722 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [December, 1911. 
balladry, which with both came to be largely encrusted with 
myth. While, however, the ballads of China were fundamentally 
based on historic events, round which from the very necessity 
of the case became entangled myths of more or less transparent 
to the dignity of current language, which they had no idea of in 
any way representing ; they had not even attained to the perfec- 
tion of hieroglyphics, but nevertheless by a system of mutually 
understood symbols, sufficiently explicit to be understood amongst 
experts, they had attained a certain facility in constructing 
annals, or as they called them in the current speech of the day, 
“‘ springs and autumns,’’ which for some centuries preserved in @ 
tangible form the remembrance of the main events occurring 
a injudicious rewards offered by the Han emperors for 
the discovery of ancient documents, and partly owing to the 
introduction by the Buddhist missionaries of stories translated 
