tion, and, together with the annals of the Mongol dynasty, they
are regarded as the worst of the annals preserved. Tokto himself is less
to blame for this than the circumstance that he was compelled to work in
great haste, and had not time to put into order the overwhelming mass of
his material.

The greatest literary achievements, however, of the Mongol period belong
beyond question to the theatre (or, rather, opera). The emperors were
great theatre-goers, and the wealthy private families were also
enthusiasts, so that gradually people of education devoted themselves to
writing librettos for the operas, where in the past this work had been
left to others. Most of the authors of these librettos remained unknown:
they used pseudonyms, partly because playwriting was not an occupation
that befitted a scholar, and partly because in these works they
criticized the conditions of their day. These works are divided in
regard to style into two groups, those of the "southern" and the
"northern" drama; these are distinguished from each other in musical
construction and in their intellectual attitude: in general the northern
works are more heroic and the southern more sentimental, though there
are exceptions. The most famous northern works of the Mongol epoch are
_P'i-p'a-chi_ ("The Story of a Lute"), written about 1356, probably by
Kao Ming, and _Chao-shih ku-erh-chi_ ("The Story of the Orphan of
Chao"), a work that enthralled Voltaire, who made a paraphrase of it;
its author was the otherwise unknown Chi Chuen-hsiang. One of the most
famous of the southern dramas is _Hsi-hsiang-chi_ ("The Romance of the
Western Chamber"), by Wang Shih-fu and Kuan Han-ch'ing. Kuan lived under
the Juchen dynasty as a physician, and then among the Mongol. He is said
to have written fifty-eight dramas, many of which became famous.

In the fine arts, foreign influence made itself felt during the Mongol
epoch much more than in literature. This was due in part to the Mongol
rulers' predilection for the Lamaism that was widespread in their
homeland. Lamaism is a special form of Buddhism which developed in
Tibet, where remnants of the old national Tibetan cult (_Bon_) were
fused with Buddhism into a distinctive religion. During the rise of the
Mongols this religion, which closely resembled the shamanism of the
ancient Mongols, spread in Mongolia, and through the Mongols it made
great progress in China, where it had been insignificant until their
time. Re