Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

25. Gunpowder was in fact only one of several advances in military techniques which were to have a marked effect on world history. The Chinese also perfected a selection technique for its forces – giving recruits a series of tests (shooting ability, eyesight) and assigning them to specialised units on that basis. New weapons were invented, including repeating crossbows, a type of tank, and a paraffin flamethrower operated by a piston to ensure a continuous jet of flame. A treatise on military matters, General Principles of the Classic on War (Wu jin zong yao), discussed new theories about siege warfare. Gernet, Op. cit., page 310. Published in 1044, this treatise also contains the first mention of the formula for gunpowder (the first reference in Europe is by Roger Bacon, in 1267).

26. Gernet, Op. cit., page 311.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid., page 312.

29. David Battie (editor), Sotheby’s Concise Encyclopaedia of Porcelain, London: Conran Octopus, 1990, pages 15ff.

30. Gernet, Op. cit., page 320. See also: Hucker, Op. cit., page 204.

31. Gavin Menzies, The Year That Changed the World: 1421, London: Bantam Press, 2002. Its thesis, that the Chinese circumnavigated the world and discovered America, has been heavily challenged.

32. Gernet, Op. cit., pages 326–327.

33. This was probably born in the great estuary of the Yangtze, 10 to 20 kilometres wide at its mouth, and which stretched inland for 150 kilometres. Here the transition from river to ocean is imperceptible. Gernet, Op. cit., page 327.

34. Taoist experiments initiated the compass (see Chapter 20). The idea of the experiment was also introduced ahead of Europe though it was not sustained. See Hucker, Op. cit., page 204. Chinese maps were also better than European maps at this time, using an early idea of both latitude and longitude. European maps were held back by religious concepts. Gernet, Op. cit., page 328.

As Joseph Needham has pointed out, the Song were a pivotal people in Chinese history, and not least in naval affairs. The greater foreign trade promoted by the Song encouraged the rise of its navy, and the associated inventions and innovations. However, despite her prominence as a sea power, China always remained primarily a land empire. Politically and militarily, she faced her greatest threats from inner Asia and she always raised more financial support from agricultural taxes than she did from taxes on international commerce. This basic truth never altered, says Lo Jung-Pang, and helps to explain why, although the Chinese were so ingenious, it was ultimately others who took greatest advantage of her many inventions. Lo Jung-Pang, ‘The rise of China as a sea power’, in Liu and Golas (editors), Op. cit., pages 20–27.

35. Yong Yap et al., Op. cit., page 43.

36. F. W. Mote, Imperial China, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999, page 127.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid., page 128.

39. This meant that very poor families might have to save for two to three generations until they could afford to send a favoured son to a private academy.

40. For this and other aspects of the examination system in Song China, see: John W. Chaffee, The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China: A Social History of Examinations, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pages 104–105, and passim.

41. See Frye, Op. cit., page 164 for details about Changʾan.

42. Chaffee, Op. cit., page 104.

43. Fairbanks, Op. cit., page 95.

44. Chaffee, Op. cit., page 134. See Hucker, Op. cit., pages 315–321, where he says later dynasties fell back on the sponsorship system.

45. C. K. Young, Religion in Chinese Society, Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1961, page 216.

46. Gernet, Op. cit., page 215. See Frye, Op. cit., pages 195–196, for the organisation of Sogdian society, especially the absence of a priestly hierarchy.

47. Gernet, Op. cit., page 216.

48. Hucker, Op. cit., page 210, says Kumarajiva’s translation of The Lotus Sutra is the single most influential book in east Asian Buddhism. See also Gernet, Op. cit., page 218, and Frye, Op. cit., pages 145–147, for Buddhist complexes between India and China.

49. Gernet, Op. cit., page 221.

50. Young, Op. cit., pages 119–120.

51. Gernet, Op. cit., page 226.

52. See Frye, Op. cit., for archaeological discoveries at Dunhuang.