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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
More than two years ago, the 10th of May, 1880, at a special meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society, I presented a paper on L'Histoire de la Langue Chinoise, in which I communicated my discoveries on the old phonetic laws of the orthography of the Ancient Chinese writing,—the derivation of this writing from the pre-cuneiform characters of Southwestern Asia,—and also the nature and contents of the long-disputed book, the Yh-King. I have delayed the printing of that paper in order to make it more precise and complete, but parts of its contents, as well as several results of my researches, have been published, by my friend Prof. R. K. Douglas and by myself.
page 781 note 1 See ProfDouglas, , The Progress of Chinese Linguistic Discovery, “The Times,” 04 20, 1880Google Scholar; reprinted in Trübner's American, European, and Oriental Literary Record, new series, vol. i. pp. 125–127Google Scholar, and my China and the Chinese: their early history and future prospects, in the Journal of the Society of Arts, 07 16, 1880Google Scholar. Early History of the Chinese Civilization (with plate of old Chinese characters borrowed from the pre-cuneiform writing), London, 1880 (Trübner).
page 781 note 2 Vid. an anonymous paper on Chinese and Babylonian Literature in Quarterly Review of 07, 1882Google Scholar; and Prof. Douglas's charming volume on China (London, 1882, 8vo.)Google Scholar. Vid. also the valuable report to the Philological Society, 1882Google Scholar, on The Progress of Assyriology, by Mr. T. G. Pinches.
page 781 note 3 Published in The Athenœum, 01 21, 1882Google Scholar, as follows: “In company with the general body of Sinologists, I read with pleasure in your issue of the 7th your announcement that Dr. Legge's translation of the ‘Yh King,’ for the ‘Sacred Books of the East’ series, will be out about Easter. But the paragraph adds: ‘Curiously enough, some Chinese scholars pretend that the book is written in the Accadian language.’ As I was the first Sinologist to point out, two years ago, that the early Chinese civilization had been borrowed by the so-called Hundred families from the south of the Caspian Sea, I fear that the rather wild statement that the ‘Yh King’ was written in the Akkadian language may be confused with my own views, and I am, therefore, bound to protest against it. As the Chinese scholars, both Eoglish and Chinese, to whom I had occasion to submit my translation, attach, as I do myself, great importance to my discovery about the ‘Yh King,’ and as this discovery has caused so eminent a Sinologist as Prof. Douglas, of the British Museum, to join me in the preparation of a translation of the ‘Yh King,’ which we shall publish in English, and also in Chinese in China, it is important to state on what ground it stands.
It deals only with the oldest part of the book, the short lists of characters which follow each of the sixty-four headings of the chapters, and it leaves entirely aside the explanations and commentaries attributed to Wen Wang, Chöu Kung, Confucius, and others, from 1200 B.C. downwards, which are commonly embodied as an integral part of the classic. The proportion of the primitive text to these additions is about one-sixth of the whole. The contents of this primitive part of the book are not homogeneous, and belong to different periods of the early history of the Chinese. It has been made up to the number of sixty-four parts, to correspond with the speculations of numbers on the Kwa, at which time these old fragments and the mystical strokes have been joined together. To reach the sacred number of sixty-four it has been found advisable by the compiler to add texts much more recent than the older ones, of which the real meaning had been lost through the lapse of time and changes in the language. So different in subject are the various chapters that we find, for example, in several of them, curious ballads on historical or legendary events. In others we have descriptions of aboriginal tribes of China, their customs, the meanings of some of their words homonymous to the Chinese ones, instructions to the officials about them, and descriptions of the animals, which descriptions in the greatest number of cases are given in relation to their meanings of the character which is the subject of the chapter. Besides all this—and it is the most curious part of the book as well as the most special result of my discovery—we have a good number of chapters which are nothing else than mere lists of the meanings of the character placed at the head of the chapter. These lists are extraordinarily like the so-called syllabaries preserved in the Cuneiform characters, which were copied, as we know, by order of the Assyrian monarchs from older ones of Babylonia. The system of having such phonetic dictionaries with others of different kinds is a peculiar feature of the old Akkadian culture, on the mixed origin of which there is nothing here to say excepting this, that it was not carried bodily into Babylonia, but sprang up in that region from the intrusion of Northern peoples amongst the highly cultured Cushite populations, who had settled there and possessed that writing of hieroglyphic origin which became the Akkadian and later on the Cuneiform characters. Now there are many most serious facts which prove that writing and the elements of sciences, arts, and government were acquired in Southwestern Asia by the future Chinese colonists from a centre of activity where the Babylonian or Akkadian culture had more or less directly been spread. It seems only natural, therefore, that the early Chinese leaders should have been induced, not only to keep some of the lists of values of the written characters which they had learned, but also to continue the same practice of making lists in relation to the peoples, customs, etc., of their new country. And though extraordinary, it is not astonishing that some of the oldest lists resemble the lists kept in the Cuneiform characters, and that I was able to exhibit two years ago at the Boyal Asiatic Society four of those lists which run parallel in the ‘Yh King’ and in the Cuneiform texts. And no doubt the impossibility of reading, as current phrases and texts, simple lists of meanings accounts for the absolute obscurity of these parts of the book, and the astounding number of interpretations which have been proposed by native Chinese scholars. European scholars are engaged on the same path. We have already the Latin translation by P. Regis and others, made with the help of the Manchu version, which is quite unintelligible; the English translation of Canon McClatchie in the sense of a cosmogony; and the Latin translation in the ‘Cursus Linguae Sinicse,’ in course of publication at Shanghai, where is to be found one of the best translations of the Chinese classics which have ever been made. Besides these three, another translation in French is announced as being about to be published in the Annales du Musée Guimet, by M. E. Philastre, who for some years was a high official in Cochin China; this translation will exhibit a system of philosophy if we may judge from what the author has already written.
