China: Its History, Arts, and Literature/Volume 2/Chapter 4
Chapter IV
FOREIGN TRADE AND INTERCOURSE:
EARLY PERIOD
The enterprise and integrity of the Chinese merchant have become proverbial, and have been eulogised by writer after writer in strong terms,—exaggerated eulogies in some cases, perhaps, but at all events sufficiently unanimous, to place the main fact beyond doubt. From the beginning of the nineteenth century clear testimony on this point was recorded by foreigners doing business in Canton, and was soon supplemented by convincing facts. At first all commercial transactions of foreigners with China were conducted through a syndicate of native firms, known as the Hong[1] Merchants, who, in return for the privilege of monopolising this business, became security to the local officials for the payment of duties on the trade and for the good behaviour of the foreign traders. The system worked well in some respects, but it presented also some very irksome features, especially as interposing an effectual barrier to direct intercourse between foreign and native officials. It is evident, however, that something of the kind was virtually essential in the early days when the foreigner, having no facilities for reaching the Chinese producer or consumer, must have descended to fortuitous retail transactions in the immediate vicinity of his warehouses had not the Chinese syndicate undertaken the functions of supplying him with exports and disposing of his imports. Thus on the abolition of this Hong system by treaty (in 1842) a void was created that had to be filled at once. The foreign official, on the one hand, no longer found the Hong Syndicate interposing between him and the Chinese Government, but, on the other, the foreign merchant found that the bridge between him and his Chinese clients had disappeared. Into this breach the "comprador" stepped. "Comprador" is not a Chinese term: it is derived from the Portuguese word comprar (to buy), and it was originally used to designate the Chinese agent through whose instrumentality foreign merchants effected their sales and purchases. There is no more remarkable figure in the history of commerce than this comprador. Serving aliens whom his nationals regarded with aversion, shared doubtless by himself though in a lesser degree, he nevertheless discharged duties of large trust with almost uniform fidelity, and in his business transactions behaved toward these strangers so as to win their unlimited confidence, their esteem, and even their friendship. A recent writer, whose long and intimate acquaintance with commercial affairs in China lends great weight to his verdict, says: "The comprador was always consulted, and if the employer ventured to omit this formality the resulting transaction would almost invariably come to grief through inexplicable causes. Seldom, however, was his advice rejected, while many of the largest operations were of his initiation. Unlimited confidence was the rule on both sides, which often took the concrete form of considerable indebtedness, now on the one side, now on the other, and was regularly shown in the despatch of large amounts of specie into the far interior of the country for the purchase of tea and silk in the districts of their growth. For many years the old practice was followed of contracting for produce as soon as marketable, and sometimes even before. During three or four months, in the case of tea, large funds belonging to foreign merchants were in the hands of native agents far beyond the reach of the owners, who could exercise no sort of provision over the proceedings of their agents. The funds were in every case returned in the form of produce purchased, which was entered to the foreign merchant at a price arbitrarily fixed by the comprador to cover all expenses. Under such a régime it would have needed no great perspicacity, one would imagine, to foretell in which pocket the profits of trading would eventually lodge. As a matter of fact the comprador generally grew rich at the expense of his employer. All the while the sincerest friendship existed between them, often descending to the second and third generation." It stands, indeed, to the high credit of Chinese commercial morality that such a relationship could possibly have continued without disaster to the foreign merchant, for he placed himself completely in the power of his native agents under circumstances which, were the ordinary motives of mercantile dealings paramount, must have led to his ruin. During recent years there have been, it is true, several cases of defaulting compradors, but they constitute an infinitesimally small fraction of the great body of men who have established a record for upright dealing. "Of all the accomplishments the Chinese nation has acquired during the long millenniums of its history," says Mr. A. Michie, speaking with the experience of thirty years in China, "there is none in which it has attained to such perfect mastery as in the science of buying and selling. The Chinese possess the Jews' passion for exchange. All classes, from the peasant to the prince, think in money, and the instinct of appraisement supplies to them the place of a ready reckoner, continually converting objects and opportunities into cash. Thus surveying mankind and all its achievements with the eye of an auctioneer, invisible note-book in hand, external impressions translate themselves automatically into the language of the market-place, so that it comes as natural to the Chinaman as to the modern American, or to any other commercial people, to reduce all forms of appreciation