Page:Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society - Volume 1.djvu/41

 The period of Chow, from about the middle of which the era of authentic history may be dated, was distinguished by the birth of Confucius, and of Laou-keun, the founders of two of the sects of China; while Fŏ, or Buddha, the author of the third, was also born in India about the commencement of the same period, although his worship was not introduced into the empire until long after, in the first century of the Christian era. The memory and the doctrines of Confucius have met with almost uninterrupted veneration down to the present time; while the absurd superstitions of the other two have been alternately embraced and despised by the different sovereigns of the country. Under the present Tartar government, they can merely be said to be tolerated. In the instructions of the Emperor Yung-ching to the people, the tenets of Fŏ and of Laou-keun are stigmatized among the “impure doctrines” against which the nation is warned to guard itself with especial caution.

Leaving the religion of his countrymen as he found it, Confucius embodied in sententious maxims the first principles of morals and of government, and the purity and excellence of some of his precepts (whatever may have been said to the contrary by persons ignorant of the language) will bear a comparison with even those of the gospel. He, and he only, of the men who have at different times aspired to teach the Chinese, was truly deserving of the title of Philosopher; and he alone, during the revolutions of ages, has met with uniform veneration. Guided by the light of reason, he applied the energies of a powerful intellect to the Study of man, and grounded his doctrines on the fixed and immutable principles of human nature. His works are at this day the Sacred Books of the Chinese, and when compared with the evanescent relics of Fŏ and of Laou-keun, confirm the superiority of truth over the fictions of artful, and the ravings of fanatical teachers. Thus it is that “opinionum delet dies, naturæ judicia confirmat.”

After the death of Confucius, who appears to have been respected by the sovereigns of nearly all the independent states of China, a series of sanguinary contests arose among them, which gave to this period of history the name of Chen-kwo, or the “contending nations,” and proved at length the ruin of the race of Chow. The king of Tsin, who had long been growing very powerful at the expense of the neighbouring states, fought against six other nations, and after a course of successes, compelled them all to acknowledge his supremacy (B.C. 200). The chief government began now to assume the aspect of an Empire, which comprehended the greater portion