In allotting precedence to the various states, the historical editors, of course, always put the Emperor first in order of mention; then comes CHÊNG, the first ruler of which state was son of an Emperor of the then ruling imperial house; next, the three Protectors Ts'i, Tsin, and Sung; then follow the petty states of Wei, Ts'ai, Ts'ao, and T'êng, all of the imperial family name, or, as we say in English, "surname," and all lying between the Hwai and the Sz systems (T'êng was a "belonging state" of Lu). Then come half a dozen petty orthodox states of less honourable family names; next, three Eastern barbarian states, which had become "Central Kingdom," or which, once genuine Chinese, had become half barbarian; and finally, Ts'u, Ts'in, Wu, and Yiieh, which were frankly, if vaguely, "outer barbarian-Tartar."
It has already been demonstrated that there is evidence, however imperfect, to show that the mass of the population of Ts'u and Wu were of decidedly foreign origin. Even as to Ts'i, which was always treated as an orthodox principality, it is stated that the founder sent there in or about 1100 B.C. "conformed to the manners of the place, and encouraged manufactures, commerce, salt and fish industries." On the other hand, the son of the Duke of Chou (the first vassal prince appointed by his brother the Emperor) changed the customs of Lu, modified the local rites, and induced the people to keep on their mourning attire for three full years. It was considered that the Ts'i policy was the wiser of the two, and it was foretold that Lu would always "look up to" Ts'i in consequence of this superior judgment on the part of Ts'i. On frequent occasions the petty adjoining "Chinesified" states, of which Lu was practically the mesne lord, are stated to have been "tainted with Eastern barbarian rites." From and including modern Sü-chou (North Kiang Su) and eastward, all were "Eastern barbarians"; in fact, the city just named (mentioned by the name of Sü in 1100 B.C., and again about 950 B.C., as revolting against the Emperor) perpetuates the "Sü barbarians" country, which was for long a bone of contention between Ts'i and Ts'u, and afterwards Wu; and the name "Hwai savages" proves that the Lower Hwai Valley was also independent. The Hwai savages, who appear in the Tribute of Yü, founder of the Hia dynasty, 2205 B.C., revolted 1000 years later against the founders of the Chou dynasty. They were present at Ts'u's first durbar in 538 B.C., and are mentioned as barbarians still resisting Chinese methods so late as A.D. 970. In Confucius' time the Lai barbarians (modern Lai-thou Fu in the German sphere) were employed by Ts'i, who had conquered them in 567 B.C., to try and effect the assassination of Confucius' master. Six hundred years before that, these same barbarians were among the first to give in their submission to the founder of Ts'i; and in 602 B.C. both Ts'i and Lu had endeavoured to crush them.
As to the state of Ts'in, there is not a single instance given of any literary conversation or correspondence held by an orthodox high functionary with a Ts'in statesman. While it is not yet quite clear that orthodox China can shake herself entirely free of the reproach of human sacrifices in all senses, it is quite certain that Ts'in had a barbarous and exclusive notoriety in this regard'; and, as the Hiung-nu Tartars also practised it, and Ts'in was at least half Tartar in blood, it is probable that she derived her sanguinary notions from this blood connection with the Turko- Scythian tribes. On the death of the Ts'in ruler in 678 B.C., the first recorded human sacrifices were made, "sixty-six individuals following the dead." In 621, on the death of the celebrated Duke Muh, 177 persons lost their lives, and the people of Ts'in, in pity, "composed the Yellow Bird Ode" (of these popular Chinese odes more anon). This holocaust was given as one reason why Ts'in could never "rule in the East," i.e. assume the Protectorate over the orthodox powers all lying to its east, on account of this cruel defect in its laws. In 387 B.C., the new Earl of Ts'in (who succeeded a nephew, and therefore could, having no paternal duty to fulfil, introduce the innovation more cheaply) abolished the principle of human sacrifices at the death of a ruler. Ten years later, the Emperor's astrologer paid a visit to Ts'in;—evidence that the imperial civilizing influence was still, at least morally, active, This astrologer and historiographer, whose name was Tan, is interesting, inasmuch as he has been confused with Li Tan (the personal name of the philosopher Lao- tsz, who was also an imperial official employed in the historiographical department). It is added that, previous to this visit, for five hundred years Ts'in and Chou had kept apart from each other. Notwithstanding this prohibition of human sacrifices, when the First August Emperor of Universal China died in 210 B.C., the old Ts'in custom was reintroduced, and all his women who had not given birth to children were buried with him. Besides this, all the workmen who had made the secret door and passage to his grave were cemented in alive, so that they might never disclose the secret of its approaches.
