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A History of Chinese Literature, by Herbert A.
Giles
PREFACE
This is the first attempt made in any
language, including Chinese, to
produce a history of Chinese
literature.
Native scholars, with their endless critiques and
appreciations of
individual works, do not seem ever to have contemplated
anything of the
kind, realising, no doubt, the utter hopelessness, from a
Chinese point
of view, of achieving even comparative success in a general
historical
survey of the subject. The voluminous character of a literature
which
was already in existence some six centuries before the Christian
era,
and has run on uninterruptedly until the present date, may well
have
given pause to writers aiming at completeness. The foreign
student,
however, is on a totally different footing. It may be said
without
offence that a work which would be inadequate to the requirements
of
a native public, may properly be submitted to English readers as
an
introduction into the great field which lies beyond.
Acting upon
the suggestion of Mr. Gosse, to whom I am otherwise
indebted for many
valuable hints, I have devoted a large portion of
this book to translation,
thus enabling the Chinese author, so far as
translation will allow, to speak
for himself. I have also added, here
and there, remarks by native critics,
that the reader may be able to
form an idea of the point of view from which
the Chinese judge their
own productions.
It only remains to be stated
that the translations, with the exception
of a few passages from Legge’s
“Chinese Classics,” in each case duly
acknowledged, are my
own.
HERBERT A.
GILES.
CAMBRIDGE.
CONTENTS
_BOOK THE
FIRST--THE FEUDAL PERIOD_ (B.C.
600-200)
CHAP. PAGE
I.
LEGENDARY AGES--EARLY CHINESE CIVILISATION--ORIGIN OF WRITING 3
II.
CONFUCIUS--THE FIVE CLASSICS 7
III.
THE FOUR BOOKS--MENCIUS 32
IV.
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS 43
V.
POETRY--INSCRIPTIONS 50
VI.
TAOISM--THE “TAO-TE-CHING”
56
_BOOK THE SECOND--THE HAN DYNASTY_
(B.C. 200-A.D.
200)
I. THE “FIRST EMPEROR”--THE BURNING OF THE
BOOKS--MISCELLANEOUS
WRITERS 77
II.
POETRY 97
III.
HISTORY--LEXICOGRAPHY 102
IV.
BUDDHISM 110
_BOOK
THE THIRD--MINOR DYNASTIES_ (A.D. 200-600)
I. POETRY--MISCELLANEOUS
LITERATURE 119
II. CLASSICAL
SCHOLARSHIP 137
_BOOK THE
FOURTH--THE T’ANG DYNASTY_ (A.D. 600-900)
I.
POETRY 143
II.
CLASSICAL AND GENERAL
LITERATURE 189
_BOOK THE FIFTH--THE SUNG
DYNASTY_ (A.D. 900-1200)
I. THE INVENTION OF
BLOCK-PRINTING 209
II. HISTORY--CLASSICAL
AND GENERAL LITERATURE 212
III.
POETRY 232
IV.
DICTIONARIES--ENCYCLOPÆDIAS--MEDICAL
JURISPRUDENCE 238
_BOOK THE SIXTH--THE MONGOL
DYNASTY_
(A.D. 1200-1368)
I. MISCELLANEOUS
LITERATURE--POETRY 247
II. THE
DRAMA 256
III. THE
NOVEL 276
_BOOK
THE SEVENTH--THE MING DYNASTY_
(A.D. 1368-1644)
I. MISCELLANEOUS
LITERATURE--MATERIA MEDICA--ENCYCLOPÆDIA
OF
AGRICULTURE
291
II. NOVELS AND
PLAYS 309
III.
POETRY
329
_BOOK THE EIGHTH--THE MANCHU DYNASTY_
(A.D.
1644-1900)
I. THE “LIAO CHAI”--THE “HUNG LOU
MENG” 337
II. THE EMPERORS K’ANG HSI AND CH’IEN
LUNG 385
III. CLASSICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
LITERATURE--POETRY 391
IV. WALL LITERATURE--JOURNALISM--WIT
AND HUMOUR--PROVERBS
AND
MAXIMS 425
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL
NOTE 441
INDEX
443
BOOK THE FIRST
_THE FEUDAL PERIOD_ (B.C.
