CHAPTER VI. SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC RELATIONS IN MEDIEVAL CHINA. WITH regard to the social and domestic usages of the people, the Odes show us things as they were between the rise of Chow and the time of Confucius; and the Li Ki shows us things as it was thought they ought to be between the age of Confucius and the restoration of letters after the fall of Tsin. But as the Li Ki deals systematically with subjects only touched on incidentally in the Odes or the Rites of Chow, it does not follow from the silence of the latter that customs first mentioned in the Book of Rites were unknown to the men of Chow. All the Chinese Classics received their present form at latest during the rule of the Han, and accordingly, the least ancient passages in the least ancient books must at least be as old as that period. And the customs of Chinese society are so slow to change, and change so gradually, that the Li Ki, which contains many passages certainly due to the disciples of Confucius, may be treated as continuing the evidence of the Odes and Tso's commentary. Technically speaking, "Middle Antiquity" in China means the period during which the Chow Dynasty nominally held the empire; but the 1,000 years (from 800 B.C. to 200 A.D.) during which the latest classics were composed and the whole canon compiled, have so much in common, and are so far marked off by that fact from later ages, that they may be treated as forming, in a sense, a single period-the Chinese Middle Ages. The relations between husbands and wives as exemplified in the Odes are far from unpleasing, and it is significant of the moral tone of the community, that this classical collection of popular poetry does not contain the slightest hint of an approach to indecency, and only a few very simple versions of the world-old village idyll of unfortunate or unauthorized courtships. Whether in the Chinese version of "Comin' through the Rye," and "Oh, had I wist before I kissed," in the maiden's rebuke to the adventurous Mr. Chung, or in the rather pretty allusive poems hinting at moonlight, midsummer, or woodland assignations, the Chinese Burns never approaches to the laxity of speech or morals usual with the popular muse elsewhere. The love of nature and the appreciation of delicate effects of sky and foliage, to which the national arts bear witness, show themselves also in the short but significant and graceful refrains with which most of the stanzas begin, like the Italian stornelli. VOL. II.-P.C. 1 Legge, iv. pp. 97, 140, 141. 65 F There are poems expressive of a lover's longings and a bridegroom's joy, of womanly devotion, from the wife who sighs in triplets1 for her absent husband a day without him is as long as three months, three seasons, three years to the constant widow who mourns : "The dolichos grows, covering the thorn trees; The convolvulus spreads all over the waste." But the beloved is no longer here, she must dwell alone "Through the days of summer, When I shall go home to his abode." 2 The ideal of conjugal duty and happiness is "to grow old together," and the poets are on the side of the old wife when the husband neglects her for a new flame; this is as wicked as to use the honourable yellow dressstuff for trousers and linings, and the vulgar green for an upper robe! In small household affairs, the husband as well as the wife was required to conform to the dictates of social propriety, and a stinging epigram would be launched against the rich miser who allowed "the delicate fingers of the bride to be used in making clothes" during the three months' holiday honeymoon of custom, or who had his old clothes mended up, instead of starting housekeeping with a proper trousseau, as if he were a poor fellow who could only afford canvas shoes in frost.3 A common type of poem expresses the sorrows of soldiers on a distant expedition, forced to leave their homes and families. Sometimes the anxious thoughts of the family about the absent one are expressed, but the commonest topics are his anxiety as to how his parents will get food when he is not there to plant rice and maize for them, his concern at the thought of his mother's having to cook the dinner, and his overwhelming grief if they both die when he is not there to bury them, or to requite that parental kindness, which, according to a famous line, is "like great heaven, illimitable." 4 They cry out in longing to return to their ordinary life: "We are not rhinoceroses, we are not tigers to be kept in these desolate wilds,” 5 with every man torn from his wife and kept constantly on the march! One of the longer remonstrances is rather amusing, as the officer who thinks he gets more than his share of foreign service complains of the unfairness of his superiors," making me serve as if I alone were worthy!" 6 Another contains the phrase already quoted, which speaks volumes for the wholesomeness of family relations in China, even in the worst days of feudal anarchy. The crowning woe which saddens the sorrowful hearts of the warriors is that they cannot keep faith with their wives : "For life and for death, however separated, To our wives we pledged our words, We held their hands; we were to grow old together with them;" 7 2 Ib., P. 186. 