Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/105

93 REVOLUTION IN CHINA. 93 prophets : some were making the sign of a cross by uniting the thumb and forefinger, as if they meant by this movement to signify some truth. Certain of the figures were represented standing on their feet, and making signs with their fingers towards heaven. There were also other pictures, but the interpreter told me these represented the prophets of India and China." * The Chinese Emperor who held this strange dialogue with the Arab Ibn-Vahab was, doubtless, Hi-Tsoung, who ascended the imperial throne in 874. The cele- brated dynasty of Thang was then approaching its decline, and China was pregnant with one of those formidable revolutions, which have so often convulsed the Empire, but always ended in re-establishing things on the same basis and with the ancient institutions. It was in the reign of Hi-Tsoung, and almost im- mediately after the departure of the Arab, that the disturbance of which the narrative of Abou-Zeyd spake began. The insurrection burst out simultaneously in the provinces of Pe-Tche-Li and Chan-Toung, to the north of the Yellow River. The chief of the rebels was Iioang-Tchao, named Banschoua by the Arab writer. He was of a mercantile family which had made a con- siderable fortune by some speculations in salt ; he had divinities and principal persons of Judaism, Christianity, Moham- medanism, Buddhism, and other religions of China and India. The general spirit of the princes of the dynasty of Thang, was that of toleration or indifference. Sometimes a sovereign would seem to lean towards Christianity, sometimes to the worship of Fo or Buddha, and sometimes to the doctrines of Tao-tse, or of the disciples of Lao-tze. — Note by M. Iieinaud.
 * The box evidently contained a collection of portraits of the