600-200)
CHAPTER I
LEGENDARY AGES--EARLY CHINESE
CIVILISATION--ORIGIN OF WRITING
The date of the beginning of all
things has been nicely calculated by
Chinese chronologers. There was first of
all a period when Nothing
existed, though some enthusiasts have attempted to
deal with a period
antecedent even to that. Gradually Nothing took upon
itself the form
and limitations of Unity, represented by a point at the
centre of
a circle. Thus there was a Great Monad, a First Cause, an Aura,
a
Zeitgeist, or whatever one may please to call it.
After countless
ages, spent apparently in doing nothing, this Monad
split into Two
Principles, one active, the other passive; one
positive, the other negative;
light and darkness; male and female. The
interaction of these Two Principles
resulted in the production of all
things, as we see them in the universe
around us, 2,269,381 years ago.
Such is the cosmogony of the Chinese in a
nutshell.
The more sober Chinese historians, however, are content to
begin with a
sufficiently mythical emperor, who reigned only 2800 years
before the
Christian era. The practice of agriculture, the invention of
wheeled
vehicles, and the simpler arts of early civilisation are
generally
referred to this period; but to the dispassionate European student
it
is a period of myth and legend: in fact, we know very little about
it.
Neither do we know much, in the historical sense, of the numerous
rulers
whose names and dates appear in the chronology of the succeeding
two thousand
years. It is not indeed until we reach the eighth century
B.C. that anything
like history can be said to begin.
For reasons which will presently be
made plain, the sixth century
B.C. is a convenient starting-point for the
student of Chinese
literature.
[Sidenote: FEUDALISM]
China was
then confined to a comparatively small area, lying for the
most part between
the Yellow River on the north and the river Yang-tsze
on the south. No one
knows where the Chinese came from. Some hold the
fascinating theory that they
were emigrants from Accadia in the ancient
kingdom of Babylonia; others have
identified them with the lost tribes
of Israel. No one seems to think they
can possibly have originated in
the fertile plains where they are now found.
It appears indeed to be
an ethnological axiom that every race must have come
from somewhere
outside its own territory. However that may be, the China of
the eighth
century B.C. consisted of a number of Feudal States, ruled by
nobles
owning allegiance to a Central State, at the head of which was a
king.
The outward tokens of subjection were homage and tribute; but
after
all, the allegiance must have been more nominal than real, each
State
being practically an independent kingdom. This condition of
things
was the cause of much mutual jealousy, and often of bloody
warfare,
several of the States hating one another quite as cordially as
Athens
and Sparta at their best.
There was, notwithstanding,
considerable physical civilisation in the
ancient States of those early days.
Their citizens, when not employed
in cutting each other’s throats, enjoyed a
reasonable security of life
and property. They lived in well-built houses;
they dressed in silk
or homespun; they wore shoes of leather; they carried
umbrellas; they
sat on chairs and used tables; they rode in carts and
chariots; they
travelled by boat; and they ate their food off plates and
dishes of
pottery, coarse perhaps, yet still superior to the wooden
trencher
common not so very long ago in Europe. They measured time by
the
sundial, and in the Golden Age they had the two famous calendar
trees,
representations of which have come down to us in sculpture,
dating
from about A.D. 150. One of these trees put forth a leaf every day
for
fifteen days, after which a leaf fell off daily for fifteen more
days.
The other put forth a leaf once a month for half a year, after which
a
leaf fell off monthly for a similar period. With these trees growing
in
the courtyard, it was possible to say at a glance what was the day
of
the month, and what was the month of the year. But civilisation
proved
unfavourable to their growth, and the species became
extinct.
In the sixth century B.C. the Chinese were also in
possession
of a written language, fully adequate to the most varied
expression of
human thought, and indeed almost identical with their present
script,
allowing, among other things, for certain modifications of form
brought
about by the substitution of paper and a camel’s-hair brush for
the
bamboo tablet and stylus of old. The actual stages by which that
point
was reached are so far unknown to us. China has her Cadmus in
the
person of a prehistoric individual named Ts’ang Chieh, who is said
to
have had four eyes, and to have taken the idea of a written
language
from the markings of birds’ claws upon the sand. Upon the
achievement
of his task the sky rained grain and evil spirits mourned by
night.
