Utupu had to

the "southern

ments which had escaped destruction. transfer the seat of his government to capital" of modern K'ai-fung Fu in Ho Nan, to which place larger numbers of the Peking people followed him. For ten years the Nüchens held out bravely against the combined attacks of Genghis, the Tanguts, and the Sung. In vain Utupu upbraided his former vassals with their cowardice and ingratitude, warning them that the Mongols would be certain, after destroying him, to turn next upon them. Utupu died "game" in 1223, at the age of sixtyone, resisting to the last.

He was succeeded by his son Nungiasu, from whom the foolish Tanguts wrested the privilege of having their own calendar, and of being "younger brother" instead of "vassal"; but Genghis had already taken their capital in 1218, and in 1227 they collapsed altogether. Corea alone remained faithful, as she has invariably done to all expiring Chinese dynasties. (See Asiatic Quarterly Review, October, 1896.) The cowardly Chinese of the Sung Empire, when appealed to for supplies of grain, not only refused assistance to the Nüchens, but supplied it to the Mongols, whose general, Subudai the Uriangkit, took the southern capital in 1233. Early in 1234 Nungiasu abdicated to a relative of his, on the ground that he himself was "too fat" to cope with the situation, and then committed suicide. The relative in question was almost immediately murdered by the excited soldiery; and thus ends the Golden Dynasty of the earlier Manchus or Nüchens, of which very little is at present known by Europeans, owing to the Chinese regarding it as an irregular power-much as the Romans regarded the Alarics, Theodorics, and other part-conquerors of their realm-and almost ignoring its history.

The habits of the Nüchens up to A.D. 1000 differed in few respects from those of the ancient tribes from which they are clearly proved to descend. During the summer they

moved about as their animals ate up the grass; in the winter they lived in holes or caves, roofed in with mud, along the river-banks; it was only when the fourth chief moved to the Anch'uhu that nakoli, or "houses," were instituted. The Tunguses alone of all Tartar tribes seem to have reared pigs on a wholesale scale; but the Nüchen Tunguses were not kumiss drinkers, nor true nomads like the Turks, and even like the Tungusic Sienpi (ancient Kitan) races. They had no knowledge of smelting, and were willing to pay fabulous prices for iron. It was the custom for sons to move into a separate dwelling on attaining manhood. Hence probably the migration to the Anch'uhu. From stray allusions in Chinese history, it appears certain that the pigtail was worn by them then as it is by the Manchus now; and, like the Cathayans, they wore an apron-like garment akin to our modern "combinations"; marriage by capture seems to have prevailed in fact, the Emperor Ulu prohibited its continuance in the Bohai region. Another custom borrowed from the Cathayans was the "shooting of willows" on certain solemn occasions during the summer and autumn, evidently connected with the old Sienpi ceremony of riding. round a coppice, or round a bunch of willow-twigs. This practice usually accompanied the worship of heaven, the execution of prisoners, obeisance to the sun, and so on. An oblation of white (? pure) water was made before marching forth on military expeditions-perhaps the same idea as Genghis Khan's "drinking the waters of the River Panchul" with his allies; and oaths of fealty were taken in front of a stake: "If I prove false, may my body lie under this stake." For provisions the flying columns carried parched flour for mixing with water. The military system had attained great perfection when the career of conquest began their tactics were almost supernatural "; and every man, a hunter in times of peace, was a warrior at immediate call. The modern Manchu "banner" organization was practically in force, for the mingan consisted of 1,000

families, and the meu-k (the Chinese form of a Solon word) of 100. For a time both Cathayans and a limited number of Chinese were organized into mingan and meuk, just as the later Manchus organized the Mongols and a limited number of Chinese into "banners "; and synchronously with these changes the mingan and meuk varied in numerical strength. But this organization was always kept quite separate from the "ordinary," or Chinese, administration. After their rebellion in 1161 the Cathayan mingans seem to have been broken up, and the people of that nation were distributed over various districts so as to weaken their power; hence, probably, why the Solons of the Amur come to be the ancestors of the Kitans.