to the common measure of the dollar. A people imbued with such habits of mind are traders by intuition. If they have much to learn from foreigners, they have also much to teach them; and the fact that at no spot within the vast Empire of China would one fail to find ready-made and eager men of business is a happy augury for the extended intercourse which may be developed in the future, while at the same time it affords the clearest indication of the true avenue to sympathetic relations with the Chinese. In every detail of handling and moving commodities, from the moment they leave the hands of the producer in his garden-patch to the time when they reach the ultimate consumer, perhaps a thousand miles away, the Chinese trader is an expert. Times and seasons have been elaborately mapped out, the clue laid unerringly through labyrinthine currencies, weights, and measures which to the stranger seem a hopeless tangle, and elaborate trade customs evolved appropriate the requirements of a myriad-sided commerce, until the simplest operation has been invested with a kind of ritual observance, the effect of the whole being to cause the duplex wheels to run both smoothly and swiftly. To crown all, there is to be noted, as the highest condition of successful trade, the evolution of commercial probity, which, though no monopoly of the Chinese merchants, is one of their distinguishing characteristics. It is that element which, in the generations before the treaties, enabled so large a commerce to be carried on with foreigners without anxiety, without friction, and almost without precaution. It has also led to the happiest personal relations between foreigners and the native traders.
When the business of the season was over contracts were made with the Hong Merchants for the next season. They consisted of teas of certain qualities and kinds, sometimes at fixed prices, sometimes at the prices which should be current at the time of the arrival of the teas. No other record of these transactions was ever made than by each party booking them, no written agreements were drawn up, nothing was sealed or attested. A wilful breach of contract never took place, and as regards quality and quantity the Hong Merchants fulfilled their part with scrupulous honesty and care. ("The Fankwae at Canton." Hunter, 1824.)
The Chinese merchant, moreover, has been always noted for what he himself graphically calls his large-heartedness, which is exemplified by liberality in all his dealings, tenacity as to all that is material, with comparative disregard of trifles, never letting a transaction fall through on account of punctilio, yielding to the prejudices of others wherever it can be done without substantial disadvantage, a 'sweet reasonableness,' if the phrase may be borrowed for such a purpose, which obviates disputation, and the manliness which does not repine at the consequences of an unfortunate contract. Judicial procedure being an abomination to respectable Chinese, their security in commercial dealings is based as much upon reason, good faith, and non-repudiation as that of Western nations is upon verbal finesse in the construction of contracts." Other writers have endorsed this appreciation, though in soberer language. Thus the Rev. A. H. Smith, for twenty-nine years a missionary in China, says: "If there are any spheres of activity for which the Chinese race appears to be by nature specially fitted, they may be comprehensively classified under the terms production and exchange. A Chinese knows how to make the most of materials which he has, and he knows how to carry the products of his industry to the places where he will be likely to receive the greatest return for his pains. He is ready to go on long journeys, submit to inconveniences and hardships of every kind for long periods together, and do it as a business for the sake of small rewards. He is a producer, and he is an instinctive and highly skilled trader. Yet, for all this, the Chinese do not place a high value upon trade as such. Attention has often been called to the instructive fact that, of the four classes into which they divide the inhabitants of the Central Empire, scholars are named first, farmers second, workmen third, and traders last. Chinese officials have always adopted the tone of lofty contempt for the trading classes whenever there was any provocation to do so. In the case of the foreigner, who came to the Chinese in the first instance simply and solely as a dealer in goods and as a medium of exchange, there was from the beginning a temptation to do this." Indeed, Chinese history shows that from the earliest times the tradesman was regarded, not as a useful and indispensable element of the body politic, but as a mischievous person who grew fat at his neighbour's expense and interfered to make life hard for the consumer. The founder of the Han dynasty interdicted the use of a silk garment or a carriage by merchants and taxed them heavily, with the definite object of rendering their calling unpopular, and in his era as well as subsequently no trader was eligible for official appointment. In those days, however, the military element ruled the situation, and, "as Mr. E. H. Parker well puts it, the chief subject for commercial speculation was grain for the armies, and the trader of the period seems to have been the same objectionable sort of person as the ubiquitous army-purveyor and commissary so detested by Napoleon during his Italian campaigns." It may be assumed that had militarism continued to be paramount in Chinese society as it was under the earlier dynasties, the