To the Editor of the Sin,—Some time ago a letter appeared in the China Mail signa " Inquirer," asking for svygestions about the Chinese words for Glass and Metal, and I venture to ask you to allow mo to reply to the same through the columns of your paper.
For the present I merely offer a fow hints about the Chinese word for Glass, or Po-li, FYFE. Instead of attempting to trace the origin of this word from the language of some nation external to China, I would merely draw attention to the oxistonco of some words in other languages which are very similar to the word Po-li, and I would submit that the natural deduction from these coin that the nations using these words have had the same remote Turanian origin as the Chinese, and that there has thus been some communication anciently between them; or that China and the other nations all drawn these words from an anterior common source from which they are all descended.
I particularly allude to the English word "to make smooth or glossy." A similar term for this ideal runs through veral European and Asiatic languages, and it is a notable circumstance that in all of them, except in English and Hindustanes, the final sh does not occur; so that the sound poli, or its equivalent commutative, s to be the general root of the expression. Thus, in Latin it is polio; French, polit; Italian, polite, or puliré. In Welsh, it is cabob, with an aflixcato the root, which there appears with a} instead of p, a not uncommon permutation of these consonants, The Russian is poli-royt, in which the same root occurs with a couple of suffixes, the signification of which may possibly be elicited from some Russian scholar, by hero asking attention to their conjunction with the Chinese word. The Arabic has cha-fa-la, and if the cha in this word is an affix similar to the ca in the Welsh word cabob, the dissylable tala is not too distant from poli to preclude a commutation of the consonant f for p having insensibly occurred and produced the actual Gifference of expression and of sound between the two words. (See Webster's dictionary—word Polish.) The terminal shin the English word polish is akin to the final of the Hebrew word galosh **to e,"" and to the Syriac word galosh, "to peel, to shave, to make bald or smooth." This coincidence, perhaps, may awaken a thought on the community of these languages with English. How far the sh of polish is connected with the sh shine is also of interest to know, for it} would further identify "the two ' words. There is a word in Ethiopic, bare ah, "to shine," from which it is probable that the English word bright is derived, and it may perhaps not be stretching a philological similarity too much, by imagining that there is a resemblance" between this Ethiopic word bare ah (judging from the similarity of meaning) and the Chinese word po-li; for the r would naturally be pronounced J in Chinese, which would produce bale ah, and the b and the p.are known to be such lingual equivalents, that the word would quite bear to be' pro. nounced pale ah, so that it quite approach po-li; and a probable affinity may be claimed for the two words, though the priority of derivation would' in such case spring from the Ethiopic term, the r of which when introduced to Chinese would naturally melt into 1; and the thought suggests itself whether the manufacture of glass may not have been brought into China from Ethiopia or Egypt, or from some other nation which gave the knowledge of it to all of them. In Morrison's Dictionary, No. 8610, itis stated that during the Ming dynasty an eunuch was sent to Europe to procure glassmakers to come to China, butit is probable that glass was know to the Chinese before the Ming reign. The historical question of glass in China may come on later; at present it can be only indirectly pointed at from a philological standpoint, To return now to the Chinese word po-li 4 FRB. An analysis of the characters of which it is composed will discover that its primary signification was "shining, brightness or an identical meaning with the appearance described in the English word polish, and ite Evropean and Asiatic equivalents.
Thus the right hand character of po is also found in conjunction with ¥, or water, and is also pronounced po Bi. See $605 in Morrison's Dictionary, where its meaning is stated to be "the glare of "water, shining, brightness applied to the eye, and to the moon, glossy," and it is there remarked that in'conjunction with Kin, as kin-po Q¥, it signifies "the light of the moon." The other character li $85 (see Morrison's Dictionary, No. 6967), when separated 12 from the character J that is common to both li and po, signifies clear, bright, elegant," and in its totality it aleo means "bright" (see Mor. Diet., No. 6963.)
Now the Chinese word for the term polish is simply ti BB, "To work, or polish gems" (see Mor. Diet. 6942), and this character is also used with the addition term for "polish," has the same primary signification as the li in po-li," though it is written in a different form. Thus there is sing-li?
'PO 3 or " the light of 5 nature" (see Medhurst's Dictionary, page 791.) So that the combined sense of the characters po and li accurately expresses the meaning of the term polish."
It may also be of interest to remark that in Shantung, where one of the chief manufactories of Chinese glass has existed for many years, at Yeh-shi-san," the natives in their common speech use the word lew-li, for glass ware, instead of the word po-li, This lewli Hu (00 Mor. Diet., 7,191), means "a vitreous substance," and also "shining, bright," and the old form of writing this character $$, (00 Mor. Diet., 7,196), is there described as sometimes used to denote "glass." Possibly an analysis of this character may bring out a still affinity with the idea of brighten the term lew-li is somewhat like a di cation of the sound li, for emphasising the idea of brightness, and possibly both lew and i may have originally been pronounced the same, for the @ in light in English and in light-in Danish and German, is commuted into an w the Italian luce, the Latin Iucis, and the French lumiére, and in the' Welsh lug, while in the same Welsh, lygu is used to signify "to polish or to make bright," and if the g were mute the pronunciation would produce a sound very similar to the Shantung term lew; and the Saxon word leoht would not be very far from the same sound.
Dr, Williams in his Dictionary states that po-li may be derived from the Portuguese word video, The Latin word vitrum, from which video comes, is supposed to have been Latinized from the Greek word for glass, "vadog but it primarily signifies "wond color," a greenish blue, as vitrea undo, in Virgil, i h is Was, blue, azure, green, and also gwydir that in Welsh this latter word only for both "glass" and color," frum does in Latin, 'There is a resemblance between guydir and vitrum, and possibly the word whence vitrum was len' may have been still ae to pecan between the Latin, a ichs,"
There maj 88 con-greenness, vires to grow, and the word vitrea, as they both mean color, but it is hard to say how the translation from "vadog to vitrum or from "vaxivog to vitrous occurred. Rich's Dictior of Antiquities simply states that the Greek equivalent of vitrum is adn, which beata such a striking resemblance to po-li that it might almost be, identified with it in sound, and the Greek word has the same radical meaning of glass as po-li has, though it is specially used to denote "a glass bottle." It is more than probable that ¢caAq is connected with "vadog from the similar, ty of meat between the two words, andithis would intermediately con-neet "vadog with po-li, through the word "'phiale" or Latin phiale, which in Persian is spelt " pialah," thus hardening the firat syllable by using p instead of ph, and bringing it near enough to po-li to warrant a relation of affinity between the two words. In connexion with this it may also be noted that the French for phiale is fiole—and if the f and ph and p ate interchangeable as has i out, the term would be piole, is still nearer to the Chinese word po-li, The inference which I venture to draw from this dry concatenation of coincident words and sounds is, that as throughout them all the primary roo} and significaion seems to be brightness, or a shining lightsome quality, they must have a common origin; and even our English word glass comes within the same inference—for it is very near to the Hebrew word galosh to shine—and though it directly comes to us from the Saxon gles, which primarily ignifies color as vitrum does, itis akin to the Welsh glés—that is derived from Uas, blue, pale, green. It is also akin to "glassy" or shining. Our word "pate" comes from another source, but it also may be somewhat identified with glass, as the Welsh word glass means to grow pale, and thus it would approach even to po-li, It is a question whether the Welsh word las is not connected with vadog, and if it be so then our word glass is related to it also, and the inference becomes more complete.
It would be difficult to give a direct answer to ''Where does the word po-li come from?" Although the word' in its totality is not to be found in the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.