Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 04.djvu/758

* CHINESE LANGUAGE. 660 CHINESE LANGUAGE. which increase the number of simple words or roots from nearly 500 to 1200 or more. It is very dillicult for a Western man to be a master of the Chinese tones. The variety of dialects and their difTiculties are overcome by what is commonly called (lie 'mandarin' or Court dialed, the medium of olUcial communication, which, though phonetically the poorest of the dialects, has received considerable literary cultivaticm. There is a vast difference between the literary and colloquial idioms. Yet though poor in form — indeed, one of the poorest — the Chinese lan- guage has been made, through ages of cultiva- tion, and solely by the genius of those who use it, superior as an instrument of thought to many, jierhaps to most, inlloctcd languages. "The I'ontrast between the means and produc- tion in Chinese." says Steintluil! "is a perfectly unique phenomenon in language history." If. as seems probable, this languiige came orig- inally with the primitive element.s of Accadian civilization from Western Asia, it is logical to connect its written character with the Accadian or proto-euneiform ideograjjlis of ancient Meso- jiotamia. These symbols, at first few in number and derived from natural or artificial objects, became stereotyped by use and so moditied l)y contractions as presently to lose all resemblance to the original hieroglyphs. Native philologists seem to recognize some such process as this in arranging tliiir language in 'six writings' {lull .thu), 008 imitative symbols, 107 signs of thought, 740 combined ideas (e.g. 'woman' and 'broom' denoting a wife), 372 inverted significa- tions (the cliaracter for "band" turned one way meaning 'right.' the other 'left'), 21,810 plumo- grams — the bulk of the language — combining an imitative with a sovnid symbol, and .508 mcta- phonic symlxds and combinations, for the most part accepted conventions diflicult to explain. This constitutes a vocabulary of 24.2.3.5 separate winds, which is approximately the total of words in good usage ; though this is increased by obso- lete and compound characters in Kang-hi's dic- tionary to 44.440. Here, as elsewhere, however, the vocabulary of ordinary life is much more limited, not far exceeding 3000; that of the nine canonical books is only 4001. Doubtless the aspect of the written character underwent a change upon the invention of the hair pencil or brush, ascribed to a general in the Third Cen- tury B.C., wlien the hard stylus ceased to be used : and other changes in the mechanics of writing nnist account for the obliteration of al- most every semblance of its hieroglyphic origin in the modern script. Some examples of such modifications from supposed original forms are given in the illustration. There being no alpha- bet in Chinese, the difTiculties in arranging this assemblage of arbitrary signs are very great. .'fter various phonetic plans had been tried, the characters were classified in the Sixth Century by selecting the most significant part of each as its key or radical, and by grouping together those in which the same clement occurred. These groups were subsequenlly reduced from 542 to 214 in the Sixteenth Century, the characters under the .same r.adical being listed consecutively according to the number of strokes required to write the extra-radical portion. This latter part — -usually called the primitive — may be written above, be- low, on either side, or inclosed within the radi- cal ; it is necessary, therefore, to become per- fectly familiar with these 214 signs before the first step can be taken in acquiring a knowledge of the written language. The number of char- acters listed under each of these in the dictionary varies from 5 to 1354. A remarkable limitation in Chinese is the paucity of its soumls, hanily more than 400 in all. The dilliculty arising from this is relieved by the employment of tones, mentioned above, and by breathings or aspirates (e.g. fang and tniig are two ditl'erent words) ; but in spite of these the number of homophones is excessive and embarrassing, and the spoken tongue, with its varying dialectic pronimciations of the same written character, may be considered the most dillicult in the world for an alien to ac(|iire. (h'eal attention is paid to its callig- raphy; no educated man allows himself to write carelessly, and tlic appearance of a written or I)rinted page of Cliinese characters in vertical columns is more ornamental than that of a page in any other langiuige. Six difTerent styles of script are recognized, of which only two — the 'pattern' and 'running' hands — are in common use. Finally, in addition to the dillicult ies al- ready enumeralcd, it may be said that a lan- guage which cannot exjircss by single words such abstract ideas as space, relation, etc., must have severely restricted the intellectual development of the race compelled to employ it during forty centuries of comparatively high civilization. l.lTEKATt'RE. The history of Chinese litera- ture is long — going back perhaps eighteen or twenty centuries B.C. ; though, owing to the lack of durable monuments, (h<'re are no credible texts of very ancient inscrijitions in China, as tiiere are in Babylonia and Kgyi)t. By the Sixth Century n.c, when Confucius edited the fanums sacred canon known as the i'hiiifi (King), there evidently existed a considerable literature in verse and prose already considered old. To the Citing, the model of literary form, the acme of [ihilosophic wisdom, is largely due that extraor- dinary stability of Chinese thought and institu- tions which is the wonder of their history. They consist of the "Five Classics' — / Cliing [Yi Kingi, the "Mook of Changes"; Shii Citing, the "Book of History"; Sliili Ching [.Shi King], or "Book of Odes": Li Chi [Li Ki], or "Book of Rites"; and the Ch'un ch'iii [Ch'ttn 7'.<.'im1, or "Spring and Autumn," the last being the only one claiming Confucius as the actual author — and to these are added the 'Four Books': The Lun Lii. or "Ana- lects," of Confucius, his views and maxims re- tailed by disciples; the "Book of Ifencius": the Ta ll.iiiili or "(ircat Learning"; and the Chung Ytiiig or "Doctrine of the Mean." a short treati.se enlarging upon Confucius's teaching as to con- duct, and ascribed to his grandson. K'ung Clii. These classics of the Far East constitute as in- teresting a body of literature as can be found in any ancient civilization. No written product of the human mind has for so long a [leriod, or so completely, molded the culture, morals, and government of a large fraction of civilized man- kind. Its profound and continuous stmly ha.s not only left abiding traces ujion Chinese thought and institutions, but has, through veneration for the letter as well as the spirit, jireserved the language almost unchanged during three thou- sand years, set a permanent standard of literary style, and stimulated the critical faculties of an acute people to the production of thousands of volumes of commentarv and discussion. The I