merchant, remaining a despised individual, would have failed to develop the high qualities to which so many foreign observers have borne witness. Such, at all events, was the course that social evolution took in the neighbouring Empire of Japan. There exactly the same fourfold division of the people was adopted—gentleman, farmer, artisan, and trader—and exactly the same ideographs were employed in writing these terms. But although the idea originally informing the classification may have been, and probably was, similar in both countries, a double change occurred in China at some period of her history not definitely marked; the "gentleman," ceasing to be identified as a soldier, became a literatus, and the trader, ceasing to be regarded as a kind of general enemy, whose business was to extort undue gains from his fellow-beings, became a respectable, though not perhaps a highly respected, member of society. It would be most interesting to trace the beginnings and the progress of this revolution of ideas, and to discover how and when it came to pass that education inspired contempt for a military career; that military posts were abandoned to men lacking moral endowment for study, and that the dregs of society alone constituted a proper recruiting ground for professional fighters. History, however, offers little clue to these questions. In Japan no such change occurred. There the soldier retained his pride of place; scholarship ranked merely as a polite accomplishment; contempt for pecuniary gain in any shape headed the list of gentlemanlike characteristics, and the tradesman, himself producing nothing and living solely by raising prices for others, remained always a despised individual, nor ever developed a commercial conscience.
But although this special aptitude for commerce is predicated of the Chinese, they do not appear to have showed any spirit of tradal enterprise in very early times. The Phœnicians, Carthaginians, and Syrians were conspicuously ahead of them in that respect, and had learned to go far afield in search of markets long before the Chinese conceived any idea of travelling for the sake either of information or of gain. It is shown by ancient annals that these Western peoples carried on an active trade between Alexandria and the East some centuries before Christ, but whether that trade reached China is uncertain, and the interest attaching to the bare fact scarcely seems to justify the discussion it has provoked. What can be asserted with confidence, however, is that, prior to the Christian era—probably as early as the beginning of the second century B.C.—a commerce of appreciable magnitude existed between the Roman Empire and northern China, silk, iron, and furs being carried westward, while glassware, woven stuffs, embroideries, drugs, metals, asbestos, and gems were sent to China. Syria—or "Ta-ts'in," as the Chinese called it—was the origin of this commerce, and Parthia was the half-way house, the transport being entirely overland. A choice of two routes offered from Parthia, one passing northward of the Celestial Mountains, the other southward, and both converging at Turfan, whence the chief towns of northern China in Shansi and Shensi were reached by a single route through the mountains on the confines of the present Kansuh,—the Pass of Kia-yuh. China up to that time had been divided into two empires, a northern with its metropolis at Hsian, and a southern with its metropolis at Nanking. There is some reason—not quite conclusive, however—to believe that southern China also had tradal relations with the Roman Empire through Burma, but no oversea route had yet been opened, nor does it appear that the northern Chinese possessed any direct knowledge of the Occident beyond Parthia, or the southern Chinese any beyond the confines of Burma. At the close of the second century before the Christian era—by which time the whole Empire of China had passed under one sceptre—there was a considerable access of information, for in the north, Khotan, the Pamirs, and Kokand having been annexed, the Chinese learned the situations of Parthia, Mesopotamia, and even Syria, which widening of their horizon was shortly followed by acquaintance with the Greek dynasties of Bactria and Afghanistan. Practically at the same time (110–109 B. C.) the provinces of Szechuan and Yunnan having been overrun by the armies of northern China and the Empire having acquired a continuous seaboard from Canton to the Gulf of Chili, an attempt was made to reach India viâ Yunnan, but it does not seem to have succeeded. The earliest conclusive evidence of the use of that route is found in the annals of the year 166 a. d., when Marcus Aurelius sent a mission to China through Burma and Yunnan. His reason for seeking access in that direction was that the Parthians, being resolved to retain their monopoly of the overland trade viâ Turfan, refused to give passage to Syrian envoys, just as, sixty-eight years previously, they had refused passage westward to a Chinese agent. They imagined that China was practically inaccessible from the south, and that they might themselves occupy the remunerative position of entrepôt for all time. The supposition was correct in so far as the almost deterrent difficulties of the Burma route were concerned. But the Parthians omitted from their calculations the possibility of an oversea avenue to southern China, and thus it fell out, towards the close of the second century a. d., that ships from the west began to reach Canton, and commerce was partially deflected to the ocean path in the south from the trans-Asian routes in the north.
