A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.]. Wolfram Eberhard
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target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#u6b6fcdec-9f01-47f9-992b-8efa918bdbb3">3 Bronze plaque representing two horses fighting each other. Ordos region, animal style. 64From V. Griessmaier: Sammlung Baron Eduard von der Heydt, Vienna 1936, illustration No. 6.
4 Hunting scene: detail from the reliefs in the tombs at Wu-liang-tz'u. 64From a print in the author's possession.
5 Part of the "Great Wall". 65Photo Eberhard.
6 Sun Ch'üan, ruler of Wu. 144From a painting by Yen Li-pen (c. 640–680).
7 General view of the Buddhist cave-temples of Yün-kang. In the foreground, the present village; in the background the rampart. 145Photo H. Hammer-Morrisson.
8 Detail from the Buddhist cave-reliefs of Lungmen. 160From a print in the author's possession.
9 Statue of Mi-lo (Maitreya, the next future Buddha), in the "Great Buddha Temple" at Chengting (Hopei). 161Photo H. Hammer-Morrisson.
10 Ladies of the Court: Clay models which accompanied the dead person to the grave. T'ang period. 208In the collection of the Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin.
11 Distinguished founder: a temple banner found at Khotcho, Turkestan. 209Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin. No. 1B 4524, illustration B 408.
12 Ancient tiled pagoda at Chengting (Hopei). 224Photo H. Hammer-Morrisson.
13 Horse-training. Painting by Li Lung-mien. Late Sung period. 225Manchu Royal House Collection.
14 Aborigines of South China, of the "Black Miao" tribe, at a festival. China-ink drawing of the eighteenth century. 272Collection of the Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin. No. 1D 8756, 68.
15 Pavilion on the "Coal Hill" at Peking, in which the last Ming emperor committed suicide. 273Photo Eberhard.
16 The imperial summer palace of the Manchu rulers, at Jehol. 288Photo H. Hammer-Morrisson.
17 Tower on the city wall of Peking. 289Photo H. Hammer-Morrisson.
MAPS
1 Regions of the principal local cultures in prehistoric times 13
2 The principal feudal States in the feudal epoch (roughly 722–481 B.C.) 39
3 China in the struggle with the Huns or Hsiung-nu (roughly 128–100 B.C.) 87
4 The Toba empire (about A.D. 500) 141
5 The T'ang realm (about A.D. 750) 171
6 The State of the Later T'ang dynasty (923–935) 205
INTRODUCTION
There are indeed enough Histories of China already: why yet another one? Because the time has come for new departures; because we need to clear away the false notions with which the general public is constantly being fed by one author after another; because from time to time syntheses become necessary for the presentation of the stage reached by research.
Histories of China fall, with few exceptions, into one or the other of two groups, pro-Chinese and anti-Chinese: the latter used to predominate, but today the former type is much more frequently found. We have no desire to show that China's history is the most glorious or her civilization the oldest in the world. A claim to the longest history does not establish the greatness of a civilization; the importance of a civilization becomes apparent in its achievements. A thousand years ago China's civilization towered over those of the peoples of Europe. Today the West is leading; tomorrow China may lead again. We need to realize how China became what she is, and to note the paths pursued by the Chinese in human thought and action. The lives of emperors, the great battles, this or the other famous deed, matter less to us than the discovery of the great forces that underlie these features and govern the human element. Only when we have knowledge of those forces and counter-forces can we realize the significance of the great personalities who have emerged in China; and only then will the history of China become intelligible even to those who have little knowledge of the Far East and can make nothing of a mere enumeration of dynasties and campaigns.
Views on China's history have radically changed in recent years. Until about thirty years ago our knowledge of the earliest times in China depended entirely on Chinese documents of much later date; now we are able to rely on many excavations which enable us to check the written sources. Ethnological, anthropological, and sociological research has begun for China and her neighbours; thus we are in a position to write with some confidence about the making of China, and about her ethnical development, where formerly we could only grope in the dark. The claim that "the Chinese race" produced the high Chinese civilization entirely by its own efforts, thanks to its special gifts, has become just as untenable as the other theory that immigrants from the West, some conceivably from Europe, carried civilization to the Far East. We know now that in early times there was no "Chinese race", there were not even "Chinese", just as there were no "French" and no "Swiss" two thousand years ago. The "Chinese" resulted from the amalgamation of many separate peoples of different races in an enormously complicated and long-drawn-out process, as with all the other high civilizations of the world.
The picture of ancient and medieval China has also been entirely changed since it has been realized that the sources on which reliance has always been placed were not objective, but deliberately and emphatically represented a particular philosophy. The reports on the emperors and ministers of the earliest period are not historical at all, but served as examples of ideas of social policy or as glorifications of particular noble families. Myths such as we find to this day among China's neighbours were made into history; gods were made men and linked together by long family trees. We have been able to touch on all these things only briefly, and have had to dispense with any account of the complicated processes that have taken place here.
The official dynastic histories apply to the course of Chinese history the criterion of Confucian ethics; for them history is a textbook of ethics, designed to show by means of examples how the man of high character should behave or not behave. We have to go deeper, and try to extract the historic truth from these records. Many specialized studies by Chinese, Japanese, and Western scholars on problems of Chinese history are now available and of assistance in this task. However, some Chinese writers still imagine that they are serving their country by yet again dishing up the old fables for the foreigner as history; and some Europeans, knowing no better or aiming at setting alongside the unedifying history of Europe the shining example of the conventional story of China, continue in the old groove. To this day, of course, we are far from having really worked through every period of Chinese history; there are long periods on which scarcely any work has yet been done. Thus the picture we are able to give today has no finality about it and will need many modifications. But the time has come for a new synthesis, so that criticism may proceed along the broadest possible front and push our knowledge further forward.
The present work is intended for the general reader and not for the specialist, who will devote his attention to particular studies and to the original texts. In view of the wide scope of the work, I have had to