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MYTHS OF CHINA AND JAPAN

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MYTH AND LEGEND IN LITERATURE AND ART

CLASSIC MYTH AND LEGEND By A. R. Hope Moncrieff

CELTIC MYTH AND LEGEND POETRY AND ROMANCE By Charles Squire

TEUTONIC MYTH AND LEGEND By Donald A. Mackenzie

ROMANCE AND LEGEND OF CHIVALRY By A. R. Hope Moncrieff

EGYPTIAN MYTH AND LEGEND By Donald A. Mackenzie

[INDIAN MYTH AND LEGEND] By Donald A. Mackenzie

[MYTHS OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA] By Donald A. Mackenzie

MYTHS OF CRETE AND PRE-HELLENIC EUROPE By Donald A. Mackenzie

THE GRESHAM PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD.

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THE GOD OF THUNDER

From a Chinese picture in the John Rylands Library, Manchester

MYTHS OF
CHINA AND JAPAN

By
DONALD A. MACKENZIE
With Illustrations in Colour & Monochrome after Paintings and Photographs

THE GRESHAM PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD.
66 CHANDOS ST. COVENT GARDEN LONDON

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Printed in Great Britain [[v]]

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PREFACE

This volume deals with the myths of China and Japan, and it is shown that these throw light on the origin and growth of civilization and the widespread dissemination of complex ideas associated with certain modes of life. The Far East does not appear to have remained immune to outside cultural influences in ancient times. Modern research has established that the old school of opinions which insisted on the complete isolation of China can no longer obtain. As Laufer says: “It cannot be strongly enough emphasized on every occasion that Chinese civilization, as it appears now, is not a unit and not the exclusive production of the Chinese, but the final result of the cultural efforts of a vast conglomeration of the most varied tribes, an amalgamation of ideas accumulated from manifold quarters and widely differentiated in space and time.… No graver error can hence be committed than to attribute any culture idea at the outset to the Chinese, for no other reason than because it appears within the precincts of their empire.”

Even the Chinese records have to be regarded with caution. It is impossible nowadays to accept as serious contributions to history the inflated chronology and the obvious fables compiled and invented by Chinese scholars [[vi]]for political and other purposes during the Han and later dynasties. These scholars had really little knowledge of the early history of their country and people. They were puzzled even by certain existing customs and religious practices, and provided ingenious “secondary explanations” which, like their accounts of the early dynasties, do not accord with the data accumulated by archæologists and other workers in the scientific field. The complex religious ideas of the Chinese were obviously not of spontaneous generation. Many of these resemble too closely the complexes found elsewhere, and their history cannot be traced within the limits of the Chinese empire. Indeed, as is shown, some of them are undoubtedly products of human experiences obtained elsewhere, and they reveal traces of the influences to which they were subjected during the process of gradual transmission from areas of origin. Nor, would it appear, was Chinese civilization nearly as ancient as the native scholars would have us believe.

When the early Chinese entered China, they found non-Chinese peoples in different parts of that vast area which they ultimately welded into an empire. They were an inland people and did not invent boats; they did not originate the agricultural mode of life but adopted it, using the seeds and implements they had acquired; nor did they invent the potter’s wheel with which they were familiar from the earliest times in China, having evidently become possessed of it, along with the complex culture associated with it, before they migrated into the province of Shensi. Nor could an agrarian people like the Chinese have been the originators of the belief in the existence of [[vii]]“Isles of the Blest” in the Eastern Ocean; they were not alone in Asia in believing in a Western Paradise situated among the mountains.

The Chinese, as Laufer demonstrates in his Jade, did not pass through in China that culture stage called the “Neolithic”. When they first settled in Shensi, they searched for and found jade, as did the carriers of bronze who first entered Europe. There was obviously an acquired psychological motive for the search for jade, and the evidence of Chinese jade symbolism demonstrates to the full that it had been acquired from those who had transferred to jade the earlier symbolism of shells, pearls, and precious metals. In the chapter devoted to jade it is shown that this view is confirmed by the evidence afforded by Chinese customs connected with jade, shells, pearls, &c.

In no country in the world are the processes of culture drifting and culture mixing made more manifest than in China. The Chinese dragon is, as Professor Elliot Smith puts it, a “composite wonder beast”. Throughout this volume it is shown to yield, when dissected, remarkable evidence regarding the varied influences under which it acquired its highly complex character. The fact that a Chinese dragon charm closely resembles a Scottish serpent charm is of special interest in this connection. When, however, it is found that China obtained certain myths and practices from the area called by its writers “Fu-lin” (the Byzantine Empire), and that not only Byzantine but Ægean influences are traceable in the Celtic field, the charm-link between Gaelic Scotland and China may not, after all, be regarded as “far-fetched”. The same may be said [[viii]]regarding the curious similarity between the myths and practices connected with shells, and especially cockle-shells, in Japan and the Scottish Hebrides. Although the West Highlanders and the inhabitants of the Land of the Rising Sun were never brought into contact, it may be that similar cultural influences drifted east and west from their area of origin, and that the carriers were the ancient mariners who introduced the same type of vessel into far-separated oceans.

As in China, we do not in Japan find a culture of purely native origin, but rather one which has grown up from a mass of imported elements as varied as the racial types that compose the present-day population. Both in China and Japan these imported elements have been subjected to the influences of time and locality and infused with national ideas and ideals. The processes of growth and change have not, however, concealed the sources from which certain of the early ideas emanated in varying degrees of development.

The early native history of Japan is, like that of China, no more worthy of acceptance than are the long-discarded English and Scottish fables regarding Brute and Scota.

The data accumulated in this volume tend to show, although we have no direct evidence of systematic missionary enterprise earlier than that of the Buddhists, that the influential religious cults of ancient times that flourished in Mesopotamia and in the Egyptian Empire (which included part of Western Asia) appear to have left their impress on the intellectual life of even far-distant peoples. Apparently modes of thought were transmitted along [[ix]]direct and indirect avenues of intercourse by groups of traders. Even before trade routes were opened, religious beliefs and practices appear to have been introduced into distant lands by prospectors and by settlers who founded colonies from which later colonies “budded”. When the same set of complexes are found in widely separated areas, it is difficult to accept the view that they originated from the same particular experiences and the same set of circumstances, especially when it is made manifest that the complexes in the older centre of culture reflect strictly local physical conditions, and even the local political conditions that resulted in a fusion of peoples and of their myths, symbols, and religious beliefs and practices.

DONALD A. MACKENZIE. [[xi]]

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CONTENTS

[[xiii]]

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LIST OF PLATES

Facing Page

[THE GOD OF THUNDER] (in colour) Frontispiece

From a Chinese picture in the John Rylands Library, Manchester

[POTTER’S WHEEL, SIMLA, INDIA] 16

From a sketch by J. Lockwood Kipling in the Victoria and Albert Museum

[A MODERN CHINESE JUNK ON THE CANTON RIVER] 24

[CHINESE DRAGON-BOAT FESTIVAL] 40

From a picture woven in coloured silks and gold thread in the Victoria and Albert Museum

[CHINESE DRAGONS AMONG THE CLOUDS] 48

From a painting in the British Museum

[CHINESE DRAGON VASE WITH CARVED WOOD STAND] 56

(Victoria and Albert Museum)

[CARP LEAPING FROM WAVES] 81

From a Japanese painting in the British Museum

[CHINESE PORCELAIN VASE DECORATED WITH FIVE-CLAWED DRAGONS RISING FROM WAVES] 88

(Victoria and Albert Museum) [[xiv]]

[RESONANT STONE OF JADE SHOWING DRAGON WITH CLOUD ORNAMENTS, SUSPENDED FROM CARVED BLACKWOOD FRAME] 96

By courtesy of B. Laufer, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago

[TORTOISE AND SNAKE] 104

From a rubbing in the British Museum of a Chinese original

[GATHERING FRUITS OF LONGEVITY] 112

From a Chinese painting in the British Museum

[SHOU SHAN (i.e. “HILLS OF LONGEVITY”), THE TAOIST PARADISE] 124

From a woven silk picture in the Victoria and Albert Museum

[THE CHINESE SI WANG MU (JAPANESE SEIOBO) AND MAO NU] 136

From a Japanese painting (by Hidenobu) in the British Museum

[MOUNTAIN VIEW WITH SCHOLAR’S RETREAT] 140

From a Chinese painting in the British Museum

[GENII AT THE COURT OF SI WANG MU] 152

From a Chinese painting in the British Museum

[SQUARE BRICK OF THE HAN DYNASTY, WITH MYTHOLOGICAL FIGURES AND INSCRIPTIONS] 160

[CHINESE BOWL WITH SYMBOL OF LONGEVITY] 168

(Victoria and Albert Museum)

[GOATS CROPPING PLANT OF LIFE] 172

From the jade sculpture in the Scottish National Museum, Edinburgh [[xv]]

[THE GODDESS OF THE DEW] 184

From a Chinese painting in the British Museum

[AN OFFERING TO THE GODS, PEKING] 200

From a photograph by H. G. Ponting, F.R.G.S.

[ANCIENT BRONZE ASTRONOMICAL INSTRUMENTS ON THE CITY WALL, PEKING] 208

[MORTUARY FISH IN JADE, OF HAN PERIOD] 212

[FIGURE OF BUTTERFLY IN WHITE AND BROWNISH-YELLOW JADE, TSʼIN OR HAN PERIOD] 212

[AMULETS FOR THE DEAD, AND OTHER OBJECTS IN JADE] 220

The subjects on pages 212 and 220 are reproduced by courtesy of B. Laufer, author of “Jade”, Field Museum, Chicago

[THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN, PEKING] 228

From a photograph by H. G. Ponting, F.R.G.S.

