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Only the first three classes are admitted to the benefits of religion. The Sudras and the outcasts are forbidden to read the sacred books, and for any one of the upper classes to teach a serf how to expiate sin is a crime.

Buddha admitted all classes to the benefits of religion, the poor outcast as well as the high-born Brahman, and thus Buddhism was a revolt against the earlier harsh and exclusive system of Brahmanism. It holds somewhat the same relation to Brahmanism that Christianity bears to Judaism.

Buddhism gradually gained the ascendancy over Brahmanism; but after some centuries the Brahmans regained their power, and by the eighth century after Christ, the faith of Buddha was driven out of almost every part of India. But Buddhism has a profound missionary spirit, like that of Christianity, Buddha having commanded his disciples to make known to all men the way to Nirvana and consequently during the very period when India was being lost, the missionaries of the reformed creed were spreading the teachings of their master among the peoples of all the countries of Eastern Asia, so that to-day Buddhism is the religion of almost one third of the human race. Buddha has probably nearly as many followers as both Christ and Mohammed together.

During its long conflict with Buddhism, Brahmanism was greatly modified, and caught much of the gentler spirit of the new faith, so that modern Brahmanism is a very different religion from that of the ancient system; hence it is usually given a new name, being known as Hinduism.

ALEXANDER'S INVASION OF INDIA .--Although we find obscure notices of India in the records of the early historic peoples of Western Asia, yet it is not until the invasion of the peninsula by Alexander the Great in 327 B.C. that the history of the Indian Aryans comes in significant contact with that of the progressive nations of the West. From that day to our own its systems of philosophy, its wealth, and its commerce have been more or less important factors in universal history. Greece carried on an intellectual commerce with this country; Rome, and the Italian republics of the Middle Ages, a more material but not less important trade. Columbus was seeking a short all-sea route to this country when he found the New World. And in the upbuilding of the imperial greatness of the England of to-day, the wealth and trade of India have played no inconsiderable part.

GENERAL REMARKS: THE BEGINNING.--China is the seat of a very old civilization, older perhaps than that of any other land save Egypt; yet Chinese affairs have not until recently exerted any appreciable influence upon the general current of history. All through ancient and mediaeval times the country lay, vague and mysterious, in the haze of the world's horizon. During the Middle Ages the land was known to Europe under the name of Cathay.

The beginning of the Chinese nation was a band of Turanian wanderers who came into the basin of the Yellow River, from the West, probably prior to 3000 B.C. These immigrants gradually pushed out the aborigines whom they found in the land, and laid the basis of institutions that have endured to the present day.

DYNASTIC HISTORY.--The government of China since the remotest times has been a parental monarchy. The Emperor is the father of his people. But though an absolute prince, still he dare not rule tyrannically: he must rule justly, and in accordance with the ancient customs and laws.

The Chinese have books that purport to give the history of the different dynasties that have ruled in the land from a vast antiquity; but these records are largely mythical and legendary. Everything is confused and uncertain until we reach the eighth or seventh century before our era; and even then we meet with little of interest in the dynastic history of the country until we come to the reign of Che Hwang-te . This energetic ruler strengthened and consolidated the imperial power, and executed great works of internal improvement, such as roads and canals. As a barrier against the incursions of the Huns, he began the erection of the celebrated Chinese Wall, a great rampart extending for about 1500 miles along the northern frontier of the country.

From the strong reign of Che Hwang-te to the end of the period covered by ancient history, Chinese dynastic records present no matters of universal interest that need here occupy our attention.

CHINESE WRITING.--It is nearly certain that the art of writing was known among the Chinese as early as 2000 B.C. The system employed is curiously cumbrous. In the absence of an alphabet, each word of the language is represented upon the written page by means of a symbol, or combination of symbols; this, of course, requires that there be as many symbols, or characters, as there are words in the language. The number sanctioned by good use is about 25,000; but counting obsolete characters, the number amounts to over 50,000. A knowledge of 5000 or 6000 characters, however, enables one to read and write without difficulty. The task of learning even this number might well be hopeless, were it not that many of the characters bear a remote resemblance to the objects for which they stand, and when once explained, readily suggest the thing or idea represented. The nature of the characters shows conclusively that the Chinese system of writing, like that of all others with which we are acquainted, was at first purely hieroglyphical, that is, the characters were originally simply rude outline pictures of material objects. Time and use have worn them to their present form.

This Chinese system of representing thought, cumbrous and inconvenient as it is, is employed at the present time by one third of the human race.

Printing from blocks was practised in China as early as the sixth century of our era, and printing from movable types as early as the tenth or eleventh century, that is to say, about four hundred years before the same art was invented in Europe.