The deflection would probably have become complete had not the Empire soon fallen once more into a divided state, lasting nearly four centuries, during which the north and the south were cut off from intercommunication, and each transacted its foreign trade independently of the other. The southern dynasties maintained a brisk commerce with Ceylon, India, Indo-China, and the other Indian colonies, while the northern sent and received commodities viâ Parthia. As yet no restriction whatever was imposed, nor were any duties levied.
In the last quarter of the fifth century the Turks presented themselves on China's northern frontiers as buyers of silk and wadding in exchange for iron articles of their own manufacture, and tea being now added to China exports, her trade acquired new importance. It presented no novel features, however, until the seventh century, when Arab traders, pushing out the Indian colonies in Java, the Malay Peninsula, and Indo-China, opened factories in various places between Persia and the Far East as well as in Canton and other Chinese ports. Thus is presented the first instance of foreigners settling in China for commercial purposes. And now, too, for the first time (middle of seventh century) the records show that duties in the form of tithes were levied in kind upon imports of spices, camphor, and precious woods, an official being stationed at Canton as overseer of foreign trade. The Nestorian Christians of Syria appear also upon the scene about the same time, and were permitted to travel freely throughout China, a fact attested by a tablet—the celebrated Nestorian Stone—found at Hsian. The inscription upon this tablet (dated 781 a. d.) is in Chinese and Syriac characters. It alludes gratefully to the liberal atti-tude shown towards Christian travellers by the Chinese sovereigns (Tang dynasty, 618-907), and it mentions an imperial edict of 638 a. d. according toleration to the Christian religion. If anything further were needed to illustrate the demeanour of the Chinese towards foreign traders, travellers, and religious propagandists, it is furnished by the fact that at the close of the eighth century four thousand foreign families then living in Hsian, were allowed to settle permanently in China, their homeward route across Asia being barred by Thibetans who had occupied Turkestan. It is notable that shortly before this time the first conspicuous excess was committed by strangers in the Chinese realm when (758 a. d.) a party of Arabs and Persians made a filibustering attack upon Canton, pillaging and burning some warehouses in the city.
The reader may be reminded parenthetically that the topographical conditions existing along the trans-Asian routes to north China were very different two thousand years ago from what they are to-day. This fact has been vividly illustrated by investigations recently undertaken in Chinese Turkestan, which formerly lay on the commercial route between China and the West, and which was freely traversed by Grecian and Roman traders at least two centuries before the Christian era. Excavations now in progress tend to prove that a high state of culture existed among the people of that region, that the art influences of Greece and Rome were felt there, that Buddhism was the religion of the inhabitants, and that they derived their civilisation from India. But owing apparently to insufficient irrigation, the towns and villages were gradually buried under advancing sands, just as was the case in Egypt, and where gardens, avenues, and orchards once existed there is now only a waste.
It will be seen from what has been recorded above that during the early centuries of the Christian era the Chinese received foreigners hospitably, encouraged their trade, imposed no restrictions on the practice or propagandism of their religions, and, in short, evinced nothing of the conservative, exclusive proclivities for which they ultimately became remarkable. The records do indeed show that about the middle of the third century (a. d.) a rule was enacted prohibiting any stranger from residing in the country unless he brought tribute, but it appears that this veto had its origin in domestic disturbances, and that it ceased to be effective when the occasion which had suggested it no longer existed.