[THREE SAGES STUDYING SYMBOL OF YIN AND YANG] 230

From a Chinese painting in the British Museum

[KWAN-YIN, THE CHINESE “GODDESS OF MERCY”] 271

From a porcelain figure decorated in soft enamels in the Victoria and Albert Museum

[LAO TZE AND DISCIPLES] 300

From a Chinese painting in the British Museum

[THE MOST FAMOUS PAI-LO (GODDESS SYMBOL) IN CHINA: AT THE MENG TOMBS, NEAR PEKING] 328

From a photograph by H. G. Ponting, F.R.G.S. [[xvi]]

[THE FAMOUS OLD TORI-WI (GODDESS SYMBOL), MIYAJIMA, JAPAN] 338

From a photograph by H. G. Ponting, F.R.G.S.

[THE JAPANESE TREASURE SHIP] 352

From a woodcut in the British Museum

[SUSA-NO-WO MAKING A COMPACT WITH DISEASE SPIRITS] 360

From a Japanese painting (by Hoga) in the British Museum

[AMATERÂSU, THE SUN GODDESS, EMERGING FROM HER CAVE] 368

From a Japanese painting in the British Museum

[SEIOBO (= THE CHINESE SI WANG MU) WITH ATTENDANT AND THREE RISHI] 380

From a Japanese painting (by Sanraku) in the British Museum [[1]]

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MYTHS OF
CHINA AND JAPAN

CHAPTER I

The Dawn of Civilization

Chinese Culture—Had it Independent Origin?—Evolution in Human Affairs—Stratification Theory—The Mystery of Mind—Man’s First Philosophy of Life—Influences exercised by Ancient Civilizations—Culture Mixing—The Idea of Progress—Art in the Pleistocene Age—Introduction of Agriculture—Birth of Osirian Civilization—The “Water of Greenness” as “Water of Life”—How Commerce Began—Introduction of Copper-working—The Oldest Calendar in the World—The “Kings of Mankind”—Ancient Man and Modern Man.

The destinies of a people are shaped by their modes of thought, and their real history is therefore the history of their culture. The Chinese frame of mind has made the Chinese the people they are and China the country it is. Every section of society has been swayed by this far-reaching and enduring influence, the sources of which lie in remote antiquity. It is the force that has even been shaping public opinion and directing political movements. Emperors and leaders of thought have been uplifted by it or cast down by it.

To understand China, it is necessary that we should inquire into its inner history—the history of its culture—[[2]]so as to get at the Chinese point of view and look at things through Chinese eyes. That inner history is in part a record of its early experiences among the nations of the earth. There was a time when China was “in the making”, when the little leaven that leavened the whole lump began to move, when that culture which spread over a vast area was confined to a small centre and to a comparatively small group of people. Who were this people, where were they situated, what influences were at work to stir them and shape their ambitions, and what secret did they learn which gave them power over the minds and bodies of about a third of the inhabitants of the globe? In short, how and where did Chinese culture originate, and how did it spread and become firmly established? Was it a thing of purely local growth? Did it begin to be quite independently of all other cultures? Does it owe its virility and distinctiveness among the cultures of ancient and modern times to the influence of the locality in which it had “independent origin”? Had it an independent origin?

These queries open up the larger problem as to the origin of civilization in the world. At this point, therefore, we must decide whether or not we are to accept the idea of evolution in human affairs. Can the principles of biological evolution be applied to the problems of ethnology (using the term in its widest sense to include the physical and cultural history of mankind)? Can we accept the theory that in isolated quarters of the globe separated communities were stirred by natural laws to make progress in adapting themselves to their environments, and that, once a beginning was made, separated communities developed on similar lines? Did each ancient civilization have its natural periods of growth and decay? Were separated communities uninfluenced during these [[3]]periods by human minds and wills? Were their destinies shaped by natural laws, or by the cumulative force of public opinion? Was it a natural law that made men abandon the hunting and adopt the agricultural mode of life? Did certain communities of men, influenced by natural laws in ancient times, begin to shape their religious systems by first worshipping groups of spirits and ultimately, having passed through a sequence of well-defined stages, find themselves elevated by these natural laws to the stage of monotheism? Is it because certain races have, for some mysterious reason, been prompted to pass through these stages more quickly than others, that they are deserving of the term “progressive” while others must be characterized as “backward”?

If these questions are answered in the affirmative, we must assume that we have solved the riddle of Mind. Those who apply the principles of biological evolution to human affairs are in the habit of referring to laws that control the workings of the human mind. But what do we really know about the workings of the human mind? This question has only to be asked so that the hazardous character of the fashion of thinking adopted by extreme exponents of the Evolution School may be emphasized. It cannot but be admitted that we know little or nothing regarding the human mind. What happens when we think? How are memories stored in the brain? How are emotions caused? What is Consciousness? How does the Will operate? Grave psychological problems have to be solved before we can undertake the responsibility of discussing with any degree of confidence the laws that are supposed to govern human thought and action.

The researches into the early history of man, of about a generation ago, were believed by some to “have revealed the essential similarity with which, under many superficial [[4]]differences, the human mind has elaborated its first crude philosophy of life”. It was found that similar beliefs and practices obtained among widely separated communities, and it was not suspected that the influence exercised by direct and indirect cultural contact between “progressive” and “backward” communities extended to such great distances as has since been found to be the case. Prospecting routes by land and sea were the avenues along which cultural influences “drifted”. Early man was much more enterprising as a trader and explorer than was believed in Tylor’s day. The evidence accumulated of late years tends to show that almost no part of the globe remained immune to the influences exercised by the great ancient civilizations, and that these civilizations were never in a state of “splendid isolation” at any period in their histories. In the light of this knowledge it is becoming more and more clear that Victorian ethnologists were inclined to make too much of resemblances, and failed to take into account the differences that a more intensive study of local cultures have revealed. There were, of course, resemblances, which suggest the influence of cultural contact and the settlement among backward peoples of colonists from progressive communities, but there were also differences of beliefs and customs which were of local origin and can hardly be characterized as “superficial”. One of the results of contact was the process of “culture mixing”. Customs and fashions of thinking were introduced into a country and blended with local customs and local modes of thought. In early China, as will be shown, there was “culture mixing”. The Chinese frame of mind is the result of compromises effected in remote times.

How, then, did the idea of progress originate? Is there in the human mind an instinct which stirs mankind [[5]]to achieve progress? If so, how does it come about that some peoples have failed to move until brought into contact with progressive races? Why did the Melanesians, for instance, remain in the Stone Age until reached by the missionary and the sandal-wood trader? The missionaries and the traders caused them to advance in a brief period from the Stone Age to the Age of Steel and Machinery. Can it be maintained that in ancient days no sudden changes took place? Did the people, for instance, who introduced bronze-working into a country introduce nothing else? Did they leave behind their beliefs, their myths, their customs, and their stories?

When it is asked how progress originated, we can only turn to such evidence as is available regarding the early history of “Modern Man”. At a remote period, dating back in Europe to the Pleistocene Age, men lived in organized communities and pursued the hunting mode of life. Their culture is revealed by their pictorial art in the prehistoric cave-dwellings of France and Spain, and their decorative art by their finely engraved implements and weapons.[1] This art reached a high state of perfection. In some aspects it compares favourably with modern art.[2] Evidently it had a long history, and was practised by those who were endowed with the artistic faculty and had received a training. These early men, who belonged to the Cro-Magnon races, were traders as well as hunters. In some of their “inland stations” have been found shells that had been imported from the Mediterranean coast.

The hunting mode of life prevailed also among the proto-Egyptians in the Nile valley, an area which was less capable in remote times of maintaining a large population [[6]]than were the wide and fertile plains of Europe. Egypt was thinly peopled until the agricultural mode of life was introduced. Someone discovered how to make use of the barley that grew wild in the Nile valley and western Asia. In time the seeds were cultivated, and some little community thus provided itself with an abundant food-supply. Men’s minds were afterwards engaged in solving the problem how to extend the area available for cultivation in the narrow Nile valley. Nature was at hand to make suggestions to them. Each year the River Nile came down in flood and fertilized the parched and sun-burnt wastes. The waters caused the desert to “blossom like the rose”. Intelligent observers perceived that if the process of water-fertilization were maintained, as in the Delta region, they could extend their little farms and form new ones. The art of irrigation was discovered and gradually adopted, with the result that the narrow river valley, which had been thinly peopled during the Hunting Period, became capable of maintaining a large population.

In what particular area the agricultural mode of life was first introduced, it is impossible to say. Some favour southern Palestine and some southern Mesopotamia. Those who favour Egypt[3] can refer to interesting and important evidence in support of their view. It is the only ancient country, for instance, in which there are traditions regarding the man[4] who introduced the agricultural mode of life. This was Osiris, a priest-king[5] who was deified, or a god to whom was credited the discovery, made by a [[7]]man or group of men, of how to grow corn. Plutarch’s version of the Egyptian legend states: “Osiris, being now become King of Egypt, applied himself towards civilizing his countrymen, by turning them from their former indigent and barbarous course of life; he moreover taught them how to cultivate and improve the fruits of the earth”. Evidence has been forthcoming that the pre-Dynastic Egyptians were agriculturists. The bodies of many of them have been found preserved in their graves in the hot dry sands of Upper Egypt. “From the stomachs and intestines of these prehistoric people”, writes Professor G. Elliot Smith, “I was able to recover large quantities of food materials, in fact, the last meals eaten before death.” Careful examination was made of the contents of the stomachs. “Almost every sample contained husks of barley, and in about 10 per cent of the specimens husks of millet could be identified with certainty.” The millet found in these bodies is nearly related to the variety “which is now cultivated in the East Indies”.[6]

Here we have proof that the agricultural mode of life obtained in the Nile valley over sixty centuries ago, and that the seeds of the cultivated variety of millet, which grows wild in North Africa and southern Asia, were carried to far-distant areas by ancient traders and colonists. These facts have, as will be found, an important bearing on the early history of Chinese civilization.

