Editor of the jowrit-Cuixa Dany News" message from Chungking yesterday announced the appointment of Professor Chen Yin-ko, of Tsing Hua University, to the chair of Chinese at Oxford University an event sufficiently important, 1 think, to be commented upon. Mr. Chen' is known perhaps only to a Father restricted group of foreign admirers, but his supreme position in the world of Chinese scholarship has {in fact remained long and undisputed. His appointment to Oxford is therefore a fine and fitting tribute to his vast accomplishments as a savant and to the unfailing instincts of the dis tinguished university in the choice of great scholars to ils faculty.
'Mr, Chen belongs to a family which has always held scholarship' in the highest esteem. His grandfather won distinction first as a scholar and then fas a ranking official in Hunan, His father lived to the ripe age of over 8 years and was indeed the last of the long line of great poets in China who through their earnest devotion to moral principles and ideals made themselves really superb examples of spiritual leadership. One of Mr. Chen's elder brothers was a genius of the purest water as an artist, and his other brothers, like Mr. Chen himself, have all such unusually charming' manners and engaging personality.
My own acquaintance with Mr. Chen goes back to some twenty years when, as students at Harvard University, a small group of us with close intellectual aftnities saw one another rather a ood deal. "Mr. Chen however, by ugo and accomplishment, was easily our recognized leader, having, Im those days already gone' through a course of training in Sanskrit Phifology with the distinguished savants in Germany and France, His passion for linguistic studies has in fact never abated. While a few of us were tolling and struggling with digleulty to understand the secret of Tinguistic development through the earnest application to Gothic, Anglo-'Saxon and the other related languages, Mr. Chen was sailing comfortable through the hazardous seas of Sat skirt, Pali, Old Persian, unfit he has now' made himself familiar with Tibetan, Mongolian, and the medley of other languages on China's western and northern borders. Mr. Chen's Interest in languages is not however purely linguistic one: it is pursued for the light which they may throw fon the problems of Chinese history fof which he has also unusually vast erudition. T think T can say without Being, contradicted that Mr Chen is one of the exceedingly few, if there are any in China, who really feel at home with the Buddhist texts. 1 have always understood it to be his great desire to edit the Tripitake in the Important languages in which this rear Buddhist masterpiece has appeared. Tt ix in the hope that the Quiet and peace inspired by the Krey and dreamy towers of Oxford will help him (0 finish this great task that we should all welcome the news of Mr, Chen's appointment to. that dis tinguished and venerable institution of learfiing. Like Thomas Gray. Mr. Chen does not speak out, but when hho does, it will be well worth our attention.
Shanghai, Feb. 7.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.