CHINESE RECORDER AND Missionary Journal. VOL. XXV. THE MARCH, 1894. The Old Thai Empire. BY E. H. PARKER, ESQ., H. B. M. CONSUL, HOIHOW. No. 3. HE Popular History of Nanchao1, published about the year A. D. 1550 by one Yang Shên2, is now a very rare book, but through the kindness of the China Inland Mission I have recently succeeded in procuring a copy from Yünnan. According to this work the traditional origin of the Nanchao group of states is connected with the kings of Magadha, and there seems to be nothing unreasonable in the supposition that military or priestly adventurers from that country first civilised and collected under a political administration the scattered tribes of Yunnan, for we are told as late as A. D. 800 that Magadha bordered upon the Nanchao empire to the West. In the papers upon Early Laos and the Ancient Thai Empire which I have already published in the China Review, as well as in my little book upon Burma (published in Rangoon), I have shewn that it is a fact beyond all doubt that Hindoo adventurers gave the earliest known organized dynasties to all the states of the Indo-Chinese peninsula and the Java-Borneo-Sumatra archipelago alike. Just in the same manner adventurers from China made their way to Corea, Canton, Soochow, Hangchow, parts of Central Asia, etc., and founded kingdoms or principalities afterwards to be absorbed in the Chinese empire. In fact, the history of man is always much the same, and repeats itself in the Mesopotamian, the Arian, the Graeco-Roman and the Chinese empires. All the world over the earliest state of things is found to be groups of kindred tribes. In no instance does there seem to have been a capacity to develop extended empire without the aid of writing, with an exception (for fitful periods only) 2 南詔野史 ? #t. in favour of the horse-riding nomads of Upper Asia. In this one case the means of communication provided by writing were, to a certain extent, anticipated by the power of rapid intercommunication on horseback. Nations and individuals are much in the same plight. There is no such thing as exceptional antiquity of birth and length of pedigree when once the records of that pedigree and the exclusive training of the family are taken away. The only difference between a patrician with a genealogy and a plebeian without one (apart of course from any personal excellencies of breed) is that the one has kept a record and the other has not, and hence we find that in China, where most respectable families have pedigrees recorded for hundreds and even thousands of years back, the idea of "blue blood" is totally non-existent. One man is as good as another. So with nations, which after all are only conglomerations of individuals, or, what is the same thing, of families, tribes, clans. It is only when the capacity of recording minute facts is introduced that it is possible to administer, and thence to become a nation. The Semitic civilisations of Egypt, Assyria and Babylon have, it may be said, only been rediscovered within our own times. The link which connects them with the Indo-European and yellow-skinned empires is both faint and indirect. Until the Phoenician alphabet was introduced into Europe, and Chinese records became more popularised in China, civilisation and empire, so far as anything certain can be known of it, was confined to the Semitic races. With the discovery, improvement and rapid development of writing the Arians and Chinese came rapidly to the fore. The Arians split up into the Indian and European branches. Europe owes everything in the way of letters to the first, and India, Burma, Siam, Java, etc., owe everything to the second. China exercised exactly the same influence over Corea, Japan, Loochoo, Annam and many other states now absorbed into China. In some cases the Hindoo and the Chinese civilisations competed for victory. In the case of Burma, as I have shewn in my papers on Burma, the Indian ousted the Chinese. In the case of Nanchao the reverse was the case, at least so far as the land itself is concerned. The land is now Chinese, but the people have split up into fragments. Some of them remain in Yünnan as Chinese; others form semi-independent principalities on the Yünnan frontier, subject to China; others, again, are in the same plight, subject to Great Britain (Burma), France (Tonquin), or Siam (Laos), and finally one branch has established itself over the fragments of the old Cambodian empire of Funam1, and rules independently under the name of Siam (i.e., Sciam Yudia, or the "Shans of Ayuthia.") 