Our immediate concern, however, is with the history of early civilization. In the Nile valley man made progress when he was able to provide something which he required, by the intelligent utilization of means at his disposal. No natural law prompted him to cultivate corn and irrigate the sun-parched soil. He did not [[8]]become an agriculturist by instinct. He conducted observations, exercised his reasoning faculty, made experiments, and a great discovery was forthcoming. The man whose memory is enshrined in that of Osiris was one of the great benefactors of the human race. When he solved the problem of how to provide an abundant supply of food, he made it possible for a large population to live in a small area. It is told of Osiris that “he gave them (the Egyptians) a body of laws to regulate their conduct by”. No doubt the early hunters observed laws which regulated conduct in the cave-home as well as on the hunting-field. The fact that a great pictorial art was cultivated by Aurignacian man in western Europe, about 20,000 years ago, indicates that the social organization had been sufficiently well developed to permit of certain individuals of a class—possibly the priestly class—devoting themselves to the study of art, while others attended to the food-supply. Aurignacian art could never have reached the degree of excellence it did had there not been a school of art—apparently religious art—and a system of laws that promoted its welfare.

When, in Egypt, the agricultural mode of life was introduced, and an abundant supply of food was assured, new laws became a necessity, so that the growing communities might be kept under control. These laws were given a religious significance. Osiris “instructed them (the Egyptians) in that reverence and worship which they were to pay to the gods”. Society was united by the bonds of a religious organization, and, as is found, Nilotic religion had a close association with the agricultural mode of life. It reflected the experiences of the early farmers; it reflected, too, the natural phenomena of the Nile valley. Water—the Nile water—was the fertilizing agency. It was the “water of life”. The god Osiris was closely [[9]]associated with the Nile; he was the “fresh” or the “new” water that flowed in due season after the trying period of “the low Nile”, during which the land was parched by the burning sun and every green thing was coated by the sand-storms. “Ho, Osiris! the inundation comes,” cried the priest when the Nile began to rise. “Horus comes; he recognizes his father in thee, youthful in thy name of Fresh Water.”[7] The literal rendering is: “Horus comes; he beholds his father in thee, greenness in thy name of Water of Greenness”. The reference is to the “new water” which flows quite green for the first few days of the annual inundation. The “new water” entered the soil and vegetation sprang up. Osiris was the principle of life; he was also the ghost-god who controlled the river. As the Nile, Osiris was regarded as the source of all life—the creator and sustainer and ruler in one.

When the discovery of how to grow corn was passed from people to people and from land to land, not only the seeds and agricultural implements were passed along, but the ceremonies and religious beliefs connected with the agricultural mode of life in the area of origin. The ceremonies were regarded as of as much importance as the implements.

It need not surprise us, therefore, to find, as we do find, not only North African millet in the East Indies, but North African religious beliefs connected with agriculture in widely separated countries. Osirian religious ideas and myths were, it would appear, distributed over wide areas and among various races. There is therefore a germ of historical truth in the account given by Plutarch of the missionary efforts of Osiris. “With the same disposition”, we read, “he (Osiris) afterwards [[10]]travelled over the rest of the world, inducing the people everywhere to submit to his discipline.… The Greeks conclude him to have been the same person with their Dionysos or Bacchus.”[8]

In the process of time the Egyptians found that they were able to produce a larger food-supply than they required for their own needs. They were consequently able to devote their surplus to stimulating trade, so as to obtain from other countries things which were not to be had in Egypt. They were thus brought into touch with other communities, and these communities, such as the wood-cutters of Lebanon, were influenced by Egyptian civilization and stimulated to adopt new modes of life. Their food-supply was assured by the Egyptian demand for timber. They received corn from the Nile valley in payment for their labour. There are references in the Egyptian texts to the exports of wheat to North Syria and Asia Minor.

When the great discovery was made of how to work copper, the early agriculturists achieved rapid progress. Boats were built more easily and in larger numbers, new weapons were produced, and the Upper Egyptians conquered the Lower Egyptians, with the result that Egypt was united under a single king. With this union, which was followed by a period of remarkable activity, begins the history of Ancient Egypt.

The man, remembered as Osiris, who first sowed his little corn patch, sowed also the seeds from which grew a mighty empire and a great civilization. His discovery spread from people to people, and from land to land, and a new era was inaugurated in the history of the world. Progress was made possible when mankind were led from the wide hunting-fields to the little fields of the Stone [[11]]Age[9] farmer, and shown how they could live pleasant and well-ordered lives in large communities.

The early Egyptian farmers found it necessary to measure time and take account of the seasons. A Calendar was introduced and adopted during the prehistoric (Palæolithic) period,[10] and was used by the Egyptians for thousands of years. Julius Cæsar adapted this Calendar for use in Rome. It was subsequently adjusted by Pope Gregory and others, and is now in use all over the civilized world. Each time we hang up a new calendar, therefore, we are reminded of the man who stimulated progress over vast areas by sowing corn, so as to provide food for his family in a distant land at a far-distant period of time.

When we consider the problem of the origin of progress, let us not forget him and others like him—those early thinkers and discoverers to whom all humanity owe a debt of gratitude. The few invent, the many adopt; the few think and lead, and the many follow.

“No abstract doctrine”, writes Sir James F. Frazer in this connection, “is more false and mischievous than that of the natural equality of men.… The experience of common life sufficiently contradicts such a vain imagination.… The men of keenest intelligence and strongest characters lead the rest and shape the moulds into which, outwardly at least, society is cast.… The true rulers of men are the thinkers who advance knowledge.… It is knowledge which, in the long run, directs and controls the forces of society. Thus the discoverers of new truths are the real though uncrowned and unsceptred kings of mankind.”[11] [[12]]

Progress has its origin in Mind. It has been manifested in the past in those districts in which the mind of man was applied to overcome natural obstacles and to develop natural resources. The histories of the great ancient civilizations do not support the idea of an evolutionary process which had its origin in human instinct. “There has”, Professor G. Elliot Smith writes, “been no general or widespread tendency on the part of human societies to strive after what by Europeans is regarded as intellectual or material progress. Progressive societies are rare because it requires a very complex series of factors to compel men to embark upon the hazardous process of striving after such artificial advancement.”

Professor Elliot Smith will have none of what Dr. W. H. R. Rivers refers to as “crude evolutionary ideas”. “The history of man”, he writes, “will be truly interpreted, not by means of hazardous and mistaken analogies with biological evolution, but by the application of the true historical method. The causes of the modern actions of mankind are deeply rooted in the past. But the spirit of man has ever been the same: and the course of ancient history can only be properly appreciated when it is realized that the same human motives whose nature can be studied in our fellow-men to-day actuated the men of old also.”[12]

In the chapters that immediately follow it will be shown that separated communities were brought into close touch by traders. The term “trading”, however, refers, especially in early times, chiefly to prospecting and the exploiting of locally unappreciated forms of wealth. It was not until after civilization had spread far and wide that permanent trade routes were established. Some overland routes became less important when sea routes were ultimately opened. [[13]]

[1] Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, pp. 26 et seq. [↑]

[2] Ibid. See illustrations opposite p. 20. [↑]

[3] Professor Cherry The Origin of Agriculture (Mem. and Proc. Manchester Lit. and Phil. Soc., 1920). [↑]

[4] In Babylonian legends civilization is introduced by the “goat-fish” god Ea, who came from the Persian Gulf. [↑]

[5] Those who give Osiris a Libyan origin believe his name signifies “The Old One”, or “The Old Man”. [↑]

[6] The Ancient Egyptians, pp. 41–42. [↑]

[7] Breasted’s Religion and Thought in Egypt, p. 18. [↑]

[8] S. Squire, Plutarch’s Treatise of Isis and Osiris (Cambridge, 1744). [↑]

[9] In Egypt this was the Solutrean stage of the so-called “Palæolithic Age”. [↑]

[10] There was no “Neolithic Age” in Egypt. [↑]

[11] The Scope of Social Anthropology (London, 1908), pp. 12–13. [↑]

[12] Primitive Man (Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. VII), p. 50. [↑]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER II

A Far-travelled Invention

The Potter’s Wheel—An Egyptian Invention—The Wheel in Theology—Clay Pots and Stone Vessels—Skilled Artisans produce Poor Pottery—The Yakut Evidence—Female Potters—Pot Symbol of Mother-goddess—Potter’s Wheel worked by Men—Egyptian “Wheel” adopted in Crete, Babylonia, Iran, India, and China—No “Wheel” in America—Secular and Religious Pottery in China, Japan, India, and Rome—Coarse Grave-Pottery—Potter’s Wheel as Symbol of Creator—Chinese Emperors as Potters—Culture Heroes—Association of Agriculture with Pottery—Egyptian Ideas in Far East.

What bearing, it may be asked, have the discoveries made in Egypt on the early history of China? Is there evidence to show that these widely-separated countries were brought into contact in remote times? Did the primitive Chinese receive and adopt Egyptian inventions, and if so, how were such inventions conveyed across the wide and difficult country lying between the Mediterranean coast and the Yellow Sea? Is there any proof that trade routes extended in ancient times right across Asia? Did prospecting and trading ancient mariners cross the Indian Ocean and coast round to Chinese waters?

