Travels in China, Sir John Barrow [phonics readers txt] 📗

of the civilized nations of India, whose numbers might have made it prudent in the former to direct their arms constantly towards the west rather than to the east.

It has been an opinion pretty generally adopted, that the people known to the ancients by the name of Seres were the same as the Chinese, partly on account of their eastern situation, and partly because the principal silk manufactures were supposed to be brought from thence, which gave the Romans occasion name the country Sericum. The Romans, however, received the trifling quantity of silk made use of by them from Persia, and not from China, nor from the country of the Seres. Nor is it probable, that the latter should be the Chinese, who are said to have sent an embassy to Augustus, in order to court the friendship of the Romans, it being so very contrary to their fundamental laws, which not only prohibit any intercourse with strangers, but allow not any of the natives to leave the country. The fact, indeed, of this embassy rests solely upon the authority of Lucius A. Florus, who wrote his history, if it may so be called, nearly a century after the death of Augustus: and, as none of the historians contemporary with that Emperor, take any notice of such an event, it is more than probable that no such embassy was sent to Rome[40].

The first people that we know to have travelled into China was a colony of Jews who, according to the records kept by their descendants, and which I understood from some of the missionaries are corroborated as to the time by Chinese history, first settled there shortly after the expedition of Alexander had opened a communication with India. Nor is it at all improbable that this adventurous and industrious people were the first to carry with them, into their new country, the silk worm and the mode of rearing it, either from Persia, or some of the neighbouring countries. The Emperor Kaung-shee, in his observations on natural history, takes notice that the Chinese are greatly mistaken when they say that silk was an exclusive product of China, for that the upper regions of India have a native worm of a larger growth, and which spins a stronger silk than any in China. Although indeed ancient authors are silent as to the article of silk, there are grounds for supposing it was not unknown in Tangut and Kitai. Several expressions in the Bible warrant the opinion that silk was used in the time of Solomon, and the vestes perlucidæ ac fluidæ Medis of Justin seem to convey a description of silken robes. This mode of the first introduction of silk into China is offered as mere conjecture, for which I have no other authority in support of, than what is here mentioned, with the circumstance of the Jews being settled chiefly in the silk provinces, and of their being at this time in considerable numbers near Hang-tchoo-foo, where they carry on the principal trade in this article, and have acquired the reputation of fabricating the best stuffs of this material that are made in China; nor do I know in what other way they could recommend themselves to the Chinese, so far as to have obtained the protection of this jealous government, and to be allowed to intermarry with the women of the country. It is true they have practised no underhand attempts to seduce the natives from their paternal religion, and to persuade them to embrace their own; and although they are not very famous for the cultivation of the sciences, yet they might have rendered themselves extremely useful in suggesting improvements in many of the arts and manufactures. Many of them, indeed, forsake the religion of their forefathers, and arrive at high employments in the state. Few among them, I understand, except the Rabbis, have any knowledge of the Hebrew language, and they have long been so intermixed with the Chinese, that the priests at the present day are said to find some difficulty in keeping up their congregations. So different are the effects produced by suffering, instead of persecuting, religious opinions.

One of the missionaries has given an account of his visit to a synagogue of Jews in China. He found the priests most rigorously attached to their old law: nor had they the least knowledge of any other Jesus having appeared in the world, except the son of Sirach, of whom, he says, their history makes mention. If this be really the fact, their ancestors could not have been any part of the ten tribes that were carried into captivity, but may rather be supposed to have been among the followers of Alexander's army, which agrees with their own account of the time they first settled in China. They possessed a copy of the Pentateuch and some other fragments of the Sacred Writings, which they had brought along with them from the westward, but the missionary's information is very imperfect, as he was ignorant of the Hebrew language[41].

Although a very great similarity is observable between many of the ancient Jewish rites and ceremonies and those in use among the Chinese, yet there seems to be no reason for supposing that the latter received any part of their religion from the ancestors of those Jews that are still in the country. This, however, is not the case with regard to the priests of Budha, who, according to the Chinese records, came by the invitation of one of their Emperors from some part of India, near Thibet, about the sixtieth year of the Christian era. These priests succeeded so well in introducing the worship of Budha, that it continues to this day to be one of the popular religions of the country; and that no traces of the original name should remain is the less surprising, as they could not possibly pronounce either the B or the D; beside, they make it an invariable rule, as I have already observed, not to adopt any foreign names.

