Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/142

 dancing may be placed some Chinese illustrations of like symbolism. Just as the Sanskrit term for "drama" (nataka) properly applies to "dancing," so the earliest kind of dramatic spectacle among the Chinese seems to have been pantomimic dances closely connected with religion. "The majority of these dances," says M. Bazin, "were symbolic, and represented the business of tillage, the pleasures of harvest, the fatigues of war, or the comforts of peace. The dancers bore shields, battle-axes, and banners, according to the various religious ceremonies. … In his notes on the Chou-King, Gaubil speaks of a Chinese treatise on the dance; the author has there given the following description of an ancient pantomime. 'The dancers sallied out on the northern side. Scarcely had they taken a few steps when, suddenly changing the order in which they had come, they symbolised by attitudes, gestures, evolutions, a battle array. In the third direction the dancers kept advancing southwards; in the fourth, they formed a kind of line; in the fifth, they represented the two ministers, Tcheou-kong and Tchao-kong, who aided Wou-wang with their advice; in the sixth, they kept motionless like the mountains. This dance was a history of the conquest of China by Wou-wang, who, entering the empire, defeated King Cheou, penetrated farther and farther, fixed the limits of his states, and governed them by the wise counsels of his two ministers.'" These old Chinese pantomimes, like the rude farces of early Rome, became after a time, in spite of their religious origin, so obscene that they required to be checked by law. But the early union of dance and song in China seems to have left its marks on Chinese criticism. In the Great Preface to the collection of ancient Chinese odes known as the Shih