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  A HISTORY OF
  CHINESE LITERATURE

  BY

  HERBERT A. GILES, M. A., LL. D. (ABERD.)

  PROFESSOR OF CHINESE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
  AND LATE H. B. M. CONSUL AT NINGPO

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK AND LONDON
  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
  1927




  COPYRIGHT, 1901,
  BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.


  Printed in the United States of America




PREFACE


This is the first attempt made in any language, including Chinese, to
produce a history of Chinese literature.

Native scholars, with their endless critiques and appreciations of
individual works, do not seem ever to have contemplated anything of the
kind, realising, no doubt, the utter hopelessness, from a Chinese point
of view, of achieving even comparative success in a general historical
survey of the subject. The voluminous character of a literature which
was already in existence some six centuries before the Christian era,
and has run on uninterruptedly until the present date, may well have
given pause to writers aiming at completeness. The foreign student,
however, is on a totally different footing. It may be said without
offence that a work which would be inadequate to the requirements of
a native public, may properly be submitted to English readers as an
introduction into the great field which lies beyond.

Acting upon the suggestion of Mr. Gosse, to whom I am otherwise
indebted for many valuable hints, I have devoted a large portion of
this book to translation, thus enabling the Chinese author, so far as
translation will allow, to speak for himself. I have also added, here
and there, remarks by native critics, that the reader may be able to
form an idea of the point of view from which the Chinese judge their
own productions.

It only remains to be stated that the translations, with the exception
of a few passages from Legge's "Chinese Classics," in each case duly
acknowledged, are my own.

  HERBERT A. GILES.

  CAMBRIDGE.




CONTENTS


  _BOOK THE FIRST--THE FEUDAL PERIOD_ (B.C. 600-200)

  CHAP.                                                              PAGE

  I. LEGENDARY AGES--EARLY CHINESE CIVILISATION--ORIGIN OF WRITING      3
  II. CONFUCIUS--THE FIVE CLASSICS                                      7
  III. THE FOUR BOOKS--MENCIUS                                         32
  IV. MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS                                            43
  V. POETRY--INSCRIPTIONS                                              50
  VI. TAOISM--THE "TAO-TE-CHING"                                       56

  _BOOK THE SECOND--THE HAN DYNASTY_
  (B.C. 200-A.D. 200)

  I. THE "FIRST EMPEROR"--THE BURNING OF THE BOOKS--MISCELLANEOUS
        WRITERS                                                        77
  II. POETRY                                                           97
  III. HISTORY--LEXICOGRAPHY                                          102
  IV. BUDDHISM                                                        110

  _BOOK THE THIRD--MINOR DYNASTIES_ (A.D. 200-600)

  I. POETRY--MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE                                 119
  II. CLASSICAL SCHOLARSHIP                                           137

  _BOOK THE FOURTH--THE T'ANG DYNASTY_ (A.D. 600-900)

  I. POETRY                                                           143
  II. CLASSICAL AND GENERAL LITERATURE                                189

  _BOOK THE FIFTH--THE SUNG DYNASTY_ (A.D. 900-1200)

  I. THE INVENTION OF BLOCK-PRINTING                                  209
  II. HISTORY--CLASSICAL AND GENERAL LITERATURE                       212
  III. POETRY                                                         232
  IV. DICTIONARIES--ENCYCLOPAEDIAS--MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE              238

  _BOOK THE SIXTH--THE MONGOL DYNASTY_
  (A.D. 1200-1368)

  I. MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE--POETRY                                 247
  II. THE DRAMA                                                       256
  III. THE NOVEL                                                      276

  _BOOK THE SEVENTH--THE MING DYNASTY_
  (A.D. 1368-1644)

  I. MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE--MATERIA MEDICA--ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF
        AGRICULTURE                                                   291
  II. NOVELS AND PLAYS                                                309
  III. POETRY                                                         329


  _BOOK THE EIGHTH--THE MANCHU DYNASTY_
  (A.D. 1644-1900)

