Man, Past and Present - Agustus Henry Keane, A. Hingston Quiggin, Alfred Court Haddon (most popular novels txt) 📗

Buddhism also, although of foreign origin, has completely conformed to the national spirit, and is now a curious blend of Hindu metaphysics with the primitive Chinese belief in spirits and a deified ancestry. In every district are practised diverse forms of worship between which no clear dividing line can be drawn, and, as in Annam, the same persons may be at once followers of Confucius, Lao-tse, and Buddha. In fact such was the position of the Emperor, who belonged ex officio to all three of these State religions, and scrupulously took part in their various observances. There is even some truth in the Chinese view that "all three make but one religion," the first appealing to man's moral nature, the second to the instinct of self-preservation, the third to the higher sphere of thought and contemplation.

But behind, one might say above it all, the old animism still prevails, manifested in a multitude of superstitious practices, whose purport is to appease the evil and secure the favour of the good spirits, the Feng-shui or Fung-shui, "air and water" genii, who have to be reckoned with in all the weightiest as well as the most trivial occurrences of daily life. These with the ghosts of their ancestors, by whom the whole land is haunted, are the bane of the Chinaman's existence. Everything depends on maintaining a perfect balance between the Fung-shui, that is, the two principles represented by the "White Tiger" and the "Azure Dragon," who guard the approaches of every dwelling, and whose opposing influences have to be nicely adjusted by the well-paid professors of the magic arts. At the death of the emperor Tung Chih (1875) a great difficulty was raised by the State astrologers, who found that the realm would be endangered if he were buried, according to rule, in the imperial cemetery 100 miles west of Pekin, as his father reposed in the other imperial cemetery situated the same distance east of the capital. For some subtle reason the balance would have been disturbed between Tiger and Dragon, and it took nine months to settle the point, during which, as reported by the American Legation, the whole empire was stirred, councils of State agitated, and L50,000 expended to decide where the remains of a worthless and vicious young man should be interred.

Owing to the necessary disturbance of the ancestral burial places, much trouble has been anticipated in the construction of the railways, for which concessions have now been granted to European syndicates. But an Englishman long resident in the country has declared that there will be no resistance on the part of the people. "The dead can be removed with due regard to Fung Shui; a few dollars will make that all right." This is fully in accordance with the thrifty character of the Chinese, which overrides all other considerations, as expressed in the popular saying: "With money you may move the gods; without it you cannot move men." But the gods may even be moved without money, or at least with spurious paper money, for it is a fixed belief of their votaries that, like mortals, they may be outwitted by such devices. When rallied for burning flash notes at a popular shrine, since no spirit-bank would cash them, a Chinaman retorted: "Why me burn good note? Joss no can savvy." In a similar spirit the god of war is hoodwinked by wooden boards hung on the ramparts of Pekin and painted to look like heavy ordnance.

In fact appearance, outward show, observance of the "eleventh commandment," in a word "face" as it is called, is everything in China. "To understand, however imperfectly, what is meant by 'face,' we must take account of the fact that as a race the Chinese have a strong dramatic instinct. Upon very slight provocation any Chinese regards himself in the light of an actor in a drama. A Chinese thinks in theatrical terms. If his troubles are adjusted he speaks of himself as having 'got off the stage' with credit, and if they are not adjusted he finds no way to 'retire from the stage.' The question is never of facts, but always of form. Once rightly apprehended, 'face' will be found to be in itself a key to the combination-lock of many of the most important characteristics of the Chinese[487]."

Of foreign religions Islam, next to Buddhism, has made most progress. Introduced by the early Arab and Persian traders, and zealously preached throughout the Jagatai empire in the twelfth century, it has secured a firm footing especially in Kan-su, Shen-si, and Yunnan, and is of course dominant in Eastern (Chinese) Turkestan. Despite the wholesale butcheries that followed the repeated insurrections between 1855 and 1877, the Hoei-Hoei, Panthays, or Dungans, as the Muhammadans are variously called, were still estimated, in 1898, at about 22,000,000 in the whole empire.

Islam was preceded by Christianity, which, as attested by the authentic inscription of Si-ngan-fu, penetrated into the western provinces under the form of Nestorianism about the seventh century. The famous Roman Catholic missions with headquarters at Pekin date from the close of the sixteenth century, and despite internal dissensions have had a fair measure of success, the congregations comprising altogether over one million members. Protestant missions date from 1807 (London Missionary Society) and in 1910 claimed over 200,000 church members and baptized Christians, the total having more than doubled since 1900[488].

The above-mentioned dissensions arose out of the practices associated with ancestry worship, offerings of flowers, fruits and so forth, which the Jesuits regarded merely as proofs of filial devotion, but were denounced by the Dominicans as acts of idolatry. After many years of idle controversy, the question was at last decided against the Jesuits by Clement XI in the famous Bull, Ex illa die (1715), and since then, neophytes having to renounce the national cult of their forefathers, conversions have mainly been confined to the lower classes, too humble to boast of any family tree, or too poor to commemorate the dead by ever-recurring costly sepulchral rites.

