Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/483

 CHINA (LANGUAGE AND LITEBATUBE) 471 first thousand years B. 0., and it is not till the latter part of that period that we meet with any noticeable list of authors. The works of Confucius then come before us; also several of the great writers of the school of Taou, some famous moralists and writers on the mili- tary art. The mechanical appliances in aid of literature at that time, however, must have been sorely discouraging to authorship. Even several centuries subsequent to Confucius slips of bamboo were still used, on which the char- acters were scratched or engraved. These were gradually superseded by the silk texture, and in the beginning of the 2d century of our era paper was invented, the pencil having al- ready been brought to a considerable degree of perfection. More than two centuries before Christ, history speaks of an effort made by the first monarch of the Tsin dynasty to destroy the great body of the existing literature, his decree exempting only writings on medicine, divination, husbandry, and the annals of his own house. The decree was supposed to be executed, and entailed at the same time the death of a great number of scholars. In 190 B. 0. the law for the suppression of literary works was repealed by the emperor of the Han then reigning, and a stimulus was given to learning. The historian of the Western Han, which came to an end in A. D. 24, gives a catalogue of works in the imperial library, comprising classics, philosophy, poetry, mili- tary tactics, mathematics, and medicine, con- sisting of 11,292 sections, by more than 500 authors. Works were then written on scrolls, and continued to be so down to the 10th or llth century, when printing came into general use, and the huge piles of manuscript rolls gradually dwindled down to the dimensions of a few antiquarian curiosities. It has frequently been asserted that there is nothing in Chinese books to repay the trouble of learning to de- cipher them ; and in view of the protracted study necessary to acquire a competent famili- arity with the subject, there is a certain amount of truth in the statement. It should, how- ever, be noted that the books of the Chinese have not had fair play at the hands of Euro- peans; and too frequently it happens that, either from want of the requisite attainments on the part of the translator, or from a desire to hold up to ridicule a subject uncongenial to his taste, translations and quotations have been little better than caricatures. At the same time, it must be admitted that some transla- tions have been very favorably received by western scholars, and give the earnest of much that may yet be discovered in this unexplored mine. In taking a rapid review of the literary productions of the empire, it will be conve- nient mainly to follow the order and classifica- tion generally adopted by native writers, and to commence with what are termed the Sing, or " Classics," which are supposed to have been written by or to have passed under the revising hand of Confucius. These are held in the highest reverence, and looked upon as the standard from which there is no appeal. They are five in number, and four of them at least, there is good reason to believe, passed through the hands of the sage in one form or another. One, the history of his native state, is said to be his own composition ; but another, the " Book of Kites," appears in such a fragmen- tary state, that it is thought by critics to be a compilation by some scholar during the Han dynasty. The earliest of these, the Ylh-Jcing, is a veritable mystery. The nucleus of the work is a series of figures composed of whole and bisected lines. These were at first eight in number, and attributed to the legendary sage Fuh-he, each consisting of three lines. Ranged in octagon form, these eight trigrams are very extensively used as decorative objects, on dishes, vases, bells, utensils, the lintels of doors, the gables of houses, the ceilings of rooms, and a numberless variety of other po- sitions, being rated to comprise a vast amount of hidden wisdom. Their names are keen, heaven ; fuy, vapor ; IS, fire ; chin, thunder ; sun, wind ; Wan, water ; Mn, mountain ; Jswdn, earth. These are variously looked upon, as the heads of categories, the rudiments of writ- ten language, or symbols of philosophic sys- tems. By squaring the number, 64 were pro- duced, each formed of two of the original tri- grams, superposed one on the other, and each one having a separate name. These hexa- grams, which are assigned to a later hand, form the themes of so many separate sections in this famous book. Wan-wang, the founder of the Chow dynasty, while in prison for a state of- fence, employed his time in studying these symbols, and appended a short text to each, under the name of T'wan. These are followed by remarks in detail on the several strokes of each hexagram, which are called seang (figure), and are said to have been added by Chow-kung, the son of Wan-wang. The additional portion of the work tradition ascribes to Confucius, being a kind of commentary, reflections, and apparently irrelevant remarks on the texts of W&n-wang and Chow-kung. Although more than 500 commentaries and treatises have been written to elucidate this strange book, it is scarcely saying too much to assert that none of them have succeeded in bringing an intelli- gible meaning out of it. If there be any moan- ing at all, it is probably a work on divination or some occult art. There is a Latin translation of the Yih-king by Pere Eegis and other Jesuit missionaries (edited by Julius Mohl, 2 vols., Stuttgart and Tubingen, 1834). The second classic, named the Shoo-Mng, contains a sketch of the ancient history of China, from the 24th century B. 0. down to the emperor Ping-wang of the Chow dynasty, 721 B. 0. It appears to have been compiled by Confucius, from the historical remains of the Yu, Hea, Shang, and Chow dynasties ; but in the vicissitudes of the earlier ages it has evidently suffered much in its integrity. Tradition asserts that it con-