CHINESE LITERATURE: CONFUCIUS AND MENCIUS.--The most highly prized portion of Chinese literature is embraced in what is known as the Five Classics and the Four Books, called collectively the Nine Classics. The Five Classics are among the oldest books in the world. For some of the books an antiquity of 3000 years is claimed. The books embrace chronicles, political and ethical maxims, and numerous odes. One of the most important of the Classics is the so-called Book of Rites, said to date from 1200 B.C.

The Four Books are of later origin than the Five Classics, having been written about the fifth and fourth centuries before the Christian era; yet they hardly yield to them in sacredness in the eyes of the Chinese. The first three of the series are by the pupils of the great sage and moralist Confucius , and the fourth is by Mencius , a disciple of Confucius, and a scarcely less revered philosopher and ethical teacher. The teachings of the Four Books may be summed up in the simple precept, "Walk in the Trodden Paths." Confucius was not a prophet, or revealer; he laid no claims to a supernatural knowledge of God or of the hereafter; he said nothing of an Infinite Spirit, and but little of a future life. His cardinal precepts were obedience to superiors, reverence for the ancients, and imitation of their virtues. He himself walked in the old paths, and thus added the force of example to that of precept. He gave the Chinese the Golden Rule, stated negatively: "What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others."

During the reign of Che Hwang-te , Chinese literature suffered a great disaster. That despot, for the reason that the teachers in their opposition to him were constantly quoting the ancient writings against his innovations, ordered the chief historical books to be destroyed, and sentenced to death any one who should presume to talk about the proscribed writings, or even allude to the virtues of the ancients in such a way as to reflect upon his reforms. The contumacious he sent to work upon the Great Wall. But the people concealed the books in the walls of their houses, or better still hid them away in their memories; and in this way the priceless inheritance of antiquity was preserved until the storm had passed.

INFLUENCE OF THIS LITERATURE AND OF THE SAGE CONFUCIUS.--It would be impossible to exaggerate the influence which the Nine Classics have had upon the Chinese nation. For more than 2000 years these writings have been the Chinese Bible. And as all of the Four Books, though they were not written by Confucius, yet bear the impress of his mind and thought, just as the Gospels teach the mind of Christ, a large part of this influence must be attributed to the life and teachings of that great Sage. His influence has been greater than that of any other teacher, excepting Christ and perhaps Buddha. His precepts, implicitly followed by his countrymen, have shaped their lives from his day to the present.

The moral system of Confucius, making, as it does, filial obedience and a conformity to ancient customs primary virtues, has exalted the family life among the Chinese and given a wonderful stability to Chinese society. Chinese children are the most obedient and reverential to parents of any children in the world, and the Chinese Empire is the only one in all history that has prolonged its existence from ancient times to the present.

But along with much good, one great evil has resulted from this blind, servile following of the past. The Chinese in strictly obeying the injunction to walk in the old ways, to conform to the customs of the ancients, have failed to mark out any new footpaths for themselves. Hence their lack of originality, their habit of imitation: hence the unchanging, unprogressive character of Chinese civilization.

EDUCATION AND CIVIL SERVICE COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS.--China has a very ancient educational system. The land was filled with schools, academies, and colleges more than a thousand years before our era, and education is to-day more general among the Chinese than among any other pagan people. A knowledge of the sacred books is the sole passport to civil office and public employment. All candidates for places in the government must pass a competitive examination in the Nine Classics. This system is practically the same in principle as that which we, with great difficulty, are trying to establish in connection with our own civil service.

THE THREE RELIGIONS,--CONFUCIANISM, TAOISM, AND BUDDHISM.--There are three leading religions in China,--Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The great Sage Confucius is reverenced and worshipped throughout the Empire. He holds somewhat the same relation to the system that bears his name that Christ holds to that of Christianity. Taoism takes its name from Tao, which is made, like Brahma in Brahmanism, the beginning of all things. It is a very curious system of mystical ideas and superstitious practices. Buddhism was introduced into China about the opening of the Christian era, and soon became widely spread.

There is one element common to all these religions, and that is the worship of ancestors. Every Chinese, whether he be a Confucianist, a Taoist, or a Buddhist, reverences his ancestors, and prays and makes offerings to their spirits.

POLICY OF NON-INTERCOURSE.--The Chinese have always been a very self- satisfied and exclusive people. They have jealously excluded foreigners and outside influence from their country. The Great Wall with which they have hedged in their country on the north, is the symbol of their policy of isolation. Doubtless this characteristic of the Chinese has been fostered by their geographical isolation; for great mountain barriers and wide deserts cut the country off from communication with the rest of the Asiatic continent. And then their reverence for antiquity has rendered them intolerant of innovation and change. Hence, in part, the unwillingness of the Chinese to admit into their country railroads, telegraphs, and other modern improvements. For them to adopt these new- fangled inventions, would be like our adopting a new religion. Such a departure from the ways and customs of the past has in it, to their way of thinking, something akin to disrespect and irreverence for ancestors.