  I. THE "LIAO CHAI"--THE "HUNG LOU MENG"                             337
  II. THE EMPERORS K'ANG HSI AND CH'IEN LUNG                          385
  III. CLASSICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE--POETRY                 391
  IV. WALL LITERATURE--JOURNALISM--WIT AND HUMOUR--PROVERBS AND
        MAXIMS                                                        425


  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE                                                441

  INDEX                                                               443




BOOK THE FIRST

_THE FEUDAL PERIOD_ (B.C. 600-200)




CHAPTER I

LEGENDARY AGES--EARLY CHINESE CIVILISATION--ORIGIN OF WRITING


The date of the beginning of all things has been nicely calculated by
Chinese chronologers. There was first of all a period when Nothing
existed, though some enthusiasts have attempted to deal with a period
antecedent even to that. Gradually Nothing took upon itself the form
and limitations of Unity, represented by a point at the centre of
a circle. Thus there was a Great Monad, a First Cause, an Aura, a
Zeitgeist, or whatever one may please to call it.

After countless ages, spent apparently in doing nothing, this Monad
split into Two Principles, one active, the other passive; one
positive, the other negative; light and darkness; male and female. The
interaction of these Two Principles resulted in the production of all
things, as we see them in the universe around us, 2,269,381 years ago.
Such is the cosmogony of the Chinese in a nutshell.

The more sober Chinese historians, however, are content to begin with a
sufficiently mythical emperor, who reigned only 2800 years before the
Christian era. The practice of agriculture, the invention of wheeled
vehicles, and the simpler arts of early civilisation are generally
referred to this period; but to the dispassionate European student it
is a period of myth and legend: in fact, we know very little about
it. Neither do we know much, in the historical sense, of the numerous
rulers whose names and dates appear in the chronology of the succeeding
two thousand years. It is not indeed until we reach the eighth century
B.C. that anything like history can be said to begin.

For reasons which will presently be made plain, the sixth century
B.C. is a convenient starting-point for the student of Chinese
literature.

[Sidenote: FEUDALISM]

China was then confined to a comparatively small area, lying for the
most part between the Yellow River on the north and the river Yang-tsze
on the south. No one knows where the Chinese came from. Some hold the
fascinating theory that they were emigrants from Accadia in the ancient
kingdom of Babylonia; others have identified them with the lost tribes
of Israel. No one seems to think they can possibly have originated in
the fertile plains where they are now found. It appears indeed to be
an ethnological axiom that every race must have come from somewhere
outside its own territory. However that may be, the China of the eighth
century B.C. consisted of a number of Feudal States, ruled by nobles
owning allegiance to a Central State, at the head of which was a king.
The outward tokens of subjection were homage and tribute; but after
all, the allegiance must have been more nominal than real, each State
being practically an independent kingdom. This condition of things
was the cause of much mutual jealousy, and often of bloody warfare,
several of the States hating one another quite as cordially as Athens
and Sparta at their best.

There was, notwithstanding, considerable physical civilisation in the
ancient States of those early days. Their citizens, when not employed
in cutting each other's throats, enjoyed a reasonable security of life
and property. They lived in well-built houses; they dressed in silk
or homespun; they wore shoes of leather; they carried umbrellas; they
sat on chairs and used tables; they rode in carts and chariots; they
travelled by boat; and they ate their food off plates and dishes of
pottery, coarse perhaps, yet still superior to the wooden trencher
common not so very long ago in Europe. They measured time by the
sundial, and in the Golden Age they had the two famous calendar trees,
representations of which have come down to us in sculpture, dating
from about A.D. 150. One of these trees put forth a leaf every day for
fifteen days, after which a leaf fell off daily for fifteen more days.
The other put forth a leaf once a month for half a year, after which a
leaf fell off monthly for a similar period. With these trees growing in
the courtyard, it was possible to say at a glance what was the day of
the month, and what was the month of the year. But civilisation proved
unfavourable to their growth, and the species became extinct.

