Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/173

records, which there is no valid reason to doubt, Jews arrived in the Middle Kingdom as early as two hundred years before Christ, that is to say, during the sway of the Han dynasty, and the historical conclusion is that they carried the Pentateuch thither shortly after the Babylonish captivity. They travelled doubtless by the trans-Asian route from Parthia, and are supposed to have established a settlement in Honan about the year A.D. 72. The narratives of Marco Polo, of Ibn Batuta, and of others show that there were Jews^[1] in Peking in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but they seem to have lived chiefly in Kaifêng, the capital of Honan, where they erected a synagogue in 1183 A.D.. They evidently constituted an appreciable element of the population in the fourteenth century, for the last Mongol ruler of China thought it worth while to solicit their aid together with that of his Mohammedan subjects when the overthrow of his dynasty by the Ming appeared imminent. Had there been an opportunity for either sect to accept the invitation, some interesting developments might have been witnessed. But the children of Zion never made their presence felt in the Middle Kingdom either by religious propagandism, by military prowess, or by a display of the financial qualities^[2] that have distinguished them in the Occident since mediæval times. China proved to be the only country in the world where, though not perse-