!!! This text was extracted from an image and needs proofreading !!!
Publications:
- Lucifer, vol. 3, no. 18, February 1889, pp. 479-485
- Lucifer, vol. 4, no. 20, April 1889, pp. 141-145
Read:
Download:
CTD entry in Russian: Сибболд Э.Т. - Древняя империя Китая
| Mentions |
Mentioned in: |
DATA
Title for references: Sibbold A.T. - The Ancient Empire of China
Short description: An essay by A. T. Sibbold on Chinese history and civilization. Amaravella supplied objections and th...
The first instalment is signed Andrew T. Sibbold; the concluding instalment is signed Andrew T. Sibbald.
479
About two thousand years before our Christian era, the Chinese tribe first appeared in the country, where it has since increased so greatly. It then occupied a small extent of territory, on the north and east of the Ho, the more southern portion of the present province of Shan-se. As its course continued to be directed to the east and south (though after it crossed the Ho, it proceeded to extend itself westwards as well), we may conclude that it had come into China from the north-west. Believing that we have in the 10th chapter of the Book of Genesis some hints, not to be called in question,[1] of the way in which the whole world was overspread by the families of the sons of Noah, I suppose that the family, or collection of families – the tribe – which has since grown into the most numerous of the nations, began to move eastwards, from the regions between the Black and Caspian seas, not long after the confusion of tongues. Going on, between the Altaic range of mountains on the north, and the Tauric range, with its continuations, on the south, but keeping to the sunny and more attractive south as much as it could, the tribe found itself, at the time I have mentioned, between 40° and 45° N. L., moving parallel with the Yellow River in the most northern portion of its course. It determined to follow the stream, turned south with it, and moved along its eastern bank, making settlements where the country promised most advantages, till it was stopped by the river ceasing its southward flow, and turning again towards the east. Thus the present Shan-se was the cradle of the Chinese empire. The tribe dwelt there for a brief space, consolidating its strength under the rule of chieftains, who held their position by their personal qualities more than by any privileges of hereditary descent; and then gradually forced its way east, west and south, conflicting with the physical difficulties of the country, and prevailing over the opposition of ruder and less numerous neighbours.
The arrival of the Chinese tribe had been anticipated by others.[2] These 480may have left the original seat of our infant race in the West earlier than it; or they may have left it at the same time. If they did so, the wave of emigration had broken in its progress. Some portions had separated from the main body, and found their way into the present province of Shan-se; and others, pursuing the same direction with it, but moving with more celerity, had then been pushed forward, by its advance, towards the sea, and subsequently along the sea-board, trying to make good a position for themselves among the mountains and along the streams of the country. We are not to suppose that the land was peopled by these tribes. They were not then living under any settled government, nor were they afterwards able to form a union of their forces, which could cope with the growing power of the larger people. They were scattered here and there over the region north of the Ho, gradually extending southward towards the Keang. Hostilities were constantly breaking out between them and the Chinese, over whom they might gain, once and again, temporary advantages. They increased in their degree, as well as those, and were far from being entirely subdued at the end of the Chow dynasty. Remnants of them still exist in a state of semi-independence in the south-western parts of the empire. Amid the struggles for the supreme power which arose when one dynasty gave place to another, and the constant contentions which prevailed among the States into which the empire was divided, the princes readily formed alliances with the chiefs of these wilder tribes. They were of great assistance to King Woo in his conflict with the last sovereign of the dynasty of Shang. In the speech which he delivered to his forces before the decisive battle in the wild of Muh, he addressed the “men of Yung, Shuh, Keang, Maou, Wei, Loo, P’ang, and Poh,” in addition to his own captains, and the rulers of friendly States. We are told that the wild tribes of the south and north, as well as the people of the great and flowery region, followed and were consenting with him.
King Woo established the rule of the Chow dynasty in the beginning of the 12th century B.C.
From the documents purporting to belong to the periods of Chinese history which are preserved in the Shoo, it will be seen that the year B.C 775 is the earliest date which can be said to be determined with certainty. The exact year in which the Chow dynasty commenced is not known; and as we ascend the stream of time, the two schemes current among the Chinese themselves diverge more widely from each other, while to neither of them can we accord our credence.
