Page:Essays on the Chinese Language (1889).djvu/21

Rh lost the knowledge thus communicated, as witness their long use of stone and flint tools and their slow return to more skilful appliances. But the children of Shem, including the primæval Chinese, were shrewd and wise, and never lost what they had learned. Here we see a very early instance of that practical sagacity which has never forsaken the Chinese. For when the first fathers of the race, urged by the resistless promptings of fate, left their home to go Eastward, whether before or after the "unaccomplishable work" which Nimrod's race began was abrubtly stopt, they carried away with them their "shovels, pickaxes, and trowels." They took also a small collection of Primitive Roots and the books which they had received from their fathers written in characters which their descendants have ever since retained. These are facts which satisfactorily explain the almost total absence of stone and flint tools from the archæological antiquities of the country, and the very primitive character of the language spoken and written.

Most of the early Jesuit and other Roman Catholic missionaries in China and their disciples at home seem to have held this doctrine of the Shemitic origin of Chinese, though they could not agree as to which of Shem's descendants was the actual immediate progenitor. Thus there was scarcely enough proof, some maintained, to identify Yao T'ang, the first great Chinese Emperor, with Joktan, the great grand-son of Shem. Some, as has been seen, have held that Ham was the father of all such as speak Chinese, and others have deemed them to be the offspring of Japhet. Several authors have seen a relationship between the language of China and that of ancient Egypt. The first and greatest advocate of the theory that the original Chinese were a colony from Egypt was De Guignes. He boldly entitled his treatise on the subject, "Memoire dans lequel on prouve que les Chinois sont une Colonie Egyptienne;" but he supported his hypothesis largely with word-resemblances of an artifical character. Scholars and Sinologists have held that Chinese and Hebrew are related, the latter having been regarded by some of