VII. ORIENTAL CHILD'S PLAYS AND GAMES. 47. Shy and Actors.-Child-nature has many characteristics in common the world over. The child of thousands of years ago and in Oriental lands was fond of play and loved games. It is said that tourists now seldom see little children at play in Oriental countries. When the foreigner appears the children suddenly disappear. They see him long before he catches a glimpse of them. When he departs, they reappear, with high glee over his absence. Or, if the stranger meets them, they will strike an attitude to excite pity, and cry for backshish, gifts. Or, they may shy a stone at some tourist who has ventured out of the customary route into the native children's domain. 48. Kinds of Play.-Children in the East now play around pits, cisterns, in gardens, on threshing floors, and upon the flat roofs of houses. They sling and throw at a mark, play house, peggy, and with sticks resembling stick-knife. They have games of ball, quoits, a native play called wolf, hide and seek, and play something like golf, marbles, leap-frog, blindman's bluff, swinging, see-saw, checkers, and draughts, similar to chess, though the manner of playing all these is thoroughly Oriental, and different from that of children of the West. The girls have dolls, toys, something like grace-hoops, and a great variety of other amusements. The little girls and boys usually play together when very young, but at six to seven years of age the boys separate from the girls to play by themselves. 49. Toys in the East.-In patriarchal times the children had dolls and toys and much the same objects as amuse Oriental children now. For many ingeniously formed toy horses, goats, sheep, and elephants of burnt clay have been found in ancient Nippur and dug from other cities of old Babylonia. Even baby-rattles shaped like a chicken, a doll, or a drum were found with a small stone in the hollow body, that made a noise when the object was shaken, similar to the baby-rattles of our times. Similar toys for children were common among the ancient Egyptians, as we know from specimens found in the tombs and ruined temples of that wonderful land. The little Egyptian children before the days of Moses had painted dolls, the hands and legs moving on pins, that could be made to assume queer positions by pulling a string. Miriam, Moses' sister, may have played with such a doll. Miniature models of the human body and of animals were made as toys. A man or woman washing or kneading dough was imitated in motions by the similar pulling of a string. Or a small crocodile was made to open and close its great mouth, to amuse a child. Many kinds of plays with ball and hoop were known in very early times in the Orient. 50. Ball Games.-The game of ball was played by children of both sexes, though in Egypt it was more common for girls. They would play it by hurling three or more balls into the air and catching them in succession or leaping into the air and catching a ball before the feet struck the ground. In one form of ball-game the one who failed to catch the ball would be required to let her competitor ride on her back until she too missed the ball. The ball would be thrown by the opposite party, also mounted on another girl's back, and each must play from that position. Balls were stuffed with bran or chaff, covered with leather, some of them three inches in diameter. Others were smaller and made of rushes, and covered with leather also, in eight rhomboidal sections. 51. Athletic Games.-Dice and draughts, similar to chess, wrestling, boxing, leaping, running and numberless other amusements, as odd and even, and mora, some of them unknown to us, were the delight of the little people of five or six thousand years ago. All the games and plays of children in those lands and times were intended to promote health and strength. 52. Children Happy.-Peasant children in the East are never burdened with clothes. They are usually barefooted, bareheaded, and make up in dirtiness for any lack of garments. To conceive of all children in the East as sad and chronically un happy is a Western fiction. The prophet's bright picture of children playing in the streets of Jerusalem,1 as they played in the streets of great cities on the Euphrates thousands of years ago, is fully understood by Orientals. The period for children's plays and games there is shorter than in the West, because the children mature much earlier. 53. Japanese Children.