Previous to this mankind had no other system than rude methods
of
knotting cords and notching sticks for noting events or
communicating
with one another at a distance.
As to the origin of the
written language of China, invention is
altogether out of the question. It
seems probable that in prehistoric
ages, the Chinese, like other peoples,
began to make rude pictures of
the sun, moon, and stars, of man himself, of
trees, of fire, of rain,
and they appear to have followed these up by
ideograms of various
kinds. How far they went in this direction we can only
surmise. There
are comparatively few obviously pictorial characters and
ideograms
to be found even in the script of two thousand years ago;
but
investigations carried on for many years by Mr. L. C. Hopkins,
H.M.
Consul, Chefoo, and now approaching completion, point more and
more
to the fact that the written language will some day be recognised
as
systematically developed from pictorial symbols. It is, at any
rate,
certain that at a very early date subsequent to the legendary
period
of “knotted cords” and “notches,” while the picture-symbols were
still
comparatively few, some master-mind reached at a bound the
phonetic
principle, from which point the rapid development of a written
language
such as we now find would be an easy
matter.
CHAPTER II
CONFUCIUS--THE FIVE
CLASSICS
[Sidenote: BOOK OF HISTORY]
In B.C. 551 CONFUCIUS was
born. He may be regarded as the founder of
Chinese literature. During his
years of office as a Government servant
and his years of teaching and
wandering as an exile, he found time
to rescue for posterity certain valuable
literary fragments of great
antiquity, and to produce at least one original
work of his own.
It is impossible to assert that before his time there was
anything
in the sense of what we understand by the term general
literature.
The written language appears to have been used chiefly for
purposes
of administration. Many utterances, however, of early, not to
say
legendary, rulers had been committed to writing at one time or
another,
and such of these as were still extant were diligently collected
and
edited by Confucius, forming what is now known as the _Shu Ching_
or
Book of History. The documents of which this work is composed are
said
to have been originally one hundred in all, and they cover a
period extending
from the twenty-fourth to the eighth century B.C.
They give us glimpses of an
age earlier than that of Confucius, if not
actually so early as is claimed.
The first two, for instance, refer to
the Emperors Yao and Shun, whose
reigns, extending from B.C. 2357 to
2205, are regarded as the Golden Age of
China. We read how the former
monarch “united the various parts of his domain
in bonds of peace, so
that concord reigned among the black-haired people.” He
abdicated in
favour of Shun, who is described as being profoundly wise,
intelligent,
and sincere. We are further told that Shun was chosen because of
his
great filial piety, which enabled him to live in harmony with
an
unprincipled father, a shifty stepmother, and an arrogant
half-brother,
and, moreover, to effect by his example a comparative
reformation of
their several characters.
We next come to a very famous
personage, who founded the Hsia dynasty
in B.C. 2205, and is known as the
Great Yu. It was he who, during the
reign of the Emperor Shun, successfully
coped with a devastating flood,
which has been loosely identified with the
Noachic Deluge, and in
reference to which it was said in the _Tso Chuan_,
“How grand was the
achievement of Yu, how far-reaching his glorious energy!
But for Yu we
should all have been fishes.” The following is his own account
(Legge’s
translation):--
“The inundating waters seemed to assail the
heavens, and in their vast
extent embraced the mountains and overtopped the
hills, so that people
were bewildered and overwhelmed. I mounted my four
conveyances (carts,
boats, sledges, and spiked shoes), and all along the
hills hewed down
the woods, at the same time, along with Yi, showing the
multitudes how
to get flesh to eat. I opened passages for the streams
throughout the
nine provinces, and conducted them to the sea. I deepened the
channels
and canals, and conducted them to the streams, at the same time,
along
with Chi, sowing grain, and showing the multitudes how to
procure
the food of toil in addition to flesh meat. I urged them further
to
exchange what they had for what they had not, and to dispose of
their
accumulated stores. In this way all the people got grain to eat,
and
all the States began to come under good rule.”
