CHAPTER IV
THE DROWNING OF DAUGHTERS—EARLY MONGOLIAN CIVILIZATION MARKED BY ANCESTOR WORSHIP—SEVERE CHARACTER OF CONFUCIUS—“BEGINNING” OF INFANTICIDE, 200 B. C.—REFORMS OF THE EMPEROR CHOENTCHE AND THE MANCHUS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY—DECREES REDUCING THE COST OF WEDDING GIFTS IN ORDER TO STOP PARENTS FROM KILLING FEMALE CHILDREN.
ASSUMING that the human cradle was in the Eastern Archipelago, and more particularly in the Island of Java where Dr. Dubois discovered his Pithecanthropus erectus, the primeval home of the Mongolian division of the human race was the Tibetan plateau. From this central plateau the early Mongol groups spread during the Stone Age over the Asiatic continent, in one place developing into the Akkado-Sumerians of Babylonia, the almost extinct Hyperboreans of Siberia in another, the Mongolo-Tartars stretching across Central Asia from Japan to Europe, the Tibeto-Indo-Chinese of Tibet, Indo-China, and China, and the Oceanic Mongols of Malaysia, Madagascar, and the Philippines.
In Tibet even today, polyandrous customs are still strong and the nomadic tendencies of the people show that the years of civilization or near-civilization have not changed the primitive roving inclinations, inclinations that partly account for the indifference to child life among the Chinese.
Our knowledge of ancient China rests principally on two authorities, the Chou King of Confucius, written 484 B. C., and the Sse Ki of Tsse Ma Thsein, written at the beginning of the first era before Christ. Confucius was not able to go further back than seventeen centuries before his own time, so that we can safely say that we know something about Chinese history for about 2200 years before the Christian era. The social and political life of the Chinese people in the time of Yao, the first of the emperors named by Confucius, was that of a pastoral people, but even then most of the useful arts had been invented, writing was already known, and the first notions of astronomy on which they founded their calendar had been acquired. The successor of Yao was Chun, and after Chun came Hia, the founder of a dynasty which lasted from 2205 to 1767 B. C., with which dynasty began the real history of China.
When Confucius appeared the Chinese Empire was a highly civilized nation, but of Confucius it has been said that he, more than any other one man, went to make China a nation. Born at a time when his country was torn with discord and desolated by war, husbandry neglected, peace of households destroyed, and plunder and rapine common occurrences, Confucius was nineteen when he married and added to the national woes his own domestic troubles, divorcing the lady after a brief period in captivity, but not however until she had borne him a son.
It is through this son that we learn something of the personal character of Confucius. An inquisitive disciple asked the son if he had learned any more than those who were not related to the great teacher.
“No,” replied Le. “He was standing alone once when I was passing through the court below with hasty steps, and said to me:
“‘Have you read the Odes?’