From Peking to Mandalay

Appendix B: Itinerary

Date.	Name of Place.	Remarks.
Jan. 6-9, 1906	Weihaiwei to Peking (威海衛：北京)	By steamer and train.
″ 13-16	Peking to Hankow (漢口)	By train.
″ 19-30	Hankow to Ichang (宜昌)	By steamer.
Feb. 2-12	Ichang to Wan-hsien (萬縣)	About 200 miles in “Red-boat.”
″ 13	Fu-tzŭ-p’u (福自鋪)	Village.
	Fên Shui (分水)	Large village; good inn.
″ 14	Shang Ku Ling (晌鼓嶺)	Village.
	Liang-shan (梁山縣)	District city.
″ 15	Sha Ho P’u (沙河鋪)	Village.
	Lao Yin Ch’ang (老音塲)	Village.
	Yüan Pa I (元壩驛)	Village.
″ 16	Huang Ni Pien (黃泥邊)	Village.
	Ta Chu (大竹)	District city; good inn.
″ 17	Chüan Tung Mên (卷東門)	Large village.
	Li Tu (李渡)	Small town on Ch’ü River.
″ 18	Crossed Ch’ü River (渠河)	Ferry.
	Wu Chia Ch’ang (吳家塲)	Busy unwalled town.
	Ch’ing Shih Chêng (青石正)	Large village.
″ 19	Lo Chia Ch’ang (羅家塲)	Village.
	T’iao Têng Ch’ang (跳登塲)	Village; bad inn.
″ 20	Lao Chün Ch’iao (老君橋))	Village.
	Shun-ch’ing-fu (順慶府)	Prefectural city on Chia-ling River. Good inn named the Shang Shêng Tien (上陞店).
″ 21	Wu Lung Ch’ang (五龍塲)	Village.
	P’êng-hsi-hsien (蓬溪縣)	District city.
″ 22	Kuan Shêng Tien (雚聖殿)	Village.
	T’ai Ho Chên (太河鎮)	Small town on right bank of Fou Chiang. Many pottery factories and shrimp-shops. River navigable for narrow boats.
″ 23	Kao Fên Tsui (高墳嘴)	Village; good inn.
	Kuan Yin Ch’iao (觀音橋)	Bridge and village.
″ 24	Lu Pan Ch’iao (魯板橋)	Village.
	Ta Sang Tun (大磉墩)	Village.
″ 25	Hsing Lung Ch’ang (興隆塲)	Large village.
	Chao Chia Tu (趙家渡)	Small town.
″ 26	Yao Chia Tu (姚家渡)	Village.
	Ch’êng-tu-fu (成都府)	Capital of Ssuch’uan. Elevation, 1,500 feet above sea-level.
Mar. 1-4	Ch’êng-tu to Chia-ting-fu (嘉定府)	By boat. Chia-ting is a small prefectural city at junction of Min, Ya and Ta Tu Rivers. Elevation, 1,100 feet.
″ 6	Chia-ting to Omei-hsien (峨眉縣)	Omei-hsien is a small district city at the foot of Mount Omei, 1,500 feet.
″ 7-10	Mount Omei (峨眉山)	11,000 feet.
″ 11	Omei-hsien to Chia-chiang (夾江)	Small town on Ya River.
″ 12	Hung-Ya-hsien (洪雅縣)	District city.
	Chih-kuo-chên (止戈鎮)	Small village; bad inn.
″ 13	Kuan Yin Ch’ang (雚音塲)	Small village.
	Ts’ao Pa (草垻)	Small town.
″ 14	Ya-chou-fu (雅州府)	Prefectural city, 2,500 feet.
″ 16	Fei Lung Pass (飛龍嶺)	3,600 feet.
	Shih-chia Ch’iao (石家橋)	Small village; good inn.
″ 17	Jung-Ching-hsien (榮經縣)	Small town, 2,300 feet.
	Huang-ni-p’u (黃坭舖)	Small village, 3,870 feet.
″ 18	Ta Hsiang Ling (大象嶺)	Pass, 9,200 feet.
	Ch’ing-ch’i-hsien (清溪縣)	Small district city, 5,750 feet.
″ 19	Fu Chuang (富庄)	Small village, 3,900 feet.
	Ni (I) T’ou I (宜頭驛)	Small village; good inns; 4,900 feet.
″ 20	Fei Yüeh Ling (飛越嶺)	9,000 feet; steep pass.
	Hua-lin-p’ing (花林坪)	Small village, 7,100 feet.
″ 21	Lêng Chi (洽磧)	Large village, 4,700 feet.
	Lu Ting Ch’iao (鑪定橋)	Small town on the left bank of Ta Tu River, 4,850 feet. Suspension bridge.
″ 22	Ta P’êng Pa (大烹壩)	Hamlet.
	Wa Ssŭ Kou (瓦寺溝)	Small village near junction of Tachienlu River and Ta Tu River, 5,300 feet.
″ 23	Tachienlu (打箭鑪)	Small City, 8,400 feet.
Apr. 15	Chê To (折多)	Scattered hamlet, 10,650 feet
″ 16	Solitary house.
	Chê Ri La	Two passes: the higher about 17,400 feet.
	A Te	Scattered hamlet, 13,000 feet.
″ 17	Du Sz Drung	Village, 10,800 feet.
	Dza Ri K’u	Village.
	Ring I Drung	Village.
	Bridge and village.
	Ba Lu	Village.
	P’un Bu Shi	Solitary house.
″ 18	Octagonal towers.
	Ch’un Bo	Solitary house.
	Large House	Residence of T’u Pai Hu, 11,400 feet.
″ 19	Bridges.
	Sho Ti Ba Dze	Village.
	Tan Ga La	Pass, 15,000 feet.
	Tu (Chinese, Lu Li)	Village.
″ 20	Bridge.
″ 20	Dro Dse Drung (Ch. San Chia-tzŭ: 三家子)	Village.
	Na K’i (Ch. Hsia Ch’êng-tzŭ: 下成子)	Village.
	Long Obo.
	Dra Shê	Village.
	Octagonal tower.
	Ri Wa (Ch. Wu Chia-tzŭ: 五家子)
	Ko Ri Drung (Ch. Chung Ku: 中古)	Hamlet, 13,000 feet.
″ 21	Dji Dju La	Pass, 17,500 feet.
	Dur (Ch. Hei Lao: 黑老)	Village, 12,500 feet.
″ 22	Wu Shu La (Ch. Wu Shu Shan: 五樹山)	Pass, 15,500 feet.
	Wu Shu (Ch. Wu Shu: 五樹)	Village, 11,000 feet.
″ 23	Sin Go La	Pass, 15,000 feet.
	Nai Yu La	Pass, 16,000 feet.
	Hlan Go La	Pass, 17,200 feet.
	Gur Dja (Ch. Yin Cho: 銀棹)	Village, 12,000 feet.
″ 24	Ri Go La	Pass, 16,500 feet.
	Pu Ti La	Pass, 10,800 feet.
	Pei T’ai (Ch. Pai T’ai: 白泰)	Village, 10,000 feet.
″ 25	Lan Yi Pa	Valley with one house.
	Hsin Yi La	Hill from which signal-gun is fired.
	Pa-U-Rong	Flourishing cluster of villages overlooking valley of Yalung, 7,700 feet.
″ 27	Yalung River (Nya Ch’u, or Chin Ho) (鴉礱江)	Crossed by single-rope bridge. River, 7,500 feet.
	Dju Mu	Hamlet, 9,000 feet.
″ 28	Tê Ben	One house, 10,000 feet.
″ 29	Pa Sung	Hamlet.
	Ten Ba K’a	Hamlet, 10,800 feet.
″ 30	Pass	12,500 feet.
	Hu Dra	Solitary house, 10,100 feet.
	May 1	Two ruined huts.
	Wa-chin Gompa, or Lha-k’ang	Lamasery, 9,600 feet.
	Ta K’oa	Hamlet.
″ 2	Dje Ru	Hamlet.
	Tong Yi	Bridge Over Li Ch’u or Litang River.
	Wu	Hamlet.
	Obos and Chorten	Camp in the open, 9,000 feet.
″ 3	Bridges.
	Ku-Dze	Hamlet.
	Muli (木裏)	Lamasery and headquarters of lama-prince of “Huang-Lama,” 9,500 feet.
″ 6	Solitary house	9,500 feet.
″ 7	Shi Li La	Pass, 15,500 feet.
	Li She Tzŭ	Mo-so hamlet, 11,000 feet.
″ 8	Li Rang Tzŭ	Hamlet, the last in “Huang-Lama” and in Ssuch’uan.
	Boundary of Ssuch’uan and Yunnan Provinces.
	Djo Dji	Village.
	Wo La	Village.
	Yi Ma Wa	Village.
	A-ko Am-ni Wa	Village.
	A-gu Wa	Village.
	Yung-ning-t’u-fu (永甯土府)	A Mo-so town with a lamasery. Chief centre of district ruled by Mo-so chief, on whom Chinese Government has conferred hereditary rank of Prefect; 9,500 feet.
″ 10	Ge Wa Ya K’ou	Pass, 13,000 feet.
	Solitary hut.
″ 11	Lan Ga Lo	House.
	La Ka Shi	Village.
	Ferry	Yangtse River, 5,200 feet.
	Fêng K’o	Village, 7,200 feet.
″ 12	Shrine and spring.
	Cottages.
	Camp in forest.
″ 13	Go Ka A	Pass, 15,000 feet.
	T’o Ko Sho	Hamlet.
	Camp in forest.
″ 14	Ming Yin Chi (鳴音汲)	Village, 9,200 feet.
	Camp	8,900 feet.
″ 15	Pass	10,600 feet.
	Bridge over Hei Shui (黑水)	8,900 feet.
	Three passes	Highest about 11,000 feet.
	Stony plateau	Overlooked by snowy peaks, 18,500 feet.
	Li-chiang plain and villages.
	Li-chiang (麗江府)	Prefectural town: seat of native chief, and also of Chinese Prefect and Magistrate, 8,200 feet.
″ 18	Shang La Shih (上喇是), or Lashi	Village, 8,100 feet.
	Pass	10,000 feet.
	Kuan Hsia (關下), or P’o Chiao (坡□)	Village at north end of Chien Ch’uan plain.
″ 19	Tu Ho (渡河)	Village.
	Wa Ch’ang (瓦塲)	Village.
	Chi Wu (雞勿)	Village.
	Chiu Ho Pa (九河霸)	Village.
	Mei Tzŭ (梅子)	Village.
	Shao Chin Ch’ang (哨金塲)	Village.
	Chien-ch’uan-chou (劍川州)	Departmental city, 7,500 feet.
	Lake.
	Han Têng Ts’un (漢登村)	Village.
	Hai Wei (海尾)	River and bridge.
″ 19	Tien Wei Kai (甸尾街)	Village.
″ 20	Hao Shou Bridge (寉壽橋)	House, temple and bridge.
	Niu Kai (牛街)	Village.
	Huo Yen Shan (水燄山)	Hill with hot springs.
	San Ying (三營)	Small market town; good inn.
″ 21	Ch’ang Ying (長營)	Village.
	Ying-shan-p’u (映山鋪	Large village.
	Pai Sha Ho (白沙河)	Small river and canal.
	Chung So (中所)	Village.
	Yu So (右所)	Village.
	Lung Kai Tzŭ (龍街子)	Village.
	Têng-ch’uan-chou (登川州)	Small departmental city, 7,000 feet.
	Erh Hai (洱海)	Lake of Tali-fu.
	Sha P’ing (沙坪)	Village near north end of lake.
″ 22	Shang Kuan (上關)	Walled village.
	Numerous villages.
	Tali-fu (大理府)	Prefectural city, 6,700 feet.
″ 25	Hsia Kuan (下關)	Busy town, 6,900 feet.
	Ho Chiang-p’u (河港鋪)	Small village.
″ 26	Yang Pi	Small town, 5,160 feet.
	Suspension bridge.
	Mountain hamlet	Not the usual stage.
″ 27	Pass	8,350 feet.
	T’ai-p’ing-p’u (太平鋪)	Hamlet, 7,370 feet.
	Suspension bridge	Over Ch’ing Lien Ho (淸連河).
	Huang-lien-p’u	Village.
″ 28	Chiao Kou Shan	Huts.
	Wan Sung An	Small temple.
	Yung P’ing (永平)	Small town.
″ 29	Hsiao T’ien Pa (小田垻)	Village.
	Hsiao Hua Ch’iao (小花橋)	Village.
	Ta Hua Ch’iao (大花橋)	Village.
	Pass	8,150 feet.
	Sha Yang	Village.
″ 30	Bridge of the Phœnix Cry (鳳嗚石橋).
	Pass.
	Mekong River (瀾滄江)	4,000 feet. Bridge of 60 yards span.
	P’ing P’o	Hamlet.
	Shui Chai	Village.
″ 31	Pass	7,800 feet.
	Niu Chio Kuan	Village.
	Kuan P’o	Village.
	Shih K’o Ts’un	Village.
	Pan Ch’iao (板橋)	Village.
″ 31	Yung-ch’ang-fu (永昌府)	Prefectural city, 5,500 feet.
June 1	Wo Shih Wo (臥獅窩)	Village.
	Hao Tzŭ P’u	Village.
	Pass.
	Lêng Shui Ching (冷水井)	Village.
	P’u Piao	Large village.
″ 2	Fang Ma Ch’ang (放馬塲)	Villages.
	Ta Pan Ching (大板井)	Hamlet, 4,500 feet.
″ 3	Salwen River	Suspension bridge, 2,400 feet.
	Hu Mu Shu	Hamlet, 5,560 feet.
″ 4	Hsiang Po (象脖)	Hamlet, 7,230 feet.
	Pass	8,730 feet.
	T’ai P’ing (太平)	Hamlet, 7,780 feet.
	Shwe-Li or Lung River	Suspension bridge, 4,300 feet.
	Kan-Lan-Chan (乾欖站)	Village, 4,810 feet.
″ 5	Chin Chai P’u (金齋鋪)	Village.
	T’êng-Yüeh (謄越), or Momein	City. British Consulate and Chinese Imperial Customs. 5,365 feet.
″ 8	Jê Shui T’ang (熱水盪)	Village.
	Nan Tien (南甸)	Village. Seat of a Shan Sawbwa.
″ 9	Kau Ngai	Market village.
″ 10	Hsiao Hsin Kai (小新街)	Village; good inn.
″ 11	Lung Chang Kai	Village. Customs station.
	Man-hsien	Village. Seat of a Shan sawbwa.
″ 12	Kamsa Bridge	Iron bridge, completed 1905.
	Kulika	British frontier.
	Mong-kung-ka	First Government Bungalow.
″ 13	Kulong-ka	Government Bungalow.
″ 14	Kalachet	Bungalow.
	Momauk	Bungalow.
″ 15	Bhamo	Frontier garrison-town, on
	Irrawaddy, 361 feet.
″ 20	Mandalay	By steamer from Bhamo.

Notes

Note 1

MOUNT OMEI AND CHOU KUNG SHAN

There are vague traditions that Mount Omei was a centre of primitive nature-worship long before the days of Buddhism. There is a passage in the Shu Ching from which we learn that the semi-mythical emperor Yü (about the twenty-third century B.C.), after the completion of some of the famous drainage and irrigation works with which his name is associated, offered sacrifices on (or to) certain hills named Ts’ai and Mêng. It is a disputed point among the commentators where these hills are. Mêng is said to be one of the mountains that overlook Ya-chou, and we shall see in Chapter VIII. that one of those mountains is still the resort of pilgrims. As to Ts’ai, one commentator at least has inclined to the opinion that it must be looked for in the Omei range (see Legge’s Chinese Classics, vol. iii. part i. p. 121). If this identification be correct, we must regard the brief notice in the Shu Ching as the oldest reference in extant literature to Mount Omei. The student of Chinese who wishes to pursue further the vexed question of Mêng and Ts’ai will find a discussion of it in the 16th chüan of the Ssuch’uan T’ung Chih. The probability seems to be that both Mêng and Ts’ai were close to Ya-chou, and that neither of them should be identified with Omei. Mêng seems to be one of the hills that lie to the south of the city; Ts’ai may or may not be the somewhat famous mountain generally known as Chou Kung Shan, or the Hill of Duke Chou, which is situated a couple of miles to the east. Chou Kung, who is said to have died in B.C. 1105, is perhaps chiefly known to Europeans as the legendary inventor of the famous “south-pointing chariot,” but he is regarded by the Chinese as a pattern of many virtues. His zeal for the public good was so great that he seems—if we may believe Mencius—to have anticipated the all-night sittings of the House of Commons. His merits indeed were of so extraordinary a nature that, as we know from the Lun Yü, Confucius regarded it as a sign of his approaching dotage that for a long time he had ceased to dream of Chou Kung.

