Part 4
We shall speak only of the Yakuts, Turkomans, and Osmanli. The Yakuts occupy an area along both banks of the Lena River and extending west from it. They are wanderers and raise herds of cattle and horses. They live chiefly on the produce of their herds, eating horse flesh especially, and making much cheese. Like many of their neighbors they are fond of _koumyss_, a drink prepared by fermenting mare’s milk. Those living farthest north, near the delta of the Lena River, also hunt small animals for food. These wandering herders, living in tents, are not quarrelsome; they respect age, and the old men control affairs and determine the time for moving camp. Women are well treated by their husbands, but one man may have several wives. In such cases, the wives live each in a separate tent, and these tents are placed about the tent of the husband. Men pay the father of their wives, for these, with cattle and horses. When a man among the Yakuts dies, they dress him in his best clothing and place in the grave with him his knife, a flint and steel, some tinder, and a little food. The burial is always under a tree, and two graves are dug. In one the man is buried with his head turned toward the west. The man’s favorite horse is brought in his finest harness and loaded with presents: a fat mare is also brought. These are both killed and buried in the second grave that they may accompany their master.
The Turkomans, who live in Southern Turkestan and adjoining regions, are probably more like the ancient Turks in appearance, than any of the other Turkic tribes of the present. They are somewhat tall, with a broad, rounded head, broad face, prominent cheek bones, little slant eyes, a low nose, rather thick lips, and projecting ears. Their skin is yellowish, their hair is coarse and black, and they have little beard. They delight in bright clothing, and the women wear much jewelry. It is said that they wear so many jingling ornaments, that a party of passing women make a noise almost like the tinkling of bells. The Turkomans live in large, round, wall tents: the light framework of poles is covered with great pieces of felt. This felt is beaten by the women from sheep’s wool and camel’s hair. They are comfortable within. The floor is often covered with fine rugs or skins, and handsome woven stuffs are hung upon the wall or thrown over the sitting places. These fine articles are partly woven by the women and partly stolen from passing caravans—for the Turkomans are dreadful pillagers. Until very lately they were also slave-hunters and stole many Persian women to sell as slaves. The Russian government has almost put an end to this trade. The Turkomans raise horses, sheep, and camels. They eat the flesh of these animals and drink their fresh milk. Unlike the Yakuts, they do not care for koumyss. When an important man among the Turkomans dies, they raise a heap of stones over his grave. If he was a very pious man, they pay great respect to his grave and consider it a holy spot. A man who is ill or in trouble may visit this grave to pray there; if he has an animal that suffers from some disease, he leads it around the grave to cure it. Such ideas about a pious man’s grave prevail in all Mohammedan countries. All the peoples of the Turkic group are Mussulmans, though you would never think it from the way in which Yakut and Turkoman women go about unveiled.
The Osmanli are the true Turks of Europe. Probably you would expect to see only Turks in Turkey. That would be a great error, for really only about one-tenth the population of Turkey is made up of Turks. There are many Armenians and Bulgarians, besides Greeks and others. The Osmanli Turks do not look like Mongolians, but their language and real blood relationship are with the yellow Asians, rather than with the white Europeans. It is not strange, however, that they present so mixed a type; Turks have long married with white slaves, and there is much Caucasian blood—both European and Asian—in their veins.
Constantinople is one of the most beautiful cities of the globe, and is probably the most important Mohammedan city. The _mosques_, or places of worship, are everywhere and recognizable by their pretty minarets. Friday and not Sunday is the day of service. Daily prayers are required, and the hours for prayer are called by the _muezzim_. When the call is heard, no matter what he may be doing, a good Mohammedan stops his occupation, spreads his prayer cloth, faces the sacred city of Mecca, and goes through his prayers.
The Turk is _not_ industrious and lacks energy; he enjoys ease and amusement. Perhaps a part of this is due to his being a fatalist; he believes that what will happen, _must_ happen; that he cannot in any way change the course of events. So _why_ should he hurry and worry? He _is_ fond of trading, but even there is not in haste. In the bazaars the seller and buyer haggle a long time over the prices. The one never asks the price he expects to get, but one much larger; the other never expects to pay the price first asked, but one much lower. Mohammedans who can afford to keep them may marry four wives; they often own many female slaves beside. These wives and slaves live in a special part of the house called the harem, where no visitors except women enter. When Turkish women go upon the street they are closely veiled, and none of their face except the eyes can be seen. Mohammedanism permits polygamy, but it forbids wine-drinking. While not all Turks obey this command, they are usually temperate, and drunkenness is rare.
