Man, Past and Present by Agustus Henry Keane, A. Hingston Quiggin, Alfred Court Haddon (free reads .TXT) 📕

This description is not accepted without some reserve by Chamberlain, who in fact holds that "the physical type of the Luchuans resembles that of the Japanese almost to identity[664]." In explanation however of the singularly mild, inoffensive, and "even timid disposition" of the Liu-Kiuans, this observer suggests "the probable absence of any admixture of Malay blood in the race[665]." But everybody admits a Malay element in Japan. It would therefore appear that Guillemard must be right, and that, as even shown by all good photographs, differences do exist, due in fact to the presence of this very Malay strain in the Japanese race.

Elsewhere[666] Chamberlain has given us a scholarly account of the Liu-Kiu language, which is not merely a "sister," as he says, but obviously an elder sister, more archaic in structure and partly in its phonetics, than the oldest known form of Japanese. In the verb, for instance, Japanese retains only one past tense of the indicative, with but one grammatical form, whereas Liu-Kiuan preserves the three original past tenses, each of which possesses a five-fold inflection. All these racial, linguistic, and even mental resemblances, such as the fundamental similarity of many of their customs and ways of thought, he would explain with much probability by the routes followed by the first emigrants from the mainland. While the great bulk spread east and north over the great archipelago, everywhere "driving the aborigines before them," a smaller stream may have trended southward to the little southern group, whose islets stretch like stepping-stones the whole way from Japan to Great Liu-Kiu[667].

Amongst the common mental traits, mention is made of the Shinto religion, "the simplest and most rustic form" of which still survives in Liu-Kiu. Here, as in Japan, it was originally a rude system of nature-worship, the normal development of which was arrested by Chinese and Buddhist influences. Later it became associated with spirit-worship, the spirits being at first the souls of the dead, and although there is at present no cult of the dead, in the strict sense of the expression, the Liu-Kiu islanders probably pay more respect to the departed than any other people in the world.

In Japan, Shintoism, as reformed in recent times, has become much more a political institution than a religious system. The Kami-no-michi, that is, the Japanese form of the Chinese Shin-to, "way of the Gods," or "spirits," is not merely the national faith, but is inseparably bound up with the interests of the reigning dynasty, holding the Mikado to be the direct descendant of the Sun-goddess Hence its three cardinal precepts now are:--1. Honour the Kami (spirits), of whom the emperor is the chief representative on earth; 2. Revere him as thy sovereign; 3. Obey the will of his Court, and that is the whole duty of man. There is no moral code, and loyal expositors have declared that the Mikado's will is the only test of right and wrong.

But apart from this political exegesis, Shintoism in its higher form may be called a cultured deism, in its lower a "blind obedience to governmental and priestly dictates[668]." There are dim notions about a supreme creator, immortality, and even rewards and penalties in the after-life. Some also talk vaguely, as a pantheist might, of a sublime being or essence pervading all nature, too vast and ethereal to be personified or addressed in prayer, identified with the tenka, "heavens," from which all things emanate, to which all return. Yet, although a personal deity seems thus excluded, there are Shinto temples, apparently for the worship of the heavenly bodies and powers of nature, conceived as self-existing personalities--the so-called Kami, "spirits," "gods," of which there are "eight millions," that is, they are countless.

One cannot but suspect that some of these notions have been grafted on the old national faith by Buddhism, which was introduced about 550 A.D. and for a time had great vogue. It was encouraged especially by the Shoguns, or military usurpers of the Mikado's[669] functions, obviously as a set-off against the Shinto theocracy. During their tenure of power (1192-1868 A.D.) the land was covered with Buddhist shrines and temples, some of vast size and quaint design, filled with hideous idols, huge bells, and colossal statues of Buddha.

But with the fall of the Shogun the little prestige still enjoyed by Buddhism came to an end, and the temples, spoiled of their treasures, have more than ever become the resort of pleasure-seekers rather than of pious worshippers. "To all the larger temples are attached regular spectacles, playhouses, panoramas, besides lotteries, games of various sorts, including the famous 'fan-throwing,' and shooting-galleries, where the bow and arrow and the blow-pipe take the place of the rifle. The accumulated treasures of the priests have been confiscated, the monks driven from their monasteries, and many of these buildings converted into profane uses. Countless temple bells have already found their way to America, or have been sold for old metal[670]."

Besides these forms of belief, there is a third religious, or rather philosophic system, the so-called Siza, based on the ethical teachings of Confucius, a sort of refined materialism, such as underlies the whole religious thought of the nation. Siza, always confined to the literati, has in recent years found a formidable rival in the "English Philosophy," represented by such writers as Buckle, Mill, Herbert Spencer, Darwin, and Huxley, most of whose works have already been translated into Japanese.

Thus this highly gifted people are being assimilated to the western world in their social and religious, as well as their political institutions. Their intellectual powers, already tested in the fields of war, science, diplomacy, and self-government, are certainly superior to those of all other Asiatic peoples, and this is perhaps the best guarantee for the stability of the stupendous transformation that a single generation has witnessed from an exaggerated form of medieval feudalism to a political and social system in harmony with the most advanced phases of modern thought. The system has doubtless not yet penetrated to the lower strata, especially amongst the rural populations. But their natural receptivity, combined with a singular freedom from "insular prejudice," must ensure the ultimate acceptance of the new order by all classes of the community.

FOOTNOTES:

[569] As fully explained in Eth. p. 303.

[570] Mark Aurel Stein, Sand-buried Cities of Khotan, 1903, and Geog. Journ., July, Sept. 1909.

[571] R. Pumpelly, Explorations in Turkestan, 1905, and Explorations in Turkestan; Expedition of 1904, 1908.