3 lb., p. 41. 4 Zb., p. 352. Ib., p. 424. Cf. Giles (Nineteenth Cent., Jan. 1894, p. 116), on nostalgia of the modern 6 Ib., p. 361. 7 lb., p. 49. 1 Legge, iv. p. 120. Chinese. and this cannot be if married soldiers are marched off to die in the distant south.1 A somewhat similar piece is ascribed to the Duke of Chow himself; but here-after describing the sufferings of the soldiers on a three years' expedition to the rainy east, while their hearts were in the west, and deer grazed in their paddocks and caterpillars crawled over their mulberry trees, wild flowers choked their gardens and spiders' webs hung over their doors the fortunate return of the troops is also commemorated, and all ends happily as the younger warriors receive the rewards of valour from young ladies with bay and red horses, whose mothers have "tied their sashes." But admirable as are these new marriages, the poet concludes, "How can the reunion of the old be expressed? ” 2 A variety of terms are used by Dr. Legge to describe the position of the one lawful wife, whose eldest son is entitled to perform the mourning rites for his father. This lady is spoken of as the "established," the "confirmed," the "commissioned," the "acknowledged" or the proper wife. A Chinaman can have only one such wife at a time, whose hand was formally solicited from her parents with the customary present of pieces of silk. According to the Li Ki, "after three months she presents herself in the ancestral temple, and is styled "the new wife who has come." A day is chosen for her to sacrifice at the shrine of her father-in-law: expressing the idea of her being the established wife." There was an ancient custom by which a bride after a short interval returned on a visit to her parents, and it seems as if the marriage was not regarded as complete or final till after these months of probation. If the bride dies during this interval, "she should be taken back and buried among the kindred of her own family, showing that she had not become the established wife.” 5 These lawful wives took part in most solemn ceremonies; the eldest son, however aged, was required to have such a wife to preside over the funeral rites, and the confirmed wives of great officers reproduced among themselves the ceremonies practised by their husbands. The ruler and his wife owed certain observances to the acknowledged wife of a great officer. The language of a ruler, when demanding the hand of a neighbouring prince's daughter, was, "I beg you, O ruler, to give me your 1 Of course only strictly moral and moderate sentiments are to be expected in the King, but feudal romance had its extravagances, and Chuang-tzu has preserved for us the memory of a Chinese Leander. "Wei Shang made an assignation with a girl beneath a bridge. The girl did not come and the water rose, but Wei Shang would not leave; he grasped a buttress and died." (H. A. Giles' tr., p. 395.) 2 Legge, .c., p. 235. 3 The feudal ruler, according to Dr. Legge, could only in all his life have one wife, one lady, that is, to be called by that name. Something answering to the preliminary betrothal of the West seems to have lasted down to the Three kingdoms. The marriage day was fixed when the presents were sent, at the interval of a year for the emperor, six months for the great vassals, and one month for the commonalty, the royal custom being no doubt the earliest. Another trace of archaic law is preserved in the San Kwo Chi, where a pretender says he will do something "when I have founded my dynasty by the marriage of my eldest son." (San Kwo Chi, ii. p. 87. Translated by T. Pavie.) 5 Cf. ante, vol. i. pp. 206 and 493. 4 S.B., xxvii. pp. 322, 316. elegant daughter, to share this small State with my poor self, to do service in the ancestral temple, and at the altars to (the spirits of) the land and the grain." The status of such a wife was equal and honourable; and, as in the course of history, the participation of women in public receptions and ceremonies gradually ceased, we are justified in believing that the position of the lawful wife was most distinguished in the remotest times. A curious circumstance which may be connected with a forgotten sense of the importance of female kinship is the existence of three distinct terms to describe affinity through women. There are two words, answering approximately to the Latin agnate and cognate; the former (nei khin) comprehends all kindred derived by descent in the male line from the same stock as the individual. The latter has three subdivisions, translated (by Sir W. H. Medhurst) as "mother's kin," "wife's kin," and "daughter's kin," including all varieties of relations by marriage.1 In historic times these relationships were regarded as unimportant, and calling only for the slighter degrees of complimentary mourning; but if this had always been so, it is difficult to see why such pains should have been taken to name them, or why marriage with relatives on the mother's