XII. THE PEOPLES OF ASIA.
There has been much question as to _where_ man first lived. Some believe that the first men were white and lived in Europe and North Africa; others think the negroes of Africa are the oldest men; a few have argued that the American Indian was the original race; most, however, have thought that Asia was man’s first home. Whether this is so or not, Asia to-day contains a swarming population composed of many peoples, differing much in appearance, dress, life, and customs.
The Asian peoples belong chiefly to the Mongolic or yellow race. It is a well-marked type. Medium stature, broad and round head, flat face, with nose rather low, broad and high cheek bones, hair coarse and straight and jet black, skin yellowish, dark eyes apparently set slantwise in the face, are its characters. The yellow race includes the Chinese, Japanese, Coreans, the peoples of Indo-China, and most of the wandering tribes of Siberia. There are probably more of this race than of any other on the globe; next to them in numbers is the white race; then the negroes; then the island peoples; last and least, the American Indians.
Asia may justly be called the continent of yellow peoples. But it would be a mistake to think that no other peoples but Mongolic peoples live there. In almost every part of the great continent are peoples of white or Caucasic types. Thus, in the far northeast of Asia we have the curious Ghilyaks; in Japan, the Ainu; in China, various mountain tribes; in Southeastern Asia, similar peoples; in India, the Todas. All these tribes are white, bearded, with hairy bodies, rather long heads, and straight eyes. These tribes are small in numbers, rather quiet and timid, with little energy, and quite unlike European whites. They usually live in mountainous, out-of-the-way places, and it almost seems as if they are the scattered fragments of an ancient, white population, who occupied much of Asia before the yellow race was important, and who have been crowded back and almost destroyed by it.
In India, Persia, and other parts of Western Asia, are many white peoples who are like true European whites in their Aryan languages and in their forms and features. In Western Asia there are, and long have been, many dark white populations who are vigorous and active, with features much more European than Mongolian. These dark whites speak languages related to each other, but not Aryan. To these peoples, including the old Hebrews, and the modern Arabs, and many other ancient and modern peoples, the name Semites is applied. So you see that in Asia there are not only the yellow, Mongolian peoples, but three different kinds of whites,—the ancient feeble race, the Aryans, and the Semites.
Nowhere do we find more interesting ruins telling of past grandeur than in Asia. We think of Rome as old; of Greece as older; but in Mesopotamia are ruins far older than those of Greece and Rome. There are the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, so often mentioned in the Bible. Both are old, but lately explorers have found yet older ruins dating back six or seven thousand years. And these are not ruins of small and unimportant places, but of grand cities, whose people were already civilized, with fixed laws, curious religions, and many arts and industries. Nowhere in the world have ruins of older cities been found, and it is believed that the people who built them were yellow Mongolians.
In Asia most of the great religions were born. The oldest religious systems of which we know were those of Mesopotamia. In India Buddhism began. Buddha was a teacher who felt that the old religion of India, Brahmanism, was wrong. So he taught a new religion. There are more believers in Buddhism to-day than in any other religion. It is the chief religion of China, Japan, Tibet, Southeastern Asia, and Ceylon; but in India itself, where Buddha lived and taught, the people are _not_ Buddhists. In China there arose a great teacher, Confucius. He taught no religion, but to-day there are Confucian temples all through China. Judaism, the worship of Jehovah by the Jews, began in Asia. There, too, in Judæa also, Christianity was born. Christ dwelt and taught there, and there the first Christian churches were founded. But just as Buddha’s land is not Buddhist, so Palestine to-day is not Christian. It is a part of the Mohammedan world. Mohammedanism, too, is Asiatic, beginning in Arabia almost thirteen hundred years ago. Perhaps the original home of man, Asia has certainly been the first seat of civilization, and the cradle of religions.
XIII. CHINESE.
Perhaps four hundred and twenty million people dwell in the Chinese Empire and are called Chinese. They are not, however, all _true_ Chinese. When the Chinese (or their ancestors) moved eastward into what is now China, four thousand or more years ago, they found many different tribes living there. Some of these were driven forth to seek new homes; many remained and have mixed and mingled with the Chinese.
So many Chinese now live in our country that you all know how they look and dress. The Chinese in America are mostly from the poorest and meanest class, and most of them come from Canton. Most of those here are laundrymen, but in some of our larger cities there are merchants and restaurant keepers, and in California hundreds of them are gardeners. They quickly learn our ways of doing, and many are employed in cigar-making, shirt-making, and railroad-building. They work hard and save their money, as they want sometime to go home to their own country. Chinamen who die here are buried only for a little time: later the bones are gathered and sent home to be buried in China.