Other people besides Confucius were in the habit of dreaming of this great and good man. The hill near Ya-chou, according to a story preserved in the official annals of Ssuch’uan, owes its name to a dream-vision that came to the famous Chinese general, Chu-ko Liang. This distinguished warrior flourished in the second and third centuries of our era. He made his name by his successful campaigns against the Wild Men of the West—the Man-tzŭ and others—and on one occasion when he was proceeding at the head of his army to inflict chastisement upon them he spent a night on the slopes of the Ya-chou Hill and dreamed that Chou Kung paid him a visit. He regarded this as of such happy omen for the success of his expedition that he immediately caused a temple to Chou Kung to be erected on the auspicious spot. Since that time, the hill—which may or may not have been already sacred, under the name of Ts’ai, to the memory of the Emperor Yü—has always been known as Chou Kung Shan. The fame of the general Chu-ko Liang has almost rivalled that of Chou Kung himself. This “darling hero of the Chinese people,” as Professor Giles calls him, has had temples erected in his honour in many towns of Ssuch’uan, and he is a well-known and popular figure on the Chinese theatrical stage.

Note 2

BODHIDARMA

Bodhidarma (逹摩大師) is the original of the Ta Mo so often found in Ssuch’uanese temples. Catholic missionaries, struck by the sound of the name and the fact that Ta-Mo is sometimes found wearing an ornament shaped like a Christian cross, have clung to the idea that Ta-Mo was no other than the Apostle St Thomas. (See Croix et Swastika, by Father Gaillard, pp. 80 seq.) Bodhidarma is regarded as the founder of the Zen sect in Japan. Japanese children know him well, for he is a conspicuous object in the toy-shops in the form of the legless Daruma. (See Lafcadio Hearn’s charming essay in A Japanese Miscellany.)

Note 3

“GODS” IN BUDDHISM

NIRVANA

On this subject may be consulted the passage on the “Eel-wrigglers” in the Brahma-gâla Suttanta, translated by Rhys Davids in the Sacred Books of the Buddhists, vol. ii. Buddhism refrains from denying, rather than distinctly affirms, the existence of the Brahmanical gods; but these gods, if existent, are regarded as neither omnipotent nor immortal. They are subject to the law of karma just as man himself is subject. The Arahat is greater than any “god” because released from all change and illusion, to which the “gods” are still subject. (See Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 210 seq., 4th edn.) The abolition or retention of the Brahmanical deities would really make little or no difference to the philosophical position of canonical Buddhism.

Note 4

NIRVANA

The view of Nirvana set forth in the text is that taught by Professor Rhys Davids, the veteran scholar to whom all European students of Buddhism owe so deep a debt of gratitude. (See his Buddhism, Hibbert Lectures, American Lectures, and his valuable contributions to the Sacred Books of the East. With regard to Nirvana, see especially his Questions of King Milinda, vol. i. pp. 106-108 and vol. ii. pp. 181 seq.) As regards the tanha or “thirst” for existence, which according to the Buddhist theory keeps us in the net of illusion and prevents the attainment of Nirvana, Huxley (Evolution and Ethics) mentions as a curious fact that a parallel may be found in the aviditas vitae of Stoicism.

The Japanese views of Nirvana are set forth clearly and authoritatively in Fujishima’s Le Bouddhisme Japonais. “Selon les écoles du Mahâyâna, ce qui est vide au dedans et au dehors c’est l’existence composée et visible (samkrita): l’anéantissement de ce vide n’est donc pas lui-même le vide, mais plutôt la plénitude.” The author goes on to quote from a sutra which declares that “illusion passes away; reality remains; that is Nirvana.” To an English reader this naturally recalls some of Shelley’s lines in Adonais, too well known to quote. Japanese Buddhism has, of course, developed somewhat on lines of its own. The popular Buddhism of Japan is portrayed with rare insight by Lafcadio Hearn, as in his Gleanings from Buddha-Fields, pp. 211 seq.

Among recent attempts to escape from the pessimistic conclusion that, according to strict Buddhism, Arahatship must lead after all to complete extinction, Schrader’s interesting essay in the Journal of the Pali Text Society, 1904-1905, is worth consulting. The question is one of deep philosophic interest, but a discussion of it cannot be attempted in the narrow space at our disposal here.

Note 5

THE MAHAYANA

For explanations of the rise of the Mahayana, see (among many other authorities) Max Mūller’s India, p. 87 (1905 edn.) and his Last Essays (First Series) pp. 260 seq. (Longmans: 1901); see also p. 376 in R. Sewell’s essay on Early Buddhist Symbolism (J.R.A.S., July, 1886). For the growth of the Mahayana and kindred schools in China, the works of Beal, Edkins, Eitel and Watters are among the first that should be consulted. There is still a great deal that is mysterious in the early history of Mahayana and allied systems, and it is reasonable to hope that the discoveries recently made, and still being made almost daily by Stein and others in Chinese Turkestan and neighbouring regions, will throw a flood of light on the whole subject, and perhaps destroy many existing theories regarding the history of Buddhism during the ten or twelve first centuries of the Christian era.

Note 6

ANTIQUITIES OF MOUNT OMEI

As Baber’s discovery of the chüan tien or spiral-shaped brick hall and the bronze elephant which it contains aroused very natural enthusiasm among persons interested in Far Eastern antiquities, and is still repeatedly referred to in connection with Chinese archæology, it is with hesitation that I suggest a doubt as to whether either the building or the elephant is as old as Baber—and others after him—have supposed. (See Supplementary Papers, R.G.S., vol. i. pp. 34-36, and Archibald Little’s Mount Omi and Beyond, pp. 64-5.)

In the 41st chüan of the Ssuch’uan T’ung Chih there are two passages relating to the Wan-nien Ssŭ, and one of them Baber apparently overlooked. It was written about 1665 in commemoration of a restoration of the Wan-nien and Kuang Hsiang monasteries under the auspices of a Provincial Governor. In it occur some remarks of which the following is a rough translation. “From the T’ang to the Sung dynasties the name of the monastery was Pai Shui P’u Hsien Ssŭ. In the time of Wan Li of the Ming, its name was changed to Shêng-shou Wan-nien Ssŭ. As originally built (yüan chien) it contained a tsang ching ko (i.e. a library) consisting of a revolving (circular?) spiral structure of brick, strongly built, of exceptionally delicate workmanship, very lofty and imposing, and of a beauty unsurpassed in the world.” Now the existing tien is a most curious building of a foreign (probably Indian) type, but to describe it as lofty and imposing and of delicate and elaborate workmanship would be to spin a traveller’s yarn of the baser sort. How, without impugning the good faith of the chronicler, can we reconcile such a glowing description with existing facts?

MOUNT OMEI

When we learn from the local records that the Wan-nien Ssŭ has been several times destroyed by fire, the obvious supposition is that the original splendid structure described in my quotation perished with the rest of the monastic pile. Baber himself points out that the tusks of the elephant inside the tien are of late date, the old ones having been “melted off,” he was told, “by the intense heat.” It seems natural to suppose that when the rebuilding of the monastery took place (and it was rebuilt, as we know, late in the sixteenth or early in the seventeenth century, and again about 1665) the monks had neither funds nor skill sufficient to enable them to restore the chüan tien to its pristine magnificence, and contented themselves with putting up a much smaller and meaner building, preserving as far as possible the original peculiarities of design.

This, however, is mere supposition. I now return to our Chinese authorities, and in the 9th chüan of the Omei-hsien Chih I find an allusion to the Wan-nien Ssŭ by one Li Hua Nan (李化楠), an official who apparently flourished in the seventeenth century. He states most emphatically that the monastery was restored or rebuilt in both the Sung and the Ming periods, but had undergone such complete destruction by fire that nothing was left except a chüan tien belonging to the period of Wan Li. Wan Li was the reign-title of a Ming emperor who reigned from 1573 to 1619. That the chüan tien was carefully and thoroughly restored under Wan Li is admitted by the authority quoted by Baber himself: the only question seems to be whether the restoration left enough of the original building to justify our regarding it as a veritable monument “fifteen centuries old”—as Baber conjectured—or whether, as the evidence seems to indicate, the restoration was such that we have only a small and inferior copy of “a lofty and imposing building, of a beauty unsurpassed in the world.”

No one, so far as I know, has yet drawn attention to the fact that the spiral building of the Wan-nien Ssŭ is not—or was not—the only building of its kind on Mount Omei. Among the few monasteries on the lower slopes of the mountain which I did not enter is the Hua Yen Ssŭ (not to be confused with the temple of the Hua Yen Ting mentioned on page 91). It was not till after I had left the province that I came across a description of this monastery, which made me much regret that I had not visited it. I translate the following passage from the Omei-Shan Chih (quoted in the 41st chüan of the T’ung Chih): “There is a very ancient and wonderful revolving (circular?) spiral building (有旋螺殿極奇古), and a tablet of the Shao Hsing period of the Sung dynasty, on the left side of which are carved the words ’15 li to Omei-hsien’ and on the right the words ’70 li to the summit of the mountain.’” The words used to describe the shape of the “revolving spiral” building are identical—so far as they go—with those applied to the brick edifice in the Wan-nien Ssŭ: and the whole passage certainly implies that, whatever the date of the spiral building in the Hua Yen Ssŭ might be, it was at any rate prior to the Sung dynasty. The next visitor to Mount Omei should not fail to examine the curiosities of the Hua Yen Ssŭ; a close inspection of its spiral building—if it still exists—and a comparison of it with that of the Wan-nien Ssŭ might assist us in assigning a date to the latter, and might perhaps prove that however old the latter may be it is not without a rival in mere antiquity.

So much for the brick building. What is to be said about the bronze elephant that Baber so properly admired, and which he believed to be “the most ancient bronze casting of any great size in existence”?

Li Hua Nan, the writer who ascribes the chüan tien to the Wan Li period, goes on to add a piece of information which is much to our purpose. “There is a P’u Hsien 1 chang 6 ch’ih in height, with a gilded body, riding a bronze elephant, set up in the Jên Tsung period of the Sung dynasty.” The sentence is somewhat ambiguous, for the date might refer to the image of P’u Hsien only and not to the elephant. Baber believed, on artistic grounds, that the P’u Hsien was of much later date than the elephant. On the whole, however, it seems probable that Li Hua Nan referred to both images. The Jên Tsung reign lasted from 1023 to 1063, so that if we select the middle of the period we may assign the elephant approximately to the year 1043. This cuts many centuries off the age of the elephant as reckoned by Baber.

There is no reason for doubting whether so fine a bronze casting of an animal unknown to China could have been made as late as the eleventh century. There were still Buddhists in India at that time, and Chinese pilgrims had not yet given up the habit of visiting India in search of relics and pei to yeh (palm-leaf manuscripts). Indian Buddhists, too, frequently came to Mount Omei. There is, indeed, no necessity for mere guesswork, for the monastic and provincial records contain ample evidence that the casting of large bronzes for Buddhist shrines was, during the Sung period at least, a regular industry in the city of Ch’êng-tu.

BUDDHA’S TEETH

The numerous miniature “Buddhas” that line the walls of the present chüan tien have attracted the attention of several European visitors, and perhaps deserve a few words of comment. Some are the property of pilgrims who leave them in the holy building in order that they may acquire sanctity, but the greater number are evidently antique and seem to be of uniform pattern. Baber was informed that they were of silver—darkened with age and the smoke of incense. Mr Archibald Little says they are of bronze. I made my own enquiries on the matter and was assured by the monks that they were of iron. Where did they come from? I conjecture that they are the images that once adorned a vanished hall of the Wan-nien Ssŭ, known as the San Ch’ien T’ieh Fo Tien—Pavilion of the Three Thousand Iron Buddhas. I cannot find any history of this building, but from a poem by Ku Kuang Hsü, a Ssuch’uan chief justice of the Ming dynasty, I gather that it was remembered but had disappeared by his time. It existed in the Sung dynasty, for it is mentioned by one Fan Ch’êng Ta (范成大) who visited it during that period. The number of the images is easily explained as an allusion to the three thousand disciples who are said to have sat at the feet of P’u Hsien in the days when, according to the legend, that great Bodhisattva expounded the Good Law amid the forests of Mount Omei.

Note 7

“BUDDHA’S TEETH”

The most famous of the supposed teeth of Buddha is, of course, the celebrated relic preserved in Kandy. The Buddhists of Ceylon will have none of the story that the original tooth was ground into powder by a pious Portuguese archbishop of the sixteenth century, and they firmly believe that the genuine relic still reposes in Kandy at the Malagawa Vihara. China possesses, or is supposed to possess, several of the alleged Buddha’s teeth, but they seem to have acquired no more than a local reputation. One—similar in appearance to that of Mount Omei—is described by Fortune as being in possession of a monastery at Fu-chou. A writer in the Fan Ju Tzŭ Chi (范汝梓記), commenting upon the specimen in the Wan-nien Ssŭ, remarks that it weighs 15 catties, equivalent to about 20 lbs. He says that in the Ching Yin (淨因寺) in Ch’êng-tu there is one that weighs 3-1/3 lbs., and another in the Chao Chiao Ssŭ (昭覺寺) in the same city that weighs 9-1/2 lbs. He goes on to describe a far more remarkable specimen that had the singular property of producing out of its own substance myriads of other shê li or Buddhistic relics, some of which flew off into space while others fell on the floor and knocked against the furniture with a jingling sound. This surprising tooth appeared by special command before the emperor, but we are not informed whether the séance was a successful one. Our historian shows something of a tendency to indulge in frivolous speculations regarding the capacity and measurements of the mouth that could accommodate teeth of such monstrous sizes and singular properties, and he points out that according to tradition a true Buddha’s tooth is always marked with certain sacred symbols, such as the dharma chakra or Wheel of the Law.

Marco Polo mentions a great embassy sent by the emperor of China to Ceylon in 1284 for the purpose of obtaining certain relics of “our first father Adam,” such as his hair and teeth and a dish from which he ate; and he remarks that the ambassadors, besides acquiring the dish, which was of “very beautiful green porphyry,” and some of the hair, “also succeeded in getting two of the grinder teeth, which were passing great and thick.” It need hardly be said that the monarchs of the Yüan dynasty took a very considerable interest in Buddha, but none at all in “our first father Adam.” That they sent embassies to Ceylon for Buddhist relics is probably true, for the fact is mentioned in Chinese Chronicles; but it is impossible to say whether any of the numerous “teeth of Buddha” that have appeared in different localities in China formed part of the relics then brought from Ceylon. (The notes appended to Cordier’s edition of Yule’s Marco Polo, vol. ii. chap. xv., should be consulted by all interested in the subject of the migrations of Buddhist relics.)

Note 8

THE K’AI SHAN CH’U TIEN

The name of this monastery shows that it claims to be one of the original religious foundations of Mount Omei. According to tradition it was here that P’u Kung, as related in Chapter VI., was gathering herbs when he came across “in a misty hollow” the tracks of the lily-footed deer that led him to the mountain-top. The monastery is supposed to have been founded in commemoration of the occurrence.

Note 9

TA SHÊNG SSŬ OR GREAT VEHICLE MONASTERY

THE HOLY LAMPS

The old name of this monastery was Hua Ch’êng (化成), and the name was chosen by its founder, “a holy monk from the foreign countries of the West,” who said that the scenery reminded him of his native country. Tradition says that he built the original hermitage of the bark of trees; hence the additional name Mu-p’i by which the foundation was known for centuries afterwards. One of the stories about this part of the mountain is that two hungry pilgrims were fed with fruit here by a wonderful white monkey.

NOTE 10 (p. 102)

“THE GLORY OF BUDDHA”

Several Chinese descriptions of the Fo Kuang will be found in the chronicles of Mount Omei and of Omei-hsien, notably those of Ho Shih Hêng (何式恒) and Yüan Tzŭ Jang (袁子讓). According to the latter, there are more than five colours. He describes the appearance somewhat as follows. The central circle is of jade-green; the outermost circle consists of a layer of pale red, and the successive inner circles are of green, white, purple, yellow and crimson. Each beholder, he says, sees his own shadow in the mist of the central circle.

A crude drawing of the “Glory” may be noticed near the upper left-hand corner of the Chinese plan of Mount Omei, which is reproduced in this book.

Note 11

“THE HOLY LAMPS”

Among good Chinese descriptions of this phenomenon may be mentioned those of Yüan Tzŭ Jang (袁子讓) of the Ming and Ho Shih Hêng (何式恒) of the present dynasty. Both writers have been mentioned in the preceding note. The former wrote a delightful account of his visit to Mount Omei. It is in a flowing unpedantic style, and it proves that its writer had a keenly observant eye and a great liking for old-world legends combined with a power of working them up into a graceful narrative.

