Page:Essays on the Chinese Language (1889).djvu/97

Rh The treatise had a better fortune in being largely used by Shao Chang-hêng in the preparation of his work, which will soon fall to be noticed.

Contemporary with P'an Ên was another scholar also distinguished for his learning in the antiquities of the language. This was Ch'ên Ti (陳第) al. Chi-li (季立), a native of Foochow. He was the author of several etymological treatises, of which two are still well known. One of these is the "Ch'ü-sung-ku-yin-i" (屈宋古音義) which treats of the words found in the poetry of Ch'ü Yuan (屈原) and Sung Yü (宋玉), that is, with the language of the latter part of the fourth century B.C. The second work is the "Mao-shi-ku-yin-k'ao" (毛詩古印烤), generally quoted by its short title "Ku-yin-k'ao," an examination of old sounds in the "Shi-ching," in four chuan, with an appendix. This was published about 1606 with one preface by the author's friend Chiao Hung (焦竑) al. Jo Hou (弱侯), and a second by the author himself. In it Ch'ên takes 500 characters in succession, and of each he gives what he finds to have been its old sound, supporting his view first by proofs taken from the "Shi-ching," and next by collateral evidence drawn from subsequent writings. Ch'ên Ti was the first to teach in a thorough methodical way that the rhymes of the "Shi" represent the sounds which the characters had at the time the poems were composed, and that characters have from age to age undergone changes of sound. These doctrines he learned from Chiao Hung, mentioned above, who also was a good scholar in the language and a writer on it seeking to preserve its purity and historical correctness. The merit of the "Ku-yin-k'ao" is lessened by the neglect its author shows for local variations and the modern sounds of characters. He went too far also with his theory that Ku-wu-hsie-yin (古無叶音), the ancients did not alter the sound of a character for a special occasion. He held, for example, that when yü (羽) at the end of one line has the character 野 at the end of the next as a rhyme, we are to infer that the actual sound of this latter character at the time was something like yü, say hu. In after