Entry 5 affords the earliest trustworthy instance of a comet in China.
A still earlier comet is recorded in what is known as The Bamboo
Annals, but the genuineness of that work is disputed.
It will be readily admitted that the _Ch'un Ch'iu_, written throughout
in the same style as the quotations given, would scarcely enable one
to reconstruct in any detail the age it professes to record. Happily
we are in possession of the _Tso Chuan_, a so-called commentary,
presumably by some one named Tso, in which the bald entries in the
work of Confucius are separately enlarged upon to such an extent and
with such dramatic brilliancy that our commentary reads more like a
prose epic than "a treatise consisting of a systematic series of
comments or annotations on the text of a literary work." Under its
guidance we can follow the intrigues, the alliances, the treacheries,
the ruptures of the jealous states which constituted feudal China; in
its picture pages we can see, as it were with our own eyes,
assassinations, battles, heroic deeds, flights, pursuits and the
sufferings of the vanquished from the retribution exacted by the
victors. Numerous wise and witty sayings are scattered throughout the
work, many of which are in current use at the present day.
The Historical Record.
History as understood in Europe and the west began in China with the
appearance of a remarkable man. Ss[)u]-ma Ch'ien, who flourished
145-87 B.C., was the son of an hereditary grand astrologer, also an
eager student of history and the actual planner of the great work so
successfully carried out after his death. By the time he was ten years
of age, Ss[)u]-ma Ch'ien was already well advanced with his studies;
and at twenty he set forth on a round of travel which carried him to
all parts of the empire. Entering the public service, he was employed
upon a mission of inspection to the newly-conquered regions of
Ss[)u]ch'uan and Yuennan; in 110 B.C. his father died, and he stepped
into the post of grand astrologer. After devoting some time and energy
to the reformation of the calendar, he took up the work which had
been begun by his father and which was ultimately given to the world
as the _Shih Chi_, or Historical Record. This was arranged under five
great headings, namely, (l) Annals of Imperial Reigns, (2)
Chronological Tables, (3) Monographs, (4) Annals of Vassal Princes,
and (5) Biographies.
Burning of the Books.
The Historical Record begins with the so-called Yellow Emperor, who is
said to have come to the throne 2698 B.C. and to have reigned a
hundred years. Four other emperors are given, as belonging to this
period, among whom we find Yao and Shun, already mentioned. It was
China's Golden Age, when rulers and ruled were virtuous alike, and all
was peace and prosperity. It is discreetly handled in a few pages by
Ss[)u]-ma Ch'ien, who passes on to the somewhat firmer but still
doubtful ground of the early dynasties. Not, however, until the Chou
dynasty, 1122-255 B.C., had held sway for some three hundred years can
we be said to have reached a point at which history begins to separate
itself definitely from legend. In fact, it is only from the 8th
century before Christ that any trustworthy record can be safely dated.
With the 3rd century before Christ, we are introduced to one of the
feudal princes whose military genius enabled him to destroy beyond
hope of revival the feudal system which had endured for eight hundred
years, and to make himself master of the whole of the China of those
days. In 221 B.C. he proclaimed himself the "First Emperor," a title
by which he has ever since been known. Everything, including
literature, was to begin with his reign; and acting on the advice of
his prime minister, he issued an order for the burning of all books,
with the exception only of works relating to medicine, divination and
agriculture. Those who wished to study law were referred for oral
teaching to such as had already qualified in that profession. To carry
out the scheme effectively, the First Emperor made a point of
examining every day about 120 lb weight of books, in order to get rid
of such as he considered to be useless; and he further appointed a
number of inspectors to see that his orders were carried out. The
result was that about four hundred and sixty scholars were put to
death for having disobeyed the imperial command, while many others
were banished for life. This incident is known as the Burning of the
Books; and there is little doubt that, but for the devotion of the
literati, Chinese literature would have had to make a fresh start in
212 B.C. As it was, books were bricked up in walls and otherwise
widely concealed in the hope that the storm would blow over; and this
was actually the case when the Ch'in (Ts'in) dynasty collapsed and the
House of Han took its place in 206 B.C. The Confucian books were
subsequently recovered from their hiding-places, together with many
other works, the loss of which it is difficult now to contemplate.
Unfortunately, however, a stimulus was provided, not for the recovery,
but for the manufacture of writings, the previous existence of which
could be gathered either from tradition or from notices in the various
works which had survived. Forgery became the order of the day; and the
modern student is confronted with a considerable volume of literature
which has to be classified as genuine, doubtful, or spurious,
according to the merits of each case. To the first class belongs the
bulk, but not all, of the Confucian Canon; to the third must be
relegated such books as the _Tao Te Ching_, to be mentioned later on.
Ss[)u]-ma Ch'ien, dying in 87 B.C., deals of course only with the
opening reigns of the Han dynasty, with which he brings to a close the
first great division of his history. The second division consists of
chronological tables; the third, of eight monographs on the following
topics: (1) Rites and Ceremonies, (2) Music, (3) Natural Philosophy,
(4) The Calendar, (5) Astronomy, (6) Religion, (7) Water-ways, and (8)
Commerce. On these eight a few remarks may not be out of place, (1)
The Chinese seem to have been in possession, from very early ages, of
a systematic code of ceremonial observances, so that it is no surprise
to find the subject included, and taking an important place, in
Ss[)u]-ma Ch'ien's work. The _Li Chi_, or Book of Rites, which now
forms part of the Confucian Canon, is however a comparatively modern
compilation, dating only from the 1st century B.C. (2) The
extraordinary similarities between the Chinese and Pythagorean systems
of music force the conclusion that one of these must necessarily have
been derived from the other. The Jesuit Fathers jumped to the
conclusion that the Greeks borrowed their art from the Chinese; but it
is now common knowledge that the Chinese scale did not exist in China
until two centuries after its appearance in Greece. The fact is that
the ancient Chinese works on music perished at the Burning of the
Books; and we are told that by the middle of the 2nd century B.C. the
hereditary Court music-master was altogether ignorant of his art. What
we may call modern Chinese music reached China through Bactria, a
Greek kingdom, founded by Diodotus in 256 B.C., with which intercourse
had been established by the Chinese at an early date. (3) The term
Natural Philosophy can only be applied by courtesy to this essay,
which deals with twelve bamboo tubes of varying lengths, by means of
which, coupled with the twenty-eight zodiacal constellations and with
certain calendaric accords, divine communication is established with
the influences of the five elements and the points of the compass
corresponding with the eight winds. (4) In this connexion, it is worth
noting that in 104 B.C. the Chinese first adopted a cycle of nineteen
years, a period which exactly brings together the solar and the lunar
years; and further that this very cycle is said to have been
introduced by Meton, 5th century B.C., and was adopted at Athens about
330 B.C., probably reaching China, via Bactria, some two centuries
afterwards. (5) This chapter deals specially with the sun, moon and
five planets, which are supposed to aid in the divine government of
mankind. (6) Refers to the solemn sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, as
performed by the emperor upon the summit of Mt. T'ai in Shan-tung. (7)
Refers to the management of the Hoang Ho, or Yellow river, so often
spoken of as "China's Sorrow," and also of the numerous canals with
which the empire is intersected. (8) This chapter, which treats of the
circulation of money, and its function in the Chinese theory of
political economy, is based upon the establishment in 110 B.C. of
certain officials whose business it was to regularize commerce. It was
their duty to buy up the chief necessaries of life when abundant and
when prices were in consequence low, and to offer these for sale when
there was a shortage and when prices would otherwise have risen
unduly. Thus it was hoped that a stability in commercial transactions
would be attained, to the great advantage of the people. The fourth
division of the _Shih Chi_ is devoted to the annals of the reigns of
vassal princes, to be read in connexion with the imperial annals of
the first division. The final division, which is in many ways the most
interesting of all, gives biographical notices of eminent or notorious
men and women, from the earliest ages downwards, and enables us to
draw conclusions at which otherwise it would have been impossible to
arrive. Confucius and Mencius, for instance, stand out as real
personages who actually played a part in China's history; while all we
can gather from the short life of Lao Tz[)u], a part of which reads
like an interpolation by another hand, is that he was a more or less
legendary individual, whose very existence at the date usually
assigned to him, 7th and 6th centuries B.C., is altogether doubtful.