In the sixth century B.C. the Chinese were also in possession
of a written language, fully adequate to the most varied expression of
human thought, and indeed almost identical with their present script,
allowing, among other things, for certain modifications of form brought
about by the substitution of paper and a camel's-hair brush for the
bamboo tablet and stylus of old. The actual stages by which that point
was reached are so far unknown to us. China has her Cadmus in the
person of a prehistoric individual named Ts'ang Chieh, who is said to
have had four eyes, and to have taken the idea of a written language
from the markings of birds' claws upon the sand. Upon the achievement
of his task the sky rained grain and evil spirits mourned by night.
Previous to this mankind had no other system than rude methods of
knotting cords and notching sticks for noting events or communicating
with one another at a distance.

As to the origin of the written language of China, invention is
altogether out of the question. It seems probable that in prehistoric
ages, the Chinese, like other peoples, began to make rude pictures of
the sun, moon, and stars, of man himself, of trees, of fire, of rain,
and they appear to have followed these up by ideograms of various
kinds. How far they went in this direction we can only surmise. There
are comparatively few obviously pictorial characters and ideograms
to be found even in the script of two thousand years ago; but
investigations carried on for many years by Mr. L. C. Hopkins, H.M.
Consul, Chefoo, and now approaching completion, point more and more
to the fact that the written language will some day be recognised as
systematically developed from pictorial symbols. It is, at any rate,
certain that at a very early date subsequent to the legendary period
of "knotted cords" and "notches," while the picture-symbols were still
comparatively few, some master-mind reached at a bound the phonetic
principle, from which point the rapid development of a written language
such as we now find would be an easy matter.




CHAPTER II

CONFUCIUS--THE FIVE CLASSICS


[Sidenote: BOOK OF HISTORY]

In B.C. 551 CONFUCIUS was born. He may be regarded as the founder of
Chinese literature. During his years of office as a Government servant
and his years of teaching and wandering as an exile, he found time
to rescue for posterity certain valuable literary fragments of great
antiquity, and to produce at least one original work of his own.
It is impossible to assert that before his time there was anything
in the sense of what we understand by the term general literature.
The written language appears to have been used chiefly for purposes
of administration. Many utterances, however, of early, not to say
legendary, rulers had been committed to writing at one time or another,
and such of these as were still extant were diligently collected and
edited by Confucius, forming what is now known as the _Shu Ching_ or
Book of History. The documents of which this work is composed are
said to have been originally one hundred in all, and they cover a
period extending from the twenty-fourth to the eighth century B.C.
They give us glimpses of an age earlier than that of Confucius, if not
actually so early as is claimed. The first two, for instance, refer to
the Emperors Yao and Shun, whose reigns, extending from B.C. 2357 to
2205, are regarded as the Golden Age of China. We read how the former
monarch "united the various parts of his domain in bonds of peace, so
that concord reigned among the black-haired people." He abdicated in
favour of Shun, who is described as being profoundly wise, intelligent,
and sincere. We are further told that Shun was chosen because of his
great filial piety, which enabled him to live in harmony with an
unprincipled father, a shifty stepmother, and an arrogant half-brother,
and, moreover, to effect by his example a comparative reformation of
their several characters.

We next come to a very famous personage, who founded the Hsia dynasty
in B.C. 2205, and is known as the Great Yue. It was he who, during the
reign of the Emperor Shun, successfully coped with a devastating flood,
which has been loosely identified with the Noachic Deluge, and in
reference to which it was said in the _Tso Chuan_, "How grand was the
achievement of Yue, how far-reaching his glorious energy! But for Yue we
should all have been fishes." The following is his own account (Legge's
translation):--

"The inundating waters seemed to assail the heavens, and in their vast
extent embraced the mountains and overtopped the hills, so that people
were bewildered and overwhelmed. I mounted my four conveyances (carts,
boats, sledges, and spiked shoes), and all along the hills hewed down
the woods, at the same time, along with Yi, showing the multitudes how
to get flesh to eat. I opened passages for the streams throughout the
nine provinces, and conducted them to the sea. I deepened the channels
and canals, and conducted them to the streams, at the same time, along
with Chi, sowing grain, and showing the multitudes how to procure
the food of toil in addition to flesh meat. I urged them further to
exchange what they had for what they had not, and to dispose of their
accumulated stores. In this way all the people got grain to eat, and
all the States began to come under good rule."

