THEORY OF INDIAN ORIGIN
A very interesting contribution has quite recently been made to the literature that bears on the ethnology of China's Far West by the researches of Mr T. W. Kingsmill.[325] That scholar presents a formidable array of evidence from Greek as well as from Chinese sources to prove that the Sinae of the fourth century of our era were the inhabitants of India extra Gangem, namely the west side of what we call the Indo-Chinese peninsula, including Burma; that their capital, Thinae, was on the banks of the Irrawaddy, between Bhamo and Mandalay;[326] that they, "if not identical with the widely-extended people of the Shans," had at least a close ethnological connection with that race; that they and kindred races sprang from the great Maurya family of north-western India; and that to them is due the wide prevalence of Indian political influence and Indian art in the greater part of south-western China as well as throughout the Indo-Chinese peninsula and neighbouring islands. According to this view, which certainly receives some support from history, tradition, philology, and much miscellaneous evidence, the Man-tzŭ were originally of Mauryan stock, but allied themselves with the Böd tribes or Tibetans, with whom their migrations had brought them into close contact.[327]
An apparent difficulty in tracing Shans and Man-tzŭ and other tribes to a common origin in north-eastern India consists in the generally recognised affinity between the Chinese and T'ai peoples.[328] According to the commonly-accepted view the Shans sprang from somewhere in north-western China and were gradually pushed southwards as the Chinese race extended itself. De Lacouperie considered that the cradle of the Shan race was "in the Kiulung mountains, north of Ssuch'uan and south of Shensi, in China proper."[329] Mr Kingsmill's theory would perhaps gain more ready acceptance if we premised that the so-called Indian people from whom he supposes the Man-tzŭ and others to have sprung were themselves not of Indian origin but had entered India at some remote period—probably before either Aryans or Dravidians set foot in the peninsula—either as peaceful immigrants or as an invading host, from the countries that lay to the north-east.[330]
VESÂLI AND THE MAURYANS
Our knowledge of the early history of the Maurya family is unfortunately exceedingly scanty, and it is impossible to trace it to its pre-Indian home. To confine ourselves to their Indian history, the Mauryans seem to have sprung from the Licchavis, the strongest members of the powerful Vaggian confederation that dwelt near the Lower Ganges, north-east of the kingdom of Magadha. Just before the time of the Buddha—about the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.—a fierce contest for the mastery of northern India was waged between the kingdoms of Magadha and Kosala. This contest, as Dr Rhys Davids points out, "was decided in the time of the Buddha's boyhood by the final victory of Magadha."[331] About 320 B.C. the Mauryan dynasty under Chandragupta (Sandrakottos) overthrew that of Dhana Nanda and seated itself on the throne of Magadha, which, under a strong ruler, became more powerful than ever. From this time onwards till the extinction of Chandragupta's dynasty about 190 B.C., the Licchavi or Mauryan element was the main source of the strength of Magadha, which became the supreme power in the Indian peninsula. The royal adventurer Chandragupta Maurya was the contemporary and rival of Seleukos Nikator. Chandragupta handed on to his son Bindusāra and his grandson Asoka (the famous Buddhist "Emperor of India") the crown of one of the most powerful monarchies the world had known.[332] The capital of the Licchavis (as distinct from the Magadhans) was the city of Vesâli, which was probably situated about 25 miles north of the Ganges, north-east of Pataliputra (the modern Patna), which was the Magadhan capital. Buddhist records give us some remarkable particulars about Vesâli. "A triple wall encompassed the city, each wall a league distant from the next, and there were three gates with watch-towers. In that city there were always 7707 kings to govern the kingdom, and a like number of viceroys, generals and treasurers."[333] In another place we are told that these numerous royal persons were "all of them given to argument and disputation."[334] Allowing for Oriental exaggeration, these assertions certainly seem to imply that Vesâli, and the people whose capital it was, occupied a unique position in the political system of India.[335] There cannot have been many cities, even in that paradise of philosophers, which, in pre-Buddhistic days, or indeed at any other period, harboured thousands of disputatious kings. The so-called "kings," however, were probably only the heads of the free families. Vesâli was really the metropolis of a number of federated republics, the influence of which extended far beyond the boundaries of Hindustan.