Scattered among these biographies are a few notices of frontier
nations; e.g. of the terrible nomads known as the Hsiung-nu, whose
identity with the Huns has now been placed beyond a doubt.
Ss[)u]-ma Ch'ien's great work, on which he laboured for so many vears
and which ran to five hundred and twenty-six thousand five hundred
words, has been described somewhat at length for the following reason.
It has been accepted as the model for all subsequent dynastic
histories, of which twenty-four have now been published, the whole
being produced in 1747 in a uniform edition, bound up (in the
Cambridge Library) in two hundred and nineteen large volumes. Each
dynasty has found its historian in the dynasty which supplanted it;
and each dynastic history is notable for the extreme fairness with
which the conquerors have dealt with the vanquished, accepting without
demur such records of their predecessors as were available from
official sources. The T'ang dynasty, A.D. 618-906, offers in one sense
a curious exception to the general rule. It possesses two histories,
both included in the above series. The first of these, now known as
the Old T'ang History, was ultimately set aside as inaccurate and
inadequate, and a New T'ang History was compiled by Ou-yang Hsiu, a
distinguished scholar, poet and statesman of the 11th century.
Nevertheless, in all cases, the scheme of the dynastic history has,
with certain modifications, been that which was initiated in the 1st
century B.C. by Ss[)u]-ma Ch'ien.
The Mirror of History.
The output of history, however, does not begin and end with the
voluminous records above referred to, one of which, it should be
mentioned, was in great part the work of a woman. History has always
been a favourite study with the Chinese, and innumerable histories of
a non-official character, long and short, complete and partial,
political and constitutional, have been showered from age to age upon
the Chinese reading world. Space would fail for the mere mention of a
tithe of such works; but there is one which stands out among the rest
and is especially enshrined in the hearts of the Chinese people. This
is the _T'ung Chien_, or Mirror of History, so called because "to view
antiquity as though in a mirror is an aid in the administration of
government." It was the work of a statesman of the 11th century, whose
name, by a coincidence, was Ss[)u]-ma Kuang. He had been forced to
retire from office, and spent nearly all the last sixteen years of his
life in historical research. The Mirror of History embraces a period
from the 5th century B.C. down to A.D. 960. It is written in a
picturesque style; but the arrangement was found to be unsuited to the
systematic study of history. Accordingly, it was subjected to
revision, and was to a great extent reconstructed by Chu Hsi, the
famous commentator, who flourished A.D. 1130-1200, and whose work is
now regarded as the standard history of China.
_Biography._--In regard to biography, the student is by no means limited
to the dynastic histories. Many huge biographical collections have been
compiled and published by private individuals, and many lives of the
same personages have often been written from different points of view.
There is nothing very much by which a Chinese biography can be
distinguished from biographies produced in other parts of the world. The
Chinese writer always begins with the place of birth, but he is not so
particular about the year, sometimes leaving that to be gathered from
the date of death taken in connexion with the age which the person may
have attained. Some allusion is usually made to ancestry, and the steps
of an official career, upward by promotion or downward by disgrace, are
also carefully noted.
_Geography and Travel._--There is a considerable volume of Chinese
literature which comes under this head; but if we exclude certain brief
notices of foreign countries, there remains nothing in the way of
general geography which had been produced prior to the arrival of the
Jesuit Fathers at the close of the 16th century. Up to that period
geography meant the topography of the Chinese empire; and of
topographical records there is a very large and valuable collection.
Every prefecture and department, some eighteen hundred in all, has each
its own particular topography, compiled from records and from tradition
with a fullness that leaves nothing to be desired. The buildings,
bridges, monuments of archaeological interest, &c., in each district,
are all carefully inserted, side by side with biographical and other
local details, always of interest to residents and often to the outside
public. An extensive general geography of the empire was last published
in 1745; and this was followed by a chronological geography in 1794.
Fa Hsien.
The Chinese have always been fond of travel, and hosts of travellers
have published notices, more or less extensive, of the different parts
of the empire, and even of adjacent nations, which they visited either
as private individuals or, in the former case, as officials proceeding
to distant posts. With Buddhism came the desire to see the country which
was the home of the Buddha; and several important pilgrimages were
undertaken with a view to bring back images and sacred writings to
China. On such a journey the Buddhist priest, Fa Hsien, started in A.D.
399; and after practically walking the whole way from central China,
across the desert of Gobi, on to Khoten, and across the Hindu Kush into
India, he visited many of the chief cities of India, until at length
reaching Calcutta he took ship, and after a most adventurous voyage, in
the course of which he remained two years in Ceylon, he finally arrived
safely, in A.D. 414, with all his books, pictures, and images, at a spot
on the coast of Shan-tung, near the modern German port of Kiao-chow.
Hsuean Tsang.
Another of these adventurous priests was Hsuean Tsang (wrongly, Yuean
Chwang), who left China on a similar mission in 629, and returned in
645, bringing with him six hundred and fifty-seven Buddhist books,
besides many images and pictures, and one hundred and fifty relics. He
spent the rest of his life in translating, with the help of other
learned priests, these books into Chinese, and completed in 648 the
important record of his own travels, known as the Record of Western
Countries.
Lao Tz[)u].
_Philosophy._--Even the briefest _resume_ of Chinese philosophical
literature must necessarily include the name of Lao Tz[)u], although his
era, as seen above, and his personality are both matters of the vaguest
conjecture. A number of his sayings, scattered over the works of early
writers, have been pieced together, with the addition of much
incomprehensible jargon, and the whole has been given to the world as
the work of Lao Tz[)u] himself, said to be of the 6th century B.C.,
under the title of the _Tao Te Ching_. The internal evidence against
this book is overwhelming; e.g. one quotation had been detached from the
writer who preserved it, with part of that writer's text clinging to
it--of course by an oversight. Further, such a treatise is never
mentioned in Chinese literature until some time after the Burning of the
Books, that is, about four centuries after its alleged first appearance.
Still, after due expurgation, it forms an almost complete collection of
such apophthegms of Lao Tz[)u] as have come down to us, from which the
reader can learn that the author taught the great doctrine of
Inaction--Do nothing, and all things will be done. Also, that Lao Tz[)u]
anticipated the Christian doctrine of returning good for evil, a
sentiment which was highly reprobated by the practical mind of
Confucius, who declared that evil should be met by justice. Among the
more picturesque of his utterances are such paradoxes as, "He who knows
how to shut, uses no bolts; yet you cannot open. He who knows how to
bind uses no ropes; yet you cannot untie"; "The weak overcomes the
strong; the soft overcomes the hard," &c.
Chuang Tz[)u].
