ABSTRACT
The best authorities are agreed that the ancient Chinese originally migrated from a point near the Caspian Sea across what is now arid desert to the upper reaches of the Yellow River. In any case it is quite certain that thirty centuries before the Christian era the Chinese had already occupied most of territory comprised in the modern provinces of Kansu, Shensi, and Honan. The barbarian raiders from wastes of Central Asia were aspect from the earliest times, and harried the race as soon as it had acquired ease and wealth from tillage, may be gathered from the policy of the Emperor Chin Shih Huang-ti. With the spread of Buddhism from across the Yellow Sea came the first real knowledge of the Chinese classics, the Japanese written language by means of Chinese ideographs dating only from the seventh century. The governmental institutions of China were likewise borrowed, the eight departments of state being copied from the Tang dynasty in China.
