206 SURGEON-GENERAL C. A. GORDON. 
‘“‘ Emperors,” whose reigns begin in B.C. 2362, 2432, 2510, 2594, 
and at last Hwang Ti’s in 2697. At this point we have done with 
Ch-ien, but the chronological tables, containing a good many other 
names, and among them especially Yen Ti, or Shin-ning, called by 
many “The Divine Husbandman,” and Thai-héo or Fi-hsi, or 
Fo-hi, who used always to be called the Founder of the Chinese 
Empire. Where in chronology are we to place these two? I have 
often amused myself with putting together the figures supplied in 
various compendia of the most ancient history and have brought out 
for Shan-ning the date of B.C. 3072, and for Fo-hi 3322. My judg- 
ment is that if we put down the beginning of the Chinese kingdom 
at B.C. 3000 we are within, rather than beyond, the proper limit. 
I cannot in these desultory observations enter into a detail of my 
reasons for that judgment. 
My principal one is connected— 
IV. With the formation and nature of the Chinese written 
characters. 
I consider Dr. Gordon has been led into error on this subject, 
but for which he would have come, I think, to a very different 
conclusion from that which his paper indicates about Chinese 
chronology. In a note on page 185, he says: “The use of written 
characters by the Chinese is assigned to the Shang dynasty, con- 
sisting at first of little more than rude representations of common 
objects. Prior to about B.C. 1600 the records of government 
were said to have consisted merely of knotted cords.” The only . 
classical witness about such cords that I have seen is in one of 
the appendices to the Yih King, where it is said that “in the 
highest antiquity,’ prior, that is, as we see from the context, 
to Fo-hi, Shin-ning, Hwang Ti, Yao, Shun, and Yu, government 
was carried on by the use of knotted cords, and subsequently ~ 
the sages substituted for these written characters and bonds. The » 
Yih King does not say who the sages that substituted these written 
characters were. It is a pity, for the system of its written characters 
is, I think, the greatest thing that the Chinese race has done,— 
greater than the Great Wall of Shih Hwang Ti, greater than the 
Grand Canal of Kublai. The honour is ascribed to Fo-hi him- 
self, or to a Tsang Chieh before him, or at latest a minister of 
Hwang Ti. 
Dr. Gordon thinks they were the work of the Shang dynasty, 
because my friend, Dr. Chalmers, a very great Chinese scholar indeed, 
but liable to err, like all other men, has speculated to that effect. 