Another interesting fact may be gathered from the records, namely, that travel on the Asiatic continent was not attended with any serious dangers in the early eras. At the beginning of the fifth century (a. d.) a Buddhist monk (Fahhien), setting out from Asia, made his way from the northwest of China to the Indus, thence to the modern Peshawur and Kabul, thence down the Ganges valley to a place near Calcutta, where he took ship for Ceylon, Java, and finally Kiaochou—now a German naval base—in Shantung. Two centuries later, Hüanchwang, also a Buddhist pilgrim, made a similar journey, going and returning by land and spending no less than seventeen years en route. Other Buddhist devotees in the seventh and eighth centuries—sixty are recorded by name—made the tour to India, some by land and some by sea, and all in obedience to religious fervour which impelled them to study Buddhism at its source in India, just as Japanese priests in the same centuries crossed constantly to China, which they, in turn, regarded as the great fountain-head of the faith.
It has been stated above that in the seventh century Arab traders opened factories in Canton and other Chinese ports, and a record of their presence in Canton still exists in the form of a massive pagoda built in 751. Canton did not then give any promise of the greatness it subsequently attained. It was a small place, and the inhabitants of the region in which it stood were chiefly aborigines. The Arabs did not remain long without competitors. They found the field soon invaded by Persians, who, coming oversea, appear to have excelled the Arabs in tradal energy, and to have considerably extended the area of commercial operations with China. There can be no doubt that during the period (618-907) of the Tang dynasty's vigorous sway both Arabs and Persians carried on a brisk trade. Customs inspectorates were established at Ningpo, Han-chou (Marco Polo’s “Kinsay"), Tsuan-chou (Polo’s “Zaitun"), and Kanpu (“Canfu"). This last-named place was only twenty-five miles from Han-chou, of which city it served as the port, the bore in the river preventing ships from lying off Han-chou itself. The importance of the trade carried on at Kanpu may be inferred from an account of its capture and sack in 877, compiled by the Arab traveller Abu Zaid. He declares that on that occasion there were among the people destroyed a hundred and twenty thousand Mohammedans, Jews, Christians, Magians, and Parsees, all engaged in commerce. Another Arab traveller, Ibn Wahab, gives details which show that any one, whether native or foreign, could journey in China in the time of the Tang dynasty, the only proviso being that he must carry two passports, one containing all personal details of himself and his retinue, the other setting forth the nature and quantity of the goods and money in his possession. The object of these passports was, not to restrict the goings and comings of strangers, but "to prevent danger to travellers in their money or goods; for should one suffer loss or die, everything about him is immediately known and he himself or his heirs after his death receive whatever is his.” There is also evidence that a system of transit dues, or something very similar, existed, and, in fact, that all matters relating to foreign trade were carefully regulated. Further, it is established that the route through Yunnan was utilised in that era by Persians, Arabs, and other nations, who sent merchants disguised as ambassadors carrying tribute to the Chinese Emperor, and received from him gifts three or four times the value of the tribute, such munificence being required by His Majesty's dignity. Subsequently the Government adopted measures to verify the authenticity of so-called "tribute-bearers," and it certainly cannot be blamed for protecting itself against manœuvres of the above character. Towards the end of the ninth century, when the Empire lapsed into a state of anarchy preceding the fall of the Tang rulers, the various factories established by foreign traders had to be closed, with the exception of Canton; and throughout the greater part of the tenth century—that is to say, the period separating the fall of the Tang dynasty and the rise of the Sung—merchants from oversea encountered many obstacles owing to the unsettled state of the coast. From the twelfth century, however, they were enabled to prosecute their calling in complete tranquillity, the Government not only extending to them general protection, but also granting special facilities by abolishing all the internal taxing stations. The state of affairs at the beginning of the thirteenth century is thus described by Parker: "The Chinese had acquired a knowledge of the African coast down to Zanzibar, the Red Sea, and even (to a limited hearsay extent) of Egypt and Sicily. The great centre of Arab trade in the Far East was Sarbaza, or the modern Palembang in Sumatra, between which place and the coasts of Fuh-kien Chinese junks plied regularly with the two monsoons, carrying their cargoes of porcelain, silk, camphor, rhubarb, iron, sugar, and precious metals to barter at Palembang for scents, gems, ivory, coral, fine swords, prints, textile fabrics, and other objects from Syria, Arabia, and India. Cochin China joined in this trade as a half-way house, but levied the heavy charge of twenty per cent upon all imports. It is especially stated that there was no foreign trade with the northern part of the peninsula, i. e., what we now call Tonquin." Japan and Riukiu Islands (Loochoo) were also within the circuit of China's oversea commerce, and caravans continued to reach the northern regions of the Empire by the overland routes already described, though during the contests between the Chinese and the Tartars in the twelfth century the former ceased to reap the advantages of this trans-Asian commerce.
