VI.] THE SOUTHERN MONGOLS. 225 



Of foreign religions Islam, next to Buddhism, has made most 

 progress. Introduced by the early Arab and Persian 

 traders, and zealously preached throughout the Christianity. 

 Jagatai empire in the i2th century, it has secured 

 a firm footing especially in Kan-su, Shen-si, and Yunnan, and is of 

 course dominant in Eastern (Chinese) Turkestan. Despite the 

 wholesale butcheries that followed the repeated insurrections 

 between 1855 and 1877, the Hoei-Hoe'i, Pant hays, or Dungans, as 

 the Muhammadans are variously called, were still estimated, in 

 1898, at about 22,000,000 in the whole empire. 



Islam was preceded by Christianity, which, as attested by the 

 authentic inscription of Si-ngan-fu, penetrated into the western 

 provinces under the form of Nestorianism about the 7th century. 

 The famous Roman Catholic missions with headquarters at Pekin 

 date from the close of the i6th century, and despite internal dis- 

 sensions have had a fair measure of success, the congregations 

 numbering (1898) altogether over one million. This contrasts 

 favourably with the 30,000 to 50,000 Protestants of all denomi- 

 nations claimed collectively by the London Missionary Society, the 

 China Inland Mission, and the A merican Methodist Episcopal Society. 

 Indeed the Protestant propaganda is almost an admitted failure. 



The above-mentioned dissensions arose out of the practices 

 associated with ancestry-worship, offerings of flowers, fruits and 

 so forth, which the Jesuits regarded merely as proofs of filial 

 devotion, but were denounced by the Dominicans as acts of 

 idolatry. After many years of idle controversy, the question was 

 at last decided against the Jesuits by Clement XL in the famous 

 Bull, Ex ilia die (1715), and since then, neophytes having to 

 renounce the national cult of their forefathers, conversions have 

 mainly been confined to the lower classes, too humble to boast of 

 any family tree, or too poor to commemorate the dead by ever- 

 recurring costly sepulchral rites. 



In China there are no hereditary nobles, indeed no nobles 

 at all, unless it be the rather numerous descendants of Confucius 

 who dwell together and enjoy certain social privileges, in this 

 somewhat resembling the Shorfa (descendants of the Prophet) in 

 Muhammadan lands. If any titles have to be awarded for great 

 deeds they fall, not on the hero, but on his forefathers, and thus 



K. 15 