A small portion of the Book of History is in verse:--

  "_The people should be cherished,
  And should not be downtrodden.
  The people are the root of a country,
  And if the root is firm, the country will be tranquil._

         *       *       *       *       *

  _The palace a wild for lust,
  The country a wild for hunting,
  Rich wine, seductive music,
  Lofty roofs, carved walls,--
  Given any one of these,
  And the result can only be ruin._"

From the date of the foundation of the Hsia dynasty the throne of the
empire was transmitted from father to son, and there were no more
abdications in favour of virtuous sages. The fourth division of the
Book of History deals with the decadence of the Hsia rulers and their
final displacement in B.C. 1766 by T'ang the Completer, founder of the
Shang dynasty. By B.C. 1122, the Shang sovereigns had similarly lapsed
from the kingly qualities of their founder to even a lower level of
degradation and vice. Then arose one of the purest and most venerated
heroes of Chinese history, popularly known by his canonisation as
Wen Wang. He was hereditary ruler of a principality in the modern
province of Shensi, and in B.C. 1144 he was denounced as dangerous to
the throne. He was seized and thrown into prison, where he passed two
years, occupying himself with the Book of Changes, to which we shall
presently return. At length the Emperor, yielding to the entreaties of
the people, backed up by the present of a beautiful concubine and some
fine horses, set him at liberty and commissioned him to make war upon
the frontier tribes. To his dying day he never ceased to remonstrate
against the cruelty and corruption of the age, and his name is still
regarded as one of the most glorious in the annals of the empire. It
was reserved for his son, known as Wu Wang, to overthrow the Shang
dynasty and mount the throne as first sovereign of the Chou dynasty,
which was to last for eight centuries to come. The following is a
speech by the latter before a great assembly of nobles who were siding
against the House of Shang. It is preserved among others in the Book of
History, and is assigned to the year B.C. 1133 (Legge's translation):--

"Heaven and Earth are the parents of all creatures; and of all
creatures man is the most highly endowed. The sincere, intelligent,
and perspicacious among men becomes the great sovereign, and the great
sovereign is the parent of the people. But now, Shou, the king of
Shang, does not reverence Heaven above, and inflicts calamities on the
people below. He has been abandoned to drunkenness, and reckless in
lust. He has dared to exercise cruel oppression. Along with criminals
he has punished all their relatives. He has put men into office on
the hereditary principle. He has made it his pursuit to have palaces,
towers, pavilions, embankments, ponds, and all other extravagances,
to the most painful injury of you, the myriad people. He has burned
and roasted the loyal and good. He has ripped up pregnant women. Great
Heaven was moved with indignation, and charged my deceased father, Wen,
reverently to display its majesty; but he died before the work was
completed.

"On this account I, Fa, who am but a little child, have, by means
of you, the hereditary rulers of my friendly States, contemplated
the government of Shang; but Shou has no repentant heart. He abides
squatting on his heels, not serving God or the spirits of heaven and
earth, neglecting also the temple of his ancestors, and not sacrificing
in it. The victims and the vessels of millet all become the prey of
wicked robbers; and still he says, 'The people are mine: the decree is
mine,' never trying to correct his contemptuous mind. Now Heaven, to
protect the inferior people, made for them rulers, and made for them
instructors, that they might be able to be aiding to God, and secure
the tranquillity of the four quarters of the empire. In regard to who
are criminals and who are not, how dare I give any allowance to my own
wishes?

"'Where the strength is the same, measure the virtue of the parties;
where the virtue is the same, measure their righteousness.' Shou has
hundreds of thousands and myriads of ministers, but they have hundreds
of thousands and myriads of minds; I have three thousand ministers, but
they have one mind. The iniquity of Shang is full. Heaven gives command
to destroy it. If I did not comply with Heaven, my iniquity would be as
great.

