His Deeds
And His Person Are Mythical, But He Is Credited With Having Given His
Country Its First Regular Institutions.
One of his successors was Hwangti
(which means Heavenly Emperor), who was the first to employ the imperial
style of Emperor, the earlier rulers having been content with the inferior
title of Wang, or prince.
He adopted the convenient decimal division in
his administration as well as his coinage. His dominions were divided into
ten provinces, each of these into ten departments, these again into ten
districts, each of which held ten towns. He regulated the calendar,
originating the Chinese cycle of sixty years, and he encouraged commerce.
He seems to have been a wise prince and to have been the first of the
great emperors. His grandson, who was also emperor, continued his good
work and earned the reputation of being "the restorer or even founder of
true astronomy."
But the most famous of Hwangti's successors was his great-grandson Yao who
is still one of the most revered of all Chinese rulers. He was "diligent,
enlightened, polished and prudent," and if his words reflected his actions
he must have been most solicitous of the welfare of his people. He is
specially remarkable for his anxiety to discover the best man to succeed
him in the government, and during the last twenty-eight years of his reign
he associated the minister Chun with him for that purpose. On his death he
left the crown to him, and Chun, after some hesitation, accepted the
charge; but he in turn hastened to secure the co-operation of another
minister named Yu in the work of administration, just as he had been
associated with Yao. The period covered by the rule of this triumvirate is
considered one of the most brilliant and perfect in Chinese history, and
it bears a resemblance to the age of the Antonines. These rulers seem to
have passed their leisure from practical work in framing moral axioms, and
in carrying out a model scheme of government based on the purest ethics.
They considered that "a prince intrusted with the charge of a State has a
heavy task. The happiness of his subjects absolutely depends upon him. To
provide for everything is his duty; his ministers are only put in office
to assist him," and also that "a prince who wishes to fulfill his
obligations, and to long preserve his people in the ways of peace, ought
to watch without ceasing that the laws are observed with exactitude." They
were stanch upholders of temperance, and they banished the unlucky
discoverer of the fact that an intoxicating drink could be obtained from
rice. They also held fast to the theory that all government must be based
on the popular will. In fact, the reigns of Yao, Chun and Yu are the ideal
period of Chinese history, when all questions were decided by moral right
and justice, and even now Chinese philosophers are said to test their
maxims of morality by the degree of agreement they may have with the
conduct of those rulers.
With them passed away the practice of letting the most capable and
experienced minister rule the State. Such an impartial and reasonable mode
of selecting the head of a community can never be perpetuated. The rulers
themselves may see its advantages and may endeavor as honestly as these
three Chinese princes to carry out the arrangement, but the day must come
when the family of the able ruler will assert its rights to the
succession, and take advantage of its opportunities from its close
connection with the government to carry out its ends. The Emperor Yu, true
to the practice of his predecessors, nominated the president of the
council as his successor, but his son Tiki seized the throne, and became
the founder of the first Chinese dynasty, which was called the Hia, from
the name of the province first ruled by his father. This event is supposed
to have taken place in the year 2197 B.C., and the Hia dynasty, of which
there were seventeen emperors, ruled down to the year 1776 B.C. These Hia
princes present no features of interest, and the last of them, named Kia,
was deposed by one of his principal nobles, Ching Tang, Prince of Chang.
This prince was the founder of the second dynasty, known as Chang, which
held possession of the throne for 654 years, or down to 1122 B.C. With the
exception of the founder, who seems to have been an able man, this dynasty
of twenty-eight emperors did nothing very noteworthy. The public morality
deteriorated very much under this family, and it is said that when one of
the emperors wanted an honest man as minister he could only find one in
the person of a common laborer. At last, in the twelfth century before our
era, the enormities of the Chang rulers reached a climax in the person of
Chousin, who was deposed by a popular rising headed by Wou Wang, Prince of
Chow.
This successful soldier, whose name signifies the Warrior King, founded
the third Chinese dynasty of Chow, which governed the empire for the long
space of 867 years down to 266 B.C. During that protracted period there
were necessarily good and bad emperors, and the Chow dynasty was rendered
specially illustrious by the appearance of the great social and religious
reformers, Laoutse, Confucius and Mencius, during the existence of its
power. The founder of the dynasty instituted the necessary reforms to
prove that he was a national benefactor, and one of his successors, known
as the Magnificent King, extended the authority of his family over some of
the States of Turkestan. But, on the whole, the rulers of the Chow dynasty
were not particularly distinguished, and one of them in the eighth century
B.C. was weak enough to resign a portion of his sovereign rights to a
powerful vassal, Siangkong, the Prince of Tsin, in consideration of his
undertaking the defense of the frontier against the Tartars.
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