Interesting evidence regarding cultural contact is afforded by the potter’s wheel. This wonderful machine was invented in Egypt some time before the Fourth Dynasty (about 3000 B.C.), and in its area of origin it exercised an influence not only on ceramic craftsmanship but on religious ideas. It was regarded as a gift of the gods, as in ancient Scotland bronze weapons, implements, [[14]]musical instruments, &c., were regarded as gifts from the fairies. Apparently the invention was first introduced in Memphis, the ancient capital, the chief god of which was Ptah, the supreme deity “of all handicraftsmen and of all workers in metal and stone”. Ptah was already regarded as the creator of the primeval egg from which the universe was hatched, and of the “sun egg” and the “moon egg”. He was evidently a deity whose life-history goes back to primitive times when the mother-goddess was symbolized as the goose that laid the primeval egg. The problem of whether the egg or the bird came first was solved by the priests of the Ptah cult of Memphis, who regarded their deity as the creator of the “egg”. After the potter’s wheel came into use, they depicted Ptah turning the “egg” upon it. The manufacture of wheel-made pottery thus came to have religious associations. It was closely connected with the culture of Egypt which had its basis in the agricultural mode of life. The arts and crafts were all stimulated by religious ideas; they were cultivated by the priestly class in temple workshops, and were essentially an expression of Egyptian beliefs and conceptions.

Before the potter’s wheel came into use, the potter’s art had degenerated. Vases, bowls, jars, platters, and other vessels were made of such costly stones as diorite, alabaster, and porphyry; these were drilled out with copper implements. Copper vessels were also made. The discovery of how to work copper had caused the craftsmen to neglect the potter’s art, and to work with enthusiasm in the hardest stone until they achieved a high degree of skill. The coarse pottery of the pre-wheel period is therefore no indication that the civilization had reached a stage of decadence. This fact should be a warning to those archæologists who are prone to conclude that if the pottery taken from a stratum in some particular [[15]]area is “coarse”, the people who produced it at the period it represents were necessarily in a backward condition. The evidence afforded by Yakut products is of special interest in this connection. The Yakuts are usually referred to as “the most intelligent and progressive people in Siberia”. They are, however, poor potters. They never glaze their vessels or use the potter’s wheel. At the great Russian market of Yakutsk they refuse to purchase wheel-made crockery, and purchase instead the raw clay with which to make their own hand-made vessels, which are almost as coarse as those of the Stone Age. But although the technique displayed in their pottery is crude, they are famous for their excellent wood-carving and iron forged-work.[1] A people cannot, therefore, be judged by their pottery alone. It may be that those ancient peoples who are found to have been poor potters were skilled and progressive in other spheres of activity. The Hebrews were poor artisans and never invented anything, but they have given the world a great religious literature.

After the potter’s wheel was introduced in Memphis, a new era in the history of pottery was inaugurated. The enclosed baking-furnace came into use at the same time, and the potter’s art and technique speedily attained a wonderfully high degree of excellence. But the old crude, hand-made pottery was still being produced. It was consistently produced until Egypt ceased to be a great and independent kingdom. Indeed, it is being manufactured even in our own day.

The reason why good and bad pottery are produced in a single country—and Egypt is no exception to this rule—is that the manufacture of hand-made vessels was in ancient times essentially a woman’s avocation. The [[16]]potter’s wheel was invented by man, and credited to a god, and has from the beginning been worked by men only. There was apparently a religious significance in the connection of the sexes with the different processes. The clay pot was, in ancient Egypt, a symbol of the mother-goddess.[2] Pots used in connection with the worship of the Great Mother were apparently produced by her priestesses. As women played their part in agricultural ceremonies, so did they play their part—evidently a prominent one—in producing the goddess’s pot symbols. The coarse jars in which were stored wines and oils and food-stuffs were gifts of the Great Mother, the giver of all; she was the inexhaustible sacred Pot—the womb of Nature. Domestic pottery used by women was, very properly, the ancient folks appear to have argued, produced by women.

POTTER’S WHEEL, SIMLA, INDIA

From a sketch by J. Lockwood Kipling in the Victoria and Albert Museum

“It will be noted”, writes O. T. Mason in this connection, “that the feminine gender is used throughout in speaking of aboriginal potters. This is because every piece of such ware is the work of woman’s hands. She quarried the clay, and, like the patient beast of burden, bore it home on her back. She washed it and kneaded it and rolled it into fillets. These she wound carefully and symmetrically until the vessel was built up. She further decorated and burned it, and wore it out in household drudgery. The art at first was woman’s.”[3]

In many countries the connection of women with hand-made and of men with wheel-made pottery obtains even in our day. The following statement by two American scholars, who have produced a short but authoritative paper on the potter’s art, is the result of a close investigation [[17]]of evidence collected over a wide area, and carefully digested and summarized:[4]

“The potter’s wheel is the creation of man, and therefore is an independent act of invention which was not evolved from any contrivance utilized during the period of hand-made ceramic ware. The two processes have grown out of two radically distinct spheres of human activity. The wheel, so speak, came from another world. It had no point of contact with any tool that existed in the old industry, but was brought in from an outside quarter as a novel affair when man appropriated to himself the work hitherto cultivated by woman. The development was one from outside, not from within. All efforts, accordingly, which view the subject solely from the technological angle, and try to derive the wheel from previous devices of the female potter, are futile and misleading. It is as erroneous as tracing the plough back to the hoe or digging-stick, whereas, in fact, the two are in no historical interrelation and belong to fundamentally different culture strata and periods—the hoe to the gardening activity of woman, the plough to the agricultural activity of man. Both in India and China the division of ceramic labour sets apart the thrower or wheel-potter, and distinctly separates him from the moulder. The potters in India, who work on the wheel, do not intermarry with those who use a mould or make images. They form a caste by themselves.”[5]

The oldest wheel-made pottery is found in Egypt. There can be no doubt that the potter’s wheel was invented in that country. It was imported into Crete, [[18]]which had trading relations with the merchants of the ancient Pharaohs, as far back as about 3000 B.C. Before the wheel was adopted the Cretans made stone vessels, following Egyptian patterns, but using soft stone instead of hard. Their hand-made pottery degenerated, as did the Egyptian. “Pottery came again to its own in both countries”, writes Mr. H. R. Hall, “with the invention of the potter’s wheel and the baking-furnace.”[6]

The potter’s wheel must have found a ready market in the old days. It was adopted, in time, in western Europe; it was quickly “taken up” in Babylonia and in Iran, and was ultimately introduced into India and China. But only the high Asiatic civilizations were capable of constructing it, and consequently wheel-made pottery is not found everywhere. Among the “aboriginal Americans” the wheel was never employed. It is an interesting fact that the mind of man, which is alleged to “work” on the same lines everywhere, never “evolved” a potter’s wheel in Mexico or Peru.[7] Major Gordon tells that in Assam[8] “the women fashion the pots by hand; they do not use the potter’s wheel”. Similar evidence is obtainable in various other countries. In China there are wheel-potters and moulders, and a distinction is drawn between them by ancient writers. “This clear distinction is accentuated by Chu Yen in his treatise on pottery.[9] He justly observes also that the articles made by the wheel-potters were all intended for cooking, with the exception of the vessel yu, which was designed for measuring; while the output of the moulders, who made the ceremonial vessels kuei and tou by availing themselves of the plumb-line, was [[19]]intended for sacrificial use. Also here, in like manner as in ancient Rome, India, and Japan, the idea may have prevailed that a wheel-made jar is of a less sacred character than one made by hand.”[10] Here then we touch on another point which must be borne in mind by those who draw conclusions regarding ancient cultures by means of pottery. In Britain, for instance, a rather coarse pottery is found in graves. It is possible that a better pottery was made for everyday use. The conservatism of burial customs may have caused coarser pottery to be put into graves than the early folks were capable of producing during the period at which the burial took place.

The wheel-pottery was as sacred to some cults as the hand-made was to others. Even the potter’s wheel was sacred. In Egypt the Ptah cult adopted it, as has been stated; in India it was a symbol of the Creator; in China (as in ancient Egypt) the idea originally prevailed that the Creator was a potter who turned on his wheel the sun and the moon, man and woman, although in time this myth became a philosophical abstraction. The symbolism of Jeremiah has similarly a history:

“O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.”—[Chapter XVIII, 6].

St. Paul, too, refers to the potter:

“Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?” ([Romans, ix, 20–21.])

Chinese emperors were compared to potters. They [[20]]were credited with the power to control a nation as the potter controlled his wheel. The ancient peoples who adopted the Egyptian potter’s wheel evidently learned that it was of divine origin. They adopted the Egyptian beliefs and myths associated with it. Withal, the wheel was associated with the agricultural mode of life, having originated in a country of agriculturists. Ptah, the divine potter, was, like all the other prominent gods of Egypt, fused with Osiris—the god who was, among other things, the “culture hero”. The Chinese “culture hero”, Shun, who became emperor, is said to have “practised husbandry, fishing, and making pottery jars”. He manufactured clay vessels without flaw on the river bank.[11]

The Chinese culture hero, Shen-ming (“Divine Husbandman”) “was regarded as the father of agriculture and the discoverer of the healing property of plants”. In ancient Chinese lore “we meet a close association of agriculture with pottery, and an illustration of the fact that husbandman and potter were one and the same person during the primeval period”.[12]

Memories of Ptah-Osiris clung to the potter’s wheel. The trade routes must have hummed with stories about the god who had gifted this wonderful contrivance to mankind. These stories were localized in various countries, and they took on the colour of the period during which the wheel was imported. In Japan, the Ptah legend has been given a Buddhistic significance. The potter’s wheel is reputed there to be the invention of the famous Korean monk, Gyõgi (A.D. 670–749). No doubt the first potter’s wheel reached Japan from Korea, whence came the conquerors of the Ainus. But there is evidence [[21]]that it was in use long before Buddhism “drifted” along the sea route from the mainland in the sixth century, to become curiously mixed up with Shintoism two centuries later. The priests of Buddhism, who transformed the Shinto gods into “avatars” of Buddha, no doubt also identified the far-carried Ptah-Osiris with their monk—the Japanese “culture hero”.

