58

exemplify these precepts by their lives. They were also described as refusing to amass wealth. They were said to keep no slaves and to make no distinction between the noble and the mean. Their religious observances were in part fasting and keeping "the vigil of silence and watchfulness." They met "seven times a day for worship and praise" and they offered prayers for the living and the dead. Every seventh day they had "a sacrifice”—probably the eucharist. Although eulogistic inscriptions set up by the adherents of a faith are not always a trustworthy record of the impression made on outsiders, it seems fair to infer from the Hsianfu inscription that the message and practice of these Nestorian representatives of Christianity were as nearly true to the spirit of Jesus as were those of Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox missionaries in Northern Europe during the period that the peoples of these regions were being won to the Christian faith.

Why did the Nestorian community disappear from the Middle Kingdom? Why did it apparently have so little permanent influence upon the culture of China? Nestorians were in China, probably continuously, for nearly two and a half centuries, or for almost the length of time that elapsed between the founding of the Christian Church and the acceptance of the faith by Constantine. Why was it that the fate of the same religion was so different in two empires which were probably so nearly equal in area, population, and culture? In China Christianity had certain advantages that it did not have in the Roman Empire until the time of Constantine. The state seems to have tolerated it for many years and even to have given it financial support." Persecutions were infrequent and were probably not as cruel as were those that befell Christians in the Roman domains. Nestorianism came, too, not as a sect whose early adherents were chiefly members of despised and unlettered classes, but with the support of foreigners who were powerful at court and with the advocacy of at least

58 See text of the Nestorian monument. The Chinese is in Saeki, Nestorian Monument, pp. 260-270. There are English translations in Saeki, op. cit., pp. 162-180, by Wylie in Williams, Middle Kingdom, Vol. 2, pp. 277-285, and by Legge in Christianity in China (or The Nestorian Monument of Hsi-an Fu). Legge also gives the Chinese text.

From the Nestorian monument it is clear that several of the Emperors favored Christianity and even at times subsidized it. This does not mean that Christianity was singled out for the exclusive patronage of the state, for other faiths were also subsidized (Saeki, op. cit., p. 85). It does mean, however, that it had the sanction of the government. Without that it might have had much more difficulty in maintaining itself.

60

some men who were well versed in the Chinese language and literature. Why was it that in spite of these advantages Christianity disappeared from one empire while without them it conquered in the other?

01

The answer must at best be conjectural, but certain facts which seem well established may shed light on the problem. In the first place, Nestorian Christianity appears never to have ceased to be primarily the faith of a foreign community. Its chief adherents were non-Chinese peoples who were resident in the Middle Kingdom under the powerful T'ang Emperors either as merchants, soldiers, or missionaries. It is almost certain that there were at least some Christian Chinese, for the Nestorian monument speaks of numerous church buildings and of what may well have been missionary work among the Chinese. Some of the long list of names given on the monument may even have been those of Chinese converts. It is doubtful whether so many of the sacred writings of the Church would have been translated had there not been active work among the Chinese population. and had there not been some native Christians. An imperial edict of 845 mentions "over three thousand monks of Ta-ch'in and Mu-hu-fu," "2 and since those of Ta-ch'in were almost certainly Nestorians it is probable that a fair proportion of the three thousand were of that faith and that a lay community of larger size supported them. Such a community may well have been in part Chinese. Still, Nestorianism seems to have depended chiefly upon foreign leadership and support.

62

In the second place, Nestorianism arrived at a time when no especial need for a new faith was felt. When Christianity entered the Roman Empire it found a marked religious hunger for which the state faiths could do nothing and which was seeking satisfaction in various philosophies and in religions from the East. In the China of the T'ang dynasty, however, the older native faiths were popular and strongly entrenched, and the unfilled gaps were largely occupied by Buddhism. Had it not been for this latter This is clear from the Nestorian inscription. I-ssu, for example, was in high favor at court.

01 See the names on the Nestorian monument. Recall, too, the numbers of Christians, evidently foreigners, who perished in the sack of Khanfu in 878.

62

The Chinese text and translation are given in Saeki, op. cit., pp. 88, 281, 282. Pelliot says that the true reading is not Mu-hu-fu but Mu-hu-hsien, hsien meaning "The Celestial God" [of Fire] and that the whole is to be understood as the hsien religion of the Mu-hu (Magi).-Pelliot. Letter to the author, March,

faith, Nestorianism might have met with greater success, but the followers of Gautama had been carrying on missionary work in China long before the arrival of the Nestorians, they had become well established, and their faith was at the acme of its vigor. To the average Chinese, Nestorianism may have appeared to be another of the Buddhist sects that were so flourishing under the T'ang. The confusion may have been facilitated by the use of Buddhist phraseology by Nestorian translators and by a close association between some Nestorian and Buddhist leaders." The Nestorians, in other words, in trying to clothe their faith in dress familiar to the Chinese, may have sacrificed in part its distinctiveness and defeated their own aim.