A small portion of
the Book of History is in verse:--
“_The people should be
cherished,
And should not be downtrodden.
The people are the root of a
country,
And if the root is firm, the country will be
tranquil._
* * * * *
_The
palace a wild for lust,
The country a wild for hunting,
Rich wine,
seductive music,
Lofty roofs, carved walls,--
Given any one of
these,
And the result can only be ruin._”
From the date of the
foundation of the Hsia dynasty the throne of the
empire was transmitted from
father to son, and there were no more
abdications in favour of virtuous
sages. The fourth division of the
Book of History deals with the decadence of
the Hsia rulers and their
final displacement in B.C. 1766 by T’ang the
Completer, founder of the
Shang dynasty. By B.C. 1122, the Shang sovereigns
had similarly lapsed
from the kingly qualities of their founder to even a
lower level of
degradation and vice. Then arose one of the purest and most
venerated
heroes of Chinese history, popularly known by his canonisation
as
Wen Wang. He was hereditary ruler of a principality in the
modern
province of Shensi, and in B.C. 1144 he was denounced as dangerous
to
the throne. He was seized and thrown into prison, where he passed
two
years, occupying himself with the Book of Changes, to which we
shall
presently return. At length the Emperor, yielding to the entreaties
of
the people, backed up by the present of a beautiful concubine and
some
fine horses, set him at liberty and commissioned him to make war
upon
the frontier tribes. To his dying day he never ceased to
remonstrate
against the cruelty and corruption of the age, and his name is
still
regarded as one of the most glorious in the annals of the empire.
It
was reserved for his son, known as Wu Wang, to overthrow the
Shang
dynasty and mount the throne as first sovereign of the Chou
dynasty,
which was to last for eight centuries to come. The following is
a
speech by the latter before a great assembly of nobles who were
siding
against the House of Shang. It is preserved among others in the Book
of
History, and is assigned to the year B.C. 1133 (Legge’s
translation):--
“Heaven and Earth are the parents of all creatures; and
of all
creatures man is the most highly endowed. The sincere,
intelligent,
and perspicacious among men becomes the great sovereign, and the
great
sovereign is the parent of the people. But now, Shou, the king
of
Shang, does not reverence Heaven above, and inflicts calamities on
the
people below. He has been abandoned to drunkenness, and reckless
in
lust. He has dared to exercise cruel oppression. Along with
criminals
he has punished all their relatives. He has put men into office
on
the hereditary principle. He has made it his pursuit to have
palaces,
towers, pavilions, embankments, ponds, and all other
extravagances,
to the most painful injury of you, the myriad people. He has
burned
and roasted the loyal and good. He has ripped up pregnant women.
Great
Heaven was moved with indignation, and charged my deceased father,
Wen,
reverently to display its majesty; but he died before the work
was
completed.
“On this account I, Fa, who am but a little child,
have, by means
of you, the hereditary rulers of my friendly States,
contemplated
the government of Shang; but Shou has no repentant heart. He
abides
squatting on his heels, not serving God or the spirits of heaven
and
earth, neglecting also the temple of his ancestors, and not
sacrificing
in it. The victims and the vessels of millet all become the prey
of
wicked robbers; and still he says, ‘The people are mine: the decree
is
mine,’ never trying to correct his contemptuous mind. Now Heaven,
to
protect the inferior people, made for them rulers, and made for
them
instructors, that they might be able to be aiding to God, and
secure
the tranquillity of the four quarters of the empire. In regard to
who
are criminals and who are not, how dare I give any allowance to my
own
wishes?
“‘Where the strength is the same, measure the virtue of
the parties;
where the virtue is the same, measure their righteousness.’ Shou
has
hundreds of thousands and myriads of ministers, but they have
hundreds
of thousands and myriads of minds; I have three thousand ministers,
but
they have one mind. The iniquity of Shang is full. Heaven gives
command
to destroy it. If I did not comply with Heaven, my iniquity would be
as
great.
“I, who am a little child, early and late am filled with
apprehensions.