"I, who am a little child, early and late am filled with apprehensions.
I have received charge from my deceased father, Wen; I have offered
special sacrifice to God; I have performed the due services to the
great Earth; and I lead the multitude of you to execute the punishment
appointed by Heaven. Heaven compassionates the people. What the people
desire, Heaven will be found to give effect to. Do you aid me, the one
man, to cleanse for ever all within the four seas. Now is the time!--it
may not be lost."

Two of the documents which form the Book of History are directed
against luxury and drunkenness, to both of which the people seemed
likely to give way even within measurable distance of the death of Wen
Wang. The latter had enacted that wine (that is to say, ardent spirits
distilled from rice) should only be used on sacrificial occasions, and
then under strict supervision; and it is laid down, almost as a general
principle, that all national misfortunes, culminating in the downfall
of a dynasty, may be safely ascribed to the abuse of wine.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: THE ODES]

The _Shih Ching_, or Book of Odes, is another work for the preservation
of which we are indebted to Confucius. It consists of a collection
of rhymed ballads in various metres, usually four words to the line,
composed between the reign of the Great Yue and the beginning of the
sixth century B.C. These, which now number 305, are popularly known
as the "Three Hundred," and are said by some to have been selected
by Confucius from no less than 3000 pieces. They are arranged under
four heads, as follows:--(_a_) Ballads commonly sung by the people in
the various feudal States and forwarded periodically by the nobles to
their suzerain, the Son of Heaven. The ballads were then submitted
to the Imperial Musicians, who were able to judge from the nature of
such compositions what would be the manners and customs prevailing
in each State, and to advise the suzerain accordingly as to the good
or evil administration of each of his vassal rulers. (_b_) Odes sung
at ordinary entertainments given by the suzerain. (_c_) Odes sung on
grand occasions when the feudal nobles were gathered together. (_d_)
Panegyrics and sacrificial odes.

Confucius himself attached the utmost importance to his labours in this
direction. "Have you learned the Odes?" he inquired upon one occasion
of his son; and on receiving an answer in the negative, immediately
told the youth that until he did so he would be unfit for the society
of intellectual men. Confucius may indeed be said to have anticipated
the apophthegm attributed by Fletcher of Saltoun to a "very wise man,"
namely, that he who should be allowed to make a nation's "ballads need
care little who made its laws." And it was probably this appreciation
by Confucius that gave rise to an extraordinary literary craze in
reference to these Odes. Early commentators, incapable of seeing the
simple natural beauties of the poems, which have furnished endless
household words and a large stock of phraseology to the language of
the present day, and at the same time unable to ignore the deliberate
judgment of the Master, set to work to read into countryside ditties
deep moral and political significations. Every single one of the
immortal Three Hundred has thus been forced to yield some hidden
meaning and point an appropriate moral. If a maiden warns her lover not
to be too rash--

      "_Don't come in, sir, please!
      Don't break my willow-trees!
      Not that that would very much grieve me;
  But alack-a-day! what would my parents say?
      And love you as I may,
  I cannot bear to think what that would be,_"--

commentators promptly discover that the piece refers to a feudal noble
whose brother had been plotting against him, and to the excuses of the
former for not visiting the latter with swift and exemplary punishment.

Another independent young lady may say--

  "_If you will love me dear, my lord,
  I'll pick up my skirts and cross the ford,
  But if from your heart you turn me out...
  Well, you're not the only man about,
  You silly, silly, silliest lout!_"--

still commentaries are not wanting to show that these straightforward
words express the wish of the people of a certain small State that
some great State would intervene and put an end to an existing feud in
the ruling family. Native scholars are, of course, hide-bound in the
traditions of commentators, but European students will do well to seek
the meaning of the Odes within the compass of the Odes themselves.