It was only after gradually adopting Chinese civilization that Ts'in began to be a considerable power; thus, when Ki-chah of Wu was entertained at Lu with specimens of the various styles of music, he observed, on being regaled with Ts'in music: "Ah! civilized sounds; it has succeeded in refining itself; it is in occupation of the old Chou appanage." So late as 361 B.C., when Ngwei (one of the three royal subdivisions of old Tsin) built a wall to keep off Ts'in, both Ngwei and Ts'u (which by this time was quite as good orthodox Chinese as any other state) treated Ts'in as though the latter were still barbarian, In 326 Ts'in first introduced into her realm the well-known year-end sacrifices of the orthodox Chinese, which fact alone points to a long isolation of Ts'in before this date.
The rule of succession in Ts'in seems to have been of the Tartar kind at one time. Duke Muh, in 660 B.C., succeeded his brother, though that brother had seven sons of his own living: that brother again, had also succeeded a brother.
As to Yüeh, there is no question as to its barbarism, though the one single king around whose name centres the whole glory of Yiieh (Kou-tsien, 496-475) seems to have been a man of great ability and some fine feeling. The native name for Yiieh was Yü-yüeh, as stated in Chapter VII.; and it seems likely that all the coast of China down to Tonquin, or Northern Annam, was then inhabited by cognate tribes, all having the syllable Yüeh, or Viét, in their names. The great empire or kingdom of Yiieh, founded upon the ruins of Wu, soon split up into the "Hundred Yiieh," i.e. (probably) it relapsed into its native barbarism, and ceased to cohere as a political factor. "Southern Yüeh" (the Canton region) has undoubted historical connections with the Tonquin part of Annam, and several other of the subdivisions of Yiieh, corresponding to Foochow, Wênchow, etc., show distinct traces of having belonged to the same race. But it is unsafe to say how the Chinese-transcribed name Yii-yiieh was pronounced; still more unsafe is it to argue that it must have been U or O-viêt simply because the Annamese so pronounce the word now. We have seen that, according to one historical statement, the Wu and Yiieh people spoke the same language; in which case the members of the ruling Wu caste who fled to Japan in 473 B.C. were probably not of the same race as the "savages around them." As an act of bravado, in 481, the King of Wu made five condemned centurions cut their own throats before the Tsin envoy, in order to show what effectively stern discipline he kept, In 484 the King of Yiieh had already committed a similar act of bravado; but neither of these barbarian states is distinctly recorded to have indulged in human sacrifices at the death of a sovereign. Previous to the crushing of Wu by Yiieh, in 473 B.C., Yiieh was nearly annihilated by Wu, and on this occasion Kou-tsien's envoy advanced crawling on his knees to beg for mercy; this is hardly an orthodox Chinese custom. However barbarous Yiieh may have been, its ruling house possessed traditions of descent, through a concubine, from an emperor of the Hia dynasty; for which reason the founder was enfeoffed, near modern Shao-hing, west of Ningpo, in order to fulfil the sacrifices to the founder of the Hia dynasty, who was, and is, supposed to be buried there: like the first colonists who migrated to Wu, he cut his hair, tattooed himself, opened up the jungle, and built a town. In 330 B.C. Kou- tsien's descendant spoke of "taking the road left to Chu- hia," through modern Ho Nan province; that means taking the high-road to China proper. The term originated in times when Ts'u had not yet become a recognized "Hia." The fact that Yüeh, with its new capital then in Shan Tung, could never govern the Yang-tsz and Hwai inland regions, seems to prove that her power was always purely a water power, and that she was comparatively ignorant of land campaigns.