Note 12

THE HSIEN TSU TIEN, CHUNG FÊNG SSŬ AND TA O SSŬ

The Hsien Tsu Tien represents the earliest of the Mount Omei monasteries, and is said to have been built by P’u Kung in the reign of Ming Ti of the Han dynasty after the famous episode of the lily-footed deer. Probably if the searchlight of strict historical enquiry were to be turned on the legends and records of Mount Omei, it would be found that the mountain knew nothing of Buddhism until the third or fourth centuries of our era. It is a significant fact that some of the legends about P’u Kung—the herb-gathering official who followed the deer and first saw the “Glory”—state or imply that he belonged to the Chin period, which did not begin till the year 265. There is more than a likelihood that the historians of such ancient monasteries as the Hsien Tsu Tien and the Wan-nien Ssŭ deliberately ante-dated their foundation in order to throw back the beginnings of Omei’s Buddhistic history to the earliest possible period. It is almost inconceivable that Omei can have become the resort of Buddhist monks during the very reign of the emperor who is credited with the first introduction of Buddhism into China.

According to the monastic chronicles, the earliest name of the monastery we are considering was P’u Kaung Tien, “The Pavilion of Universal Glory.” The name was subsequently altered to Kuang Hsiang Ssŭ (光相寺), and so it was known during the T’ang and Sung periods. In the time of Hung Wu, first emperor of the Ming, it was rebuilt and roofed with iron. Associated with it were four small bronze pagodas, some of the remains of which are still lying on the ground within the precincts of the present Chin Tien (which was apparently first built in the reign of Wan Li of the Ming). A thorough restoration—carried out during a period of three years—took place in the second half of the fifteenth century. At the end of the Ming period it was utterly destroyed—presumably by fire. It was again rebuilt during the reign of K’ang Hsi of the present dynasty under the auspices of a Provincial Governor named Chang (see note 6, paragraph 2), and minor restorations on a smaller scale have taken place more recently.

The Chung Fêng Ssŭ or Half-way Monastery bears the alternative name of “The Gathering Clouds,” an allusion to the fact that here the upward-bound pilgrim enters into the region of mist. It dates from the Chin dynasty (about the third century of our era) and was restored in the Sung and Ming periods.

THE TA HSIANG LING

The Ta O Ssŭ is an ancient foundation rebuilt in the first year of K’ang Hsi (1662). It is one of the principal religious houses on the mountain, and has a finer site than most of its rivals. An alternative name is Fu Shou An. This name is due to the fact that the words Fu Shou—“Happiness and Longevity”—were carved on a neighbouring rock by a celebrated recluse of the Sung dynasty named Hsi I, known as the Wizard of Omei.

Note 13

YA-CHOU-FU

The military importance of this city was very great so long as the tribal chiefs and Tibetans had not been reduced to comparative quiescence. The commander-in-chief of the military forces of the province was permanently stationed at this frontier city. (Shêng Wu Chi, 11th chüan.)

Note 14

THE TA HSIANG LING

There is a small unsettled controversy regarding the name of the Ta Hsiang Ling. It is possible that the mountain owes its name not to the legend of P’u Hsien’s elephant, but to the famous general Chu-ko Liang (see note 1). Devout Buddhists are bound to hold that the name means “The Great Elephant,” and this is the view taken in all Buddhistic accounts of western Ssuch’uan and in the maps issued by the monks of Mount Omei. But other authorities—including the official Topography and the Shêng Wu Chi (5th chüan)—give the central character not as 象 (hsiang, elephant) but as 相 (hsiang, minister of state), thereby changing the mountain’s name into “The Great Mountain of the Minister.” This minister is none other than Chu-ko Liang, who is said to have crossed the mountain during his western campaigns. The “Small Elephant Pass” in the Chien-ch’ang Valley is similarly metamorphosed into “The Small Mountain of the Minister,” and for a like reason. This latter mountain, however, is also known officially as the Nan Shan or South Mountain. (寕遠府南山土名小相嶺皆以武候經過得名: Shêng Wu Chi, loc. cit.)

This note will throw a light on a passage that occurs in Mr Archibald Little’s Mount Omi and Beyond (pp. 204-205) and exonerate Captain Gill from the charge of inaccuracy.

It may be worth mentioning that a neighbouring mountain bears the officially-recognised name of Shih-tzŭ Shan, or Lion Hill, but the T’ung Chih explicitly states that this is owing to its peculiar shape. There is nothing in the contour of the Ta Hsiang Ling to suggest an elephant.

Note 15

CH’ING-CH’I-HSIEN

This little town has had a variety of names during its long and chequered history, and it frequently changed hands. Its position was for centuries somewhat analogous to that of Berwick-on-Tweed during the Anglo-Scottish border wars. The T’ung Chih states that it passed into the hands of the Chinese after one of the numerous “pacifications of the West,” in the 30th year of Han Wu Ti (111 B.C.), but it was lost to China many times after that. Its present name and status as a magistracy date from the eighth year of Yung Chêng (1730). This was an epoch in which a series of able Chinese emperors were making determined and, on the whole, successful efforts to reduce the Wild West to obedience.

Note 16

THE LIU SHA RIVER

The Liu Sha is also known as the Han Shui or Chinese water. It is said to rise in the “Fairy’s Cave” (hsien jên tung) in the Fei Yüeh range. Thence it flows to the Shih Chien Shan or Trial-of-the-Sword Hill and joins the Chien Shui (澗水) and thereafter enters the Ta Tu. According to the Huan Yü Chi (寰宇記) an evil miasma arises from this river every winter and spring, causing fever.

NOTE 17 (p. 122)

THE FEI YÜEH LING AND HUA-LIN-P’ING

LU TING BRIDGE

This great pass has for centuries been regarded by the Chinese as a very important strategic point in connection with their western wars. During the eighteenth century, when strenuous warfare was being carried on against the Chin Ch’uan chiefs and others, the summit of the pass was permanently held by a Chinese guard, and the village that lies at the mountain’s western base—Hua-lin-p’ing—was garrisoned by a considerable body of troops.

Note 18

THE TA TU RIVER

The Ta Tu (Great Ferry) is said to derive its name from the fact that it was crossed by the ubiquitous Chu-ko Liang. In the neighbourhood of Chia-ting it is commonly known as the T’ung, and above Wa Ssŭ Kou its two branches are always known as the Great and Small Chin Ch’uan. (Shêng Wu Chi, 5th chüan.)

Note 19

LU TING BRIDGE

The Ssuch’uan T’ung Chih makes the following remark in connection with the suspension bridge at Lu Ting. “Formerly there was no bridge. The waters of the river are swift and turbulent, and boats and oars cannot be used. Travellers used to cross by hanging on to a rope stretched across the river—a dangerous proceeding.” (We shall see, when we come to the Yalung, that rope bridges are still in use.) In the fortieth year of K’ang Hsi (1701) it was decided with imperial sanction to construct an iron suspension bridge, not merely for the convenience of travellers to and from Tibet, but also to facilitate the military operations which during the reigns of K’ang Hsi, Yung Chêng and Ch’ien Lung were carried on with great vigour against the Tibetan tribes. The bridge is accurately described in the Chih and in the Hsi Tsang Tu K’as as being 31 chang 1 ch’ih in length and 9 ch’ih broad, and as possessing 9 chain-cables supporting wooden planks, and side-railings of cast-iron. A chang is 11-3/4 English feet, and a ch’ih about 14-1/10 English inches. The bridge is similar in construction to those that span the Mekong, Salwen and other rivers in Yunnan. They are remarkable examples of Chinese engineering skill, and never fail to astonish European travellers who behold them for the first time.

The completion of the Lu Ting bridge seems to have had a considerable moral effect on the border tribes, for the Chih contains the names of dozens of t’u ssŭ (tribal chiefs) who immediately afterwards submitted to Chinese overlordship and consented to pay tribute. The more remote chiefs came in later, but most of those in the neighbourhood of the road to Tachienlu and the Ta Tu River hastened to become vassals of China during the five first years of the eighteenth century. The vassalage consisted—and for the most part still consists—merely in the payment of a small annual tribute. But the chiefs of the Greater and the Smaller Chin Ch’uan—the country that includes the valley of the Ta Tu and its branches above Wa Ssŭ Kou—resisted Chinese encroachments for many years in a most vigorous and courageous manner, and it was not till the reign of Ch’ien Lung, towards the end of the century, that the resistance of the last Chin Ch’uan roitelet was finally quelled—with the usual accompaniments of slaughter and devastation. Even as it was, the Chinese owed their ultimate success more to the assistance rendered them by other tribal chiefs—of whom the Ming Chêng Ssŭ or King of Chala was the most important—than to their own military skill. The war is well described—though from an exclusively Chinese standpoint—in the Shêng Wu Chi (聖武記).

Note 20

TACHIENLU

The Chinese characters (see Itinerary) used for the name Tachienlu are three separate words signifying strike, arrow, forge. These characters were originally chosen merely to represent the sound of the Tibetan name Tar-rTse-Mto or Dartsendo (derived from the names of the streams that meet there), but Chinese archæologists contrived to forget this and insisted upon finding an interpretation of the word that would suit the meaning of the three Chinese characters. Accordingly they constructed an ingenious legend to the effect that the famous Chu-ko Liang—always as useful in literary as he used to be in military emergencies—came to Tachienlu in the third century of our era, and ordered his lieutenant, Kuo Ta, to forge arrow-heads there for the imperial army. The actual forge is said to have been in a cave on a hill at a short distance to the north-east of the city. The proof of the absolute truth of this story consists in the incontrovertible fact that the hill in question is called the Kuo Ta hill to this day, and there is a cave in it. The story is further embellished by the statement that when the forge was in use a blue-black ram ran round the hill and frightened away the barbarians (i jên) so that the good work could proceed without interruption.

An ancient name of the Tachienlu district is said to have been Mao Niu Kuo—the Land of Yaks.

THE KING OF CHALA

Note 21

SINO-TIBETAN TRADE

Chinese accounts of Tachienlu as a trading centre may be found in the Hsi Tsang T’u K’ao, the Tachienlu T’ing Chih and the more easily accessible Shêng Wu Chi. In the fifth volume of the last-named work the town is aptly described as being (from the commercial point of view) the hub of a wheel—the centre at which all the spokes meet.

Note 22

THE KING OF CHALA

Tachienlu is not a correct name for the state as a whole: it is strictly applicable only to the city. The state may be described as Chala or as Ming Chêng. Ming Chêng (明正) corresponds with the Chinese title of the king—Ming Chêng Ssŭ (明正司)—which was conferred upon an ancestor no less than five hundred years ago. The meaning of the Chinese words—“bright” and “correct”—are of no consequence. The word “Chala” we have already discussed on page 136.

The king’s Chinese rank is that of a hsüan wei shih ssŭ (宣慰使司)—one of the numerous titles invented by the Chinese for their vassal chiefs. This title carries with it the Chinese rank 3b. As a hsüan wei shih ssŭ the king of Chala takes precedence of the chiefs of Litang and Batang, his neighbours on the west, both of whom are hsüan fu shih ssŭ (宣撫使司) with Chinese rank 4b. All three take precedence of the ruler of Muli, who is an an fu shih ssŭ (安撫使司), with rank 5b. (For an explanation of these titles and ranks, see Mayers’ Chinese Government, 3rd edn., pp. 46-47. The Chinese official hierarchy consists of nine ranks, subdivided into a higher and a lower grade, or a and b.) Special decorations may be and often are conferred upon an individual chief, and these may carry with them the “button” of a superior rank: the button and its privileges, however, are not hereditary. The rank of the chiefs quâ Chinese officials does not affect their position quâ rulers of native states. The “kings” of Litang, Batang and Muli are within their own borders quite as powerful as the “king” of Chala. The latter, however, holds his kingship by strict hereditary right, whereas the “regalities” of Litang and Batang are not necessarily hereditary, though in practice they may be generally so. The kingship of Muli is hereditary in one family (see Page 215), but as the king is also a lama, and therefore a celibate, the descent can only be collateral.

It must be remembered that there are many other semi-independent kings and chiefs along the borderland of Burma, Tibet, Turkestan and Mongolia. Some are the vassals of China, others the vassals of Tibet, while there are probably some even to-day who pay no tribute and acknowledge no suzerain. Few of these chiefs, however, have the importance and dignity of those mentioned in this note.

The greatest length of the state of Chala, from Rumi-changu on the north, to Lo Jang and Muli on the south, is 1,050 li (say 350 miles); the greatest breadth, from Lu Ting on the east, to the Yalung on the west, 400 li (say 133 miles). Under the king’s control are 49 sub-chiefs, including 1 t’u ch’ien hu (土千戶) and 48 t’u pai hu (土百戶). A t’u ch’ien hu nominally presides over 1,000 households, a t’u pai hu over 100. These terms, however, are quite elastic in meaning. The former takes precedence of the latter, but he does not necessarily control a wider territory, or a larger population. The population of the whole state—not including Tachienlu—consists of 6,591 households. (This is the figure given in the Ssuch’uan T’ung Chih, the latest edition of which belongs to the nineteenth century.) The number seems a small one, but a Tibetan household—the members of which are all farm-hands or herdsmen—is generally large, though the average family is so small that the population of Chinese Tibet is probably—apart from Chinese immigration—at the present time stationary. The annual tribute payable to China by the king himself amounts to 161 taels 7 candareens—a sum which, according to our reckoning, amounts to about £25. His 49 sub-chiefs or headmen pay between them a further tribute of about 180 taels 9 mace 2 candareens—equivalent to about £27. The total revenue raised by China out of this large tract of country is, therefore, only slightly over £50 a year. But this amount was assessed at a time when the tael was worth far more than it is worth now, and its purchasing power in the Tibetan states is in any case considerably greater than in the east of China; moreover, the money is not, strictly speaking, a tax, but a mere acknowledgment of China’s suzerainty. Ula (see pp. 136-137) is the real tax paid to China by the tributary states of the west, and China exacts it in case of need to the grim uttermost. Over and above the exaction of ula and the payment of tribute the people are, of course, obliged to pay taxes to the king himself. The king’s powers in the matter of taxation appear to be unlimited, for the principle of “no taxation without representation” has not yet been accepted as a political axiom in the state of Chala. But the only direct tax consists of a kind of likin, or toll on merchandise in transit; this is ample to defray the cost of administration, and the king’s private exchequer is apparently chiefly dependent for its supplies on the revenues of his hereditary property, which are very considerable. The king of Chala succeeds in doing what the kings of England used at one time to get into serious trouble for not doing—he “lives of his own.”

THE KING OF CHALA

The position of the t’u ch’ien hu and t’u pai hu is a peculiar one. Though they are under the jurisdiction of the king, they may be regarded as possessing a certain amount of independence. The Ssuch’uan T’ung Chih states that the king became a vassal of China in the year 1666, but his t’u ch’ien hu did not follow suit till 1700, while the 48 t’u pai hu all “came in” together in 1701 (the fortieth year of K’ang Hsi). The Suzerain Power, however, is careful to differentiate between the great vassals and the little ones: the king of Chala—like others of his rank—receives, in return for his homage, sealed “letters of authority” and a stamped warrant; each t’u pai hu receives only the warrant. All these formalities are of small practical consequence: the Chinese insist upon controlling the high-road to Lhasa, and upon receiving their just dues in the shape of ula service and tribute, but otherwise the kings and t’u pai hu of the western border are just as free as they were before they “tied their heads”—as the Tibetan saying goes—to the emperor of China. It may be worth while adding that the king of Chala is expected to prostrate himself before the imperial throne at Peking once in twelve years. In practice it appears that he does not do so with great regularity. The expenses entailed by such a journey—chiefly in connection with the valuable presents always expected by the Court on such occasions—must be a very severe tax on his majesty’s privy purse.

The first appearance of a ruler of Chala in Chinese history may be assigned to the first years of the Ming dynasty, in the second half of the fourteenth century, when the king showed his good-will to his mighty neighbour by assisting the imperial troops in the frontier warfare of those days. In the fifth year of Yung Lo (1407) he received the title of Ming Chêng Ssŭ, and in the fifth year of K’ang Hsi (1666) his successor definitely abjured his allegiance to Tibet and became a vassal of China. In 1771 the king—whose name was Chia Mu Ts’an—received official recognition from the emperor for his valuable assistance against the Chin Ch’uan rebels, and received a Peacock’s Feather and the “button” of the Second Rank. Twenty years later his successor had a similar honour conferred upon him for like services, and in the fourteenth year of Chia Ch’ing (1809) the king went with a retinue to Peking to do homage to the emperor. Since then the history of the little state has gone through few vicissitudes; but, now that the relations between China and Tibet are going through a process of re-adjustment, it is probable that the new administrative arrangements will tend to the gradual effacement of the powers and privileges of all the Sino-Tibetan kings and chiefs, including the ruler of Chala, and the conversion of their territories into magistracies and prefectures under the direct control of China. Perhaps this is a fitting time, while “the old order changeth, yielding place to new,” to put on record some account of systems of government and constitutions that no doubt have in the past fulfilled some useful purposes, but seem destined before long to pass utterly away.

