CHINA AND ANCIENT GREECE
The study of Chinese presents at least one advantage over the study
of the Greek and Roman classics; I might add, of Hebrew, of Syriac, and
even of Sanskrit. It may be pursued for two distinct objects. The
first, and most important object to many, is to acquire a practical
acquaintance with a living language, spoken and written by about
one-third of the existing population of the earth, with a view to the
extension of commercial enterprise, and to the profits and benefits
which may legitimately accrue therefrom. The second is precisely that
object in pursuit of which we apply ourselves so steadily to the
literatures and civilisations of Greece and Rome.
Sir Richard Jebb, in his essay on “Humanism in Education,” points
out that even less than a hundred years ago the classics still held a
virtual monopoly, so far as literary studies were concerned, in the
public schools and universities of England. “The culture which they
supplied,” he argues, “while limited in the sphere of its operation,
had long been an efficient and vital influence, not only in forming men
of letters and learning, but in training men who afterwards gained
distinction in public life and in various active careers.”
Long centuries had fixed so firmly in the minds of our forefathers a
belief, and no doubt to some extent a justifiable belief, in the
perfect character of the languages, the literatures, the arts, and some
of the social and political institutions of ancient Greece and Rome,
that a century or so ago there seemed to be nothing else worth the
attention of an intellectual man. The comparatively recent introduction
of Sanskrit was received in the classical world, not merely with
coldness, but with strenuous opposition; and all the genius of its
pioneer scholars was needed to secure the meed of recognition which it
now enjoys as an important field of research. The Regius Professorship
of Greek in the University of Cambridge, England, was founded in 1540;
but it was not until 1867, more than three centuries later, that
Sanskrit was admitted into the university curriculum. It is still
impossible to gain a degree through the medium of Chinese, but signs
are not wanting that the necessity for such a step will be more widely
recognised in the near future.
All the material lies ready to hand. There is a written language,
which for difficulty is unrivalled, polished and perfected by centuries
of the minutest scholarship, until it is impossible to conceive
anything more subtly artistic as a vehicle of human thought. Those
mental gymnastics, of such importance in the training of youth, which
were once claimed exclusively for the languages of Greece and Rome, may
be performed equally well in the Chinese language. The educated classes
in China would be recognised anywhere as men of trained minds, able to
carry on sustained and complex arguments without violating any of the
Aristotelian canons, although as a matter of fact they never heard of
Aristotle and possess no such work in all their extensive literature as
a treatise on logic. The affairs of their huge empire are carried on,
and in my opinion very successfully carried on—with some reservations,
of course—by men who have had to get their mental gymnastics wholly
and solely out of Chinese.
I am not aware that their diplomatists suffer by comparison with
ours. The Marquis Tseng and Li Hung-chang, for instance, representing
opposite schools, were admitted masters of their craft, and made not a
few of our own diplomatists look rather small beside them.
Speaking further of the study of the Greek and Roman classics, Sir
Richard Jebb says: “There can be no better proof that such a discipline
has penetrated the mind, and has been assimilated, than if, in the
crises of life, a man recurs to the great thoughts and images of the
literature in which he has been trained, and finds there what braces
and fortifies him, a comfort, an inspiration, an utterance for his
deeper feelings.”
Sir Richard Jebb then quotes a touching story of Lord Granville, who
was President of the Council in 1762, and whose last hours were rapidly
approaching. In reply to a suggestion that, considering his state of
health, some important work should be postponed, he uttered the
following impassioned words from the Iliad, spoken by Sarpedon to
Glaucus: “Ah, friend, if, once escaped from this battle, we were for
ever to be ageless and immortal, I would not myself fight in the
foremost ranks, nor would I send thee into the war that giveth men
renown; but now,—since ten thousand fates of death beset us every day,
and these no mortal may escape or avoid,—now let us go forward.”
Such was the discipline of the Greek and Roman classics upon the
mind of Lord Granville at a great crisis in his life.
Let us now turn to the story of a Chinese statesman, nourished only
upon what has been too hastily stigmatised as “the dry bones of Chinese
literature.”
