Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/81

Rh teachings of the foreign god, rumors of whose fame had already reached the Pacific shore. It has since been supposed by some that this meant tidings of Christ; but the basis for such an inference is doubtful. At any rate the embassy found its way to India and returned thence with the doctrines of Buddhism, which at once became the established religion of the country, spreading over the whole of China and eventually Japan. It makes an interesting speculation to consider what the effect on the world would have been if the embassy had taken a more northern route, bringing it to Palestine instead of to India.

The Tang dynasty 618 to 908 marks perhaps the zenith of Chinese development, when, there is no doubt, its civilization and cultivation outshone those of Europe at the same period. Literature flourished; trade was nurtured, the banking system developed, laws were codified and the limits of the empire were extended even to Persia and the Caspian Sea. The art of printing was discovered, certainly in block form and probably by movable type. The fame of China reached India and Europe, whence embassies were despatched bearing salutations and presents. Monks of the Nestorian order were received by the Emperor Tai-tsung, who gave permission for them to erect churches, and thus was Christianity first publicly acknowledged in China. Although the efforts of the Nestorian monks continued for many years from perhaps as early as 500 to 845, yet they were without permanent results, as they left no monuments behind them, and the practice of Christianity was suspended for some centuries.

In 1213 the Chinese for the first time passed under a foreign rule, when Genghis Khan, the great Mongol, crossed the wall and began to lay waste the country. When he had captured Peking and established a Mongol dynasty, he turned his attention to further conquests, and in 1219 led a force westward. With it he overran Northern India, Asia Minor, and even entered Europe in Southern Russia. He then withdrew to Peking, having established the largest empire in the world's history. Under his degenerate successors this vast power dwindled, the only permanent result being found in Europe; for the presence of the Turks on that continent is due to the invasion of Genghis, as he drove them before him out of their own Asiatic country.

The last purely Chinese dynasty was the Ming (Bright) which occupied the throne from 1368 to its overthrow by the Manchus in 1644. The capital of this house was originally at Nan-king, but was moved by the great Emperor Yung-loh to Pekin in 1403, where he constructed the famous Ming Tombs forty miles northwest of the city, where he and his successors of Ming lie buried in solitary grandeur. He also established the laws under which China is governed to-day, and under him the seeds of Christianity were permanently planted in China in 1582 by the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci. About two hundred and