Note 23

HEIGHTS OF PASSES

With regard to the elevations given in this book it is very necessary to say that those referring to localities between Tachienlu and Li-chiang must be regarded as tentative and provisional only. Future travellers, better equipped with instruments than I was, will doubtless find much to correct. My readings were for the most part dependent on aneroids, which are very untrustworthy at great altitudes. Wherever possible, I have accepted the results of previous travellers, especially those of such accomplished surveyors as Major Davies.

Note 24

POPULATION OF YALUNG WATERSHED

M. Bonin appears to have had the same experience. He states that in travelling from Chung-tien viâ Muli to Tachienlu—a journey of about a month’s duration—he did not meet a single Chinese. “All the inhabitants,” he says, “belong to the Tibetan race.” (Bulletin de la Soc. de Géog., 1898, p. 393.)

Note 25

RACE-TYPES OF YALUNG WATERSHED

THE PA-U-RONG T’U PAI HU

These people owe their tall and well-built frames to their non-Tibetan blood. It is probably the “Man-tzŭ” blood that tells. “The stature of the Tibetans of Lhasa,” says Colonel Waddell, “is even less than that of the Chinese, and considerably below the European average; whilst the men from the eastern province of Kham are quite up to that standard.” (Lhasa and its Mysteries, p. 347.) Kham or Khams includes or included the greater part of Chinese Tibet.

Note 26

ATTITUDE OF MULI PEOPLE TOWARDS STRANGERS

M. Bonin states that he had to spend ten days in negotiation before he was allowed, in 1895, to cross into the Muli country. He approached it from the Yunnan side. (Bulletin de la Soc. de Géog., 1898, p. 396.) Major Davies informs me that he also had difficulty in persuading the people of Muli to allow him to cross the Yalung in the course of his journey from Mien-ning-hsien. It was doubtless owing to the friendliness and tact shown by these travellers and by Mr Amundsen that I met with no opposition on entering the country.

Note 27

EXPLORATION OF THE TA LIANG SHAN

It is reported that the country of the Independent Lolos (the Ta Liang Shan) has at last been traversed by a European. The successful traveller was a French officer named D’Ollone. (See Geographical Journal, October, 1907, p. 437.) The account of his journey should be awaited with interest.

Note 28

THE PA-U-RONG T’U PAI HU

The t’u pai hu of Pa-U-Rong (Pa-U-Lung according to the Pekingese sound of the Chinese characters) is to be accounted one of the most important of all the 49 sub-chiefs of the king of Chala, if the amount of tribute paid is the test of importance. His annual tribute is 7 taels, whereas the single t’u ch’ien hu only pays a little more than 9 taels. The highest of all the tributes is that of the t’u pai hu of Rumi Cho-rong, in the northern part of the state. His payment is 12 taels 5 mace. The Pa-U-Rong t’u pai hu nets a modest revenue by causing travellers and merchants who cross the Yalung at this point to pay him a small toll.

Note 29

NAME OF THE YALUNG

M. Bonin calls the Yalung the Rivière Noire, apparently supposing its Tibetan name to be Nag Ch’u (ནག་ཆུ་) “Black Water.” But I know of no authority for this. The true Tibetan name appears to he Nya(g)-ch’u (ཉག་ཆུ་). The nya(g) reappears in the tribal or district name Mi-nya(g) or Miniak (Menia), མི་ཉག་; and the Chinese “Yalung” is an attempt to pronounce the Tibetan Nya-Rong (ཉག་རོང་) or “Valley of the Nya.”

Note 30

THE CHIN SHA CHIANG

MULI—KHON—OFFICIAL TITLES

It may not be generally known that according to the Chinese authorities there are two rivers bearing the name of Chin Sha Chiang. One is the Ta (Great), the other the Hsiao (Small) Chin Sha Chiang, and the “small” one is the Yangtse. In a first attempt to identify the Ta Chin Sha Chiang—which must obviously be a very great river—we are apt to be much puzzled; for we read of it as flowing from western Tibet and also as flowing through Burma into the “Southern Ocean.” But the mystery is explained when we remember that the great river of southern Tibet—the Tsangpo or Yaru Tsangpo (literally “Upper River”)—used to be believed not only by Chinese but also by European geographers to be the main feeder of the Irrawaddy. We now know that the Tsangpo is no other than the main upper branch of the Brahmaputra: or rather we assume it from much circumstantial evidence. No European has yet followed the course of the Brahmaputra up to the point where it receives the icy waters of the Tibetan Tsangpo—which hurls itself over the edge of the Tibetan plateau and creates there a series of waterfalls that must be among the grandest sights in the world—but we now know, from the reports of our native surveyors, the approximate position of the falls.414 The country between Assam and Tibet is unfortunately inhabited by tribes that are apparently violently hostile to all strangers. Their own domestic habits are of a somewhat repellent nature: it is said,415 for instance, that on occasions of the celebration of marriages it is the genial custom of one of the tribes to serve up the bridegroom’s mother-in-law at the nuptial banquet.

The Chinese geographers know the Tsangpo by its Tibetan name (calling it the Ya-lu-tsang-pu-chiang, where chiang is tautological) but they also call it the Great (Ta) Chin Sha Chiang; and readers of their topographical works must beware of confusing this river with the Small (Hsiao) Chin Sha Chiang of China: though when the adjective is omitted the river referred to is always the Chinese river, and therefore identical with the Yangtse.

Note 31

MULI

I have adopted the spelling “Muli” instead of “Mili” on the authority of the Ssuch’uan T’ung Chih. The Chinese characters there given are 木裏, (Mu-li), and though I have seen others used I think there can be no doubt that the T’ung Chih is the best authority to follow.

Note 32

KHON

The name of the third lamasery was given to me as Khon, but I observe that Mr Amundsen calls it Kang-u, and locates it half-way between Muli and the Yalung, almost due east. Major Davies’s map, again, places a lamasery named K’u-lu at almost the same spot. K’u-lu, Khon and Kang-u are probably one and the same place, and as Major Davies’s route seems to have led him past it the name given by him is probably the correct one. It seems strange that the residences of the k’an-po should all be within a comparatively short distance of each other. If the real object of the periodical movements of the “Court” were to enable the k’an-po to keep in close touch with all parts of his territory, it would naturally extend its peregrinations somewhat further afield.

Note 33

OFFICIAL TITLES IN MULI

Most of these official titles are well known in connection with the administrative arrangements of all the great lamaseries of Tibet; but the authority of the Muli officials is not confined to the management of lamaseries.

Note 34

THE KING AND PEOPLE OF MULI

The ruler of Muli holds the rank, vis-à-vis the Chinese suzerain, of an An Fu Ssŭ (see note 22). In his own territory he is a gyal-po or king, but he is also a lama, and the succession must therefore go to a collateral branch of the “royal” family. In practice, the heir is generally a nephew who has been inducted into Lamaism at an early age, and has risen high in the hierarchy. The king of Muli first became tributary to China in the seventh year of Yung Chêng (1729). He received from the Chinese Government sealed “letters of authority” and a stamped warrant similar to those bestowed on the king of Chala. The greatest length of the territory, from the frontier of the Litang principality on the north to the territory of the Ku Po Chu t’u ssŭ on the south, is 900 li (say 300 miles); its greatest breadth is from the frontier of Chala on the east to that of Chung-tien on the west, 1,300 li (say 430 miles). These distances, as in the case of Chala, are measured by length of actual paths, and not by bee-lines. Though the Yalung forms the eastern boundary at Pa-U-Rong, the Muli territory extends for a distance of some scores of miles across the Yalung further south. According to the Ssuch’uan T’ung Chih (published in the first half of the nineteenth century) the total number of i jên (“barbarians”) under the king’s rule comprises 3,283 households. This figure hardly enables us to assess the present population, which—if we include the large body of lamas—can hardly be judged to be less than 25,000. It should be remembered that there are no towns in Muli, very little trade, and great areas of mountainous country practically uninhabitable. The king’s annual tribute consists of 120 piculs of buckwheat (16,000 lbs.) estimated in cash value at 74 taels 4 mace and 3 horses, each valued at 8 taels, or a total of 24 taels for the three. The total tribute thus amounts (in money-value) to 98 taels 4 mace. These assessments of value were, of course, made many years ago. Probably re-assessments are made from time to time, as otherwise the monetary values would bear no proper ratio to the value of the articles forming the basis of the tribute. Payment is made at Yen-yüan-hsien, and is supposed to be applied to the expenses of the local military establishment. It is the custom of the country that one out of every three, or two out of every five, male members of a family enter the priesthood. All the lay population can be called upon for military service; but it is hardly necessary to say that the king keeps no standing army, and his people are only called to arms when serious disputes arise with the neighbouring Tibetan chiefs. The T’ung Chih goes on to say that the people of the land of Muli consist of six different kinds of Barbarians: (1) lamas; (2) Chia-mi or Chieh-mi (呷迷); (3) Yüeh-ku or Yo-ku (約古); (4) Hsü-mi (虛迷); (5) Mo-so; (6) Hsi Fan. The lamas, of course, are not a distinct race; the Mo-so and Hsi Fan are discussed in Chapter XV. of this book; as for the three others, the remarks made upon them in the T’ung Chih leave us very much in the dark. The characteristics of the i jên are dismissed in four lines. We are told that the Chia-mi and Yüeh-ku are very like one another, and that the women allow their hair to hang over their shoulders. The Hsü-mi males cultivate a queue, and the women do up their hair into a pointed coiffure. They are docile, and of an amiable disposition. The Mo-so and Hsi Fan are like each other, and honest and tractable by nature. Their clothes are made of woven cloth, and their coats button under the left arm (tso jên; cf. the Confucian Lun Yü, p. 282, Legge’s edn.) The men wear queues and the women do up their hair. They live by agriculture. They are fond of hunting wild animals. This is all the T’ung Chih has to tell us about the people of Muli. The section ends with the laconic remark that lawsuits are decided by the k’an-po.

THE LANGUAGE-TEST OF RACE

Chinese customs certainly seem to be losing rather than gaining ground in Muli: the queues worn by some of the men do not hang down the back but are coiled round the head; and it is not a mark of respect, as in China, to uncoil the queue. Moreover the front of the head is not shaved, as in China. The remarks about the women are true enough: a large proportion wear their hair loose, so that they look like rather overgrown and unwieldy school-girls; the rest have more or less elaborate coiffures, but the female fashions of China in this respect are totally ignored. I will leave the task of identifying the Chia-mi, Yüeh-ku and Hsü-mi to some future investigator with more time and leisure than fell to my lot. Tibetans, Li-so, Man-tzŭ or Lolos, Kachins and Mo-so are all doubtless to be found among the people of Muli, and it seems not improbable that the predominant type is Mo-so.

Note 35

THE LANGUAGE-TEST OF RACE

The collection of hastily-compiled and doubtless very inaccurate vocabularies to be found in Appendix A need not be taken as indicating any belief in the value of such lists of words from either the philological or the ethnological point of view. They are given merely for what they are worth, as an infinitesimal addition to the small stock of general knowledge that we already possess with regard to the tribes of western China. The old faith in language as a sure test of race has long been given up. A page or two of skull measurements would help us more towards settling the racial problems of western China than the completest equipment of grammars and dictionaries. Unfortunately the methods employed by many of the tribes for the disposal of their dead will seriously hamper the investigations of the craniologist who, in the hopes of a rich harvest of inexorable bones, may take his measuring-tape to the graveyards of western China.

Note 36

HIGHEST HABITATION ON THE GLOBE

The land of Muli is as wild and mountainous as that of Chala. It was between Muli and the Yalung that M. Bonin discovered what he believes to be the highest inhabited station on the globe, at a height of 16,568 feet, “a hamlet occupied in the dead of winter by a few yak-herdsmen.” The mines of Tok-ya-long in western Tibet, he says, which have hitherto been considered the highest habitation in the world are 525 feet lower, and moreover are not inhabited all the year round. There are other spots both in Muli and Chala, probably of a greater height than 16,000 feet, that are inhabited, though the huts are probably not occupied in winter.

Note 37

FEMALE CHIEFS

In the Shan States female rulers are apparently not uncommon. (See Gazetteer of Upper Burma, pt. i. vol. i. p. 262.) For an interesting note on several Tibetan “queens” (derived from native and Chinese sources) see Rockhill’s Land of the Lamas, pp. 339-341. Sa-mong is better known as So-mo. A recent European visitor to this country says that the “queen” or nü-wang of So-mo is only a myth, “the real monarch being actually a man, who for some obscure reason calls himself a Queen.” (W. C. Haines Watson, A Journey to Sung-p’an, in J.R.A.S. (China), vol. xxxvi., 1905.) The Ssuch’uan T’ung Chih contains references to several female t’u ssŭ. A female t’u pai hu, with a territorial name of six syllables, is mentioned as becoming tributary to China in K’ang Hsi 60. She paid 20 taels annually as “horse-money.” The Ch’ang Kuan Ssŭ of Sung Kang is—or may be—a woman. One is mentioned as receiving honours from China in K’ang Hsi 23. Another female ch’ang kuan ssŭ in the Chien-ch’ang Valley (Hu-li-ho-tung) is described as being a tribute-payer to the extent of ten horses a year.

Note 38

LI-CHIANG-FU

An old name of Li-chiang was Sui (嶲), and its inhabitants, in the days of the Early Han dynasty, appear to have been known as the K’un Ming (昆明). Their fierceness and lawlessness were instrumental in preventing the Emperor Wu Ti, in the second century B.C., from establishing a trade route from China to India through their territory. (See T. W. Kingsmill’s Intercourse of China with Eastern Turkestan, J.R.A.S., January 1882.)

Note 39

THE REBELLION IN YUNNAN

The best account of the Mohammedan rebellion is to be found in M. Émile Rocher’s La Province Chinoise du Yunnan, vol. ii. pp. 30-192. The origin of the rebellion is to be traced to a comparatively trifling dispute among miners, which took place in 1855 in a mining centre situated between Yunnan-fu and Tali-fu. The Mohammedan section of miners, who all worked together, aroused envy and hatred because they had struck richer veins of metal than the “orthodox” Chinese miners in a neighbouring locality, and the result was a violent dispute which ended in blows. The official who was responsible for good order in the district was seized with panic and fled to Yunnan-fu, where he submitted reports that were unjustifiably hostile to the Mohammedans. The latter meanwhile had rendered themselves masters of the situation, and drove their opponents off the field. The people of the neighbouring town of Linan avenged this insult by attacking the Mohammedans in overwhelming force and expelling them to the forests. This was the beginning of a series of bloodthirsty combats, which in a short time set the whole province in a blaze, and caused the loss of millions of human lives.

So far as race went, the Mohammedans of Yunnan were no other than ordinary Yunnanese. They were marked off from their fellow-provincials solely by their religion. This, however, was sufficient to cause them to be treated almost as foreigners, for they had little intercourse with orthodox Chinese, and seem to have intermarried among themselves. Whether the Mohammedans of Yunnan and other parts of China were—and are—strict observers of the rules of their religion is a doubtful point. Rocher says of the Yunnanese Mohammedans that “they have preserved intact the beliefs of their ancestors, and they rigorously observe the rules imposed upon them by the Koran.” Other observers, however,—including Mohammedan natives of India—have scoffed at their co-religionists of Yunnan, declaring that they know nothing of the tenets of Islam, and obey none of the rules of their faith except that of abstinence from pork. I have myself seen Chinese Mohammedan children undergoing the pains of having page after page of Arabic drilled into their little heads, though both they and their teachers admitted that they did not understand the meaning of a single word. The fact remains, however, that some Chinese Mohammedans do still occasionally make the pilgrimage to Mecca; and well-attended Mohammedan mosques may yet be found in at least half the provinces of China.

Chinese Mohammedans have often proved a thorn in the flesh of the official classes, not only in Yunnan, but also in Kansu and elsewhere. Yet it cannot be said that they have shown much of that fiery religious fanaticism which has sometimes characterised Islam elsewhere. The great rebellion in Yunnan did not originate in any religious dispute, and it would never have developed into a war that lasted nearly twenty years and laid waste a province, if only a few able and impartial officials had given their attention to the matter in its early stages.

Two circumstances helped to prolong the struggle. The first was the great T’ai P’ing rebellion in eastern China, which rendered the central Government powerless to deal effectually with the situation in Yunnan; the second was the military skill of the Mohammedan leaders, which led to the concentration of the whole Mohammedan strength in the hands of a few able men.