The earliest pottery in Japan was manufactured by the Ainus and was “hand-shaped” by the women. A similar pottery was produced in Korea. The wheel-made variety made its appearance when Chinese culture spread through Korea during the Silla kingdom period, which began about the time (A.D. 59) when the earliest Japanese, according to their own traditions, migrated to the islands that bear their name. No doubt the traders were active on sea and land long before the Japanese conquered the islands of the Ainus and the Chinese overran Korea. Great migrations and conquests in ancient times were indirectly stimulated by trade. A new culture was introduced into backward communities by the early prospectors and trading colonists, and these communities in time acquired weapons, reared the domesticated horse, and took to the sea after having learned how to build and navigate ships similar to those introduced by the traders.

When the potter’s wheel was introduced into Korea, the clay vessels were shaped in imitation of Chinese pottery. There can remain no doubt, therefore, as to whence the wheel came. China was the chief centre of early civilization in the Far East, and its influence spread far and wide. There are some who think that Burma was during its early period in closer touch with China than with India; but more evidence than is yet available is required to establish this theory. The earliest civilization in southern China of which we have knowledge [[22]]was of Indian origin. The sea traders who had crossed the Indian Ocean reached the Burmese coast several centuries before the Christian era, as the archaic character of Burmese river boats suggests. It may be, however, that the potter’s wheel was carried along the mid-Asian trade routes long before the shippers coasted round to Chinese waters. There can be no doubt that the potter’s wheel was introduced into China at a very remote period. Investigators are unable to discover any native legends regarding its origin. Nor are there any traditions regarding female potters. The culture heroes of China who made the first pots appear to have used the wheel, and the Chinese potter’s wheel is identical with the Egyptian.

When the wheel was introduced into Japan, hand-made pottery was in use for religious purposes, and for long afterwards the vessels used at Shinto shrines were not turned on the wheel. In India, hand-made pottery was similarly reserved for religious worship after the wheel-made variety came into use.[13] The wheel did not reach southern India until its Iron Age.[14] When the southern India Iron Age began is uncertain. It was not, of course, an “Age” in the real sense, but a cultural “stage”. Iron was known and apparently in use during the Aryo-Indian Vedic period in the north.[15]

The potter’s wheel was introduced into Babylonia at a very remote period. From Babylonia it was carried into Persia. The Avestan word for kiln is tanura, which is believed, according to Laufer, to be a loan word from Semitic tanur.

There are, of course, no records regarding the introduction [[23]]of the potter’s wheel into Babylonia, India, or China. All that we know definitely is that it first came into use in Egypt, and that it was afterwards adopted in the various ancient centres of civilization from which cultural influences “flowed” to various areas. With the wheel went certain religious ideas and customs. These are not found in the areas unreached by the potter’s wheel.

China appears to have been influenced at the dawn of its history by the culture represented by the Egyptian wheel. [[24]]

[1] The Yakut (in Russian), Vol. I, p. 378. [↑]

[2] The Evolution of the Dragon, G. Elliot Smith (London, 1919), pp. 178 et seq. [↑]

[3] O. T. Mason, Origins of Invention, p. 166; and Woman’s Share in Primitive Culture, p. 91. [↑]

[4] The Beginnings of Porcelain in China, by Berthold Laufer and H. W. Nichols (Field Museum of Natural History Publication, 192, Anthropological Series, Vol. XII, No. 2. Chicago, 1917). [↑]

[5] Ibid., pp. 153–154. [↑]

[6] The Journal of Egyptian Archæology, April, 1914, p. 14. [↑]

[7] Aboriginal Pottery of the Eastern United States, p. 50 (Twentieth Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, 1903). [↑]

[8] The Khasis, p. 61. [↑]

[9] Tao Shuo, chap. ii, p. 2 (new edition, 1912). [↑]

[10] The Beginnings of Porcelain in China, pp. 154–5. In “culture mixing” old local religious beliefs were not obliterated. [↑]

[11] Chavannes, Mémoires historiques de Se-ma Tsʼien, Vol. I, pp. 72–4. [↑]

[12] The Beginnings of Porcelain in China, p. 160. [↑]

[13] Antiquities of India, L. D. Barnett, p. 176. [↑]

[14] Madras Government Museum Catalogue of Prehistoric Antiquities, p. 111. [↑]

[15] Vedic Index of Names and Subjects, Macdonell and Keith, Vol. I, pp. 31, 32. [↑]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER III

Ancient Mariners and Explorers

The Chinese Junk—Kufas—The Ancient “Reed Float” and Skin-buoyed Raft—“Two floats of the Sky”—Dug-out Canoes—Where Shipping was developed—Burmese and Chinese Junks resemble Ancient Egyptian Ships—Cretan and Phœnician Mariners—Africa circumnavigated—Was Sumeria colonized by Sea-farers?—Egyptian Boats on Sea of Okhotsk—Japanese and Polynesian Boats—Egyptian Types in Mediterranean and Northern Europe—Stories of Long Voyages in Small Craft—Visit of Chinese Junk to the Thames—Solomon’s Ships.

Further important evidence regarding cultural contact in early times is afforded by shipping. How came it about that an inland people like the primitive Chinese took to seafaring?

The question that first arises in this connection is: Were ships invented and developed by a single ancient people, or were they invented independently by various ancient peoples at different periods? Were the Chinese junks of independent origin? Or were these junks developed from early models of vessels—such foreign vessels as first cruised in Chinese waters?

Chinese junks are flat-bottomed ships, and the largest of them reach about 1000 tons. The poops and fore-castles are high, and the masts carry lug-sails, generally of bamboo splits. They are fitted with rudders. Often on the bows appear painted or inlaid eyes. These eyes are found on models of ancient Egyptian ships.

Photo. Underwood

A MODERN CHINESE JUNK ON THE CANTON RIVER

During the first Han dynasty (about 206 B.C.) junks [[25]]of “one thousand kin” (about 15 tons) were regarded as very large vessels. In these boats the early Chinese navigators appear to have reached Korea and Japan. But long before they took to the sea there were other mariners in the China sea.

The Chinese were, as stated, originally an inland people. They were acquainted with river kufas (coracles) before they reached the seashore. These resembled the kufas of the Babylonians referred to by Herodotus, who wrote:

“The boats which come down the river to Babylon are circular, and made of skins. The frames, which are of willow, are cut in the country of the Armenians above Assyria, and on these, which serve for hulls, a covering of skins is stretched outside, and thus the boats are made, without either stem or stern, quite round like a shield.”[1]

These kufas are still in use in Mesopotamia. They do not seem to have altered much since the days of Hammurabi, or even of Sargon of Akkad. The Assyrians crossed rivers on skin floats, and some of the primitive peoples of mid-Asia are still using the inflated skins of cows as river “ferry-boats”. But such contrivances hardly enter into the history of shipping. The modern liner did not “evolve” from either kufa or skin float. Logs of wood were, no doubt, used to cross rivers at an early period. The idea of utilizing these may have been suggested to ancient hunters who saw animals being carried down on trees during a river flood. But attempts to utilize a tree for crossing a river would have been disastrous when first made, if the hunters were unable to swim. Trees are so apt to roll round in water. Besides, they would be useless if not guided with a punting-pole, expertly manipulated. Early man must have learned [[26]]how to navigate a river by using, to begin with, at least two trees lashed together. In Egypt and Babylonia we find traces of his first attempts in this connection. The reed float, consisting of two bundles of reeds, and the raft to which the inflated skins of animals were attached to give it buoyancy, were in use at an early period on the Rivers Nile and Euphrates. A raft of this kind had evidently its origin among a people accustomed, as were the later Assyrians, to use skin floats when swimming across rivers. There are sculptured representations of the Assyrian soldiers swimming with inflated skins under their chests.

The reed float was in use at a very early period on the Nile. Professor Breasted says that the two prehistoric floats were “bound firmly together, side by side, like two huge cigars”, and adds the following interesting note: “The writer was once without a boat in Nubia, and a native from a neighbouring village at once hurried away and returned with a pair of such floats made of dried reeds from the Nile shores. On this somewhat precarious craft he ferried the writer over a wide channel to an island in the river. It was the first time that the author had ever seen this contrivance, and it was not a little interesting to find a craft which he knew only in the Pyramid texts of 5000 years ago still surviving and in daily use on the ancient river in far-off Nubia.”

