Chow, 1325 B.C., and provides them with huts and caves, for as yet they had no houses. In concert with his wife, the lady Keang, he chose the site for a settlement; "he divided the ground into large tracts and smaller portions; he dug the ditches, he defined the acres." The superintendent of works and the minister of instruction were charged with the building of the houses and the ancestral temples; "with the line they made everything straight, they bound the frame-boards tight, crowds brought the earth in baskets, throwing it in and ramming it down with shovels,1

.the trees were thinned and roads for travelling opened;" in fact, all the pioneer's work ascribed to Yu 900 years before was supposed to be done again by all the ancestors of the new dynasty, without much regard to their remoteness from the existing period of civilization.

Other odes mention with praise the road-making and forest-clearing achievements of later princes, and it may of course be said that these poems do not imply a fresh beginning of the arts and agriculture-only the foundation of a new settlement. Just as there are in America colonists who have spent a lifetime in "going west," so as to keep always just ahead of the rising tide of population, so in China for many centuries it seems to have been a favourite undertaking with the most enterprising chiefs of the growing settlements to migrate into roomier quarters. This constant opening up of new territory might easily lead the Chinese emigrants to underestimate the remoteness of their own first experiences of this kind, for the civilized descendants of the aboriginal tribes, with whom they came successively in contact, would retain a true recollection of the beginnings of agriculture in their own region; and these recollections would blend partly with the traditional features of the legend of Yu, and partly with particular traditions of family migrations, with the result of reducing all the semi-historical leaders of different ages to a single type.

That the Chinese themselves did not learn agriculture in China is beyond a doubt. Just as the family life of the Vedic Aryans is coeval with their existence as a pastoral people, so that of the Chinese does not go back to a time when the black-haired people were not agricultural. The Chinese cultivated and irrigated the ground before they framed the character that stands for "son," which is compounded of the sign for strength and the ideograph consisting of four squares, which repre

1 Mrs. Williamson, the wife of a Chinese missionary, describes "rather a novel way' of housebuilding which she saw on her travels; and though the method is anything but "novel," her account is clear enough to serve as a commentary on this ode. From a pillar at each of the four corners of the proposed dwelling "two long planks were fixed in the form of a trough. Into this trough three men and a boy were busily shovelling mud lightly mixed with straw. After shovelling in a quantity, they laid down their spades, got into the spaces between the planks, and stamped most vigorously on the mud; then another filling was succeeded by another stamping, and so on till the mud was beaten hard. The planks were then slipped up and the process repeated till the wall was completed." (Old Highways in China, p. 71, 1884.) For the real beginning of this way of building we must go back to Babylonia, where one of the bi-lingual tablets describing the creation of all things tells how the "Lord Merodach" raised a bank (lit. "filled a filling") on the sea-shore. Transactions of the Ninth Congress of Orientalists (London, 1892), vol. ii. p. 192.

sents the "channeled fields." From the earliest times, the birth of a male child was thought of as bringing the addition of a strong worker to the agricultural community, as the revolution of the seasons was thought of in reference to the return of harvest.1 Of course it may be said that the evidence of language carries us further back than that of any written characters. But we know from another source that Chinese writing is certainly at least as old as the historical constitution of the family, and probably older, because it takes us back to the time when genealogies were traced through the mother habitually, and not merely in the exceptional case of a heaven-born hero; hsing, the character for "surname," is compounded of two signs for "woman" and "birth," and the eight most ancient surnames are said to be written with that symbol.2

Another trace of customs akin to those of Sumer and Akkad may be seen in the tradition which assigns to the reign of Shun the division of the land into twelve districts, subject to the "Twelve Pastors," under the presidency of an officer called "The Four Mountains" (? a reminiscence of the "Four Regions"). Such a division could not have been invented at a later time when only nine provinces were known, and it therefore testifies to the antiquity of the record. At the same time the internal administration of the country was divided into departments under responsible ministers; and the habitable world within the "four seas" was theoretically divided between the Imperial domain, the domains of the nobles surrounding this, a larger area of border lands called the " peacesecuring domain," where Chinese influence was making its way pacifically, while the still larger "domain of restraint" and "the wild domain" consisted of the more or less entirely barbarous regions into which criminals were banished. If we knew nothing else about the character and history of ancient China, it is at least a fact of some importance that these terms were in use at the time when its first records were compiled.

