Page:Oriental Religions - China.djvu/436

406 their grammatical homogeneousness and convertibility, hinting of the lowest forms of organic life, have led to a general belief that it represents a primitive stage in the evolution of speech. Even Renan, who doubts the precedence of monosyllabism to agglutination, declares that the Chinese absolutely lacks a grammar, and that the only thing it has in common with Sanscrit, that perfection of inflected speech, is the end to be attained. The comparative fewness of words, supplemented by varieties of tone, and the great number of meanings for which many of them are obliged to do duty, have been regarded as so many distinct proofs that we have here a language crystallized in its first stages, and transmitted unchanged. " The self-isolating quality of its sounds resists all attempts at combination, derivation, formal distinction of the parts of the sentence, or of the signs of grammatical relations." Edkins believes that an original monosyllabic language, common to all mankind, preceded the "dispersion of tongues," and that the Chinese migration retained these older forms.

It is not primitive. The roots show this.

That, even apart from Biblical deductions, the above it is not theory of the Chinese language will be confirmed by modern science, can by no means be regarded as certain. Its very monosyllabism has been strongly disputed. Remusat denied it, and Meadows asserts that nearly the whole spoken language consists of compound words. Each element of the composition is, it is true, a pure word ; but this aptness for combination at least allows the supposition that the elements themselves may have been fused from more complex forms. The language abounds in verbal coalescences, and in many the