Page:Oriental Religions - China.djvu/151

Rh This adventurous spirit, so rare in Asiatic monarchs, was rewarded by the arrival of one of his generals, if not at the Caspian Sea, yet near the Persian Gulf, whence the vine, true symbol of social unity, was carried to China; whose exchange for the gift came some centuries later, when the silk-worm, symbol of productive labor, was brought to Constantinople by Nestorian monks. From the date at which Ma-touan-lin begins his notices of Indian relations, religious and commercial,^ — not far from the Christian era, — two, and probably three, great lines of traffic were fully organized across the continent. One high-road is described by Ptolemy as coasting the desert on the south from Bactria to the Western sea ; another led from Samarcand to the northern provinces of China. In nine months the caravans crossed from sea to sea ; and the Romans met these returning land-galleons at the fairs of Armenian and Persian towns.^

countries.

So wide-reaching were the attractive powers of industry in an age when the present centres of civilization Chinese were a wilderness, and railroad and ocean-steamer interest in beyond the world of dreams. But the persistent faith of the Chinese in their own cosmopolitanism has recorded much earlier intercourse with the nations immediately in contact. The Shu-king records tributes to the great Emperor from foreign as well as native States. Hospitality to guests is one of the eight "principles of government " laid down for the earliest kings.^ The Tcheou-li describes the reception of foreign embassies at court, in those remote ages which it professes to represent: they were not interrogated at the borders, but greeted with cordial ceremony by officers despatched thither for the purpose, escorted to the capital, and lodged at the public

Journ. R. As. Soc VI. 457.

Gibbon, ch. xl.

Shu-king, v. iv. 7.