EGYPT.

EGYPT AND THE NILE.--Egypt comprises the delta of the Nile and the flood- plains of its lower course. The whole land is formed of the deposits of the river; hence Herodotus, in happy phrase, called the country "the gift of the Nile." The delta country was known to the ancients as Lower Egypt; while the valley proper, reaching from the head of the delta to the First Cataract, a distance of six hundred miles, was called Upper Egypt.

Through the same means by which Egypt was originally created, is the land each year still renewed and fertilized. The Nile, swollen by the heavy tropical rains about its sources, begins to rise in its lower parts late in June, and by October, when the inundation has attained its greatest height, the country presents the appearance of an inland sea.

CLIMATE.--In Lower Egypt, near the sea, the rainfall in the winter is abundant; but the climate of Upper Egypt is all but rainless, only a few slight showers falling throughout the year. This dryness of the Egyptian air is what has preserved through so many thousand years, in such wonderful freshness of color and with such sharpness of outline, the numerous paintings and sculptures of the monuments of the Pharaohs.

The southern line of Egypt only just touches the tropics; still the climate, influenced by the wide and hot deserts that hem the valley, is semi-tropical in character. The fruits of the tropics and the cereals of the temperate zone grow luxuriantly. Thus favored in climate as well as in the matter of irrigation, Egypt became in early times the granary of the East. To it less favored countries, when stricken by famine,--a calamity so common in the East in regions dependent upon the rainfall,--looked for food, as did the families of Israel during drought and failure of crops in Palestine.

DYNASTIES AND CHRONOLOGY.--The kings, or Pharaohs, that reigned in Egypt from the earliest times till the conquest of the country by Alexander the Great , are grouped into thirty-one dynasties. Thirty of these we find in the lists of Manetho, an Egyptian priest who lived in the third century B.C., and who compiled a chronicle of the kings of the country from the manuscripts kept in the Egyptian temples.

We cannot assign a positive date to the beginning of the First Dynasty, chiefly because Egyptologists are at a loss to know whether to consider all the dynasties of Manetho's list as successive or in part contemporaneous. Thus, it is held by some scholars that several of these families were reigning at the same time in the different cities of Upper and Lower Egypt; while others think that they all reigned at different epochs, and that the sum of the lengths of the several dynasties gives us the true date of the beginning of the political history of the country. Accordingly, some place the beginning of the First Dynasty at about 5000 B.C., while others put it at about 3000 B.C. The constantly growing evidence of the monuments is in favor of the higher figures.

MENES, THE FIRST OF THE PHARAOHS.--Menes is the first kingly personage, shadowy and indistinct in form, that we discover in the early dawn of Egyptian history. Tradition makes him the founder of Memphis, near the head of the Delta, the site of which capital he secured against the inundations of the Nile by vast dikes and various engineering works. To him is ascribed the achievement of first consolidating the numerous petty principalities of Lower Egypt into a single state.

The mountains of stone heaped together by the Pyramid kings are proof that they were cruel oppressors of their people, and burdened them with useless labor upon these monuments of their ambition. Tradition tells how the very memory of these monarchs was hated by the people. Herodotus says that the Egyptians did not like even to speak the names of the builders of the two largest pyramids.

THE TWELFTH DYNASTY .--After the Sixth Dynasty, Egypt, for several centuries, is almost lost from view. When finally the valley emerges from the obscurity of this period, the old capital Memphis has receded into the background, and the city of Thebes has taken its place as the seat of the royal power.

The period of the Twelfth Dynasty, a line of Theban kings, is one of the brightest in Egyptian hhistory. Many monuments scattered throughout the country perpetuate the fame of the sovereigns of this illustrious house. Egyptian civilization is regarded by many as having during this period reached the highest perfection to which it ever attained.

THE HYSKOS, OR SHEPHERD KINGS .--Soon after the bright period of the Twelfth Dynasty, Egypt again suffered a great eclipse. Nomadic tribes from Syria crossed the eastern frontier of Egypt, took possession of the inviting pasture-lands of the Delta, and established there the empire of the Shepherd Kings.

These Asiatic intruders were violent and barbarous, and destroyed or mutilated the monuments of the country. But gradually they were transformed by the civilization with which they were in contact, and in time they adopted the manners and culture of the Egyptians. It was probably during the supremacy of the Hyksos that the families of Israel found a refuge in Lower Egypt. They received a kind reception from the Shepherd Kings, not only because they had the same pastoral habits, but also, probably, because of near kinship in race.