In China there are no hereditary nobles, indeed no nobles at all, unless it be the rather numerous descendants of Confucius who dwell together and enjoy certain social privileges, in this somewhat resembling the Shorfa (descendants of the Prophet) in Muhammadan lands. If any titles have to be awarded for great deeds they fall, not on the hero, but on his forefathers, and thus at a stroke of the vermilion pencil are ennobled countless past generations, while the last of the line remains unhonoured until he goes over to the majority. Between the Emperor, "patriarch of his people," and the people themselves, however, there stood an aristocracy of talent, or at least of Chinese scholarship, the governing Mandarin[489] class, which was open to the highest and the lowest alike. All nominations to office were conferred exclusively on the successful competitors at the public examinations, so that, like the French conscript with the hypothetical Marshal's baton in his knapsack, every Chinese citizen carried the buttoned cap of official rank in his capacious sleeve. Of these there are nine grades, indicated respectively in descending order by the ruby, red coral, sapphire, opaque blue, crystal, white shell, gold (two), and silver button, or rather little globe, on the cap of office, with which correspond the nine birds--manchu crane, golden pheasant, peacock, wild goose, silver pheasant, egret, mandarin duck, quail, and jay--embroidered on the breast and back of the State robe.

Theoretically the system is admirable, and at all events is better than appointments by Court favour. But in practice it was vitiated, first by the narrow, antiquated course of studies in the dry Chinese classics, calculated to produce pedants rather than statesmen, and secondly by the monopoly of preference which it conferred on a lettered caste to the exclusion of men of action, vigour, and enterprise. Moreover, appointments being made for life, barring crime or blunder, the Mandarins, as long as they approved themselves zealous supporters of the reigning dynasty, enjoyed a free hand in amassing wealth by plunder, and the wealth thus acquired was used to purchase further promotion and advancement, rather than to improve the welfare of the people.

They have the reputation of being a courteous people, as punctilious as the Malays themselves; and they are so amongst each other. But their attitude towards strangers is the embodiment of aggressive self-righteousness, a complacent feeling of superiority which nothing can disturb. Even the upper classes, with all their efforts to be at least polite, often betray the feeling in a subdued arrogance which is not always to be distinguished from vulgar insolence. "After the courteous, kindly Japanese, the Chinese seem indifferent, rough, and disagreeable, except the well-to-do merchants in the shops, who are bland, complacent, and courteous. Their rude stare, and the way they hustle you in the streets and shout their 'pidjun' English at you is not attractive[490]." But the stare, the hustling and the shouting may not be due to incivility. No doubt the Chinaman regards the foreigner as a "devil" but he has reason, and he never ceases to be astonished at foreign manners and customs "extremely ferocious and almost entirely uncivilised[491]."

FOOTNOTES:

[375] Ethnology, p. 300.

[376] Geogr. Journ., May, 1898, p. 491. This statement must of course be taken as having reference only to the historical Malays and their comparatively late migrations.

[377] For the desiccation of Asia see P. Kropotkin, Geogr. Journ.XXIII. 1904; E. Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, 1907.

[378] See J. Cockburn's paper "On Palaeolithic Implements," etc., in Journ. Anthr. Inst. 1887, p. 57 sq.

[379] "Le type. primitif des Mongols est pour nous dolichocephale" (Les Aryens au Nord et au Sud de l'Hindou-Kouch, 1896, p. 50).

[380] Thus Risley's Tibetan measurements were all of subjects from Sikkim and Nepal (Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Calcutta, 1896, passim). In the East, however, Desgodins and other French missionaries have had better opportunities of studying true Tibetans amongst the Si-fan ("Western Strangers"), as the frontier populations are called by the Chinese.

[381] Op. cit. p. 319.

[382] Op. cit. p. 327. Here we are reminded that, though the Sacae are called "Scythians" by Herodotus and other ancient writers, under this vague expression were comprised a multitude of heterogeneous peoples, amongst whom were types corresponding to all the main varieties of Mongolian, western Asiatic, and eastern European peoples. "Aujourd'hui l'ancien type sace, adouci parmi les melanges, reparait et constitue le type si caracteristique, si complexe et si different de ses voisins que nous appelons le type balti" (p. 328).

[383] W. W. Rockhill, our best living authority, accepts none of the current explanations of the widely diffused term bod (bhot, bhot), which appears to form the second element in the word Tibet(Stod-Bod, pronounced Teu-Beu, "Upper Bod," i.e. the central and western parts in contradistinction to Maen-Bod, "Lower Bod," the eastern provinces). Notes on the Ethnology of Tibet, Washington, 1895, p. 669. This writer finds the first mention of Tibet in the form Tobbat (there are many variants) in the Arab Istakhri's works, about 590 A.H., while T. de Lacouperie would connect it with the Tatar kingdom of Tu-bat (397-475 A.D.). This name might easily have been extended by the Chinese from the Tatars of Kansu to the neighbouring Tanguts, and thus to all Tibetans.

[384] Hbrog-pa, Drok-pa, pronounced Dru-pa.

[385] The Mongols apply the name Tangut to Tibet and call all Tibetans Tangutu, "which should be discarded as useless and misleading, as the people inhabiting this section of the country are pure Tibetans" (Rockhill, p. 670). It is curious to note that the Mongol Tangutu is balanced by the Tibetan Sok-pa, often applied to all Mongolians.

[386] Notes on the Ethnology of Tibet, 1895, p. 675; see also S. Chandra Das, Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet, 1904; F. Grenard, Tibet: the Country and its Inhabitants, 1904; G. Sandberg, Tibet and the Tibetans, 1906; and L. A. Waddell, Lhasa and its Mysteries, with a record of the Expedition of 1903-1904, 1905.

[387] Isvestia, XXI. 3.

[388] Ethnology, p. 305.

[389] Abor, i.e. "independent," is the name applied by the Assamese