118 



r n i x A. 



"*5 dc ' 

 jfd. 



the*e sou-cet, from which^the Chinese proles* to draw 

 their early history, must be considered ss more than 

 questionable. Brnde* a variety of trong presui. 

 against their riedibi'ity, a simple examination of these 

 document! tln-raselve*, and of the account of their ori- 

 gin given by the Chinese, il more than sufficient to discre- 



::cir whole pretensions to a remote antiquity. Their 

 Itory it at follow*. 



;rreat diversity of the characters used in writing 

 had begun to prevail in very early times ; and the sue- 

 ' cettw Chinese emperors had attempted in vain to re- 

 j uce jj, cm to onc uniform am j intelligible system. In 

 this, however, they experienced the utmost difficulty, 

 both from the obstinacy of the learned men, w\- 

 attached to the different modes of writing, and fi 



.il of the chiefs of the different provinces to obey 

 the imperial mandates on the subject. At length the 

 Emperor Shce-hoang-tee, after many bloody wars, ha- 

 ving united the supreme authority in his own person, 

 commanded his prime minister, Li s, to enter upon the 

 reformation of the written characters. Li-fe, with the 

 assistance of two of the literati, reduced to the number 

 of 10,500 the characters used in medicine, agriculture, 

 and astrology ; but found himself utterly unable to in- 

 troduce the new characters into general use. As the 

 only measure, which could ensure the accomplishment of 

 this object, 'lie advised the emperor to cause all tin- books 

 to be burned, except those which treated of medicine, 

 agriculture, and divination, and the history of tin- dy- 

 nasty of Tsin (from which the emperor himself was de- 

 scended) ; and to punish with death all, who should in 

 any respect oppose the execution of this decree, or re- 

 fuse to employ henceforth the new system of characters. 

 The emperor approved of the ptan, and caused it to be 

 put into execution with the utmost severity. The con- 

 demned writings, or rather characters, were collected 1111- 

 cJcr the heaviest penalties from all quarters of the em- 

 pire ; and about four or five hundred lra;r.ea men were 

 put to death in the course of this literary persecution. 

 This event took place 213 years before the birth of 

 Christ. About forty years afterwards, the Emperor 

 Ven-tee was desirous to recover the historical documents, 

 especially a work of Confucius called Shoo-king ; and 

 an old man was found, who furnished several portions of 

 it from memory. In the reign of Voo-tee, about 150 

 er HO years before Christ, some fragments of the an- 

 cient books were discovered, which had escaped the ge- 

 neral conflagration, and which had been preserved in the 

 ruins of a house, which had been inhabited by some of 

 the deicendants of Confucius. One of these was the 

 book Shoo-king, written on tables of bamboo, but 

 greatly destroyed in many places. Hy putting together, 

 liowcvi-r, the legible portions, and patching them up 

 with the fragments formt-ily procured from the mouth 

 of the old man Foo thong, they restored, as they pre- 

 tend, 58 chapters of the works which originally consist- 

 ed of 101 ; and this has continued to be the sole foun- 

 dation of the ancient history of China. By the assist- 

 ance of this document, aiid a few other imperfect histo- 

 rical memoir", an author named Se-ma-t.-ien, produced 

 the first complete history of China, about fifty, or as 

 tome say, ninety years before Christ ; but he has him- 

 self the candour to acknowledge, that he was not able 

 to ascend with certainty more than 8()0 years, before the 

 time in which he wrote ; and, according to fatln r Pre'- 

 marc, he is regarded by the greater part of the Chinese 

 authors, at a mire fabler. There was afterwards lii-ru- 

 vered another work of Confucius, named Tchun-tsioo, 

 which carries the history, however, DO farther back than 



JT, about the year 2GJ of History. 



the Chri-ti.ui '1 piece u;> :n chronology was '*"" ~~" " 



found, which bep .,,d 



ends with the dy: i'cheoo, or the year before 



Christ 78- ; hnt it is mer.ly a list of emperors without 

 dates, and w-th a f:-w n. vents. 



Such is the ac Chinese of the com- Uncertain- 



plete destruction, and partial restoration of their most ty and dc- 

 .1 records ; bi:t it is j of I'uli-ncy of 



the most judicious writers on the subject, as also -.M-ther a carlv "" 

 fable, invented at some modern period as an j-iology nal ** 

 for their want of annals to support their pi 

 remote antiquity ; or if true, it afT.ird.; equally ..efficient 

 pr.'of, that no well authei-tica'.c'd ain 

 their history is in existence. Even those ancient records, 

 ii they consider as the foundation ot" their early his- 

 tory, especially the surviving chapters of the Shoo-k: 

 admitting these documents to be both genuine and au- 

 thentic, are meagre and imperfect beyond what any one 

 will easily be able to conceive, who has heard only of 

 those hyperbolical descriptions of the antiquity am! I - 

 tory of China, which have been so long curi cut in Eu- 

 rope. The Shoo king itself makes mention c-;.l\ ,,f 

 twenty Emperors, and these, too, not in regular sticV 

 sion from onc another ; but onc here and there only, in 

 periods of thousands of years, with frequently no other 

 circumstance, but merely the name. It begins with Yao 

 and Chvn, then proceeds to the first dynasty, named 

 Hia, of which only five are named of the 17 tmperon-, 

 of whom it i said to have consisted. Of the '28 empe- 

 nr.s of the second, only five also are noticed ; and of the 

 third, down to the rei^-n of Ping-vaiig, 770 years bi-tore 

 Christ, only six are recorded out of fourteen. There is 

 besides in the wir-.lo book no epoch mentioned, no dates 

 given, no account even of the duration of the ncveral 

 reigns, except those of five or six princes. Instead of the 

 Jar series of astronomical calculations, upon which 

 the ancient Chinese annals are supposed to be {-..IT. i> d, 

 and which are understood to have been verified by the 

 calculations of the most eminent modern astronomers, the 

 Shoo-king mentions only two eclipses, and two observa- 

 tions of the solstices, in the space of the first fifteen hun- 

 dred years of their history ; and these also arc recorded 

 in such an obscure manner, with so little detail of circum- 

 stances, without even the year of the emperor's reign, or 

 the day of the cycle, on which they took place, that mo- 

 li'.-rn astronomers have no foundation whatever, upon 

 which to proceed, in fixing the time of these phenomena. 

 It is only from the year 722 before Christ, that their ob- 

 servations begin to multiply ; and, from that period to the 

 year 4SO bt fore the Christian zra, Confucius has men- 

 tioned, wit!, . ufficient chronological exactness, 36 eclipses, 

 of which 31 at least have been found completely confor- 

 mable to astronomical calculation. It has been remark- 

 ed, as rather a curious circumstance, that this sra cf 722 

 before Christ, at which alone the Chinese chronology 

 commences with any degree of certainty, coincides i; 

 with the famous :cra of Nabonassar, which ia placed in 

 the ye.ir 747 before Christ, and which forms the basis of 

 i-cian calculations; and it ha be nred, 



that Confucius may have been acquainted with tinse as- 

 tronomical observations made at Babylon, when he gave 

 to the Chinese astronomy so sudden, and so great im- 

 irnts. 



arly history of China, besides being derived from 

 such uncertain sources, is so extremely limited, as scarce- 

 ly to deserve the name. Of the immense collection, known 

 in China by the name of the twenty-one historians, 

 which consists of about 500 volume*, the first II volumei 