-The Japanese are conspicuous for the number and variety of games and amusements they have invented for children. Some of them have a high educational value, such as cards with bits of poems, or proverbs in two parts to be matched, or names of cities or towns and bits of wood cut in geometrical figures, to be put together, called wisdom boards and puzzles. In no country are the variety, colors, fantastic shapes, and novelties in kites so numerous, ingenious, and striking as in Japan. The childrens' toys also display great ingenuity, and suggest an amount of thought given to the amusement of children that would do credit to the great toy factories of Nuremberg. The girls have dolls and images in abundance. The boys have balls, stilts, pop-guns, slings, and blow-guns. As they advance in years, they practice as flute-players and in charades, as conjurers, dancers, song-singers, raree shows, and sometimes with genii or ghostly figures lighted in the dark to startle or frighten others or to give them courage. The Chinese also play foot-ball and shuttle-cock with their feet, and fly kites shaped like fishes, animals, butterflies, insects, and birds. The bird kites also have holes in them, with fine thread across, making them into Eolian harps, so that a bird-kite not only looks quite like a real bird in the air, but sings like one too. Oriental children also enjoy feats of wrestling and of acrobats, jugglers' tricks, dice, fortune-tellers, and magical arts, similar to those frequently mentioned in the Bible. The children have a play called jang, with wooden shoes, the game being to throw one shoe from a distance so that it will be inserted inside the other. These illustrate the wealth of Oriental thought and interest devoted to child development. 1 Zech. 8: 5. VIII. EDUCATION OF ORIENTAL CHILDREN. 54. Child Culture.-Schools for the education of children existed in the East thousands of years before Socrates questioned Alcibiades, or Confucius taught disciples and before Moses even "was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." Systems of public education, however, such as are now common in highly civilized countries, were not known. But specimens of school exercises in great variety have been found in the buried cities of old Babylonia, indicating the educational methods in the era of the patriarchs, and before Abram's childhood days in old Ur. And these methods are further illustrated by the peculiar education of children in Oriental lands as observed in the past century. 55. Religious Motive.-The methods vary widely among different peoples of the East, and sometimes among the same peoples, when they are of different religious faiths. Thus, instruction among the Moslems, usually, if not always, centers about the Koran; among the Buddhists, it is around their religious rites and in their sacred books, and among the Confucians about the traditional teachings of the Chinese Sage; yet in them all there are features distinctly Oriental. Thus, an Oriental school may be connected with a mosque, a temple, or a place of worship, house of some priest, or a public fountain, or public building, where children can be instructed at a trifling expense. 56. Oriental Schools.-Wilkinson, Lane, Van Lennep, and others have given us pictures of these schoois. In Egypt the fick'ee, or Master, says Lane, received from the parent of each pupil half a piaster (about three cents) more or less, each Thursday, that day being the end of the Moslem week, as 1 Acts 7: 22. Friday is their Sabbath or holiday. The teacher usually receives also a present of muslin for a turban, a piece of linen and a pair of shoes, once a year, in the feast-month of Ramadan. Their "blackboards" were wood-tablets painted white, written upon with thin colored inks. When one lesson was learned, the tablet was washed and another lesson written. The children drop off their wooden shoes, if they have any, at the door; squat on the floor, on a mat, a rug, or a bit of old carpet, holding a tablet in hand. The master sits on a mat or small mattress, and leans upon a cushion. The scholars study their lessons aloud, the one that shouts the loudest being counted the most studious. The din and noise can hardly be imagined. Books are rare, says Van Lennep. The lessons to be memorized are chiefly prayers and formularies of their religion. Reading and writing are taught by letters, signs for syllables, and words on the tablets, as they were many thousand years ago in Nineveh and Nippur. 57. Trained in Manners.-The chief early training of the Oriental child was and is to make all his gestures, looks, and movements decent and graceful. Plato commended the ancient Egyptians for permitting their children to learn only songs and verses that inspired to virtue. They diligently inculcated respect for the aged and toward strangers, and reverence to parents. The young were to defer to superiors in age and station. The son is early taught that he is not to sit, eat, or smoke in the presence of his father unless he is bidden to do so. He must stand quietly with folded hands, not speak unless spoken to, wait upon his father, and upon any guest. This he is expected to do even after he has grown to be a man. Disobedience to parents is one of the greatest sins. Muhammed required children to be taught to say their prayers, and were to be beaten if they neglected to say them. But Moslem girls are seldom taught among the peasantry to read, write, or to say prayers. The higher class of Egyptians often employed a woman teacher to teach needle-work, embroidery, and sometimes reading and writing. An Oriental child is an example of |