G92 m a n k i n d ’s c h r o n o l o g y .
The reveries of Fortia D’Urban (505) are now superannuated ; the, monstrous extravaganzas
of a Paravey are preserved as ceaseless sources of merriment. (506) To refute
either, seriously, would be sheer waste of time. The inundations of the river Hoang-ho,
overcome by the engineer Yu, (507) lie parallel with the Egyptian Xllth dynasty; when,
in the 23d century b. c., similar causes induced smaller constructions along the Nubian
Nile&(508) and a reader of Pauthier will as soon associate those local dikings, buttresses,
dams, and sluices, in China or Egypt, with Usher’s universal Flood, as by anybody else the
Noachian deluge might be proposed in explanation of the levees along our Louisianian
Mississippi. It would be an equal outlay of labor to discuss Hales’s views upon Chinese
subjects ; (509) after his Hebraical knowledge has been so repeatedly shaken throughout
these pages: nor need we perplex the reader with other works whose authors, like ourselves,
are not Sinologists ; but who, in this respect unlike ourselves, do not seek for information
at its only clear fountains.
It will be now plain that “ Types of Mankind” recognizes for Chinese history none but
Chinese historians. The chances of error lie uniquely in the channels through which its
authors receive their accounts: and these, to our view, are completely guarded against
when we accept ,Rémusat and Pauthier, as, above all Europeans at this day, qualified to
be their interpreters. Furthermore, every relevant passage from the Jesuit missionaries
is embraced within Pauthier’s volumes.
Under the caption of Mongolian Origin and ideographic writings, we have displayed the
argumentative process through which it becomes certain, that Europe knew naught about
China, nor China aught about Europe, until the end of the 1st century after C. : but modern
acquaintance with Cathay dates from the Venetian Marco Polo, who resided in.China about
a . d . 1275; followed by the first Jesuit missionary, Father Michæl Rogerius, who
penetrated thither about a . d . 1581 ; and the second, Father Matthseus Riccius, in 1601.
From that time, during more than a century, many accomplished Europeans è Societate Jesu
flocked into the Celestial Empire; and to their vast labors are we indebted for complete
reports upon China, derived by them from the highest scholastic and official sources of the
realm f l which narratives, now collated by Sinologists in Europe with the immensp literary
treasures accessible, in Chinese, to students at Paris and Rome, prove to have been conscientiously
executed. No Europeans, before or since, have possessed such opportunities
for acquiring thorough knowledge of everything Chinese as these lowly preachers of the
Gospel. Indeed, the official report made, in 1692, by the “ President of the Supreme Court
Of Rites” to the Emperor Khang-hi, and by him approved, alone suffices to show their
powerful claims upon Mantchou-Tartar affections : —
“ We have'found that these Europeans have traversed vast seas, and have come from the
extremities of the earth. . . . They have at present the supervision of astronomy and of
the board of mathematics. They have applied themselves with great pains to making warlike
machines, and to casting cannon; of which use has been made in the last civil troubles
[that is, the missionary ordnance had been found effective in quelling Chinese .revolts
against the Tartar dynasty]. . When sent to Nip-chou with our ambassadors [the reverend
Fathers Pereyra and Gerbillon, I Soc. Jesu,'] to treat about peace with the Muscovites, they
caused those negotiations to succeed: in short, they have rendered great services to the
[.Mantchouj empire. . . . The doctrine which they teach is not bad, nor capable of seducing
the [Chinese] people, or of causing any troubles. It is permitted to every body to go into
the temples of the Lamas, of the Ho-chang, of the Tao-ssè ; and it is forbidden to go into
the churches of these Europeans, who do nothing contrary to the laws : this does not seem
reasonable.” (510)
The emperor himself had been previously instructed by the scientific Father Yerbiest,
“ chief of the bureau of astronomers ” ; whose evangelical virtues comprised gnomonics,
(505) Histoire Antédiluvienne de la Chine.
(506) Documents sur le Déluge de Noè: Paris, 1838.
(507) P a u t h ie r : Chine; pp. 12-4; and his Choùrhing; pp. 49-56.
(508) L e p s iu s : Nachricht; p. I l :,-r Briefe aus Ægypten; pp. 259, 260: — D e R o u g é : Phénom. Célestes; Rev.
Archéol., Feb. 1853.
