Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

ART. V.-FRAGMENTARY NOTICES OF CHINESE

CIVILIZATION.*

“Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.'

"

[blocks in formation]

Ir we view the human species, as a whole,-as one great complex individual, governed in all its parts and movements by a pervading and continuous organization, and if we regard the different forms of civilization, through which it has passed, as the successive stages of its growth, each of which occurs in its proper season, and prepares the way for those which are to follow ;-it is obvious, we cannot comprehend, in any enlarged sense, the history of mankind,-we cannot even understand the present condition of our race in the vast theatre of God's universal Providence-a position, into which we have been brought by a series of changes, woven together in indissoluble connection, from the commencement of the world,-without going back to the contemplation of those primitive forms of social life, into which humanity shaped itself, on first emerging from barbarism, and which sheltered and cherished its latent germs of intelligence and refinement, till capable of being transplanted to a more fruitful soil and genial sky. It is, therefore, a fortunate circumstance for the philosophical enquirer, that the manners and institutions of Asia, where civilization unquestionably had its source, should have been, through thousands of years, so fixed and permanent in their character, as almost to supply the place of historical records, by setting before our eyes at the present day, the very image of that form of society, which grew up with the infancy of our race and has prolonged its continuance.

Hence the recitals of modern travellers into the East convey to us as distinct an impression of what mankind once universally were, as the accounts of ancient writers, and serve by the minute details which they furnish, to complete the fragmentary notices which the latter have bequeathed to us. A great difference exists in this respect between Oriental antiqui

These notices are extracted from a MS. Course of Lectures on the Early History of Asiatic Civilization. Some apology is due for presenting them in this form to the public. The writer himself was unwilling to let them appear, till he had had an opportunity of reducing them to a more connected and finished state. But the editor was of opinion, that at the present time they might excite some interest, and exhibit in one view information respecting China that might not be so easily accessible to every reader from another source.-J. J. T.

ties and those of the Greeks and Romans. We possess, indeed, the precious literature of the last; but when we traverse the beautiful regions which they once occupied, we find no living vestige of the manners, religion and civil polity, which flourished under their institutions; these have long vanished from the earth;-man's workmanship, but not man himself, survives, to tell us what they were: and the fractured altar, the mouldering temple, the broken aqueduct, the far-stretching highway faintly traced across the green-sward and the corn-fields of modern cultivation, and the vast circuit of the silent amphitheatre, alone present themselves to the eye of the observer, as the solitary witnesses of the wide diffusion of their ancient civilization. But it is far otherwise in the East. There even the ideas, the habitudes, and the pursuits of men, seem to partake of the immobility of the nature, which encircles them, and to repeat, generation after generation, the same unvarying cycle of childlike docility, and of unenquiring submission to authority.

[blocks in formation]

The term by which the Chinese designate their country, signifies the centre of the world,—an idea allied to that, which led the Indians to describe their sacred hill Meru, as the pistil of the lotus, under which they symbolized the universe. Sin or Tchin was the appellation given to China by the people of western Asia, and has evidently an affinity with the name Sinæ, which seems to have been applied in a vague way by the Romans to all the nations east of the Ganges.* The Chinese were first known, as a distinct nation, to the western world, in the period of the lower Roman empire. The Seres, who are earlier mentioned as the peoplet from whom silk was imported into Europe, and who are considered by the authors of the Ancient Universal History, after Prideaux, as the Chinese,-appear to have dwelt considerably to the west of China proper. Arrian, who flourished in the age of the Antonines, A. D. 140, speaks of the Sinæ or Thina, who exported raw and manufactured silk through Bactria into the regions of the West.§ Klaproth,|| who has studied the native records of the Chinese themselves, says, that they became acquainted with the Romans, through the medium of the Parthians, who occupied for several centuries the boundary between the Roman Empire and the rich coun

* Malte Brun, Geogr. Univ. Liv. xlii. The Chinese: A General Description of China and its Inhabitants, by J. F. Davis, Esq. F.R.S. London, 1836.

Their name occurs in Horace and Virgil. Silk was called from them, Sericum. Vol. v. fol. p. 300. n. B. Prideaux's Connection, vol. iii.

§ Davis.

Tableaux Historiques de l'Asie, p. 68 seqq.

tries of the far East, and that everything great or wonderful out of their own territory the Chinese were in the habit of attributing to the Romans.

In A.D. 166, Marcus Antoninus dispatched an embassy to them, with commercial views, which landed in Tonquin; and the intercourse thus opened appears to have lasted for a considerable time, but was at last broken off by the jealousy of the Parthians, who were anxious to prevent all direct communication between the Chinese and the Romans. The Parthians received raw silk from China, which they manufactured themselves, before it was transmitted to the West; and the monopoly of this lucrative business they were naturally desirous not to lose. The Roman fleets engaged in this eastern trade set sail from the ports of Egypt or from the Persian Gulph. From this time, though at intervals of various length, the connexion of the western world with the Chinese scems never to have been entirely interrupted.

