been applied to the Buddhists by
general usage. If we acknowledge the validity of these two
assumptions--and, so far as we have been able to ascertain, the best
authorities have adopted them--there would be little difficulty in
explaining who the Tungani were. Granting these, they would simply be
the Mahomedan subjects in the eastern portions of China. But others
believe that the Tungani are a distinct race, presenting peculiar
ethnological features. According to this version, the tribe of the
Tungani can be traced back as a distinct community to the fifth and
sixth centuries, when they were seated along the Tian Shan range, with
their capital at Karashar. The most recent investigations, under Colonel
Prjevalsky, are believed to show no signs of there having been any
important cities in this quarter. It may be convenient to mention here,
that at that time they were Buddhists; but when Islamism broke over Asia
in the eighth century, they were among the first to adopt the new
tenets. This defection from the religion of China brought them into
collision with the Emperors of Pekin, and many of these Tungani were
deported into Kansuh and Shensi, where we are to suppose they continued
a race apart, with their own religion and their own code of morality,
for more than ten centuries. Even granting the possibility of such a
consistency to a new religion, which history informs us was thrust upon
them at the point of the sword, it seems scarcely credible that we
should not hear more of this troublesome tribe in Chinese history.
Frequent allusions are made in imperial edicts and other official
proclamations to the Tungani, but always in reference to their religion,
and not in any way as if they were any other but heretic Chinamen.
Besides, even in this way little is heard of the Tungani until the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when very sharp measures were taken
against them by the emperors, solely because religious propagandists
from their ranks were appearing as enemies of a Buddhist Government. The
theory that the Tungani were a people and not a sect is new, but it is
possible that it may be a true discovery. On the other hand, it is far
more probable that it is only an ingenious attempt at elucidating what
appears on the face of it to be a simple matter enough. The reader must
decide for himself between the two versions. If the Tungani are to be
considered a distinct race, then the majority of the inhabitants of
Eastern T