VITA SINE LITEEIS. 27 



However that may be, there is evidence enough, in the eight varieties of writing of 

 which the characters are preserved, of the steps by which the Chinese system was eA'olved. 

 The most ancient form (that of Fon-Hi), shewn in the inscription of Heng-Chau, represents 

 simple figures of things, — a man, dog, horse, tree, being suggested by such drawings of 

 those objects as a child might make. The characters of Fou-Hi gave place (B. C. 820) to the 

 Ta-Chouan or ancient figurative style. About B. C. 22*7, this style underwent a considerable 

 modification which, twenty-seven years later, was still further transformed into a near 

 approach to the modern writing. The four remaiuing varieties are the usual, the cursive, 

 the square (for printing), and the current (also for printing). The changes thus indicated 

 took place between the years, A. D. 960 and 1123. The characters used by the Chinese are 

 A'ariously classed, according to their import, according to the objects represented (whether 

 of things celestial, of mountains, of plants, etc.), or according to the number of strokes 

 or radicals (from one to seventeen) that they comprise. The first classification admits of six 

 grand divisions : — the purely figurative ; the indicative (altered from their first shape, but 

 not enough to preclude its recognition) ; the combined (as two trees for forest) ; the inverse 

 (the meaning of which is implied by the direction, as a hand turned either way to indicate 

 right or left) ; the ideo-phonetic, and the metaphoric. Of the first class, with its ten sub- 

 divisions, there are 588 characters ; of the second, with two subdivisions (the second 

 being again subdivided into three), there are lOT ; of the third class (two subdivisions), 

 740 ; of the fourth (four subdivisions), 352 ; of the fifth (two subdivisions, the second of 

 which comprises six distinct classes), 21,810 ; and of the sixth (with thirteen subdivisions), 

 598. It will be seen that the fifth class, or ideo-phonetic, comprises the nineteen twentieths 

 of the 24,1*75 Chinese symbols. Enormous as is this number and well calculated to deter 

 the inquiring student, it is, like many an obstacle, worse than it looks. For whoever has 

 mastered the figurative and phonetic values of the 1,400 characters of the first three classes 

 is in a fair way to overcome a difficulty which at first sight seems so formidable. Never- 

 theless, even for the Chinese, this conventionalized picture-writing is cumbrous and its 

 acquisition, a thing of labour. Isaac Taylor says that " even to obtain such an accj[uain- 

 tance with it as to be able to write a common business letter, or to read an ordinary book, 

 it is necessary for a Chinese student to commit to memory some 6,000 or. 7,000 of these 

 gi-oups of characters." ' 



The Japanese became acquainted with Chinese civilization and Buddhism in the third 

 century, and adopted the Chinese system of writing. But their language being polysyl- 

 labic, they had to treat the Chinese characters as syllabic signs. Selecting a sufficient num- 

 ber of phonograms, and rejecting the "keys" or "radicals" as unnecessary, they greatly 

 simplified the original system. Having only five vowels and fifteen consonantal sounds, 

 they require only scA'enty-five possible combinations of a consonant and a vowel, and of 

 these several occur rarely. It is possible, indeed, with less than fifty distinct syllabic 

 signs to write any Japanese word. The two syllabaries, which were in working order 

 before the end of the ninth century are called the HiraLana and the Kalakann. The 

 former, derived from the Chinese cursive form, has some 300 signs, many of which are 

 variants or homophones. The other, which is more simple, was obtained from the Chinese 

 Kyai or " model type " and comprises only a single sign written more or less cursively, for 

 each of the forty-seven syllabic sounds in the Japanese language. ' 

 ' The Alphabet, i. 32. ^ ItAd., i. 35. 