Dr. Legge's translation will certainly be an improvement upon the others already published. The many years of work which this Sinologist has spent upon it and his study of the commentaries will undoubtedly result in a great amount of information, as in his edition of some of the other Chinese classics.
So in a short time European scholars will have five translations of the ‘Yh King’ to compare, and when our translation, the sixth, appears, they will be able to decide which is the most faithful.”
page 783 note 1 Several misleading statements about the authorship and contents of this mysterious book, and the manner of translating it, have been lately published in an important place, The Sacred Books of the East, vol. xviGoogle Scholar., the Ti-King, translated by J. Legge. The author has answered in his Preface, p. xixGoogle Scholar, rather sharply to the above letter of mine, and though he has made a Yh-King of his own fashion, having formulated the scheme supposed by some commentators more concisely than they have done (Vid. ibid. p. xiv), he dismisses the possibility of understanding the text of the book in a manner different from his own, for the reason that, according to his views and in his own words, “if you discard the explanations and commentaries attributed to King Wan, the Duke of Kaü, and Confucius, we take away the whole Yî. There remain only the linear figures attributed to Fû-hsi, without any lists of characters, long or short, without a single written character of any kind whatever.” The proofs of the inaccuracy of these statements of Dr. Legge will be found throughout the following pages. His version has been thoroughly refuted by Prof. Douglas, in the Academy of 07 12th, 1882, pp. 121–122Google Scholar, where is given a comparative version, according to our views, of the 30th chapter of the Yh. Vid. also my letters in the Athenœum, 09 9 and 30, 1882.Google Scholar
page 784 note 1 The italicised words are borrowed from Dr. Legge's Preface, in which we read also: “There is hardly another work in the ancient literature of China that presents the same difficulties to translate.” See pp. xiii, xiv, xv.
page 784 note 2 
. Cf. Bridgman, E. C., Chinese Chrestomathy (Macao, 1841, 4to.), p. xvii.Google Scholar
page 784 note 3 The K'ang Hi's Imperial edition of the Yh-King, which appeared in 1715, contains quotations from the commentaries of 218 scholars, and these are (we take the words of DrLegge, , Introd. p. 3Google Scholar) hardly a tenth of the men who have tried to interpret this remarkable book.
page 784 note 4 The book opens with the Yh-King, the first of the classics, as do all the bibliographies, from the catalogue of the Han period downwards.
page 784 note 5 See Notes on Chinese Literature (Shanghae, 1867, 4to.), p. 1.Google Scholar
page 784 note 6 In the ordinary phraseology of the Yh, the lower one is called 
; and the upper one 
. The lines are: the 
yang, 
strong, 
= 9, entire, undivided, and the 
yn, 
weak, 
= 6, broken, divided.
page 785 note 1 In a day of wisdom, a known Sinologist, Dr. Legge, in his version of the Tso-chuen (Chín. Class, vol. v. p. 169aGoogle Scholar), has made npon a quotation of the Yh-King this comment: “But it seems to me of no use trying to make out any principle of reason in passages like the present.” This view is the true one, but we are sorry that the learned missionary, to whom we are indebted for a valuable though unequal version of several of the Chinese classics, has not stuck to it and refrained from publishing his paraphrase of the Yh-King. Speaking (The Yî-King, Pref. p. xvGoogle Scholar) of the literal Latin version done by PP. Regis, De Mailla, and Du Tartre, and also of his own first version, Dr. Legge writes: “But their version is all but unintelligible, and mine was not less so.” However, Prof. Regis and his coadjutors had at their disposal all the help that Chinese lore could throw upon the Yh.
page 786 note 1 Such as the 
.
page 786 note 2 In each, the first line of every chapter attributed to the entire diagram is considered as one part, called Twan or Siang, and the after lines as another part, called Twan chuen or Siang chuen respectively. The text is sometimes called 
.