Between A.D. 859 and 880, China was visited by two Arabian merchants, whose itineraries have been translated and published by Renaudot. In the latter half of the thirteenth century, A.D. 1250-95, the Venetian traveller, Marco Polo, spent many years in the country, and having been invested by the reigning Emperor, Kublai Khan, with an office of some trust in the southern provinces, had an excellent opportunity of becoming acquainted with its singular institutions, and with the manners and occupations of its inhabitants. Rubruquis and our own countryman, Sir John Maundeville,* also visited China, before the East was laid generally open by navigation round the Cape of Good Hope. Since that time, travellers accompanying embassies, and above all the missionaries of the Christian religion, especially the Jesuits, have contributed to increase our knowledge of the Chinese. At one period the Jesuits seemed to have a fair prospect of effecting a permanent establishment in the country, had not the views of the more rational and moderate among them been frustrated by the fanatical indiscretion of their companions. They enjoyed favour and encouragement at court; and it is to them that we are indebted for the trigonometrical survey of the country, on which the present maps of China are founded. It appears, from an ancient monument, which was dug up more than a century ago, and is now generally admitted to be authentic, that the Nestorian Christians had made a settlement in China as early as the middle of the seventh century. In Marco Polo's time, their worship was tolerated, and they had churches in the principal cities of the empire. Protestant missionaries

[blocks in formation]

have carried on the researches begun by the Catholics. Every one who has attended to these subjects, is acquainted with the labours of the late Dr. Morrison, who bequeathed his valuable collection of Chinese books to the library of University College, London; and there is every reason to believe, that the language and literature of China will henceforth engage a larger share of the attention of Orientalists. The French Savans have led the way in this new path of learned enquiry. In the earlier part of the last century, Chinese were frequently sent into Europe by the Jesuits, to receive their education, that they might promote the objects of the mission on their return. It was from a Chinese, resident in Paris, that the learned Fréret, drew the materials of the instructive disquisitions which have been preserved in the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres. Two others, when they went back to their native country, were furnished by the learned men of France with a number of questions, the replies to which were the first occasion of the Memoires concernant les Chinois, which have since been extended to fourteen or fifteen quarto volumes. In the last volume of the series is a Chronological Abstract of Chinese History, drawn from native sources by Pere Gaubil.* Among recent scholars, Klaproth, Abel Remusat, and Silvestre de Sacy, may be mentioned as those who have largely contributed, by their labours, to throw light on the language and antiquities of the Chinese.

[blocks in formation]

As in India, two different races seem to have successively inhabited China. Relics of the primitive barbarians still subsist under the name of Miao, unsubdued, and speaking a dialect of their own, in the western highlands, to which they have retreated before the progress of civilization. They are admitted to be a distinct race from the Chinese, and are probably allied to the Thibetians. Various suppositions have been entertained as to the origin of the Chinese. Sir W. Jones † regards them as a colony from India, whose national characteristics were gradually effaced by intermarrying with aborigines and the Tartars, and in this view Mr. Davis participates. De Guignes traces them from Egypt; and De Pauw considers them as a tribe of Tartars or Scythians. Many considerations militate powerfully against the supposition of their connection with Hindostan or with

* Traité de la Chronologie Chinoise par le Pere Gaubil; publié par M. Silvestre de Sacy. Paris, 1814. The original manuscript was sent from Pekin to Fréret in 1794. + Discourses before the Asiatic Society.

Memoirs concerning the Chinese. Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. i. Part I.

Egypt. Though the Indians and the Chinese both employ a cycle of sixty years in their chronology, yet with the former it is a cycle of Jupiter, with the latter a solar cycle. Though both divide the moon's path through the heavens, into twenty eight mansions, yet the principle of division adopted by the two nations is perfectly distinct, and cannot therefore have been borrowed by one from the other.* Had the Chinese been a colony from Egypt, they must have landed at the south of the country, but to this supposition all their earliest traditions are strongly opposed. The most probable view is that espoused by Klaproth, that the Chinese took possession of their present seats from the north west, descending into them from the mountainous district, which was anciently called Kuenlun, near the lake Koko Nor. Here was their holy hill, and the scene of their ancient mythology; the West being the sacred region to them, as the North to the Hindoos. The first historical notices of China prove its civilization to have commenced in the northern provinces.

[blocks in formation]

Confucius was born 549 B.C., of the imperial family of Tchingtang under the dynasty of the Tcheon. After having filled a great number of public situations, and employed himself in writing history, and in arranging and illustrating the ancient books called king, he died in his native province of Lou, 479 B.C. His precepts and aphorisms were collected after his death by his disciples. His morality is mild, pure, and rational, and is intimately connected, in his instructions, with the science of politics. It is based on the principle of the supreme importance of submission to legitimate authority. He repeats again and again, if we may trust the extracts which the Jesuits have given from his works, that the happiness of a community must arise from the diffusion through every part of it, of a spirit of subjection and obedience. Through all the gradations of private life up to the general dependence of subjects on their sovereign, he would have the doctrine of paternal authority carried out to its utmost extent; and in his system, a king should be the father of his people, and the administration of a family furnish the type of the government of a kingdom. Order, subordination to established authority, gravity of manners, and personal selfdiscipline are the bases on which the great Chinese legislator sought to build the civilization of his country. In his Ta-hio, or book of great science, the materials of which he collected from more ancient documents, he treats, 1. of self-renewal; 2. of the

* Davis.

+ Tableaux Historiques de l'Asie.

« AnteriorContinuar »