214 MAN: PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



free from all religious prejudice, and unhampered by theological 

 creeds or dogmas, combined with a lofty moral tone, not always 

 however in harmony with daily conduct. 



Even more than in China, the family is the true base of 

 the social system, the head of the household 

 Systems US being not only the high-priest of the ancestral 

 cult, but also a kind of patriarch enjoying almost 

 absolute control over his children. In this respect the rela- 

 tions are somewhat one-sided, the father having no recognised 

 obligations towards his offspring, while these are expected to 

 show him perfect obedience in life and veneration after death. 

 Besides this worship of ancestry and the Confucian ethical 

 philosophy, a national form of Buddhism is prevalent. Some 

 even profess all three of these so-called "religions, "beneath which 

 there still survive many of the primitive superstitions associated 

 with a not yet extinct belief in spirits and the supernatural power 

 of magicians. While the Buddhist temples are neglected and the 

 few bonzes 1 despised, offerings are still made to the genii of agri- 

 culture, of the waters, the tiger, the dolphin, peace, war, diseases, 

 and so forth, whose rude statues in the form of dragons or other 

 fabulous monsters are even set up in the pagodas. Since the 

 early part of the iyth century Roman Catholic missionaries have 

 laboured with considerable success in this unpromising field, 

 where the congregations were estimated in 1898 at about 900,000. 



From Annam the ethnical transition is easy to China 2 and its 

 teeming multitudes, regarding whose origins, racial 



The Chinese. .. . . 111 



and cultural, two opposite views at present hold 



1 From bonzo, a Portuguese corruption of the Japanese bttsso, a devout 

 person, applied first to the Buddhist priests of Japan, and then extended to 

 those of China and neighbouring lands. 



2 This name, probably the Chinese jin, men, people, already occurs in 



Sanskrit writings in its present form: *T, China, whence the Hindi &+:**> 

 Chin, and the Arabo-Persian )*?&, Sin, which gives the classical Sinae. 



s 



The most common national name is Chung-kue, "middle kingdom" (presumably 

 the centre of the universe), whence Chting-kue-Jin, the Chinese people. Some 

 have referred China to the Chin (Tsin) dynasty (909 B.C.), while Marco Polo's 

 Kataia (Russian Kitai] is the Khata (North China) of the Mongol period, 

 from the Manchu K'i-tan, founders of the Liao dynasty, which was overthrown 