OFFICIAL ACCOUNTS OF WESTERN TRIBES

The history of the war cannot be sketched here. It may be sufficient to say that at one time nearly the whole province was in the hands of the Mohammedan rebels; even Yunnan-fu itself capitulated to their victorious arms. Before this took place, the great Mohammedan leader, Tu Wên-hsiu, had already greatly distinguished himself in the west of the province. Against the will of the viceroy, who committed suicide, the officials had in 1856 planned and carried out a massacre of all Mohammedans found within a radius of 800 li from the capital. The news of the massacre naturally roused in Tu Wên-hsiu intense feelings of indignation and hatred against the provincial Government which had sanctioned an act of such hideous barbarity, and his natural abilities and high reputation for courage and integrity soon singled him out for leadership. His first great victory secured him the city of Tali, which became the Mohammedan headquarters. In 1867 he was proclaimed Imam or Sultan, and Tali became the capital of a short-lived Mohammedan state. It was held till 1873, when Tu Wên-hsiu, faced by hopeless odds, surrendered it and poisoned himself. Before this time the genius of General Gordon had put an end to the T’ai P’ing rebellion, and the imperial Government was in a position to oppose the Sultan with an overwhelming force. Only one result was possible. With the capitulation of Tali and the death of Tu Wên-hsiu the Mohammedans were able to make no further headway against the imperial troops.

One of the most terrible results of this hideous civil war was the recrudescence of the deadly disease now too well known to us all as the plague. After the war the pestilence gradually spread far beyond the limits of the province, and is still the annual scourge of south China and India. It is probable, however, that plague has for many centuries been endemic in the valleys of western Yunnan. The accounts given of it by such writers as Rocher and Baber, who witnessed its ravages in Yunnan long before the fatal year when it was first observed in Hong Kong (1894), are of great interest. The curious fact that rats always seemed to be attacked before human beings was noted by Rocher many years before the disease began to be studied by medical experts. (See Rocher, op. cit., vol. i. p. 75; vol. ii. pp. 279-281.)

Note 40

CHINESE OFFICIAL ACCOUNTS OF WESTERN TRIBES

Several volumes of the official Provincial Annals of Yunnan are devoted to a most elaborate quasi-ethnological enquiry into the various tribal communities of that province. Unfortunately, the conscientious industry of the compilers coupled with their bland credulity and lack of critical training led them to fill their pages with a great deal of matter that is useless and misleading. The numbers and names of the tribes are quite unnecessarily multiplied, and there is hardly any attempt at classification or at the tracing of origins. Subdivisions of the same race are treated as entirely separate, and any similarities between them are either ignored or merely mentioned as unexplained facts. Yet it must be admitted that as descriptions of tribal customs and as store-houses of tradition and folk-lore the ethnological sections of the Annals are by no means to be despised. The T’ung Chih of Ssuch’uan is less satisfactory in this respect than that of Yunnan.

NOTE 41 (p. 284)

THEORY OF INDIAN ORIGIN OF TRIBES

It seems quite clear that the Licchavis—or the great Vaggian or Vrijian clan-system to which they belonged and from which the Mauryans sprang—were neither Aryans nor Dravidians. In all probability they were of Kolarian or Munda race. The Kolarians seem to have entered India from the north-east—just as the Aryans afterwards entered it from the north-west—and extended themselves over vast areas from which they were subsequently driven by Dravidians and Aryans. They must have originally come from the countries that lay to the east, which we now know as Burma, China and Indo-China. They probably left many of their Kolarian kinsfolk behind them, and it may have been through keeping up communications with the latter that they were able to introduce into their old homes something of the new culture and civilisation that they acquired in their new homes in India. The Kolarian dialects are known to be akin to those of certain tribes in Burma, and so far as personal characteristics are concerned a description of the Kolarian tribes as they are known to-day in parts of Bengal would be applicable, word for word, to some of the peoples of Indo-China and Yunnan. “The Kolarian people,” says Mr J. F. Hewitt, who lived among them, “may generally be described as gregarious, excitable, turbulent when roused, but generally peaceable and good-humoured. They are brave and adventurous, witty, and very fond of amusement, not given to work more than is necessary, and as a rule very careless of the future.” (J.R.A.S., vol. xx. p. 330.) It must be remembered, however, that the Burmese people, to whom these words are also applicable, are now believed by the best authorities to have come from “the Mongolian countries north of Magadha.” (Sir George Scott’s Burma, p. 66.)

Many of the tribes of western China—some of the Lolos and Min-chia, for instance—are often described as possessing a type of features that is almost European; and Mr Kingsmill seems to derive from this fact some support of his theory of their Indian (Aryan) origin. “The distinctive colouring,” he says, “closely approximates to the Aryan type of the Indian peninsula,” etc. (J.R.A.S. (China Branch), vol. xxxv. p. 95.) But the Mauryans themselves, as we have seen, were not of Aryan origin. The Licchavis are referred to in Manu as one of the “base-born” castes for that very reason—in spite of the fact that they possessed great power and prestige and very wide influence. It seems very doubtful whether an Aryan emigration from India to China took place at any time. India always offered full scope for all Aryan energies; indeed we know that the Aryans by no means became so universally predominant, even in India, as one might gather from the early and wide extension of their language and religion. If there really is an Aryan element among the tribes of western China it would be curious to speculate on the possibility of its having come by a non-Indian route.

Note 42

CHANDRAGUPTA AND ASOKA

Chandragupta’s reign probably began in 320 B.C., and his grandson Asoka ruled from? 264 to? 228. The chronology is not yet absolutely fixed, but I rely with some confidence on the dates recently selected by J. F. Fleet (J.R.A.S., October 1906, pp. 984 seq.) who, it may be remarked incidentally, assigns the death of the Buddha to B.C. 482.

Note 43

VESÂLI AND THE LICCHAVIS

For further information regarding Vesâli and the Licchavis see W. W. Rockhill’s Life of the Buddha, pp. 62 seq., and 203 (footnote), Dr Rhys Davids’ Buddhist India, pp. 40-41, and two articles by Mr Vincent Smith in the Royal Asiatic Society’s Journal for April 1902 and January 1905. One of Mr Rockhill’s Tibetan authorities connects the Licchavis with the Sakyas or Çakyas to whom the Buddha himself belonged. “The Çakyas,” says this authority, were “divided into three parts, whose most celebrated representatives were Çakya the Great (the Buddha), Çakya the Licchavi, and Çakya the Mountaineer. Grya Khri btsan po, the first Tibetan King, belonged to the family of Çakya the Licchavi. Many other Buddhist sovereigns of India and elsewhere claimed the same descent.” This note is of interest as showing the wide extent and long duration of Licchavi influence, and the desire of powerful races and kings to trace a connection with the family of the Buddha. “Çakya, the Licchavi” may, of course, have become a member of the clan by adoption. Caste-rules (even supposing they precluded adoption) did not hold good among the Licchavis, who were not Aryans. With respect to the possible connection of the Buddha’s family with the Licchavis, all that can be said for certain is that the Licchavis were among the earliest and most devoted supporters of the Buddhist faith, and that Vesâli soon became a city of great religious importance. Buddhism, indeed, was less of an Aryan religion than people have been in the habit of supposing. The Sakyas themselves were almost certainly an Aryan people; we know that their exclusiveness and intense pride of birth brought about the destruction of their capital at the hands of Vidūdabha. But it seems quite clear that Buddhism progressed most rapidly and won its greatest victories among people of non-Aryan race, and this not only in foreign lands but in India itself. Buddhism did not achieve its wonderful successes in India in the third century B.C. and afterwards by means of the conversion of Brahmans. It is far truer to say that Buddhism spread on account of its adoption by northern non-Aryan tribes which, in spite of Aryan conquests, remained very powerful both in numbers and in political influence. (See on this point B. H. Baden-Powell’s Notes on the Origin of the “Lunar” and “Solar” Aryan Tribes, J.R.A.S., April 1899, pp. 298-299.)

Note 44

THE SERES

The Seres are mentioned by Virgil, Strabo, Lucan, Pliny and Pomponius Mela. Lucan seems to have supposed that they were an African race—neighbours of the Ethiopians. Such ignorance in Nero’s age may be excused when we remember the wild theories prevalent in mediæval Europe as to the local habitation of Prester John!

Note 45

ARCHÆOLOGICAL WORK

Some valuable work—of special interest to the student of Buddhism—has quite recently been carried out at Pagan by Mr I. H. Marshall and Dr Sten Konow. (See J.R.A.S., October 1907, pp. 1003 seq.) It is earnestly to be hoped that that Government will some day see fit to provide for the proper support of the Archæological Department, which cannot be expected to carry out good work at Pagan or elsewhere without funds. Every year’s delay will render the work of excavation more difficult and more costly. It is not pleasing to observe that the Archæological Departments of India, Burma and Ceylon are all starved. Only a few weeks after the conclusion of the recent Franco-Siamese treaty it was announced in the French press that steps were being taken forthwith to carry out some expensive archæological and preservative work at the magnificent ruins of Angkor Wat, which are within the Cambodian territory acquired by France under the treaty. Is England always to lag behind France in matters of this kind?

Note 46

THE BURMESE LABOUR QUESTION

One aspect of the labour question in Burma does not seem to have attracted the attention it deserves. In spite of Mr Fielding Hall’s optimism, the belief that the apathetic Burman is being shouldered out of his own country by more hard-working immigrants, especially natives of India, is a very prevalent one, not only among European observers, but even among some classes of the Burmese themselves. At present no Burman dares to raise a protest against the influx of labourers, who, if they do not utterly crush him in the course of the struggle for existence, may at least degrade him from the high level of comfort and social well-being in which he now lives. The day may come when the Burman will demand that this alien immigration be interdicted. If he does so, what will be the attitude of the Government? Probably anything but sympathetic. The White races of Australia, British Columbia and California object to the influx of Chinese and Japanese labourers for reasons practically identical with those that would actuate the Burman, and if their attitude is a justifiable one can it be argued that the Burmese attitude would not be equally so? The Burman would doubtless be told by the European, whose material interests in Burma depend on the unrestricted immigration of hard-working aliens, that his country cannot be allowed to go to waste; that if he, through his laziness, will not develop it to the utmost, some one else must be found who will develop it in his stead. But the Chinese and Japanese might if they were strong enough—and perhaps some day they will be strong enough—knock at the gates of Australia, Canada and the United States, and demand admission on precisely similar grounds. No one will deny that the scarcity and high price of labour in those countries have seriously retarded, and are still retarding, nearly every form of industrial and agricultural development; yet the Yellow races are excluded on the grounds that they would lower the White man’s standard of living, and that they are in the habit of sending their earnings out of the country. I do not say the White man’s attitude is unreasonable: but I do not see how, on our own principles, we could refuse to restrict the immigration of black aliens into Burma if the Burmese people—on grounds identical with those that actuate our own conduct in Canada and elsewhere—demanded that we should do so. Such action would no doubt be an artificial restriction of natural economic tendencies, and so might bring its own punishment in the long-run; but the same remark applies to the policy adopted in our own colonies.

We have recently become so much accustomed to hear of the antagonism and rivalry of interests between East and West—as if all Eastern countries represented one set of immutable ideals and all Western countries another—that we are apt to lose ourselves in a mist of generalities. The East has problems of its own to solve, some of which reproduce in a more restricted area the racial problems that are beginning at a late hour to agitate the minds of statesmen in Europe and America. The European speaks with half-hearted contempt (behind which lurks a secret dread) of a Yellow Peril: the Burman is disquieted by a no less threatening Black Peril that is already within his gates, and his gates still stand open with a dangerous hospitality.

Note 47

MILITARY QUALITIES OF ORIENTALS

The British officers who trained and led the recently-disbanded Chinese Regiment are known to have formed a high opinion of the personal courage of the Chinese as represented by the men of that regiment. When it is remembered that the very existence of the regiment as a unit in the British Army was an anomaly, and that at Tientsin and Peking the men fought as mercenaries against their own countrymen, the fact that they behaved well under fire is all the more noteworthy. It may be taken for granted that even the Japanese soldier, if ordered to charge an unruly mob of his own countrymen, would hardly show the brilliant daring that he displayed before Port Arthur.

When Europe was startled by the news of some of the great Japanese victories in Manchuria, an English newspaper made the somewhat hasty suggestion that the Japanese were “scientific fanatics,” and the phrase was caught up and repeated with approbation by many. Why fanatics? Simply because the Japanese troops had behaved with such unheard-of heroism that Europe was unable to reconcile such conduct with its own ideas of what constituted bravery. What many Englishmen said, in effect, was this: “The conduct ordinarily shown by British troops in action is bravery; to go beyond this is fanaticism. The criterion of true courage is the average conduct of the average British soldier on the field of battle.” The Japanese who with reckless gallantry gave their lives for emperor and country on the battle-fields of Liao-tung, and who considered it a disgrace to return home without a wound, were fanatics. Well, if so, it is a kind of fanaticism that every European Government would like to see spread among its own fighting-men when the day of battle comes.

Note 48

“THE YELLOW PERIL”

With some people the antipathy to the Oriental amounts to a positive horror, inexplicable even by themselves in ordinary language, and very often based on no personal experience. “I know not,” said De Quincey, “what others share in my feelings on this point; but I have often thought that if I were compelled to forego England, and to live in China, among Chinese manners and modes of life and scenery, I should go mad. The causes of my horror lie deep, and some of them must be common to others.... In China, over and above what it has in common with the rest of southern Asia, I am terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, by the barrier of utter abhorrence placed between myself and them, by counter-sympathies deeper than I can analyse. I could sooner live with lunatics, with vermin, with crocodiles or snakes.” When we have made all allowances for the excited utterances of an opium-dreamer, these words indicate the existence of intensely strong feelings of racial antipathy, and there is no reason to regard De Quincey as the only European who has entertained such feelings. Does our subliminal consciousness retain dim ancestral memories of mighty struggles waged æons ago for the survival and supremacy of our own racial type? And does it harbour a vague prophetic dread of a more terrific warfare yet to come?

What is perhaps at the root of this horror of Asiatics felt by some Europeans is an instinctive feeling that the world is not large enough to contain or afford free play for the energies of both races; coupled perhaps with an ugly doubt whether, in spite of all the great material achievements of the West in recent years, the European type is after all the fittest to survive in the struggle for existence. Huxley long ago reminded us that the “survival of the fittest” does not necessarily imply the survival of the “best” or most highly developed. He points out, for instance, that if certain conceivable changes were to come about in atmospheric conditions, the law of the survival of the fittest might bring about the extinction of all living things except “lichens, diatoms, and such microscopic organisms as those which give red snow its colour.”416 They would be the sole survivors of the struggle for existence because they alone were adapted to the new environment. It may be that at some future period in the course of the struggle—though long before we have reached the lichen and diatom stage—certain conditions may prove hostile to the continued existence of the White races and favourable to that of the Yellow. Lafcadio Hearn, who in spite of his “de-occidentalisation” admitted the superiority of the Western races—without explaining what he meant by “superiority”—expressed the belief that in the “simple power of living” they are immensely inferior to those of the East. “The Occidental,” he says, “cannot live except at a cost sufficient for the maintenance of twenty Oriental lives. In our very superiority lies the secret of our fatal weakness. Our physical machinery requires a fuel too costly to pay for the running of it in a perfectly conceivable future period of race-competition and pressure of population.” He conjectures that some day the Western peoples may be crushed out of existence, their successors scarcely regretting their disappearance “anymore than we ourselves regret the extinction of the dinotherium or the ichthyosaurus.” Why indeed should they? When we consider how seldom the memory even of our own dead ancestors touches our sympathies or prompts an affectionate thought it will not seem strange that in the days to come the victorious Yellow man may regard the extinct White man with no more emotion than the visitor to a museum now regards the wire-linked bones of a prehistoric monster. No creature that is doomed to failure in the struggle for existence need look to the conquerors for the least sign of pity or sympathy. The poor dodo has vanished from the scene of its joys and sorrows for ever, but that is not the reason why the nightingale’s song is sometimes a sad one. No less cheerfully warbles the thrush because the great auk will flap his ineffectual wings no more. Even the crocodile refrains from shedding tears over the fossil remains of the Triassic stagonolepis.

It behoves us to remember that victory in the struggle for existence is not a victory once and for all. The doom of the conqueror in this fight is that he must never sheathe his sword. The prize goes always to him who deserves it, but no rest is allowed him when the battle is over. New challengers are ever pressing into the lists, and the challenged must go ever armed and with lance in rest.

The grim tragedy once enacted periodically at Aricia might be interpreted, not too fancifully, as a miniature representation of the more terrible struggle that is for ever in progress throughout the whole world of animate nature. The guardian of the Golden Bough—

“The priest who slew the slayer,
And shall himself be slain”—

retained his position and his life only so long as they were not challenged by one more vigorous or more dexterous than himself.