In the Pyramid texts there are references to the reed floats used by the souls of kings when being ferried across the river to death. The gods “bind together the two floats for this King Pepi”, runs a Pyramid text. “The knots are tied, the ferry-boats are brought together”, says another, and there are allusions to the ferryman (the prehistoric Charon) standing in the stern and poling the float. Before the Egyptian sun-god was [[27]]placed in a boat, he had “two floats of the sky” to carry him along the celestial Nile to the horizon.[2]

The “dug-out” canoe was probably developed from the raft. Men who drifted timber down a river may have had the idea of a “dug-out” suggested to them by first shaping a seat on a log, or a “hold” to secure the food-supply for the river voyage. Pitt Rivers suggests that after the discovery was made that a hollowed log could be utilized in water, “the next stage in the development of the canoe would consist in pointing the ends”.[3]

In what locality the dug-out canoe was invented it is impossible to say with absolute certainty. All reliable writers on naval architecture agree, however, that Egypt was the “cradle” of naval architecture.[4]

“For the development of the art of shipbuilding,” says Chatterton, “few countries could be found as suitable as Egypt.… The peacefulness of the waters of the Nile, the absence of storms, and the rarity of calms, combined with the fact that, at any rate, during the winter and early spring months, the gentle north wind blew up the river with the regularity of a Trade Wind, so enabling the ships to sail against the stream without the aid of oars—these were just the conditions that many another nation might have longed for. Very different, indeed, were the circumstances which had to be wrestled with in the case of the first shipbuilders and sailormen of Northern Europe.”[5]

The early Egyptians were continually crossing the [[28]]river. When they began to convey stones from their quarries, they required substantial rafts. Egyptian needs promoted the development of the art of navigation on a river specially suited for experiments that led to great discoveries. The demand for wood was always great, and it was intensified after metal-working had been introduced, because of the increased quantities of fuel required to feed the furnaces. It became absolutely necessary for the Egyptians to go far afield in search of timber. The fact that they received supplies of timber at an early period from Lebanon is therefore of special interest. Their experiences in drifting rafts of timber across the Mediterranean from the Syrian coast apparently not only stimulated naval architecture and increased the experiences of early navigators, but inaugurated the habit of organizing seafaring expeditions on a growing scale. “Men”, says Professor Elliot Smith, “did not take to maritime trafficking either for aimless pleasure or for idle adventure. They went to sea only under the pressure of the strongest incentives.”[6]

The Mediterranean must have been crossed at a very early period. Settlements of seafarers took place in Crete before 3000 B.C.[7] On the island have been found flakes of obsidian that were imported at the dawn of its history from the Island of Melos. No doubt obsidian artifacts were used in connection with the construction of vessels before copper implements became common.

The earliest evidence of shipbuilding as an organized and important national industry is found in the Egyptian tomb pictures of the Old Kingdom period (c. 2400 B.C.). Gangs of men, under overseers, are seen constructing many kinds of boats, large and small. There are records [[29]]of organized expeditions dating back 500 years earlier. Pharaoh Snefru built vessels “nearly one hundred and seventy feet long”. He sent “a fleet of forty vessels to the Phœnician coast to procure cedar logs from the slopes of Lebanon”.[8] Expeditions were also sent across the Red Sea. Vessels with numerous oars, and even vessels with sails, are depicted on Egyptian prehistoric pottery dating back to anything like 6000 B.C. In no other country in the world was seafaring and shipbuilding practised at such a remote period.

The earliest representations of deep-sea boats are found in Egypt. One is seen in the tomb of Sahure, of the Fifth Dynasty (c. 2600 B.C.). A great expedition sailed to Punt (Somaliland) during the reign of Queen Halshepsut (c. 1500 B.C.). Five of the highly-developed vessels are depicted in her temple at Deir-el-Bahari. It is of interest to compare one of these vessels with a Chinese junk. “Between the Chinese and Burmese junks of to-day and the Egyptian ships of about six thousand years ago there are”, writes E. Kebel Chatterton, “many points of similarity.… Until quite recently, China remained in the same state of development for four thousand years. If that was so with her arts and life generally, it has been especially so in the case of her sailing craft.” Both the Chinese junk and the ancient Egyptian ship “show a common influence and a remarkable persistence in type”.[9]

“Are we to believe”, a reader asks, “that the ancient Egyptian navigators went as far as China? Is there any proof that they made long voyages? Were the ancient Egyptians not a people who lived in isolation for a prolonged period?”[10] [[30]]

It is not known definitely how far the ancient Egyptian mariners went after they had begun to venture to sea. But one thing is certain. They made much longer voyages than were credited to them a generation ago. The Phœnicians, who became the sea-traders of the Egyptians, learned the art of navigation from those Nilotic adventurers who began to visit their coast at a very early period in quest of timber; they adopted the Egyptian style of craft, as did the Cretans, their predecessors in Mediterranean sea trafficking. By the time of King Solomon the Phœnicians had established colonies in Spain, and were trading not only from Carthage in the Mediterranean, but apparently with the British Isles, while they were also active in the Indian Ocean. They were evidently accustomed to make long voyages of exploration. At the time of the Jewish captivity, Pharaoh Necho (609–593 B.C.) sent an expedition of Phœnicians from the Red Sea to circumnavigate Africa. They returned three years later by way of Gibraltar. But their voyage excited no surprise in Egypt.[11] It had long been believed by the priests that the world was surrounded by water. Besides, these priests preserved many traditions of long voyages that had been made to distant lands.

There are those who believe that the early Egyptian mariners, who were accustomed to visit British East Africa and sail round the Arabian coast, founded the earliest colony in Sumeria (ancient Babylonia) at the head of the Persian Gulf. The cradle of Sumerian culture was Eridu, “the sea port”. The god of Eridu was Ea, who had a ship with pilot and crew. According to Babylonian traditions, he instructed the people, as did Osiris in Egypt, how to irrigate the land, grow corn, build houses and temples, make laws, engage in trade, and so [[31]]on. He was remembered as a monster—a goat-fish god, or half fish, half man. Apparently he was identical with the Oannes of Berosus. It may be that Ea-Oannes symbolized the seafarers who visited the coast and founded a colony at Eridu, introducing the agricultural mode of life and the working of copper. Early inland peoples must have regarded the mariners with whom they first came into contact as semi-divine beings, just as the Cubans regarded Columbus and his followers as visitors from the sky. The Mongols of Tartary entertained quaint ideas about the British “foreign devils” after they had fought in one of the early wars against China. M. Huc, the French missionary priest of the congregation of St. Lazarus, who travelled through Tartary, Tibet, and China during 1844–6, had once an interesting conversation with a Mongol, who “had been told by the Chinese what kind of people, or monsters rather, these English were”. The story ran that the Englishmen “lived in the water like fish, and when you least expected it, they would rise to the surface and cast at you fiery gourds. Then as soon as you bend your bow to send an arrow at them, they plunge again into the water like frogs.”[12]

Those who suppose that the Sumerians coasted round from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, landed on the barren African coast, and, setting out to cross a terrible desert, penetrated to the Nile valley along a hitherto unexplored route of about 200 miles, have to explain what was the particular attraction offered to them by prehistoric Egypt if, according to their theory, it was still uncultivated and in the “Hunting Age”. How came it about that they knew of a river which ran through desert country? [[32]]

It is more probable that the Nilotic people penetrated to the Red Sea coast, and afterwards ventured to sea in their river boats, and that, in time, having obtained skill in navigation, they coasted round to the Persian Gulf. In pre-Dynastic times the Egyptians obtained shells from the Red Sea coast.

At what period India was first reached is uncertain. When Solomon imported peacocks from that country (the land of the peacock), the sea route was already well known. It is significant to find that all round the coast, from the Red Sea to India, Ceylon, and Burma, the Egyptian types of vessels have been in use from the earliest seafaring periods. The Burmese junks on the Irawadi resemble closely, as has been indicated, the Nile boats of the ancient Egyptians.[13] The Chinese junks were developed from Egyptian models. More antique Egyptian boats than are found on the Chinese coast are still being used by the Koryak tribe who dwell around the sea of Okhotsk. Mr. Chatterton says that the Koryak craft have “important similarities to the Egyptian ships of the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties (c. 3000–2500 B.C.). Thus, besides copying the ancients in steering with an oar, the fore-end of the prow of their sailing boats terminates in a fork through which the harpoon-line is passed, the fork being sometimes carved with a human face which they believe will serve as a protector of the boat. Instead of rowlocks they have, like the early Egyptians, thong-loops through which the oar or paddle is inserted. Their sail, too, is a rectangular shape of dressed reindeer skins sewed together. But it is their mast that is especially like the Egyptians and Burmese.” This mast is made of three poles “set up in the manner [[33]]of a tripod”. The double mast was common in ancient Egypt, but Mr. Chatterton notes that Mr. Villiers Stuart “found on the walls of a tomb belonging to the Sixth Dynasty (c. 2400 B.C.) at Gebel Abu Faida, the painting of a boat with a treble mast made of three spars arranged like the edges of a triangular pyramid”.[14] Thus we find that vessels of Egyptian type (adopted by various peoples) not only reached China but went a considerable distance beyond it. Japanese vessels still display Egyptian characteristics. In the Moluccas and Malays the ancient three-limbed mast has not yet gone out of fashion. Polynesian craft were likewise developed from Egyptian models. William Ellis, the missionary,[15] noted “the peculiar and almost classical shape of the large Tahitian canoes”, with “elevated prow and stern”, and tells that a fleet of them reminded him of representations of “the ships in which the Argonauts sailed, or the vessels that conveyed the heroes of Homer to the siege of Troy”.