The home of the rulers of the black-haired people appears in the "Tribute of Yu" as the "Middle Kingdom;" it is then the seat of a highly developed national civilization and an imperial government which recognises only tributary allies or feudal dependants, and barbarous tribes whose submission is expected to follow spontaneously as they learn gradually to value the blessings of peace and civilized protection.3

Under the Chow kings the name of the Empire and the political significance of the name remain unaltered. The influence of Chinese rule radiated from a centre, and the settlements where wealth, industry, and population abounded most and had struck their roots deepest were in the midst of the future fields of conquest of the race. But as the people spread, the States on the outer circle, so to speak, of Chinese

1 The earliest written character for "a year" represented a grain of wheat. (China, R. K. Douglas, p. 231.)

2 lb., p. 224.

3 S.B., iii. p. 47.

influence, were able to expand at the expense of their barbarous neighbours, while the older and smaller States first formed were enclosed by the growing territories of the border princes and distanced by them in importance. When the Yin-Shang Dynasty was superseded, Chow was almost a border State; but its neighbours on the east, south, and north, Tsin, T'soo, and T'sin, which supplied the next dynasty, had larger territories available for future conquest and settlement.

The period during which the Chow Dynasty occupied the throne is called "Middle Antiquity;" and Confucius, who lived towards the close of it, insists on the continuity of Chinese tradition through preceding ages. According to him, "The Yin Dynasty followed the regulations of the Hia; wherein it took from or added to them may be known. The Chow Dynasty has followed the regulations of the Yin; wherein it took from or added to them may be known. Some other may follow the Chow; but though it should be at the distance of a hundred ages, its affairs may be known." 1 And the survival in the China of to-day of features and institutions older than Confucius justifies us in crediting his assurances that the moral and political ideas to which he gave fresh currency were, in fact, an inheritance from times already ancient.

In comparing the regulations of Chow with those of the earlier dynasties, Confucius gives the preference to Chow, which, profiting by the experience of the past, had excelled it in the "complete and elegant" character of its ordinances. These ordinances are embodied in the voluminous work known as the Chow Li, or "Rites of Chow," 2 the authorship of which is ascribed to the Duke of Chow, the virtuous and disinterested brother of King Wu. The Duke of Chow, like Confucius, did not claim to be an innovator, and the latter is probably right in his belief that the Rites of Chow differed from those of Yin and Hia mainly in the "completeness and elegance" with which they were written out.

Each section of this Blackstone of ancient China begins with a formula asserting the royal supremacy; the king determines the cardinal points, the position of the capital, the boundaries of the provinces, and it is he who appoints the ministers and separates their functions. Then follows a list of the officers of every degree attached to the department, and then a detailed account of the minister's functions, or of the regulations which it is his business to enforce. These lists of departmental functionaries and employees, which preface each section, remind us of similar lists of workmen, officers and overseers by name which the Egyptian scribes are so often called on to furnish, as if to satisfy their superiors that each department has its due complement of officials. One of the Books of the Shoo, dating from the early years of the dynasty, and called "The Officers of Chow," gives an abridged account of the six departments of

1 Analects, ii. xxiii. § 2.

2 Translated by the late M. Ed. Biot, Le Tcheou Li, ou Rites des Tcheou, 2 vols., Paris, 1851.

State, and at least all the points upon which the two documents are agreed may be accepted as historical.1

The subdivisions of the official hierarchy are substantially similar to those still in force, and it would be the very wantonness of scepticism to reject the positive evidence given as to their antiquity merely on the ground that it would be easier for such institutions to endure for a period of two thousand years than for three. Indeed, as an elaborate bureaucracy existed in Egypt and Mesopotamia, it is actually easier to suppose the Chinese administration to have been organized in the same manner from the first, than that such similarity of method should have been achieved independently at distant times.

The astronomical knowledge of the Chinese was almost certainly derived from their kinsmen in Mesopotamia, but during the ancient monarchy great importance was attached to the correctness of astronomical observations. The emperor had fixed the length of the year at 366 days, and certain clans or families, to whom these calculations were assigned, were instructed to observe and publish the precise dates of midsummer and winter, and of the spring and autumn equinoxes. The verification of Chinese chronology is based upon the position of the constellations referred to in these instructions, and as the Chinese at the time of Confucius, when the sacred canon assumed its present form, were not acquainted with the precession of the equinoxes, it is obvious that no forger could have calculated backwards so as to give a correct description of the heavens nearly 2000 years before his own time.