Wen T'ien-hsiang was born in A.D. 1236. At the age of twenty-one he
came out first on the list of successful candidates for the highest
literary degree. Upon the draft-list submitted to the Emperor he had
been placed seventh; but his Majesty, after looking over the essays,
drew the grand examiner's attention to the originality and excellence
of that of Wen T'ien-hsiang, and the examiner—himself a great scholar
and no sycophant—saw that the Emperor was right, and altered the
places accordingly.
Four or five years later Wen T'ien-hsiang attracted attention by
demanding the execution of a statesman who had advised that the Court
should quit the capital and flee before the advance of the victorious
Mongols. Then followed many years of hard fighting, in the course of
which his raw levies were several times severely defeated, and he
himself was once taken prisoner by the Mongol general, Bayan, mentioned
by Marco Polo. He managed to escape on that occasion; but in 1278 the
plague broke out in his camp, and he was again defeated and taken
prisoner. He was sent to Peking, and every effort was made to induce
him to own allegiance to the Mongol conqueror, but without success. He
was kept several years in prison. Here is a well-known poem which he
wrote while in captivity:—
“There is in the universe an Aura, an influence which
permeates all things, and makes them what they are. Below, it shapes
forth land and water; above, the sun and the stars. In man it is called
spirit; and there is nowhere where it is not.
“In times of national tranquillity, this spirit lies hidden in the
harmony which prevails. Only at some great epoch is it manifested
widely abroad.”
Here Wen T'ien-hsiang recalls, and dwells lovingly upon, a number of
historical examples of loyalty and devotion. He then proceeds:—
“Such is this grand and glorious spirit which endureth for all
generations; and which, linked with the sun and moon, knows neither
beginning nor end. The foundation of all that is great and good in
heaven and earth, it is itself born from the everlasting obligations
which are due by man to man.
“Alas! the fates were against me; I was without resource. Bound with
fetters, hurried away toward the north, death would have been sweet
indeed; but that boon was refused.
“My dungeon is lighted by the will-o'-the-wisp alone: no breath of
spring cheers the murky solitude in which I dwell. The ox and the barb
herd together in one stall: the rooster and the phoenix feed together
from one dish. Exposed to mist and dew, I had many times thought to
die; and yet, through the seasons of two revolving years, disease
hovered around me in vain. The dark, unhealthy soil to me became
Paradise itself. For there was that within me which misfortune could
not steal away. And so I remained firm, gazing at the white clouds
floating over my head, and bearing in my heart a sorrow boundless as
the sky.
“The sun of those dead heroes has long since set, but their record
is before me still. And, while the wind whistles under the eaves, I
open my books and read; and lo! in their presence my heart glows with a
borrowed fire.”
At length, Wen T'ien-hsiang was summoned into the presence of Kublai
Khan, who said to him, “What is it you want?” “By the grace of his late
Majesty of the Sung dynasty,” he replied, “I became his Majesty's
minister. I cannot serve two masters. I only ask to die.” Accordingly
he was executed, meeting his death with composure, and making a final
obeisance toward the south, as though his own sovereign was still
reigning in his capital.
May we not then plead that this Chinese statesman, equally with Lord
Granville, at a crisis of his life, recurred to the great thoughts and
images of the literature in which he had been trained, and found there
what braced and fortified him, a comfort, an inspiration, an utterance
for his deeper feelings?
Chinese history teems with the names of men who, with no higher
source of inspiration than the Confucian Canon, have yet shown that
they can nobly live and bravely die.
Han Yue of the eighth and ninth centuries was one of China's most
brilliant statesmen and writers, and rose rapidly to the highest
offices of State. When once in power, he began to attack abuses, and
was degraded and banished. Later on, when the Court, led by a weak
Emperor, was going crazy over Buddhism, he presented a scathing
Memorial to the Throne, from the effect of which it may well be said
that Buddhism has not yet recovered. The Emperor was furious, and Han
Yue narrowly escaped with his life. He was banished to the extreme
wilds of Kuangtung, not far from the now flourishing Treaty Port of
Swatow, where he did so much useful work in civilising the aborigines,
that he was finally recalled.
Those wilds have long since disappeared as such, but the memory of
Han Yue remains, a treasure for ever. In a temple which contains his
portrait, and which is dedicated to him, a grateful posterity has put
up a tablet bearing the following legend, “Wherever he passed, he
purified.”