These details of China's foreign commerce during the early centuries suffice to indicate her general attitude towards aliens. It is plain that she showed no manner of prejudice against trade with the outer world, whether the traders came oversea or overland. But there would be error in assuming that the traders always received liberal treatment at the hands of Chinese local officials. The celebrated Arab traveller of the ninth century, Ibn Wahab, gives a very unfavourable account of the state of affairs at Kanpu. He describes many unjust dealings with the merchants who traded thither, which had gathered the force of a precedent, and he says "that there was no grievance, no treatment so bad but they exercised it upon the foreigners and the masters of the ships." It is stated by him that in consequence of these official abuses and extortions the port had to be finally forsaken, and the "merchants returned in crowds to Siraz and Oman;" but that is evidently an exaggeration, since, as has been shown above, there were at least 120,000 foreign traders at Kanpu in 877. At all events, Ibn Wahab's statement may be accepted as evidence that Chinese local officialdom in the ninth century had already developed the greedy unscrupulous habits now so familiar.
The treatment extended to foreign religions by the Chinese in early eras merits even more careful attention than their attitude towards foreign trade, for there are cogent reasons to think that the international complications which have already involved China in trouble of extreme gravity and which now threaten to disintegrate her empire, must be attributed in great part to unwise methods of Christian propagandism.
The first religion that reached China from
abroad was Judaism. According to their own 
A Canal in Ningpo.
Jews arrived in the Middle Kingdom as early as two hundred years before Christ, that is to say, during the sway of the Han dynasty, and the historical conclusion is that they carried the Pentateuch thither shortly after the Babylonish captivity. They travelled doubtless by the trans-Asian route from Parthia, and are supposed to have established a settlement in Honan about the year A.D. 72. The narratives of Marco Polo, of Ibn Batuta, and of others show that there were Jews[2] in Peking in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but they seem to have lived chiefly in Kaifêng, the capital of Honan, where they erected a synagogue in 1183 A.D.. They evidently constituted an appreciable element of the population in the fourteenth century, for the last Mongol ruler of China thought it worth while to solicit their aid together with that of his Mohammedan subjects when the overthrow of his dynasty by the Ming appeared imminent. Had there been an opportunity for either sect to accept the invitation, some interesting developments might have been witnessed. But the children of Zion never made their presence felt in the Middle Kingdom either by religious propagandism, by military prowess, or by a display of the financial qualities[3] that have distinguished them in the Occident since mediæval times. China proved to be the only country in the world where, though not persecuted in any way, they were unable to preserve their individuality. Pere Gozani, visiting Kai-fêng in 1704, found a tolerably flourishing colony with a temple and a synagogue. The former, the “Pure and True Temple," is described as a large establishment consisting of four separate courts and various buildings enclosed for residence, worship, and work. The synagogue is said to have measured sixty feet by forty, its portico having a double row of four columns before it, while in the centre stood the throne of Moses, a magnificent dais with an embroidered cushion, on which the book of the law was placed at reading time. But in 1866, when the Rev. W. A. P. Martin visited Kaifêng, he found no remains of this synagogue or temple, except a solitary stone with an inscription recording the erection of the synagogue in 1183%; while of the once numerous colony only three to four hundred remained, their sacred tongue fallen into disuse, their traditions no longer transmitted, their worship neglected, their condition so impoverished that they had been obliged to demolish and sell their holy buildings, and their complete dispersion imminent. But nothing of all this could be ascribed to intolerance on the part of the Chinese. The Jews had lived for eighteen or nineteen hundred years in the midst of the Chinese, practising their religion freely and not discriminated against in any injurious manner by either the central or the local authorities. Bishop Schereschewsky, of Shanghai, himself a Jew, paid a visit to Kaifêng in recent years, and his inquiries showed that one or two of the Jews had actually become Buddhist priests, that all were ignorant of their own rites and ceremonies, and that they had never translated their sacred books into Chinese, from which it is plain that their efforts to win converts must always have been perfunctory.