Various writers have called attention to the persistence of Egyptian types in the Mediterranean and in northern Europe. “In every age and every district of the ancient world”, wrote Mr. Cecil Torr, the great authority on classic shipping, “the method of rigging ships was substantially the same; and this method is first depicted by the Egyptians.”[16]

The Far Eastern craft went long distances in ancient days. Ellis tells of regular voyages made by Polynesian chiefs which extended to 300 and even 600 miles. A chief from Rurutu once visited the Society Islands in a native boat built “somewhat in the shape of a crescent, the stem and stern high and pointed and the sides [[34]]deep”.[17] Sometimes exceptionally long voyages were forced by the weather conditions of Oceania. “In 1696”, Ellis writes, “two canoes were driven from Ancarso to one of the Philippine Islands, a distance of 800 miles.” He gives other instances of voyages of like character. A Christian missionary, travelling in a native boat, was carried “nearly 800 miles in a south-westerly direction”.[18] Reference has already been made to the long and daring voyage made by the Phœnicians who circumnavigated Africa. Another extraordinary enterprise is referred to by Pliny the elder,[19] who quotes from the lost work of Cornelius Nepos. This was a voyage performed by Indians who had, before 60 B.C., embarked on a commercial voyage and reached the coast of Germany. It is uncertain whether they sailed round the Cape of Good Hope and up the Atlantic Ocean, or went northward past Japan and discovered the north-east passage, skirting the coast of Siberia, and sailing round Lapland and Norway to the Baltic. They were made prisoners by the Suevians and handed over to Quintus Metellus Celer, pro-consular governor of Gaul.

In 1770 Japanese navigators reached the northern coast of Siberia and landed at Kamchatka. They were taken to St. Petersburg, where they were received by the Empress of Russia, who treated them with marked kindness. In 1847–8 the Chinese junk Keying sailed from Canton to the Thames and caused no small sensation on its arrival. This vessel rounded the Horn and took 477 days to complete the voyage.

Solomon’s ships made long voyages: “Once every [[35]]three years came the navy of Tarshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks”.[20]

As in the case of the potter’s wheel, cultural elements were distributed far and wide by the vessels of the most ancient of mariners. Before tracing these elements in China, it would be well to deal with the motives that impelled early seafarers to undertake long and adventurous voyages of exploration and to found colonies in distant lands. [[36]]

[1] Book I, chap. 194. [↑]

[2] Breasted, Religion and Thought in Egypt, pp. 108, 158. [↑]

[3] Early Modes of Navigation, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, Vol. IV, p. 402. [↑]

[4] Holmes’s Ancient and Modern Ships, E. K. Chatterton’s Sailing Ships and their Story, Cecil Torr’s Ancient Ships, Warrington Smith’s Mast and Sail in Europe and Asia, Elliot Smith’s Ships as Evidence of the Migrations of Early Culture, and the works of Pâris and Assmann, and Pitt Rivers (op. cit.). [↑]

[5] Sailing Ships and their Story, pp. 25–6. [↑]

[6] Ships as Evidence, &c., pp. 5, 6. [↑]

[7] Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, pp. 146 and 191, et seq. [↑]

[8] Breasted’s A History of Egypt, pp. 114–5. [↑]

[9] Sailing Ships and their Story, pp. 31, 32. [↑]

[10] Maspero in his The Dawn of Civilization protests against this view. [↑]

[11] Egyptian Myth and Legend, p. 372. [↑]

[12] English translation of M. Huc’s Recollections (London, 1852), p. 21. [↑]

[13] E. Kebel Chatterton’s Sailing Ships and their Story, pp. 7 and 31, and illustration opposite page 8. [↑]

[14] Sailing Ships and their Story, pp. 32–3. [↑]

[15] Polynesian Researches, First Edition, 1829, Vol. I, p. 169. [↑]

[16] Ancient Ships, p. 78. [↑]

[17] Polynesian Researches, First Edition, 1829, Vol. I, pp. 181, 2. The crescent-shaped vessel is quite Egyptian in character. [↑]

[18] Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 50, 51. [↑]

[19] Book II, 67. [↑]

[20] [1 Kings, x, 22]. [↑]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER IV

The World-wide Search for Wealth

Religious Incentive of Quest of Wealth—Sacredness of Precious Metals and Stones—Gold and the Sky Deities—Iron as the Devil’s Metal—Chinese Dragons and Metals—Gold good and Silver bad in India—Dragons and Copper—Sulphuret of Mercury as “Dragon’s Blood” and Elixir of Life—Dragons and Pearls—The “Jewel that grants all Desires”—Story of Buddhist Abbot and the Sea-God—“Jewels of Flood and Ebb”—Japan and Korea—Sea-god as “Abundant Pearl Prince”—Pearl Fishers—Early History of Sea-trafficking—Traders and Colonists—Cow, Moon, Shells, and Pearls connected with Mother-goddess—The Sow Goddess—Shell Beliefs—Culture Drifts and Culture Complexes.

There can be no doubt as to the reasons why Solomon sought to emulate the maritime activities of the Phœnicians who had been bringing peacocks from India, silver from Spain, and gold from West Africa and elsewhere long before his day.

“And King Solomon made a navy of ships in Ezion-geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom. And Hiram sent in the navy his servants, shipmen that had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon. And they came to Ophir, and fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to King Solomon.”[1]

When the Queen of Sheba visited Jerusalem she was accompanied by “camels that bare spices, and very much gold, and precious stones”.[2] About seven centuries before Solomon’s day, Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt, to [[37]]whom reference was made in the last chapter, had emulated the feats of her ancestors by sending a fleet to Punt (Somaliland or British East Africa) to bring back, among other things, myrrh trees for her new temple. The myrrh was required “for the incense in the temple service”.[3] Ancient mariners set out on long voyages, not only on the quest of wealth, but also of various articles required for religious purposes. Indeed, the quest of wealth had originally religious associations. Gold, silver, copper, pearls, and precious stones were all sacred, and it was because of their connection with the ancient deities that they were first sought for. The so-called “ornaments” worn by our remote ancestors were charms against evil and ill luck. Metals were similarly supposed to have protective qualities. Iron is still regarded in the Scottish Highlands as a charm against fairy attack. In China it is a protection against dragons. The souls of the Egyptian dead were “charmed” in the other world by the amulets placed in their tombs. When the Pharaoh’s soul entered the boat of the sun-god he was protected by metals. “Brought to thee”, a Pyramid text states, “are blocks of silver and masses of malachite.”[4] Gold was the metal of the sun-god and silver of the deity of the moon. Horus had associations with copper, and Ptah, the god of craftsmen, with various metals. Iron was “the bones of Set”, the Egyptian devil. In Greece and India the mythical ages were associated with metals, and iron was the metal of the dark age of evil (the Indian “Kali Yuga”).

In China the metals have similarly religious associations. The dragon-gods of water, rain, and thunder are connected with gold of various hues—the “golds” coloured by the alchemists by fusion with other metals. Thus we [[38]]have Chinese references to red, yellow, white, blue, and black gold, as in the following extract:

“When the yellow dragon, born from yellow gold a thousand years old, enters a deep place, a yellow spring dashes forth; and if from this spring some particles (fine dust) arise, these become a yellow cloud.

“In the same way blue springs and blue clouds originate from blue dragons, born from blue gold eight hundred years old; red, white, and black springs and clouds from red, white, and black dragons born from gold of same colours a thousand years old.”[5]

In Indian Vedic lore gold is a good metal and silver a bad metal. One of the Creation Myths states in this connection:

“He (Prajapati) created Asuras (demons). That was displeasing to him. That became the precious metal with the bad colour (silver). This was the origin of silver. He created gods. That was pleasing to him. That became the precious metal with the good colour (gold). That was the origin of gold.”[6]

The dragon of the Far East is associated with copper as well as gold. In the Japanese Historical Records the story is told how the Emperor Hwang brought down a dragon so that he might ride on its back through the air. He first gathered copper on a mountain. Then he cast a tripod. Immediately a dragon, dropping its whiskers, came down to him. After the monarch had used the god as an “airship”, no fewer than seventy of his subjects followed his example. Hwang was the monarch who prepared the “liquor of immortality” (the Japanese “soma”) by melting cinnabar (sulphuret of mercury, known as “dragon’s blood”). Chinese dragons, according to Wang Fu in ’Rh ya yih, dread iron and like precious [[39]]stones. In Japan the belief prevailed that if iron and filth were flung into ponds the dragons raised hurricanes that devastated the land. The Chinese roused dragons, when they wanted rain, by making a great noise and by throwing iron into dragon pools. Iron has “a pungent nature” and injures the eyes of dragons, and they rise to protect their eyes. Copper has, in China, associations with darkness and death. The “Stone of Darkness” is hollow and contains water or “the vital spirit of copper”.[7] Dragons are fond of these stones and of beautiful gems.[8]

The dragon-shaped sea-gods of India and the dragon-gods of China and Japan have close associations with pearls. In a sixth-century Chinese work,[9] it is stated that pearls are spit out by dragons. Dragons have pearls “worth a hundred pieces of gold” in their mouths, under their throats, or in their pools. When dragons fight in the sky, pearls fall to the ground. De Groot[10] makes reference to “thunder pearls” that dragons have dropped from their mouths. These illuminate a house by night. In Wang Fu’s description of the dragon it is stated that a dragon has “a bright pearl under its chin”.

A mountain in Japan is called Ryushuho, which means “Dragon-Pearl Peak”. It is situated in Fuwa district of Mino province, and is associated in a legend with the Buddhist temple called “Cloud-Dragon Shrine”. When this temple was being erected, a dragon, carrying a pearl in its mouth, appeared before one of the priests. Mountain and sanctuary were consequently given dragon names.

