CHAP. VI.

LANGUAGE.-LITERATURE, AND THE FINE ARTS.-SCIENCES.MECHANICS, AND MEDICINE.

Opinion, of the Chinese Language being hieroglyphical, erroneous.-Doctor Hager's mistakes.-Etymological Comparisons fallacious.-Examples of.-Nature of the Chinese written Character.-Difficulty and Ambiguity of.-Curious Mistake of an eminent Antiquarian. Mode of acquiring the Character.—Oral Language.-Mantchoo Tartar Alphabet.-Chinese Literature.-Astronomy. -Chronology.-Cycle of sixty Years.-Geography.-Arithmetic.-Chemical Arts. Cannon and Gunpowder.-Distillation.-Potteries.-Silk Manufactures. -Ivory-Bamboo.-Paper.-Ink.-Printing.--Mechanics.—Music.--Painting.-Sculpture.—Architecture.—Hotel of the English Embassador in Pekin.The Great Wall.-The_Grand Canal.-Bridges.-Cemeteries.-Natural Philosophy. Medicine.-Chinese Pharmacopoeia.-Quacks.-Contagious Fevers. -Small-pox.-Opthalmia.-Venereal Disease.-Midwifery.-Surgery.-Doctor Gregory's Opinion of their Medical Knowledge:-Sir William Jones's Opinion of their general Character.

IF no traces remained, nor any authorities could be produced, of the antiquity of the Chinese nation, except the written character of their language, this alone would be sufficient to decide that point in its favour. There is so much originality in this language, and such a great and essential difference between it and that of any other nation not immediately derived from the Chinese, that not the most distant degree of affinity can be discovered, either with regard to the form of the character, the system on which it is constructed, or the idiom, with any other known language upon the face of the globe. Authors, however, and some of high reputation, have been led to suppose that, in the Chinese character, they could trace some relation to those hieroglyphical or sacred inscriptions found. among the remains of the ancient Egyptians; others have considered it to be a modification of hieroglyphic writing, and that each character was the symbol or comprehensive form of the idea it was meant to express, or, in other words, an abstract

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delineation of the object intended to be represented. To strengthen such an opinion, they have ingeniously selected a few instances where, by adding to one part, and curtailing another, changing a straight line into a curved one, or a square into a circle, something might be made out that approached to the picture, or the object of the idea conveyed by the character, as, for example, the character, representing a‘CULTIVATED PIECE OF GROUND, they supposed it to be the picture of an inclosure, turned up in ridges; yet, it so happens that, in this country, there are no inclosures; the character, MOUTH, has been considered by them a very close resemblance of that object; and T ABOVE and BELOW, distinctly marked these points of position; the character sig nifying MAN, is, according to their opinion, obviously an abbreviated representation of the human figure; yet, the very same character, with an additional line across, thus, which by the way approaches nearer to the human figure, having how arms as well as legs, signifies the abstract quality GREAT and with a second line, thus the material or visible HEAVEN, between either of which and MAN it would be no easy task to find out the analogy; and still less so to trace an affinity between any of them and which signifies a dog.

It is true, certain ancient characters are still extant, in which a rude representation of the image is employed; as for instance, a circle for the sun, and a crescent for the moon, but these appear to have been used only as abbreviations, in the same manner as these objects are still characterized in our almanacks, and in our astronomical calculations. Thus also the kingdom of China is designed by a square, with a vertical line drawn through the middle, in conformity perhaps with their ideas of the earth being a square, and China placed in its centre. So far these may be considered as symbols of the objects intended to be represented, So, also, the numerals one, two, three, being designed by would na

turally suggest themselves as being fully as convenient for the purpose, and perhaps more so than any other; and where the first series of numerals ended, which, according to the universal custom of counting by the fingers, was at ten, the very

act of placing the index of the right hand on the little finger of the left would suggest the form of the vertical cross x as the symbol or representation of the number ten.

I cannot avoid taking notice, in this place, of a publication of doctor Hager, which he calls an "Explanation of the Elementary Characters of the Chinese." In this work he has advanced a most extraordinary argument, to prove an analogy between the ancient Romans and the Chinese, from the resemblance which he has fancied to exist between the numeral characters and the numeral sounds made use of by those two nations. The Romans he observes, expressed their numerals one, two, three, by a corresponding number of vertical strokes I. II. III. which the Chinese place horizontally