I have received charge from my deceased father, Wen; I have
offered
special sacrifice to God; I have performed the due services to
the
great Earth; and I lead the multitude of you to execute the
punishment
appointed by Heaven. Heaven compassionates the people. What the
people
desire, Heaven will be found to give effect to. Do you aid me, the
one
man, to cleanse for ever all within the four seas. Now is the
time!--it
may not be lost.”
Two of the documents which form the Book
of History are directed
against luxury and drunkenness, to both of which the
people seemed
likely to give way even within measurable distance of the death
of Wen
Wang. The latter had enacted that wine (that is to say, ardent
spirits
distilled from rice) should only be used on sacrificial occasions,
and
then under strict supervision; and it is laid down, almost as a
general
principle, that all national misfortunes, culminating in the
downfall
of a dynasty, may be safely ascribed to the abuse of
wine.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: THE
ODES]
The _Shih Ching_, or Book of Odes, is another work for the
preservation
of which we are indebted to Confucius. It consists of a
collection
of rhymed ballads in various metres, usually four words to the
line,
composed between the reign of the Great Yu and the beginning of
the
sixth century B.C. These, which now number 305, are popularly known
as
the “Three Hundred,” and are said by some to have been selected
by Confucius
from no less than 3000 pieces. They are arranged under
four heads, as
follows:--(_a_) Ballads commonly sung by the people in
the various feudal
States and forwarded periodically by the nobles to
their suzerain, the Son of
Heaven. The ballads were then submitted
to the Imperial Musicians, who were
able to judge from the nature of
such compositions what would be the manners
and customs prevailing
in each State, and to advise the suzerain accordingly
as to the good
or evil administration of each of his vassal rulers. (_b_)
Odes sung
at ordinary entertainments given by the suzerain. (_c_) Odes sung
on
grand occasions when the feudal nobles were gathered together.
(_d_)
Panegyrics and sacrificial odes.
Confucius himself attached the
utmost importance to his labours in this
direction. “Have you learned the
Odes?” he inquired upon one occasion
of his son; and on receiving an answer
in the negative, immediately
told the youth that until he did so he would be
unfit for the society
of intellectual men. Confucius may indeed be said to
have anticipated
the apophthegm attributed by Fletcher of Saltoun to a “very
wise man,”
namely, that he who should be allowed to make a nation’s “ballads
need
care little who made its laws.” And it was probably this
appreciation
by Confucius that gave rise to an extraordinary literary craze
in
reference to these Odes. Early commentators, incapable of seeing
the
simple natural beauties of the poems, which have furnished
endless
household words and a large stock of phraseology to the language
of
the present day, and at the same time unable to ignore the
deliberate
judgment of the Master, set to work to read into countryside
ditties
deep moral and political significations. Every single one of
the
immortal Three Hundred has thus been forced to yield some
hidden
meaning and point an appropriate moral. If a maiden warns her lover
not
to be too rash--
“_Don’t come in, sir,
please!
Don’t break my willow-trees!
Not that that would very
much grieve me;
But alack-a-day! what would my parents say?
And
love you as I may,
I cannot bear to think what that would
be,_”--
commentators promptly discover that the piece refers to a feudal
noble
whose brother had been plotting against him, and to the excuses of
the
former for not visiting the latter with swift and exemplary
punishment.
Another independent young lady may say--
“_If you
will love me dear, my lord,
I’ll pick up my skirts and cross the
ford,
But if from your heart you turn me out ...
Well, you’re not the
only man about,
You silly, silly, silliest lout!_”--
still
commentaries are not wanting to show that these straightforward
words express
the wish of the people of a certain small State that
some great State would
intervene and put an end to an existing feud in
the ruling family. Native
scholars are, of course, hide-bound in the
traditions of commentators, but
European students will do well to seek
the meaning of the Odes within the
compass of the Odes themselves.