These, and many similar subtleties of speech, seem to have fired the
imagination of Chuang Tz[)u], 4th and 3rd centuries B.C., with the
result that he put much time and energy into the glorification of Lao
Tz[)u] and his doctrines. Possessed of a brilliant style and a master
of irony, Chuang Tz[)u] attacked the schools of Confucius and Mo Ti
(see below) with so much dialectic skill that the ablest scholars of
the age were unable to refute his destructive criticisms. His pages
abound in quaint anecdotes and allegorical instances, arising as it
were spontaneously out of the questions handled, and imparting a
lively interest to points which might otherwise have seemed dusty and
dull. He was an idealist with all the idealist's hatred of a
utilitarian system, and a mystic with all the mystic's contempt for a
life of mere external activity. Only thirty-three chapters of his work
now remain, though so many as fifty-three are known to have been still
extant in the 3rd century; and even of these, several complete
chapters are spurious, while in others it is comparatively easy to
detect here and there the hand of the interpolator. What remains,
however, after all reductions, has been enough to secure a lasting
place for Chuang Tz[)u] as the most original of China's philosophical
writers. His book is of course under the ban of heterodoxy, in common
with all thought opposed to the Confucian teachings. His views as
mystic, idealist, moralist and social reformer have no weight with the
aspirant who has his way to make in official life; but they are a
delight, and even a consolation, to many of the older men, who have no
longer anything to gain or to lose.
Confucius.
Confucius, 551-479 B.C., who imagined that his Annals of the Lu State
would give him immortality, has always been much more widely
appreciated as a moralist than as an historian. His talks with his
disciples and with others have been preserved for us, together with
some details of his personal and private life; and the volume in which
these are collected forms one of the Four Books of the Confucian
Canon. Starting from the axiomatic declaration that man is born good
and only becomes evil by his environment, he takes filial piety and
duty to one's neighbour as his chief themes, often illustrating his
arguments with almost Johnsonian emphasis. He cherished a shadowy
belief in a God, but not in a future state of reward or punishment for
good or evil actions in this world. He rather taught men to be
virtuous for virtue's sake.
Mencius.
Mo Ti.
Yang Chu.
Hsuen Tz[)u].
Yang Hsiung.
The discourses of Mencius, who followed Confucius after an interval of
a hundred years, 372-289 B.C., form another of the Four Books, the
remaining two of which are short philosophical treatises, usually
ascribed to a grandson of Confucius. Mencius devoted his life to
elucidating and expanding the teachings of the Master; and it is no
doubt due to him that the Confucian doctrines obtained so wide a
vogue. But he himself was more a politician and an economist (see
below) than a simple preacher of morality; and hence it is that the
Chinese people have accorded to him the title of The Second Sage. He
is considered to have effectually "snuffed out" the heterodox school
of Mo Ti, a philosopher of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. who
propounded a doctrine of "universal love" as the proper foundation for
organized society, arguing that under such a system all the calamities
that men bring upon one another would altogether disappear, and the
Golden Age would be renewed. At the same time Mencius exposed the
fallacies of the speculations of Yang Chu, 4th century B.C., who
founded a school of ethical egoism as opposed to the exaggerated
altruism of Mo Ti. According to Mencius, Yang Chu would not have
parted with one hair of his body to save the whole world, whereas Mo
Ti would have sacrificed all. Another early philosopher is Hsuen
Tz[)u], 3rd century B.C. He maintained, in opposition to Mencius, who
upheld the Confucian dogma, and in conformity with Christian doctrine,
that the nature of man at his birth is evil, and that this condition
can only be changed by efficient moral training. Then came Yang
Hsiung, 53-18 B.C., who propounded an ethical criterion midway between
the rival positions insisted on by Mencius and Hsuen Tz[)u], teaching
that the nature of man at birth is neither good nor evil, but a
mixture of both, and that development in either direction depends
wholly upon circumstances.
Huai-nan Tz[)u].
There is a voluminous and interesting work, of doubtful age, which
passes under the title of _Huai-nan Tz[)u]_, or the Philosopher of
Huai-nan. It is attributed to Liu An, prince of Huai-nan, who died 122
B.C., and who is further said to have written on alchemy; but alchemy
was scarcely known in China at the date of his death, being introduced
about that time from Greece. The author, whoever he may have been,
poses as a disciple of Lao Tz[)u]; but the speculations of Lao Tz[)u],
as glorified by Chuang Tz[)u], were then rapidly sinking into vulgar
efforts to discover the elixir of life. It is very difficult in many
cases of this kind to decide what books are, and what books are not,
partial or complete forgeries. In the present instance, the aid of the
_Shuo Wen_, a dictionary of the 1st century A.D. (see below), may be
invoked, but not in quite so satisfactory a sense as that in which it
will be seen lower down to have been applied to the _Tao Te Ching_.
The _Shuo Wen_ contains a quotation said to be taken from _Huai-nan
Tz[)u]_; but that quotation cannot be found in the work under
consideration. It may be argued that the words in question may have
been taken from another work by the same author; but if so, it becomes
difficult to believe that a book, more than two hundred years old,
from which the author of the _Shuo Wen_ quoted, should have been
allowed to perish without leaving any trace behind. China has produced
its Bentleys in considerable numbers; but almost all of them have
given their attention to textual criticism of the Confucian Canon, and
few have condescended to examine critically the works of heterodox
writers. The foreign student therefore finds himself faced with many
knotty points he is entirely unable to solve.
Wang Ch'ung.
Of Wang Ch'ung, a speculative and materialistic philosopher, A.D.
27-97, banned by the orthodox for his attacks on Confucius and
Mencius, only one work has survived. it consists of eighty-four essays
on such topics as the nature of things, destiny, divination, death,
ghosts, poisons, miracles, criticisms of Confucius and Mencius,
exaggeration, sacrifice and exorcism. According to Wang Ch'ung, man,
endowed at birth sometimes with a good and sometimes with an evil
nature, is informed with a vital fluid, which resides in the blood and
is nourished by eating and drinking, its two functions being to
animate the body and keep in order the mind. It is the source of all
sensation, passing through the blood like a wave. When it reaches the
eyes, ears and mouth, the result is sight, hearing and speech
respectively. Disturbance of the vital fluid leads to insanity.
Without the fluid, the body cannot be maintained; without the body,
the fluid loses its vitality. Therefore, argues Wang Ch'ung, when the
body perishes and the fluid loses its vitality, each being dependent
on the other, there remains nothing for immortality in a life beyond
the grave. Ghosts he held to be the hallucinations of disordered
minds, and miracles to be natural phenomena capable of simple
explanations. His indictments of Confucius and Mencius are not of a
serious character; though, as regards the former, it must be borne in
mind that the Chinese people will not suffer the faintest aspersion on
the fair fame of their great Sage. It is related in the _Lun Yue_ that
Confucius paid a visit to the notoriously immoral wife of one of the
feudal nobles, and that a certain disciple was "displeased" in
consequence, whereupon the Master swore, saying, "If I have done any
wrong, may the sky fall and crush me!" Wang Ch'ung points out that the
form of oath adopted by Confucius is unsatisfactory and fails to carry
conviction. Had he said, "May I be struck dead by lightning!" his
sincerity would have been more powerfully attested, because people are
often struck dead by lightning; whereas the fall of the sky is too
remote a contingency, such a thing never having been known to happen
within the memory of man. As to Mencius, there is a passage in his
works which states that a thread of predestination runs through all
human life, and that those who accommodate themselves will come off
better in the end than those who try to oppose; it is in fact a
statement of the [Greek: ouk uper moron] principle. On this Wang
Ch'ung remarks that the will of God is consequently made to depend on
human actions; and he further strengthens his objection by showing
that the best men have often fared worst. For instance, Confucius
never became emperor; Pi Kan, the patriot, was disembowelled; the bold
and faithful disciple, Tz[)u] Lu, was chopped into small pieces.
