[13] Soldiers will often stop a European in a by-place and beg. They get about twenty paras (a penny farthing) a day.
From Household Words.
THE JEWS IN CHINA.
There is a quaintness in the notion of a Jewish colony surrounded by Chinese; the fixed among the fixed. The fact that such a colony exists, or has existed when found, ought to be especially remarked, for to ethnologists and others it may prove a valuable opportunity for speculation. Jews in China, what will they be like? Will the Jew stand out from the surrounding uniformity of Chinese life, like the one tree of the desert (for which, see Panorama of Overland Mail, and hear lecture upon same); or will he become non-entity, like among like, adding nothing to the first idea—silence in a calm? In the Jewish synagogue in Kai-foung-fou, concerning which we have presently to speak, there are Chinese inscriptions. The first placed there in 1444, by a literary Jew, is intended to prove the close analogy between Jewish and Chinese points of doctrine. "The author," it says, "of the law of Yse-lo-ye (Israel) is Ha-vou-lo-han (Abraham). His law was translated by tradition to Nichè (Moses). He received his book on Mt. Sinai. His book has fifty-four sections. The doctrine which is therein contained is much like that of the Kings," (which are sacred volumes of the Chinese). The author of the inscription repeats many passages to prove that in their worship to heaven, their ceremonies, their behavior to the old and young, their patriarchal character, their prayers, and their mode of honoring dead ancestors, the Jews resemble the Chinese.
The author of a second inscription, a grand mandarin in his own time, speaks to the same purpose. "From the time of Han," says this gentleman, whose name is Too-tang, "from the time of Han, the Jews fixed themselves in China; and in the twentieth year of the cycle 65, (which is, by interpretation, 1163,) they offered to the Emperor Hiao-tsong a tribute of cloth from India. He received them well, and permitted them to live in Kai-foung-fou. They formed then sixty-six families. They built a synagogue where they placed their Kings, or Divine Scriptures." This mandarin concludes with an eulogium of Jewish virtue, after the approved manner of epitaphs.
The Jews emphatically cultivated agriculture, commerce, were faithful in the armies, upright as magistrates, and rigid in observance of their ceremonies. One only wants to wind up with the scrap, "Affliction sore, long time they bore;" but affliction on the part of the Chinese, at any rate, they certainly did not bear; they were more than tolerated, they were understood; ceremony-men to ceremony-men were ceremoniously polite to one another. The Jews and Chinese even intermarried; on their first introduction by way of Persia to the Chinese Empire, they had settled here and there in sundry Chinese cities; but by the marriage with Chinese disciples of Confucius or Mahomet, the Jewish colonies were melted down into the pure Chinese metal; and when this history begins, nothing is known of any synagogue in China, save the synagogue at Kai-foung-fou, which is a city in the heart of the Flowery Land, the capital of the central province of Honan; and for an account of which we are indebted to Father Ricci, one of the Jesuit Missionaries.
Father Ricci died in the year 1610, at Pekin, which was his station. Father Ricci, at Pekin, first heard of the Jewish synagogue at Kai-foung-fou, and the information startled him exceedingly. The young Jew who enlightened Father Ricci on the subject told him that there were then at Kai-foung-fou barely a dozen Jewish families, and that for five or six hundred years they had preserved in their synagogue a very ancient copy of the Pentateuch. The father produced a Hebrew Bible, and the young man recognized the characters, although he could not read them, for he knew no language but Chinese. Four years after this, Father Ricci (whose business at Pekin would not permit him to go gadding) had an opportunity of sending off to Kai-foung-fou a Chinese Jesuit, with a letter written in Chinese, to the chief of the synagogue. He explained to the rabbi his own reverence for the books of the Old Testament, and informed him of its fulfilled predictions, and the advent of a Messiah. The rabbi shook his head at that, saying, "that so it could not be, because they had yet to expect the Messiah for ten thousand years." The good natured rabbi nevertheless did homage to Father Ricci's great abilities. He was an old man, and saw none about him fit to guide his people; he therefore besought the learned Jesuit to come to Kai-foung-fou, and undertake the guidance of the synagogue, under one only condition, a true Chinese-Jewish one, that he would pledge himself to abstinence from all forbidden meats. However, that was very much as if Dr. Jones of Bettws-y-Coed should offer his practice to Sir B. Brodie of London. Father Ricci had a larger work in hand, and so he stopped at Pekin.
In 1613, Father Aleni (such an uncommonly wise man, that the Chinese called him the Confucius of Europe) was directed to proceed to Kai-foung-fou and make investigation. Father Aleni, being well up in his Hebrew, was a promising man to send on such an errand, but he found the rabbi dead, and the Jews, though they let him see the synagogue, would not produce their books. The particulars of nothing having been done on this occasion are to be found related by Father Trigaut, in choice Latin, and choicer Italian, (de Expedit. Sinicâ, lib. 1., cap. 2, p. 118,) and by Father Samedo (Relatione della China, part 1., cap. 30, p. 193.)
A residence was established by the Jesuits in Kai-foung-fou. Now, thought those who thought at all upon such matters, we shall have something done. If we can only compare our Old Testament texts with an ancient exemplar, that will be no small gain. A certain father Gozani went zealously into the whole subject, entered the synagogue, copied the inscriptions, and transmitted them to Rome.