_'6 s^r iTifsoNiAN iM iscia.i-AXKors lOi.ij^XTJONS vor,. 80 



thousands of years iiilo ancient C hinese history. In the sixth section 

 of the history of Si A!a Ch'ien. it is stated tluit 177 persons were 

 killed and btiried with the emperor. The following- (juotation is from 

 the journal of the North-China Uranch of the Royal Asiatic Society 

 for 1 910: 



From the Chinese classics we know that, in remote antiquity, a straw figure 

 of a man was placed in the grave with the dead. Confucius himself commended 

 the act in preference to a later custom of substituting a wooden image with 

 moveable joints. His counsel, however, went unheeded. It is not certain, but 

 presumably' he was aiming at stopping the immolation of human beings at the 

 tombs of the great. The burying of wooden men was, in all likelihood, the bogus 

 form of this savage reality. Later history contains many examples of it. To 

 quote from Professor Kid : " When Woo — king of the state Tsin — died sixty-six 

 persons were put to death and buried with him. One hundred and sevent3'-seven 

 ordinary individuals, together with three persons of superior rank, were devoted 

 by death to the service of Muh-kung in the other world ; a monody still exists 

 lamenting the fate of these three men. Tsin-shih-liuang-ti, who flourished about 

 two hundred jears before the Christian era, commanded that his household 

 females and domestics should be put to death and interred with him." The custom 

 long survived this period, " and when persons offered themselves voluntarily 

 to die, from attachment to their masters and friends, such sacrifices were 

 esteemed most noble and disinterested." ^ 



In the Encyclojxiedia Sinica there is a similar statement : 



Sacrifices, Human. This title should more properly be reserved for the 

 killing of men as ofiferings to the Deity, as in the case of Abraham and Isaac, 

 or the religious ceremonies of the Aztecs. In default of a more convenient term, 

 it is used for the burial of living slaves, concubines, and others, with the rich or 

 royal dead; though the idea of providing companionship and service in the 

 other world is more prominent than that of appeasing anger or seeking favor. 



The practice must have been established in China in very early times, but the 

 first example recorded in Chinese history was at the burial of the Ch'in ruler 

 Wu Kung, B. C. 678, when sixty-six persons were buried alive to keep him 

 company in the other world. In Ch'in again, when Mu Kung died in B. C. 621, 

 there were buried with him one hundred and seventy-four people. This caused 

 the Ode called Hikuui Jiiao to be made (Legge's She King, p. 198). The fact 

 itself is recorded in the Ch'un Ch'iu. The practice had been forbidden by Hsien 

 Kung on his succeeding to tlie Cli'in earldom in B. C. 384, but at the death of 

 Ch'in Shih Huang Ti in B. C. 210, all his wives and concubines who had not 

 borne him children were buried with him, and tlio workmen who had made liis 

 tomb were also walled up alive in it." 



In North China many old graves have been unearthed, and their 

 contents are in the world's great musetuns. Some of them go as far 



'Journal of the Xorlh-Cliina Branch of the Royal .\siatic Society, Vol. XLI, 

 1910, pp. 63-4. 

 "Encyclopaedia Sinica, 1917, p. 493. 



