The Civilization of China | Page 8

in
stern reality, there was no response from the insulted nobles. The king
was killed, and his concubine strangled herself.
Meanwhile, a high state of civilization was enjoyed by these feudal
peoples, when not engaged in cutting each other's throats. They lived in
thatched houses constructed of rammed earth and plaster, with beaten
floors on which dry grass was strewn as carpet. Originally accustomed
to sit on mats, they introduced chairs and tables at an early date; they
drank an ardent spirit with their carefully cooked food, and wore robes
of silk. Ballads were sung, and dances were performed, on ceremonial
and festive occasions; hunting and fishing and agriculture were
occupations for the men, while the women employed themselves in

spinning and weaving. There were casters of bronze vessels, and
workers in gold, silver, and iron; jade and other stones were cut and
polished for ornaments. The written language was already highly
developed, being much the same as we now find it. Indeed, the chief
difference lies in the form of the characters, just as an old English text
differs in form from a text of the present day. What we may call the
syntax of the language has remained very much the same; and phrases
from the old ballads of three thousand years ago, which have passed
into the colloquial, are still readily understood, though of course
pronounced according to the requirements of modern speech. We can
no more say how Confucius (551-479 B.C.) pronounced Chinese, than
we can say how Miltiades pronounced Greek when addressing his
soldiers before the battle of Marathon (490 B.C.). The "books" which
were read in ancient China consisted of thin slips of wood or bamboo,
on which the characters were written by means of a pencil of wood or
bamboo, slightly frayed at the end, so as to pick up a coloured liquid
and transfer it to the tablets as required. Until recently, it was thought
that the Chinese scratched their words on tablets of bamboo with a
knife, but now we know that the knife was only used for scratching out,
when a character was wrongly written.
The art of healing was practised among the Chinese in their pre-historic
times, but the earliest efforts of a methodical character, of which we
have any written record, belong to the period with which we are now
dealing. There is indeed a work, entitled "Plain Questions," which is
attributed to a legendary emperor of the Golden Age, who interrogates
one of his ministers on the cause and cure of all kinds of diseases; as
might be expected, it is not of any real value, nor can its date be carried
back beyond a few centuries B.C.
Physicians of the feudal age classified diseases under the four seasons
of the year: headaches and neuralgic affections under /spring/, skin
diseases of all kinds under /summer/, fevers and agues under /autumn/,
and bronchial and pulmonary complaints under /winter/. They treated
the various complaints that fell under these headings by suitable doses
of one or more ingredients taken from the five classes of drugs, derived
from herbs, trees, living creatures, minerals, and grains, each of which

class contained medicines of five flavours, with special properties:
/sour/ for nourishing the bones, /acid/ for nourishing the muscles, /salt/
for nourishing the blood-vessels, /bitter/ for nourishing general vitality,
and /sweet/ for nourishing the flesh. The pulse has always been very
much to the front in the treatment of disease; there are at least
twenty-four varieties of pulse with which every doctor is supposed to
be familiar, and some eminent doctors have claimed to distinguish no
fewer than seventy-two. In the "Plain Questions" there is a sentence
which points towards the circulation of the blood,--"All the blood is
under the jurisdiction of the heart," a point beyond which the Chinese
never seem to have pushed their investigations; but of this curious
feature in their civilization, later on.
It was under the feudal system, perhaps a thousand years before Christ,
that the people of China began to possess family names. Previous to
that time there appear to have been tribal or clan names; these however
were not in ordinary use among the individual members of each clan,
who were known by their personal names only, bestowed upon them in
childhood by their parents. Gradually, it became customary to prefix to
the personal name a surname, adopted generally from the name of the
place where the family lived, sometimes from an appellation or official
title of a distinguished ancestor; places in China never take their names
from individuals, as with us, and consequently there are no such names
as Faringdon or Gislingham, the homes of the Fearings or Gislings of
old. Thus, to use English terms, a boy who had been called "Welcome"
by his parents might