The Chinese who come here are short or of medium stature. In the interior and north of China they are taller. They have yellow skin, black straight hair, and black eyes. Their eyes appear to slant or be set crookedly, the inner corners being lower than the outer; they are really almost as straight as our own, and the appearance is due to a fold of skin at the inner corner. The long queue that hangs down the Chinaman’s back is not composed entirely of hair; it is pieced out below with cord or strings braided in. This style of wearing the hair is _not_ truly Chinese. Formerly the Chinese wore their hair in a knot on top of the head, but at the time of the Manchu Conquest, two hundred and fifty or so years ago, they were compelled to wear the hair in the Manchu fashion. For a Chinaman to cut off his queue would be almost the same as declaring himself unloyal to his Manchu rulers.
Chinamen usually have three names. The family name, which we place last, they place first. Thus _Li Hung Chang_, the great Chinese viceroy, belongs to the _Li_ family. Few of the Chinese laundrymen in this country have their true names on their signs. The _Li_ family is one of the largest in China, but it is also generally poor and despised. Most of our Chinese laundrymen are _Lis_, and are related to Li Hung Chang.
In writing, the Chinese use a brush, which they dip into ink. A single character represents a word, though many Chinese words are written with compound characters, one part of which gives the sound, and the other part pictures the meaning. In Chinese many sounds have several different meanings. If the character with which the sound is written stood alone, it would not be clear which meaning was intended. Chinese books are printed on thin paper, which is folded back and forth like a screen or fan and then stitched at the back; this makes the pages double. The Chinese book begins at what we would consider the back and goes through to what we would call the front. The print goes from the top of the page down, in vertical columns, and the first column is the one to the right hand.
To be able to write well is considered of the greatest importance in China. The Chinese respect learning also, and no man can hold office in China unless he is educated and has passed his examinations. From the time when a boy begins study he must keep it up for many years, if he hopes for a government position. Often he is a middle-aged or old man before he succeeds in passing all the necessary examinations. To be able to write beautifully, to be able to compose a poem upon any given subject, and to know the writings of Confucius and the other old philosophers are the things the Chinaman must learn. The great examinations at the Capital are attended by thousands from every part of the Empire. The man who stands first is sure to have an important governorship given to him at once.
There are many curious customs regarding Chinese children. One takes place when a little boy is one year old. A great bamboo sieve, such as farmers use, is placed upon the table. Upon it are spread many articles—money-scales, shears, a measure, a mirror, a pencil, ink, paper, inkstone, books, the counting-board, objects of gold or silver, fruits, etc. The baby, all dressed in his best clothes, is then set in the midst of the objects, on the sieve. His parents and friends watch anxiously to see which of the articles he will grasp. They believe it will show what he will do when he is a man. If he takes the money-scales or the gold or silver, he will become a rich merchant; if he takes the book or pencil, he will be a great scholar, and so on.
Chinese money consists chiefly of round brass coins with a square hole in the middle. It takes from eight to sixteen of them to make one cent of ours. They are called “cash” and are often strung on strings for convenient carrying. Many hundreds of years ago the ancient Chinese used clothing and tools for money. When they began to make metal coins they made these in the shape of shirts, knives, and spades, and called them shirt money, knife money, and spade money.
In eating the Chinese do not use knives and forks, but a pair of slender sticks called “chopsticks.” These are both taken in one hand, and are used to pick up bits of meat or vegetables from the soup or to lift boiled rice or dumplings to the mouth. For eating soup they use little flat-bottomed spoons of chinaware, which will not fall over when set down on the table. In making tea the cup or bowl for each person stands on the table with tea leaves in it; it sets into a little ring-shaped saucer and has a little cover over it like a saucer turned bottom upward. The servant lifts the cover and pours boiling water upon the leaves and then replaces the cover to let the tea steep. The cover may be used to stir the tea for cooling it, and when held in proper position prevents the tea leaves from getting into the mouth of the person who is drinking.
But how many things are left that we cannot speak of! The busy work in the fields, the preparation of tea, the rearing of silkworms and making of silk, the trades, the government, the love and respect for parents, the respect for the graves of ancestors, the religious ideas, the life and teachings of Confucius—these things would need many books like this.
XIV. COREANS.
Corea is often called the Hermit Nation, because it has wanted to keep foreigners away. In this respect it is what China, Japan, and Tibet have sometimes been; all of them have followed at times policies of exclusion. Still, Corea has had a good deal of contact with other nations; she has learned many things from China and has passed on much that she learned to Japan. Sometimes, too, Corea has been subject to China, sometimes to Japan.
