Page:Illustrations of China and Its People vol. IV.pdf/33



BELLS appear to have been used in China from the earliest times. It is reported in the Shoo-king, or " Classic Historical Documents," that during the reign of Chung-kang, 2159 B.C., every year, in the first month of spring, " the herald with his wooden-tongued bell goes along the roads proclaiming," and at the present day in China we still meet the counterpart of this ancient prototype striking his bell with its wooden tongue or mallet. We can thus invest the office of town-crier or bell-man, whose occupation in England is now all but gone, with a splendid classic antiquity. During my stay in Peking, accompanied one of our attaches to a shop in « Curiosity Street," where I saw a small bell, reputed to be the most ancient in the empire. It partook to some extent of the modern bell shape, but besides having an inscription in the most antique Chinese characters, it was adorned externally with a series of knobs so arranged that a sort of gamut was produced by striking each in succession with a mallet It is thus possible that the herald of antiquity may have proclaimed the orders of his imperial master in rhyme, and charmed the cars of the people with a harmonious accompaniment on his single bell.

The Bell Tower of the illustration (No. 22) is situated about a quarter of a mile beyond the Hou-Men, or north gate of the capital, and contains one of the five great bells cast when Yung-lo of the Ming dynasty occupied the imperial throne. Each of these bells weighs about fifty-three tons, and its proportions, according to Verbiest, are, width 13 feet, circumference 40 feet, and height 12 feet. One bell is in the palace beside the Tai-ho-tien; another, cast with the entire text of a Buddhist liturgical work on its outer face, now hangs at a temple outside the north-west gate of Peking; a third is here, while a fourth lies half buried in an obscure lane near this tower, and there is a fifth in some other temple. These bells are slightly conical and dome-shaped at the upper end. The fourth one was rejected on account of a flaw, but the others are as perfect examples of the art of casting great masses of metal as we could produce in Europe at the present day, and the like indeed may be said of the astronomical instruments belonging to the same period, and which I have already described. The Tower bell has a rich mellow tone, which can easily be distinguished, when the watches are struck at midnight, all over Peking.

THE Drum Tower of Peking stands a little to the south of the Bell Tower, and is also a structure dating from the beginning of the fifteenth century. When first erected it contained (so Mr. Edkins assures me) a clepsydra for determining the time. A clepsydra of this sort consisted of four cisterns, together with a little automaton time-beater, and I saw at Peking the remains of an ancient instrument in one of the halls of the "old Observatory. It is difficult to say where the Chinese obtained their water-clocks. Sextus Empiricus says « that the Chaldeans divided the zodiac into twelve parts, which they supposed to be equal, by allowing water to run out of a small orifice during the whole revolution of a star, and then dividing the fluid into twelve equal parts;" whereas Beckmann asserts "that this ingenious machine, which we know at present under the name of a water-clock, was invented in the 17th century;" and he was evidently unaware that water-clocks were in use in Peking during the 1 5th century. The Tower now contains a drum such as is commonly to be found in all Chinese cities, for marking the time, sounding alarms of fire, and similar purposes. Drums also were anciently employed in China in connection with state' ceremonials. One eight feet long is noticed as existing during the Chow dynasty, that is, about 2,500 years ago; the probable date also assigned by scholars to the ancient stone drums of the Confucian Temple, Peking.