side should have been as strictly prohibited as is still the case. Confucius was a great believer in the due subjection of women, and though he was incapable of falsifying the classic texts to favour his own opinions, as editor and commentator he naturally gave precedence to the phrases and interpretations most in harmony with his views of propriety. In a book which bears the title Concerning Dykes, there is a passage which may refer to a conflict between the modern and the archaic custom. Confucius is made to describe the proper forms of marriage. The bridegroom comes forward to meet his bride, and her parents bring her forward and give her to him. "In this way a dyke is raised in the interests of the people; and yet there are cases in which the bride will not go" (to the bridegroom). To found the Egyptian, the Chinese, or any other family involving community of property and religious rites, it is necessary that one or other of the married couple should "go" from the old home to the new; and as the bald statements of Chinese tradition are never meaningless, it is very possible that the sage meant to condemn the usage of some families in which the bridegroom was required to join the family of his father-in-law. This is the less improbable, as such an inversion of the general usage is still sanctioned, when a rich citizen who has no son desires to adopt and give his daughter in marriage to a poor scholar of distinction, and the son-in-law who comes to live with his wife's parents acquires a title to share in the division of their wealth. At the present day, the question whether a son-in-law has been adopted, so as to acquire the rights of a son and successor, turns exactly upon the point whether he has been domiciled with his wife's parents. The multifarious regulations on the subject of mourning correspond to serious opinions on the character of family relationships. "The mourning 2 Ib., xxviii. p. 299. 1 S.B., xxvii. p. 203. worn for the son of a brother should be the same as for one's own son, the object being to bring him still nearer to oneself. An elder brother's wife and his younger brother do not wear mourning for each other, the object being to maintain the distance between them."1 A man did not wear mourning for his step-father, unless they had lived together, the step-father having no son of his own, and contributing to the sacrifices which the son was bound to make to his real ancestors. And as a further illustration of the effect of this "companionship of the cupboard," in giving reality to the remotest ties, we learn that even "the husband of a maternal cousin and the wife of a maternal uncle," should wear the three months' mourning for each other, "if they have eaten together from the same fireplace." In the same way the more distant relatives of a parent are mourned for by such of the younger generation as were personally acquainted with them, but not by any living at a distance to whom they were unknown. The existence of fostering as an institution in ancient China, rests mainly on a saying of Mencius: "The ancients exchanged sons, and one taught the son of another." 2 In the time of Confucius, it was considered a doubtful point whether mourning should be worn for a foster mother; the sage thought not,3 and endeavoured to represent the doing so as a modern innovation; but as he implies that the institution was more general in antiquity than then, we may respectfully venture to question his infallibility. The foster mother was one of the inferior wives or concubines,-in fact a step-mother, --and if the lawful wife died, she might for some purposes take her place, and the diversity of usage was probably owing to the fact that the character of the relation varied much in individual cases. The statement of the Li Ki, that a man did not wear mourning for the parents of his nurse, would hardly have been called for unless the relation were so close as to make it in some cases appear natural that he should do so. Reference has already been made to the principles followed in the formation of new branch families.5 Mourning was worn in theory for four generations of ascendants and descendants in the direct line, and for contemporaries descended in the same fifth generation from the "honoured head" of the family. If a family is kept up longer than this, each fresh generation superannuates the "honoured head" recognised by the last; that is to say, his tablet is removed from its place, by the father, grandfather, etc., into the general collection of such monuments preserved in the ancestral temple. In the case of a clan or ruling house, claiming descent from some high ancestor of remoter antiquity, the high ancestor or great honoured head keeps his place unaltered "for a hundred generations;" but with ordinary private households or branch families, the person of the honoured head changed in each generation, so that the honours appropriate to the position were always given to an ancestor of the same degree of remoteness from the sacrificer. 1 S. B., xxvii. p. 147. 3 S.B., xxvii. p. 327. 5 Vol. i. p. 552. Cf. Appendix K. |