Judaism is here mentioned as the earliest alien faith brought under the notice of the Chinese people, but there is some reason to suppose that Buddhism preceded it. The Indian faith, according to some historians, was carried to China in the third century before Christ by priests who showed so much zeal in preaching their creed that they were seized and thrown into jail, whence the legends say that they escaped by the aid of an angel who appeared in the middle of the night and opened their prison doors,—an incident sometimes quoted as constituting one of the many points of resemblance between the records of the two great creeds, that of the Nepaulese and that of the Nazarene. It would seem, therefore, that in those early times the Chinese were not disposed to brook any active invasion by an alien faith, and that their display of repugnance was sufficiently strong to deter any second attempt on the part of the Buddhists. For they are not again heard of in Chinese history until 65 A.D. (61 according to some authorities), when an Emperor (Ming Ti) sent to India for the sacred books and for authorised teachers. Concerning this marked departure from the intolerance of the preceding three centuries two explanations are offered. One is that the Emperor having seen in a dream the image of a foreign god, his thoughts turned naturally to India, where the religion of Siddartha could then count its disciples by tens of millions. The other is that Ming's action was prompted by belief in a saying attributed to Confucius: "The people of the West have sages." But Confucius died more than five hundred years before this invitation to the disciples of Buddha, and it has not been explained why a dictum of the great teacher, disregarded through all that long interval, should have suddenly inspired active obedience. The source of the Chinese Emperor's momentous impulse remains, therefore, uncertain.
Under imperial patronage the Indian creed spread quickly among all classes of the Chinese people, and became, before the middle of the fourth century, the chief religion of the nation. Its own liberality must have helped Buddhism to disarm opposition, for its propagandists made no attempt to interfere with the State religion which formed the basis of the country's polity. In China, as at a later era in Japan also, they followed eclectic rather than exclusive lines, and they were further assisted by the fact that Confucianism, the ethical creed permeating China at the time of Buddhism's advent, did not concern itself about the supernatural, and thus presented no obstacle to the essential tenets of the imported faith. On the whole the welcome given by the Chinese to Buddhism at its second advent cannot be cited with strict propriety as evidence of a tolerant disposition towards alien faiths, for the Indian religion came among them by invitation of their sovereign and remained among them under his protection.