The great nations of the West have won their material pre-eminence by overcoming weaker competitors, who in their turn had once been conquerors. They will keep their prizes so long as they deserve to keep them, and no longer. Exclusion laws and trades-unions and cunning appliances wrought by scientific and intellectual skill may stave off the day of disaster, but if the White races have no better support than such things as these, for them the day of doom will assuredly dawn.

Yet a struggle for predominance among great sections of the human race need not imply actual physical warfare. If the Yellow races are to be supreme, it will be partly because the White races have suicidally contributed to their own ruin. If White men become too intensely careful of the individual life, and too careless of the welfare of the race; if they allow luxury to sap their energies and weaken their moral fibre; if they insist too strongly on “rights” and show too slack a devotion to “duty”; if they regard the accumulation of wealth as the be-all and end-all of existence; if selfishness impels their young men to avoid matrimony, and their young women to shun the duties of maternity; if they give way to these and other social vices to which our age bears witness, they cannot reasonably expect to compete advantageously with people who have no craving for luxury, and scarcely know what it means; who look not to wealth as a means for individual aggrandisement; who are at all times willing to sink personal interests in the larger interests of family and clan; who are tireless and uncomplaining workers; among whom parenthood is a religious necessity, and artificial restrictions of the birth-rate are practically unknown; and whose women are free from political aspirations and willing to do their duty at the domestic fireside and in the nursery.

The Yellow Peril, then, is no mere myth: let so much be granted. Yet the recognition of its existence need not drive us to utter pessimism, so long as our faults are not irremediable, and our virtues not reduced to inactivity. The shaping of our fate lies, to some extent at least, in our own hands, and, after all, the outlook for the West is not entirely gloomy. The mere proximity of a peril does not make the brave man falter and tremble; on the contrary, it braces his nerves, and increases his alertness. If the East has qualities and virtues that make for great strength, it is no less clearly lacking in other qualities and virtues that still find a home in the West. The Yellow Peril, so far from driving us to a cowardly despair, may and should have the effect of raising our courage, ennobling our ideals, up rooting our selfishness and purifying Western society. It may enable us to see that in some respects our aims have been false ones, and that our views of the essentials of progress and of civilisation must be partially modified. The recognition of the existence of our own diseases may lead to the discovery of the means of cure. The East has begun in recent years to learn some valuable lessons from the West; is it not time that we returned the compliment? If we could but bring ourselves to do so, perhaps at no very distant period the Yellow Peril might turn out to be the White Salvation.

Footnotes

1 Mr J. Henniker Heaton, M.P., in The Nineteenth Century and After, September 1906.

2 Since reduced to thirty-six hours.

3 The Far East, by Sir Henry Norman, p. 593.

4 But there is another side to this story which does not reflect much credit on the foreigners concerned. This aspect of the matter has been fully detailed by Mr Chester Holcombe, in The Real Chinese Question, chap. i.

5 China’s Only Hope, by Chang Chih-tung, translated by S. I. Woodbridge, 1901.

6 It was accomplished very successfully by a British river gun-boat as recently as the summer of 1907.

7 For Itinerary, see Appendix B.

8 The word fu attached to so many Chinese place-names is usually translated “prefecture,” which is an administrative division including several hsien or district-magistracies. Chou also signifies an administrative division or “department,” smaller than a fu.

9 Yule’s Marco Polo, edited by Cordier, vol. ii. pp. 36-37.

10 First published in the Royal Geographical Society’s Supplementary Papers, vol. i.

11 書畫史.

12 Clive Bigham, in A Year in China, p. 125.

13 江口.

14 See Map.

15 It will be observed by those acquainted with Chinese that here and elsewhere I have, for the sake of uniformity, transliterated all Chinese names according to the sounds of Pekingese, except in the case of a few stereotyped words.

16 It is used, however, in the official Annals of the province (Ssuch’uan T’ung Chih).

17 See chap. xv. p. 286 (note 1).

18 S. Beal in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, January 1882, p. 39. His view does not seem to have attracted much attention.

19 See Waddell’s Lhasa and its Mysteries (John Murray, 1905), pp. 289-290.

20 See Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, January and July 1886.

21 See China Review, vols. xv. and xix.

22 See chap. xv.

23 蛾眉.

24 天真皇人.

25 黃帝.

26 隨時易名.

27 寶掌.

28 千歲和尚.

29 This name (蒲) is not to be confused with the P’u (普) of P’u Hsien. The sound is the same but the Chinese characters are different.

30 The word P’u, which means Universal, is also the first character in the name of P’u Hsien.

31 See 1 (p. 411).

32 普賢.

33 He must not be confused with the Adi-Buddha or primordial deity of Red Lamaism, though the name is the same.

34 華嚴經. See especially chüan, 7-10.

35 龍樹 (Lung Shu) in Chinese.

36 See Dhammapada, chap. xxiii. S.B.E. vol. x. p. 78.

37 See 2 (p. 412).

38 The Pali word is Kamma, which, like the Sanskrit, simply means “doing; action; work; labour; business.” See Childers’ Pali Dictionary, s.v. Kammam. Mr A. E. Taylor, in his admirable work The Elements of Metaphysics, describes the Buddhist karma as “the system of purposes and interests” to which a man’s “natural deeds give expression.”

39 Cf. Virgil, Æneid, vi. 719-721:
“O pater, anne aliquas ad caelum hinc ire putandumst
Sublimes animas iterumque ad tarda reverti
Corpora? Quae lucis miseris tam dira cupido?”

The whole passage from 703 to 751 is of great interest to those who like to trace Buddhistic thought in non-Buddhistic literature. Lines 66-68 of the Third Georgic are equally striking in this respect:

“Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi
Prima fugit, subeunt morbi tristisque senectus
Et labor et durae rapit inclementia mortis.”

It was just such reflections as this that filled the heart of the Sakya prince with pity and love for mankind. Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalium tangunt, the beautiful utterance of “the chastest and royalest” of poets, expresses the feeling that prompted the Great Renunciation and gave to the world a Buddha.

40 See 3 (p. 412).

41 The Chinese 八聖道分.

42 See 4 (p. 413).

43 The Mahâ-Parinibbâna Suttanta, translated by Rhys Davids (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi. p. 38).

44 Avalokiteçvara is the Chinese Kuan Yin, generally represented in China (where temples to this divinity are exceedingly numerous) as a female, and known to Europeans as the “Goddess of Mercy.” The change of sex is due to an identification of this Bodhisattva with a legendary Chinese princess, who devoted herself to saving human lives, especially from the dangers of the sea. She has thus become in a special sense the guardian deity of sailors; but she is also worshipped by women as the goddess who grants male offspring. Mahâsthâma is the Chinese Ta Shih Chih, the Bodhisattva of Great Strength. Eitel, in his Handbook of Chinese Buddhism, says that this Bodhisattva is perhaps the same as Maudgalyâyana; but this is a mistake, as is quite clear from the fact that, in certain sutras, such as the Amitâyur-Dhyāna Sutra, they figure as separate personalities.

45 The Japanese Amida.

46 “The Buddha, the Dharma, and the Samgha”: i.e. the Buddha, the law and doctrine of the Buddha, and the Church or Community of Brethren established by the Buddha.

47 The Smaller Sukhâvatî Vyûha, translated by Max Müller (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xlix.).

48 See 5 (p. 414).

49 Any one who is not hopelessly narrow-minded can thoroughly sympathise with the missionary position. The missionaries as a body are men of religious enthusiasm. They believe they have been summoned by their Master to preach to non-Christians a faith which they believe to be the only true faith; and some of them believe that an acceptance of this faith is “necessary to salvation.” From their point of view, all missionary work is entirely justified; and from any point of view the work the Christian missions have done in alleviating sickness and pain in China is wholly admirable. As regards the purely religious aspect of the question, I am glad to refrain from expressing a personal opinion. It is a subject which requires to be handled with extraordinary delicacy, for many people are unable to discuss it dispassionately, and it gives rise to endless arguments which from the nature of the case are and must be utterly devoid of persuasive power. Now that Religion, as distinct from any systematised Creed, has taken its place among the recognised subjects of philosophical investigation (and psychological also, as in Professor James’s brilliant book, The Varieties of Religious Experience), we may expect to hear missionary work discussed (at least by educated persons) with less bitterness and strong language than has sometimes disgraced the controversialists on both sides. A short and incomplete but very interesting discussion of the missionary question from an obviously impartial point of view may be found in Professor Knight’s Varia, pp. 31-35. (John Murray: 1901.)

50 See 6 (p. 414).

51 海會堂.

52 See 7 (p. 417).

53 This is the usually accepted estimate; but Sir A. Hosie has recently stated it to be only 10,158 feet.

54 Ficus infectoria.

55 觀心頂.

56 繫心所.

57 Literally, “the quelling of the passions.”

58 長老坪.

59 開山初殿. See 8 (p. 418).

60 阿羅漢.

61 In the early Buddhist scriptures we learn that super-normal powers were even then supposed to be characteristic of the arhats, but it was generally considered undesirable to put such powers to the test.

62 See the Saddharma-Pundarîka, translated by Kern in the Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxi. The Chinese version is known as the Miao Fa Lien Hua Ching (妙法蓮華經).

63 See an article on this subject by T. Watters, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, April 1899. See also Edkins, Chinese Buddhism, pp. 249 and 394-395.

64 華嚴頂.

65 Manjusri (文殊師利) is a Bodhisattva who in China is practically worshipped as the God of Wisdom. Like Ti Tsang, Kuan Yin and others, he is supposed to have had a human prototype, or rather to have been incarnated in the body of a historical personage. But the truth probably is that any person of superlative wisdom was liable to be identified by his admirers with Manjusri. There is an interesting reference to him in I-Tsing’s Records of the Buddhist Religion, translated by J. Takakusu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896), p. 169. The translator comments on the fact that Manjusri was even by the people of India supposed, at one time, to be somehow connected with China, and the actual place of his residence was identified as Ping Chou in Chih-li.

66 蓮花石.

67 Three Lectures on Buddhism, pp. 60-61.

68 唵嚤呢叭□吽.

69 ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པདྨེ་ཧཱུྃ་·

70 南無阿彌陀佛.

71 洗象池.

72 大勢至.

73 大乘寺. See 9 (p. 418).

74 白雲古剎.

75 張良.

76 文成.

77 雷洞坪.

78 掣電飛雲.

79 接引殿.

80 韋陀 or 護法韋陀: Veda Fidei Defensor—a Hindu deity who was regarded as one of the protectors of the four “Continents” of the world or Universe.

81 藥師佛, whose common title Lui Li Fo (琉璃佛) translates the Sanskrit Vaidūrya, lapis lazuli. This precious stone seems also to have been associated with a favourite Assyrian deity, Ênu-rêstū.

82 地藏.

83 古太子坪.

84 永慶寺.

85 See above, p. 66.

86 開山肉身祖師殿.

87 沉香塔. The aloes or eagle-wood is so-called because it sinks (ch’ên) in water. It is supposed to be the aloes-wood mentioned in the Bible.

88 威鎮天門.

89 七天橋.

90 普賢塔.

91 財神 or 財帛星神.

92 關帝.

93 龍王.

94 三官.

95 錫瓦殿.

96 Chêng Ting Chin Tien (正頂金殿). There is another Chin Tien or Golden Temple on the summit of a range of mountains north-east of Tali-fu in Yunnan (the Chi Shan) which is also a noted centre for Buddhist pilgrimages. A short account of the temples of this mountain is given in a Foreign Office Report by the late Mr Litton. (China, No. 3: 1903, pp. 4-6.)

97 日出則犬吠.

98 佛光.

99 A somewhat similar phenomenon, described as an “anthelia,” may be witnessed in Ceylon. Sir James Emerson Tennent, in his Ceylon [Longmans: 1859, 2nd edition], states that phenomena of this kind may have “suggested to the early painters the idea of the glory surrounding the heads of beatified saints.” He adds this description: “To the spectator his own figure, but more particularly the head, appears surrounded by a halo as vivid as if radiated from diamonds. The Buddhists may possibly have taken from this beautiful object their idea of the agni or emblem of the sun, with which the head of Buddha is surmounted. But, unable to express a halo in sculpture, they concentrated it into a flame.”—Vol. i. 72 seq.

100 See 10 (p. 419).

101 捨身崖. There is a similar Suicide’s Cliff near the summit of T’ai Shan. Shê shên, it may be remarked, has a double meaning.

102 銀色界.

103 雷打天補.

104 早課.

105 大雄寶殿. The first two characters, rendered Great Lord or Hero, represent the Sanskrit Vîra, used as the epithet of a Buddhist saint.

106 南無本師釋迦牟尼佛.

107 南無當來彌勒尊佛.

108 文殊師利.

109 大智.

110 普賢.

111 護法諸天菩薩.

112 三洲感應護法韋陀尊天菩薩.

113 韋陀.

114 日光 and 月光遍照菩薩.

115 增福財神.

116 See above, p. 99.

117 什方菩薩.

118 晚課.

119 極樂世界阿彌陀佛.

120 消災延夀藥師佛.

121 大悲觀世音 and 大勢至 (Avalokiteçvara and Mahâsthâma: see footnote, p. 72).

122 地藏王.

123 伽藍聖衆菩薩. The two first characters represent the Sanskrit Sanghârâma, the park or dwelling-place of monks, equivalent to a vihara or monastery.

124 歷代袓師菩薩.

125 清淨大海諸菩薩.

126 See 11 (p. 419).

127 先祖殿. See 12 (p. 420).

128 峰頂卧雲庵.

129 白龍池.

130 廣福寺.

131 龍昇岡.

132 觀音寺.

133 中峰寺. See 12 (p. 420).

134 大峨寺. See 12 (p. 420).

135 正心橋.

136 慧燈寺.

137 From here a road leads direct to the capital, Ch’eng-tu, which can be reached in three stages.

138 See 13 (p. 421).

139 See 1 (p. 411).

140 Three Years in Western China, p. 95.

141 See 14 (p. 421).

142 Baber mentions an instance of a coolie who “must have had, at the lowest computation, more than 400 English pounds on his back.”

143 See 15 (p. 422).

144 Also known as Man Chuang (蠻庄).

145 See 16 (p. 422).

146 內地第一險阻也.

147 Rockhill, The Land of the Lamas, p. 305.

148 See 17 (p. 422).

149 See 18 (p. 423).

150 Land of the Lamas, p. 304.

151 See 19 (p. 423).

152 See chap. xv.

153 I observe that it is so marked in Waddell’s map attached to his recent book on the British expedition to Lhasa.

154 For a brief discussion of the ethnology of this country, see chap. xv.

155 Gold-washing is carried on here to a considerable extent, as in nearly all the rivers of western Ssuch’uan.

156 Journey to the Eastern Frontier of Tibet, pp. 24-25.

157 See 20 (p. 424).

158 Mrs Moyes (then Mrs Rijnhart) is the well-known author of the book, With the Tibetans in Tent and Temple, in which she ably describes the life of adventure and hardship which she led in the far interior of Tibet, where she lost both husband and child.

159 See 21 (p. 425).

160 Hosie, Journey to the Eastern Frontier of Tibet.

161 Yule, Marco Polo (Cordier’s edition), vol. ii. p. 49.

162 The word Amban, now so well known to Europeans, is Manchu, and is applied to many high Chinese officials serving in the Mongolian and Tibetan dependencies of China, besides the Resident at Lhasa.

163 甲哪.

164 甲宜齋.

165 See 22 (p. 425).

166 Land of the Lamas, p. 276.

167 The Chinese is 烏拉, which is merely phonetic. The word ula is Mongolian. Rockhill observes that ula (oulâk) was known in India in mediæval times.—(Land of the Lamas, p. 52.)

168 Huan-t’ieh (換帖), literally “the exchange of cards.”

169 See p. 358 of that work.

170 For the origin of the Prayer (or perhaps rather Praising) Wheel, see Rhys Davids’ Hibbert Lectures (1881), p. 138 (4th ed.). See also Tylor’s Primitive Culture, ii. 372-373 (4th ed.)

171 A Mongolian word which the Chinese have naturalised as o-pu (阿卜).

172 Major H. R. Davies, whose admirable survey and exploration work are well known, visited the Muli lamasery before me, but our routes only touched at that point. He has unfortunately published no account of his journey from Mien-ning-hsien to Chung-tien.

173 For M. Bonin’s see the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, 1898, pp. 389 seq. For Mr Amundsen’s, see the Geographical Journal for June and November 1900.