Possibly the very introduction of these absurdities may have helped to
preserve to our day a work which would otherwise have been considered
too trivial to merit the attention of scholars. Chinese who are in
the front rank of scholarship know it by heart, and each separate
piece has been searchingly examined, until the force of exegesis can
no farther go. There is one famous line which runs, according to the
accepted commentary, "The muddiness of the Ching river appears from
the (clearness of the) Wei river." In 1790 the Emperor Ch'ien Lung,
dissatisfied with this interpretation, sent a viceroy to examine the
rivers. The latter reported that the Ching was really clear and the Wei
muddy, so that the wording of the line must mean "The Ching river is
made muddy by the Wei river."

The following is a specimen of one of the longer of the Odes, saddled,
like all the rest, with an impossible political interpretation, of
which nothing more need be said:--

  "_You seemed a guileless youth enough,
  Offering for silk your woven stuff;[1]
  But silk was not required by you;
  I was the silk you had in view.
  With you I crossed the ford, and while
  We wandered on for many a mile
  I said, 'I do not wish delay,
  But friends must fix our wedding-day...
  Oh, do not let my words give pain,
  But with the autumn come again.'_

  "_And then I used to watch and wait
  To see you passing through the gate;
  And sometimes, when I watched in vain,
  My tears would flow like falling rain;
  But when I saw my darling boy,
  I laughed and cried aloud for joy.
  The fortune-tellers, you declared,
  Had all pronounced us duly paired;
  'Then bring a carriage,' I replied,
  'And I'll away to be your bride.'_

  "_The mulberry-leaf, not yet undone
  By autumn chill, shines in the sun.
  O tender dove, I would advise,
  Beware the fruit that tempts thy eyes!
  O maiden fair, not yet a spouse,
  List lightly not to lovers' vows!
  A man may do this wrong, and time
  Will fling its shadow o'er his crime;
  A woman who has lost her name
  Is doomed to everlasting shame._

  "_The mulberry-tree upon the ground
  Now sheds its yellow leaves around.
  Three years have slipped away from me
  Since first I shared your poverty;
  And now again, alas the day!
  Back through the ford I take my way.
  My heart is still unchanged, but you
  Have uttered words now proved untrue;
  And you have left me to deplore
  A love that can be mine no more._

  "_For three long years I was your wife,
  And led in truth a toilsome life;
  Early to rise and late to bed,
  Each day alike passed o'er my head.
  I honestly fulfilled my part,
  And you--well, you have broke my heart.
  The truth my brothers will not know,
  So all the more their gibes will flow.
  I grieve in silence and repine
  That such a wretched fate is mine._

  "_Ah, hand in hand to face old age!--
  Instead, I turn a bitter page.
  O for the river-banks of yore;
  O for the much-loved marshy shore;
  The hours of girlhood, with my hair
  Ungathered, as we lingered there.
  The words we spoke, that seemed so true,
  I little thought that I should rue;
  I little thought the vows we swore
  Would some day bind us two no more._"

Many of the Odes deal with warfare, and with the separation of wives
from their husbands; others, with agriculture and with the chase,
with marriage and feasting. The ordinary sorrows of life are fully
represented, and to these may be added frequent complaints against
the harshness of officials, one speaker going so far as to wish he
were a tree without consciousness, without home, and without family.
The old-time theme of "eat, drink, and be merry" is brought out as
follows:--

  "_You have coats and robes,
  But you do not trail them;
  You have chariots and horses,
  But you do not ride in them.
  By and by you will die,
  And another will enjoy them._

  "_You have courtyards and halls,
  But they are not sprinkled and swept;
  You have bells and drums,
  But they are not struck.
  By and by you will die,
  And another will possess them._

  "_You have wine and food;
  Why not play daily on your lute,
  That you may enjoy yourself now
  And lengthen your days?
  By and by you will die,
  And another will take your place._"

The Odes are especially valuable for the insight they give us into the
manners, and customs, and beliefs of the Chinese before the age of
Confucius. How far back they extend it is quite impossible to say. An
eclipse of the sun, "an event of evil omen