[572] Sven Hedin, Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, 1899-1902, 1906, and Geog. Journ., April, 1909.

[573] Douglas Carruthers, Unknown Mongolia, 1913 (with bibliography).

[574] Ellsworth Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, 1910.

[575] "The Asiatic Background," Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. I. 1911.

[576] Memoires de la Delegation en Perse; Recherches archeologiques(from 1899).

[577] Sand-buried Cities of Khotan, 1903.

[578] "Ueber Alte Grabstaetten in Sibirien und der Mongolei," in Mitt. d. Anthrop. Ges., Vienna, 1895, XXV. 9.

[579] Th. Volkov, in L'Anthropologie, 1896, p. 82.

[580] Too much stress must not, however, be laid upon the theory of gradual desiccation as a factor in depopulation. There are many causes such as earthquake, water-spouts, shifting of currents, neglect of irrigation and, above all, the work of enemies to account for the sand-buried ruins of populous cities in Central Asia. See T. Peisker, "The Asiatic Background," Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. I. 1911, p. 326.

[581] Journ. Anthr. Inst. 1895, p. 318 sq.

[582] Cf. Archaeologia Cambrensis, 6th Ser. XIV. Part 1, 1914, p. 131, and Zeitschr. f. Ethnol. 1910, p. 601.

[583] "Zur Praehistorik Japans," Globus, 1896, No. 10.

[584] The best account of the archaeology of Japan will be found in Prehistoric Japan, by N. G. Munro, 1912.

[585] Die Bronzezeit Finnlands, Helsingfors, 1897.

[586] "Akkadian," first applied by Rawlinson to the non-Semitic texts found at Nineveh, is still often used by English writers in place of the more correct Sumerian, the Akkadians being now shown to be Semitic immigrants into Northern Babylonia (p. 264).

[587] Cf. L. W. King, History of Sumer and Akkad, 1910, pp. 5, 6.

[588] Ueber die Summerische Sprache, Paper read at the Russian Archaeological Congress, Riga, 1896.

[589] "Sumer and Sumerian," Ency. Brit. 1911, with references.

[590] Geschichte des Altertums, I. 2, 2nd ed. 1909, p. 404.

[591] E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, I. 2, 2nd ed. 1909, p. 406. L. W. King (History of Sumer and Akkad, 1910) discusses Meyer's arguments and points out that the earliest Sumerian gods appear to be free from Semitic influence (p. 51). He is inclined, however, to regard the Sumerians as displacing an earlier Semitic people (Hutchinson's History of the Nations, 1914, pp. 221 and 229).

[592] Ellsworth Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, 1910, p. 382.

[593] L. W. King, History of Sumer and Akkad, 1910, p. 357.

[594] E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, I. 2, 2nd ed. 1909, p. 463.

[595] L. W. King, History of Sumer and Akkad, 1910, p. 61, and the article, "Chronology. Babylonia and Assyria," Ency. Brit. 1911. Cf. also E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, I. 2, 2nd ed. 1909, Sec.Sec. 329 and 383.

[596] The cylinder-seals and tablets of Fara, excavated by Koldewey, Andrae and Noeldeke in 1902-3 may go back to 3400 B.C. Cf. L. W. King, loc. cit. p. 65.

[597] C. H. W. Johns, Ancient Babylonia, 1913, regards Sharrukin as "Sargon of Akkad," p. 39.

[598] L. W. King, History of Sumer and Akkad, 1910, pp. 234, 343, where the seal is referred to a period not much earlier than the First Dynasty of Babylon.

[599] H. V. Hilprecht, The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, Series D, Vol. v. 1. 1910.

[600] See The Times, June 24, 1914.

[601] "Babylonia and Elam Four Thousand Years Ago," in Knowledge, May 1, 1896, p. 116 sq. and elsewhere.

[602] The term "Elam" is said to have the same meaning as "Akkad" (i.e. Highland) in contradistinction to "Sumer" (Lowland). It should be noted that neither Akkad nor Sumer occurs in the oldest texts, where Akkad is called Kish from the name of its capital, and Sumer Kiengi(Kengi), probably a general name meaning "the land." Kish has been identified with the Kush of Gen. x., one of the best abused words in Palethnology. For this identification, however, there is some ground, seeing that Kush is mentioned in the closest connection with "Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar" (Mesopotamia) v.10.

[603] J. de Morgan, Memoires de la Delegation en Perse, 1899-1906.

[604] S. Laing, Human Origins, p. 74.

[605] And it has remained so ever since, the present Lur and Bakhtiari inhabitants of Susiana speaking, not the standard Neo-Persian, but dialects of the ruder Kurdish branch of the Iranian family, as if they had been Aryanised from Media, the capital of which was Ekbatana. We have here, perhaps, a clue to the origin of the Medes themselves, who were certainly the above-mentioned Mandas of Nabonidus, their capital being also the same Ekbatana. Now Sayce (Academy, Sept. 7, 1895, p. 189) identified the Kimmerians with these Manda nomads, whose king Tukdamme (Tugdamme) was the Lygdanis of Strabo (I. 3, 16), who led a horde of Kimmerians into Lydia and captured Sardis. We know from Esarhaddon's inscriptions that by the Assyrians these Kimmerians were called Manda, their prince Teupsa (Teispe) being described as "of the people of the Manda." An oracle given to Esar-haddon begins: "The Kimmerian in the mountains has set fire in the land of Ellip," i.e.the land where Ekbatana was afterwards founded, which is now shown to have already been occupied by the Kimmerian or Manda hordes. It follows that Kimmerians, Mandas, Medes with their modern Kurd and Bakhtiari representatives, were all one people, who were almost certainly of Aryan speech,