page 786 note 3 Wen Wang 
“King Wen,” or more properly the Elegant King, a posthumous title conferred by his son 
Tan 
Chöu Kung, the Duke of Chöu, to 
Ch'ang, the Chief of the West 
, father of 
Fa, posthumously called Wu Wang 
, the founder (1169–1116) of the Chöu dynasty. Wen Wang (1231–1135), for a state offence, was imprisoned at Yu Li 
, during two years (1144–1143), which he spent on the Yh-King. The 
of which the chronology down to 826 B.C. is different from the one commonly received, states that he remained six years in confinement.
page 786 note 4 Cf. Wen Yen, 1st Kwa, §§ 1–3, and Tso chuen, Duke Siang, IXth year, § 3, in Legge's edition, p. 440.
page 789 note 1 Li Tai Wang nien piao, p. 5.
page 789 note 2 Tai Hao = ‘great whitish,’ also the ‘western region’:—Fuh-hi, also written i different manners 
.
page 789 note 3 
in Tai Ping yü lan, K. 78, f. 3.
page 790 note 1 
, f. 34, in the great Cyclopedia in 10,000 Kiuen, Kin ting Ku Kin t'u shu tsih cheng.
page 790 note 2 
page 790 note 3 
page 790 note 4 Vid. f. 1 v. and f. 3.
page 790 note 5 Shen-nung, 2737–2697 B.C ?
page 790 note 6 Vid. Tai Ping Yü Lan, K. 78, f. 5 v. Vid. n. 3, following page.
page 791 note 1 
, 2nd part, ch. ii.
page 791 note 2 16, 17, 21, 34, 38, 42, 43, 59, 62.
page 791 note 3 
K. 609, f. 2. A very interesting notice of this Cyclopedia, and its adventures since its compilation, is given by MrWylie, A., Notes on Chinese Literature, pp. 146, 147Google Scholar. On Hwang P'u Mih, vid. Dr. Legge's Prolegomena to the Shu-King, p. 26Google Scholar; and also Mayer, 's Chinese Reader's Manual, n. 216.Google Scholar
page 791 note 4 Yen-Ti = Shen-nung.
page 791 note 5 The Lien-shan is said to have included eight myriads of words, and the Kweitsang 4300. I shall discuss this tradition and its bearing when tracing the history of the written text of the Yh, and shall quote a traditional list of the headings of chapters which have been modified by Wen Wang. Vid. § 31.
page 791 note 6 
Kiuen 2, f. 1. In Wylie, 's Notes on Chinese Literature, p. 24Google Scholar, is the following appreciation of the work:—“The historical portion is considered of little value, and the author seems to have been led astray by an undue attachment to Taouist legends, but there is a good deal of learning shown in the geographical and critical parts” (here quoted).
page 792 note 1 Mi-tze, part ii. ch. 7 and 11.
page 793 note 1 The period of middle antiquity, according to Chinese commentators, begins with the rise of the Chöu in the twelfth century B.C. and it finishes at the Confucian Era. But we are not sure that this explanation has not been made up for the occasion of this passage.
page 793 note 2 See Kiuen 4, f. 5 v.
page 793 note 3 It seems to me that we cannot translate here, otherwise than considering 
as having its meaning = 
; else the phrase would be in contradiction with the facts certainly known to Se-ma Tsien and his father, of the multiplication of the Kwas before the time of Wen Wang. For this manner of translating see Julien, , Syntaxe nouvelle, vol. i. p. 159Google Scholar, and Legge, 's Chinese ClassicsGoogle Scholar, passim. If my translation of this phrase were not the right one, how is it that Pan fiu has not repeated the same thing, but gives a statement which is much more in accordance with my translation? However, it is rather unsatisfactory.
page 794 note 1 Vid. 
, Kiuen 30, f. 2.
page 794 note 2 Vid. She Ki, K. 47, Kung tze She Kia, f. 24 v.
page 794 note 3 For the use of the same word with the same meaning in the same chapter, see ibid, f. 23 v.
page 794 note 4 These, with the 
and 
, are all the appendixes of the Yh.
page 794 note 5 DrLegge, , Yî King, Introd. p. 26.Google Scholar
page 795 note 1 Tso Chum, Duke Ch'ao, 2nd year. Legge edit. p. 583Google Scholar, translates:—“When he looked at the (various) documents in the charge of the great historiographer, and the Ch'un Ts'iew of Loo, he said, ‘The institutes of Chow are all in Loo. Now, indeed, I know the virtue of the Duke of Chow, and how it was that (the House of) Chow attained to the Royal dignity.’”
page 797 note 1 One of the most striking passages from the Tso-chuen, justifying all that we have stated, is the quotation said to he from the 18th Kwa 
, and in which are quoted meanings borrowed from the 40th Kwa 
, in different order and with serious discrepancies of characters. This occurs during the fifteenth year of Duke Hi, and is not quoted as from the Yh of Chöu. It comes obviously from the older text, previously to its arrangement by Wen Wang.
