1876.] R. Mackgan— On Early Asiatic Fire Weapons. 83 



Chinese, and that the alarm created by them was one great cause of the 

 defeat at that time of a Tartar invasion."* Few other writers, however, go 

 so far back. The nature of the proof of this early use of cannon is 'not 

 mentioned. Gibbon says that in China, in the thirteenth century, "in 

 the attack and defence of places the engines of antiquity and the Greek 

 Fire were alternately employed, and the use of gunpowder in cannons and 

 bombs appears as a familiar practice, "f But the absence of all mention 

 by Marco Polo of any such practice, while, in his account of the siege of 

 Siang Yang in 1268 by Kublai, he records the manufacture and employ- 

 ment of mangonels and trebuchets, a short experience of which induced the 

 Chinese garrison to surrender, % may throw some doubt on the Chinese know- 

 ledge of cannon at that time. 



The exclusive and self -isolating practice of China through many ages, 

 and the absence of authentic information regarding its early history, occa- 

 sion possible errors in two opposite directions, — perhaps crediting the people 

 of that country in early times with a state of advancement in arts and 

 knowledge which they had not attained, perhaps again wrongly imagining 

 them to have continued in primitive backwardness down to recent times. 

 " There must have been a series of ages", Sir Henry Maine has observed, 

 with reference to matters of a different kind, " during which this progress 

 of China was very steadily maintained ; and doubtless our assumption of 

 the absolute immobility of the Chinese and other societies is in part the . 

 expression of our ignorance. "§ This is very true ; but, on the other hand, 

 this same ignorance sometimes expresses itself in errors of an opposite kind. 

 Omne ignotum has, in all ages, been apt to suggest something uncommon 

 or wonderful ; and of this kind seems to have been the idea that the Chinese 

 were acquainted, before European nations, with gunpowder and cannon. 

 MM. Reinaud and Fave, who have gone into the matter pretty fully in the 

 work before quoted, thus conclude their statement of the result of the 

 investigation, which leaves little ground for the Chinese claim to stand upon, 

 " Ainsi tombe l'opinion exageree que s'etaient faite plusieurs savants sur 

 l'art des artifices de guerre chez les Chinois."|| 



In the ISTote by Sir Henry Elliot on the Early use of Gunpowder in 

 India^" he quotes the opinion expressed by General Cunningham in his Essay 

 on the Arian Order of Architecture (J. A. S. B., Vol. XVII, Sept. 1848, 

 p. 244) with reference to the condition of the ruins of some of the old 



* Sketch of Mil. Hist, of Great Britain, p. 100. 



f Decline and Fall, Ch. IXIV. 



t Tule's Marco Polo, 2nd ed., II, 152. 



§ Lectures on the Early History of Institutions, p. 227. 



|| Feu Oregeois, p. 201. 



If Original Vol. I. Not© H, p. 340. 