2扶南 After this digression I venture to repeat that the Nanchao (ie., Shan) tradition of a ruling family from Magadha is not only not improbable but more than probable. The history of Buddhism resembles that of Christianity. Neither Sakyamuni nor Jesus Christ left anything in writing, but both left disciples. A century or two after their deaths councils were held, in order to decide upon what they had really taught. King Asoka, of Magadha, was both a Saul and a Constantine, and in B. C. 300 or thereabouts he sent missionaries to preach Buddhism across the Himalaya mountains. There is nothing at all necessarily legendary about this. In the whole of ancient Hindoo history-so neglected a part of their duty-there is but one date that can be fixed with certainty, and that is the accession of King Chandragupta in B. C. 315. This is the Sandracottus of the Greeks, who were themselves in the region of the Indus under Alexander a few years before that. Asoka was the grandson of Chandragupta, so here we have Chinese and Western history and tradition meeting upon common ground. At this time China was split up into contending states, all nominally subordinate to the imperial house of Chou, just as, in their declining periods, the Western and Eastern Roman empires held a nominal supremacy amongst contending Gallic, Gothic, Vandal and Bulgarian powers. A military adventurer and general of Chu, the southernmost of the Semi-Chinese kingdoms, made his way to the region of modern Yünnan and took it. Ch'u was, and to a certain extent still is, that part of the Yang-tsz valley which lies in Hu-kwang. The general's name was Chwang Kiao3, and his master's original instructions had been to conquer the region of the Upper Yang-tsz, that is, the modern Sz-ch'wan and Kwei-chou provinces. But meanwhile a war broke out between Ch'u and the menacing power of Ts'in, whose general, Sz Ma-ts'u', took possession of modern Kwei-chou and cut off Chwang Kiao's return. The latter therefore set up as king of Tien and settled his army there, having to contend before long for mastery with one of the Magadha family. Between B. C. 255 and B. C. 206 China became a real empire under the Ts'in-hwang-ti or emperors. The Han dynasty succeeded, and the Emperor Wu Ti of that ilk-in a sense the Julius Cæsar of China-tried to find a way to India through Yünnan, as the Turco-Scythians were perpetually threatening his communications with Turkestan. At this time one of Chwang K'iao's successors, named Chang Kiang', was reigning as king of Tien, but he was a 2 楚.3莊蹯or豪 司馬措or錯B.C. 315. 5; still a name for 6 Except that he seldom if ever led an army in person. B. C. 140–86. 1 周 Yünnan. feeble monarch and a slave to Buddhism. He distinguished himself by asking the envoy of Wu Ti the celebrated question: Which is greater, the Han dominion or mine? Jên Kwo1, a descendant of Suklôdana Râdja', was reigning over that part of Yüunan3, of which Pêh-ngai was the chief centre, and Wu Ti, to mark his disgust with Chang Kiang, made Jên Kwo king of Tien. A descendant of his in the 15th generation, by name Lung Yu-na3, was equally patronised by the celebrated after Han general Chu Koh-liang three centuries later. At this time the two rival Chinese kingdoms of Shuh and Wu' were contesting the ownership of Yunnan. Lung Yu-na was made chief of Kien-ning and presented with the surname of Chang'; an iron column was set up at Mi-tulo to commemorate the event. Also an inscribed stone, which was discovered by a conquering general of the Sui dynasty about A. D. 600. The next step was the absorption of the Kien-ning state into the dominions of Si Nu-lo", one of the six chao or "princes" ruling at Méng-she12, a place between the modern Yao-chou 18 and Yungch'ang1. Thirty-two princes, covering seventeen generations from Lung Yu-na, had reigned when these events occurred (about A. D. 649). The deposed prince Chang-loh