It was not until 1123 that the second Emperor, Ukimai, imitating the Cathayans, "put on the purple "—or perhaps "scarlet"; his system of government was organized in 1133. In 1139 Khara first wore, or insisted upon the use of, Court clothes; and already in the time of Ulu strenuous efforts had to be made to prevent Chinese degeneration from sapping Nüchen virility; it was in Ulu's and Matako's time that most of the general legislation took place. As financiers the Nüchens are respectfully spoken of, and considering that the Mongol historians lost no opportunity of sneering at them, it is plain that at first their government must have been tolerably good, as nothing is urged against it. In 1154 banknotes were introduced. Towards the end taxation became harassing and tyrannical. Nearly all the Emperors were free from Buddhist weakness, and there is scarcely any mention of religion at all, except in the direction of restricting the numbers of temples and priests. There was some difficulty in reconciling Tartar and Chinese customs in mixed cases; but on the whole the law was liberal and equal, the sole privilege reserved for Nüchens being that Nüchen custom should prevail where Nüchens were parties to a cause. The circuit judges were provided with Chinese, Nüchen, and Cathayan secretaries. Chinese ideas upon surnames, marriage, and exogamy gave some difficulty, but at last

even frontier tribes had to refrain from marrying into the same clan name from the date of their submission to the Golden Dynasty. At first the Nüchens had no ancestral worship, having evidently imbibed their ideas on this subject from the Chinese. Nüchens were on several occasions prohibited by ordinance from using Chinese surnames or translating their own into Chinese; in fact, like the Manchus, they had to keep up a perpetual struggle against the effeminate habits which insidiously enveloped them in China. It is nowhere stated that, as with all true nomad Tartars, wives were passed on from father to son and from brother to brother; but in 1168 it was ordained that "Chinese widows or Bohai widows of brothers should be allowed to return to their parents and remarry," which looks as though the Nüchens were once in the habit of passing on wives like the Turks, Mongols, and Cathayans (or at least like the Sienpi, who were the Cathayan ancestors); but waived this custom in favour of true Chinese and bastard Nüchens. In 1129 step-brothers and step-sisters, whether paternal or maternal, were forbidden to intermarry.

The Nüchens were great sportsmen; after 1129 there was an annual ceremony at the beginning of the new year of presenting the "first goose" shot as an offering to the ancestral temple; apparently the idea was taken from the Cathayans, who used also to celebrate the catching of the "first fish" from the Sungari: it was Akuta's sullen refusal to dance on this occasion that forced the Cathayan Emperor to definitely suspect his loyalty; and one Cathayan Emperor made the Ouigour envoys do so. It will be recollected that the early Dutchmen were compelled to dance in this way before the Shogun of Japan. In 1189 "trapping, netting, and wholesale hawking" were prohibited, “in order to keep up the science of archery"; hawking, especially, was a favourite pastime, and the hai-tung-ch'ing from the Corean coasts and the Southern Ussuri province are frequently mentioned in all Tartar histories. The word Nüchen, or Churché, is said to mean (? in what language) hai-si, or

46

sea-west"; hai-tung means "sea-east"; unfortunately, the word "sea" is often vaguely used in China in the sense of "desert" and "river "; moreover, the modern Manchu word for "sea" appears to be mederin, whilst the Nüchen word was telin (written in Chinese); so that we cannot extract philological matter hence. The ch'ing were the gray variety, but there were also hai-tung-poh, or "white.' Both belonged to the huh, or falconida. Ballplaying was popular at Court; there are indications that one form of it was simply polo, as horses were used.

There are numerous indications that the Nüchens were politically almost Anglo-Saxon in their independent simplicity. Besides their generous and almost equal treatment of Cathayans and Chinese, and their frequent legislation in favour of women and slaves, we have the positive statement that their primitive laws were destitute of complication or privilege. The punishments were the birch-rod, confiscation, and battering out the brains; and their prisons were underground pits; and apparently most penalties could be ransomed; but whether this was before or after Hanpu introduced weregild I cannot say. There was a form of salute called sasu, said to mean "hand-wagging," which suggests our hand-shaking—a ceremony unknown to the Chinese.

A great deal has been written about the Nüchen form of writing, which so far has resisted all attempts to decipher it consecutively and grammatically. The celebrated inscription in the Nankow Pass near Peking, published in Colonel Yule's Marco Polo, has now been proved by Dr. S. W. Bushell, of Peking, and by the late M. Gabriel Devéria to be Tangut, and not Nüchen. Mr. Pozdneyev, in a Russian work on Manchuria, mentions a Nüchen inscription at Tir, near the mouth of the Amur; 'but I am not aware that it has been actually proved to be such. Even the inscription of Salican (Journ. R. As. Soc., 1870), described by Mr. Wylie, may turn out to be Cathayan, for I find on referring in Nüchen history to Salican's biography,