Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/454

 446 REVIEWS OF BOOKS July and always kept up their lead in Chinese matters ; no wonder, then, that M. Cordier therefore gives them special prominence. M. Cordier 's first volume (penible to read, as a French Jesuit critic writes) treats of ancient times up to the beginning of dated history (842 B. c.), and so on to the fall of the second great conquering dynasty (T'ang, A. D. 618- 906). He cites with apparent approval the present writer's words : l ' the true dated Chinese history only begins in 842 B. c., at which date a great revolution took place, not only in politics, but also in letters.' It may now be added that first-class Chinese philosophical writers of 2,300 years ago express the view that the traditions of the older dynasties are un- doubtedly true so far as they go, but that there are (that is, even then were) no documents to prove anything definite. M. Cordier seems to have taken Mailla's paraphrased translation of the Chinese historical work T'ung-kien Kang-mu (subsequently published by the Abbe Grosier) as the basis of his own sketch ; ingeniously reinforced, so far as Chinese relations with Korea, Japan, Indo-China, Tibet, Central Asia, &c., go, by running remarks on the recent researches of the French specialists above cited, besides H. Maspero, Bretschneider, Groeneveldt, De Groot, Stein, Hedin, and others ; he does not seem to include Younghusband, and moreover he is decidedly weak on the subjects of Burma (Pagan, Pegu, &c.) and Nepaul. He follows the pardonable error of Gibbon (accepted by Chavannes) in identifying the Jouan-jouan with the Avars (p. 347), an assumption which, besides being impossible, ignores the fact that the Chinese themselves give a full account of the Avars (Yueh-pan or, apparently, E-bar) and their wars with the same Jouan-jouan, who were spurlos versenkt. Nor does he anywhere allude to M. Leopold de Saussure of Geneva, who has recently published some interesting and striking papers about ancient Chinese uranology, the lunar Zodiac, and theory of the universe, &c., which have the warm approval of so competent a scientist as Mr. Herbert Chatley of Nanking. M. de Saussure has also made it quite clear that M. Chavannes's theory about the visit of a Chinese reigning prince to Tartary being afterwards transformed by his literary admirers into that of an ancient emperor will not for a moment hold water. In this connexion also it may be mentioned that the late Professor Forke of Berlin is apparently not so much as once alluded to in M. Cordier' s book ; he did some very useful English work in philosophic translation, and amongst other things conceived the curious notion (overthrown by Chavannes) that the above-mentioned Chinese prince or emperor even went to Africa and associated with the queen of Sheba. However, the great point about M. Cordier's work is that it is a storehouse of con- centrated Chinese history, both ancient and modern, to which we may refer with profit and gratitude all those who have read the originals in ideograph, in order at least from time to time to check their own informa- tion, and to see how far their own independent judgement may be fortified or modified by the immense mass of sifted evidence laid out here before us, often with references to chapter and date. The alphabetical index of proper names alone takes up nearly one hundred pages, and there are, aa near as may be, one hundred names mostly of only one line apiece > China, 1917, p. 16.