In the third place, the Nestorian missionaries were separated from the center of their church by immense distances and could look for little assistance and inspiration from the main body of their fellow believers."* This and the fact that in most countries the Nestorians were a minority group and that in Mesopotamia they were a subject people were serious handicaps to extensive missionary work in a land as vast as China. If Christianity were ever to make a profound impression it would have to be at a time when the older Chinese culture was more nearly in a state of flux than it was under the T'ang and when the Church could bring to the task greater resources than the Nestorians had at their command. When one remembers the political disabilities under which the Nestorians labored in most lands, including Mesopotamia itself, when one recalls that China was at the outermost fringe of the range of Nestorian influence and that under the T'ang monarchs she was the mightiest empire on earth, the marvel is not that the Nestorians did not win her to the Christian faith or found a permanent Chinese Christian community, but that they maintained themselves in the country for nearly two hundred and fifty years.

With the decline of the T'ang, the disappearance of the Nes• Saeki, op. cit., p. 15. Remember, too, that the author of the Hsianfu inscription collaborated with a Buddhist priest in the translation of a Buddhist sutra.Chavannes et Pelliot, Un traité manichéen, p. 158. There is in the British Museum a picture which may be meant to be that of Christ or a Christian saint, but which, except for a cross on its forehead, is that of a Bodhisattva.— Arthur Waley in Artibus Asiae (1925), No. 1, p. 5.

** In the middle of the ninth century, for example, the Metropolitan of China is mentioned with those of India, Persia, Merv, Syria, Herat, Samarkand, and Arabia, as excused because of distance from attending the quadrennial synods of the Church. Cordier-Yule, Cathay and the Way Thither, Vol. 1, p. 104.

torians was, under the circumstances, almost a foregone conclusion. The closing years of the dynasty were marked by extensive internal disorder which hampered foreign commerce, endangered the lives of foreign residents, and probably made missionary work difficult. When, finally, the dynasty collapsed, for over three and a half centuries none of its successors were able to unite all the country. First were five ephemeral dynasties (907-960) and almost constant civil war. Then came the Sung dynasty, during all of whose existence (960-1280) the country was subject to attacks from non-Chinese peoples on the north. The Khitan and then the Chin Tatars wrested part of the northern provinces from the hands of the native monarchs. Under the Sung dynasty Chinese culture flowered afresh, but the rulers and their subjects would not be inclined to look with favor upon a foreign faith, particularly if that religion were professed, as was Nestorianism, by some of the hated alien tribes of the north. Neither the Khitans nor the Chins were Christian, and while the faith persisted among some of their neighbors and non-Chinese subjects there is no evidence of conversions among the Chinese. The revival of Christian effort in China was to wait for the reunification of the country under a new foreign dynasty.

65

The biographies and genealogies of some of these non-Chinese Nestorian Christians are found in the History of the Chin dynasty.-Cordier, Histoire générale de la Chine, Vol. 2, p. 377; Pelliot, T'oung Pao, December, 1914.

CHAPTER V

CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA UNDER THE MONGOLS

THE MONGOL CONQUEST

IN the thirteenth century occurred one of those irruptions of peoples from Central Asia that from time to time have had so marked an effect upon the history of both Asia and Europe. For a brief period an empire was established which stretched from Eastern Europe to the Pacific Ocean and which was to make possible the exchange of cultural influences between the Far West and the Far East. The initiator of this series of invasions was one of the greatest military geniuses of history, Temuchin, or, as he is better known, Jenghiz Khan (ca. 1162-1227). Under his leadership a comparatively obscure Asiatic people, the Mongols, burst out of their home in the great stretches northwest of China Proper and within his lifetime made themselves masters of what is now a part or all of Northern China, Western Russia, Central Asia, and Northwestern India. Under his successor, Ogodai (died 1241), the overthrow of the Chin Tatars was completed, Northern China was annexed to the Mongol Empire, and Mongol armies invaded lands as widely separated as Korea and Hungary. Kuyuk (Khan 1246-1248) followed Ogodai and after an interval Mangu, a nephew of Ogodai, became Khan (1251). While Mangu was on the throne his brother Hulagu overran much of Western Asia, captured and sacked Bagdad (1258) and founded a dynasty in Persia. Mangu was succeeded by another brother, Khubilai (1216-1294). The latter completed the conquest of the Sung dynasty and so added the remainder of the Middle Kingdom to the Mongol domains. From his capital at Cambaluc, the modern Peking, he ruled an empire larger and more populous than had ever before acknowledged the authority of one man. All China, Central Asia, Persia, Mesopotamia, and parts of Europe as far west as Poland recognized him as sovereign.