The accession of Yu, the first sovereign of the nation, was probably at some time in the nineteenth century before Christ; [3] and previous to him 481there were the chiefs Shun and Yaou. To attempt to carry the early Chinese history to a higher antiquity than twenty centuries before Christ is without any historical justification.[4]
There may have been such men as Chinese writers talk of under the appellations of Chuen-heuh, Hwang-te, Shin-nung, Fuh-he, etc.; but they cannot have been rulers of China. They are children of the mist of tradition, if we should not rather place them in the land of phantasy.[5]
The Chinese empire consisted in the time of Yu of nine provinces. On the north and west its boundaries were much the same as those of China Proper at the present day. On the east it extended to the sea, and even, according to many, across it, so as to embrace the territory of Corea. Its limits on the south are not very well defined in the “Books of Yu.” It certainly did not reach beyond the range of mountains which run along the north of Kwang-tung province, stretching into Kwang-se on the west and Fuh-Keen on the east.
Edward Biot calls attention to the designation of the early Chinese tribe or colony as “the black-haired people,” saying that they were doubtless so named in opposition to the different or mixed colour of the hair of the indigenous race. But I cannot admit any indigenous race – any race that did not come from the same original centre of our world’s population as the Chinese themselves. The wild tribes of which we read in the Shoo and Chinese history, were, no doubt, black-haired, as all the remnants of them are at the present day. If we must seek an explanation for the name of “black-haired people,” as given to the early Chinese, I should say that its origin was anterior to their entrance into China, and that it was employed to distinguish them from other descendants of Noah,[6] from whom they separated, and who, while they journeyed to the east, moved in an opposite and westward direction.
It was to their greater civilization and the various elements of strength flowing from it, that the Chinese owed their superiority over other early settlers in the country. They were able, in virtue of this, to subdue the land and replenish it, while the ruder tribes were gradually pushed into 482corners, and finally were nearly all absorbed and lost in the prevailing race. The black-haired people brought with them habits of settled labour. Their wealth did not consist, like that of nomads, in their herds and flocks. Shun’s governors of provinces in the Shoo are called Pastors or Herdsmen, and Mencius speaks of princes generally as “Pastors of men”; but pastoral allusions are very few in the literature of China. The people could never have been a tribe of shepherds. They displayed, immediately on their settlement, an acquaintance with the arts of agriculture and weaving. The cultivation of grain to obtain the staff of life, and of flax to supply clothing, at once received their attention. They knew also the value of the silkworm and planted the mulberry tree. The exchange of commodities – the practice of commerce on a small scale – was, moreover, early developed among them. It was long, indeed, before they had anything worthy of the name of a city; but fairs were established at convenient places, to which the people resorted from the farms and hamlets about, to barter their various wares.
In addition to the above endowments, the early Chinese possessed the elements of intellectual culture. They had some (?) acquaintance with astronomy, knew approximately the length of the year, and recognized the necessity of the practice of intercalation, to prevent the seasons, on a regard to which their processes of agriculture depended, from getting into disorder. They possessed also the elements of their present written characters. The stories current, and which are endorsed by statements in the later semi-classical books, about the invention of the characters by Ts’ang-Keü, in the time of Hwang-te, are of no value; and it was not until the Chow dynasty, and the reign particularly of King Seuen (B.C. 825 – 779), that anything like a dictionary of them was attempted to be compiled; but the original immigrants, I believe, brought with them the art of ideographic writing or engraving. It was rude and imperfect, but it was sufficient for the recording of simple observations of the stars in their courses, and the surface of the earth, and for the orders to be issued by the government of the time.[7] As early as the beginning of the Shang dynasty, we find E Yin presenting a written memorial to his sovereign.[8]
The habits of the other settlers were probably more warlike than those of the Chinese; but their fury would exhaust itself in predatory raids. They were incapable of any united or persistent course of action. We cannot wonder that they were in the long run supplanted and absorbed 483by a race with the characteristics and advantages which I have pointed out.
