To the Editor of the Dear Srr,—May the author of a work recently reviewed. in your columns say some words in self-defence?
Iwill commones with rot eat against the reviewer's method of discussing. Chinese chronology. He seems to. think that dates, facts and names are matters of ima-Let me ask the reviewer what his congination and not of research. To inquire clusion would be in the following instances. Would need examination. For this he The city of Karakorum, the capital of. appears to be unwilling, and he makes use Genghis Khan, and the ruins of which lie of bold assertion to supply its place. I to the west of Urya, is spelt in the Chinese refer to his novel opinion that the history of the Yuen dynasty with the cha-period when Chinese writing was intro-acter lin, forest, for its last syllable. This duced was B. C. 800, and that the present character has a final m in the southern form of the characters was adopted B C. dialects of China and " in the north. The 150. The period of the adoption of the Mongols in the Yuen dynasty used. Baschpresent mode of writing ig marked by the pa's alphabet to write sounds of Chinese monument of Wang Bi-chi* Jk Fi Ju OF, characters, and in all instances they wrote mas the final of words now sounded with ie A. D. 353, of the Tsin dynasty. Chi-in Canton, Swatow, and Amoy. So, also, ig was at that tim the Arabian' travellers in the eighth cen-the introduction oils, in! and it has continued the same ever' tury called the eunuchs of the Chinese Court, to the best of my recollection, because the writing materials are the same. takao (which would now be a Cantonism). The revival' of learning in the Han took Obviously the final m was in use in North-place about 150 years before Christ, and the China both in the eighth century and in mode of writing then introduced was the the thirteenth. If he should find an abso-Lishu. Not only are these known facts, lute uniformity in evidence thus collected which the reviewer might have learned by from every foreign country which has reconsulting books which are in every one's hand, but his statement regarding the tained the sound of Chinese characters, in regard to this final letter m, now lost from origin of Chinese writing is equally cha-the mandarin syllabary,. what will the reacterized by a reckless spirit of assertion viewer say? Let him listen to the Corean which too plainly shews that he lacks that and Japanese Buddhist priests chanting critical judgment which he denies to me. their litanies to Amitabha, and the merci-He says "the external history of the ful Bodhisattwa. They use Chinese trans Odes reaches to the seventh century lations taken over to thir respective coun-their present form dates back perhaps to tries a thousand years ago, or more, the second." Dr. Legge has studied they They are interlined with the phonetic writ-Book of Odes. "He places the oldest Odes ing of Corea and Japan, and the final m, in B. C. 1765—1122, The next are in with the other lost finals of the Chinese B. C. 11841194. Next to these come syllabary, are all carefully expressed. a group of Odes belonging to B. C. 1121—Thus it appears that the reviewer has 1076. The rest are later, and come down not only a powerful phalanx of authorities as low as 585 B. C.t These citations are arrayed against him, but the facts place enough to settle the point as to whether him in sv hopeless a situation that he the reviewer has any right to question my really had better make an uncompromisdate of B.C. 1100, as a convenient epoch ing surrender of his argument. Let him for the Shi-king as viewed from the stand-consider this point. Every p, t, k and m of philological research. For his as-which terminates the sounds of the Chisertion that the eighth century B. C. was nese characters in Canton and Amoy the date of the origin of the written Ian-crops up again wherever the words occur, age, the critic has all authorities against him, both native and foreign, and the opin-g.g. im the, Coshin-Chinese, dialect, in the 'Tibetan and Mongol vocabularies, in Man-ion can only be explained' from a para-chu, and in the Chine-e transcriptions of doxical spirit which evidently leads him to Sanscrit names. desire to be the boldest among the bold.
Where will the reviewer take refuge To eschew facts and neglect inquiry is not when he reflects on the exigencies of his the way to knowledge. sition? Neither Hans Breitmann nor Your reviewer has fallen into rome sinngfellow will give him aid here. A gular errors, which it may be well to point broad and uniform front of incontestable Out, since they vitiate all. his conclusions facts such as those of which a relation is and may be so readily shown to be here offered to the reviewer's attention, founded that I do not despair of his be-deserves a more vigorous logic than that coming a convert to more tenable views on which he has presented to your readers if the Chinese language, and on the true cha-he would oppose it in a creditable manner. racter and position of China's Place in What is the use of resisting facts? We Philology. do not help philology by doing 80, nor any He says that the standard for the another of the sciences. It isan unpleasant cient pronunciation of the Chinese Iangu necessity which drives us to abandon our of the dialects isthe favourite hypotheses, swelling as they will T ask him to consult do by the aid of imagination into such w two articles by the writer on this subject magnitude as too often to hide from us the in the' Transactions of the China Branch aspect of real nature. But it is better to come out. of their shadow into the suu-of the Royal Asiatic Society, published at shine of truth. If I search a Chinese.tome Hongkong about 18 years ago.t It is there shown by cunmlative and what still apsprinkled with Sanscrit words more or less freely in each page and compiled fifteen pear to me irrefragable proofs, that the mandarin language is new, and that the centuries ago, I may surely derive useful ancient, pronunciation is retained in the conclusions as to the phonetic value of the Chinese characters made use of in the seaboard dialects among others. 1 cannot recall a single instance when, in print, transcription. If in transcribing Brahm a Chinese character is used which ends in any student of the Chinese language has, during the last fifteen years, called in min many Chitiese dialects at the present question this important principle in the day, I may deduce something from this fact. The claim of these dialects to be history and present state of the language, till your reviewer felt himself impelled regarded as ancient becomes strony. If to do so. further I look. into the matter of the itiale, and narrowly observe the kind of characters selected to represent the Sanscrit band bh, as distinguished from p and ph, shariiing tr Chelona, sal let a meg wha renoirnedcaligrapher ofthe ith eoitury, wholired will rio results reward these researches Hag fv iter age been engraved in fcsnide og stows Suppose that with great uniformity ove many paite of the empire, known as the Be 4 Lanting wan—Ep.) Grand th and another p and ph; or in the roup of characters is used to represent
Legge' She, vol. 1, pp S456, tooth series, that certain characters represent d and dh and certain others t and th. experienced students of Chivese hold SEEM TE tee wie itera tat Suppose further that the scientific investigator examines existing dialects in China who have given their atteuti'm to this subject there more, Mayery Wylie and. others im pro. Among those itself, and finds the surd and sonant series 4 striking unanimity of opinion. No one doubts it, kept carefully distinct, and that the sonant
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.