174 How few, may be judged from the fact that I met only one caravan in the course of a month’s journey.

175 The complications and variations in currency and money values constitute one of the greatest vexations to a European traveller in China. As is well known, the ordinary medium of exchange in China for small purchases is the “cash” (t’ung ch’ien) of which about 1,000 (sometimes more and sometimes less) are equivalent to a dollar (Mex). In larger transactions silver sycee or “broken” silver is used, in which case payments are made by weight and according to the “touch” or fineness of the silver. The ingots are cut up by the use of sycee-shears into small or large portions as required. The larger ingots—which in Ssuch’uan are generally of the approximate value of ten taels each (equivalent to nearly two pounds)—usually bear the guarantee “chops” of bankers and large merchants. In the west of Ssuch’uan the Indian rupee became many years ago a well-known and much appreciated coin, and very largely took the place of broken silver. Its convenient size and shape specially commended it to the Chinese and Tibetan merchants who had trade relations with Burma, Tibet and India: and as its exchange-value in and about Tachienlu was in excess of its face-value many Yunnanese merchants used to bring mule-loads of rupees to that city from Tali-fu, thereby making a very considerable profit. The coin was generally known as the lama-t’ou or Lama’s Head—Queen Victoria’s head being supposed to be that of a lama—and also as yang ch’ien or “foreign money,” the same term that is often applied in other parts of China to the Mexican and British dollars. Recently the provincial Government prohibited the circulation of Indian rupees in Ssuch’uan, and began to issue a similar coin of its own at the Mint in Ch’êng-tu. The new coin is almost exactly equivalent in value to the Indian rupee, and resembles it in size and appearance: but it bears the head of the emperor of China instead of that of the emperor of India. It is interesting as being the first Chinese coin, so far as I am aware, to bear the sovereign’s head. Probably had it borne no head at all it would have been regarded with suspicion and dislike by those who had for years been accustomed to the Indian rupee. One of the Ssuch’uanese coins (a half-rupee) is illustrated in the text, along with the obverse and reverse of a Tibetan coin also in common use about Tachienlu and western Ssuch’uan. I found the new Ssuch’uan rupee was accepted fairly willingly by the people between Tachienlu and Pa-U-Rong, less willingly by those of the Muli country. South of Yung-ning I again had recourse to broken silver; but west of Tali-fu the Indian rupee is generally accepted, and at the town of Hsia Kuan, near Tali-fu, Indian rupees can be bought in any quantity by travellers and merchants bound for Burma. The Indian rupee is now a rare coin in Ssuch’uan, but sometimes it is treated like broken silver, being cut into pieces and sold by weight. I have in my possession several mutilated rupees which were weighed out to me as small change. The late queen-empress’s head has been treated with small respect by the silver-merchants.

176 See 23 (p. 428).

177 It has been pointed out by Griesbach that the central Himālayan glaciers are receding, and once extended much lower than at present. Apparently the same is the case in the “Himālayas” of Tibetan Ssuch’uan. I saw few living glaciers; but in many ravines there were evident traces of lateral and terminal moraines.

178 This I take to be the crossoptilon Tibetanum. It is quite unknown in China proper.

179 See 24 (p. 428).

180 The Tibetan ja-ndong.

181 See 25 (p. 428).

182 Yule’s Marco Polo (Cordier’s edition), vol. ii. p. 45.

183 Travels of a Pioneer of Commerce.

184 It is now well known that in parts of the Himalāyas which form the watershed of the great Indian rivers the line of perpetual snow is as high as 18,000 or even 20,000 feet.

185 There is a fine poplar grove close to Tachienlu, fringing the “royal” parade-ground. Sarat Chandra Das (Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet) mentions a poplar at Lhasa which is supposed by the Tibetans to have sprung from the hair of the Buddha.

186 The felis fontanieri, besides other members of the Cat tribe.

187 Customs of this kind seem to exist or to have existed all over the world. For Tibet, see Sarat Chandra Das’s Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet, and several recent works. Frazer, in the Golden Bough (2nd edn. vol. iii. pp. 4-6), has an interesting note in which he mentions the same or similar customs in the Solomon and Banks Islands, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Central and South Africa, Bolivia, Burma and Korea. He says: “The act is not a religious rite, for the thing thrown on the heap is not an offering to spiritual powers, and the words which accompany the act are not a prayer. It is nothing but a magical ceremony for getting rid of fatigue, which the simple savage fancies he can embody in a stick, leaf, or stone, and so cast it from him.” Gipsies have a custom of leaving heaps of stones and bits of stick at cross-roads, to guide members of their band who have fallen behind. I do not propose to argue from this fact that the gipsy race was originally a Tibetan tribe, in spite of the facts that both gipsies and Tibetans love a wandering life, and that the gipsies of Persia and the Tibetans use almost the same word for “tent,” which is guri in Persia and gur (གུར་) in Tibet.

188 River of Golden Sand, vol. ii. p. 136.

189 Royal Geographical Society’s Supplementary Papers, vol. i. p. 96.

190 Sometimes, however, the door is several feet above the level of the ground, so that ladders of some kind must have been used for entrance and exit.

191 The word Drung or Dr’ong (གྲོང་) is the Tibetan word for Village.

192 La is the Tibetan word for a Mountain Pass. Ri, which often occurs in the names of villages and passes, means Mountain, and Rong Valley.

193 See above, p. 143.

194 See above, p. 145.

195 Many of the villages between Tachienlu and Yung-ning have been given Chinese names by the Yunnanese, who occasionally send merchandise by this route. The Chinese name, as a rule, has no connection with the Tibetan or Man-tzŭ name. Wu Chia-tzŭ, for instance, means a “Village of Five Families”; San Chia-tzŭ a “Village of Three Families.”

196 See illustration of this tower, which is a fair sample of the rest, to face p. 171.

197 Modern Painters, I. II. chap. iv. p. 2.

198 See John Tyndall’s description of his ascent of the Finsteraarhorn (Glaciers of the Alps).

199 See 26 (p. 429).

200 See 27 (p. 429).

201 Les Lolos, by M. Paul Vial, Catholic missionary (Shanghai, 1898).

202 See chap. xv. below, on the ethnology of the Lolos and other border tribes.

203 See Appendix A.

204 There is, however, a system of written characters peculiar to the Lolos. It appears to be unknown among these colonists.

205 See above, p. 55.

206 See 28 (p. 429).

207 See 29 (p. 430).

208 Mr Amundsen states that he crossed by a raft made of two pieces of timber, with a plank in the middle to stand on.—(Geographical Journal, vol. xv. p. 621).

209 In Captain Gill’s The River of Golden Sand (John Murray), p. 121, where there is a good illustration of the single-rope bridges.

210 See above, p. 128.

211 Yule’s Marco Polo, edited by Cordier. [London: John Murray.] See vol. ii. p. 67.

212 See above, pp. 43-44.

213 流入岷江. Similarly we read of the Han River (which flows into the Yangtse at Hankow) joining the Min (合岷江).

214 See 30 (p. 430).

215 This is on Mr Amundsen’s authority. See Geographical Journal, Nov. 1900, p. 534.

216 See illustration, p. 152 (No. 2). The plaques may also be seen on the women’s heads, p. 188.

217 I travelled up the valley of this river in 1902, and heard much of its deadliness. Rocher, in his excellent history of Yunnan, remarks that the only people who could live on the banks of the Red River with comparative immunity were some indigenous non-Chinese tribes and Cantonese merchants. As regards the Cantonese, the jealous Yunnanese supposed that their immunity was derived from the fact that they possessed a sovereign remedy for the disease, but kept the secret of it to themselves so that they alone should obtain the benefit. Some of the Yunnanese told Rocher that they would go into battle rather than brave a visit to the banks of the Red River.—(La Province Chinoise du Yunnan, vol. i. pp. 229, 230, and 286.)

218 See below, pp. 305 seq.

219 གའུ་

220 Tibetan brTen (སྲུང་བ་) pronounced ten, or Srung-ba (སྲུང་བ་) pronounced sung-wa, the original meaning of which is simply “protection.”

221 The reader will not, I hope, require to be reminded of “The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts,” in which the poem to which I refer finds an honourable place.

222 It would appear from the recent Indian Survey map prepared by Major H. R. Davies, that this must be the Litang River, and therefore starts its course much further north.

223 See p. 216.

224 Ruskin, Proserpina, II. IV.

225 Spelt in Tibetan mCh’od-rTen.

226 See illustration, p. 207.

227 Land of the Lamas, p. 63.

228 Lamaism in Tibet, pp. 263-264.

229 See accompanying illustration.

230 See 31 (p. 431).

231 Royal Geographical Society’s Supplementary Papers, vol. i. p. 96. The conjecture about the monastery was correct.

232 黃 (Yellow) and 皇 (Imperial).

233 Judging from the dates in the T’ung Chih, it cannot have been earlier than 1729.

234 “Nearly every great monastery,” says Waddell, “has its own reincarnate Lama as its chief.”—(Lamaism in Tibet, p. 230. For the numbers of these reincarnated saints, see ibid., p. 243.) These are the personages generally known by Europeans as Living Buddhas. One of them presides over the great lamasery in Peking.

235 Spelt mk’an-po (མཁན་པོ་)

236 This word literally means the “house of a god, or shrine” (ལྷ་ཁང་) It is the same lamasery as that otherwise known as Wa-chin, referred to on p. 204.

237 See 32 (p. 431).

238 ཕྱག་མཛོད་ (ch’ag-mDzod), literally the “treasury-hand.”

239 སྐུ་ཚབ་ (sku-ts’ab), literally “vice-gerent” or “lieutenant.”

240 See 33 (p. 431).

241 Known by the Tibetans as Re-wo-tse-nga. The monastery there is said to be the oldest in China, and is visited annually by thousands of pilgrims, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Chinese.

242 Spelt Ha-dBar-bDe-Ligs(ཧ་དབར་བདེ་ལིགསརྒྱ་ལ་བོ་).

243 See 34 (p. 432).

244 For further information regarding the position of the ruler of Muli and the history of his state, see 34 (p. 432).

245 Travellers to Mecca have recorded the same fact with regard to that city.

246 གྲྭ་པ་

247 See 35 (p. 433).

248 See pp. 280-281.

249 Major H. R. Davies informs me that he found some Miao-tzŭ between Mien-ning-hsien and the Yalung on the way to Muli, but that is much further east.

250 See 34 (p. 432).

251 Cf. Marco Polo’s description of the burial customs of certain Yunnan tribes, vol. ii. pp. 122-123. (Cordier’s edition, 1903.)

252 See Rockhill, Land of the Lamas, pp. 286-287. See also p. 81, where he states that “the remains of the dead are exposed on the hillsides in spots selected by lamas; if the body is rapidly devoured by wild beasts and birds of prey, the righteousness of the deceased is held to be evident, but if it remains a long time undevoured, his wickedness is proved.” See also the Zend-Avesta, Sacred Books of the East, vol. iv. pp. 74-75 and 97-98. It is interesting to note that Friar Odoric’s account of “Tebek” is almost literally true, if we except the remark about the tusked ladies.

253 See 36 (p. 434).

254 See below, chap. xv.

255 From information obtained later I gather that these travellers were the Count de Marsay and the Count L. de Las Cases.

256 One of their earrings is illustrated at p. 152.

257 開基.

258 See Royal Geographical Society’s Supplementary Papers, vol. i. p. 97.

259 “In Ceylon the joint husbands are always brothers, and this is also the case among the tribes residing at the foot of the Himalaya mountains.” (Lord Avebury’s Origin of Civilisation, 6th ed. p. 153.) A fuller account of polyandry in Ceylon may be found in Tennent’s Ceylon (Longmans, 1859, 2nd ed. vol. ii. pp. 428 seq.). Tennent points out that polyandry can be traced back to very ancient times. It “receives a partial sanction in the Institutes of Manu,” and is referred to without reproach in the Mahabharata. Herbert Spencer (Principles of Ethics, pt. ii. ch. 13) says that in Tibet, “polyandry appears more conducive to social welfare than any other relation of the sexes. It receives approval from travellers, and even a Moravian missionary defends it: the missionary holding that superabundant population, in an unfertile country, must be a great calamity and produce ‘eternal welfare or eternal want.’” See also Principles of Sociology. Polyandry is forbidden in the Shan States, though polygamy is sanctioned. (See Gazetteer of Upper Burma, pt. i. vol. i. p. 325.)

260 See 37 (p. 434).

261 See illustration to face page 236.

262 A similar great bend, only recently discovered, occurs in the course of the Yalung. In travelling between Mien-ning-hsien, north of Ning-yuan-fu, and Muli, the Yalung must, on account of this bend, be crossed no less than three times. The bend was discovered by Major H. R. Davies.

263 See page 233.

264 A similar story, apparently, was told to Mr Amundsen with reference to a locality in the Muli territory.

265 This is, I have been told, a common practice among the people of the Upper Mekong valley, especially about Atuntzŭ.

266 鳴音汲.

267 See 38 (p. 435).

268 See above, p. 150.

269 Known to the Tibetans as A-jol (འཇོལ་)

270 Both names are Chinese. The first means “Below the Pass,” the second “The Foot of the Hill.”

271 See below, pp. 289 seq.

272 Literally “Tail of the Lake.”

273 Snow is said to exist in patches on the summit of the Tali mountains all the year round; and is hawked in the streets of Hsia Kuan, near Tali-fu, in the summer months.

274 In Yunnan the word chieh (which means either “street” or “village”) is always pronounced Kai, as in the Cantonese dialect.

275 The official Annals of Yunnan contain records of very many disastrous earthquakes in this province.

276 The Pai Sha (White Sand) river is no whit more entitled to that appellation than the Cher would be.

277 There are two roads from Shang Kuan to Tali-fu: one lying near the lake, the other near the mountain. My road was the latter.

278 Marco Polo’s description of Tali-fu and the district of which it was capital (Carajan) is well worth reading. The terrifying serpents which he mentions as having “eyes bigger than a great loaf of bread,” are said to have been crocodiles. (See Cordier’s edition of Yule’s Marco Polo, vol. ii. pp. 76-84.)

279 See 39 (p. 435).

280 In his valuable work La Province Chinoise du Yunnan (Paris, 1880).

281 The Chinese name for the lofty mountains behind Tali-fu is Ts’ang Shan (蒼山), “Azure Hills.”

282 Two young children survived the catastrophe. Yang Wei was the Sultan’s son-in-law and principal general of his army.

283 楊玉科, an imperialist general.

284 China: Her History, Diplomacy and Commerce, p. 9.

285 西番 and 土番.

286 See Rockhill’s Life of the Buddha, pp. 215-216, and T. W. Kingsmill’s article in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (China Branch), vol. xxxvii. pp. 26-27.

287 བོད་ The last letter of the Tibetan word is not pronounced, but it modifies the phonetic value of the vowel sound. As regards the Chinese character 番 of which the phonetic value in modern Chinese is generally fan, we find several cases in which the sound is still bo or po. Mr Kingsmill mentions 鄱 p’o (as in the characters used for the P’o Yang Lake). The characters 嶓, 皤 and 播 are similar instances.

288 སྟོད་ as opposed to སྨད་ (smad, pron. ma), meaning lower, inferior.

289 Often transliterated Mantse, and spelt by Marco Polo Manji.

290 Vol. ii. p. 617 (Legge’s ed.).

291 As in Shu Ching, vol. ii. p. 345.

292 荒服.

293 Shu Ching vol. i. p. 147.

294 Ibid. vol. i. pp. 42, 44.

295 Mencius, p. 255 (Legge, 2nd. ed.).

296 Mencius, pp. 253-254 (Legge).

297 Lun Yü, pp. 295-296 (Legge, 2nd ed.).

298 China: Her History, Diplomacy and Commerce, p. 310.

299 See 40 (p. 437).

300 Comptes Rendus, Société de Géographie, 1898. No. 8, p. 349. But see M. Paul Vial (Les Lolos: Shanghai, 1898). If M. Vial’s theory of the origin of the word Lolo is correct, it was originally by no means a disrespectful term. He considers that it is a Chinese reduplication of a form of the word No or Na, which was the special name of one of the patrician tribes of the Lolos. He admits, however, that the term is now regarded as impolite. He says that the Lolos have now no common name for the whole race, but simply employ the various tribal names as occasion requires. The Chinese characters for Lolo (generally 玀玀) are merely phonetic. The constant use of the “dog” radical in the Chinese characters employed to represent the names of barbarous tribes is an instructive indication of the contemptuous Chinese attitude towards such people. In the word Man the radical is an insect or reptile.

301 M. Bonin regards them all as of Tibetan origin; but as they separated from the main branch, he says, before the adoption of Buddhism they have preserved on Chinese soil their primitive fetish-worship. “I consider them in consequence,” he concludes, “as the avant-garde of the Tibetans.”

302 Les Lolos, p. 4. See also the Gazetteer of Upper Burma, pt. i. vol. i. p. 615, where it is stated that the Man-tzŭ “have undoubtedly been distinct from the Lolo for centuries, but the balance of opinion seems to connect them with that tribe.”

