We are also told that before the Christian Era numerous treatises were written on philosophy, mathematics, medicine, military affairs, husbandry, law, and geography; but many of these perished in the convulsions which afterward shook the empire. (On the religious books of China, consult Max Müller’s “Sacred Books of the East,” vols. xvi., xxvii.)
With the languages of Siam, Burmah, and Thibet—all monosyllabic like the Chinese—are also connected literatures of considerable antiquity. In both Burmah and Siam the drama, often licentious, has always been popular, its exhibitions being sometimes prolonged for days. Burmah has records that purport to carry back its history almost to the Christian Era. The best writings of the Siamese are imitations of Hindoo fictions, while the literature of Thibet is largely made up of commentaries on the Tripitaka.
NOTES ON CHINESE LITERATURE, ETC.
Specimen Cash.
Bamboo tablets and the stylus, the ancient writing implements; these in the reign of Ching Wang, the book-burner, superseded by the brush, and paper made of closely woven silk. Silk paper, found too expensive, replaced in turn by paper made of the inner bark of trees, old rags, and worn-out fishing-nets. Books multiply in consequence. At the Christian Era, the imperial library contained 11,332 sections filled with books on all subjects, but no great productions of genius. The old classics still in the front rank.
Printing practised in China 600 A.D., nearly 900 years before its invention in Europe. Movable types invented by a blacksmith between 1000 and 1100 A.D. The types, made of clay hardened in the fire, reduced to an exact level by a smooth board, and then cemented to an iron plate with a mixture of resin and wax. The production of books thus greatly facilitated. Chinese books at the present day not printed from movable types, but from wooden blocks of the size of the page, on which the characters are cut in relief.
Bronze pieces called cash, worth one-tenth of a cent, coined as early as the 12th century B.C.; strung on cords through holes with which they are pierced; in later times worn as amulets.
The golden age of China’s later ancient literature, the period of the Tang dynasty (620-907 A.D.), when the imperial armies penetrated to Samarcand and Bokhara in Turkestan. Le Taipih, the Chinese Anacreon, the greatest poet of this period; but even he seldom rises above mediocrity.