page 797 note 2 He says (according to the 
k. xxv. f. 2 v.): “Fuh-hi made the 64 Kwas 
Chöu Kung connected the words of the lines 
with the main emblems 
, the prognostics 
, the Kwas 
and the series of their mutations and explanations 
.”
page 797 note 3 However, we shall be contented to quote one of the best European Sinologists who mentions the primitive text of the Yh. “According to the Chinese belief, these eight figures (the eight Kwas), together with the sixty-four combinations to which they are extended, accompanied by certain presumptive explanations attributed to Fuh-hi, were the basis of an ancient system of philosophy and divination during the centuries preceding the era of Wen Wang …” See Mayer, 's Chinese Reader's Manual, vol. ii. p. 241Google Scholar, who quotes (p. 336) his native authorities, none of which have been quoted above, and consequently are to be added to them.
page 798 note 1 In a dictionary of the Han period, the 
(2nd cent. A.D. we read that “At the time of the Canon of Yao 
(2356–2255 B.C. or 2146–2042 B.C.they kept the Yh 
.
page 798 note 2 There are several passages in the text of the Yh which have been interpreted as allusions to places or facts connected with the rising of the Chöu, etc., but this is not the place to deal with them. It will be seen in my translation or scientific analysis of the text, that they have nothing to do with the meanings which have been forced upon them afterwards.
page 798 note 3 For want of space, I have to summarize in this section a score of pages in which I had summed up from my large work in preparation on the subject the leading facts and proofs of this double evolution.
page 798 note 4 We have convincing proofs (vid. my Early History, pp. 21–23Google Scholar, and the last section of the present paper) that it had been borrowed, by the early leaders of the Chinese Bak families (Pöh Sing) in Western Asia, from an horizontal writing traced from left to right, the pre-cuneifonn character, which previously had itself undergone several important modifications. Following their old habit of notched sticks and knotted cords, the Chinese disposed in perpendicular lines, and consequently had to put up the characters too wide for the regularity of the columns. This was done according to the objects represented by the characters. Vid. for example the Ku-wan shapes of the following characters: turned up: 
, the two lips and tip of the tongue = mouth; 
, the two lips open and breath = speak; 
, the two lips and something in the mouth = taste; 
, = the eye, etc., etc. Turned up from the left: 
, the two lips open and voice = speech; 
, two heights = colline; 
= a tortoise; 
, an animal, afterwards a horse; etc., etc. Turned up from the right: 
= a boat; 
, the upper part of the face = minister; 
, the lower part of the face, the chin; 
, a seated man, good; etc., etc.
page 799 note 1 The phonetic combinations in early Chinese have been singularly disturbed by the putting up spoken of in the last note. In the borrowed compounds, when unchanged in direction, the reading goes from left to right; when put up from the left, it reads from top to bottom; when put up from the right, the most frequent, it reads from bottom to top. These various directions, according to the shape, size, and sense of the characters, were imitated afterwards in the new compounds, as long as and where the old principles of phonetic orthography were not forgotten. Here are a few examples of this orthography in the oldest Chinese characters transcribed in modern style of writing: 
= Nam (mod. Nan) was written with 
= Nen (mod. Jen) under 
= Muh; 
= Kop (mod. Kü) was written 
= Kam (mod. K'an) under 
= ping 
= Din (mod. Sien) was written = Dik (mod. Chi) over 
= Nen (mod. Jen); 
= Sen (mod. Sien) was written 
= San (mod. Shan) followed on the right by = Nen; 
= Keng was written 
= Kwo followed on the right by 
, = Nip (mod. Œt); 
= Jen was written 
Shi followed on the right by 
= Ni (mod. Œt); etc., etc.
page 799 note 2 The orthography of the bisyllabic or polysyllabic words presents the same phenomena of reading as the two-consonantea words, and for the same reasons, The only disturbing fact which may prevent their recognition is that, the final of the second syllable having been often dropped by phonetic decay, the compound has the appearance of a biconsonanted word. The reading most frequently found for these compounds is generally from left to right, but the other directions also occur. The great interest in this discovery is that the old groups did express not only the monoconsonant- or biconsonant-syllables, but also the polysyllables and compound words of the colloquial, many of which can still be recognized, though more or less decayed since that time. In the comparison with the spoken words, it is important not to forget that the characters used to express the compound words in colloquial are not to be pressed by themselves as a help to restore the older sound of the expression, as they have been used only afterwards to express the spoken word, and they are not etymologically connected to it. The book-language of the dialects is more fallacious than useful for this purpose. A few examples of various kinds are necessary to illustrate these explanations. Ex. 
tw'an =to roll up, to beat, was written in Ku-wen 
and 
which both read TKM, as the three characters were Tih (mod. chi), Kan, aud Meu or Muh. Now the colloquial has kept an expression 
= ta kwan = ‘to roll about on the ground,’ which is obviously the same with a slight differentiation of meaning, whilst the phonetic decay in the older official dialect has contracted the whole together into tw'an. Ex. 
