270 



CHINA. 



Origin of 

 thnc tit- 



tare*, prevailed amovg the learned, respecting the ori- 

 : rogreis, and structure of this extraordinary Ian- 

 guigr. From tiie remark* of Barrow and De Guignes, 

 and e*p*cilly from the iJisfertatinn on the Character* 

 end SotniJt of Ike Chinese language, by Mr Marshman, 

 one of the Baptist missionaries in fndia, a more complete 

 and consilient view may be formed of the subject, even 

 by those who have no knowledge of the language itself, 

 than coul.1 be collected from the varying and contradic- 

 tory statements of the earlier writers upon this topic.* 

 llsmrnurv The elements of the Chinese language are clearly of a 

 ck *" clcrfc symbolic or hieroglyphic nature ; f and its written sign* 

 m.iy be described as imitations of natural objects, com- 

 bined in a variety of forms >n order to convey, or ra- 

 ther to exhibit, ideas to others. The formation of the 

 written characters is extremely simple ; and their consti- 

 tuent elements, though variously enumerated in different 

 dictionaries, are, at most, 214 in number. These are 

 called by the Chinese Tsi-moo, or mother characters, 

 and sometimes Poo, or ruling characters ; but by the 

 European missionaries they are designated claves, or 

 keys : and by the various combinations of these elemen- 

 tary figures, all the other characters in the language are 

 formed. The origin of these mother characters is en- 

 tirely a metier of conjecture ; but they may be concei- 

 ved, as seems to be the general opinion, to have taken 

 their rise from the first rude attempts of men to deli- 

 neate objects of sight, as a mode of expressing their 

 ideas to others. These represenrations, or outlines, may 

 be supposed to have been at first very imperfecl pic- 

 tnrings, and to have lost, by .degrees, much of the little 

 reseirlblance, which they ever possessed to sensible ob- 

 jects. All the Chinese literati consider this to have been 

 the nature of the first endeavours to form a written cha- 

 racter ; but they are fond of representing the lines of 

 Fo-shee, broken and unbroken, disposed in circles, 

 square*, and polygons, as at once the most ancient of 

 their records, and as a specimen of the original language 

 of their country. They pretend, however, to trace the 

 use of the present characters as far back as the reign of 

 Hoang-tee, about 2700 years before Christ ; a period at 

 which, according to their own histories, their nation, if 

 at all in existence, must have been in a very rude and 

 uncivilized state. But whatever may have been the 

 date of the origin of these characters, it appears from 

 inscriptions upon antique seals of agate, vases of porce- 

 lain, and cups of serpentine stone, as well as from suc- 

 cessive editions of their oldest books, that they bore a 

 considerable resemblance to the objects, which they were 

 intended to rcpr. 



The individual figures at first selected to form the ba- 

 sis of this mode of communication, include the most re- 

 markabl objects of nature, as the sun and moon, a river, 

 a mountain, tire, water, earth, wood, stone, &c. ; the 

 principal pans of a house ; the utensils most commonly 

 in use, such as a knife, a spoon, a seat, a box, a staff, 

 &c. ; the chief articles of subsistence, grain, pulse, flesh, 

 fish, &c. ; the primary relations of life, father, mother, 

 son, daughter ; some of the most obvious qualities of bo- 

 dies, such as straightness, crookedness, greatness, small- 

 nest, bright, &c. ; a few of the most common actions of 

 life, such as seeing, speaking, walking, running, &c. 



Objects of 



thc-c ijm- 



Tlu-se original elements, of which the other characters, Lair 

 or rather words, are composed, may be regarded as, > -"~, ' 



tly speaking, the alphabet of the Chinese language. 