CHAPTER XXX
LITERARY RELATIONS
It is instructive to inquire what were the literary relations between the distinguished statesmen and active princes who moved about quite freely within the limited area so frequently alluded to in foregoing pages as being sacrosanct to civilization and the rites. There seems good reason to suppose that the literary activity which so disgusted the destroyer of the books in 213 B.C. did not really begin until after Confucius' death in 479; moreover, that the avalanche of philosophical works which drenched the royal courts of the Six Kingdoms was in part the consequence of Confucius' own efforts in the literary line. In the pre- Confucian days there is little evidence of the existence of any literature at all beyond the Odes, the Changes, the Book, and the Rites, which, after a lapse of 2500 years or more, are still the "Bible" of China. The Odes, of which 3000 were popularly known previous to Confucius' recension, seem to have been originally composed here and there, and passed from mouth to mouth, by the people of each orthodox state under impulse of strong passion, feeling, or suffering; or some of them may even have been committed to writing by learned folk in touch with the people. Naturally, those songs which specially treated of local matters would be locally popular; but it would seem that a large number of them must have been generally known by heart by the whole educated body all over orthodox China, It will be remembered that in the year 1900, an enterprising American newspaper correspondent took advantage of President Kruger's penchant for quoting Scripture, and telegraphed to him daily texts, selected as applicable to the event, for which the replies to be sent were always prepaid. For instance, on news of a British victory, the American would telegraph: "Victory stayeth not always with the righteous"; on which President Kruger would promptly rejoin: "Yet shall I smite him, even unto the end." This was the plan followed by Chinese envoys, statesmen, and princes in their intercourse with each other: no matter what event transpired, Ki-chah, or Tsz-ch'an, or Shuh Hiang would illustrate it with an ode, or with a reference to the "Book" (of history), or by an appeal to the Rites of Chou, or to some obscure astrological or cosmogonical development extracted from the mystic diagrams of "The Changes." As often as not, the quotations given from the Odes and Book no longer exist in the editions of those two classics which have come down to us. This fact is interesting as proving that the Tso Chwan—or Commentary of Confucius' pupil Tso K'iu-ming on Confucius' own bare notes of history— must have been written before Confucius' expurgated Book of Odes reduced and fixed the number of selected songs; or, at all events, the records from which Tso K'iu-ming took his quotations must have existed before either he or Confucius composed their respective annals and comments. In the times when a book the size of a three-volume novel of to-day would mean a mule-load of bamboo splinters or wooden tablets, it is absurd to suppose that generals in the field, or envoys on the march, could carry their Odes bodily about with them: it is even probable that the four "scriptural" books in question were exclusively committed to memory by the general public, and that not more than half a dozen varnish-written copies existed in any state; possibly not more than one copy. In fact, the only available literary exhilaration then open to cultured friends was to check the memory on visiting strange lands by comparing the texts of Odes, Changes, or Book. A knowledge of the Rites would perhaps be confined to the ruling classes almost entirely, for with them it lay to pronounce the religious, the ritual, the social, or the administrative sanction applicable to each contested set of circumstances. It is very much as though,—as was indeed the case in Johnsonian times,—the French, English, and German wits of the day, and occasionally distinguished literary specimens of even more "barbarous" countries, should at a literary conference indulge in quotations from Horace or Juvenal by way of passing the time: they would not select the Twelve Tables or the Laws of the Pr'tors as matter for the testing of learning.
To take a few instances. In 559 the ruler of Wei had severely beaten his court music-master for failing to teach a concubine how to play the lute. One day the prince invited to dinner some statesmen, the father of one of whom had taken offence at the prince's rudeness; and he ordered the same musician to strike up the last stanza of a certain ode hinting at treason, which the malicious performer did in such a way as to give further offence to the father through his son, and to bring about the dethronement of the indiscreet prince. It gives us confidence in the truth of these anecdotes when we find that K'ü-pêh-yüh was consulted by the offended father as to what course he ought to pursue. This Wei statesman, who has already been twice mentioned in connection with other matters, met Ki-chah of Wu when the latter visited that state in 544, and he was also an admired senior acquaintance of Confucius himself, whom he twice lodged at his house for many months. Three chapters of the "Book" still remain, after Confucius' manipulations of it, to prove how Wei was first enfeoffed by the Duke of Chou, and one of the Odes actually sings the praises of a Ts'i princess who married the prince of Wei in 753 B.C. Thus we see that the ancient classics are intertwined and mutually corroborative.