= hien = ‘all, the whole of,’ was written in the Ku-wen 
= Kam under 
= Thu, or Kam-thu, for which we find the colloquial hien-tsih 
and the contracted form kat (
mod. kiai). Ex. 
= Lan in Ku-wen 
= Ban-Lan (mod. Wen-Ian), and in colloquial Pan-lan 
= ‘variegated colours.’ 
= Tao = ‘to pray,’ in Ku-wen same orthography: 
= Ki 
= Tho, in colloquial 
= K'i-tao or 
Kao-tao, the contracted form is Kit 
mod. K'i, etc. etc. Vid. other examples below, § 31, and the following note.
To understand, with this true history of the Chinese characters, the rough hieroglyphic signs which (more or less exactly reproduced in every European book treating of the writing) are wrongly quoted as primitive, and present a striking contrast to the really advanced state of the oldest written words, we must not forget, besides the hieroglyphical revival of 820 B.C.(which has produced no inconsiderable influence on the pictography of the characters), that these rough signs are found only on made-up antiquities, or misunderstood imitations, and also in rude inscriptions written by men unacquainted with the science of writing, which was the privilege only of a small number of the learned. We have in the Tso-chuen many proofs of this last assertion, as the ‘Book of Odes’ could be read or sung intelligibly only by specialists.
page 800 note 1 The Chinese languages are phonetically decayed in the extreme; however, in their present stage they are not monosyllabic, but agglutinative. The theory of their monosyllabism, and in fact its sad influence on linguistic progress, arose from a misunderstanding of the syllabism of the present writing supposed to be spoken, and the wrong assimilation of the old writing to it; and also from the confusion between the monosyllabisms of elocution and of decay, with a supposed logical monosyllabism; the whole combined with the false hypothesis of a primeval monosyllabism.
page 800 note 2 Here is an interesting proof of this remarkable fact, from the Shu-king, The great announcement, 
, § 2. The Ku-wen phrase is from the text engraved on stone (245 A.D. in three styles, Ku-wen, Siao-chuen, and Li-shu (Vid. 
, f. 6). The phrase we take as an example is in modern style: 
, translated by Medhurst, ‘And now we see then-stupid commotions,’ and by Dr. Legge, ‘Accordingly we have the present senseless movements.’ This supposed despising expression is intended to. qualify a military rising, which had been prognosticated in the West according to the preceding phrase. But as the troubles arose in the East, there is a disagreement which the commentators childishly solve by saying that the troubles arose indeed in the East, but they necessarily went on to trouble the West. The Ku-wen text gives the solution of the difficulty, which came from an inaccuracy of the transcribers. It reads as follows: 
= Yueh tze chun, which in spoken language cannot be understood, but which disintegrated as we must do for the Ku-wen, give: 
= yü-shen tze chun-ko, are more audible and completely intelligible to the ear in the colloquial yu-shen tze tung-ko 
= moreover (is) this rising-in-arms. The above quoted translation must be amended according to the latter, which is the true meaning of the genuine text; it does not imply any contradiction, as the modern text does; the king alludes here obviously to the actual outbreak in the East, and not at all to the predicted troubles in the West. As to the necessary philological apparatus of this reading, which I shall give in my Outlines of the Evolution of Speech and Script in China, it will be sufficient to say that: 
ch'ün was formerly tün; 
= vuthan (mod. yu-shen) contracted in the compounds in viet (Sin-Ann.) yueh (Mand.), is still found under the false written etymology 
, (Viet-tinh) yüeh-sheng, a name for the Canton province. I hope that direct proofs, as this example from the Shu-king, will convince the Sinologists of the truth of my discovery of the reading of the old Chinese texts, and consequently, how important it is to gather all that remains still to be found in China of texts in ancient or Kuwen characters.
page 801 note 1 I have also compiled a vocabulary of this writing, of which the principles afterwards imitated have been so powerful a factor in the mental and political history of Chinese culture.