The Bamboo Annals give but the skeleton of the history of ancient China; the Shoo gives the flesh and drapery of the body at particular times. The one tells of events simply, in the fewest possible words; the other describes the scenes and all the attendant circumstances of those events.
The Chinese meaning of the term Shoo is “the pencil speaking,” and hence it is often used as a general designation for the written characters of the language. From this use of the term the transition was easy to the employment of it in the sense of writings or books, applicable to any consecutive compositions; and before the time of Confucius we find it further specially applied to designate the historical remains of antiquity, in distinction from the poems, the accounts of rites and other monuments of former times. Not that those other documents might not also be called by the general name of Shoo. The peculiar significance of the term, however, was well established, and is retained to the present day. The Shoo, in the lips of Confucius, denoted documents concerning the history of his country from the most ancient times to his own; as spoken of since the Han dynasty, it has denoted a compilation of such documents, believed to have been made by the sage. The Shoo, or “Book of History,” is simply a collection of historical memorials, extending over a space of 1,700 years.
“The Bamboo Books” is a comprehensive designation. It is not, indeed, so wide as De Mailla represents, when he says: – “It is the general name given to all ancient books written on tablets of bamboo, before the manner of making paper was discovered.”
Such books might be spoken and written of as “Bamboo Books.” The Bamboo Books is the name appropriate to a large collection of ancient documents, discovered in A.D. 279, embracing nearly twenty different works, which contained altogether between seventy and eighty chapters or books. The chiefs and rulers of the ancient Chinese were not without some considerable knowledge of God; but they were accustomed, on their first appearance in the country, if the earliest portions of the Shoo can be relied on at all, to worship other spiritual beings as well. There was no sacerdotal or priestly class among them; there were no revelations from Heaven to be studied and expounded. The chieftain was the priest for the tribe; the emperor, for the empire; the prince of a state, for his people; the father, for his family.
Shun had no sooner been designated by Yaou to the active duties of the government as co-emperor with him, than “he offered a special sacrifice, but with the ordinary forms, to God; sacrificed purely to the six Honoured ones; offered their appropriate sacrifices to the rivers and hills, and extended his worship to the host of spirits.”
Subsequently, in the progresses which he is reported to have made to 484the different mountains where he met the princes of the several quarters of the empire, he always commenced his proceedings with them by “presenting a burnt-offering to Heaven, and sacrificing in order to the hills and rivers.” I do not refer to these passages as veritable records of what Shun actually did; but they are valuable as being the ideas of the compilers of the Shoo of what he should have done in his supposed circumstances.
The name by which God was designated was the Ruler and the Supreme Ruler, denoting emphatically his personality, supremacy and unity. We find it constantly interchanged with the term Heaven, by which the ideas of supremacy and unity are equally conveyed, while that of personality is only indicated vaguely, and by an association of the mind.[9] By God, kings were supposed to reign, and princes were required to decree Justice. All were under law to Him, and bound to obey His will. Even on the inferior people He has conferred a moral sense, compliance with which would show their nature invariably right. All powers that be are from Him. He raises one to the throne and puts down another. Obedience is sure to receive His blessing; disobedience to be visited with His curse. The business of kings is to rule in righteousness and benevolence, so that the people may be happy and good. They are to be an example to all in authority, and to the multitudes under them. Their highest achievement is to cause the people tranquilly to pursue the course which their moral nature would indicate and approve. When they are doing wrong God admonishes them by judgments – storms, famine and other calamities; if they persist in evil, sentence goes forth against them. The dominion is taken from them, and given to others more worthy of it.
The Duke of Chow, in his address on “The Establishment of Government,” gives a striking summary of the history of the empire down to his own time. Yu the Great, the founder of the Hea dynasty, “sought for able men to honour God.” But the way of Kee, the last of his line, was different. He employed cruel men – and he had no successors. The empire was given to T’ang the Successful, who “greatly administered the bright ordinances of God.” By and by, T’ang’s throne came to Show, who was all violence, so that “God sovereignly punished him.” The empire was transferred to the House of Chow, whose chiefs showed their fitness for the charge by “finding out men who would reverently serve God, and appointing them as presidents and chiefs of the people.”
