Chinese culture has recently been declared by Professor Terrien de la Couperie, François Lenormant, and Sayce to be of Accadian origin. Hieratic Accadian has been identified with the first five hundred Chinese characters, and it is believed by Professor de la Couperie that the Chinese entered north-western China from Susiana, about the twenty-third century before Christ.[287]
In the Finno-Tartarian magical mythology, we have not only the link which connects the religion of heathen Finland with that of Accadian Chaldæa, but we discover what is of more importance in tracing the origin of the magic and medicine of the old civilizations of the world from a primitive and coarse cosmogony, such as we have examined in so many savage peoples.
As it is impossible to separate the ancient medical belief of a people from its religious conceptions, if we admit Prof. Max Müller’s theory, we must also hold that it embraces the medical notions of these peoples. And so we find that one of the striking characteristics of the Mongolic religions is an extensive magic and sorcery—Shamanism. Practically the gods and heroes of the poetry of these peoples are sorcerers, and their worshippers value above everything their magical powers. Taoism, a Chinese religion of great antiquity and respect, involves an implicit faith in sorcery; and the Chinese and Mongolians have degenerated Buddhism into Shamanism.[288]
Confucianism is the chief religion of the Chinese. It is simply a development of the worship of ancestors, which was the aboriginal religion of the country. All the Chinese are ancestor-worshippers, to whatever other native religion they may belong.[289]
Although Chinese civilization is without doubt extremely ancient, we are unable to study it as we study that of Egypt or Chaldæa, on account of the absence of monuments or a literature older than a few centuries before Christ, which would give us a reliable history.
The Chinese attribute to Huang-ti (B.C. 2637) a work on medicine, which is still extant, entitled Nuy-kin, which is probably not older than the Christian era. They also attribute to the Emperor Chin-nung (B.C. 2699) a catalogue of medicinal herbs.[290]
The demon theory of disease universally obtains throughout the Chinese empire. All bodily and mental disorders spring either from the air or spirits. They are sent by the gods as punishments for sins committed in a previous state of existence. In a country where Buddhism is largely believed, it is natural to suppose that there is little sympathy with the suffering and afflicted. One might offend the gods by getting cured, or delay the working out of the effects of the expiatory suffering. Archdeacon Grey found a grievously afflicted monk in a monastery in the White Cloud mountains. He desired to take him to the Canton Medical Missionary Hospital; but the abbot took him aside, and begged him not to do so, as the sufferer had doubtless in a former state of existence been guilty of some heinous crime, for which the gods were then making him pay the well-merited penalty.[291]