page 801 note 2 The survival of pictography and hieroglyphism, which She-chöu gave to the writing by his modifications of the characters, can be fully illustrated by the two following examples. The phonetic group for ‘wild country,’ ‘desert,’ 
was written in Ku-wen 
= ± Tu ‘earth,’ under 
Lam, mod. lin, ‘forest,’ i.e. T initial under L final, to be read T—L, which we find still in the Corean tel and in-the decayed Sinico-Annamite da. This was all right so long as the reading was not forgotten and the colloquial remained unaltered. But when and where this agreement break up, the ideographical value of the combination, deprived of its phonetic reading, in the regions where had begun the phonetic decay which has turned gradually the primitive tel into the modern ye, was no more suggestive enough of the intended solitude. She-chöu for the purpose of suggesting this savageness added the ideograph f or isolate (not spear) into the group, and wrote it 
(not 
). The proof of the early bisyllabism T-L of this word is very likely to be seen in the colloquial ye-lu (
), ye decayed of te. Again, the group 
‘to bury,’ ‘to conceal,’ was not sufficiently expressive to the eyes; the historiographer of Chöu in framing anew the character substituted 
to its central part 
in order to suggest ‘hidden in the ground as reptiles do,’ and did not consider the phonetic expression, which was entirely thrown over by him.
page 802 note 1 And so was established officially, for political reasons, the wide gap which separates the written style from the spoken language; a difficulty of which the solution gives the link of the respective evolution of speech and writing in China.
page 802 note 2 The deformation undergone by the old characters (in the cases of no substitution) when transcribed with the small canons of fixedly shaped strokes of the Zi-shu, Siao-chuen, and finally modern style Kiai-shu, is the great difficulty which the palæographer has to overcome. It complicates singularly the graphical etymologies by apparent, but in reality false, similarities, too often accepted as genuine by many uncritical Chinese historians of their writing. The same complication presents itself to those who study the history of the Cuneiform characters.
page 802 note 3 The ideographic determinatives aphone began since that time to be more and more extensively used; before She-Chöu the process had only been initiated in a few places. At first, at least in some quarters, in order to show their nonphonetic value, they were written smaller and rather under the character or group which they were intended to determinate. Cf. for the determinatives 
in the inscriptions of which the facsimile are published in the patæographical collection of Tuen Yuen, 
, K. iv. ff. 36–39.
page 802 note 4 The influence of the advanced civilization and the mixture of the Ougro-Altaïc early Chinese immigrants with the native populations of China of several Btates (of which the primitive Taï or Shan was not the least important) were not confined to the area of their political power. This deep mixture which has produced the Chinese physical type and peculiar speech, and accounts for several phonetic features common to the Chinese and many Indo-Chinese languages, as well as for the reciprocal loan of words, which amounts between the Chinese and Taï vocabularies to more than 30 per cent, had begun outside long before the extension of the Chinese political supremacy. And as to this extension, I may remark that the publication by Prof. Douglas in my Orientalia Antiqua, part I. of The Calendar of the Hia dynasty, which bear astronomical evidences of its genuineness 2000 B.C. points to a settlement more southern than afterwards under the Chöu dynasty. The Chinese culture spread very early and extensively in the south, and more on the western than on the eastern side. The phonetic writing, propagated by the Chinese immigrants, was eagerly adopted by the active and intelligent population of the South-West. We see them at different periods of Chinese history carrying books to the Chinese court. In 1109 B.C. the Annamites had a phonetic writing, and in several instances we have tidings bearing on the existence of such writings, composed of a certain number of Chinese simple characters used according to the phonetic principle disused amongst the Chinese, as we largely know. These simple characters, selected by progressive elimination of the less easy to draw and to combine, formed a special script, of which we know several offshoots, and have been, according to my views, and as far as affinities of shape and tradition are to be trusted, the Grundschrift with which has been framed that splendid monument of Brahmanic phonetic lore—the South Indian Alphabet or Lat-Pali. The North Indian Alphabet has been framed on a Semitic ground according to the same principles, and this achievement has been most likely done at the same time for the two alphabets, as they bear obvious marks of reciprocal influence and of internal making up. Their artificial assimilation and parallelism is obvious. The vocalic notation, however, seems to me to have originated from the South Alphabet side, as here only are found independent vowel characters, which embodied in the consonants have most likely suggested the external addition of marks for the vocalic notation; these marks were reversed to the left for adaptation to the Northern alphabet. Mention has been lately made of a new writing found at Babylon, which by a too hasty conclusion has been on insufficient examination considered as the ancestor of the South Indian Alphabet. But a keen study of these two lines of writing, on a contract clay-tablet of Babylon, dated in the 23rd year of Artaxerxes, has given me a quite different result; they are the signatures in cursive Aramaic of the witnesses of the contract, excepting two who were not acquainted with writing. The interesting feature is, besides its cursive shape, that of the appended consonants, as was occasionally done in cursive Cuneiform; I cannot find any vocalic notation.
page 804 note 1 In comparing the remains of the Ku-wen text of the Classics engraved on Stone (published in the 
) with the modern text, we find that no less than twenty-five percent, of the characters have been substituted or altered through the transcriptions.