Possibly the very introduction of these
absurdities may have helped to
preserve to our day a work which would
otherwise have been considered
too trivial to merit the attention of
scholars. Chinese who are in
the front rank of scholarship know it by heart,
and each separate
piece has been searchingly examined, until the force of
exegesis can
no farther go. There is one famous line which runs, according to
the
accepted commentary, “The muddiness of the Ching river appears
from
the (clearness of the) Wei river.” In 1790 the Emperor Ch’ien
Lung,
dissatisfied with this interpretation, sent a viceroy to examine
the
rivers. The latter reported that the Ching was really clear and the
Wei
muddy, so that the wording of the line must mean “The Ching river
is
made muddy by the Wei river.”
The following is a specimen of one of
the longer of the Odes, saddled,
like all the rest, with an impossible
political interpretation, of
which nothing more need be
said:--
“_You seemed a guileless youth enough,
Offering for silk
your woven stuff;[1]
But silk was not required by you;
I was the silk
you had in view.
With you I crossed the ford, and while
We wandered on
for many a mile
I said, ‘I do not wish delay,
But friends must fix our
wedding-day ...
Oh, do not let my words give pain,
But with the autumn
come again.’_
“_And then I used to watch and wait
To see you
passing through the gate;
And sometimes, when I watched in vain,
My
tears would flow like falling rain;
But when I saw my darling boy,
I
laughed and cried aloud for joy.
The fortune-tellers, you
declared,
Had all pronounced us duly paired;
‘Then bring a carriage,’
I replied,
‘And I’ll away to be your bride.’_
“_The mulberry-leaf,
not yet undone
By autumn chill, shines in the sun.
O tender dove, I
would advise,
Beware the fruit that tempts thy eyes!
O maiden fair,
not yet a spouse,
List lightly not to lovers’ vows!
A man may do this
wrong, and time
Will fling its shadow o’er his crime;
A woman who has
lost her name
Is doomed to everlasting shame._
“_The mulberry-tree
upon the ground
Now sheds its yellow leaves around.
Three years have
slipped away from me
Since first I shared your poverty;
And now again,
alas the day!
Back through the ford I take my way.
My heart is still
unchanged, but you
Have uttered words now proved untrue;
And you have
left me to deplore
A love that can be mine no more._
“_For three
long years I was your wife,
And led in truth a toilsome life;
Early to
rise and late to bed,
Each day alike passed o’er my head.
I honestly
fulfilled my part,
And you--well, you have broke my heart.
The truth
my brothers will not know,
So all the more their gibes will flow.
I
grieve in silence and repine
That such a wretched fate is
mine._
“_Ah, hand in hand to face old age!--
Instead, I turn a
bitter page.
O for the river-banks of yore;
O for the much-loved
marshy shore;
The hours of girlhood, with my hair
Ungathered, as we
lingered there.
The words we spoke, that seemed so true,
I little
thought that I should rue;
I little thought the vows we swore
Would
some day bind us two no more._”
Many of the Odes deal with warfare, and
with the separation of wives
from their husbands; others, with agriculture
and with the chase,
with marriage and feasting. The ordinary sorrows of life
are fully
represented, and to these may be added frequent complaints
against
the harshness of officials, one speaker going so far as to wish
he
were a tree without consciousness, without home, and without
family.
The old-time theme of “eat, drink, and be merry” is brought out
as
follows:--
“_You have coats and robes,
But you do not trail
them;
You have chariots and horses,
But you do not ride in
them.
By and by you will die,
And another will enjoy
them._
“_You have courtyards and halls,
But they are not sprinkled
and swept;
You have bells and drums,
But they are not struck.
By
and by you will die,
And another will possess them._
“_You have
wine and food;
Why not play daily on your lute,
That you may enjoy
yourself now
And lengthen your days?
By and by you will die,
And
another will take your place._”
The Odes are especially valuable for the
insight they give us into the
manners, and customs, and beliefs of the
Chinese before the age of
Confucius. How far back they extend it is quite
impossible to say. An
eclipse of the sun, “an event of evil omen,” is
mentioned in one of the
Odes as a recent occurrence on a certain day which
works out as the
29th August, B.C. 775; and this eclipse has been verified
for
that date. The following lines are from Legge’s rendering of this
Ode:--
“_The sun and moon announce evil,
Not keeping to their
proper paths.
All through the kingdom there is no proper
government,
Because the good are not employed.
For the moon to be
eclipsed
Is but an ordinary matter.