It was the duty of all men to reverence and honour God, by obeying His law written in their hearts, and seeking His blessing in all their ways; but there was a solemn and national worship of Him, as ruling in 485nature and providence, which could only be performed by the emperor, It consisted of sacrifices, or offerings rather, and prayers. No image was formed of Him, as indeed the Chinese have never thought of fashioning a likeness of the Supreme.[10]
Who the “six Honoured ones,” whom Shun sacrificed to next to God were, is not known [11] In going on to worship the hills and rivers, and the host of spirits, he must have supposed that there were certain tutelary beings, who presided over the more conspicuous objects of nature, and its various processes. They were under God, and could do nothing, excepting as they were permitted and empowered by Him; but the worship of them was inconsistent with the truth that God demands to be recognized as “He who worketh all in all,” and will allow no religious homage to be given to any but Himself. It must have always been the parent of many superstitions; and it paved the way for the pantheism which enters largely into the belief of the Chinese at the present day, and of which we find one of the earliest steps in the practice, which commenced with the Chow dynasty, of not only using the term Heaven as a synonym for God, but the combination Heaven and Earth.
141 THERE was also among the early Chinese the religious worship of their departed friends, which still continues to be observed by all classes from the Emperor downward, and seems of all religious services to have the greatest hold upon the people. The title given in the Shoo to Shun’s minister of Religion is that of “Arranger of the Ancestral temple.”
The rule of Confucius, that “parents when dead, should be sacrified to according to propriety,” was doubtless in accordance with a practice which had come down from the earliest times of the nation.
The spirits of the departed were supposed to have a knowledge of the circumstances of their descendants, and to be able to affect them.[12] Events of importance in a family were communicated to them before their shrines; many affairs of government were transacted in the ancestral temple. When Yaou demitted to Shun the business of the government, the ceremony took place in the temple of “the accomplished ancestor,” the individual to whom Yaou traced his possession of the supreme dignity; and while Yaou lived, Shun, on every return to the capital from his administrative progresses, offered a bullock before the shrine of the same personage. In the same way, when Shun found the toils of government too heavy for him, and called Yu to share them, the ceremony took place in the temple of “the spiritual ancestor,” the chief in the line of Shun’s progenitors. In the remarkable narrative, which we have in the 6th of the Books of Chow, of the duke of Chow praying for the recovery of his brother, King Woo, from a dangerous illness, and offering to die in his stead, he raises three altars – to their father, grandfather, and great-grandfather; and prays to them, as having in heaven the charge of watching over their great descendant. When he has ascertained by divination that the king would recover, he declares that he had got Woo’s tenure of the throne renewed by the three Kings, who had thus consulted for a long futurity of their House.
This case shows us that the spirits of good kings were believed to be in Heaven. A more general conclusion is derived from what we read in the 7th of the Books of Shang. The Emperor Pwan-Kâng, whose reign commenced B.C. 1400, irritated by the opposition of the wealthy and powerful Houses to his measures, and their stirring up the people to murmur against them, threatens them all with calamities to be sent 142down by his High ancestor, Tang the Successful. He tells his ministers that their ancestors and fathers, who had loyally served his predecessors, were now urgently entreating Tang, in his spirit-state in Heaven, to execute great punishments on their descendants. Not only, therefore, did good sovereigns continue to have a happy existence in heaven, but their good ministers shared the happiness with them, and were somehow round about them, as they had been on earth, and took an interest in the progress of the concerns which had occupied them during their lifetime.
