While I to teach children, leave this one little book.
Diligence has merit; play yields no profit;
Be ever on your guard! Rouse all your energies!”
These quotations illustrate the character of the Trimetrical Classic, and show its imperfections as a book for young minds. It is a syllabus of studies rather than a book to be learned, and ill suited to entice the boy on in his tasks by giving him mental food in an attractive form. Yet its influence has been perhaps as great as the classics during the last four dynasties, from its general use in primary schools, where myriads of lads have “backed” it who have had no leisure to study much more, and when they had crossed this ford could travel no farther. The boy commences his education by learning these maxims; and by the time he has got his degree—and long before, too—the highest truths and examples known in the land are more deeply impressed on his mind than are ever Biblical truths and examples on graduates of Yale, Oxford, Heidelberg or the Sorbonne. Well was it for them that they had learned nothing in it which they had better forget, for its deficiencies, pointed out by Bridgman in his translation, should not lead us to overlook its suggestive synopsis of principles and examples. The commentary explains them very fully, and it is often learned as thoroughly as the text. Many thousands of tracts containing Christian truths written in the same style and with the same title, have been taught with good effect in the mission schools in China.[273]
The next hornbook put into the boy’s hands is the Pih Kia Sing, or ‘Century of Surnames.’ It is a list of the family or clan names commonly in use. Its acquisition also gives him familiarity with four hundred and fifty-four common words employed as names, a knowledge, too, of great importance lest mistakes be made in choosing a wrong character among the scores of homophonous characters in the language. For instance, out of eighty-three common words pronounced kí, six only are clan names, and it is necessary to have these very familiar in the daily intercourse of life. The nature of the work forbids its being studied, but the usefulness of its contents probably explains its position in this series.[274]
THE THOUSAND-CHARACTER CLASSIC.
The third in the list is the Tsien Tsz’ Wăn, or ‘Millenary Classic,’ unique among all books in the Chinese language, and whose like could not be produced in any other, in that it consists of just a thousand characters, no two of which are alike in form or meaning. The author, Chau Hing-tsz’, flourished about A.D. 550, and according to an account given in the history of the Liang dynasty, wrote it at the Emperor’s request, who had ordered his minister Wang Hí-chí to write out a thousand characters, and give them to him, to see if he could make a connected ode with them. This he did, and presented his performance to his majesty, who rewarded him with rich presents in token of his approval. Some accounts (in order that so singular a work might not want for corresponding wonders) add that he did the task in a single night, under the fear of condign punishment if he failed, and the mental exertion was so great as to turn his hair white. It consists of two hundred and fifty lines, in which rhyme and rhythm are both carefully observed, though there is no more poetry in it than in a multiplication table. The contents of the book are similar but more discursive than those of the Trimetrical Classic. Up to the one hundred and second line, the productions of nature and virtues of the early monarchs, the power and capacities of man, his social duties and mode of conduct, with instructions as to the manner of living, are summarily treated. Thence to the one hundred and sixty-second line, the splendor of the palace, and its high dignitaries, with other illustrious persons and places, are referred to. The last part of the work treats of private and literary life, the pursuits of agriculture, household government, and education, interspersed with some exhortations, and a few illustrations. A few disconnected extracts from Dr. Bridgman’s translation[275] will show the mode in which these subjects are handled. The opening lines are,
“The heavens are sombre; the earth is yellow;
The whole universe [at the creation] was one wide waste;”
after which it takes a survey of the world and its products, and Chinese history, in a very sententious manner, down to the thirty-seventh line, which opens a new subject.