Mr. Davis's Memoir concer?iing the Chinese. 11 



almost entirely to that half of modern China, which Ues between the great 

 river Kean-, and the confines of Tartary ; that it was subsequently split 

 into several independent nations, which, after various contests and revolu- 

 tions were formed into tv>o Empires, the Northern and Southern, and became 

 finally united under one head, about A. D. 585 ; that China has been the 

 theatre of as bloody and continued wars as have ravaged most of the other 

 countries of the globe ; that it has twice, and at no very distant periods of 

 time been completely conquered by foreign barbarians; and that its last 

 conquerors exercise over it, at this day, an imperious, and by no means 

 impartial sway, but one in which the precedence and the trust are, m most 

 cases, conferred on the Tartar. 



Among other points of inquiry relating to the Chinese, their attamments 

 in the various branches of human knowledge have naturally been the objects 

 of much curiosity in Europe. With respect to those arts of life which 

 administer to the wants and enjoyments of mankind, they must be allowed 

 to have made a very eariy and considerable proficiency, and are even at this 

 day, in many respects, the most skilful and best workmen in the worid. Of 

 science, however, they are, and appear always to have been, entirely desti- 

 tute. It is a curious circumstance that they and the Hindus, (whether they 

 had, or had not, any connexion in remote antiquity,) should have existed so 

 long in the immediate vicinity of each other, and at the same time possessed 

 so little in common. With the exception of the sect of Fo, or Buddha, an 

 Indian heresy, which found refuge in the Empire from the persecutions of a 

 bigotted priesthood, the Chinese appear to me to have received nothing 

 from their western neighbours. The ancient skill of the Hindus, in astrono- 

 mical and algebraic science, has been cleariy and ably demonstrated: but 

 no proofs have yet occurred that they imparted any portion of that skill to 

 the Chinese. I feel persuaded that, until the introduction of astronomy into 

 the Empire by the Arabians, in the first instance, and subsequently by 

 the European Missionaries, the whole science of the Chinese consisted 

 in a careful observation and scrupulous notation of the eclipses, and 

 other heavenly phenomena. Their ignorance led them to attach the most 

 hnportant political influences to the different aspects and conjunctions of 

 the celestial orbs, and hence arose the exactness with which they marked 



and chronicled them. 



Confucius has recorded six and thirty eclipses of the sun, the greater 

 number of which have been verified by the calculations of European astro- 



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