Modern scholars, following in the wake of Confucius, to whom the future state of the departed was all wrapt in shadows, clouds, and darkness, say that the people of the Shang dynasty were very superstitious. My object is to bring out the fact and the nature of their superstition.[13]
There is no hint in the Shoo nor elsewhere, so far as I am aware, of what became of bad emperors and bad ministers after death, nor, indeed, of the future fate of man generally. There is a heaven in the classical books of the Chinese; but there is no hell and no purgatory.[14] Their oracles are silent as to any doctrine of future rewards and punishments. Their exhortations to well-doing, and their warnings against evil, are all based on a reference to the will of God, and the certainty that in this life virtue will be rewarded and vice punished.[15] “Of the five happinesses, the first is long life; the second is riches; the third is soundness of body and serenity of mind; the fourth is the love of virtue; and the fifth is doing or receiving to the end the will of Heaven.” There is no promise of rest or comfort beyond the grave. The virtuous man may live and die in suffering and disgrace – let him be cheered. His posterity will reap the reward of his merits. Someone, sprung from his loins, will become wealthy, or attain to distinction. But if he should have no posterity – it never occurred to any of the ancient sages to consider such a case.
I will now pass on to the subject of divination. Although the ancient Chinese can hardly be said to have had the knowledge of a future state, and were not curious to enquire about it, they were anxious to know about the wisdom and issues of their plans for the present life. For this purpose they had recourse to divination. The Duke of Chow certainly practised it, and we have a regular staff of diviners among the officers of the Chow dynasty. Pwan-Kâng practised it in the dynasty of Shang. And Shun did so also, if we can put faith in “The Counsels of Yu.” The instruments of divination were the shell of the tortoise and the stalks of a certain grass or reed. By various caustic operations 143on the former, and by manipulations with the latter, it was supposed possible to ascertain the will of Heaven.
It is difficult to understand how the really great men of ancient China could have believed in it, One observation ascribed to Shun is worthy of remark. He tells Yu that “divination, when fortunate, must not be repeated.” I once saw a father and son divining after one of the fashions of the present day. They tossed the bamboo roots, which came down in the unlucky positions for a dozen times in succession. At last a lucky cast was made. They looked into each other’s faces, laughed heartily, and rose up, delighted, from their knees. The divination was now successful, and they dared not repeat it!
When the dignity of chief advanced to that of a sovereign, and the Chinese tribe grew into a nation, the form which it assumed was that of a feudal empire. It was probably not until the Chow dynasty, that its constitution was fully developed and consolidated, as it is only then that we find, in the last part of the Shoo, in the Ch’un Ts’ëw, the Rites of Chow, and other works of the period, materials giving a description.
King Woo, we are told, after he had overthrown the last sovereign of the line of T’ang, arranged the orders of nobility into five,[16] from duke downwards, and assigned the territories to them on a scale proportioned to their different ranks. But at the beginning of the Hea dynasty, Yu conferred on the chiefs among his followers lands and surnames. The feudal system grew in a great measure out of the necessities of the infant empire. As the ruder tribes were pushed backwards from its growing limits, they would the more fiercely endeavour to resist further encroachment. The measure was sometimes taken of removing them to other distant sites, according to the policy on which the kings of Assyria and Babylon dealt with Israel and Judah. So Shun is reported to have carried away the tribes of San-mëaou, who were the original possessors of the kingdom. But the Chinese empire was too young and insufficiently established itself to pursue this plan generally, and each State therefore was formed with a military constitution of its own, to defend the marches against the irruptions of the barbarians.
What was designed to be the central State of the empire was the appanage of the sovereign himself, and was of the same dimensions as one of the largest of the feudatory States. Over this he ruled like one of the other princes in their several dominions, and he received, likewise, a certain amount of revenue from all the rest of the country, while all the nobles were bound to do him military service whenever called upon. He maintained, also, a court of great ministers, who superintended the government of the whole empire. The princes were little kings within their own States, and had the power of life and death over the people. They practised the system of subinfeudation, but their assignments of lands were required to have the imperial sanction.