At last these intruders, after they had ruled in the valley four or five hundred years, were expelled by the Theban kings, and driven back into Asia. This occurred about 1650 B.C. The episode of the Shepherd Kings in Egypt derives great importance from the fact that these Asiatic conquerors were one of the mediums through which Egyptian civilization was transmitted to the Phoenicians, who, through their wide commercial relations, spread the same among all the early nations of the Mediterranean area.

And further, the Hyksos conquest was an advantage to Egypt itself. The conquerors possessed political capacity, and gave the country a strong centralized government. They made Egypt in fact a great monarchy, and laid the basis of the power and glory of the mighty Pharaohs of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties.

THE EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY .--The revolt which drove the Hyksos from the country was led by Amosis, or Ahmes, a descendant of the Theban kings. He was the first king of what is known as the Eighteenth Dynasty, probably the greatest race of kings, it has been said, that ever reigned upon the earth.

The most eventful period of Egyptian history, covered by what is called the New Empire, now opens. Architecture and learning seem to have recovered at a bound from their long depression under the domination of the Shepherd Kings. To free his empire from the danger of another invasion from Asia, Amosis determined to subdue the Syrian and Mesopotamian tribes. This foreign policy, followed out by his successors, shaped many of the events of their reigns.

Thothmes was also a magnificent builder. His architectural works in the valley of the Nile were almost numberless. He built a great part of the temple of Karnak, at Thebes, the remains of which form the most majestic ruin in the world. His obelisks stand to-day in Constantinople, in Rome, in London, and in New York.

One of the most important of Seti's wars was that against the Hittites and their allies. The Hittites were a powerful non-Semitic people, whose capital was Carchemish, on the Euphrates, and whose strength and influence were now so great as to be a threat to Egypt.

His chief wars were those against the Hittites. Time and again is Rameses found with his host of war-chariots in their country, but he evidently fails to break their power; for we find him at last concluding with them a celebrated treaty, in which the chief of the Hittites is called "The Great King of the Khita" , and is formally recognized as in every respect the equal of the king of Egypt. Later, Rameses marries a daughter of the Hittite king. All this means that the Pharaohs had met their peers in the princes of the Hittites, and that they could no longer hope to become masters of Western Asia.

The reign of this monarch marks a new era in Egyptian history. Hitherto Egypt had secluded herself from the world, behind barriers of jealousy, race, and pride. But Psammetichus being himself, it seems, of non-Egyptian origin, and owing his throne chiefly to the swords of Greek soldiers, was led to reverse the policy of the past, and to throw the valley open to the commerce and influences of the world. His capital, Sais, on the Canopic branch of the Nile, forty miles from the Mediterranean, was filled with Greek citizens; and Greek mercenaries were employed in his armies.

This change of policy, occurring at just the period when the rising states of Greece and Rome were shaping their institutions, was a most significant event. Egypt became the University of the Mediterranean nations. From this time forward Greek philosophers, as in the case of Pythagoras and of Plato, are represented as becoming pupils of the Egyptian priests; and without question the learning and philosophy of the ancient Egyptians exerted a profound influence upon the quick, susceptible mind of the Hellenic race, that was, in its turn, to become the teacher of the world.

The liberal policy of Psammetichus, while resulting in a great advantage to foreign nations, brought a heavy misfortune upon his own. Displeased with the position assigned Greek mercenaries in the army, the native Egyptian soldiers revolted, and two hundred thousand of the troops seceding in a body, emigrated to Ethiopia, whence no inducement that Psammetichus offered could persuade them to return.

Necho then fitted out an exploring expedition for the circumnavigation of Africa, in hope of finding a possible passage for his fleets from the Red Sea to the Nile by a water channel already opened by nature, and to which the priests and oracles could interpose no objections. The expedition, we have reason to believe, actually accomplished the feat of sailing around the continent; for Herodotus, in his account of the enterprise, says that the voyagers upon their return reported that, when they were rounding the cape, the sun was on their right hand . This feature of the report, which led Herodotus to disbelieve it, is to us the very strongest evidence possible that the voyage was really performed.

Upon the extension of the power of the Macedonians over the East , Egypt willingly exchanged masters; and for three centuries the valley was the seat of the renowned Graeco-Egyptian Empire of the Ptolemies, which lasted until the Romans annexed the region to their all- absorbing empire .

"The mission of Egypt among the nations was fulfilled; it had lit the torch of civilization in ages inconceivably remote, and had passed it on to other peoples of the West."

CLASSES OF SOCIETY.--Egyptian society was divided into three great classes, or orders,--priests, soldiers, and common people; the last embracing shepherds, husbandmen, and artisans.

The sacerdotal order consisted of high-priests, prophets, scribes, keepers of the sacred robes and animals, sacred sculptors, masons, and embalmers. They enjoyed freedom from taxation, and met the expenses of the temple services with the income of the sacred lands, which embraced one third of the soil of the country.

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