MEMOIRS 
OF THE 
CARNEGIE MUSEUM. 
VOL. IV. INO I: 
EARLY CHINESE WRITING. 
By Rey. Frank H. CHALFANT. 
I. Illustrations of Early Writing Derived from Ancient Inscriptions. 
II. Notes upon the ‘‘Shuo Wén.”’ 
III. The Royal Edict Confirming the Domain of San. 
IV. Ancient Inscriptions upon Bone and Tortoise Shell. 
Preratory Nore. 
The Rey. Frank H. Chalfant, who for nineteen years has been a missionary in 
the Province of Shantung, China, has devoted much time to the study of Chinese 
archeology, and more particularly to the ancient Chinese writings which tend to 
throw light upon the origin of the present written and printed symbols. Upon the 
oceasion of a recent visit to the United States the writer induced Mr. Chalfant 
to put into shape for publication the following memoir upon which he had for 
several years been laboring at moments of leisure. Jt embodies a large amount of 
interesting and curious information collated from Chinese sources, which, though in 
part known to students of the Chinese language, has not been put into a form easily 
accessible to philologists. Mr. Chalfant in his memoir has not confined himself to 
material known hitherto, but has embodied in his paper the results of original 
observations made by him upon archeological material acquired by himself and 
others from the Province of Honan, consisting of inscriptions of great antiquity 
upon bone and tortoise-shell. This material when further examined promises to 
yield valuable results. For the first time, so far as is known to the writer, a tenta- 
tive translation of the edict designated by Mr. Chalfant as “The San Edict” is 
given. This is a legal paper of undoubted antiquity, going back at least to 1000 
B.C. 