Tsin-kiu15, who held Chinese rank as pro-consul, was given a daughter of Si Nu-lo in marriage. Si Nu-lo amalgamated the other five chao into one empire called the "Great Meng Kingdom16" or "Southern Chao1." The above sketch of early Shan history is admitted by the above-cited Chinese author to be incomplete, and in some parts semi-fabulous, but so far as it goes it will certainly compare favourably with the early history of Japan or that of any other border state of China. Moreover, it is supported in principle by what we know to have taken place in Burma, the Dutch islands and Annam. For closer details regarding the early traditions of the Ailaos and the Nanchao ruling family I must refer the reader to my paper on Early Laos, published in the China Review for 1890. 2 仁果 2 This is the Hindoo name given by Dr. Eitel to the Chinese E, Prince of Kapilavastu. Other Chinese traditions connect this "White Rice King" with Magadha. The essential point, however, is the persistence of tradition in deriving the representatives of earlier dynasties from India. Speaking of Cabulistan, Nepaul, Cashmere and Gandhara, Dr. Eitel says: "Every caravan of traders that left India was accompanied by missionaries." Yünnan must be added to the above four names. ; See Note 10. 5龍佑那‘諸葛亮’蜀;吳建響國 11 細奴邏. 12 蒙 蒙舍 23 姚州“永昌15張樂進求 16; Mêng is the Shan word Muong, which is prefixed to nearly every Shan place name. Thus Yünnan Fu is Muong-sai, and Yung-ch‘ang is Muong-sang, Chao is the Shan word for "prince (dom)." Si Nu-lo, alias Tuh Lo, son of Shê Lung, alias Lung Ka-tuh1, was thus the founder of the Nanchao empire. It is unnecessary to go into the traditions of prodigies which, as in the case of all conquerors, surrounded Si Nu-lo's early birth and life. It is interesting, however, to notice that here the mendicant missionary comes in again, and it was as a reward for his wife and sister having fed a wandering bonze that Si Nu-lo was inspired to give his daughter in marriage to Chang-loh Tsin-k'iu (the grandson in the 36th degree of the 5th son of the King of Asoka), holding Chinese rank as generalissimo or pro-consul from the newly-arisen Tang dynasty. He arrogated to himself the title of "Marvellous Prince and Divine Founders," fixing his capital at a spot 35 li north-west of the modern Meng-hwa-t'ing in the year A. D. 651. The Chinese had to carry war into other parts of Yünnan, notably Yünnan hien, then known as Puh-lung, but Si Nu-lo sent his son Lo Sheng-yen on a friendly mission to the Tang capital in 653 and remained at peace with China until his death in A. D. 674. He was succeeded by his son Lo Sheng-yen, or Lo Sheng, who was then forty years old. This prince had a Chinaman as his chief minister, and he visited the Chinese court a second time in 675. He remained faithful to China until his death in A. D. 7127, although nearly all the other chiefs in Yünnan were disposed to rebel on account of the licentious brutality of a Chinese general named Li Chi-ku He was succeeded by his son Sheng Lo-p'i', who received a title from China as serene highness. He also was forty years old when he came to the throne, and his title had reference to a place called Tai-teng in modern Mien-ning 10 on the other side of the Yang-tsz, from which it would appear that the Shans then extended into modern Sz-ch'wan. He established a tax-station there, and in 714 sent on a mission to Peking his minister Chang Kien-ch'êng", the same man that his father had employed. But in 721 he rebelled against the Tang power and set up a temple in honour of the cele 1 1 # X Z, G, € X, ƒh G ; a peculiarity in Nanchao personal names is that usually the son takes a syllable of his father's name. '; as in the case of Corea and Japan. 3 奇嘉王南詔高宗‘粟化 6 5 勃弄 or; called after his death (spuriously as the Chinese of course say) 世宗真宗王 Mayers' Manual omits to mention that this year is the first of in Hüen Tsung's reign. 8 ; he had been sent to chastise the barbarians of Yao-chou for joining the Tibetans. The result was he was murdered by the men whose wives he had ravished, and the Tibetans gained more influence. 9 ✯, also written; this enables us to guess at the sound intended, which must be something like Zingrafi, known as ✯✯✯E. |