The last Emperor of the Ming dynasty, which was overthrown by rebels
and then supplanted by the Manchus in 1644, was also a man who in the
Elysian fields might well hold up his head among monarchs. He seems to
have inherited with the throne a legacy of national disorder similar to
that which eventually brought about the ruin of Louis XVI of France.
With all the best intentions possible, he was unable to stem the tide.
Over-taxation brought in its train, as it always does in China, first
resistance and then rebellion. The Emperor was besieged in Peking by a
rebel army; the Treasury was empty; there were too few soldiers to man
the walls; and the capital fell.
On the previous night, the Emperor, who had refused to flee, slew
the eldest Princess, commanded the Empress to commit suicide, and sent
his three sons into hiding. At dawn the bell was struck for the Court
to assemble; but no one came. His Majesty then ascended the well-known
hill in the Palace grounds, and wrote a last decree on the lapel of his
robe:—
“Poor in virtue, and of contemptible personality, I have incurred
the wrath of high Heaven. My ministers have deceived me. I am ashamed
to meet my ancestors; and therefore I myself take off my cap of State,
and with my hair covering my face, await dismemberment at the hands of
you rebels.”
Instead of the usual formula, “Respect this!” the Emperor added,
“Spare my people!”
He then hanged himself, and the great Ming dynasty was no more.
* * * * *
Chinese studies have always laboured under this disadvantage,—that
the ludicrous side of China and her civilisation was the one which
first attracted the attention of foreigners; and to a great extent it
does so still. There was a time when China was regarded as a Land of
Opposites, i.e. diametrically opposed to us in every imaginable
direction. For instance, in China the left hand is the place of honour;
men keep their hats on in company; use fans; mount their horses on the
off side; begin dinner with fruit and end it with soup; shake their own
instead of their friends' hands when meeting; begin at what we call the
wrong end of a book and read from right to left down vertical columns;
wear white for mourning; have huge visiting-cards instead of small
ones; prevent criminals from having their hair cut; regard the south as
the standard point of the compass; begin to build a house by putting on
the roof first; besides many other nicer distinctions, the mere
enumeration of which would occupy much of the time at my disposal.
The other side of the medal, showing the similarities, and even the
identities, has been unduly neglected; and yet it is precisely from a
study of these similarities and identities that the best results can be
expected.
A glance at any good dictionary of classical antiquities will at
once reveal the minute and painstaking care with which even the small
details of life in ancient Greece have been examined into and
discussed. The Chinese have done like work for themselves; and many of
their beautifully illustrated dictionaries of archaeology would compare
not unfavourably with anything we have to show.
There are also many details of modern everyday existence in China
which may fairly be quoted to show that Chinese civilisation is not,
after all, that comic condition of topsy-turvey-dom which the term
usually seems to connote.
The Chinese house may not be a facsimile of a Greek house,—far from
it. Still, we may note its position, facing south, in order to have as
much sun in winter and as little in summer as possible; its division
into men's and women's apartments; the fact that the doors are in two
leaves and open inward; the rings or handles on the doors; the portable
braziers used in the rooms in cold weather; and the shrines of the
household gods;—all of which characteristics are to be found equally
in the Greek house.
There are also points of resemblance between the lives led by
Chinese and Athenian ladies, beyond the fact that the former occupy a
secluded portion of the house. The Chinese do not admit their women to
social entertainments, and prefer, as we are told was the case with
Athenian husbands, to dine by themselves rather than expose their wives
to the gaze of their friends. If the Athenian dame “went out at all, it
was to see some religious procession, or to a funeral; and if
sufficiently advanced in years she might occasionally visit a female
friend, and take breakfast with her.”
And so in China, it is religion which breaks the monotony of female
life, and collects within the temples, on the various festivals, an
array of painted faces and embroidered skirts that present, even to the
European eye, a not unpleasing spectacle.
That painting the face was universal among the women of Greece, much
after the fashion which we now see in China, has been placed beyond all
doubt, the pigments used in both cases being white lead and some kind
of vegetable red, with lampblack for the eyebrows.