(509) Analysis: i. pp. 199-203.
(510) Chine: pp. 435, 440, 445-449.
geometry, land-surveying, and music. The reverend Fathers Bouvet, Regis, Jartoux, Fri-
delli, Cardoso, de Tartre, de Mama, and Bonjour, at government expense, made official
maps of the different provinces of China, after European methods ; and, at the same time
that such labors familiarized the whole of these Propagandic missionaries with Chinese
literature, Fathers Amiot, Gaubil, and Du Halde, devoted their leisure more especially to
minute study of Chinese archmology. In one word, the admiration avowed by the Jesuits
for Chinese civilization on the one hand, and the influence which Chinese philosophy possessed
over their intellects on the. other, had led to such a fusion at Pe-kin, during the 17th
century, that one is at a loss to decide whether the Chinese were becoming converts to spiritual
Christianity, or whether the disciples of Loyola were adopting the materialistic “ doctrine
of the Lettered.” .
Unhappily for our desires to solve this curious problem, certain puritanic Dominicans
arrived from Rome ; and, Pandora-like, let loose fanatic ills heretofore preserved hermetically.
It was they who started that everlasting question whether the Chinese word cliang-ti
be a synonyme for “ God ” or the “ sky.” Pig-tailed converts to Christianity à la Jésuite
were incontinently bambooed by hôg-tails à la Dominicain ,* for heretical notions upon an
equivocal point by aliens indicated for Mongol salvatory “ credo.” Khoung-tseii’s “ universal
charity” being interrupted by swinish brawls at which the writersWÎeoiticus(511)
would have shuddered, policemen duly reported their real causes to mandarin magistracy :
which reports, in official course, reached a new embodiment of the Sun upon earth, Young-
tching. This unsophisticated Tartar at once relieved himself," and his successors for more
than a century, of these foreign theologers, by shipment of a live cargo, including missionaries
Jesuit and Dominican, consigned to Macao under judiciary “ bill of lading,” about
the years A. d . 1721V25.
It is to the Jesuits, nevertheless, that impartial science looks back, gratefully, for throwing
the portals of Chinese history widely open to European Sinology : and it is especially
to the late Rémusat, Klaproth, and Ed. Biot, as to MM. Stanislas Julien and Pauthier, thaT
our generation owes the reappearance of Chinese studies on the continent, since the demise
of the famed historian of the Suns, Deguignes. At Paris, the Chinese department of the
Bibliothèque Impériale comprehends quantities stupendous of that country’s literature.
Every element for our purposes being in consequence accessible, we proceed, Pauthier’s
works in Mind, to sketch 1st, — the mode through which archæologists in China have definitely
tabulated, in precise stratification's, the relative order of national events ; and 2d,—
to present a chronological table of Chinese dynasties, from such tabulations accruing.
It is as certain as any other fact in history (512) that about 1000 years b. c., parallel with
the reign of Solomon, books existed in China with such titles as these : — “ Laws of the^
administration of ancient kings;” and that recurrence was common to “ ancient documents;”
It. is also certain that arts and sciences continued to prosper down to the year
484 e .g ., (513) when Confucius compiled the’ Ohou-king, sacred book of .the Chinese, from
anterior documents. Literature was immensely diffused among the “ Lettered ” in China •
when, b . o. 213, Chi-hoang-ti burned all the boo.ks which torture could extort; together
with multitudes of their readers ; (514) because the latter quoted the former- against his
imperial innovations. Nevertheless, this splendid miscreant served practical objects, not
altogether indefensible, when hp relieved the empire of its “ old-fogiedom;” to judge by
the withering oration of his prime-minister, Li-sse : —
“ Prejudiced in favor of antiquity, of which they admire even the-stupidities, they are
full of disdain for every thing which is,not exactly chalked after models that time has
nearly effaced from the memory of man. Incessantly they have in their mouths, or at
the tips of their pencils, the three, Ilo-ang [the Chinese august triad], and thefive Ti [the '
Chinese pentateuch].”
Nearly 2000 years previously, disputes among religious sects in China had'risen to such
(511) XI. 7.
(512) Chine ; pp. 59,194, 200.
(513) Chou-Jcing, Préface du Père GauM; Pauthier’s “ Liv. Sac. de l ’Orient,” Paris, 1843; pp. 1, 2.
(514) Chine; pp. 222-228.