Four Pilgrims
9781465651969
188 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
For thousands of years China was a world to itself, cut off from the races of men. The main causes of this singular seclusion are simple:— China was protected from serious invasion by her geographical position. Northward, it was no easy business for the barbarous intruder to find a way into China from the Manchurian plain, or for a Chinaman to find a way out; and it was still more difficult to effect a passage by force. To the North-West rose the forbidding walls of the Altai Mountains; and, between them and China, a broad and demon-haunted waste of sand blocked the way. Westward, huge interlocked ranges of Central Asia—the Thian Shan and Pamirs—mountains which o’er top Alp or Caucasus, which rival the loftiest Andes, and which are inferior only to Himalaya, presented perils in abundance. These difficulties surmounted, the vast, trackless sands of Gobi formed a second barrier; and the steep rocks of Ala-Shan and In-Shan were a third. To the South-West rose the plateau of Thibet, interlocking with the Pamirs—a plateau with a mean level of more than 12,000 feet, terminating southward in Himalaya, that highest and broadest of mountain-walls. To the South of China were the dense forests, deep valleys, and rapid rivers of Burma and Tonquin. Eastward the Celestial Empire was guarded by the sea: to reach China from India was a long and perilous voyage; and the boldest navigator might hesitate to entrust his clumsy craft to the caprice of the Indian Ocean, to thread his way through the tortuous straits of Malaysia, and to chance an encounter with the fierce islanders who lined them, only in the end to reach a jealous shore. The unwieldly Chinese junk—a town afloat—did, however, make a periodic and prolonged voyage—at least in later days—to India; and a few bands of bold, hardy traders were wont to cross over the formidable passes of Central Asia on horses, mules, or asses, and to traverse vast, trackless wastes on camels. They exchanged the products of India, Persia, and those States which were watered by the classic streams of Oxus and Jaxartes, for the silks and manufactures of Cathay. Chinese porcelain has been found in Egyptian tombs. China enjoyed a soil so productive of every kind of wealth that she was independent of commercial intercourse with other lands. Secure from all invaders but the scattered hordes of Mongolia, she developed a high and distinctive civilization, which became more and more fixed and rigid, but was superior in many respects to that of other Eastern States. By the Seventh Century of our Era, good roads, good inns, and an admirable system of canals rendered internal communication easy; the heavens had been surveyed by astronomical instruments of some precision; and the art of printing, which had not then been discovered long, was in use; although to this day the Chinese do without the valuable economy of an alphabet. Moreover the Chinese People preferred to be undisturbed by stimulus from without. Yet China transmitted her culture to her near and less civilized neighbours—Japan and the Indo-Chinese peninsula—and claimed a precarious overlordship of semi-barbarous Manchuria, Mongolia, Eastern Turkestan and Thibet. During a long stretch of time, the powerful and jealous Persian Empire was a bar to intercourse with the far West; because it tried to preserve a monopoly of its own products. The records of early intercourse with other countries are few; and those few are meagre. Thirteen centuries before the age in which Hiuen-Tsiang lived, Embassies from distant nations would seem to have reached China. Marcus Aurelius despatched a mission (A.D. 166) to establish direct relations; it travelled by way of India; and failed. Carus sent another (A.D. 284).