In marriage, we find the Chinese aiming, like the Greeks, at
equality of rank and fortune between the contracting parties, or, as
the Chinese put it, in the guise of a household word, at a due
correspondence between the doorways of the betrothed couple. As in
Greece, so in China, we find the marriage arranged by the parents; the
veiled bride; the ceremony of fetching her from her father's house; the
equality of man and wife; the toleration of subordinate wives, and many
other points of contact.
The same sights and scenes which are daily enacted at any of the
great Chinese centres of population seem also to have been enacted in
the Athenian market-place, with its simmering kettles of boiled peas
and other vegetables, and its chapmen and retailers of all kinds of
miscellaneous goods. In both we have the public story-teller,
surrounded by a well-packed group of fascinated and eager listeners.
The puppet-shows, agalmata neurospasta, which Herodotus tells us
were introduced into Greece from Egypt, are constantly to be seen in
Chinese cities, and date from the second century B.C.,—a suggestive
period, as I shall hope to show later on.
The Chinese say that these puppets originated in China as follows:—
The first Emperor of the Han dynasty was besieged, about 200 B.C.,
in a northern city, by a vast army of Hsiung-nu, the ancestors of the
Huns, under the command of the famous chieftain, Mao-tun. One of the
Chinese generals with the besieged Emperor discovered that Mao-tun's
wife, who was in command on one side of the city, was an extremely
jealous woman; and he forthwith caused a number of wooden puppets,
representing beautiful girls and worked by strings, to be exhibited on
the wall overlooking the chieftain's camp. At this, we are told, the
lady's fears for her husband's fidelity were aroused, and she drew off
her forces.
The above account may be dismissed as a tale, in which case we are
left with Punch and Judy on our hands.
To return to city sights. The tricks of street-jugglers as witnessed
in China seem to be very much those of ancient Greece. In both
countries we have such feats as jumping about amongst naked swords,
spitting fire from the mouth, and passing a sword down the throat.
Then there are the advertisements on the walls; the mule-carts and
mule-litters; the sunshades, or umbrellas, carried by women in Greece,
by both sexes in China.
The Japanese language is said to contain no terms of abuse, so
refined are the inhabitants of that earthly paradise. The Chinese
language more than makes up for this deficiency; and it is certainly
curious that, as in ancient Greece, the names of animals are not
frequently used in this connection, with the sole exception of the dog.
No Chinaman will stand being called a dog, although he really has a
great regard for the animal, as a friend whose fidelity is proof even
against poverty.
In the ivory shops in China will be found many specimens of the
carver's craft which will bear comparison, for the patience and skill
required, with the greatest triumphs of Greek workmen. Both nations
have reproduced the human hand in ivory; the Greeks used it as an
ornament for a hairpin; the Chinese attach it to a slender rod about a
foot and a half in length, and use it as a back-scratcher.
The Chinese drama, which we can only trace vaguely to Central Asian
sources, and no farther back than the twelfth century of our era, has
some points of contact with the Greek drama. In Greece the plays began
at sunrise and continued all day, as they do still on the open-air
stages of rural districts in China, in both cases performed entirely by
men, without interval between the pieces, without curtain, without
prompter, and without any attempt at realism.
As formerly in Greece, so now in China, the words of the play are
partly spoken and partly sung, the voice of the actor being, in both
countries, of the highest importance. Like the Greek actor before masks
were invented, the Chinese actor paints his face, and the thick-soled
boot which raises the Chinese tragedian from the ground is very much
the counterpart of the cothurnus.
The arrangement by which the Greek gods appeared in a kind of
balcony, looking out as it were from the heights of Olympus, is well
known to the Chinese stage; while the methodical character of Greek
tragic dancing, with the chorus moving right and left, is strangely
paralleled in the dances performed at the worship of Confucius in the
Confucian temples, details of which may be seen in any illustrated
Chinese encyclopaedia.
Games with dice are of a high antiquity in Greece; they date in
China only from the second century A.D., having been introduced from
the West under the name of shu p'u, a term which has so far
defied identification.
The custom of fighting quails was once a political institution in
Athens, and under early dynasties it was a favourite amusement at the
Imperial Court of China.