144 It was the rule, under the Chow dynasty, that the princes should repair to the court every five years, to give an account of their administration of their governments; and that the emperor should make a general tour through the country every twelve years, to see for himself how they performed their duties. We read in the Canon of Shun that he made a tour of inspection once in five years, and that the princes appeared at court during the intermediate four. As the empire enlarged the imperial progresses would naturally become less frequent. By this arrangement it was endeavoured to maintain uniformity of administration and customs throughout the States. The various ceremonies to be observed in marriages, funerals and mourning, hospitalities, religious worship, and the conduct of hostilities; the measures of capacity, length, weight, etc.; and the written characters of the language – these were all determined by imperial prerogative. To innovate in them was a capital offence.
The above is an imperfect outline of the feudal constitution of the ancient empire of China, which was far from enjoying peace and prosperity under it. According to the received accounts, the three dynasties of Hea, Shang, and Chow were established one after another by princes of great virtue and force of character, aided in each case by a minister of consummate ability and loyal devotion. Their successors invariably became feeble and worthless. After a few reigns the imperial rule slackened. Throughout the States there came assumptions and oppressions, each prince doing what was right in his own eyes, without fear of his suzerain.
The wild tribes round about waxed bold, and kept up a constant excitement and terror by their incursions. Then would come an exceptional reign of more than usual vigour, and a partial order would be established; but the brief prosperity was only like a blink of sunshine in a day of gloom. In the Shoo, the termination of the dynasties of Hea and Shang is attributed to the wickedness of their last emperors. After a long array of feeble princes, there suddenly appear on the throne men of gigantic physical strength, the most daring insolence, and the wildest debaucheries, having neither piety nor truth; and in contrast with them are princes whose fathers have for several generations been attracting general notice by their righteousness and benevolence. When Heaven and men can no longer bear the iniquity of the tyrants, the standard of revolt is raised, and the empire speedily comes under a new rule.
These accounts are, no doubt, much exaggerated and embellished Këë and Show were not such monsters of vice, nor were T’ang and Woo such prodigies of virtue. More likely is it that the earlier dynasties died out like that of Chow, from sheer exhaustion, and that their last sovereigns were weaklings rather than tyrants. The teachings of Confucius in the Chow dynasty could not arrest the progress of degeneracy and 145dissolution in a single state. His inculcation of the relations of society and the duties belonging to them had no power. His eulogies of the ancient sages were only the lighting up in the political firmament of so many suns which communicated no heat. Things waxed worse and worse. The pictures which Mencius draws of the misery of his times are frightful. What he auspiced from the doctrines and labours of his master, never came to pass. The ancient feudal empire was extinguished amid universal anarchy, in seas of blood.
The character and achievements of the founder of the Ts’in dynasty have not yet received from historians the attention which they deserve. He destroyed the feudal system of China, and introduced in its room the modern despotic empire, which has now lasted rather more than 2,000 years. The ancient empire of China passed away, having been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Under the system of rule which superseded it the boundaries of the empire have been greatly extended, and the people have grandly increased. Once and again the country has been overrun and subjugated by the descendants of the tribes which disputed the possession of the soil with its earliest colonists; but it has subdued them in its turn by its greater cultivation, and they have become more Chinese than the Chinese themselves. The changes of dynasty since the end of the old empire or classical period have not been revolutions, but only substitutions of one set of rulers for another.
Footnotes
- ↑ Our contributors are entitled to their opinions and allowed a great latitude in the expression of their respective religious or even sectarian views. Yet a line of demarcation must be drawn; and if we are told that the evolution of Races and their ethnological distribution as in the Bible are “not to be called in question,” then, after Noah, we may be next asked to accept Bible chronology, and the rib, and the apple verbally, to boot? This – we must decline. It is really a pity to spoil able articles by appealing to Biblical allegory for corroboration. – [Ed.]
- ↑ And all this in less than 2,000 years B.C. (1998) if we accept Bible chronology? The Chinese race has been ethnologically and historically known to exhibit the same type as it does now, several thousand years B.C. A Chinese emperor put to death two astronomers for failing to predict an eclipse, over 2,000 years B.C. What kind of an antediluvian animal was Noah, for that “Adamite” to beget all by himself three sons of the most widely separated types – namely an Aryan or Caucasian, a Mongolian, and an African Negro? – [Ed.]
