China was
for many ages the supreme empire of the Far East, embracing a vast and
fertile area, inhabited by an industrious and civilized people.
Aristocracy, in our sense of the word, came to an end before the
beginning of the Christian era, and government was in the hands of
officials chosen for their proficiency in writing in a dead language, as
in England. Intercourse with the West was spasmodic and chiefly
religious. In the early centuries of the Christian era, Buddhism was
imported from India, and some Chinese scholars penetrated to that
country to master the theology of the new religion in its native home,
but in later times the intervening barbarians made the journey
practically impossible. Nestorian Christianity reached China in the
seventh century, and had a good deal of influence, but died out again.
(What is known on this subject is chiefly from the Nestorian monument
discovered in Hsianfu in 1625.) In the seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries Roman Catholic missionaries acquired considerable favour at
Court, because of their astronomical knowledge and their help in
rectifying the irregularities and confusions of the Chinese
calendar.[24] Their globes and astrolabes are still to be seen on the
walls of Peking. But in the long run they could not resist quarrels
between different orders, and were almost completely excluded from both
China and Japan.
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