page 804 note 2 The praise and censure system, which is so conspicuously applied by the commentators of the texts of Confucius, seems to have been really put forward by the Great Sage himself. We know that Confucius said, speaking of the Ch'un Ts'iu: “Its righteous decisions I ventured to make.” And also: “Yes! It is the Ch'un Ts'iu which will make men know me; and it is the Ch'un Ts'iu which will make men condemn me” (Vid. Legge, , Chin. Class., vol. v. prol. 2Google Scholar). This important statement has been repeated by Mencius and enlarged by him. There is no doubt about its genuineness. Turning to the pages of the Ch'un Ts'iu, “We experienced, says Dr. Legge (ibid), an intense feeling of disappointment. Instead of a history of events woven artistically together, we find a congeries of the briefest possible intimations of matters in which the Court and State of Lu were more or less concerned, extending over 242 years, without the slightest tincture of literary ability in the composition, or the slightest indication of judicial opinion on the part of the writer.” It is a bare ephemeris. This is a difficulty which has still to be solved. The attempt by the commentators, of finding in almost every paragraph some righteous decision, has laid them open to many absurdities (Legge, ibid, p. 5). Now if We consider that according to the principles of writing at the time of the Sage, a greater importance was given, since She Chöu, to the ideographic values of the characters, and that the writer, in order to suggest a complementary idea or fix its meaning, could add an ideographic aphone, we are not far from the explanation. And then if we examine the text, we are sure that here is the solution. So, for instance, whilst recording the deaths of great officers, princes, rulers of states, etc., he made use of 
= ‘finish,’ when he has to record the deaths of the sovereigns of his state (Lu), or of their wives, he used the character 
= ‘obscure’ (to which has been substituted in Siao-chuen style 
to show the respect to which those dead were entitled; it did not allow to consider them as ‘finished,’ as it was more proper to say that they became obscure and could no more be seen. Again in the records of murders, when the murderer is of the same rank or superior to the killed, Confucius used the ordinary character 
= ‘to kill’; but when it is the murder of a ruler by a subject, or of a father by a son, the Sage uses another character 
, which he framed himself for the purpose: he substituted for the determinative 
‘to kill,’ the character 
‘rule,’ ‘pattern,’ to show his censure of the fact. I shall study this more largely elsewhere. There is, about the transcriptions made from the old Kuwen texts into the Si-shu, Siao-chuen, and finally the modern style, a curious remark to make. It is the great influence of this system of praise and censure on the selection of substituted characters, the addition of ideographic determinatives, in fact all the modifications introduced by the transcribers. It produces the same effect as if they had endeavoured to transform every text into a smooth stream of righteous principles and moral conduct. Almost in every case where we can restore the old texts, we find in them much more energy and precision.
page 805 note 1 These various influences of ideographism, and of interpretations by the transcribers, have also to be taken into account in any complete study of old Chinese grammar. The European scholars who have worked upon the ideology, phonetism, and morphology of the Chinese language in the classics, have not yet been able to appreciate the difference which the ideographic transcription they have in hand has produced upon the old style they have not. They were not aware how highly artificial is the written language, and how deep is the abyss which separates it from the colloquial, modern and ancient, which, after all, is the only one interesting for linguistic research. The phonetic decipherment of the old Ku-wen texts when available will enable Sinologists to know something of the old spoken language. The readings, we have found out, make it clear that the use of frequent polysyllabics or compounds did not, in the old time any more than in the present, let so much looseness in the grammatical value and meaning of the words that was supposed to have existed. Besides that, the phonetism more full of the separate words (not decayed as now) did not present in the old spoken language so many homophones leading to confusion, as was premised by the ancient Sinologists.
page 806 note 1 Vid. Hi-se, part i. sect. 79.
page 806 note 2 Vid. Li-ki, ch. viii. trad. Callery, p. 50, Turin, 1853, 4to.
page 806 note 3 Vid. Zun-yü, ix. 8.Google Scholar
page 806 note 4 Among the 1690 works quoted by the Imperial compilers of the Tai-Ping-yü-Zan in 977–983 are twelve works on the Ho-tu, two on the Loh-shu, and one on them both.
page 807 note 1 The extraordinary similarity between the Ho map and the inscriptions found in India by Mr. H. Rivett Carnac is too striking to be neglected. See his Rough Notes on some Ancient Sculpturings on Socks in Kamaon, in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1877, vol. xlvi. pp. 1–15Google Scholar. I have already pointed out this similarity in my paper on The Indo-Chinese Origin of the South Indian Writing.
