Myths and Legends of China | Page 3

or 3000 B.C.) in a relatively
advanced state of civilization. The country east and south of this district
was inhabited by aboriginal tribes, with whom the Chinese fought, as
they did with the wild animals and the dense vegetation, but with
whom they also commingled and intermarried, and among whom they
planted colonies as centres from which to spread their civilization.
The K'un-lun Mountains
With reference to the K'un-lun Mountains, designated in Chinese
mythology as the abode of the gods--the ancestors of the Chinese
race--it should be noted that these are identified not with the range

dividing Tibet from Chinese Turkestan, but with the Hindu Kush. That
brings us somewhat nearer to Babylon, and the apparent convergence
of the two theories, the Central Asian and the Western Asian, would
seem to point to a possible solution of the problem. Nü Kua, one of the
alleged creators of human beings, and Nü and Kua, the first two human
beings (according to a variation of the legend), are placed in the
K'un-lun Mountains. That looks hopeful. Unfortunately, the K'un-lun
legend is proved to be of Taoist origin. K'un-lun is the central mountain
of the world, and 3000 miles in height. There is the fountain of
immortality, and thence flow the four great rivers of the world. In other
words, it is the Sumêru of Hindu mythology transplanted into Chinese
legend, and for our present purpose without historical value.
It would take up too much space to go into details of this interesting
problem of the origin of the Chinese and their civilization, the cultural
connexions or similarities of China and Western Asia in
pre-Babylonian times, the origin of the two distinct culture-areas so
marked throughout the greater part of Chinese history, etc., and it will
be sufficient for our present purpose to state the conclusion to which
the evidence points.
Provisional Conclusion
Pending the discovery of decisive evidence, the following provisional
conclusion has much to recommend it--namely, that the ancestors of
the Chinese people came from the west, from Akkadia or Elam, or from
Khotan, or (more probably) from Akkadia or Elam via Khotan, as one
nomad or pastoral tribe or group of nomad or pastoral tribes, or as
successive waves of immigrants, reached what is now China Proper at
its north-west corner, settled round the elbow of the Yellow River,
spread north-eastward, eastward, and southward, conquering, absorbing,
or pushing before them the aborigines into what is now South and
South-west China. These aboriginal races, who represent a wave or
waves of neolithic immigrants from Western Asia earlier than the
relatively high-headed immigrants into North China (who arrived about
the twenty-fifth or twenty-fourth century B.C.), and who have left so
deep an impress on the Japanese, mixed and intermarried with the

Chinese in the south, eventually producing the pronounced differences,
in physical, mental, and emotional traits, in sentiments, ideas,
languages, processes, and products, from the Northern Chinese which
are so conspicuous at the present day.

Inorganic Environment
At the beginning of their known history the country occupied by the
Chinese was the comparatively small region above mentioned. It was
then a tract of an irregular oblong shape, lying between latitude 34° and
40° N. and longitude 107° and 114° E. This territory round the elbow
of the Yellow River had an area of about 50,000 square miles, and was
gradually extended to the sea-coast on the north-east as far as longitude
119°, when its area was about doubled. It had a population of perhaps a
million, increasing with the expansion to two millions. This may be
called infant China. Its period (the Feudal Period) was in the two
thousand years between the twenty-fourth and third centuries B.C.
During the first centuries of the Monarchical Period, which lasted from
221 B.C. to A.D. 1912, it had expanded to the south to such an extent
that it included all of the Eighteen Provinces constituting what is
known as China Proper of modern times, with the exception of a
portion of the west of Kansu and the greater portions of Ssuch'uan and
Yünnan. At the time of the Manchu conquest at the beginning of the
seventeenth century A.D. it embraced all the territory lying between
latitude 18° and 40° N. and longitude 98° and 122° E. (the Eighteen
Provinces or China Proper), with the addition of the vast outlying
territories of Manchuria, Mongolia, Ili, Koko-nor, Tibet, and Corea,
with suzerainty over Burma and Annam--an area of more than
5,000,000 square miles, including the 2,000,000 square miles covered
by the Eighteen Provinces. Generally, this territory is mountainous in
the west, sloping gradually down toward the sea on the east. It contains
three chief ranges of mountains and large alluvial plains in the north,
east, and south. Three great and about thirty large rivers intersect the
country, their