The game of “guess-fingers” is another form of amusement common to
both countries. So also is the custom of drinking by rule, under the
guidance of a toast-master, with fines of deep draughts of wine to be
swallowed by those who fail in capping verses, answering conundrums,
recognising quotations; to which may be added the custom of introducing
singing-girls toward the close of the entertainment.
At Athens, too, it was customary to begin a drinking-bout with small
cups, and resort to larger ones later on, a process which must be
familiar to all readers of Chinese novels, wherein, toward the close of
the revel, the half-drunken hero invariably calls for more capacious
goblets. Neither does the ordinary Chinaman approve of a short
allowance of wine at his banquets, as witness the following story,
translated from a Chinese book of anecdotes.
A stingy man, who had invited some guests to dinner, told his
servant not to fill up their wine-cups to the brim, as is usual. During
the meal, one of the guests said to his host, “These cups of yours are
too deep; you should have them cut down.” “Why so?” inquired the host.
“Well,” replied the guest, “you don't seem to use the top part for
anything.”
There is another story of a man who went to dine at a house where
the wine-cups were very small, and who, on taking his seat at table,
suddenly burst out into groans and lamentations. “What is the matter
with you?” cried the host, in alarm. “Ah,” replied his guest, “my
feelings overcame me. My poor father, when dining with a friend who had
cups like yours, lost his life, by accidentally swallowing one.”
The water-clock, or clepsydra, has been known to the Chinese
for centuries. Where did it come from? Is it a mere coincidence that
the ancient Greeks used water-clocks?
Is it a coincidence that the Greeks used an abacus, or
counting-board, on which the beads slid up and down in vertical
grooves, while on the Chinese counting-board the only difference is
that the beads slide up and down on vertical rods?
Is it a mere coincidence that the olive should be associated in
China, as in Greece, with propitiation? To this day, a Chinaman who
wishes to make up a quarrel will send a piece of red paper containing
an olive, in token of friendly feeling; and the acceptance of this
means that the quarrel is at an end.
The olive was supposed by the Greeks to have been brought by
Hercules from the land of the Hyperboreans; the Chinese say it was
introduced into China in the second century B.C.
The extraordinary similarities between the Chinese and Pythagorean
systems of music place it beyond a doubt that one must have been
derived from the other. The early Jesuit fathers declared that the
ancient Greeks borrowed their music from the Chinese; but we know now
that the music in question did not exist in China until two centuries
after its appearance in Greece.
The music of the Confucian age perished, books and instruments
together, at the Burning of the Books, in B.C. 212; and we read that in
the first part of the second century B.C. the hereditary music-master
was altogether ignorant of his art. Where did the new art come from?
And how are its Greek characteristics to be accounted for?
There are also equally extraordinary similarities between the
Chinese and Greek calendars.
For instance, in B.C. 104 the Chinese adopted a cycle of nineteen
years, a period which was found to bring together the solar and the
lunar years.
But this is precisely the cycle, enneakaidekaeteris, said to have
been introduced by Meton in the fifth century B.C., and adopted at
Athens about B.C. 330.
Have we here another coincidence of no particular importance?
The above list might be very much extended. Meanwhile, the question
arises: Are there any records of any kind in China which might lead us
to suppose that the Chinese ever came into contact in any way with the
civilisation of ancient Greece?
We know from Chinese history that, so far back as the second century
B.C., victorious Chinese generals carried their arms far into Central
Asia, and succeeded in annexing such distant regions as Khoten, Kokand,
and the Pamirs. About B.C. 138 a statesman named Chang Ch'ien was sent
on a mission to Bactria, but was taken prisoner by the Hsiung-nu, the
forebears of the Huns, and detained in captivity for over ten years. He
finally managed to escape, and proceeded to Fergana, and thence on to
Bactria, returning home in B.C. 126, after having been once more
captured by the Hsiung-nu and again detained for about a year.
Now Bactria was then a Greek kingdom, which had been founded by
Diodotus in B.C. 256; and it would appear to have had, already for some
time, commercial relations with China, for Chang Ch'ien reported that
he had seen Chinese merchandise exposed there in the markets for sale.
We farther learn that Chang Ch'ien brought back with him the walnut and
the grape, previously unknown in China, and taught his countrymen the
art of making wine.
The wine of the Confucian period was like the wine of to-day in
China, an ardent spirit distilled from rice. There is no grape-wine in
China now, although grapes are plentiful and good. But we know from the
poetry which has been preserved to us, as well as from the researches
of Chinese archaeologists, that grape-wine was largely used in China
for many centuries subsequent to the date of Chang Ch'ien; in fact,
down to the beginning of the fifteenth century, if not later.
One writer says it was brought, together with the “heavenly horse,”
from Persia, when the extreme West was opened up, a century or so
before the Christian era, as already mentioned.
I must now make what may well appear to be an uncalled-for
digression; but it will only be a temporary digression, and will bring
us back in a few minutes to the grape, the heavenly horse, and to
Persia.
Mirrors seem to have been known to the Chinese from the earliest
ages. One authority places them so far back as 2500 B.C. They are at
any rate mentioned in the Odes, say 800 B.C., and were made of
polished copper, being in shape, according to the earliest dictionary,
like a large basin.
About one hundred years B.C., a new kind of mirror comes into vogue,
called by an entirely new name, not before used. In common with the
word previously employed, its indicator is “metal,” showing under which
kingdom it falls,—i.e. a mirror of metal. These new mirrors
were small disks of melted metal, highly polished on one side and
profusely decorated with carvings on the other,—a description which
exactly tallies with that of the ancient Greek mirror. Specimens
survived to comparatively recent times, and it is even alleged that
many of these old mirrors are in existence still. A large number of
illustrations of them are given in the great encyclopaedia of the
eighteenth century, and the fifth of these, in chronological order,
second century B.C., is remarkable as being ornamented with the
well-known “key,” or Greek pattern, so common in Chinese decoration.
Another is covered with birds flying about among branches of
pomegranate laden with fruit cut in halves to show the seeds.
Shortly afterward we come to a mirror so lavishly decorated with
bunches of grapes and vine-leaves that the eye is arrested at once.
Interspersed with these are several animals, among others the lion,
which is unknown in China. The Chinese word for “lion,” as I stated in
my first lecture, is shih, an imitation of the Persian shir. There is also a lion's head with a bar in its mouth, recalling the
door-handles to temples in ancient Greece. Besides the snake, the
tortoise, and the sea-otter, there is what is far more remarkable than
any of these, namely, a horse with wings.
On comparing the latter with Pegasus as he appears in sculpture, it
is quite impossible to doubt that the Chinese is a copy of the Greek
animal. The former is said to have come down from heaven, and was
caught, according to tradition, on the banks of a river in B.C. 120.
The name for pomegranate in China is “the Parthian fruit,” showing
that it was introduced from Parthia, the Chinese equivalent for Parthia
being [an][xi] Ansik, which is an easy corruption of the Greek
Arsakes, the first king of Parthia.
The term for grape is admittedly of foreign origin, like the fruit
itself. It is [pu][tao] pu t'ou. Here it is easy to recognise
the Greek word Botrus, a cluster, or bunch, of grapes.
Similarly, the Chinese word for “radish,” [luo][bo] lo po,
also of foreign origin, is no doubt a corruption of raphe, it being of
course well known that the Chinese cannot pronounce an initial r.
There is one term, especially, in Chinese which at once carries
conviction as to its Greek origin. This is the term for watermelon. The
two Chinese characters chosen to represent the sound mean “Western
gourd,” i.e. the gourd which came from the West. Some Chinese
say, on no authority in particular, that it was introduced by the Kitan
Tartars; others say that it was introduced by the first Emperor of the
so-called Golden Tartars. But the Chinese term is still pronounced
si kua, which is absolutely identical with the Greek word sikua, of
which Liddell and Scott say, “perhaps the melon.” For these three words
it would now scarcely be rash to substitute “the watermelon.”
We are not on quite such firm ground when we compare the Chinese
kalends and ides with similar divisions of the Roman month.
Still it is interesting to note that in ancient China, the first day
of every month was publicly proclaimed, a sheep being sacrificed on
each occasion; also, that the Latin word kalendae meant the day
when the order of days was proclaimed.
Further, that the term in Chinese for ides means to look at, to see,
because on that day we can see the moon; and also that the Latin word
idus, the etymology of which has not been absolutely established,
may possibly come from the Greek idein “to see,” just as kalendae
comes from kalein “to proclaim.”
As to many of the analogies, more or less interesting, to be found
in the literatures of China and of Western nations, it is not difficult
to say how they got into their Chinese setting.
For instance, we read in the History of the Ming Dynasty, A.D.
1368-1644, a full account of the method by which the Spaniards, in the
sixteenth century, managed to obtain first a footing in, and then the
sovereignty over, some islands which have now passed under the American
flag. The following words, not quite without interest at the present
day, are translated from the above-mentioned account of the
Philippines:—
“The Fulanghis (i.e. the Franks), who at that time had
succeeded by violence in establishing trade relations with Luzon (the
old name of the Philippines), saw that the nation was weak, and might
easily be conquered. Accordingly, they sent rich presents to the king
of the country, begging him to grant them a piece of land as big as a
bull's hide, for building houses to live in. The king, not suspecting
guile, conceded their request, whereupon the Fulanghis cut the hide
into strips and joined them together, making many hundreds of ten-foot
measures in length; and then, having surrounded with these a piece of
ground, called upon the king to stand by his promise. The king was much
alarmed; but his word had been pledged, and there was no alternative
but to submit. So he allowed them to have the ground, charging a small
ground-rent as was the custom. But no sooner had the Fulanghis got the
ground than they put up houses and ramparts and arranged their
fire-weapons (cannon) and engines of attack. Then, seizing their
opportunity, they killed the king, drove out the people, and took
possession of the country.”
It is scarcely credible that Chinese historians would have recorded
such an incident unless some trick of the kind had actually been
carried out by the Spaniards, in imitation of the famous classical
story of the foundation of Carthage.
A professional writer of marvellous tales who flourished in the
seventeenth century tells a similar story of the early Dutch
settlers:—
“Formerly, when the Dutch were permitted to trade with China, the
officer in command of the coast defences would not allow them, on
account of their great numbers, to come ashore. The Dutch begged very
hard for the grant of a piece of land such as a carpet would cover; and
the officer above mentioned, thinking that this could not be very
large, acceded to their request. A carpet was accordingly laid down,
big enough for about two people to stand on; but by dint of stretching,
it was soon able to accommodate four or five; and so the foreigners
went on, stretching and stretching, until at last it covered about an
acre, and by and by, with the help of their knives, they had filched a
piece of ground several miles in extent.”
* * * * *
These two stories must have sprung from one and the same source. It
is not, however, always so simple a matter to see how other Western
incidents found their way into Chinese literature. For instance, there
is a popular anecdote to be found in a Chinese jest-book, which is
almost word for word with another anecdote in Greek literature:—
A soldier, who was escorting a Buddhist priest, charged with some
crime, to a prison at a distance, being very anxious not to forget
anything, kept saying over and over the four things he had to think
about, viz.: himself, his bundle, his umbrella, and the priest. At
night he got drunk, and the Buddhist priest, after first shaving the
soldier's head, ran away. When the soldier awaked, he began his
formula, “Myself, bundle, umbrella—O dear!” cried he, putting his
hands to his head, “the priest has gone. Stop a moment,” he added,
finding his hands in contact with a bald head, “here's the priest; it
is I who have run away.”
* * * * *
As found in Greek literature, the story, attributed to Hierocles,
but probably much later, says that the prisoner was a bald-headed man,
a condition which is suggested to the Chinese reader by the
introduction of a Buddhist priest.
Whether the Chinese got this story from the Greeks, or the Greeks
got it from the Chinese, I do not pretend to know. The fact is that we
students of Chinese at the present day know very little beyond the
vague outlines of what there is to be known. Students of Greek have
long since divided up their subject under such heads as pure
scholarship, history, philosophy, archaeology, and then again have made
subdivisions of these. In the Chinese field nothing of the kind has yet
been done. The consequence is that the labourers in that field,
compelled to work over a large superficies, are only able to turn out
more or less superficial work. The cry is for more students, practical
students of the written and colloquial languages, for the purposes of
diplomatic intercourse and the development of commerce; and also
students of the history, philosophy, archaeology, and religions of
China, men whose contributions to our present stock of knowledge may
throw light upon many important points, which, for lack of workmen,
have hitherto remained neglected and unexplored.