Now that the sun has been
eclipsed,
How bad it is!_”
The rainbow was regarded, not as a
portent of evil, but as an improper
combination of the dual forces of
nature,--
“_There is a rainbow in the east,
And no one dares point
at it,_”--
and is applied figuratively to women who form improper
connections.
The position of women generally seems to have been very much
what it
is at the present day. In an Ode which describes the completion of
a
palace for one of the ancient princes, we are conducted through
the
rooms,--
“_Here will he live, here will he sit,
Here will
he laugh, here will he talk,_”--
until we come to the bedchamber, where
he will awake, and call upon
the chief diviner to interpret his dream of
bears and serpents. The
interpretation (Legge) is as
follows:--
“_Sons shall be born to him:--
They will be put to
sleep on couches;
They will be clothed in robes;
They will have
sceptres to play with;
Their cry will be loud.
They will be
resplendent with red knee-covers,
The future princes of the
land._
“_Daughters shall be born to him:--
They will be put to
sleep on the ground;
They will be clothed with wrappers;
They will
have tiles to play with.
It will be theirs neither to do wrong nor to do
good.
Only about the spirits and the food will they have to think,
And
to cause no sorrow to their parents._”
The distinction thus drawn is
severe enough, and it is quite
unnecessary to make a comparison, as some
writers on China have done,
between the tile and the sceptre, as though the
former were but a dirty
potsherd, good enough for a girl. A tile was used in
the early ages
as a weight for the spindle, and is here used merely to
indicate the
direction which a girl’s activities should take.
Women
are further roughly handled in an Ode which traces the
prevailing
misgovernment to their interference in affairs of State and in
matters
which do not lie within their province:--
“_A clever man
builds a city,
A clever woman lays one low;
With all her
qualifications, that clever woman
Is but an ill-omened bird.
A woman
with a long tongue
Is a flight of steps leading to calamity;
For
disorder does not come from heaven,
But is brought about by
women.
Among those who cannot be trained or taught
Are women and
eunuchs._”
About seventy kinds of plants are mentioned in the Odes,
including the
bamboo, barley, beans, convolvulus, dodder, dolichos, hemp,
indigo,
liquorice, melon, millet, peony, pepper, plantain, scallions,
sorrel,
sowthistle, tribulus, and wheat; about thirty kinds of trees,
including
the cedar, cherry, chestnut, date, hazel, medlar, mulberry, oak,
peach,
pear, plum, and willow; about thirty kinds of animals, including
the
antelope, badger, bear, boar, elephant, fox, leopard, monkey,
rat,
rhinoceros, tiger, and wolf; about thirty kinds of birds,
including
the crane, eagle, egret, magpie, oriole, swallow, and wagtail;
about
ten kinds of fishes, including the barbel, bream, carp, and tench;
and
about twenty kinds of insects, including the ant, cicada,
glow-worm,
locust, spider, and wasp.
Among the musical instruments of
the Odes are found the flute, the
drum, the bell, the lute, and the Pandæan
pipes; among the metals
are gold and iron, with an indirect allusion to
silver and copper;
and among the arms and munitions of war are bows and
arrows, spears,
swords, halberds, armour, grappling-hooks, towers on wheels
for use
against besieged cities, and gags for soldiers’ mouths, to prevent
them
talking in the ranks on the occasion of night attacks.
The idea
of a Supreme Being is brought out very fully in the Odes--
“_Great is
God,
Ruling in majesty._”
Also,
“_How mighty is
God,
The Ruler of mankind!
How terrible is His majesty!_”
He is
apparently in the form of man, for in one place we read of His
footprint. He
hates the oppression of great States, although in another
passage we
read--
“_Behold Almighty God;
Who is there whom He
hates?_”
He comforts the afflicted. He is free from error. His “Way” is
hard to
follow. He is offended by sin. He can be appeased by
sacrifice:--
“_We fill the sacrificial vessels with
offerings,
Both the vessels of wood, and those of earthenware.
