450 CHINESE FISHING 
covered by this period, if the Line claimed adherents,! Nets 
made of fine bamboo, with bags arranged in front of wooden 
stockades planted on the banks of rivers,? were the general 
method.? 
Although the Chinese have produced quite a considerable 
literature on Fishing, the path of a writer unversed in 
their language is, from the absence of translations, com- 
passed about with many difficulties. The trail winds dim 
and Serbonian, even if, as was my good fortune, a friendly 
hand holds out now and then a torch to guide his faltering 
steps.4 
The dividing line between the historical and the non- 
historical in China does not cut clearly and without breaks. 
History as distinct from legend was assumed till recently to 
begin between goo and 800 B.c., but three archeological dis- 
coveries have affected previous chronological conceptions. 
I. The inscribed bone fragments (till the advent of paper, 
c. 100 B.C., bones, stones, bronzes and tablets of wood served 
for papyri) found in Honan apparently carry as far back as 
c. 1500 B.c., and shed quite new light on the character of the 
early Chinese script. Among the divination tablets I had 
hoped for some fish omens similar to those of Assyria, Greece, 
and Rome, or some trace of the belief still current in Southern 
China that certain fish, as the Dolphin in the Mediterranean, 
were weather-prophets: but, owing probably to the dry 
character of the country of which they are the voice or rather 
the testament, none survive.5 
2. The wooden tablets at Tunhuang along the Great Wall 
which illumine social conditions and deal largely with the 
commissariat of the army. 
3. The MSS. at the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, found 
about 1907. Coming from a Buddhist monastery, they give 
in the main Buddhist texts, but also (as do the Egyptian 
1 I shih ching, i. 5, v. i., ii. 8, abud Werner. 
2 [bid. i. 5, iii. 4. 
3 Jbid. i. 8, ii. 5. 
4 To my friend Dr. Lionel Giles of the British Museum, and to his father, 
Prof.H. A. Giles of Cambridge, my thanks are due for leading and kindly lights. 
5 See L. C. Hopkins in New China Review, 1917, 1918, 1919. 