Book of Changes.
But the tale of Chinese philosophers is a long one. It is a department
of literature in which the leading scholars of all ages have mostly
had something to say. The great Chu Hsi, A.D. 1130-1200, whose fame is
chiefly perhaps that of a commentator and whose monument is his
uniform exegesis of the Confucian Canon, was also a voluminous writer
on philosophy. He took a hand in the mystery which surrounds the _I
Ching_ (or _Yih King_), generally known as the Book of Changes, which
is held by some to be the oldest Chinese work and which forms part of
the Confucian Canon. It is ascribed to King Wen, the virtual founder
of the Chou dynasty, 1122-249 B.C., whose son became the first
sovereign and posthumously raised his father to kingly rank. It
contains a fanciful system of divination, deduced originally from
eight diagrams consisting of triplet combinations of a line and a
broken line, either one of which is necessarily repeated twice, and in
two cases three times, in the same combination. Thus there may be
three lines [Illustration], or three broken lines [Illustration], and
other such combinations as [Illustration] and [Illustration].
Confucius declared that he would like to give another fifty years to
the elucidation of this puzzling text. Shao Yung, A.D. 1011-1077,
sought the key in numbers: Ch'eng I., A.D. 1033-1107, in the eternal
fitness of things. "But Chu Hsi alone," says a writer of the 17th
century, "was able to pierce through the meaning and appropriate the
thoughts of the inspired man who composed it." No foreigner, however,
has been able quite to understand what Chu Hsi did make of it, and
several have gone so far as to set all native interpretations aside in
favour of their own. Thus, the _I Ching_ has been discovered by one to
be a calendar of the lunar year; by another, to contain a system of
phallic worship; and by a third, to be a vocabulary of the language of
a tribe, whose very existence had to be postulated for the purpose.
Kuan Chung.
_Political Economy._--This department of literature has been by no
means neglected by Chinese writers. So early as the 7th century B.C.
we find Kuan Chung, the prime minister of the Ch'i state, devoting his
attention to economic problems, and thereby making that state the
wealthiest and the strongest of all the feudal kingdoms. Beginning
life as a merchant, he passed into the public service, and left behind
him at death a large work, parts of which, as we now possess it, may
possibly have come direct from his own hand, the remainder being
written up at a later date in accordance with the principles he
inculcated. His ideal State was divided into twenty-one parts, fifteen
of which were allotted to officials and agriculturists, and six to
manufacturers and traders. His great idea was to make his own state
self-contained; and accordingly he fostered agriculture in order to be
independent in time of war, and manufactures in order to increase his
country's wealth in time of peace. He held that a purely agricultural
population would always remain poor; while a purely manufacturing
population would risk having its supplies of raw material cut off in
time of war. He warmly encouraged free imports as a means of enriching
his countrymen, trusting to their ability, under these conditions, to
hold their own against foreign competition. He protected capital, in
the sense that he considered capitalists to be necessary for the
development of commerce in time of peace, and for the protection of
the state in time of war.
Mencius (see above) was in favour of heavily taxing merchants who
tried to engross for the purpose of regrating, that is, to buy up
wholesale for the purpose of retailing at monopoly prices; he was in
fact opposed to all trusts and corners in trade. He was in favour of a
tax to be imposed upon such persons as were mere consumers, living
upon property which had been amassed by others and doing no work
themselves. No tax, however, was to be exacted from property-owners
who contributed by their personal efforts to the general welfare of
the community. The object of the tax was not revenue, but the
prevention of idleness with its attendant evil consequences to the
state.
Wang An-shih.
Wang An-shih, the Reformer, or Innovator, as he has been called,
flourished A.D. 1021-1086. In 1069 he was appointed state councillor,
and forthwith entered upon a series of startling reforms which have
given him a unique position in the annals of China. He established a
state monopoly in commerce, under which the produce of a district was
to be used first for the payment of taxes, then for the direct use of
the district itself, and the remainder was to be purchased by the
government at a cheap rate, either to be held until there was a rise
in price, or to be transported to some other district in need of it.
The people were to profit by fixity of prices and escape from further
taxation; and the government, by the revenue accruing in the process
of administration. There was also to be a system of state advances to
cultivators of land; not merely to the needy, but to all alike. The
loan was to be compulsory, and interest was to be paid on it at the
rate of 2% per month. The soil was to be divided into equal areas and
taxed according to its fertility in each case, without reference to
the number of inhabitants contained in each area. All these, and other
important reforms, failed to find favour with a rigidly conservative
people, and Wang An-shih lived long enough to see the whole of his
policy reversed.
Sun-Tz[)u].
_Military Writers._--Not much, relatively speaking, has been written
by the Chinese on war in general, strategy or tactics. There is,
however, one very remarkable work which has come down to us from the
6th century B.C., as to the genuineness of which there now seems to be
no reasonable doubt. A biographical notice of the author, Sun Wu, is
given in the _Shih Chi_ (see above), from which we learn that "he knew
how to handle an army, and was finally appointed General." His work,
entitled the _Art of War_, is a short treatise in thirteen chapters,
under the following headings: "Laying Plans," "Waging War," "Attack by
Stratagem," "Tactical Dispositions," "Energy," "Weak Points and
Strong," "Manoeuvring," "Variation of Tactics," "The Army on the
March," "Terrain," "The Nine Situations," "The Attack by Fire," and
"The Use of Spies." Although the warfare of Sun Wu's day was the
warfare of bow and arrow, of armoured chariots and push of pike,
certain principles inseparably associated with successful issue will
be found enunciated in his work. Professor Mackail, in his _Latin
Literature_ (p. 86), declares that Varro's _Imagines_ was "the first
instance in history of the publication of an illustrated book." But
reference to the Art Section of the history of the Western Han
dynasty, 206 B.C.-A.D. 25, will disclose the title of fifteen or
sixteen illustrated books, one of which is Sun Wu's _Art of War_.
Hsue Kuang-ch'i.
_Agriculture._--In spite of the high place accorded to agriculturists,
who rank second only to officials and before artisans and traders, and
in spite of the assiduity with which agriculture has been practised in
all ages, securing immunity from slaughter for the ploughing ox--what
agricultural literature the Chinese possess may be said to belong
entirely to modern times. Ch'en Fu of the 12th century A.D. was the
author of a small work in three parts, dealing with agriculture,
cattle-breeding and silkworms respectively. There is also a well-known
work by an artist of the early 13th century, with forty-six woodcuts
illustrating the various operations of agriculture and weaving. This
book was reprinted under the emperor K'ang Hsi, 1662-1723, and new
illustrations with excellent perspective were provided by Chiao
Ping-chen, an artist who had adopted foreign methods as introduced by
the famous Jesuit, Matteo Ricci. The standard work on agriculture,
entitled _Nung Cheng Ch'uean Shu_, was compiled by Hsue Kuang-ch'i,
1562-1634, generally regarded as the only influential member of the
mandarinate who has ever become a convert to Christianity. It is in
sixty sections, the first three of which are devoted to classical
references. Then follow two sections on the division of land, six on
the processes of husbandry, none on hydraulics, four on agricultural
implements, six on planting, six on rearing silkworms, four on trees,
one on breeding animals, one on food and eighteen on provision against
a time of scarcity.
