CHAPTER XIX.

FOREIGN ACCOUNTS OF CHINA UNDER THE SUNG AND THE FIRST MONGOLS.

OUR notices of intercourse between China and the countries of the West are at their scantiest during the first two centuries of the Sung Dynasty. After 1077 A.D., "tribute" was brought almost yearly from Khotan, and commercial and other intercourse with Corea was closer than usual, till private commerce was put a stop to towards the close of the 11th century, at the instigation of Su-tung-po. Under the year 1200, we are told that "no commerce was allowed but what was carried on by Government capital;" but subsequently everything except gems was allowed to be sold in public market, subject to a fixed duty. After the partition of the empire, the Southern Sung were cut off from most of their northern and western tributaries. The eastern provinces of Yunnan and Sz'chuen seem to have been in direct communication with India. Arab traders still frequented the ports of Southern China, while intercourse with the Northern empire was close enough to fix the mediæval name of the empire.1 But private trade could subsist through disturbances which are adverse to the presence of scientific travellers or political embassies. Chinese authorities mention such embassies as arriving from the Caliphate in 974 and in 1011, that is, before the power of the Khitan became dangerous; and "the caravan of Cathay" is referred to as a source of opulence in a remarkable Uigour poem of the last half of the 11th century. But it cannot be said that we have any account worth mentioning of Northern China from independent sources during the 11th and 12th centuries.

The Arab geographer, Edrisi, writing at second-hand, about 1150, adds nothing to the received tradition of the just and beneficent government of China, its large population, wealthy cities, commercial activity, and skill in arts and manufactures. Silk stuffs and porcelain are specially mentioned; the terminus of the western trade is placed at Hang-chow (Khan-fu), the Yang-tse-kiang naturally being more important for the inland trade than the Canton River. Foreigners at a distance are generally behindhand in their history, or historical geography; and Ibn Batuta, who visited China. in the middle of the 14th century, when the country was reunited under the Mongols, has a clearer notion of its division into the two regions of Cathay

Cathay is the empire of the Khitai or Khitan Tatars, who held part of Northern China for three centuries.

2 Kudatku Bilik., tr. by H. Vambéry, 1870.

and Manzi than Edrisi, who wrote when the power of the Northern and the Southern empires was most nearly equal.

A Franciscan friar, known as John of Plano Carpini, is the first European who gives us any information about the Mongol empire in Northern China; and he, though distinguishing the Tatars from the Cathayans, clearly does not know of any difference between the Cathayans recently conquered by Genghis Khan and the Chinese. What he says of the people of the country clearly applies to the latter. "They seem to be kindly and polished folks enough. They have no beard, and in character of countenance have a considerable resemblance to the Mongols, but are not so broad in the face. They have a language of their own" (and a written character, as he has already observed). "Their betters as craftsmen, in every art practised by man, are not to be found in the whole world. Their country is very rich in corn, in wine, gold, silver, silk, and in every kind of produce that tends to the support of mankind.”1

A few years later Rubruk, a Flemish friar, describes the Cathayans as "little fellows, speaking much through their nose, and, as is general with all those Eastern people, their eyes are very narrow. . . It has always

been their custom that the son must follow the father's craft. . They are first-rate artists in every kind of craft, and their physicians have a thorough knowledge of the virtues of herbs, and an admirable skill in diagnosis by the pulse. They have no wine in Cathay, but make their

drink of rice. The common money of Cathay consists of pieces of cotton paper about a palm in length and breadth, upon which certain lines are printed, resembling the seal of Mango Khan. They do their writing with a pencil such as painters paint with, and a single character of theirs comprehends several letters so as to form a whole word." 2 The last remark proves that Rubruk was an intelligent, as well as an observant, traveller ; and as he did not proceed beyond Karakorum, his account of so many thoroughly Chinese traits shows how far, and how thoroughly, Chinese civilization had already spread.

