e
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
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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