CHAPTER XLIII
“PLUS UN PAYS PRODUIT DES POISSONS,
PLUS IL PRODUIT D’HOMMES”
If the above dictum[1094] and Williams’s statement that “in no country, except Japan, is so much food derived from the water,”[1095] be accurate, modern China should lack not folk nor food. Every method of fishing obtains in one part of the country or other, and scarce a sea or stream exists unvexed by some piscatorial implement.
“Fish are killed by the spear, caught with the hook, scraped up by the dredge, ensnared in traps, and captured by nets: they are decoyed to jump into boats by painted boards, and frightened into nets by noisy ones, taken out of the water by lifting nets, and dived in for by birds, for the cormorant seizes what his owner can not easily reach.”[1096]
This description, minus the cormorant but plus leistering, applies fairly well to Ancient China. Mr. Werner’s great work discloses no distinct mention of fishing previous to 1122 b.c., although the present to a Viceroy of “cuttle fish condiment” apparently implies it. From that date the Spear, the Net, the Line, the Rod, and divers strange devices figure frequently and historically.[1097] In the earlier centuries covered by this period, if the Line claimed adherents,[1098] Nets made of fine bamboo, with bags arranged in front of wooden stockades planted on the banks of rivers,[1099] were the general method.[1100]
Although the Chinese have produced quite a considerable literature on Fishing, the path of a writer unversed in their language is, from the absence of translations, compassed about with many difficulties. The trail winds dim and Serbonian, even if, as was my good fortune, a friendly hand holds out now and then a torch to guide his faltering steps.[1101]
The dividing line between the historical and the non-historical in China does not cut clearly and without breaks. History as distinct from legend was assumed till recently to begin between 900 and 800 b.c., but three archæological discoveries have affected previous chronological conceptions.
1. The inscribed bone fragments (till the advent of paper, c. 100 b.c., bones, stones, bronzes and tablets of wood served for papyri) found in Honan apparently carry as far back as c. 1500 b.c., and shed quite new light on the character of the early Chinese script. Among the divination tablets I had hoped for some fish omens similar to those of Assyria, Greece, and Rome, or some trace of the belief still current in Southern China that certain fish, as the Dolphin in the Mediterranean, were weather-prophets: but, owing probably to the dry character of the country of which they are the voice or rather the testament, none survive.[1102]
2. The wooden tablets at Tunhuang along the Great Wall which illumine social conditions and deal largely with the commissariat of the army.
3. The MSS. at the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, found about 1907. Coming from a Buddhist monastery, they give in the main Buddhist texts, but also (as do the Egyptian Papyri) many quite new excerpts from lost writers, in addition to accounts, etc.[1103]
A goodly store of stories and descriptions of prehistoric Fishing and Fishers exists in ancient and modern works.