Pen Ts'no.
_Medicine and Therapeutics._--The oldest of the innumerable medical
works of all descriptions with which China has been flooded from time
immemorial is a treatise which has been credited to the Yellow Emperor
(see above), 2698-2598 B.C. It is entitled _Plain Questions of the
Yellow Emperor_, or _Su Wen_ for short, and takes the form of
questions put by the emperor and answered by Earl Ch'i, a minister,
who was himself author of the _Nei Ching_, a medical work no longer in
existence. Without accepting the popular attribution of the _Su Wen_,
it is most probable that it is a very old book, dating back to several
centuries before Christ, and containing traditional lore of a still
more remote period. The same may be said of certain works on cautery
and acupuncture, both of which are still practised by Chinese doctors;
and also of works on the pulse, the variations of which have been
classified and allocated with a minuteness hardly credible. Special
treatises on fevers, skin-diseases, diseases of the feet, eyes, heart,
&c., are to be found in great quantities, as well as veterinary
treatises on the treatment of diseases of the horse and the domestic
buffalo. But in the whole range of Chinese medical literature there is
nothing which can approach the _Pen Ts'ao_, or _Materia Medica_,
sometimes called the Herbal, a title (i.e. _Pen Ts'ao_) which seems to
have belonged to some book of the kind in pre-historic ages. The work
under consideration was compiled by Li Shih-chen, who completed his
task in 1578 after twenty-six years' labour. No fewer than eighteen
hundred and ninety-two species of drugs, animal, vegetable and
mineral, are dealt with, arranged under sixty-two classes in sixteen
divisions; and eight thousand one hundred and sixty prescriptions are
given in connexion with the various entries. The author professes to
quote from the original _Pen Ts'ao_, above mentioned; and we obtain
from his extracts an insight into some curious details. It appears
that formerly the number of recognized drugs was three hundred and
sixty-five in all, corresponding with the days of the year. One
hundred and twenty of these were called _sovereigns_ (cf. a sovereign
prescription); and were regarded as entirely beneficial to health,
taken in any quantity or for any time. Another similar number were
called _ministers_; some of these were poisonous, and all had to be
used with discretion. The remaining one hundred and twenty-five were
_agents_; all very poisonous, but able to cure diseases if not taken
in over-doses. The modern _Pen Ts'ao_, in its sixteen divisions, deals
with drugs classed under water, fire, earth, minerals, herbs, grain,
vegetables, fruit, trees, clothes and utensils, insects, fishes,
crustacea, birds, beasts and man. In each case the proper name of the
drug is first given, followed by its explanation, solution of doubtful
points, correction of errors, means of identification by taste, use in
prescriptions, &c. The work is fully illustrated, and there is an
index to the various medicines, classed according to the complaints
for which they are used.
_Divination, &c._--The practice of divination is of very ancient date
in China, traceable, it has been suggested, back to the Canon of
Changes (see above), which is commonly used by the lettered classes
for that purpose. A variety of other methods, the chief of which is
astrology, have also been adopted, and have yielded a considerable
bulk of literature. Even the officially-published almanacs still mark
certain days as suitable for certain undertakings, while other days
are marked in the opposite sense. The spirit of Zadkiel pervades the
Chinese empire. In like manner, geomancy is a subject on which many
volumes have been written; and the same applies to the pseudo sciences
of palmistry, physiognomy, alchemy (introduced from Greek sources) and
others.
_Painting._--Calligraphy, in the eyes of the Chinese, is just as much
a fine art as painting; the two are, in fact, considered to have come
into existence together, but as might be expected the latter occupies
the larger space in Chinese literature, and forms the subject of
numerous extensive works. One of the most important of these is the
_Hsuean Ho Hua P'u_, the author of which is unknown. It contains
information concerning two hundred and thirty-one painters and the
titles of six thousand one hundred and ninety-two of their pictures,
all in the imperial collection during the dynastic period _Hsuean Ho_,
A.D. 1119-1126, from which the title is derived. The artists are
classified under one of the following ten headings, supposed to
represent the line in which each particularly excelled: Religion,
Human Figures, Buildings, Barbarians (including their Animals),
Dragons and Fishes, Landscape, Animals, Flowers and Birds, The Bamboo,
Vegetables and Fruits.
_Music._--The literature of music does not go back to a remote period.
The Canon of Music, which was formerly included in the Confucian
Canon, has been lost for many centuries; and the works now available,
exclusive of entries in the dynastic histories, are not older than the
9th century A.D., to which date may be assigned the _Chieh Ku Lu_, a
treatise on the deerskin drum, said to have been introduced into China
from central Asia, and evidently of Scythian origin. There are several
important works of the 16th and 17th centuries, in which the history
and theory of music are fully discussed, and illustrations of
instruments are given, with measurements in each case, and the special
notation required.
_Miscellaneous._--Under this head may be grouped a vast number of
works, many of them exhaustive, on such topics as archaeology, seals
(engraved), numismatics, pottery, ink (the miscalled "Indian"),
mirrors, precious stones, tea, wine, chess, wit and humour, even
cookery, &c. There is, indeed, hardly any subject, within reasonable
limits, which does not find some corner in Chinese literature.
Lung Wei Pi Shu.
_Collections_.--Reprints of miscellaneous books and pamphlets in a
uniform edition, the whole forming a "library," has long been a
favourite means of disseminating useful (and other) information. Of
these, the _Lung Wei Pi Shu_ may be taken as a specimen. In bulk it
would be about the equivalent of twenty volumes, 8vo, of four hundred
pages to each. Among its contents we find the following. A handbook of
phraseology, with explanations; a short account of fabulous regions to
the N., S., E. and W.; notes on the plants and trees of southern
countries; biographical sketches of ninety-two wonderful personages;
an account of the choice of an empress, with standard measurements of
the height, length of limb, &c., of the ideal woman; "Pillow Notes" (a
term borrowed by the Japanese), or jottings on various subjects,
ranging from the Creation to an account of Fusang, a country where the
trees are thousands of feet high and of vast girth, thus supporting
the California, as opposed to the Mexico, identification of Fusang;
critiques on the style of various poets, and on the indebtedness of
each to earlier writers; a list of the most famous bronze vessels cast
by early emperors, with their dimensions, inscriptions, &c.; a
treatise on the bamboo; a list of famous swords, with dates of forging
and inscriptions; an account of the old Mongol palace, previous to its
destruction by the first Ming emperor; notes on the wild tribes of
China; historical episodes; biographical notices of one hundred and
four poets of the present dynasty; notes on archaeological,
supernatural and other topics, first published in the 9th century;
notes for bibliophiles on the care of books, and on paper, ink,
pictures and bric-a-brac; a collection of famous criminal cases; night
thoughts suggested by a meteor. Add to the above, numerous short
stories relating to magic, dreams, bilocation, and to almost every
possible phase of supernatural manifestation, and the reader will have
some idea of what he may expect in an ordinary "library" of a popular
character. It must always be remembered that with the Chinese, style
is of paramount importance. Documents, the subject-matter of which
would be recognized to be of no educative value, would still be
included, if written in a pleasing style, such as might be serviceable
as a model.
_Individual Authors_.--In a similar manner it has always been
customary for relatives or friends, sometimes for the trade, to
publish the "complete works" of important and often unimportant
writers; usually, soon after death. And as literary distinction has
hitherto almost invariably led to high office under the state, the
collected works of the great majority of authors open with selected
Memorials to the Throne and other documents of an official character.
The public interest in these may have long since passed away; but they
are valued by the Chinese as models of a style to be imitated, and the
foreign student occasionally comes across papers on once burning
questions arising out of commercial or diplomatic intercourse with
western nations. Then may follow--the order is not always the
same--the prefaces which the author contributed from time to time to
the literary undertakings of his friends. Preface-writing is almost a
department of Chinese literature. No one ever thinks of publishing a
book without getting one or more of his capable associates to provide
prefaces, which are naturally of a laudatory character, and always
couched in highly-polished and obscure terms, the difficulty of the
text being often aggravated by a fanciful and almost illegible script.
Prefaces written by emperors, many examples of which may be seen, are
of course highly esteemed, and are generally printed in coloured ink.
The next section may comprise biographical notices of eminent men and
women, or of mere local celebrities, who happened to die in the
author's day. Then will follow Records, a title which covers
inscriptions carved on the walls of new buildings, or on memorial
tablets, and also notes on pictures which the author may have seen,
places which he may have visited, or allegorical incidents which he
may have imagined. Then come disquisitions, or essays on various
subjects; researches, being short articles of archaeological interest;
studies or monographs; birthday congratulations to friends or to
official colleagues; announcements, as to deities, a cessation of
whose worship is threatened if the necessary rain or fair weather be
not forthcoming; funeral orations, letters of condolence, &c. The
above items will perhaps fill half a dozen volumes; the remaining
volumes, running to twenty or thirty in all, as the case may be, will
contain the author's poetry, together with his longer and more serious
works. The essential of such a collection is, in Chinese eyes, its
completeness.
San Kuo Chih.
Hung Lou Meng.
Liao Chai.
_Fiction_.--Although novels are not regarded as an integral part of
literature proper, it is generally conceded that some novels may be
profitably studied, if for no other reason, from the point of view of
style. With the novel, however, we are no longer on perfectly safe
ground in regard to that decency which characterizes, as has been above
stated, the vast mass of Chinese literature. Chinese novels range, in
this sense, from the simplest and most unaffected tale of daily life,
down to low--not the lowest--depths of objectionable pornography. The
_San Kuo Chih_, an historical romance based upon a period of disruption
at the close of the 2nd century A.D., is a delightful book, packed with
episodes of battle, heroism, self-sacrifice, skilful strategy, and all
that goes to make up a stirring picture of strenuous times. Its author,
who might almost have been Walter Scott, cannot be named for certain;
but the work itself probably belongs to the 13th century, a date at
which the novel begins to make its appearance in China. Previous to that
time, there had been current an immense quantity of stories of various
kinds, but nothing like a novel, as we understand the term. From the
13th century onwards, the growth of the novel was continuous; and
finally, in the 17th century, a point was reached which is not likely to
be surpassed. The _Hung Lou Meng_, the author of which took pains, for
political reasons, to conceal his identity, is a creation of a very high
order. Its plot is intricate and original, and the _denouement_
startlingly tragic. In the course of the story, the chief clue of which
is love, woven in with intrigue, ambition, wealth, poverty, and other
threads of human life, there occur no fewer than over four hundred
characters, each one possessed of a distinctive personality drawn with
marvellous skill. It contains incidents which recall the licence
tolerated in Fielding; but the coarseness, like that of Fielding, is
always on the surface, and devoid of the ulterior suggestiveness of the
modern psychological novel. But perhaps no work of fiction has ever
enjoyed such vogue among literary men as a collection of stories, some
graceful, some weird, written in 1679 by P'u Sungling, a disappointed
candidate at the public examinations. This collection, known as the
_Liao Chai_, is exceedingly interesting to the foreign student for its
sidelights on folklore and family life; to the native scholar, who
professes to smile at the subject-matter as beyond the pale of genuine
literature, it is simply invaluable as an expression of the most
masterly style of which his language is capable.
Hsi Hsiang Chi.
_Drama._--Simultaneously with the appearance of the novel, stage-plays
seem to have come into existence in China. In the earliest ages there
were set dances by trained performers, to the accompaniment of music and
singing; and something of the kind, more or less ornate as regards the
setting, has always been associated with solemn and festive occasions.
But not until the days of the Mongol rule, A.D. 1260-1368, can the drama
proper be said to have taken root and flourished in Chinese soil. The
probability is that both the drama and the novel were introduced from
Central Asia in the wake of the Mongol conquerors; the former is now
specially essential to the everyday happiness of the Chinese people, who
are perhaps the most confirmed playgoers in the world. There is an
excellent collection of one hundred plays of the Mongol dynasty, with an
illustration to each, first published in 1615; there is also a further
large collection, issued in 1845, which contains a great number of plays
arranged under sixty headings, according to the style and purport of
each, besides many others. There is one famous play of the Mongol period
which deals largely in plot and passion, and is a great favourite with
the educated classes. It is entitled _Hsi Hsiang Chi_, or the Story of
the Western Pavilion; and as if there was a doubt as to the reception
which would be accorded to the work, a minatory sentence was inserted in
the prolegomena: "If any one ventures to call this book indecent, he
will certainly have his tongue torn out in hell." So far as the written
play is concerned, its language is altogether unobjectionable; on the
stage, by means of gag and gesture, its presentation is often unseemly
and coarse. What the Chinese playgoer delights in, as an evening's
amusement, is a succession of plays which are more of the nature of
sketches, slight in construction and generally weak in plot, some of
them based upon striking historical episodes, and others dealing with a
single humorous incident.
_Dictionaries._--The _Erh Ya_, or Nearing the Standard, is commonly
classed as a dictionary, and is referred by native scholars generally
to the 12th century B.C. The entries are arranged under nineteen
heads, to facilitate reference, and explain a large number of words
and phrases, including names of beasts, birds, plants and fishes. The
work is well illustrated in the large modern edition; but the actual
date of composition is an entirely open question, and the insertion of
woodcuts must necessarily belong to a comparatively late age (see
_Military Writers_).
Shuo Wen.
With the _Shuo Wen_, or Explanation of Written Words, we begin the
long list of lexicographical works which constitute such a notable
feature in Chinese literature. A scholar, named Hsue Shen, who died
about A.D. 120, made an effort to bring together and analyse all the
characters it was possible to gather from the written language as it
existed in his own day. He then proceeded to arrange these
characters--about ten thousand in all--on a system which would enable
a student to find a given word without having possibly to search
through the whole book. To do this, he simply grouped together all
such as had a common part, more or less indicative of the meaning of
each, much as though an English dictionary were to consist of such
groups as
Dog-days
Dog-kennel
Dog-collar
Dog-meat
Dog-nap
and so on.
Horse-collar
Horse-flesh
Horse-back
Horse-fly
Horse-chestnut
and so on.
Hsue Shen selected five hundred and forty of these common parts, or
Radicals (see _Language_), a number which, as will be seen later on,
was found to be cumbrously large; and under each Radical he inserted
all the characters belonging to it, but with no particular order or
arrangement, so that search was still, in many cases, quite a
laborious task. The explanations given were chiefly intended to
establish the pictorial origin of the language; but whereas no one now
disputes this as a general conclusion, the steps by which Hsue Shen
attempted to prove his theory must in a large number of instances be
dismissed as often inadequate and sometimes ridiculous. Nevertheless,
it was a great achievement; and the _Shuo Wen_ is still indispensable
to the student of the particular script in vogue a century or two
before Christ. It is also of value in another sense. It may be used,
with discretion, in testing the genuineness of an alleged ancient
document, which, if an important or well-known document before the age
of Hsue Shen, would not be likely to contain characters not given in
his work. Under this test the _Tao Te Ching_, for instance, breaks
down (see _Huai-nan Tz[)u]_).