The “jewel that grants all desires” is known in India, China, and Japan. A Japanese story relates that once upon a time an Indian Buddhist abbot, named Bussei [[40]](Buddha’s vow), set out on a voyage with purpose to obtain this jewel (a pearl) which was possessed by “the dragon king of the ocean”. In the midst of the sea the boat hove to while Bussei performed a ceremony and repeated a charm, causing the dragon-king to appear. The abbot, making a mystic sign, then demanded the pearl; but the dragon deceived him and nullified the mystic sign. Rising in the air, “the King of the Ocean” caused a great storm to rage. The boat was destroyed and all on board it, except Bussei, were drowned. Bussei afterwards migrated from southern India to Japan, accompanied by Baramon (“Wall-gazing Brahman”).

The “Jewels of Flood and Ebb” were jewels that granted desires. In Japanese legend these were possessed by the dragon king (Sagara), whose kingdom, like that of the Indian Naga monarch and that of the Gaelic ruler of “Land Under-Waves”, is situated at the bottom of the sea. The white jewel is called “Pearl of Ebb”, and the blue jewel “Pearl of Flood”.

CHINESE DRAGON-BOAT FESTIVAL

From a picture woven in coloured silks and gold thread in the Victoria and Albert Museum

A Japanese story relates that the Empress Jingo obtained from a sea-god a “jewel that grants all desires”. During her reign a great fleet went to Korea to obtain tribute. The Korean fleet went out to meet it, but when it was drawn up for battle, a Japanese god cast into the sea the “Pearl of Ebb”, and immediately the waters withdrew, leaving both fleets stranded. The resolute King of Korea, not to be daunted, leapt on to the dried sea-bed, and, marshalling his troops there, advanced at the head of them to attack and destroy the Japanese fleet. Then the Japanese god flung the “Pearl of Flood” into the sea. No sooner was this done than the waters returned and drowned large numbers of Koreans. Then a tidal wave swept over the Korean shore, while the troops prayed for their lives in vain. Not until the “Pearl of Ebb” was [[41]]thrown once again into the sea did the waters retreat from the land.

After these miraculous and disastrous manifestations, the King of Korea was glad to make peace, and sent out three vessels laden with tribute to the empress, who had conquered the enemy without the loss of a single Japanese soldier or sailor, or even a single drop of Japanese blood.

Other names of the Japanese sea-god Sagara[11] are Oho-watatsumi (“sea lord, or sea snake”), and Toyo-tama hiko no Mikoto (“Abundant Pearl Prince”), and he has a daughter named Toyo-tama-bime (“Abundant Pearl Princess”).[12] During storms, sailors threw jewels into the sea to pacify the dragon king.

Chinese emperors, like the Egyptian Pharaohs, had dragon boats which were used in connection with religious rain-getting ceremonies. They had also the bird boats called “yih”. Mr. Wells Williams refers to the yih as “a kind of sea-bird that flies high, whose figure is gaily painted on the sterns of junks, to denote their swift sailing”. He adds that “the descriptions are contradictory, but its picture rudely resembles a heron”.[13]

It will be gathered from the evidence summarized above that the seafaring activities of the Chinese and Japanese had close associations with the search for precious metals and stones and pearls on the part of those who introduced the Egyptian type of vessels into their waters. With these ships went many customs and beliefs that became mixed with local customs and beliefs. New modes of life were introduced, and, with these, new modes of thought. Nothing persists like immemorial customs, [[42]]myths, and religious beliefs associated with a particular mode of life.

Before the culture-complexes of China and Japan are investigated, so that local elements may be sifted out from the overlying mass of imported elements, it would be well to deal with the history of the search for wealth across the oceans of the world.

It is necessary, therefore, to turn back again to the cradle of shipbuilding and maritime enterprise—to ancient Egypt with its wonderful civilization of over 3000 years that sent its influences far and wide. Whether or not the Egyptians ever reached China or Japan, we have no means of knowing. Pauthier’s view in this connection has come in for a good deal of destructive criticism. He referred to a Chinese tradition that about 1113 B.C. the Court was visited by seafarers from the kingdom of “Nili”, and suggested that they came from the Nile valley.[14] The “Nili”, “Nēlē”, or “Nērē” folk, according to others, came from the direction of Japan or from beyond Korea. References to them are somewhat obscure. It does not follow that because Egyptian ships reached China, they were manned by Egyptians. Ships were, like potter’s wheels, adopted by folks who may never have heard of Egypt. A culture flows far beyond the areas reached by those who have given it a definite character, just as the Bantu dialects have penetrated to areas in Africa far beyond Bantu control.

What motives, then, stimulated maritime enterprise at the dawn of the history of sea-trafficking? What attracted the ancient mariners? If it was wealth, what was “wealth” to them?

The answer to the last query is that wealth was something with a religious significance. Gold was searched [[43]]for, but not, to begin with, for the purpose of making coins. There was no coinage. Gold was a precious metal in the sense that it brought luck, and to the ancient people “luck” meant everything they yearned for in this world and the next.

As far back as the so-called “Palæolithic period” in western Europe, there was, as has been noted, a systematic search for wealth in the form of sea-shells. The hunters in central Europe imported shells from the Mediterranean coast and used them as amulets. These imported shells are found in their graves. In Ancient Egypt, shells were carried from the Red Sea coast, as well as from the Mediterranean coast, long before the historical period begins. The evidence of the grave-finds shows that Red Sea pearl-shell and Red Sea cowries were in use for religious purposes. “Millions of them”, as Maspero has noted, have been found in Ancient Egyptian graves. In time, pearls came into use, not only pearls from Nile mussels, but from oysters found in the southern part of the Gulf of Aden. As shipping developed, the pearl-fishers went farther and farther in search of pearls. The famous ancient pearl area in the Persian Gulf was discovered and drawn upon at some remote period. No doubt the pearls worn by Assyrian and Persian monarchs came, in part, from the Persian Gulf. At what period Ceylon pearls were first fished for it is impossible to say. Of one thing we can be certain, however. They were fished for by men who used the Egyptian type of vessel.

The migrating and trading pearl-fishers carried their beliefs with them from land to land. Almost everywhere are found the same beliefs and practices connected with shells and pearls. These beliefs and practices are of a highly complex character—so complex, indeed, that they must have had an area of origin in which they reflected [[44]]the beliefs and customs of a people with a history of their own. The pearl, for instance, was connected with the moon, with the goddess who was the Great Mother, and with the sun and the sun-god. Venus (Aphrodite) was sea-born. She was lifted from the sea, by Tritons, seated on a shell. She was the pearl—the vital essence of the magic shell, and she was the moon, the “Pearl of Heaven”. The pearl, like the moon, was supposed to exercise an influence over human beings. In Egypt, the Mother Goddess was symbolized by a cow, and cow, moon, pearl, and shell were connected in an arbitrary way.

In those areas in which the Mother Goddess was symbolized by the sow, the shell was likewise connected with her. The Greeks applied to the cowry a word that means “little pig”; this word had a special reference to the female sex. The Romans called the shell “porci”, and porcelain has a like derivation.[15] As has been shown, women were connected with hand-made pottery, and the pot was a symbol of the Great Mother. In Scotland, certain shells are still referred to as “cows” and “pigs”. They were anciently believed to promote fertility and bring luck. The custom of placing shells on window-sills, at doors, in fire-places, and round garden plots still obtains in parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Some low-reliefs of mother goddesses with baskets of fruit, corn, &c., surviving from the Romano-British period, which have been found in various parts of Britain, have shell-canopies. The Romans “took over” the goddesses of the peoples of western Europe on whom they imposed their rule, as they took over the Greek pantheon.

Following the clues afforded by the evidence of ships, it is found that the early pearl-fishers coasted round from [[45]]the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf, round India to the Bay of Bengal, round the Malay Peninsula to the China Sea, northwards to the Sea of Okhotsk, and on to the western coast of North America. Oceania was peopled by the ancient mariners, who appear to have reached by this route the coast of South America. As we have seen, Africa was circumnavigated. Western and north-western Europe and the British Isles were reached at a very early period.

The ancient seafarers searched not only for pearls and pearl-shell, but also for gold, silver, copper, tin, and other metals and for precious stones. They appear to have founded trading colonies that became centres from which cultural influences radiated far and wide. From these colonies expeditions set out to discover new pearling grounds and new mineral fields. The search for wealth, having a religious incentive, caused, as has been said, the spread of religious ideas. In different countries, imported beliefs and customs became mingled with local beliefs and customs, with the result that in many countries are found “culture complexes” which have a historical significance—reflecting as they do the varied experiences of the peoples and the influences introduced into their homelands at various periods.

In the next chapter it will be shown how the dragon of China has a history that throws much light on the early movements of explorers and traders who carried the elements of complex cultures into far distant lands. [[46]]

[1] [1 Kings, ix, 26–8]. [↑]

[2] [1 Kings, x, 2]. [↑]

[3] Breasted’s A History of Egypt, p. 274. [↑]

[4] Breasted’s Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, p. 279. [↑]

[5] Quoted from a Chinese work by Dr. W. M. W. de Visser in The Dragon in China and Japan (Amsterdam, 1913). [↑]

[6] Muir’s Sanskrit Texts, Vol. I, p. 516 (1890). [↑]

[7] Dr. W. M. W. de Visser, The Dragon in China and Japan, p. 69. [↑]

[8] Ibid., p. 223. [↑]

[9] Shi i ki, chap. ii. [↑]

[10] Religious System of China, Vol. V, p. 867. [↑]

[11] This is the name of the Indian Naga king. [↑]

[12] The Dragon in China and Japan, p. 139. [↑]

[13] Chinese-English Dictionary, p. 1092. [↑]

[14] Chine Ancienne, pp. 94 et seq. [↑]

[15] Elliot Smith, The Evolution of the Dragon, pp. 216 et seq. [↑]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER V