The Middle Kingdom, Volume 1 (of 2) / A Survey of the Geography, Government, Literature, Social Life, Arts, and History of the Chinese Empire and its Inhabitants

The literature contained in the language now briefly described is very ample and discursive, but wanting in accuracy and unenlivened by much variety or humor. The books of the Chinese have formed and confirmed their national taste, which consequently exhibits a tedious uniformity. The unbounded admiration felt for the classics and their immaculate authors, fostered by the examinations, has further tended to this result, and caused these writings to become still more famous from the unequalled influence they have exerted. It may be very readily seen, then, with what especial interest the student of Chinese sociology turns to an investigation of their letters, the immense accumulation of forty centuries. Were its amount and prominence the only features of their literature, these would suffice to make necessary some study thereof; but in addition, continued research may reveal some further qualities of “eloquence and poetry, enriched by the beauty of a picturesque language, preserving to imagination all its colors,” which will substantiate the hearty expressions used by Rémusat when first he entered upon a critical examination of its treasures.

In taking a survey of this literature, the Sz’ Ku Tsiuen Shu Tsung-muh, or ‘Catalogue of all Books in the Four Libraries,’ will be the best guide, since it embraces the whole range of letters, and affords a complete and succinct synopsis of the contents of the best books in the language. It is comprised in one hundred and twelve octavo volumes, and is of itself a valuable work, especially to the foreigner. The books are arranged into four divisions, viz., Classical, Historical, and Professional writings, and Belles-lettres. This Catalogue contains about 3,440 separate titles, comprising upward of 78,000 books; besides these, 6,764 other works, numbering 93,242 books, have been described in other catalogues of the imperial collections. These lists comprise the bulk of Chinese literature, except novels, Buddhist translations, and recent publications.

The works in the first division are ranged under nine sections; one is devoted to each of the five Classics (with a subsidiary section upon these as a whole), one to the memoir on Filial Duty, one to the Four Books, one to musical works, and the ninth to treatises on education, dictionaries, etc.

At the head of the ‘Five Classics’ (Wu King) is placed the Yih King, or ‘Book of Changes,’ a work which if not—as it has been repeatedly called—Antiquissimus Sinarum liber, can be traced with tolerable accuracy to an origin three thousand years ago. It ranks, according to Dr. Legge, third in antiquity among the Chinese classics, or after the Shu and portions of the Shí King; but if an unbounded veneration for enigmatical wisdom supposed to lie concealed under mystic lines be any just claim for importance, to this wondrous monument of literature may easily be conceded the first place in the estimation of Chinese scholars.

While following Dr. Legge in his recent exposition of this classic,[302] a clearer idea of its subject-matter can hardly be given than by quoting his words stating that “the text may be briefly represented as consisting of sixty-four short essays, enigmatically and symbolically expressed, on important themes, mostly of a moral, social, and political character, and based on the same number of lineal figures, each made up of six lines, some of which are whole and the others divided.” The evolution of the eight diagrams from two original principles is ascribed to Fuh-hí (B.C. 3322), who is regarded as the founder of the nation, though his history is, naturally enough, largely fabulous. From the Liang Í, or ‘Two Principles’ (⚊) (⚋), were fashioned the Sz’ Siang, or ‘Four Figures,’ by placing these over themselves and each of them over the other, thus:

⚌ ⚍ ⚎ ⚏

The same pairs placed in succession under the original lines formed eight trigrams called the

PAH KWA of FUH-HÍ.

The table furnishes us with the natural objects that these figures are said to represent, the attributes which should seem to be suggested by them, and which, with the application of the eight points of the compass, together form the material for a cabalistic logomancy peculiarly pleasing to Chinese habits of thought. The trigrams furnish, moreover, the state and position, at any given place or time, of the twofold division of the one primordial kí, or ‘Air,’ called Yang and Yin, and have thus become the source from whence the system of Fung-shui is derived and on whose changes it is founded. This substance kí answers sufficiently closely to the animated air of the Grecian philosopher Anaximenes; its divisions are a subtle and a coarse principle which, acting and reacting upon each other, produce four siang, or ‘forms,’ and these again combine into eight kwa, or trigrams. Fuh-hí is thus said to have arranged the first four of the Pah Kwa under the Yang (strong or hard) principle, and the last four under the Yin (weak or soft) principle; the former indicate vigor or authority, and it is their part to command, while of the latter, representing feebleness or submission, it is the part to obey.

It was probably Wăn Wang, King Wăn, chief of the principality of Chau in 1185 B.C., who when thrown into prison by his jealous suzerain Shau, the tyrant of Shang, arranged and multiplied the trigrams—long before his time used for purposes of divination—into the sixty-four hexagrams as they now occur in the Yih King. His was a wholly different disposition, both of names, attributes, and the compass points, from the original trigrams of Fuh-hí; again, he added to them certain social relations of father, mother, three sons, and three daughters, which has ever since been found a convenient addition to the conjuring apparatus of the work. “I like to think,” says Dr. Legge, “of the lord of Chau, when incarcerated in Yu-lí, with the sixty-four figures arranged before him. Each hexagram assumed a mystic meaning and glowed with a deep significance. He made it to tell him of the qualities of various objects of nature, or of the principles of human society, or of the condition, actual and possible, of the kingdom. He named the figures each by a term descriptive of the idea with which he had connected it in his mind, and then he proceeded to set that idea forth, now with a note of exhortation, now with a note of warning. It was an attempt to restrict the follies of divination within the bounds of reason.... But all the work of King Wăn in the Yih thus amounts to no more than sixty-four short paragraphs. We do not know what led his son Tan to enter into his work and complete it as he did. Tan was a patriot, a hero, a legislator, and a philosopher. Perhaps he took the lineal figures in hand as a tribute of filial duty. What had been done for the whole hexagram he would do for each line, and make it clear that all the six lines ‘bent one way their precious influence,’ and blended their rays in the globe of light which his father had made each figure give forth. But his method strikes us as singular. Each line seemed to become living, and suggested some phenomenon in nature, or some case of human experience, from which the wisdom or folly, the luckiness or unluckiness, indicated by it could be inferred. It cannot be said that the duke carried out his plan in a way likely to interest any one but a hien shăng who is a votary of divination and admires the style of its oracles. According to our notions, a framer of emblems should be a good deal of a poet; but those of the Yih only make us think of a dryasdust. Out of more than three hundred and fifty, the greater number are only grotesque. We do not recover from the feeling of disappointment till we remember that both father and son had to write ‘according to the trick,’ after the manner of diviners, as if this lineal augury had been their profession.”

Such is the text of the Yih. The words of King Wăn and his son are followed by commentaries called the Shih Yih, or ‘Ten Wings.’ These are of a much later period than the text, and are commonly ascribed to Confucius, though it is extremely doubtful if the sage was author of more than the sentences introduced by the oft-repeated formula, “The Master said,” occurring in or concluding many chapters of the ‘Wings.’ Without lingering over the varied contents of these appendices, more than to point out that the fifth and sixth Wings (‘Appended Sentences’), known as the ‘Great Treatise,’ contains for the first time the character Yih, or ‘Change,’ it will be necessary, before leaving this classic, to illustrate its curious nature by means of a single quotation.

An idea of the several commentaries, or ‘Wings,’ upon such a passage may be gained from the following excerpts. First comes the ‘Treatise on the Twan,’ or King Wăn’s paragraphs; then the ‘Treatise on the Symbols,’ consisting of observations on Duke Chau’s exposition.

The hundreds of fortune-tellers seen in the streets of Chinese towns, whose answers to their perplexed customers are more or less founded on these cabala, indicate their influence among the illiterate; while among scholars, who have long since conceded all divination to be vain, it is surprising to remark the profound estimation in which these inane lines are held as the consummation of all wisdom—the germ, even, of all the truths which western science has brought to light! Each hexagram is supposed to represent, at any given time, six different phases of the primordial kí. “As all the good and evil in the world,” observes McClatchie, “is attributed by the Chinese philosophers to the purity or impurity of the animated air from which the two-fold soul in man is formed, a certain moral value attaches to each stroke, and the diviner prognosticates accordingly that good or evil luck, as the case may be, will result to the consulter of the oracle with regard to the matter on which he seeks it. Nine is the number of Heaven, or the undivided stroke, and six is the number of Earth, or the divided stroke, and hence each stroke has a double designation. The first stroke, if undivided, is designated ‘First-Nine,’ but if divided it is designated ‘First-Six,’ and so on. The second and fifth strokes in each diagram are important, being the centre or medium strokes of their respective lesser diagrams. The fifth stroke, however, is the most important in divination, as it represents that portion of the air which is the especial throne of the imperial power, and is the ‘undeflected due medium.’ Nothing but good luck can follow if the person divining with the straws obtains this stroke. Tao, or the Divine Reason, which is the supreme soul of the whole Kosmos, animates the air, pervading its six phases, and thus giving power to the diagrams to make known future events to mankind.”

Of course anything and everything could be deduced from such a fanciful groundwork, but the Chinese have taken up the discussion in the most serious manner, and endeavored to find the hidden meaning and evolutions of the universe from this curious system. The diagrams have, moreover, supplied the basis for many species of divination by shells, letters, etc., by which means the mass of the people are deluded into the belief of penetrating futurity, and still more wedded to their superstitions. The continued influence of such a work as the Yih illustrates the national penchant for laws and method, while equally indicating the general indifference to empirical research and the facts deduced from study of natural history. If, from a philosophical standpoint, we consider the barrenness of its results, there is little, indeed, to say for the Yih King, save concurrence in Dr. Gustave Schlegel’s epithet, “a mechanical play of idle abstractions;” nevertheless, this classic contains in its whimsical dress of inscrutable strokes much of practical wisdom, giving heed to which it is not hard to agree with Dr. Legge in concluding that “the inculcation of such lessons cannot have been without good effect in China during the long course of its history.”[303]

The second section of the Imperial Catalogue contains treatises upon the Shu King, or ‘Book of Records.’ This classic, first in importance as it is in age among the five King, consists of a series of documents relating to the history of China from the times of Yao down to King Hiang, of the Chau dynasty (B.C. 2357-627). Its earlier chapters were composed at periods following the events of which they relate, but after the twenty-second century B.C. the Shu comes to us, though in a mutilated condition, as the contemporary chronicle of proclamations, addresses, and principles of the early sovereigns. Internal evidence leads to the conclusion that Confucius acted chiefly as editor of documents existing in his day; he probably wrote the preface, but what alterations it received at his hand cannot now be ascertained. When it left his care it contained eighty-one documents in one hundred books, arranged under the five dynasties of Yao, Shun, Hia, Shang, and Chau, the last one coming down to within two hundred and twenty-one years of his own birth. Most of these are lost, and others are doubted by Chinese critics, so that now only forty-eight documents remain, thirty of them belonging to the Chau, with the preface ascribed to Confucius. He showed his estimate of their value by calling the whole Shang Shu, or the ‘Highest Book,’ and we may class their loss with that of other ancient works in Hebrew or Greek literature. The Shu King now contains six different kinds of state papers, viz., imperial ordinances, plans drawn up by statesmen as guides for their sovereign, instructions prepared for the guidance of the prince, imperial proclamations and charges to the people, vows taken before Shangtí by the monarch when going out to battle, and, lastly, mandates, announcements, speeches, and canons issued to the ministers of state.[304]

The morality of the Shu King, for a pagan work, is extremely good; the principles of administration laid down in it, founded on a regard to the welfare of the people, would, if carried out, insure universal prosperity. The answer of Kaoyao to the monarch Yu is expressive of a mild spirit: “Your virtue, O Emperor, is faultless. You condescend to your ministers with a liberal ease; you rule the multitude with a generous forbearance. Your punishments do not extend to the criminal’s heirs, but your rewards reach to after-generations. You pardon inadvertent faults, however great, and punish deliberate crime, however small. In cases of doubtful crimes you deal with them lightly; of doubtful merit, you prefer the highest estimate. Rather than put to death the guiltless, you will run the risk of irregularity and laxity. This life-loving virtue has penetrated the minds of the people, and this is why they do not render themselves liable to be punished by your officers.”[305]

In the counsels of Yu to Shun are many of the best maxims of good government, both for rulers and ruled, which antiquity has handed down in any country. The following are among them: “Yih said, Alas! Be cautious. Admonish yourself to caution when there seems to be no reason for anxiety. Do not fail in due attention to laws and ordinances. Do not find enjoyment in indulgent ease. Do not go to excess in pleasure. Employ men of worth without intermediaries. Put away evil advisers, nor try to carry out doubtful plans. Study that all your purposes may be according to reason. Do not seek the people’s praises by going against reason, nor oppose the people to follow your own desires. Be neither idle nor wayward, and even foreign tribes will come under your sway.”

The Shu King contains the seeds of all things that are valuable in the estimation of the Chinese; it is at once the foundation of their political system, their history, and their religious rites, the basis of their tactics, music, and astronomy. Some have thought that the knowledge of the true God under the appellation of Shangtí is not obscurely intimated in it, and the precepts for governing a country, scattered through its dialogues and proclamations, do their writers credit, however little they may have been followed in practice. Its astronomy has attracted much investigation, but whether the remarks of the commentators are to be ascribed to the times in which they themselves flourished, or to the knowledge they had of the ancient state of the science, is doubtful. The careful and candid discussions by Legge in the introduction to his translation furnish most satisfactory conclusions as to the origin, value, and condition of this venerable relic of ancient China. For his scholarly edition of the Classics he has already earned the hearty thanks of every student of Chinese literature.[306]

The third of the classics, the Shí King, or ‘Book of Odes,’ is ranked together with the two preceding, while its influence upon the national mind has been equally great; a list of commentators upon this work fills the third section of the Catalogue. These poetical relics are arranged into four parts: The Kwoh Fung, or ‘National Airs,’ numbering one hundred and fifty-nine, from fifteen feudal States; the Siao Ya, or ‘Lesser Eulogiums,’ numbering eighty, and arranged under eight decades; the Ta Ya, or ‘Greater Eulogiums,’ numbering thirty-one, under three decades (both of these were designed to be sung on solemn occasions at the royal court); and the Sung, or ‘Sacrificial Odes,’ numbering forty-one chants connected with the ancestral worship of the rulers of Chau, Lu, and Shang. Out of a total number of three hundred and eleven now extant, six have only their titles preserved, while to a major part of the others native scholars give many various readings.

In the preface to his careful translation Dr. Legge has collected all the important information concerning the age, origin, and purpose of these odes, as furnished by native commentators, whose theory is that “it was the duty of the kings to make themselves acquainted with all the odes and songs current in the different States, and to judge from them of the character of the rule exercised by their several princes, so that they might minister praise or blame, reward or punishment accordingly.” These odes and songs seem to have been gathered by Wăn Wang and Duke Chau at the beginning of the Chau dynasty (B.C. 1120), some of them at the capital, others from the feudal rulers in the course of royal progresses through the land, the royal music-master getting copies from the music-masters of the princes. The whole were then arranged, set to music, too, it may be, and deposited for use and reference in the national archives, as well as distributed among the feudatories. Their ages are uncertain, but probably do not antedate B.C. 1719 nor come after 585, or about thirty years before Confucius. Their number was not improbably at first fully up to the three thousand mentioned by the biographers of Confucius, but long before the sage appeared disasters of one kind and another had reduced them to nearly their present condition. What we have is, therefore, but a fragment of various collections made in the early reigns of the Chau sovereigns, which received, perhaps, larger subsequent additions than were preserved to the time of Confucius. He probably took them as they existed in his day, and feeling, possibly, like George Herbert, that

did everything he could to extend their adoption among his countrymen. It is difficult to estimate the power they have exerted over the subsequent generations of Chinese scholars—nor has their influence ever tended to debase their morals, if it has not exalted their imagination. They have escaped the looseness of Moschus, Ovid, or Juvenal, if they have not attained the grandeur of Homer or the sweetness of Virgil and Pindar. There is nothing of an epic character in them—nor even a lengthened narrative—and little of human passions in their strong development. The metaphors and illustrations are often quaint, sometimes puerile, and occasionally ridiculous. Their acknowledged antiquity, their religious character, and their illustration of early Chinese customs and feelings form their principal claims to our notice and appreciative study. M. Ed. Biot, of Paris, was the first European scholar who studied them carefully in this aspect, and his articles in the Journal Asiatique for 1843 are models of analytic criticism and synthetic compilation, enabling one, as he says, “to contemplate at his ease the spectacle of the primitive manners of society in the early age of China, so different from what was then found in Europe and Western Asia.”

An ode referred to the time of Wăn Wang (a contemporary of Saul) contains a sentiment reminding us of Morris’ lines beginning “Woodman, spare that tree.” It is in Part I., Book II., and is called Kan-tang, or the ‘Sweet pear-tree.’

The eighth ode in Book III., called Hiung Chí, or ‘Cock Pheasant,’ contains a wife’s lament on her husband’s absence.

From the same book we translate somewhat freely an example (No. 17) of love-song, or serenade, not uncommon among these odes.

Among the ‘Lesser Eulogiums’ (Book IV., Ode 5) is one more ambitious in its scope, relating to the completion of a palace of King Siuen, about B.C. 800.

The last two stanzas indicate the comparative estimate, in ancient days, of boys and girls born into a family; and this estimate, still maintained, has been in a great degree upheld by this authority. Another ode in the ‘Greater Eulogies’ (Book III., Ode 10) deplores the misery that prevailed about B.C. 780, owing to the interference of women and eunuchs in the government. Two stanzas only are quoted, which are supposed to have been specially directed against Pao Sz’, a mischief-maker in the court of King Yu, like Agrippina and Pulcheria in Roman and Byzantine annals.

There are, however, numerous stanzas among the odes in the ‘National Airs’ which show their fairer side and go far to neutralize these, giving the same contrasts in female character which were portrayed by King Solomon during the same age.

The versification in a monosyllabic language appears very tame to those who are only familiar with the lively and varied rhythms of western tongues; but the Chinese express more vivacity and cadence in their ballads and ditties when sung than one would infer from these ancient relics when transliterated in our letters. As the young lad has usually committed all the three hundred and five odes to memory before he enters the Examination Hall, their influence on the matter and manner of his own future poetical attempts can hardly be exaggerated. It is shown throughout the thousands of volumes enumerated in the fourth division of the Imperial Catalogue. Most of the Shí King is written in tetrametres, and nothing can be more simple. They have been most unfortunately likened to the Hebrew Psalms by some of the early missionaries, but neither in manner nor matter is the comparison a happy one. One point of verbal resemblance is noticed by Dr. Legge between the first ode in Part III. and the one hundred and twenty-first psalm, where the last line of a stanza is generally repeated in the first line of the next, a feature something like the repetitions in Hiawatha. The rhymes and tones both form an essential part of Chinese poetry, one which can only be imperfectly represented in our language. The following furnishes an example of the general style, to which a literal rendering is subjoined:

The highest range of thought in the odes is contained in Part IV., but the whole collection is worthy of perusal, and through the labors of Dr. Legge has been made more accessible than it was ever before. The amount of native literature extant, illustrative, critical, and philological, referring to the Book of Odes[311] is not so large as that on the Yih King; but the fifty-five works quoted in his preface[312] contain enough to indicate their industry and acumen. These works will elevate the character of Chinese scholarship in the opinion of those foreigners who remember the disadvantages of its isolation from the literature of other lands, and the difficulties of a language which rendered that literature inaccessible.[313]

The fourth section in the Catalogue contains the Rituals and a list of their editions and commentators, but only one of the three is numbered among the King and used as a text-book at the public examinations. This is the Lí Kí, or ‘Book of Rites,’ the Mémorial des Rites, as M. Callery calls it in his translation,[314] and one of the works which has done so much to mold and maintain Chinese character and institutions. It is not superior in any respect to the Chau Lí and the Í Lí, but owes its influence to its position. They were all the particular objects of Tsin Chí Hwangtí’s ire in his efforts to destroy every ancient literary production in his kingdom; the present texts were recovered from their hiding-places about B.C. 135. The Chau Lí, or ‘Ritual of Chau,’ is regarded as the work of Duke Chau (B.C. 1130), who gives the detail of the various offices established under the new dynasty, in which he bore so prominent a part. The sections containing the divisions of the administrative part of the Chinese government of that day have furnished the types for the six boards of the present day and their subdivisions. So far as we now know, no nation then existing could show so methodical and effective a system of national polity.

The Í Lí is a smaller work, treating of family affairs, and as its name, ‘Decorum Ritual,’ indicates, contains directions for domestic life, as the other does for state matters. That is in forty-four sections and this is in seven, and both are now accepted as among the most ancient works extant. The former was translated by Ed. Biot,[315] and remains a monument of his scholarship and research.

The Lí Kí owes its position among the classics to the belief that Confucius here gives his views on government and manners, although these chapters are not regarded as the same in their integrity as those said to have been found in the walls of his house, and brought to light in the second century B.C. by Kao Tang of Lu, under the name of Sz’ Lí, or the ‘Scholar’s Ritual.’ In the next century Tai Teh collected all the existing documents relating to the ancient rituals in two hundred and fourteen sections, only a portion of which were then held to have emanated from the sage and recorded by his pupils. His work, in eighty-five sections, is called Ta Tai Lí, or the ‘Senior Tai’s Ritual,’ to distinguish it from the Siao Tai Lí, or the ‘Junior Tai’s Ritual,’ a work in forty-nine sections, by his nephew, Tai Shing. This is the work now known as the Lí Kí, M. Callery’s translation of which contains the authorized text of Kanghí according to Fan Tsz’-tăng, in thirty-six sections, with many notes. His translation is wearisome reading from the multitude of parentheses interjected into the text, distracting the attention and weakening its continuity.

Those who have read Abbé Huc’s entertaining remarks on the Rites in China will find in these three works the reason and application of their details. In explanation of their importance, M. Callery shows in a few words what a wide field they cover: “Ceremony epitomizes the entire Chinese mind; and, in my opinion, the Lí Kí is per se the most exact and complete monograph that China has been able to give of itself to other nations. Its affections, if it has any, are satisfied by ceremony; its duties are fulfilled by ceremony; its virtues and vices are referred to ceremony; the natural relations of created beings essentially link themselves in ceremonial—in a word, to that people ceremonial is man as a moral, political, and religious being in his multiplied relations with family, country, society, morality, and religion.” This explanation shows, too, how meagre a rendering ceremony is for the Chinese idea of lí, for it includes not only the external conduct, but involves the right principles from which all true etiquette and politeness spring. The state religion, the government of a family, and the rules of society are all founded on the true lí, or relations of things. Reference has already been made to this profoundly esteemed work (p. 520), and one or two more extracts will suffice to exhibit its spirit and style, singular in its object and scope among all the bequests of antiquity.

Affection between father and son.