OCR Text |
Show Trace Lineage Back for Many Centuries We often speak of China as having the oldest civilization in the world, but we seldom appreciate the full significance sig-nificance of the statement. I once met a Chinese by the name of Kung, who was the seventy-sixth lineal descendant descend-ant of the elder brother of Confucius, and Confucius lived In the years from 550 to 479 B. C. That is about as old a family as one could find anywhere, and it Is a family whose pedigree is absolutely unimpeachable. The name Confucius is a Latinized form of the words Kung-fu-tze, meaning mean-ing Master Kung. In the family temple tem-ple on the Shantung estate of the Kung family can be seen the tablets of all the ancestors of the family from 550 B. C. down to the present time. I might say further that Confucius considered, con-sidered, when he lived, that he he-longed he-longed to a reasonably old family; he traced his ancestry back somewhere between 700 and 1,000 years. National Nation-al Geographic Magazine. |