CHAPTER IV

THE DROWNING OF DAUGHTERS-EARLY MONGOLIAN CIVILIZATION MARKED BY ANCESTOR WORSHIPSEVERE CHARACTER OF CONFUCIUS-“BEGINNING" OF INFANTICIDE, 200 B.C.-REFORMS OF THE EMPEROR CHOENTCHE AND THE MANCHUS IN THE REDUCING

SEVENTEENTH

CENTURY-DECREES

THE COST OF WEDDING GIFTS IN ORDER TO STOP
PARENTS FROM KILLING FEMALE CHILDREN

A

SSUMING that the human cradle was in the Eastern Archipelago, and more particularly in the Island of Java where Dr. Dubois discovered his Pithecanthropus erectus, the primeval home of the Mongolian division of the human race was the Tibetan plateau. From this central plateau the early Mongol groups spread during the Stone Age over the Asiatic continent, in one place developing into the Akkado-Sumerians of Babylonia, the almost extinct Hyperboreans of Siberia in another, the Mongolo-Tartars stretching across Central Asia from Japan to Europe, the Tibeto-Indo-Chinese of Tibet, Indo-China, and China, and the Oceanic Mongols of Malaysia, Madagascar, and the Philippines.

In Tibet even today, polyandrous customs are

Writings of Confucius

47

still strong and the nomadic tendencies of the people show that the years of civilization or nearcivilization have not changed the primitive roving inclinations, inclinations that partly account for the indifference to child life among the Chinese.

Our knowledge of ancient China rests principally on two authorities, the Chou King of Confucius, written 484 B.C., and the Sse Ki of Tsse Ma Thsein, written at the beginning of the first era before Christ. Confucius was not able to go further back than seventeen centuries before his own time, so that we can safely say that we know something about Chinese history for about 2200 years before the Christian era. The social and political life of the Chinese people in the time of Yao, the first of the emperors named by Confucius, was that of a pastoral people, but even then most of the useful arts had been invented, writing was already known, and the first notions of astronomy on which they founded their calendar had been acquired. The successor of Yao was Chun, and after Chun came Hia, the founder of a dynasty which lasted from 2205 to 1767 B.C., with which dynasty began the real history of China.

When Confucius appeared the Chinese Empire was a highly civilized nation, but of Confucius it has been said that he, more than any other one man, went to make China a nation. Born at a time when his country was torn with discord and desolated by war, husbandry neglected, peace of households destroyed, and plunder and rapine

common occurrences, Confucius was nineteen when he married and added to the national woes his own domestic troubles, divorcing the lady after a brief period in captivity, but not however until she had borne him a son.

It is through this son that we learn something of the personal character of Confucius. An inquisitive disciple asked the son if he had learned any more than those who were not related to the great teacher.

"No," replied Le. "He was standing alone once when I was passing through the court below with hasty steps, and said to me:

"Have you read the Odes?'

"On my replying, 'Not yet,' he added:

"If you do not learn the Odes, you will not be fit to converse with.'

"Another day in the same way and the same place, he said to me:

"Have you read the rules of Propriety?'

"On my replying 'Not yet,' he added:

'If you do not learn the rules of Propriety, your character cannot be established.""

"I asked one thing," said the enthusiastic disciple, "and I have learned three things. I have learned about the Odes, I have learned about the rules of Propriety, and I have learned that the Superior Man maintains a distant reserve toward his son."

In this anecdote-and in his works-it is evident that Confucius had the Chinese estimate of

Confucius and Parental Sovereignty 49

the child-the father was sovereign; the child, as long as that sovereign lived, a mere subject. It was this idea and the strongly implanted idea of filial piety that led to the callous attitude toward children among the disciples of Confucius.

The Chinese explanation and defence of this phase of their life is that up to the year 232 B.C. there did not exist in China anything but the most humane system of treatment of children. The Jesuit authors of the Mémoires declare that up to that time there is no trace of the drowning of infants, their abandonment, etc. Instead of being a burden, says the missionary chronicler, children were considered an asset and the orphan was generally in the position of having to choose between many would-be adoptive parents. The law is cited to prove this, the Code declaring that in case there were several people anxious to adopt an orphan, preference should be given to those who were childless.'

It was under Ts'in Chi Hoang,' who reigned about 232 B.C., that the abominable practice grew up, along with many other ills. The greed and avarice of the nobles and the Emperor's immediate following produced much suffering, in the wake of which came famine, causing mothers and fathers to abandon children that they were not able to feed.

• Mémoires sur les Chinois, tome ii., p. 396.

2 Ts'in Chi Hoang, Emperor of China, 220-210 B.C., was King of Ts'in, 246-221 B.C. Hirth, p. 334.

Whatever truth there may be in this statement, there is very little doubt that the reign of Ts'in Chi Hoang was one of bloodshed, war, and suffering and that with the end of the Chou (or Chow), dynasty, and the accession of the Prince Ts'in, first as the dominating King and then as Emperor of China, there was much suffering.

"It was a time of extreme severity," says the historian Tsse Ma Thsien, "and all affairs were decided according to the law without either grace or charity."

In addition to his bloodthirsty qualities, the Prince Ts'in, who was known as the Great First Emperor and who insisted that all successors should be known as the Second, Third, and Fourth Emperors, was superbly egotistic. Everything, including literature, was ordained to begin from his reign, to which end he issued an edict that all books should be burned. He put to death so many hundred of the literati who refused to obey this edict that the "melons actually grew in winter on the spot beneath which the bodies were buried"2 -a tribute to the fertile character of the Chinese literati.

Even assuming that the ill-treatment of children as we know it today did not extend farther back than the period ascribed to it by the Catholic missionaries, the period of Ts'in Chi Hoang, the

Se Ma Ts'ien, Traduits et Annotés, par Edouard Chavannes, tome ii., p. 130.

H. A. Giles, Chinese Biographical Dictionary.