page 807 note 2 Vid. Shu-King, part v. bk. 22. The great precious tortoise is also mentioned as an heirloom in The Great Announcement, about 1115-B.C. See Classics, Chinese, ed. Legge, iii. p. 365.Google Scholar
page 807 note 3 Cf. my Early History of the Chinese Civilisation, p. 30.Google Scholar
page 807 note 4 See Legge, , Chinese Classics, vol. iii. p. 356 n.Google Scholar
page 808 note 1 In the Tso-Chuen we find several references to this different system, of which it may be interesting to quote one here: in 635 B.C.The Marquis Wen made the master of divination, Yen, consult the tortoise shell about the undertaking. He did so and said, “The oracle is auspicious,—that of Hwang-ti's battle in Fan-ts'iun.” The marquis said, “that oracle is too great for me.” The diviner replied, “The rules of Chöu are not changed. The King of to-day is the Emperor of Antiquity.” The marquis then said, “Try it by the milfoil.” They consulted the reeds and found the diagram, etc., etc. See Legge, , Chinese Classics, vol. v. p. 195.Google Scholar
page 808 note 2 In the same work, fourth part of The Great Plan, we read an interesting instruction a about the divination to be practised in case of doubts:
“Seventhly, on the examination of doubts 
. Select and appoint special officers to divine 
. And as to the orders to divine,b
they are called rain 
, called clearing up 
, called cloudiness 
, called disconnected 
called crossing 
called correctness 
, called repentance 
Of these seven 
divine by the tortoise five 
and as prognostics use the other 
to trace out the errors 
.
As we have most probably here a relic of the Hia dynasty, it is interesting to find in it this statement of seven orders, or perhaps sets of slips for divination. I shall examine elsewhere what connexion, if any, may have existed between these seven orders and the meanings attributed to the eight diagrams, two of which agree. It would seem that we have here seven series indicated or divining slips instead of eight, which, one may suppose, was the number of classes of rows of characters used in the consultation for prognostics in the Lien Shan system.
Notes.—a I find a rather different translation in 85 words in DrLegge, 's Chinese Classics, vol. iii. p. 335Google Scholar, but with the addition of so many words which are not in the text, that I prefer to give a more literal translation. —b 
translated ‘decree of divination.’ Cf. Medhurst's Shoo-King, The Great Announcement, p. 217.
page 808 note 3 In fact the period 1766–1122 includes two dynasties, the Shang from 1766 to 1401, and the Yn afterwards; but this last name is also given to the whole period.
page 808 note 4 Vid. Tai Ping Yü lan, K. 608, f. 5. 
as usmal is not to be taken literally 80,000, but as meaning eight indeterminate innumerable quantities.
page 809 note 1 It is not unlikely that something of the arrangement by Wen Wang has crept out from the temporary homonymy at his time of these two characters, Kwei-tsang with 
and 
. Cf. above, § 2n. This will be discussed in the translation.
page 809 note 2 Though the text of the Kwei- Tsang 
seems to have been lost of old, quotations from it were found in old literature. The work is not one of the 1690 works of which the titles are given at the beginning of the Great Cyclopædia of 983 A.D. the Tai Ping Yü lan. However several quotations from it are given in it, and I think it interesting to reproduce them. In the chapter on Nu Kwa 
, we read: 
In the chapter on Hwang-Ti we read: 
Vid. K. 78, f. 4, and K. 79, f. 2. On Nu Kwa, vid. Mayer's Manual, p. 162, n. 521.
page 811 note 1 Such as the 
by Fu Lwan Tsiang, 1751, in 14 Kiuen, according to the 214 radicals; the 
, 1661, in 10 Kiuen, according to 76 finals. In these two works the old forms are quoted with references to the inscriptions, texts, etc., where they are to be found. The latter, though less complete than the former, is more accurate; it is a wonderful monument of palæographical knowledge and patient research, the work of an entire life devoted to study. Its author published it at the age of 82. It has been reprinted several times, in 1718, 1796, 1865, and these are the different editions I have seen; the 1796 one is the worst.
page 812 note 1 Cf. Min tsi Ki, Luh shu t'ung, K. iv. f. 21 v. Fu Lwan Tsiang, Luh shu Fin Luy, S.V
page 812 note 2 In cases of single words written phonetically with two characters, these are often superposed; the under one suggesting the initial. These principles and their ulterior modifications, their demonstration and the method which I have used to find them, are explained and summarized in my paper on the Evolution of Language and Writing in China. Vid. also the notes to § 23 of the present paper.
page 812 note 3 Min Tsi Ki, Luh shu t'ung, K. i. f. 29.
page 812 note 4 This is one of the characters which show that the writing borrowed by the Bak people, Pöh Sing, has not always been written in perpendicular lines. As all those which had more width than height, it has been turned up from the right, and originally represented the lower part of the face, mouth, and chin, still discernible through the modern strokes.
page 813 note 1 Cf. § 23 n. and Min Tsi Ki, Luh shu tung, K. v. f. 33.
page 813 note 2 Vid. 
, K.2, f.2 v.
page 814 note 1 Cf. the 
, annotated by 
of the Tsin period. Vid. 
, K. 25.
page 814 note 2 Vid. Luh-shu-fōn-luy, svv.
page 814 note 3 So 
is for 
Cf. Min tsi Ki, Luh shu t'ung, K. iv., f. 51.