- ↑ The first Emperor, the grandson of Chow Siang, the founder of the Tsin dynasty, which gave its name to China, flourished in the VI. cent. B.C. but the series of Sovereigns in China is lost in the flight of time. But even nineteen centuries carry the Chinese race beyond the Flood, and leave that race still historical. – [Ed.]
- ↑ The Chinese chronological annals have preserved to this day the names of numerous dynasties running back to a period 3,000 and 4,000 years B.C. Why should we, whose history beyond the year 1 of our era (even that year is now found untrustworthy!) is all guess-work, presume to correct the chronology of other nations far older than our own? With doubts thrown even upon Wilhelm Tell, as an historical personage, and King Arthur in an historical London fog, what right – except egregious conceit – have we, Europeans, to say we know Chinese or any pre-Christian chronology better than the nations who have kept and preserved their own records? – [Ed.]
- ↑ Surely not any more so than the Patriarchs and their periods? – [Ed.]
- ↑ We believe there could not be found now one single anthropologist or ethnologist of any note (not even among those clergymen who care for their scientific reputation) who would take any concern in, or consider for one moment Noah as the root-stock of mankind. To use this personage as a buffer against the views of any man of science is, to say the least out of date. Mr. Gladstone alone could afford it. – [Ed.]
- ↑ Bunsen calculates that 20,000 years, at least, were necessary for the development and formation of the Chinese language. Other philologists may disagree, but which of them traces the “celestials” from Noah? – [Ed.]
- ↑ How can this be, when we find in Knight’s Cyclopædia of Biography that the work Shan Hai King is spoken of by the commentator Kwoh P’oh (A.D. 276 – 324) as having been compiled 3,000 years before his time, “seven dynasties back”? It was arranged by Kung Chia or Chung-Ku “from engravings on nine urns made by the Emperor Yu B.C. 2355.”
- ↑ No Chinaman has ever believed in one personal God, but in Heaven in an abstract sense, whose many “Rulers” were synthesized by that “Heaven.” Every philosophy and sect proves it; from Laotze and Confucius down to the latest sects and Buddhism. A “He” God is unknown in China. – [Ed.]
- ↑ Just so; because the mind of the Chinaman is too philosophical to create for itself an Absolute Supreme as a personality in his (the Chinaman’s) likeness.
- ↑ “The six honoured ones,” are those of every nation which had a cult based on astronomy. The “God” was the Sun. Ahura Mazda and his six Amshaspends of the Mazdeans are the later development of the 12 Zodiacal signs divided into six double houses the Sun being the seventh and always made the representative (or synthesis) of the six. As Proclus has it: “The Framer made the heavens six in number, and for the seventh he cast into the midst the fire of the Sun” (Timæus), and this idea is preeminent in the Christian (especially the Roman Catholic) idea, i.e., the Sun-Christ, who is also Michael, and his six and seven Eyes, or Spirit of the Planets. The “six – seven” are a movable and interchangeable number and are ever made to correlate in religious symbolism. As correctly shown by Mr. G. Massey there are seven circles to Meru and six parallel ridges across it, there are seven manifestations of light and only six days of creation, etc. The mystery of the “double heaven” is one of the oldest and most Kabalistic and the six chambers, divisions, etc., in most of the temples of antiquity with the officiating priest, representing the Sun, the seventh, left abundant witnesses behind them. – [Ed.]
- ↑ Christian countries are zealously imitating the Chinamen, in that more than one hundred millions, perhaps, are now Spiritualists, whether openly or otherwise – [Ed.]
- ↑ But why not take advantage of this opportunity to also bring out that other worse “superstition” – about Noah and the rest? Shall our “doxies” remain for ever the only orthodoxy, and those of all other people heterodoxies and “superstition”?
- ↑ This is an excellent proof of the philosophical mind of Chinamen. They ought to send a few missionaries to Lambeth Palace.
- ↑ A reminiscence of the old Karmic Law, or belief in Karma.
- ↑ According to the five root-races which have so far appeared on earth.