The dress of Corea, while somewhat like that of China, and that of Japan, is still quite peculiar. The common people are all dressed in bluish white stuffs. Rich people dress in silks of the most gorgeous colors—blue, crimson, scarlet, orange. The chief garment worn by men is a long, loose gown that hangs from the neck quite to the ground. This is bound around, high above the waist, with a stiff, broad belt. No buttons are used in the fastening of garments, but strips of colored ribbons. The socks and shoes of the Coreans are like those of the Chinese, except that the shoe soles are thick-set with nail-heads. Nowadays these hob-nailed shoes are worn at all times, but formerly they were probably used only in winter to prevent slipping on ice and snow. About this the Coreans tell a story: long ago there was war between China and Corea, and the Chinese sent an army of eight hundred thousand soldiers; Corea’s army numbered but five thousand. It was in the midst of winter. The two armies met at a river, which was frozen solid, and the battle took place upon the ice. The Chinese wore their smooth-soled shoes, while the Coreans wore hob-nailed ones. When they fought on the ice the Chinese slipped helplessly, while the Coreans were able to fight well. The result was a great victory for the Coreans who, since then, have worn their hob-nailed shoes constantly in memory of their success.
But the most curious part of Corean dress is the hat. There are many different kinds. There are hats for young and hats for old, hats for out-doors and hats for the house, hats for people of different occupations. The commonest out-door hat is round, square-topped, and with the wide, flat, brim halfway up the crown. The hats worn at the royal court are like high skull-caps, with wide flaps or wings projecting at the sides. The straw hats worn by drovers and people in mourning are shaped like the top of a parasol and measure two feet and a half across.
Until lately people in Corea carried wooden blocks to show who they were. These blocks were carried by boys of fifteen and all older persons. They were called “name-tablets,” and were made of pear-wood or mahogany. They were about two inches long and a half inch wide. There was writing upon both sides. At the top on one side was the name of the ward where the boy lived; below it were the words “leisure-fellow,” meaning that he was not a servant; then came the boy’s name, and lastly his date of birth. On the other side was the date on which the tablet was issued, and the seal of the officer who gave it. When a boy was older his “name-tablet” was of box-wood; still later—after he had passed an examination—his tablet was cut from black horn; when finally he took highest honors, it was made of ivory. Poor people, of the lowest class, also carried tablets, but of a different sort; upon these the bearer was _described_.
In Corea there is much cold weather with ice and snow. Much clothing is needed for warmth, and several garments of one sort may be worn one over another. In the houses they have _kangs_ for warmth at night. Under the house, or under a certain part of it, there is built a sort of oven or furnace; above this is a floor of stones and, perhaps, earth upon which oiled paper is smoothly spread. A fire is built in the furnace and the sleepers stretch themselves upon the heated floor. It is not a satisfactory mode of heating, but is used not only among the Coreans but also among their Tatar neighbors.
Everywhere in Corea, Japan, China, and Tibet the people are Buddhists. But in all these countries we find also much worship of demons or bad spirits. Nowhere is there more of this than in Corea. They believe that there are spirits everywhere, some good, some bad. They are afraid of these bad spirits and do many things to ward off their mischief. Upon the roof of the king’s palace are a lot of ugly figures of bronze that resemble pigs and monkeys. All are different, but all are as terrible as their makers could shape. These are intended to frighten bad spirits away. No one but the king may have just these guardian animals; other important persons have two pictures fastened at the door; at the doors of the poor are hung a bunch of rice straw, and a bit of old rag. The two pictures represent two great generals, one a Chinese and the other a Corean, who were such valiant fighters against demons that their very pictures scare them. As for the things on the poor man’s door, it is believed that the spirits will stop to eat the grains of rice, and that they will think the rag the man’s clothing and will do their harm to it without entering the house.
Among the Coreans the tiger is much admired and much feared. They believe that bad men and evil spirits can turn themselves into tigers, and they have many strange stories of these tiger-men magicians. Thus they say that once a man was travelling through a lonely and desolate region. Toward evening he was surprised to come upon a fine house. Entering and asking shelter he found an old man living alone there. He felt sure things were wrong and that the old man was a tiger-magician. He was right; it was the king of all the tiger-magicians. If he had shown his fear he would have been torn to pieces, but he pretended to be brave. When the old man asked him who he was and where he was going, he boldly declared he was hunting for tiger-magicians, of whom he meant to kill two hundred, that he might carry their skins to the king. When the old man—who you remember was king of the tiger-magicians—heard this bold talk he was terribly scared. Secretly he called his subjects together and told them of their danger. They advised him to kill two hundred tiger-magicians who were in jail and give their skins to the hunter, begging him to spare the rest. The traveller gladly accepted, and taking the skins sold them for much money. This man had a cowardly neighbor who heard the story and determined to try the same trick. When he reached the tiger-king’s palace, however, he got scared, the tigers knew his fraud, and falling upon him they killed him.
XV. TIBETANS.