The successor of Shang-tang was his grandson T’ai-kia, who was under the tutelage of a wise minister [Page 81] named I-yin.  Observing the indolence and pleasure-loving disposition of the young man, the minister sent him into retirement for three years that he might acquire habits of sobriety and diligence.  The circumstance that makes this incident worth recording is that the minister, instead of retaining the power in his own family, restored the throne to its rightful occupant.

Another king of this house, by name P’an-keng, has no claim to distinction other than that of having moved his capital five times.  As we are not told that he was pursued by vindictive enemies, we are left to the conjecture that he was escaping from disastrous floods, or, perhaps under the influence of a silly superstition, was in quest of some luckier site.

Things went from bad to worse, and finally Chou-sin surpassed in evil excesses the man who had brought ruin upon the House of Hia.  The House of Shang of course suffered the same fate.  An ambitious but kind-hearted prince came forward to succour the people, and was welcomed by them as a deliverer.  The tyrant, seeing that all was lost, arrayed himself in festal robes, set fire to his own palace, and, like another Sardanapalus, perished in the flames.

He and Kie make a couple who are held up to everlasting execration as a warning to tyrannical princes.  Like his remote predecessor, Chou-sin is reputed to have been led into his evil courses by a wicked woman, named Ta-ki.  One suspects that neither one nor the other stood in need of such prompting.  According to history, bad kings are generally worse than bad queens.  In China, however, a woman is considered out of place [Page 82] when she lays her hand on the helm of state.  Hence the tendency to blacken the names of those famous court beauties.

If Mencius may be believed, the tyrants themselves were not quite so profligate as the story makes them.  He says, “Dirty water has a tendency to accumulate in the lowest sinks”; and he warns the princes of his time not to put themselves in a position in which future ages will continue to heap opprobrium on their memory.

Of the wise founders of this dynasty it is said that they “made religion the basis of education,” as did the Romans, who prided themselves on devotion to their gods.  In both cases natural religion degenerated into gross superstition.  In the number of their gods the Chinese have exceeded the Romans; and they refer the worship of many of them to the Shang dynasty.

The following dynasty, that of Chou (35 sovereigns, 1122-249 B. C.) merits a separate chapter.

[Page 83] CHAPTER XVI

HOUSE OF CHOU

Wen-wang, the founder—­Rise and Progress of Culture—­Communistic Land Tenure—­Origin of the term “Middle Kingdom”—­Duke Chou and Cheng wang, “The Completer”—­A Royal Traveller—­Li and Yu, two bad kings