In some part of the seventh century, a few Christians of the Nestorian sect passed from India into China where, for a time, they were tolerated by the government. But, having most probably presumed upon its indulgence, and endeavoured to seduce the people from the established religions of the country, they were exposed to dreadful persecutions, and were at length entirely extirpated, after numberless instances of their suffering martyrdom for the opinions they had undertaken to propagate to the "utmost corners of the earth." When Gengis-Khan invaded China, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, a number of Christians of the Greek church followed his army into this country; and they met with such great encouragement from the Tartars, that when Kublai-Khan succeeded to the government and built the city of Pekin, he gave them a grant of ground within the walls of the city for the purpose of building a church, in order to retain in the empire men of so much learning and of abilities so much superior to those of the Chinese; who, however, on their part, have affected, in their history, to consider the Monguls as the greatest barbarians, for turning their horses into the apartments of the palaces, while they themselves were contented to pitch their tents in the courts or quadrangular spaces surrounded by the buildings. Father Le Compte, in his memoirs of China, says, but I know not on what authority, that at the taking of the city of Nankin the Tartars put all the Chinese women in sacks, without regard to age or rank, and sold them to the highest bidder; and that such as, in thus "buying the pig in the poke," happened to purchase an old, ugly, or deformed bargain, made no ceremony in throwing it into the river. If Father Le Compte was not the inventor of this, among many other of his pleasant stories, it certainly tells as little in favour of the Chinese, who must have been the purchasers, as of the Tartars; but we will charitably suppose the thing never happened. It seems, however, that the overthrow of the Chinese empire by the Mongul Tartars, was an event not to be regretted by the nation at large. By means of the learned and scientific men, who accompanied the expedition from Balk and Samarcand, astronomy was improved, their calendar was corrected, instruments for making celestial observations were introduced, and the direct communication between the two extremities of the empire was opened, by converting the streams of rivers into an artificial bed, forming an inland navigation, not to be paralleled in any other part of the world.

It was about this period when the celebrated Venetian traveller Marco Polo visited the Tartar Khan, then sitting on the throne of China; and who, on his return, gave the first accounts of this extraordinary empire; which appeared indeed so wonderful that they were generally considered as his own inventions. His relations of the magnificent and splendid palaces of the Emperor, of his immense wealth, of the extent of his empire, and the vast multitudes of people, were held to be so many fabrications; and as, in speaking of these subjects, he seldom made use of a lower term than millions, his countrymen bestowed upon him the epithet of Signor Marco Millione—Mr. Mark Million. They had no hesitation, however, in giving credit to the only incredible part of his narrative, where he relates a few miracles that were performed, in the course of his journey through Persia, by some Nestorean Christians. Young Marco is said to have accompanied three missionaries of the Dominican order, sent from Venice to the capital of China, at the express desire of Kublai-Khan; but, whether they met with little encouragement in the object of their mission, on account of being preceded by the Christians of the Greek church, or their zeal at that time was less ardent than in later days, is not stated; but it seems they did not remain long in the East, returning very soon to their native country much enriched by their travels.

During the continuance of the Tartar government, which was not quite a century, great numbers of Mahomedans likewise found their way from Arabia to China. These people had long, indeed, been in the habit of carrying on a commercial intercourse with the Chinese; which, however, as at the present day, extended no further than the sea-ports on the southern coast. They now found no difficulty in getting access to the capital, where they rendered themselves particularly useful in adjusting the chronology of the nation, and making the necessary calculations for the yearly calendar. Having acquired the language and adopted the dress and manners of the people, by degrees they turned their thoughts to the extending of their religious principles, and bringing the whole country to embrace the doctrine of their great prophet. For this end, they bought and educated at their own expence such children of poor people as were likely to be exposed in times of famine; and they employed persons to pick up, in the streets of the capital, any infants that should be thrown out in the course of the night, and who were not too much weakened or otherwise injured to be recovered.

About the middle of the sixteenth century, several Roman Catholic missionaries, of the order of Jesus, penetrated into the East; and the indefatigable zeal of one of these, Francis Xavier, carried him as far as San-Shian, a small island on the coast of China, where he died in the year 1552, in consequence of the uncommon fatigues he had undergone. His brother missionaries have calculated that he travelled, on foot, not less than one hundred thousand English miles, a great part of which was over