The Licchavis may well have pushed eastwards into China and Indo-China long before the Mauryans gave India its first imperial dynasty; though if we find traces of their influence in western China it seems not improbable that this is due to the fact that after their migration to India they succeeded in maintaining a friendly intercourse with their Eastern kinsfolk. In either case, the Licchavis (and through them the kingdom of Magadha[336]) must have possessed, in the days of the struggle against Kosala, an enormous advantage over their rivals in being able to draw an inexhaustible supply of strength from Indo-Chinese countries to which the Kosalans had no access.
I have no space here to discuss the various arguments that Mr Kingsmill adduces to prove that the Man-tzŭ, Lolos and allied tribes, and perhaps the Shans, are the descendants of the Mauryas—some being more or less mixed with the Böd and Kiang[337] elements of Tibet. Suffice it to say that he traces the Maury an element in tribal names and place-names, in decorative and architectural art,[338] in Chinese records and tribal traditions, and by an analysis of the phonetic history of certain Chinese characters.
NAN-CHAO
The fatal weakness of the Indo-Chinese tribes appears at all times to have been their lack of cohesive power. At one time it must have seemed as though their empire would rival that of their Indian kinsmen—if kinsmen they were—in Magadha, and for centuries it might have seemed a doubtful question whether they or the Chinese were to be the masters of the vast country we now know as China. The great kingdom of Tien—which included the greater portions of Burma and Yunnan—was for centuries a formidable obstacle in the way of Chinese expansion towards the south, and it is only within comparatively recent years that Chinese suzerainty has been accepted by western and southern Ssuch'uan. The Shan kings of Tien or Nan-Chao sometimes arrogated to themselves the title of Huang-ti (Emperor), and frequently invaded Chinese territory. In 859 of our era one of these emperors besieged Ch'eng-tu, the capital of Ssuch'uan, and left "eighty per cent. of the inhabitants of certain towns with artificial noses and ears made of wood."[339] To this day there are thousands of square miles of nominally Chinese territory in which Chinese law is unknown, and with the administration of which no Chinese official dares to meddle. Had these various tribes—many of whom have the right, according to Mr Kingsmill's theory, to claim a common Mauryan ancestry—produced a few great rulers endowed with a genius for organisation, their history might have been at least as splendid as that of the Manchus and the so-called Mongolians, both of which peoples have given emperors to China. It is indeed possible that a dynasty of Mauryan blood did actually succeed for a few brilliant years in seating itself on the Chinese throne, though the evidence to this effect is far from conclusive. Mr Kingsmill, not content with identifying the Sinae with a people belonging to the same race as the Mauryans, has also found reason for identifying the Seres with the Man-tzŭ: that is to say, with a race descended from Mauryans and Tibetans. He conjectures that the people of the State of Ts'in (Ch'in) were connected with "the Mans in the south" rather than with "the Chinese in the north." He points out that we can trace the word Ts'in[340] and its homologues to an ancient pronunciation Ser,[341] and that when Virgil and other Roman writers mentioned the Seres they were making use of a name which had become famous through the brilliant achievements of the Ts'in or Ser, who through the genius or good luck of Ts'in Shih Huang-ti had established a short-lived supremacy over the other peoples of the Chinese empire.[342] That ruler reigned from about 221 to 209 B.C., and therefore was almost a contemporary of the great emperor Asoka, who died only about eleven years before Ts'in Shih Huang-ti began to reign.[343] The famous episode of "the burning of the books" is said to have taken place about the year 213 B.C. It would be curious if it could be proved that, during the same century in which the great Mauryan emperor of Magadha was trying to inaugurate a new epoch of religion and peace by spreading the doctrines of the Buddha throughout southern Asia, another Mauryan ruler was sitting on the throne of China and inaugurating what he believed to be a new era of progress in north-eastern Asia by the destruction of the sacred books of China.
HUNG WU'S EMPIRE