About the same time as Friar John, an Armenian prince, Hayton, was sent to make terms for his brother with the Tatars, and in the beginning of the next century, a monk of the same royal house embodied in a geographical work some of the traveller's experiences. According to this writer, the people of Cathay "are exceedingly full of shrewdness and sagacity, and hold in contempt the performances of other nations in every kind of art and science. They have indeed a saying to the effect that they alone see with two eyes, whilst the Latins see with one, and all other nations are blind! . . And, in good sooth, there is such a vast variety of articles of marvellous and unspeakable delicacy and elaboration of workmanship brought from those parts, that there is really no other people that can be compared with them in such matters." The essentially secular character of their civilization has not escaped the good monk, who continues: "Though these people have the acutest intelligence in all matters

Cathay, and the Way thither, i. cxxiv.

2 Ib., cxxv.-vii.

wherein material things are concerned, yet you shall never find among them any knowledge or perception of spiritual things." ]

Abulfeda, who flourished between 1273 and 1331, complains of the rarity of travellers from these remote parts, and adds nothing to the reports of earlier writers, except that the Tatars had destroyed the walls of Zayton, which is identified with Chin-chow, and described by all mediaval travellers as nearly or quite the most wonderful port of commerce in the world. Ibn Khordadbeh, however, gave the preference to Hang-chow, and makes especial mention of the fresh-water lake to the north of the town, and the wells which supply the town with water, as if these achievements of Su-che were among the chief attractions of the great city.

Following the chronology of Sir Henry Yule, Marco Polo, with his father and uncle, reached the court of Kubla in 1285. His position in China was not unlike that of the Jesuit missionaries in the reign of the emperor, best known as Kang-hi. He was in the service of a foreign monarch, and looked at China and the Chinese from the conqueror's point of view; unlike the Jesuits, he does not seem even to have understood the Chinese language, at least not so as to read or write it, and hence he is unable to distinguish between Chinese and Tatar customs, where they overlap. Thus he describes the people of Tangut, the former kingdom of Hia, which included part of the modern province of Kansu, as burning paper copies of money, houses, etc., at funerals, using elaborate air-tight and varnished coffins, and arranging posthumous betrothals between children or young persons who have died unmarried, all which are purely Chinese traits, and must have been borrowed by the Tanguts, just as the Khitan and the Kin adopted the manners and customs of their subjects. Similarly in a passage given from Ramusio, after describing the three staple food crops, rice, panic, and millet, which all "render an hundred fold," and the industry of the people, which leaves no spot of arable land untilled, the author, in the same breath, dwells on the fruitfulness of the cattle by which, "when they take the field, every man is followed by six, eight, or more horses for his own use," though this would apply to the Mongols only, and is quite out of place in an explanation of how the country of Cathay supports its vast population.

The description of the functions of an officer whom Marco calls "The keeper of lost property," at once recalls the provisions on this subject of the Chow Li; but if the Mongols borrowed this institution from the Chinese, they must have attached particular value to it, as it is described as prevailing at the Perso-Mongol court as well; and it should more probably be regarded as a common inheritance of all branches of the Tatar stock. According to the Chow Li,3 found property must be declared at once to the provost of the market, who takes charge of it for ten days, and then appropriates it, things of small value being given to the finder, while those of 2 Yule, i. p. 392.

1 Cathay, and the Way thither, i. cxcv.

3 Biot, ii. p. 349.

great value fall to the State. According to Marco Polo, the finder of any article, sword, horse, hawk, or whatsoever else, without a known owner, is bound to bring it at once to the keeper, or is liable to punishment. This officer's tent is pitched in a conspicuous place, with banner displayed, so that both those who have lost and those who have found anything may know where to find him.1

The exact direction of Marco Polo's journeys within the borders of China is not of much importance for our purpose. The extent of his facilities for observing the general condition of the country are sufficiently indicated when we know him to have travelled between Peking and Pinyang, Pin-yang and Si-gnan-fu, Si-gnan-fu and Ching-tu-fu, Ching-tu-fu and Yunnan (to say nothing of Yunnan and Burmah); and then again between Peking and Tsinan, along the Grand Canal to the Yellow River, which, at its junction with the Hwai, then marked the eastern boundary between Northern China and Polo's Manzi; further along the canal to Yang-chow, of which city Polo was for three years governor, to Su-chow and Hangchow, the two jewels in the southern crown of which it was said, "Heaven is above, but Su and Hang are here below;" thence by land and water into Fokien, to its two great ports, Foo-chow and Zayton, while on some other occasion he certainly proceeded up the Kiang as far as Nganking, and probably thence to Woo-chang, and by the Han River to Siangyang, though this point may also have been reached from Si-gnan-fu. Whether the diagonal of the primitive Chinese empire was thus traversed or not, Marco Polo certainly saw with his own eyes all that lay along the two principal lines of traffic from north to south, through the western and the eastern provinces.

