In this connection and with special reference to the title Tien=heaven, employed by the Chinese in addressing the supreme ruler, I must quote T. de Lacouperie's opinion that the Akkadian name=Din-gira and symbol for God, the eight-pointed star, was the origin of Ti, a Chinese character with the same meaning and sound. Mr. C. J. Ball (The New Akkadian Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology) explains the Akkadian Din-gira as composed of di=to shine and gira=heaven and that thus the Accadian name for God is “the shining one of heaven,” which explains why the ideogram is a star. According to Mr. K. Douglas (p. 171) “Mr. Ball has practically demonstrated that the Chinese and Akkadian are the same tongue and that everywhere in China we are reminded of that great centre of civilization in Babylonia.”
An investigation of the Taouist religion reveals that it consists chiefly of star-worship, stars being deemed “divine.” “Among the liturgical works used by the priests of Taou, one of the commonest consists of prayers to Tow-moo, a female divinity supposed to reside in the Great Bear. A part of the same constellation is worshipped as a male spirit under the name of Kwei-sing” (Edkins).
A name closely resembling the latter in sound, Tseih-ching, and meaning the “Seven Regulators” is now applied to the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. In ancient times, however, according to native authorities, “this term was used to designate the seven bright stars of Ursa Major which subsequently, by an astrological device, were associated with the seven planets; so, that, by metonymy, the latter became the established meaning.”[86]
The association of the term “Regulators” with Septentriones is particularly interesting because the seven-day period has been employed in China from time immemorial, the seventh day being invariably marked by the ancient character mih, which means “quiet, secret or silent.” In the modern Chinese almanacs and astrological works “the mih days are marked by the four constellations which correspond among the seven planets to the principal one among them, the Sun” (cf. Wylie, On the Knowledge of a weekly Sabbath in China, op. cit. p. 86). I am strongly tempted to refer the origin of the Chinese mih or quiet day, on which rest was generally observed, to that remote period of time when, to primitive observers, one of the stars in Ursa Major would have appeared more closely associated with immovability and nearer the polar axis than its companions (see pp. 20 and 21).
If we pause here to review the preceding data we are particularly struck at the unanimity of evidence establishing that even the most ancient form of civilization and religion was not indigenous to China, but was carried there by colonists from distant parts, presumably from Babylonia. The latter conclusion finds a strong support in the undeniable fact that during subsequent centuries a steady stream of emigration has carried colonists of different nationalities into the heart of China.
Buddhism entered China from India in the first century of the Christian era. Alexander Wylie tells us that “according to the testimony of one of the stone tablets in the synagogue at Kai-fung foo, the Israelites first entered China during the Han dynasty” and we are further told in the letters of the Jesuits that “they came during the reign of Ming-ti (A.D. 58-75) from Si-yih, i. e. the western regions. It appears by all that can be gathered from them that this western country is Persia and that they came by Khorasan and Samarcand. They have many Persian words in their language and they long preserved a great intercourse with that country” (The Israelites in China, Wylie's Chinese Researches, Shanghai, 1897).
Some other interesting facts related by Wylie deserve mention here. In translating the name of Jehovah into Chinese, the Israelites [pg 304] in China, to the present day, say Teen, “just as the scholars of China do when they explain their term Shang-te.” We thus observe a growing practice in western Asia, among the Hebrews, of designating Jehovah as the God of Heaven and sometimes as Heaven. In Chinese history distinct mention is made of a foreign sect distinguished as the “worshippers of Heaven,” spoken of as existing in China at the beginning of the sixth century. Wylie has surmised that the Hebrews were thus designated and remarks “that this name, as the designation of a foreign sect, is the more remarkable inasmuch as the state ritual of China has designated the Supreme by the name of Heaven, from the earliest times down to the present day.”
It is a curious reflection that it may possibly have been due to a gross misconception of the Hebrew religion on the part of the Chinese and a supposed identity of worship that caused the Israelites to be treated with such tolerance and hospitality in China that their colony situated in the heart of the country still exists to the present day. It is, in fact, related of the Dowager Empress Ling, in the first half of the sixth century, that she “abolished the various corrupt systems of religious worship, excepting that of the foreign tien-spirit.” A strange insight into the Chinese view of the Christian religion is likewise afforded by the following native documents cited by Wylie: “Now Jesus, the Lord of Heaven, is worshipped by the Europeans. They say that this is the ancient religion of Ta-tsin (Syria).”
The following remarkable passages occur on the famous Nestorian tablet, dated A.D. 781, which eulogizes the propagation of the “Illustrious [Christian] Religion” in China. This tablet was discovered by the Jesuit fathers in 1625 and, after its authenticity had been violently assailed, Wylie's painstaking researches have now vindicated its genuineness.[87] The following extracts are from the preface engraved upon it and composed by King-tsing, a priest of the Syrian Church: “... Our eternal, true lord God.... He appointed the cross as the means of determining the four cardinal points, he moved the original spirit and produced the two principles of nature; the sombre void was changed and heaven and earth were opened out; the sun and moon revolved and day and night commenced; having perfected all inferior objects, he then made the first man ... the illustrious and honorable Messiah, [pg 305] veiling his true dignity, appeared in the world as a man ... a bright star announced the felicitous event [of his birth] ... he fixed the extent of the eight boundaries.... As a seal [his disciples] hold the cross, whose influence is reflected in every direction uniting all without distinction. As they strike the wood the fame of their benevolence is diffused abroad; worshipping towards the east they hasten on the way to life and glory ... they do not keep slaves, but put noble and mean all on an equality; they do not amass wealth but cast all their property into the common stock.”
Referring the matter to oriental scholars for further discussion I merely note here the astonishing fact that in China, in the seventh century of our era, the supreme God of the Hebrews and Christians was spoken of as the God of Heaven, or Heaven, that He is credited with having created the two principles of nature besides heaven and earth and instituted the cross as “a means of determining the cardinal points.”