Passing over a long series of dictionaries and vocabularies which
appeared at various dates, some constructed on Hsue Shen's plan, with
modifications and improvements, and others, known as phonetic
dictionaries, arranged under the finals according to the Tones, we
come to the great standard lexicon produced under the auspices, and
now bearing the name of the emperor K'ang Hsi, A.D. 1662-1723.
Phonetic dictionaries.
But before proceeding, a rough attempt may be made to exhibit in
English terms the principle of the phonetic as compared with the
radical dictionary described above. In the spoken language there would
occur the word _light_, the opposite of dark, and this would be
expressed in writing by a certain symbol. Then, when it became
necessary to write down _light_, the opposite of heavy, the result
would be precisely what we see in English. But as written words
increased, always with a limited number of vocables (see _Language_),
this system was found to be impracticable, and Radicals were inserted
as a means of distinguishing one kind of _light_ from another, but
without altering the original sound. Now, in the phonetic dictionary
the words are no longer arranged in such groups as
Sun-light
Sun-beam
Sun-stroke
Sun-god, &c.
according to the Radicals, but in such groups as
Sun-light
Moon-light
Foot-light
Gas-light, &c.
according to the phonetics, all the above four being pronounced simply
_light_, without reference to the radical portion which guides towards
the limited sense of the term. So, in a phonetic dictionary, we should
have such a group as
Brass-bound
Morocco-bound
Half-bound
Spell-bound
Homeward-bound
Wind-bound
and so on, all the above six being pronounced simply _bound_. To
return to "K'ang Hsi," as the lexicon in question is familiarly
styled, the total number of characters given therein amounts to over
forty-four thousand, grouped no longer under the five hundred and
forty Radicals of Hsue Shen, but under the much more manageable number
of two hundred and fourteen, as already used in earlier dictionaries.
Further, as the groups of characters would now be more than four times
as large as in the _Shuo Wen_, they were subdivided under each Radical
according to the number of strokes in the other, or phonetic part of
the character. Thus, adopting letters as strokes, for the purpose of
illustration, we should have "dog-nap" in the group of Radical "dog"
and three strokes, while "dog-days" and "dog-meat" would both be found
under Radical "dog" with four strokes, and so on. The two hundred and
fourteen Radicals are themselves arranged in groups according to the
number of strokes; so that it is not a very arduous task to turn up
ordinary characters in a Chinese dictionary. Finally, although Chinese
is a monosyllabic and non-alphabetic language, a method has been
devised, and has been in use since the 3rd century A.D., by which the
sound of any word can be indicated in a dictionary otherwise than by
simply quoting a word of similar sound, which of course may be equally
unknown to the searcher. Thus, the sound of a word pronounced _ching_
can be exhibited by selecting two words, one having the initial _ch_,
and the other a final _ing_. E.g. the sound _ching_ is given as _chien
ling_; that is _ch[ien l]ing = ching_.
_The Concordance._--Considering the long unbroken series of years
during which Chinese literature has always, in spite of many losses,
been steadily gaining in bulk, it is not astonishing to find that
classical, historical, mythological and other allusions to personages
or events of past times have also grown out of all proportion to the
brain capacity even of the most brilliant student. Designed especially
to meet this difficulty, there are several well-known handbooks,
elementary and advanced, which trace such allusions to their source
and provide full and lucid explanations; but even the most extensive
of these is on a scale incommensurate with the requirements of the
scholar. Again, it is due to the emperor K'ang Hsi that we possess one
of the most elaborate compilations of the kind ever planned and
carried to completion. The _P'ei Wen Yuen Fu_, or Concordance to
Literature, is a key, not only to allusions in general, but to all
phraseology, including allusions, idiomatic expressions and other
obscure combinations of words, to be found in the classics, in the
dynastic histories, and in all poets, historians, essayists, and
writers of recognized eminence in their own lines. No attempt at
explanation is given; but enough of the passage, or passages, in which
the phrase occurs, is cited to enable the reader to gather the meaning
required. The trouble, of course, lies with the arrangement of these
phrases in a non-alphabetic language. Recourse has been had to the
Rhymes and the five Tones (see _Language_); and all phrases which end
with the same word form one of a number of groups which appear under
the same Rhyme, the Rhymes themselves being distributed over five
Tones. Thus, to find any phrase, the first point is to discover what
is its normal Rhyme; the next is to ascertain the Tone of that Rhyme.
Then, under this Tone-group the Rhyme-word will be found, and under
the Rhyme-word group will be found the final word of the phrase in
question. It will now only remain to run through this last group of
phrases, all of which have this same final word, and the search--so
vast is the collection--will usually yield a satisfactory result. The
_P'ei Wen Yuen Fu_ runs of course to many volumes; a rough estimate
shows it to contain over fifteen million words.
Yuan Lo Ta Tien.
_Encyclopaedias._--In their desire to bring together condensed, yet
precise, information on a large variety of subjects, the Chinese may
be said to have invented the encyclopaedia. Though not the earliest
work of this kind, the _T'ai P'ing Yue Lan_ is the first of any great
importance. It was produced towards the close of the 10th century
A.D., under the direct supervision of the emperor, who is said to have
examined three sections every day for about a year, the total number
of sections being one thousand in all, arranged under fifty-five
headings. Another similar work, dealing with topics drawn from the
lighter literature of China, is the _T'ai P'ing Kuang Chi_, which was
issued at about the same date as the last-mentioned. Both of these,
and especially the former, have passed through several editions. They
help to inaugurate the great Sung dynasty, which for three centuries
to follow effected so much in the cause of literature. Other
encyclopaedias, differing in scope and in plan, appeared from time to
time, but it will be necessary to concentrate attention upon two only.
The third emperor of the Ming dynasty, known as Yung Lo, A.D.
1403-1425, issued a commission for the production of a work on a scale
which was colossal even for China. His idea was to collect together
all that had ever been written in the four departments of (1) the
Confucian Canon, (2) History, (3) Philosophy and (4) General
Literature, including astronomy, geography, cosmogony, medicine,
divination, Buddhism, Taoism, arts and handicrafts; and in 1408 such
an encyclopaedia was laid before the Throne, received the imperial
approval and was named _Yung Lo Ta Tien_, or The Great Standard of
Yung Lo. To achieve this, 3 commissioners, with 5 directors, 20
sub-directors and a staff of 2141 assistants, had laboured for the
space of five years. Its contents ran to no fewer than 22,877 separate
sections, to which must be added an index filling 60 sections. Each
section contained about 20 leaves, making a total of 917,480 pages for
the whole work. Each page consisted of sixteen columns of characters
averaging twenty-five to each column, or a total of 366,992,000
characters, to which, in order to bring the amount into terms of
English words, about another third would have to be added. This
extraordinary work was never printed, as the expense would have been
too great, although it was actually transcribed for that purpose; and
later on, two more copies were made, one of which was finally stored
in Peking and the other, with the original, in Nanking. Both the
Nanking copies perished at the fall of the Ming dynasty; and a similar
fate overtook the Peking copy, with the exception of a few odd
volumes, at the siege of the legations in 1900. The latter was bound
up in 11,100 volumes, covered with yellow silk, each volume being 1
ft. 8 in. in length by 1 ft. in breadth, and averaging over 1/2 in. in
thickness. This would perhaps be a fitting point to conclude any
notice of Chinese encyclopaedias, but for the fact that the work of
Yung Lo is gone while another encyclopaedia, also on a huge scale,
designed and carried out sonic centuries later, is still an important
work of reference.
