Page:Columbia University Lectures on Literature (1911).djvu/97

Rh chronological accounts, recording day by day the events that had occurred under each of the several emperors of the dynasty. "Court chronicles" we may call them as distinguished from the second part, in which we find valuable material for the study of certain phases of cultural life, such as astronomy, ceremonial, music, criminal law, political economy, literature, etc. The greater part of the entire history, however, is devoted to the biographies of the remarkable men of the time, to which are added accounts of the foreign nations known to the Chinese. These accounts are of the greatest value to the investigator of Asiatic history and geography. They contain ethnographical sketches of the Tartar nations in the north and west of China, chief among whom there were in ancient times the Hiung-nu, the Huns of Western history, whose migrations to the confines of Europe can be traced to periods as early as the first century B.C. Their place during the early part of the Middle Ages was taken by the Eastern and Western Turks, their blood relations, whose history appears in lapidary style in Old-Turkish characters on some famous stone slabs discovered by Russian travelers in Mongolia. The work of deciphering these mysterious inscriptions, formerly believed to be runes, has been greatly facilitated by the detailed ethnographical accounts found in the dynastic history of the period. These accounts are also our chief source of information for the later Turks known as Uigurs and down to our own times of the Mongols, Tunguses, etc. Even portions of the Roman Empire are described in contemporaneous accounts, the identification and interpretation of which has become an unexpected, helpful source for our knowledge of ancient trade and traffic with the Far East.

Another class of historical works has been created in imitation of Confucius' "Spring and Autumn" annals. The oldest of these was discovered in 284 a.d. in a tomb dating from about 300 B.C. It deals in chronological order with the most ancient history of China, and since it was written on