we have an army of Ts'oo marching on from Leu, where the Loo Jung had dwelt, and throwing open its granaries to soldiers and officers alike. [ii] It is only in the Chuen just referred to, in the 16th year of duke Wăn, that mention is made of the many tribes of the Man.' There was then, we are told, a great famine in Ts'oo, and the people of Yung, who are also mentioned in the Speech at Muh, and who had by this time coalesced into a State of some order and civilization, took advantage of it to incite a general rising of all the tribes of the south against that Power. The Man came to join in the movement from their seats in what are now the departments of Shin-chow and Yuen-chow in Hoo-nan. It was a critical time in the history of Ts'oo, and it was proposed that the capital should be abandoned. But bolder counsels prevailed; an army took the field; assistance came from Ts'in and Pa; the Man were severed from the combination, and made a covenant on their own account; and Yung was extinguished, that is, the sacrifices of its chiefs were abolished, and it was reduced to be a city of Ts'oo. There is no further mention of the Man in the Ch'un-Ts'ëw period. It was not till the time of the Warring States that Ts'oo succeeded in depriving them of their independence. [iii.] The Puh, it has been seen, were among the auxiliaries of king Woo in the conquest of Shang. The 'hundred' or many tribes of them took a principal part in the rising against Ts'oo, of which I have just spoken, and appear in it under the direction of the people of Keun, 47 a small State between Yung and Lo. Where their own settlements were is uncertain. Some say they were in the present department of K'euh-tsing, Yun-nan, which is too far off, though some tribes may have wandered there at a subsequent period; others, with more probability, place them in the departments of Ch'ang-tih and Shin-chow, Hoo-nan. On the occasion under our notice, Wei Këa, one of the generals of Ts'oo, said about them, 'They think that we are unable from the famine to take the field. If we send forth an army, they are sure to be afraid, and will return to their own country. The Puh dwell apart from one another; and when they are hurriedly going off, each tribe for its own towns, who among them will have leisure to think of anybody but themselves?' It happened as he said. In fifteen days from Ts'oo's appearing in force there was an end of the attempt of the Puh. 47 麇 Only twice more are they mentioned in the Chuen. In Chaou's 9th year, on occasion of a dispute between Chow and Tsin, the representative of the royal court says boastfully that, when Woo subdued Shang, Pa, the Puh, Ts'oo, and Tăng were the territories of the kingdom in the south; and in his 19th year, we have Ts'00 preparing a naval expedition against the Puh. against the Puh. What became of them afterwards I have not been able to ascertain. [iv.] Pa in the time of the Ch'un-Ts'ëw appears as a State ruled by viscounts of the surname Ke. It has left its name in the present district of Pa, department Chung-k'ing, Sze-ch'uen. In the Chuen on the 9th year of duke Hwan, we find it in good relations with Ts'oo, and co-operating with that State in the siege of Yew, a city in the present department of Yun-yang, Hoo-pih. Under the 18th year of duke Chwang, Tso tells us that Pa then revolted from Ts'oo, and invaded it, its army advancing even to attack Ts'oo's capital. The only other mention of it is in the text of Wan's 18th year, in connexion with the rising of the southern tribes against Ts'oo, when, as has been stated above, Pa and Ts'in came to the assistance of the latter. In the time of the Warring States, Pa fell to the share of Ts'in. I have thus gathered up into as brief space as possible the information that we derive from the Ch'un Ts'ëw and Tso about the rude and uncivilized or semi-civilized tribes that infested the kingdom of Chow or surrounded it. The strongest impression which I receive from the review is one of grave doubt as to most of what we are told about the previous dynasties of Shang and Hea. Is it possible that they could have held the territory occupied by the States of Chow for a thousand years before the rise of king Woo, and that we should find it, five and six centuries after his time, in the condition which is revealed to us by the sage and his commentator? I do not think so. We have seen that the China of Chow was a small affair; that of Shang and Hea must have been much smaller;-extending not so far towards the sea on the east, and to a smaller distance north and south of the Yellow river. It was evidently, however, in the plan of Providence that by the Chinese race all the other tribes in the space now included in China proper should be first broken to pieces and stript of their individualities, and then welded as into one homogeneous nation. Its superior culture and capabilities fitted it for this task; and the process went on very gradually, and with many disturbances and interruptions, frequently with 'hideous ruin and combustion.' Having first made good'a settlement along the Yellow river, in the south-western parts of the present Shan-se, and perhaps also on the other side of the stream, the early immigrants sent forth their branches, scions of different families, east, west, north, and south, as so many suckers, among the ruder populations sparsely scattered about, which gradually gathered round them, till they lost their original peculiarities, and were prepared to be collected into larger communities, or into States. The first stage in the formation of the Chinese nation terminated with the ascendency of the State of Ts'in and the establishment of its short-lived dynasty. We have seen that of the more considerable of the wild tribes during the Ch'un-Ts'ëw period their chiefs had titles like the princes of the States of Chow. We read of the viscounts of the Loos, of Fei, of Koo, and of the Keang Jung, and of the baron of the Le Jung; and it has been asked whence they derived those titles. 48 The Tso Chuen gives us no information on the point, and I am inclined to suppose that they assumed them themselves, to assert thereby their equality with the feudal nobles of Chow. Where they claimed to be the descendants of some great name in former ages of Chinese history, it would be easier to do so; and the title might be acknowledged by the kings of Chow. Or where intermarriages were formed with them by the royal House, or by the princes of the States, as we know was frequently done, the fathers of the brides might be ennobled for the occasion, and then the titles would be jealously retained. But the title was generally, I believe, the assumption of arrogance, as the Chinese would deem it. There is one passage in the Chuen which shows that the tribes differed from the Chinese not only in their habits of life, but also in their languages. In the account of the meeting at Heang in the 14th year of duke Sëang, which was attended by the representatives of more than a dozen States, and by the chief of at least one of the Jung tribes, who was a viscount (though the text does not say so), Fan Seun-tsze appears as wanting on behalf of Tsin to seize the viscount, who belonged to the Këang Jung or the Jung of Luh-hwăn, attributing the loss of Tsin's power and influence to unfavourable reports of its proceedings leaking out through them among the other States. The viscount makes a good defence, and says in con 48 There is the saying of Confucius in the Analects, III. v.:-'The rude tribes of the east and north have their rulers, and are not like the States of our great land which are without them.' Without adopting the view of Ho An which I have given in my note upon the passage, I conclude that the sage is merely uttering a lament over the disorganization and disobedience to authority, which he saw going on in Loo and other States. The rude tribes obeyed the Powers that were' among them, titled or untitled; but very different was the state of things in China. |