170 SURGEON-GENERAL C. A. GORDON. 
who wrote about B.C. 800, should be interpreted of the Chinese 
appears not to be susceptible of decision, but the context 
appears to indicate a people of the extreme east or south. 
According to the Laws of Menu and to the Aryan epic poem 
the Mahahabarata, the name China was applied to a country 
with which the Hindoos held intercourse B.C. 1200. The 
more generally received account assigns the name to about 
B.C. 250, and as derived from the family of T’sin, whose chief 
about that period obtained sway over the feudal principalities 
or petty kingdoms into which the country had previously been 
divided. But the patronymic of the founder of that 
dynasty had existed during several centuries prior to that 
event. There is reason to believe that the name China was 
introduced into Europe by Malay and Arabian traders so 
recently as about A.D. 1500.* The Persian name Cathay, 
and its Russian equivalent A7vtai, are of modern application,— 
modern in the sense of being not long prior to the thirteenth 
century, A.D. 
The particular portion of China to which, in the fest cen- 
tury of our era, the term Seriewm (Silk) was applied, appears to 
have been that which now constitutes the province of Sechuen. 
The inhabitants, named “ Seres,’” were described as being 
“a mixture of Scythians and Indians”?; as being just and 
gentle in character, loving tranquillity and comfort ; as being 
isolated from the world, though addicted to commerce, and 
avoiding intercourse with strangers. In carryimg on their 
commercial transactions “they inscribed the prices of their 
goods upon the bales in which they were packed, and deposited 
them in a solitary building called the Stone Tower. The 
Scythian merchants then approached, and having deposited 
what they deemed a just price for the goods, retired. After 
their departure the Seres examined the sum deposited; if 
they thought it sufficient they took it away and left the goods ; 
but if not enough, they removed the goods and left the 
money.” In these particulars we recognise some characteristics 
and customs of the modern Chinese. 
Arrian (A.D. 140) speaks of the Sinae or Thinae as a people 
“‘in the remotest parts of Asia,’ by whom were exported raw 
and manufactured silks by way of Bactria,—that is, Bokhara, 
westwards. At the same date Ptolemy (Claudius) described 
the Seres as ‘a nation between the Ganges and the modern 
Tibet”? ; the silk exported by them as material for gar- 
* Thsing, pure, the title assumed by the Manchow conquerors. The word 
is believed to have been by the Malays turned into 7'china and from them, 
through the Portuguese traders, into China. 
