condemning it would be issued by the local
officials. A man might, by purchase and contract, adopt a person
as son, daughter, or grandchild, such person acquiring thereby all
the rights of a son or daughter. Descent, both of real and personal
property, was to all the sons of wives and concubines as joint heirs,
irrespective of seniority. Bastards received half shares. Estates were
not divisible by the children during the lifetime of their parents
or grandparents.

The head of the family being but the life-renter of the family
property, bound by fixed rules, wills were superfluous, and were used
only where the customary respect for the parents gave them a voice
in arranging the details of the succession. For this purpose verbal
or written instructions were commonly given.

In the absence of the father, the male relatives of the same surname
assumed the guardianship of the young. The guardian exercised full
authority and enjoyed the surplus revenues of his ward's estate,
but might not alienate the property.

There are many instances in Chinese history of extreme devotion of
children to parents taking the form of self-wounding and even of
suicide in the hope of curing parents' illnesses or saving their lives.

Political History

The country inhabited by the Chinese on their arrival from the West
was, as we saw, the district where the modern provinces of Shansi,
Shensi, and Honan join. This they extended in an easterly direction
to the shores of the Gulf of Chihli--a stretch of territory about 600
miles long by 300 broad. The population, as already stated, was between
one and two millions. During the first two thousand years of their
known history the boundaries of this region were not greatly enlarged,
but beyond the more or less undefined borderland to the south were
_chou_ or colonies, nuclei of Chinese population, which continually
increased in size through conquest of the neighbouring territory. In
221 B.C. all the feudal states into which this territory had been
parcelled out, and which fought with one another, were subjugated
and absorbed by the state of Ch'in, which in that year instituted the
monarchical form of government--the form which obtained in China for
the next twenty-one centuries.

Though the origin of the name 'China' has not yet been finally decided,
the best authorities regard it as derived from the name of this feudal
state of Ch'in.

Under this short-lived dynasty of Ch'in and the famous