Page:Elementary Chinese - San Tzu Ching (1900).djvu/13

 PREFACE

The San Tzŭ Ching, otherwise called the Three-Character-Classic or Trimetrical Classic, is an elementary guide to knowledge for Chinese children, arranged in 356 alternately rhyming lines of three characters to each, and containing about 500 different characters in all. It is the foundation-stone of a Chinese education. Every child throughout the empire begins his or her studies with this book, learning to repeat a certain amount daily, until the whole is known by heart. Its importance therefore to foreigners who wish to study the book-language of China, and to be able to follow out Chinese trains of thought, can hardly be overestimated. Serious students would do well to imitate the Chinese schoolboy, and commit the whole to memory.

So firm a hold has this primer taken upon the national mind that both Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries have published similar works, availing themselves of the familiar form and title, as a means of teaching the principles of Christianity. Even the T'ai-p'ing rebels, when striving to establish a new dynasty, issued a San Tzŭ Ching of their own.

To Wang Ying-lin, A.D. 1223–1296, the authorship of the San Tzŭ Ching is by common consent attributed, and although it was not printed among his collected works as issued in 1813, there seems to be no valid reason for disputing his claim. He was a voluminous writer on classical and educational subjects, and rose