 They arc, however, very irregularly and unequally Prevailing 

 brought into use in the composition of characters ; and, symbol*, 

 while some of them enter, as roots or primitives, into the 

 formation of 1400 or 1.500 characters, others hare only 

 two or three descendants. Muo.'t, wood, for instance, 

 enters into the composition of 1232.charactcrs ; soi, wa- 

 ter, into 1333 ; tchou, grass, or vegetation in general, ir.- 

 to 1423 ; shoo, the hand, into.lOli'; Itou, the mouth, into 

 983; tin, the heart, into 956; nee, a woman, into 834; 

 yun, a man, into 729; ley, denoting rcptilrs, into Mil-; 

 gniu, a word, into 734; /ci/am, or kyun, gold, into 719 ; 

 see, silk, or any thing tine and delicate, and tehck, a bam- 

 boo, into 672 each ; yok, flesh, tan, a mountain, mook, 

 the eye, tchok, the foot, nieu, a bud, into somewhat more 

 than 500 each ; ma, a horse, A/tin, a dog, yul, a day, lou, 

 a knife, tehee, a place, mic, me, tcficek, motion, into some- 

 what more than 300 each ; and the elements, which repre- 

 sent earth, stone, disease, clothing, and jewels, lir.-c above 

 4*00 in their respective classes. Thus do thirty of the 

 elementary symbols, expressive of the primary objects of 

 sense, enter into the composition of nearly 20,000 cha- 

 racters ; which are supposed to constitute more than one 

 half of the characters in the language. Some of these 

 elements, on the oilier hand, enter into so few characters, 

 that they are scarcely entitled to be ranked among the 

 primitive figures. The six elementary symbols, which 

 compote the class formed by one stroke, and which are 

 all obsolete, except yitt, one, include altogether only 95 

 characters, and one of them has only two derivatives or 

 compounds. Among those which consist of many strokes, 

 there arc 40, which comprise in their respective classes 

 not more th.m 20 characters each, some of these having 

 only 10, and the whole U) making only 615. Twenty 

 others contain only from 20 to 35 each, and altogether 

 only 557. So that here are 84 of the elements which 

 enter into the composition of only 1427 characters, which 

 is little more than the number classed uuder the single 

 element of tchoii, vegetation. 



Thus the effective elements amount only to 130, while 

 the rest of the 214 very rarclyoccurin writing. The whole 

 useful and practical part of the language, also, instead 

 of amounting to 80,000, according to the French mis- 

 sionaries, contains only about 35,000 characters ; many 

 of which even are synonimes, and one third of which is 

 more than sufficient for the common purposes of life, and 

 for understanding most of their books. Thus the whole 

 text of the Ta-tsmg-leu-lee, or present code of Chinese 

 laws, consisting of 100,000 characters or words, does 

 not contain more than 1860 that arc essentially different 

 from each other. The dictionary Shue-ven, compo-, 

 by Hui-tchee, under Ho-tee, of the Han dynasty, A. D. 

 89, and the other dictionaries composed after him, con- 

 tain only between 8000 and 10,000. Additional charac- 

 ters were formed at different periods, and in consequence 

 of changes in the state and relations of the empire ; espe- 

 cially when the Chinese became united with the people 

 of the East ; when the Bonzes of l"'o arrived in the coun- 

 try, a short time after whose establishment, the charac- 

 ters were numbered at 26,430 ; and when the Tao-tse, 



* The latest publication on the subject, of which we have heard, ii a Grammar of the Chinese language, publuhcd by Mr Moriron, 

 Oirutian miurionary at Canton, and dedicated to I.urd Minlo, the promt governor of Bengal, win., like hui predecessor Lord Wcl- 

 Iraky, hit extended hit encouraging patronage l tin- cultivation nf Oriental liu-ratine ; and whose liberal and enlightened mind is 

 nut restrained by the inBucncc of prejudice or party, in estimating the merit of those, who have distinguished themselves in this de- 

 partment. 



tied and Illuxtiatcd in a trratine by one of the Jesuit miraionariei, publish .-J at Brussels in 1773, and 

 milled, iMtrt dc ftkin ur U genie V fa lanptt Ckinouc, tt la nature de tear err/lure nymkoiijw. 