T'u Shu.
The _T'u Shu Chi Ch'eng_ was planned, and to a great extent made
ready, under instructions from the emperor K'ang Hsi (see above), and
was finally brought out by his successor, Yung Cheng, 1723-1736.
Intended to embrace all departments of knowledge, its contents were
distributed over six leading categories, which for want of better
equivalents may be roughly rendered by (l) Heaven, (2) Earth, (3) Man,
(4) Arts and Sciences, (5) Philosophy and (6) Political Science. These
were subdivided into thirty-two classes; and in the voluminous index
which accompanies the work a further attempt was made to bring the
searcher into still closer touch with the individual items treated.
Thus, the category Heaven is subdivided into four classes,
namely--again, for want of better terms--(_a_) The Sky and its
Manifestations, (_b_) The Seasons, (_c_) Astronomy and Mathematics and
(_d_) Natural Phenomena. Under these classes come the individual
items; and here it is that the foreign student is often at a loss. For
instance, class _a_ includes Earth, in its cosmogonic sense, as the
mother of mankind; Heaven, in its original sense of God; the Dual
Principle in nature; the Sun, Moon and Stars; Wind; Clouds; Rainbow;
Thunder and Lightning; Rain; Fire, &c. But Earth is itself a
geographical category; and all strange phenomena relating to many of
the items under class _a_ are recorded under class _d_. Category No.
6, marked as Political Science, contains such classes as Ceremonial,
Music and Administration of Justice, alongside of Handicrafts, making
it essential to study the arrangement carefully before it is possible
to consult the work with ease. Such preliminary trouble is, however,
well repaid, the amount of information given on any particular subject
being practically coextensive with what is known about that subject.
The method of presenting such information, with variations to suit the
nature of the topics handled, is to begin with historical excerpts,
chronologically arranged. These are usually followed by sometimes
lengthy essays dealing with the subject as a theme, taken from the
writings of qualified authors, and like all the other entries, also
chronologically arranged. Then come elegant extracts in prose and
verse, in all of which the subject may be simply mentioned and not
treated as in the essays. After these follow minor notices of
incidents, historical and otherwise, and all kinds of anecdotes,
derived from a great variety of sources. Occasionally, single poetical
lines are brought together, each contributing, some thought or
statement germane to the subject, expressed in elegant or forcible
terms; and also, wherever practicable, biographies of men and women
are inserted.
Chronological and other tables are supplied where necessary, as well
as a very large number of illustrations, many of these being
reproductions of woodcuts from earlier works. It is said that the _T'u
Shu Chi Ch'eng_ was printed from movable copper type cast by the
Jesuit Fathers employed by the emperor K'ang Hsi at Peking; also that
only a hundred copies were struck off, the type being then destroyed.
An 8vo edition of the whole encyclopaedia was issued at Shanghai in
1889; this is bound up in sixteen hundred and twenty-eight handy
volumes of about two hundred pages each. A copy of the original
edition stands on the shelves of the British Museum, and a translation
of the Index has recently been completed.
_Manuscripts and Printing._--At the conclusion of this brief survey of
Chinese literature it may well be asked how such an enormous and
ever-increasing mass has been handed down from generation to generation.
According to the views put forth by early Chinese antiquarians, the
first written records were engraved with a special knife upon bamboo
slips and wooden tablets. The impracticability of such a process, as
applied to books, never seems to have dawned upon those writers; and
this snowball of error, started in the 7th century, long after the knife
and the tablet had disappeared as implements of writing, continued to
gather strength as time went on. Recent researches, however, have placed
it beyond doubt that when the Chinese began to write in a literary
sense, as opposed to mere scratchings on bones, they traced their
characters on slips of bamboo and tablets of wood with a bamboo pencil,
frayed at one end to carry the coloured liquid which stood in the place
of ink. The knife was used only to erase. So things went on until about
200 B.C., when it would appear that a brush of hair was substituted for
the bamboo pencil; after which, silk was called into requisition as an
appropriate vehicle in connexion with the more delicate brush. But silk
was expensive and difficult to handle, so that the invention of paper in
A.D. 105 by a eunuch, named Ts'ai Lun, came as a great boon, although it
seems clear that a certain kind of paper, made from silk floss, was in
use before his date. However that may be, from the 1st century onwards
the Chinese have been in possession of the same writing materials that
are in use at the present day.
In A.D. 170, Ts'ai Yung, who rose subsequently to the highest offices of
state, wrote out on stone in red ink the authorized text of the Five
Classics, to be engraved by workmen, and thus handed down to posterity.
The work covered forty-six huge tablets, of which a few fragments are
said to be still in existence. A similar undertaking was carried out in
837, and the later tablets are still standing at a temple in the city of
Hsi-an Fu, Shensi. With the T'ang dynasty, rubbings of famous
inscriptions, wherein the germ of printing may be detected, whether for
the style of the composition or for the calligraphic excellence of the
script, came very much into vogue with scholars and collectors. It is
also from about the same date that the idea of multiplying on paper
impressions taken from wooden blocks seems to have arisen, chiefly in
connexion with religious pictures and prayers. The process was not
widely applied to the production of books until the 10th century, when
in A.D. 932 the Confucian Canon was printed for the first time. In 981
orders were issued for the _T'ai P'ing Kuang Chi_, an encyclopaedia
extending to many volumes (see above) to be cut on blocks for printing.
Movable types of baked clay are said to have been invented by an
alchemist, named Pi Sheng, about A.D. 1043; and under the Ming dynasty,
1368-1644, these were made first of wood, and later of copper or lead,
but movable types have never gained the favour accorded to
block-printing, by means of which most of China's great typographical
triumphs have been achieved. The process is, and always has been, the
same all over China. Two consecutive pages of a book, separated by a
column containing the title, number of section, and number of leaf, are
written out and pasted face downwards on a block of wood (_Lindera
tz[)u]-mu_, Hemsl.). This paper, where not written upon, is cut away
with sharp tools, leaving the characters in relief, and of course
backwards, as in the case of European type. The block is then inked, and
an impression is taken off, on one side of the paper only. This sheet is
then folded down the middle of the separating column above mentioned, so
that the blank halves come together, leaving two pages of printed matter
outside; and when enough sheets have been brought together, they are
stabbed at the open ends and form a volume, to be further wrapped in
paper or pasteboard, and labelled with title, &c. It is almost
superfluous to say that the pages of a Chinese book must not be cut.
There is nothing inside, and, moreover, the column bearing the title and
leaf-number would be cut through. The Chinese newspapers of modern times
are all printed from movable types, an ordinary fount consisting of
about six to seven thousand characters.
See J. Legge, _The Chinese Classics_ (1861-1872); A. Wylie, _Notes on
Chinese Literature_ (1867); E. Chavannes, _Memoires historiques_
(1895-1905); H.A. Giles, _Chuang Tz[)u]_ (1889), _A Chinese
Biographical Dictionary_ (1898), and _A History of Chinese Literature_
(1901); A. Forke, _Lun-Heng_ (1907); F. Hirth, _The Ancient History of
China_ (1908); L. Giles, _Sun Tz[)u]_ (1910). (H. A. GI.)