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Romans designed the number ten by an oblique cross X and the Chinese by a vertical one x. This resemblance in the forming of their numerals, so simple and natural, that almost all nations have adopted it, is surely too slight a coincidence for concluding that the people who use them must necessarily, at some period or other, have had communication together. The doctor, however, seems to think so; and proceeds to observe, that the three principal Roman cyphers, I. V. X. or one, five and ten, are denoted in the Chinese language by the same sounds that they express in the Roman alphabet. This remark, although ingenious, is not correct. One and five, it is true, are expressed in the Chinese language by the y and ou of the French, which, it may be presumed, were the sounds that the lettres I. and V. obtained in the ancient Roman alphabet; but, with regard to the ten, or X, which, he says, the Chinese pronounce xe, he is entirely mistaken; the Chinese word for ten in Pekin being shee, and in Canton shap. This error the doctor appears to have been led into by consulting some vocabulary in the Chinese and Portuguese languages; in the latter of which the letter X is pronounced like our sh. But admitting, in its fullest extent, the resemblance of some of the numerals used by the two nations, in the shape of the character, and of others in the sound, it certainly cannot be assumed to prove any thing beyond a mere accidental coincidence.

The earliest accounts of China, after the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope, being written by Portuguese missionaries, and the Chinese proper names still remaining to be spelled in the letters of that alphabet, have led several etymologists into

great errors, not only with regard to the letter X, but more particularly in the m final, and the h incipient; the former being pronounced ng, and the latter with a strong aspirate, as sh. Thus, the name of the second emperor of the present dynasty is almost universally written in Europe Cam-hi, whereas it is as universally pronounced in China Caung-shee.

The learned doctor seems to be still less happy in his next conjecture, where he observes that, as the Romans expressed their five by simply dividing the X, or ten, so also the ancient character, signifying five, with the Chinese-was X, or ten, between two lines, thus ; indicating, as it were, that the number ten was divided in two. The doctor seems to have forgotten that he has here placed his cross in the Roman form, and not as the Chinese write it; and it is certainly a strange way of cutting a thing in two, by enclosing it between two lines: but the learned seldom baulk an absurdity, when a system is to be established. The Chinese character for five is

Of all deductions, those drawn from etymological comparisions are, perhaps, the most fallacious. Were these allowed to have any weight, the Chinese spoken language is of such a nature, that it would be no difficult task to point out its relationship to that of every nation upon earth. Being entirely monosyllabic, and each word ending in a vowel or a liquid, and being, at the same time, deprived of the sounds of several letters in our alphabet, it becomes necessarily incapable of supplying any great number of distinct syllables. Three hundred are, in fact, nearly as many as an European tongue can articulate, or ear distinguish. It follows, of course, that the same sound must have a great variety of significations. The syllable ching, for example, is actually expressed by fifty-one different characters, each having a different, unconnected, and opposite meaning; but it would be the height of absurdity to attempt to prove the coincidence of any other language with the Chinese, because it might happen to possess a word something like the sound of ching, which might also bear a signification not very different from one of those fifty-one that it held in the Chinese.

The Greek abounds with Chinese words. Ku, a dog, is in Chinese both keou and keun, expressive of the same animal good, is not very different from the Chinese hau, which

signifies the same quality; and the article is not far remote from ta, he, or that. Both Greeks and Romans might recog

nise their first personal pronoun yw, or ego, in go, or, as it is sometimes written, ngo. The Italian affirmative, si, is sufficiently near the Chinese shee, or zee, expressing assent. The French étang, and the Chinese tang, a pond or lake, are nearly the same, and their two negatives pas and poo are not very remote. Lex, loi, le, law, compared with leu, lee, laws and institutes, are examples of analogy that would be decisive to the etymological inquirer. The English word mien, the countenance, and the Chinese mien, expressing the same idea, are nothing different; and we might be supposed to have taken our goose from their goo. To sing is chaung, which comes very near our chaunt. The Chinese call a cat, miau, and so does the Hottentot. The Malay word, to know, is tau, and the Chinese monosyllable for the same verb is also tau, though in conversation they generally use the compound tchee-tau, each of which separately have nearly the same meaning. The Sumatrans have mau for mother, the Chinese say moo. On grounds equally slight with these have many attempts been made to form conclusions from etymological comparisons. If I mistake not, the very ingenious Mr. Bryant makes the word gate a derivative from the Indian word ghaut, a pass between mountains. Surely this is going a great deal too far for our little monosyllable. Might we not with as great a degree of priety fetch our shallow or shoal from China, where sha-loo signifies a flat sand, occasionally covered with the tide ? A noted antiquarian has been led into some comical mistakes in his attempt to establish a resemblance between the Chinese and the Irish languages, frequently by his having considered the letters of the continental alphabet, in which the Chinese vocabulary he consulted was written, to be pronounced in the same manner as his own*.

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For the curiosity of those who may be inclined to speculate in etymological comparisons between the Chinese and other languages, I here subjoin a short list of words in the former, expressing some of the most striking objects in the creation, a few subjects of natural history, and of such articles as from their general use are familiar to most nations; these being of all others the most likely to have retained their primitive names. The orthography I have used is that of the English language.