Dr. Legge suggests that new dynasties introduced a new beginning of the year when the errors in the calendar had accumulated so as to alter the correspondence between the solar and the political year; and the prominence given in the Shoo-King to the regulation of the seasons was not

1 S. B., iii. p. 226. The prime minister or general regulator has authority over all the other officers, though he is more particularly concerned with the imperial household, revenues and records. His department is called the Ministry of Heaven in the Book of Rites, and is now represented by the Board of Civil Office. The Shoo describes the second department as that of the Minister of Instruction. The Chow Li includes that function in the same department, but also describes the "Minister of Earth" as Director of the Multitudes, and his function as those of a Minister of Agriculture. There is no difficulty in identifying the third department, “the Ministry of Spring" of the Chow Li, with the modern Board of Rites and the Minister of Religion in the "Officers of Chow." The fourth department is that of the Ministry of War or the executive power, whose chief is called the "Officer of Summer" in the Book of Rites. The Minister of Autumn answers to the Minister of Crime, whose office survives in the present Board of Punishments. The present Board of Works corresponds to the sixth ministry described in the Shoo, and to the account of the Ministry of Winter, or official works in the Book of Rites; but the section descriptive of the latter department is missing, and the fact that in the "Officers of Chow" the Minister of Works is described as undertaking great part of the functions which in the Book of Rites are assigned to the Director of the Multitudes (whom we have called Minister of Agriculture) may explain how it came to be lost owing to its seeming redundance. According to the Shoo-King, the Minister of Works "presides over the land of the empire, settles the four classes of the people and regulates the seasons for obtaining the advantages of the ground," and acts as overseer of the unoccupied," allotting lands for cultivation and townships. The modern Board, which takes the place of the Ministry of Instruction, is the Board of Revenue.

2 Legge, Chinese Classics, vol. i. pp. 20-28.

dictated by pure enthusiasm for astronomical science. Such regulation was regarded as an outward and visible sign of sovereignty like the possession of a Board of Historiographers. And we may charitably assume that the political importance of a due regulation of the calendar and the timely prediction of eclipses was the cause of a sanguinary clause, quoted from the "Statutes of Government" during the reign of the fourth king after Yu, and therefore very possibly as ancient as the Canon of Yao: "When they (the astronomical clans or families) anticipate the time, let them be put to death without mercy; when behind the time, let them be put to death without mercy."

"1

While the Recorder of the Interior was required to take notes of the speeches or edicts of the ruling emperor, the Recorder of the Exterior was supposed to keep the books of the chronicles of the past, and to record the histories of the states in all the parts of the empire. The importance of the department as a sign and instrument of imperial supremacy may be guessed from the significance attached to the control of the Calendar. Mencius complained that in his day the feudal princes destroyed ancient records to favour their own usurpations; and in China it seems always to have been peculiarly impossible for any prince to make history who was not also in a position to write or have it written. One of the earliest signs of the rebellious pretensions entertained by the State of T'sin, which superseded Chow, was the establishment of a bureau of historians to keep the State records.

The historical documents of the Shoo-King belonging to the Chow Dynasty date mainly from the reigns of Wu himself and his immediate successor. The death of the latter and the accession of his son are commemorated in two pieces, and two more are assigned to the reign of the next prince, with whom begins the degeneracy of the royal house. This brings us to the middle of the 10th century, B.C.; after that there is only one piece belonging to the Sth century, and one of the 7th century by a Marquis of T'sin, ancestor of the founder of the fourth dynasty. The Duke of Chow, whom Confucius regarded as his patron saint and good genius, is credited with the composition of many of the documents of the Shoo, as well as of many poems in the Book of Odes and of the Rites of Chow; but he is the last of the ancient Chinese magnates who aims thus at the direct instruction of the people.

These documents answer to the inscriptions of Egyptian and Assyrian kings, and with their cessation the power of the pen passes into the hands of the literary class, to which the official historiographers themselves belong. The native writers expressly state that the practice of making verses to satirize and condemn the Government was introduced in the reign of King E (934-909 B.C.); and a very considerable proportion of the classic odes, the study of which was enthusiastically recommended by Confucius, are of this character.

The two ideas of historical veracity and the sacredness of letters are 1 S. B., iii. p. 82.