Taw will be prepared to deny the fact, that the dominant race in China has always been distinguished for its black hair and yellow skin. We have been so accustomed to render the phrase by which the Chinese are pleased to designate themselves, (the Li Min), by the English equivalent black-haired people, that probably not one student in ten has ever asked the question what connection can there be between the two.
Blot, whose researches on matters connected with China and the Chinese are so well and favourably known, does not hesitate to accept the popular view and in a paper in the Journal Asiatique for November-December 1843, quoted in the preface to Dr. Legge's Shoo-king, draws a vivid description not only of the manners, but of the appearance of the ancient race or races who composed the Odes. He tells us of a beauty of the time as having the rounded temples of the Chinese portraits of the present day, as having long and slender eyebrows, white temples and black hair in masses like clouds. She is besides distinguished for a complexion like the "flowers of the mallow; while a high colour in men's faces, as if they had been rouged, is commended. It is curious that Blot did not see that there was a certain amount of incongruity in his description; long slender eyebrows, like the antenna of the silkmoth, (to which they are compared), are not signs of the Chinese of the present day, while the degenerate daughters of Han with whom we are acquainted can scarcely be complimented on their white temples and pink checks. These signs of beauty are not likely to accompany a race distinguished for the coarse black hair of the Chinese of to-day. Yet, before admitting that the words used to denote the supposed colour of the hair are to be taken as meaning black, we may look into the Odes for ourselves, and see how Chinese beauties really were described some twenty-five—conturies ago. Now it is first of all curious that no philological connection can be traced between the words relied on, and anything we can call black. The Shoo-king on the contrary throws some light on the phrase Li-min. We there find (book X) that Li HY was used as the designation of a territory adjoining and subject to the dominions of the last sovereign of the Yin dynasty. The ruler of the state of Chow, then rising into eminence, having raised the flag of rebellion against his liege lord, proceeded first to occupy the territory of Li, a step which spread consternation in the court of the doomed monarch. Now, as has been long ago pointed out, Li the name of the state and Li to plough are one and the same word, differentiated simply by the substitution in the lower part of the latter of 2f niu, an ox, for tai, expan sion, in the former. The term therefore meant rather that the district referred to was that occupied by the cultivators of the soil, as opposed to the pastoral tribes which then occupied the greater portion of China. This view is borne out by the subsequent progress of events. The prince of Chow having occupied the Li territory, strengthens himself for a final effort; the sovereign of Yin seems to.have retired eastward into Muh-yi, literally the wilderness of the herdsman, to make his final stand. Liemin may therefore be more fairly translated as the men of Li, or the agricultural people, (in which use its connection is clear,) than as the "black-haired" race, an etymology which it is impossible to support. The same perverseness seems to run through the interpretation of the only other passage where a word directly bearing on the subject is to be found. The Odes of Yung describe a beauty 4 ST tu FE Chen fak juyiin trans. Inted by Dr. Legge as "her black hair in masses like clouds." Now the absence of any connection with black is as plain here asin the other ease. Chen we find in $f, "to press down"; or fa, collection of many things bundled together; thick, close"; the meaning being thick, luxuriant, in which sense we can well understand the allusion to masses of clouds heaped upon the horizon. Clouds besides are only black when the sky is completely overshadowed, an image little likely to be taken to represent a beautiful woman. So far, the black-haired theory is essentially weak;—it lacks positive proof. There is, however, some presumptive proof on the other side, that the beauties of the Odes were really fair-haired. The likeness of the eyebrow to the antenna of the silkmoth, the white skin, and the pink complexion are in themselves presumptive evidence so faras they go. In the Odes of Yung again, No. IV, a lover describes the objects which remind him of his mistress.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.