XXX. A Chinese Pedigree on a Tablet-Disk

Extract

In a scholarly paper contributed to Baessler-Archiv this year under the title “Frühgeschichtliche Orakelknochen aus China”, the author, Fräulein Anna Bernhardi, has discussed various questions arising from the great find of inscribed bones in Honan Province, and has illustrated her paper partly from the Wirtz Collection of these objects now in the Royal Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin, partly from specimens in other cabinets. Considerable space is devoted to the consideration of the genealogies which have been found on certain of these relics, and peculiarities of writing markedly noticeable in these strange records of descent have caused Fräulein Bernhardi to ask whether they do not perhaps point to an early dissyllabism in the Chinese language, and also whether they do not show traces of a genitival form. And in order that the pros and cons of these hypotheses may be more adequately grounded, she appeals to the owners of the various collections now scattered over different parts of the world carefully to test the specimens they possess.