During these struggles it became evident that Ts’ao Ts’ao with his troops had become the strongest of all the generals.  His troops seem to have consisted not of Chinese soldiers alone, but also of Hsiung-nu.  It is understandable that the annals say nothing about this, and it can only be inferred from the facts.  It appears that in order to reinforce their armies the generals recruited not only Chinese but foreigners.  The generals operating in the region of the present-day Peking had soldiers of the Wu-huan and Hsien-pi, and even of the Ting-ling; Liu Pei, in the west, made use of Tanguts, and Ts’ao Ts’ao clearly went farthest of all in this direction; he seems to have been responsible for settling nineteen tribes of Hsiung-nu in the Chinese province of Shansi between 180 and 200, in return for their armed aid.  In this way Ts’ao Ts’ao gained permanent power in the empire by means of these troops, so that immediately after his death his son Ts’ao P’ei, with the support of powerful allied families, was able to force the emperor to abdicate and to found a new dynasty, the Wei dynasty (A.D. 220).

This meant, however, that a part of China which for several centuries had been Chinese was given up to the Hsiung-nu.  This was not, of course, what Ts’ao Ts’ao had intended; he had given the Hsiung-nu some area of pasturage in Shansi with the idea that they should be controlled and administered by the officials of the surrounding district.  His plan had been similar to what the Chinese had often done with success:  aliens were admitted into the territory of the empire in a body, but then the influence of the surrounding administrative centres was steadily extended over them, until the immigrants completely lost their own nationality and became Chinese.  The nineteen tribes of Hsiung-nu, however, were much too numerous, and after the prolonged struggles in China the provincial administration proved much too weak to be able to carry out the plan.  Thus there came into existence here, within China, a small Hsiung-nu realm ruled by several shan-yue.  This was the second major development, and it became of the utmost importance to the history of the next four centuries.

10 Literature and Art

With the development of the new class of the gentry in the Han period, there was an increase in the number of those who were anxious to participate in what had been in the past an exclusively aristocratic possession—­education.  Thus it is by no mere chance that in this period many encyclopaedias were compiled.  Encyclopaedias convey knowledge in an easily grasped and easily found form.  The first compilation of this sort dates from the third century B.C.  It was the work of Lue Pu-wei, the merchant who was prime minister and regent during the minority of Shih Huang-ti.  It contains general information concerning ceremonies, customs, historic events, and other things the knowledge of which was part of a general education.  Soon afterwards other