Page:Oriental Religions - China.djvu/149

 EXTERNAL RELATIONS. prevailing belief that the Chinese are an unsocial people, who have always haughtily closed their Ancient doors against foreigners, is at variance with the intercourse facts of history. It proceeds from a misunderstand- Jhina. ing of the causes which led to a policy adopted by the Empire only in recent times. The Romans had simi- lar impressions concerning this remote, and by them scarcely visited, race. Pliny describes the Seres as " shun- ning intercourse, and awaiting the approach of those who would traffic with them." l Yet he admits that they sup-" plied Rome in his time with greatly admired tissues, made of what he describes as carded wool ; with the best kind of iron ; with skins and silks. 2 It impresses him with ad- miration at the progress of mankind, that "we should now be reaching the Seres to obtain our clothing, and the emer- ald in the bowels of the earth." 3 The " Serica vestis " was a luxury which had more than once to be abated by sump- tuary laws. The old Greeks knew only that from an unseen people at the borders of the world came a delicate mystery of fibre and color, to be wrought up by the looms of the -^Egean into precious fabrics, which they called, now Me- dian, now Assyrian. By ample testimony we know that this reserved and silent sphere of civilizing powers was 1 Natural History, VI. 20. * Ibid. ; and XXXIV. 41. Ibid. XII. i.