Except in the remote south-west, where cowries and salt were used for money (as the latter is still in the same regions), and where gold was to be bought from unsuspicious natives for only five times the price of silver, the traveller's descriptions show us everywhere Chinese civilization flourishing in substantially the same manner and degree throughout the empire. Special products, such as rhubarb, asbestos, coal, ginger, musk, grass-cloth, camphor, bamboos, sugar, and the like, are mentioned in their place; the omission of any notice of tea probably indicates that the Mongols had not yet acquired a taste for that beverage, and remained faithful to the spiced rice wine, which Marco thought "makes better drink than any other kind of wine," with the incidental advantage of also producing drunkenness sooner than any other.

The face of the country between such great landmarks as mountains, rivers, and cities of capital importance, is described in recurring phrases which recall those of the Mahomedan travellers four centuries before:

1 These regulations speak more strongly for the anxious care of the rulers than the scrupulous honesty of the governed; and, in fact, the readiness of Chinese converts to return found property unsolicited was reckoned to their credit as a positive virtue. The Lettres Edifiantes tell of a poor couple who restored some money to its owner, and declined a reward; and this act of virtue was considered worthy of being reported to the Emperor, who honoured it by a special proclamation.

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"fine districts, with plenty of towns and boroughs, all enjoying much trade, and practising various forms of industry; "excellent hostelries for travellers, with fine vineyards, fields and gardens, and springs of water;" "many cities and walled towns, and many merchants, too, therein;' "cities and boroughs abounding in trade and industry, and quantities of beautiful trees and gardens, and fine plains planted with mulberries, which are the trees on the leaves of which the silkworms do feed . . . also plenty of game of all sorts, both of beasts and birds; "a succession of cities and boroughs, and beautiful plains, inhabited by people who live by trade and industry, and have great plenty of silver." Then follow "great mountains and valleys," with towns and villages, and people who "live by tilling the earth, and hunting in the great woods;" or, to give Marco's favourite formula at length, "You meet everywhere with fine towns and villages, the people of which are all idolaters,1 and burn their dead, and are subject to the great Kaan, and have paper money, and live by trade and handicrafts, and have all the necessaries of life in great abundance.”

To the foreigner, this teeming population, all devoted to the arts of peace, appears as a triumph of civilization. It is the native sage who, having beheld the fall of Governments, while the fruitful earth nourishes men so crowded together that their shoulders touch, their sleeves sweep one against the other, and three young children might hardly find a vacant corner whereon to stand upright,2-it is he who, looking back upon the past, finds little comfort in the thought that, " . . the individual withers, and the world is more and more." As if remembering or divining the clear inspiration which the fathers of his race drew from the unclouded visage of the Sun God, Ma-twan-lin surmises that as the climate became denser, the sons of those born under happier influences lost capacity, wisdom degenerated, scholars blushed to bear arms, labourers, with no thought above the plough, were ignorant of both war and letters; and thus the growing population gave no real accession of strength to the State; the people were many, but without worth or virtue; they had become good for nothing but to pay taxes, and with taxes they were overwhelmed; the State no longer found a protection in the people, and the people cursed their lives beneath the oppression of their rulers! If we let these two pictures supplement each other, it becomes obvious that China, in the 13th century, had reached that point of material civilization which has never yet been attained without attendant materials for moral and intellectual discontent.

Marco Polo saw as little of the misery caused by oppressive taxgatherers, debased assignats, and an alien Government, as pleasure tourists in the Western world see of the effects of a commercial crisis or the low standard of comfort reached by the labouring classes. But Chinese.

1 I.e. Buddhists. Buddhist priests are still burnt instead of buried, and as the Mongols were zealous Buddhists, Marco Polo may have mistaken their rites for the general national usage. The Chinese seem always as now to have buried their dead, and to have been superstitiously particular about the choice of a burial ground.

2 Ma-twan-lin, tr. by Klaproth, Nouveau Journ. As., vol. x. p. 16.