284 ON LEGIBLE LANGUAGE, 



been suffered to become obsolete, that M. de Guignes was able, in his day, to 

 collect and put into his dictionary eight thousand characters : the six national 

 dictionaries that were chiefly in use about a century since, give from fifteen 

 to about thirty thousand; and, lastly, the Imperial Chinese Dictionary, com- 

 posed by order of the emperor Kang-khee, in 1710 of our own era, comprises 

 not less than forty-three thousand four hundred and ninety-six characters ! 



Dr. Marshman, in his valuable " Elements of Chinese Grammar," observes, 

 that in the Imperial Dictionary these stand arranged as follows : 



Characters in the body of the work ----- 31,214 



Added, principally obsolete and incorrect forms of others - 6,423 



Characters not before classed in any dictionary - 1,659 



Characters without name or meaning - - - - . - 4,200 



43,496 



We have here, therefore, a confession by the Chinese lexicographers them- 

 selves, that upwards of ten thousand of the characters admitted into the Im- 

 perial Dictionary, being nearly a fourth of the whole, are useless, and for the 

 most part unintelligible, in the present day ; independently of which, " a con- 

 siderable number," observes Dr. Marshman, " of the 31,214 characters adopted 

 from the former dictionaries have no meaning affixed to them; but are merely 

 given as obsolete, or current but incorrect forms of other characters, to which 

 the compilers of the dictionary have referred the reader for their meaning."* 

 Whence we may fairly conclude, that of the characters which are still allowed to 

 iigure away in the written language of China, nearly half of the whole convey 

 no ideas whatever, and are altogether representatives without constituents. 



Were we able to follow even the latest of these up to their origin, and to 

 prove that they have not issued, in the remotest manner, from the two hundred 

 and fourteen elementary marks, which Dr. Marshman has endeavoured to do, 



III. INDH-ANTS, or POINTERS : from their indicating or pointing out the relative form or position of what 

 is predicated : as, 



Chdng __ * Above, now written r 



T 



Three, 



IV. ANTITIIETICS, or CONTRARIES: formed by inverting or reversing the character ; and hence requir 

 ing an antithetic or correspondent signification : as, 



Modern Forms. 



Tio r~ Left Hand, reversed is G6ou >v Right Hand, ^: and J_* 



I Standing up, and, ) p- I Lying down, ) ^ 



Tchinw "Tj \ hence, " Correct," > Fa ~T| < and, hence, > i^ and *y 



' U~ ("Proper." ) " ("Defect." ) " " h ' /~ 



Jin J~) a Living Man, Chi "p^* Dead Boly, ^4^ and 



Most of the Chinese characters may be classed under one of these four heads. , The two remaining classes 

 do not appear to be so intimately connected with a pictorial or gin. 



The two hundred and fourteen elementary keys, or radicals of the language, are divided into seventeen 

 clashes*, according to the number of strokes of which each element or radical consists. It is probable, 

 however, that all the more complicated, and, indeed, great numbers of all those that possess more than five 

 or six strokes, are as strictly compounds as any in the language, though t,hs lexicographers are incapable^ 

 of re.lucing thorn to their constituent principles ; and hence allow (hem to stand as primitives among such 

 as are of simpler construction ; and hence the total number of primitives are reckoned at about sixteen 

 hundred, each of them producing from three to seventy-four derivatives ; and hereby constituting the great 

 mas3 of the Chinese written language. 



* Elements of Chinese Grammar, with a preliminary Dissertation on the Characters and Colloquial Me- 

 turn of lha Chinese, &c. By J. Marshman, D.D., Serampore, 1814, 4to. 



