208 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[July 2, 1888. 



especially Confucius ; to act in a filial manner as a son ; to 

 treat as a son ; an beir, issue, posterity ; a seed, a kernel ; a 

 term of respect, you, sir ; or more familiarly a comrade ; an 

 officer ; a viscount ; the first of the Twelve Stems, relating 

 to water and denoted by the lat ; applied to the eleventh 

 moon, and to the third watch from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. ; north, 

 on the compass card ; a spot ; subordinate ; itc, &c., itc. 



•^ Tang. What is suitable, opportune, convenient, or 

 just; adequate to, competent; to bear, to take the responsi- 

 bility ; to act as, to be ; equal to, to match ; to make ; to 

 stand in contra.st ; to meet or occur : at the time of, when — 

 in which sense it is often a form of the present participle ; 

 used as a particle, as, then, or throwing the sentence into 

 the future tense ; to decide, to manage, to mete out ; to 

 withstand, to bear against ; to screen ; to pawn or pledge ; 

 to consider as, reputed or looked upon as ; to serve an end ; 

 instead of, as, for ; to suit with ; suitable, favourable ; to 

 deceive, to swindle; basis, foundation. 



^ when read Kih, means to respect; to beat; when 

 read Yoh, it means a bright, pleasing sight, as a fine land- 

 scape. 



One would naturally think that this strange phenomenon 

 would cause great difficulties in conversation ; but these are 

 partially obviated by the introduction of the system of 

 tones, of which there are four in the Peking Mandarin 

 dialect, and five in the Nanking IMandarin dialect ; partially 

 by the context in which such words are placed, and 

 partially by the fact that although Chine.se is monosyllabic, 

 a large proportion of the parts of speech are formed of two 

 characters joined, or in apposition, of which each supple- 

 ments and explains the other, the sound presenting a dis- 

 tinct dissyllable. As Sir Thomas Wade says : " Just as in 

 English, if it be necessary to particularise whether by a 

 certain sound we mean wright, write, right, or rite, we 

 make our meaning clear by a co'ntext which shows whether 

 the syllable uttered is that in shipwright, to write letters, 

 right and left, or rite of baptism, so a Chinese will explain 

 that the ai he is speaking of is the ai in ai-ch'iu, to im- 

 plore, in ch'cn-ai, dust, in k((o-ai, tall and short, or in 

 ai-fmi, to love ; but homophony being, in his language, as 

 much the rule as in ours it is the exception, he is very 

 constantly obliged to fall back on this expedient." In 

 writing this difliculty of course does not occur, the context 

 being clear. 



The Chinese affirm that in high antiquity they used 

 knotted cords instead of letters to constitute the signs of 

 ideas, and convey the commands of their rulers. This 

 means of communication was afterwards succeeded by 

 symbols, from which the present system of writing was 

 derived. Chinese historians attribute the invention of this 

 system to Tsang-hee, who lived in the reign of Hwang-te, 

 more than two thousand years before the Christian era, 

 who from observing a constellation in the heavens, the 

 marks on the shell of a tortoise, and the print of a horse's 

 hoof on the ground, conceived the idea of such a method of 

 communication thiough the eye, in fact a system of ideo- 

 giaphy. 



The idea that the development of the present system was 

 artificial, as suggested in the above legend, cannot be 

 seriously entertained, it was doubtless gradually and 

 naturally evolved from the primitive picture-writing under 

 the law of conservation of energy, by which a single line in 

 time comes to do service for a whole figure. Modern 

 researches endorse the opinion of PavVshi, a Chinese scholar 

 who lived about 1100 B.C., and who stated in his work that 

 the gi-eater part of the Chinese characters were originally 

 hieroglyphic ; but gradually changed for the sake of appear- 

 ance and convenience. 



The ultimate scheme is reducible to a few simple prin- 



ciples : — 1. Resemblance of the figure to the object signified ; 

 as a circle for sun, a crescent for moon and the like. 

 2. Reference to some property or circumstance. 3. Com- 

 bination of thoughts as truth, a combination of the signs for 

 man and irord. 4. Contraries are expressed by reversing 

 or inverting the character, and so on. 



A symbol representing two men with their backs towards 

 each other, pronounced pili, signifies perver.se, to turn away 

 from, retreat, and in the modern language "the north," 

 i.e. the back of the world. A combination of the words for 

 "human hair" and "changing" means old. A certain 

 character is doubled to mean " to follow," and tripled to 

 represent " many." 



The whole of the Chinese language is arranged in the 

 dictionaries under 214 roots, or radical .and original 

 characters, which enter into the composition and influence 

 the meaning of every word in the langu.age, which are 

 arranged as follows by Sir J. F. Davis.* 



Classes. Classes. 



Human kind and its Objects in early ai-t . 41 



relations . .14 Numbers ... 5 



Mammalia . . S Actions (verbs) . . .37 



Other animals . . 7 Qualities (adjectives) .30 



Vegetables . .13 Undefined. . . 1 



Minerals ... 5 



Parts of animals . 28 i 214 

 Other objects in nature 25 



Analysing a dictionai-y containing about 11,GG0 words, 

 the above-named author compiled a series of most interest- 

 ing table.s, showing the total number of compound woi-ds 

 into which each root enters, from which tables it may be 

 seen that one word may give rise to some hundreds, for 

 example, the word meaning " to walk swiftly " enters into 

 145 compounds, "to speak, express," into 373, "wheel, 

 carriage," into 127, " garment " into 184, and so on, the 

 seven most prolific roots comprehending between them no 

 less than 3,385 words, classed as follows : — 



Compound. | Compound. 



Man . . . 47S I Tree, wood . . 493 

 Mouth . . 437 Grass, herbs . 470 



Heart. . . 4G7 And water . . 548 



Hand. . . 492 



The word " man " combined with " one " means alone, 

 deserted ; with " hundred " it signifies centurion, with 

 "field," husbandman; with "village," rustic; with 

 "emperor," noble, elevated; with "justice," right, correct, 

 and so on. The character meaning Sin, " the heart," which 

 is regarded among the Chinese as the seat of the affections, 

 emotions and intellect, combined with hea, " downwards," 

 means downhearted, with taou, " a knife," grieved ; with urh, 

 " the ear," it forms che, conscience, a sense of shame, &c. Under 

 the radical che, " hog," is classed seang, " an elephant," 

 under new, " an ox," se, " a rhinoceros," under the root 

 for "dog" come wolf, fox, ape, and lion. The roots thus 

 serve as the generic beads of the words into the composition 

 of which they enter. 



Tlie process of the development of abstract from concrete 

 words, which may be compared to that of the conventional 

 sign from the primitive picture, can be more clearly traced 

 in Chinese than in any other language, although in all it can 

 be shown to have gone on the same lines. 



Thus, dr, infant, used also as "little"; in diminutives 

 sill, a character composed of those meaning heart and blood, 

 signifies " pity " ; i/e (roof, man, dark) " night " ; the ancient 

 character for gdn, " peace," " tranquillity," represented a 

 woman under a roof — sitting quiet at home. Doctrine is 



* See " Chinese Miscellanies," pp. 78-82. 