303 See the Gazetteer of Upper Burma, pt. i. vol. i. pp. 272 seq. “The relationship of the T’ai to the Chinese races seems unmistakable.... The research, which has not been long begun, points distinctly to the fact that the Chinese and the T’ai belong to a family of which the Chinese are the most prominent representatives.”

304 重家子, or 重甲子.

305 Yule’s Marco Polo (Cordier’s edition), vol. ii. pp. 122-123. Cordier has, however, another explanation.

306 Introduction to Colquhoun’s Amongst the Shans, liv.

307 See Gazetteer of Upper Burma, pt. i. vol. i. p. 597.

308 Op. cit. p. 35.

309 See p. 223.

310 See Gazetteer of Upper Burma, pt. i. vol. i. pp. 597-601. There are numerous settlements of the Miao-tzŭ in the British Shan States, and the Gazetteer says: “It may be hoped that more will come, for they are a most attractive race.”

311 See pp. 239 and 245-246.

312 The Chinese characters are 摩□. It is tempting, but rash, to connect the word with Mu-hsö, which means “a hunter” in the Shan, Wa, Palaung, Rumai and Riang languages.

313 The Tibetans also call them Jang or Aj’angs (འཇངས་). Surely there is some justification for tracing a connection between this word, as spelt in Tibetan, with the name of the tribe A-ch’angs mentioned in the Gazetteer of Upper Burma, pt. i. vol. i. pp. 618-619. But see Sir George Scott’s Burma, pp. 94-95.

314 See p. 270.

315 Géographie de l’empire de Chine, by Richards (Shanghai: 1905).

316 See above, pp. 228-229.

317 In Tibetan Sa is “earth” or “land,” and t’am is “seal” (sigillum) or “offering.” Possibly the Tibetan is in this case the transliteration of a Mo-so word.

318 We have seen on pages 249-250 that the plain west of that of Li-chiang is called Lashi-Pa, or Plain of the Mo-so, and that a village therein bears the same name. M. Paul Vial mentions what he calls a Lolo tribe named Ashi, apparently dwelling in the south-east of Yunnan (Les Lolos, p. 25). Now only a few miles west of Lashi-Pa, on the road from Li-chiang to Chung-tien, there is a village called Ashi, which gives its name to a ferry on the Yangtse river. It is possible that the sound in both cases was once either Lashi or Nashi, for, when we find from experience that the L and N are interchangeable, it may well be that in some districts inhabited by Mo-so the initial has been dropped altogether. I do not know the derivation of the word Lashio, the British settlement near the Salwen valley, in the North Shan States. There is also a district called Lashi, in British territory, north-east of Myitkyina, the people of which appear to be a connecting link between the Kachins and the Burmese. (See Sir George Scott’s Burma, p. 70.)

319 See above, p. 222.

320 As in the common expression, ka-li ka-li ndro a, “walk slowly” or “there’s no hurry.”

321 For some account of the Bon religion see Rockhill’s Life of the Buddha, pp. 205 seq., and Sarat Chandra Das’s Journey to Lhasa.

322 力□.

323 Mr G. C. B. Stirling, quoted in Gazetteer of Upper Burma, pt. i. vol. i. p. 588.

324 Gazetteer of Upper Burma, pt. i. vol. i. p. 616.

325 The Mantse and the Golden Chersonese, and Ancient Tibet and its Frontagers, by T. W. Kingsmill, in vols. xxxv. and xxxvii. of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (China Branch).

326 The name still survives in the province of Theinni and in the classical name Tien (滇) for the Chinese province of Yunnan. The connection between Tien and Theinni was pointed out by Terrien de Lacouperie in his introduction to Colquhoun’s Amongst the Shans, p. xlviii.

327 The fable is that a Mauryan woman was married to a Tibetan dog and that their progeny were the Man-tzŭ.

328 See above, p. 275 (footnote 2).

329 Introduction to Colquhoun’s Amongst the Shans.

330 See 41 (p. 438).

331 Buddhist India, p. 260.

332 See 42 (p. 439).

333 Introduction to Jātaka, No. 149. (Cowell’s ed., vol. i. p. 316.)

334 Ibid., No. 301 (vol. iii. p. 1).

335 See 43 (p. 439).

336 “The struggle between Kosala and Magadha for the paramount power in all India was, in fact, probably decided when the powerful confederation of the Licchavis became arrayed on the side of Magadha.” (Rhys Davids’ Buddhist India, p. 25.)

337 For the Kiang element, see Kingsmill, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (China Branch), vol. xxxvii. 29 and 34 seq. The Kiang appear to have been a branch of the Yüeh-ti or Lunar Race, to which reference is made on p. 49.

338 It is to the “Mauryan” Man-tzŭ that Mr Kingsmill ascribes the excavation of the caves of Ssuch’uan (see pp. 46 seq.). He says that they were evidently the work of a people who had made considerable progress in the arts, and that the art in its predominant features approaches more nearly to ancient Indian types than to Chinese (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, China Branch, vol. xxxv. p. 93). As I have already stated, there is not much evidence of a strong artistic instinct in the decoration of the caves. I agree with Mr Kingsmill, nevertheless, in ascribing the art, such as it is, to Indian influences.

339 Gazetteer of Upper Burma, pt. i. vol. i. p. 267.

340 秦, pronounced Ch’in in modern Pekingese.

341 In this connection Mr Kingsmill explains that the character hsiang (象), which means “elephant,” was also originally pronounced Ser. I have already mentioned a mountain-pass called the Ta Hsiang Ling which is supposed to be named after either P’u Hsien’s elephant or Chu-ko Liang. (See p. 117 and 14.) To the south of that pass there is another named the Hsiao Hsiang Ling, or Small Elephant Pass, which must be crossed on the way to the Chien-ch’ang valley. Mr Kingsmill would perhaps translate the names of these passes as the Great and Small Passes of the Ts’in or Ser; in which case we may regard Ts’in Shih Huang-ti as being a third claimant to the honour of giving a name to this pass.

342 See Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (China Branch), vol. xxxvii. pp. 22-23.

343 See 44 (p. 440).

344 Hung Wu was the “reign-title” of the first emperor of the Ming dynasty, who reigned from 1368 to 1398. His successor, whose “reign-title” was Chien Wên, ruled from 1399 to 1402. With regard to the Yangtse being taken as the southern limit of China, this statement can only be accepted with an important modification, for all the southern provinces of China, including Yunnan, were at this time regarded as being within the empire, though the fact that they were chiefly inhabited by non-Chinese tribes made it somewhat anomalous to describe them as forming part of China proper. We have seen that Yunnan was annexed to the empire by Kúblái Khan in the thirteenth century. Towards the close of the following century the Yunnanese princes tried to reassert their independence, and the province was again reduced to complete submission by the generals of the emperor Hung Wu himself, who, in spite of his maps, never for a moment intended to relax the imperial hold on that distant province.

345 By “indigenous race” M. Vial presumably means Lolos or Mo-so.

346 That is, Kiang-su, the province in which Shanghai is situated. Nanking was at that time the capital of China.

347 See above, p. 276.

348 Gazetteer of Upper Burma, pt. i. vol. i. pp. 585-586.

349 See below, p. 331.

350 Baber describes the old bridge as “very dilapidated” when it was crossed by the Grosvenor Mission in 1876.

351 蘭滄江.

352 Captain Gill (River of Golden Sand) somewhat exaggerates the difficulties of what he calls “this desperate gorge.”

353 人力所通.

354 光尊寺.

355 Yule’s Marco Polo (Cordier’s edition), vol. ii. p. 85.

356 Yule’s Marco Polo (Cordier’s edition), vol. ii. pp. 98-104.

357 潞子江.

358 This is especially the case with the Chinese who come from a long distance, and only know the Salwen by hearsay. My men (who belonged to Yung-ch’ang) treated the valley with a disrespect that was perhaps bred of familiarity, for they certainly did not unduly hurry themselves.

359 Royal Geographical Society’s Supplementary Papers, vol. i. pp. 176-177.

360 At Ta Pan Ching (4,500 feet) the shade temperature immediately after sunrise was 67°: in the temple at the Salwen bridge (2,400 feet) it was only 81° at midday. So even the change of temperature was not very serious.

361 Or the alternative route through the valley of Ho Ch’ing.

362 Those interested in the railway question should consult Major Ryder’s paper in the Geographical Journal for February 1903 (vol. xxi.) and Major Davies’s remarks thereon.

363 So called by the Burmese. The Shan word is Sao-p’a, which is the designation of a tribal chief or prince.

364 The name of the bungalow is Mong-kung-ka.

365 The years of dacoit-hunting that followed were, unfortunately, far from bloodless; and it was during those years that the Burman learned to respect the British soldier.

366 The latitude of Hongkong is almost exactly the same as that of Mandalay and Calcutta.

367 Some villages in Ssuch’uan may be said to be an honourable exception.

368 “Est-ce la colline qui a été façonée pour la pagode, est-ce la pagode qui a choisi la colline, si bien faites l’une pour l’autre, ravissantes d’ensemble? Qu’elle est jolie, cette réflexion blanche, tombant de haut dans le cristal de l’eau!”—Birmanie, par Mme. Quenedey, p. 218.

369 The first is above Bhamo, where, owing to the dangers to navigation, steamers have temporarily ceased to run.

370 A large river of French Laos or the trans-Mekong Shan States. It is navigable only for canoes of the most primitive description, for it is full of dangerous rapids. It enters the Mekong a few miles above Luang Prabang. The scenery of this river, which I descended from its highest navigable point (Muang Wa) to its mouth, is exceptionally beautiful.

371 The founder of Mandalay, and second last king of Burma. He reigned from 1852 to 1878, and was succeeded by his son Thibaw, who reigned until his deposition by the British Government in 1885.

372 There is an interesting essay by Max Müller on the Kutho-daw in his Last Essays (Second Series).

373 Mr G. C. B. Stirling.

374 See 45 (p. 440).

375 See 46 (p. 441).

376 A People at School, chap. xxiv.

377 Op. cit. chap. xxi.

378 Fielding Hall’s Soul of a People, p. 125.

379 See, for instance, Mr R. B. Arnold’s Scientific Fact and Metaphysical Reality, pp. 321-323. Professor William James, in his Varieties of Religious Experience, asks whether “the worship of material luxury and wealth, which constitutes so large a portion of the ’spirit’ of our age” does not “make somewhat for effeminacy and unmanliness.” He goes so far as to recommend, as a cure for some of our social diseases, the adoption of that form of asceticism which consisted in “the old monkish poverty-worship.” Wealth-getting, he says, “enters as an ideal into the very bone and marrow of our generation.” It is certain, he adds, that “the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilisation suffers.”—(Pp. 365-369.)

See also Professor W. R. Inge’s Personal Idealism and Mysticism, especially pp. 175-176. I strongly recommend the reader who is interested in the pressing problems presented by the changing relations between the Occident and the Orient to read Dr Inge’s book (especially Lectures IV. and VI.) in connection with Mr Percival Lowell’s Soul of the Far East. Both are, as one would expect, able and well-written books, but they take diametrically opposite views of a very important question. Mr Lowell finds that the most notable characteristic of the East, and the secret of its fatal weakness, is what he calls its Impersonality, and that the peoples of the West, deriving an irresistible strength from the exact opposite—an intense Individualism—have nothing to fear from the impersonal civilisations of the East, which they will eventually overpower and crush. Dr Inge arrives independently at a similar belief as to the remarkable absence of individualism in the East, but so far from adopting Mr Lowell’s interpretation of its results he finds in this Oriental Impersonality a very remarkable source of strength and permanence; while he prognosticates possible disaster to Western civilisation from the very fact that it is based on individualism. Already, he says, “it shows signs of breaking up from within.” It seems possible that the events of the not-distant future will show that Dr Inge was right.

380 Time and Tide. See also an article by W. T. Seeger in the Hibbert Journal for October 1906, p. 75; and Sir Oliver Lodge’s article in the same journal for April 1907, p. 527.

381 The Silken East, p. 37.

382 Of course there are exceptions, especially in the larger towns where Burmese and English civilisations have clashed.

383 “It is the way in which hours of freedom are spent that determines, as much as war or as labour, the moral worth of a nation. It raises or lowers, it replenishes or exhausts. At present we find, in these great cities of ours, that three days’ idleness will fill the hospitals with victims whom weeks or months of toil had left unscathed.”—Maurice Maeterlinck, The Kingdom of Matter.

384 See the Burma Census Report for 1891 and Sir George Scott’s Upper Burma Gazetteer, and his Burma: a Handbook, pp. 380-381.

385 Perhaps that is not saying much after all. “In reality,” said the German philosopher Nietzsche, “there has been only one Christian, and He died on the Cross.”

386 Here, again, there are, of course, exceptions. There are “black sheep” within the monastic fold as well as outside it.

387 Sir George Scott, in Burma: a Handbook, p. 381.

388 See his Greek Oracles, pp. 8, 18, 20-21. (Eversley Series.)

389 See ll. 349 seq.

390 See Frazer’s Golden Bough, vol. iii. p. 49, and vol. i. pp. 170-171 (2nd ed.). See also Tylor’s Primitive Culture, vol. i. pp. 475-476, and ii. pp. 217-218 (4th ed.); and Rhys Davids’ Buddhist India, chap. xii.

391 Sir George Scott, Burma: a Handbook, p. 22.

392 Scott O’Connor, The Silken East, p. 128.

393 A cutting from the sacred tree (a species subsequently known as the ficus religiosa) under which Gautama is believed to have sat when he attained Buddhahood, was brought from India to Ceylon about the year 245 B.C. and planted at Anuradhapura, then the Singhalese capital. It is still growing there, and is annually visited by countless pilgrims from all parts of the Buddhist world.

394 A Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 374 (2nd ed.).

395 See an excellent anonymous article in Macmillan’s Magazine, vol. ii. No. 16, N.S. It is entitled “The White Man and the British Empire.”

396 Herbert Spencer, in the Principles of Ethics, speaks of “the many who, in the East, tacitly assume that Indians exist for the benefit of Anglo-Indians.” He is right in saying it is tacitly assumed; for few go so far as to say openly that the Indians are destined by Nature to be exploited by the White races. But the tacit assumption often leavens their thoughts and discourses on “the native question.” One recent writer, indeed, distinctly states that “it is an inexorable law of progress that inferior races are made for the purpose of serving the superior; and if they refuse to serve, they are fatally condemned to disappear.” (W. H. Brown, On the South African Frontier). But who is to decide which are “the inferior races”?

397 See Shakespeare, King Henry V., Act iii. Sc. 6.

398 The Times, 4th Sept. 1907.

399 Mr Chester Holcombe, in The Real Chinese Question, p. 242.

400 Mutato coelo mores mutantur!

401 I earnestly commend to the reader’s notice an admirable leader in the Times of 15th January 1907, which closes with these words: “Altogether it seems to be time for the white races to take a fresh survey of the whole situation, and to recognise that, in the changed conditions, the old haughty and dictatorial attitude stands in need of modification.”

402 Lest it may appear that I am under-rating the speed with which evolutionary forces have operated among the European races during the last few centuries, I venture to quote the words of one whose opinion is likely to be listened to with respect, and who was the last man to minimise the significance of the conquests made by science. “There can be no doubt that vast changes have taken place in English civilisation since the reign of the Tudors. But I am not aware of a particle of evidence in favour of the conclusion that this evolutionary process has been accompanied by any modification of the physical or the mental characters of the men who have been the subjects of it. I have not met with any grounds for suspecting that the average Englishmen of to-day are sensibly different from those that Shakespeare knew and drew.... In my belief the innate qualities, physical, intellectual and moral, of our nation have remained substantially the same for the last four or five centuries” (T. H. Huxley, Prolegomena to Evolution and Ethics).

403 A few years ago a certain Chinese magistrate in a district very near Weihaiwei was much disgusted, on arriving at his post, to find that the opportunities for “squeeze” were so severely limited that he was likely to remain a poor man. On his own responsibility he decided to tap a new source of revenue, and issued a proclamation to the necessary effect. In a few days the populace was up in arms, the magistrate’s official residence was pulled to pieces (it is still almost a ruin), and he was himself a disgraced fugitive.

404 The Times of 15th December 1906 reports the sale at Christie’s of a pair of vases of the K’ang Hsi period for 3,700 guineas, and a pair of beakers of the Yung Chêng period for 3,100 guineas.

405 Quoted in Professor Giles’ Chinese Pictorial Art.

406 Author of Papers from a Viceroy’s Yamen, and other works.

407 Chinese Poetry in English Verse (Shanghai and London: 1898).

408 Published by the Clarendon Press, 1904.

409 Lafcadio Hearn’s Kokoro, p. 335.

410 See 47 (p. 442).

411 See 48 (p. 443).

414 See Waddell’s Lhasa and its Mysteries, pp. 434 seq.

415 Op. cit., p. 439.

416 See Evolution and Ethics, pp. 80-81 (Eversley edn.).