Islamism (called by the Chinese Hwei-hwei-chiao) first arrived in China in 628 A.D. (the year of the Mission), when Wahb-Abi-Kabcha, a maternal uncle of Mohammed, was despatched to the court of the great Tang dynasty, a bearer of presents and an expounder of the Arabian creed. Long before that time, as shown above, tradal routes had been established between China and the Indian and Arabian colonies. Wahb-Abi-Kabcha reached Canton by sea, and proceeded thence overland to the capital, which was then at Hsiang in Shensi, a long and arduous journey. He appears to have been hospitably received, and that no obstacles were placed in the way of his propagandism may be confidently inferred from the fact that a mosque was soon afterwards built in Canton, where it still stands. It is called the "Plain Pagoda," and its height is estimated at 165 cubits. Evidently such a monument could not have been erected except in the presence of official tolerance. It would seem, however, that trade occupied the attention of the early Mohammedan settlers rather than religious propagandism; that while they observed the tenets and practised the rites of their faith in China, they did not undertake any strenuous campaign against either Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, or the State creed, and that they constituted a floating rather than a fixed element of the population, coming and going between China and the West by the oversea or the overland routes. According to Giles, the true stock of the present Chinese Mohammedans was a small army of four thousand Arabian soldiers, who, being sent by the Khaleef Abu Giafar in 755 to aid in putting down a rebellion, were subsequently permitted to settle in China, where they married native wives. The numbers of this colony received large accessions in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries during the conquests of Genghis, and ultimately the Mohammedans formed an appreciable element of the population, having their own mosques and schools, and observing the rites of their religion, but winning few converts except among the aboriginal tribes, as the Lolos and the Mantsu. Their failure as propagandists is doubtless due to two causes, first, that, according to the inflexible rule of their creed, the Koran might not be translated into Chinese or any other foreign language; secondly and chiefly, that their denunciations of idolatry were as unpalatable to ancestor-worshipping Chinese as were their interdicts against pork and wine. They were never prevented, however, from practising their faith so long as they obeyed the laws of the land, and the numerous mosques that exist throughout China prove what a large measure of liberty these professors of a strange creed enjoyed. One feature of the mosques is noticeable, however: though distinguished by large arches and by Arabic inscriptions, they are generally constructed and arranged so as to bear some resemblance to Buddhist temples, and they have tablets carrying the customary ascription of reverence to the Emperor of China,—facts suggesting that their builders were not entirely free from a sense of the inexpediency of differentiating the evidences of their religion too conspicuously from those of the popular creed. It has been calculated that in the regions north of the Yangtse the followers of Islam aggregate as many as ten millions, and that eighty thousand are to be found in one of the towns of Szchuan. On the other hand, just as it has been shown above that although the Central Government did not in any way interdict or obstruct the tradal operations of foreigners in early times, the local officials sometimes subjected them to extortion and maltreatment of a grievous and even unendurable nature, so it appears that while as a matter of State policy, full tolerance was extended to the Mohammedan creed, its disciples frequently found themselves the victims of such unjust discrimination at the hand of local officialdom that they were driven to seek redress in rebellion. That, however, did not occur until the nineteenth century. There is no evidence that, prior to the time of the Great Manchu Emperor Chienlung (1736—1796), Mohammedanism presented any deterrent aspect to the Chinese. That renowned ruler, whose conquests carried his banners to the Pamirs and the Himalayas, did indeed conceive a strong dread of the potentialities of Islamic fanaticism reinforced by disaffection on the part of the aboriginal tribes among whom the faith had many adherents. He is said to have entertained at one time the terrible project of eliminating this source of danger in Shensi and Kansuh by killing every Mussulman found there, but whether he really contemplated an act so foreign to the general character of his procedure is doubtful. The broad fact is that the Central Government of China has never persecuted Mohammedans or discriminated against them. They are allowed to present themselves at the examinations for civil or military appointments, and the successful candidates obtain office as readily as their Chinese competitors.
Concerning the exact time when Christianity became known to the Chinese there is no historical evidence. Some affirm that St. Thomas himself was the apostle; others that later, though still early, propagandists carried the faith thither. What seems certain is that very soon, if not immediately, after the condemnation of Nestorius in Constantinople for the heresy of denying that Mary was the mother of God, some of his disPage:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/181 Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/182 Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/183 Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/184 Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/185 Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/186 Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/187 Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/188 Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/189 Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/190 Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/191 Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/192
- ↑ See Appendix, note 17.
Note 17.—Hong means a "row" or "series." It alludes to the fact that a Chinese warehouse consists of a succession of rooms. Hence, as the original foreign factories at Canton were built in that style, the Chinese gave to each block the name hong, which ultimately came to be applied to mercantile houses of every kind.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 18.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 19.
Note 18.—They were known in China as T'iao-chin-chiao, or the "sect of persons that extract the sinew."
Note 19.—This is another evidence of the fact that the Jews in Europe were driven to adopt the trade of money-lenders, not of deliberate choice, but because all other means of earning a livelihood were denied to them.