3O6 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



masters of East Central Asia for about 400 years and then dis- 

 appeared from history 1 . At least after the 6th century A.D. no 

 further mention is made of the Sien-pi principalities either in 

 Manchuria or in Korea. Here, however, they appear still to 

 form a dominant element in the northern (Mongol) provinces, 

 calling themselves Ghirin (Khirin), from the Khirin (Sungari) 

 valley of the Amur, where they once held sway. 



Since those days Korea has been alternately a vassal State 

 and a province of the Middle Kingdom, with interludes of 

 Japanese ascendancy, interrupted only by the four centuries of 

 Korai ascendancy (934 1368). This was the most brilliant 

 epoch in the national records, when Korea was rather the ally 

 than the vassal of China, and when trade, industry, and the arts, 

 especially porcelain and bronze work, flourished in the land. 

 But by centuries of subsequent misrule, a people endowed with 

 excellent natural qualities have been reduced to the lowest state 

 of degradation. Before the reforms introduced by the political 

 events of 1895-96, "the country was eaten up by officialism. It 

 is not only that abuses without number prevailed, but the whole 

 system of government was an abuse, a sea of corruption, with- 

 out a bottom or a shore, an engine of robbery, crushing the 

 life out of all industry 2 ." But an improvement is already per- 

 ceptible. "The air of the men has undergone a subtle and real 

 change, and the women, though they nominally keep up their 

 habits by seclusion, have lost the hang-dog air which distinguishes 

 them at home. The alacrity of movement is a change also, and 

 has replaced the conceited swing of the yang-ban [nobles] and the 



1 On the authority of the Wei-Shu documents contained in the Wei-Chi, 

 Mr E. H. Parker gives (in the China Revieiv and A Thousand Years of the 

 Tartars, Shanghai, 1895) the dates 386-556 A.D. as the period covered by the 

 "Sien-pi Tartar dynasty of Wei." This is not to be confused with the Chinese 

 dynasty of Wei (224-264, or according to Kwong Ki-Chiu 234-274 A.D.). 

 The term "Tartar" (Ta-Ta), it may be explained, is used by Mr Parker, as 

 well as by the Chinese historians generally, in a somewhat wide sense, so as to 

 include all the nomad populations north of the Great Wall, whether of Tungus 

 (Manchu), Mongol, or even Turki stock. The original tribes bearing the name 

 were Mongols, and Jenghiz-Khan himself was a Tata on his mother's side 

 (Eth. p. 303). 



2 Mrs Bishop, Korea and Her Neighbours, 1898. 