Then
when the fragrance is borne on high,
God smells the savour and is
pleased._”
One more quotation, which, in deference to space limits, must
be the
last, exhibits the husbandman of early China in a very pleasing
light:--
“_The clouds form in dense masses,
And the rain falls
softly down.
Oh, may it first water the public lands,
And then come to
our private fields!
Here shall some corn be left standing,
Here some
sheaves unbound;
Here some handfuls shall be dropped,
And there some
neglected ears;
These are for the benefit of the widow._”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: BOOK OF CHANGES]
The
next of the pre-Confucian works, and possibly the oldest of all, is
the
famous _I Ching_, or Book of Changes. It is ascribed to WEN WANG,
the virtual
founder of the Chou dynasty, whose son, WU WANG, became the
first sovereign
of a long line, extending from B.C. 1122 to B.C. 249.
It contains a fanciful
system of philosophy, deduced originally from
Eight Diagrams consisting of
triplet combinations or arrangements of a
line and a divided line, either one
or other of which is necessarily
repeated twice, and in two cases three
times, in the same combination.
Thus there may be three lines ☰, or three
divided lines ☷, a divided
line above or below two lines ☱ ☴, a divided line
between two lines
☲, and so on, eight in all. These so-called diagrams are
said to have
been invented two thousand years and more before Christ by the
monarch
Fu Hsi, who copied them from the back of a tortoise. He
subsequently
increased the above simple combinations to sixty-four double
ones, on
the permutations of which are based the philosophical speculations
of
the Book of Changes. Each diagram represents some power in
nature,
either active or passive, such as fire, water, thunder, earth, and
so
on.
The text consists of sixty-four short essays, enigmatically
and
symbolically expressed, on important themes, mostly of a moral,
social,
and political character, and based upon the same number of
lineal
figures, each made up of six lines, some of which are whole and
the
others divided. The text is followed by commentaries, called the
Ten
Wings, probably of a later date and commonly ascribed to Confucius,
who
declared that were a hundred years added to his life he would
devote
fifty of them to a study of the _I Ching_.
The following is a
specimen (Legge’s translation):--
“_Text._ ䷉ This suggests the idea of
one treading on the tail of a
tiger, which does not bite him. There will be
progress and success.
“1. The first line, undivided, shows its subject
treading his
accustomed path. If he go forward, there will be no
error.
“2. The second line, undivided, shows its subject treading the
path
that is level and easy;--a quiet and solitary man, to whom, if he
be
firm and correct, there will be good fortune.
“3. The third line,
divided, shows a one-eyed man who thinks he can
see; a lame man who thinks he
can walk well; one who treads on the tail
of a tiger and is bitten. All this
indicates ill-fortune. We have a
mere bravo acting the part of a great
ruler.
“4. The fourth line, undivided, shows its subject treading on the
tail
of a tiger. He becomes full of apprehensive caution, and in the
end
there will be good fortune.
“5. The fifth line, undivided, shows
the resolute tread of its subject.
Though he be firm and correct, there will
be peril.
“6. The sixth line, undivided, tells us to look at the whole
course
that is trodden, and examine the presage which that gives. If it
be
complete and without failure, there will be great good
fortune.
“_Wing._--In this hexagram we have the symbol of weakness
treading on
that of strength.
“The lower trigram indicates pleasure
and satisfaction, and responds
to the upper indicating strength. Hence it is
said, ‘He treads on the
tail of a tiger, which does not bite him; there will
be progress and
success.’
“The fifth line is strong, in the centre,
and in its correct place. Its
subject occupies the God-given position, and
falls into no distress or
failure;--his action will be brilliant.”
As
may be readily inferred from the above extract, no one really
knows what is
meant by the apparent gibberish of the Book of Changes.
This is freely
admitted by all learned Chinese, who nevertheless hold
tenaciously to the
belief that important lessons could be derived from
its pages if we only had
the wit to understand them. Foreigners have
held various theories on the
subject. Dr. Legge declared that he had
found the key, with the result
already shown. The late Terrien de la
Couperie took a bolder flight,
unaccompanied by any native commentator,
and discovered in this cherished
volume a vocabulary of the language of
the Bak tribes. A third writer regards
it as a calendar of the lunar year, and so
forth. |
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