INFLUENCE OF THE LANGUAGE UPON LITERATURE.
Some of its peculiarities are owing to the nature of the language, and the mode of instruction, both of which have affected the style and thoughts of writers: for, having, when young, been taught to form their sentences upon the models of antiquity, their efforts to do so have moulded their thoughts in the same channel. Imitation, from being a duty, soon became a necessity. The Chinese scholar, forsaking the leadings of his own genius, soon learned to regard his models as not only being all truth themselves, but as containing the sum total of all things valuable. The intractable nature of the language, making it impossible to study other tongues through the medium of his own, moreover tended to repress all desire in the scholar to become acquainted with foreign books; and as he knew nothing of them or their authors, it was easy to conclude that there was nothing worth knowing in them, nothing to repay the toil of study, or make amends for the condescension of ascertaining. The neighbors of the Chinese have unquestionably been their inferiors in civilization, good government, learning, and wealth; and this fact has nourished their conceit, and repressed the wish to travel, and ascertain what there was in remoter regions. In judging of the character of Chinese literature, therefore, these circumstances among others under which it has risen to its present bulk, must not be overlooked; we shall conclude that the uniformity running through it is perhaps owing as much to the isolation of the people and servile imitation of their models, as to their genius: each has, in fact, mutually acted upon and influenced the other.
The “homoglot” character of the Chinese people has arisen more from the high standard of their literature, and the political institutions growing out of its canonical books (which have impelled and rewarded the efforts of students to master the language), than from any one other cause. This feature offers a great contrast to the polyglot character which the Romans possessed even to the last, and suggests the cause and results as interesting topics of inquiry. The Egyptian, Jewish, Syriac, Greek, and Latin languages had each its own national literature, and its power was enough to retain these several nations attached to their own mother tongue, while the Gauls, Iberians, and other subject peoples, having no books, took the language and literature of their rulers and conquerors. Thus the kingdom, “part iron and part clay,” fell apart as soon as the grasp of Rome was weakened; while the tendency in China always has been to reunite and homologate.
In this short account of the Chinese tongue, it will be sufficient to give such notices of the origin and construction of the characters, and of the idioms and sounds of the written and spoken language, as shall convey a general notion of all its parts, and to show the distinction between the spoken and written media, and their mutual action. They are both archaic, because the symbols prevented all inflexion and agglutination in the sounds, and all signs to indicate what part of speech each belonged to. They are like the ten digits, containing no vocable and imparting their meaning more to the eye than the ear.
Chinese writers, unable to trace the gradual formation of their characters (for, of course, there could be no intelligible historical data until long after their formation), have ascribed them to Hwangtí, one of their primeval monarchs, or even earlier, to Fuh-hí, some thirty centuries before Christ; as if they deemed writing to be as needful to man as clothes or marriage, all of which came from Fuh-hí. A mythical personage, Tsang-kieh, who flourished about B.C. 2700, is credited with the invention of symbols to represent ideas, from noticing the marking on tortoise-shell, and thence imitating common objects in nature.
The Japanese have tried to attach their kana to the Chinese characters to indicate the case or tense, but the combination looks incongruous to an educated Chinese. We might express, though somewhat crudely, analogous combinations in English by endeavoring to write 1-ty, 1-ness, 1-ted, for unity, oneness, united, or 3-1 God for triune God.
At this crisis, when a medium for conveying and giving permanency to ideas was formed, Chinese historians say: “The heavens, the earth, and the gods, were all agitated. The inhabitants of hades wept at night; and the heavens, as an expression of joy, rained down ripe grain. From the invention of writing, the machinations of the human heart began to operate; stories false and erroneous daily increased, litigations and imprisonments sprang up; hence, also, specious and artful language, which causes so much confusion in the world. It was for these reasons that the shades of the departed wept at night. But from the invention of writing, polite intercourse and music proceeded; reason and justice were made manifest; the relations of social life were illustrated, and laws became fixed. Governors had laws to which they might refer; scholars had authorities to venerate; and hence, the heavens, delighted, rained down ripe grain. The classical scholar, the historian, the mathematician, and the astronomer can none of them do without writing; were there no written language to afford proof of passing events, the shades might weep at noonday, and the heavens rain down blood.”[290] This singular myth may, perhaps, cover a genuine fact worthy of more than passing notice—indicating a consentaneous effort of the early settlers on the Yellow River to substitute for the purpose of recording laws and events something more intelligible than the knotted cords previously in use. Its form presents a curious contrast to the personality of the fable of Cadmus and his invention of the Greek letters.
ORIGIN OF THE LANGUAGE.
The date of the origin of this language, like that of the letters of Western alphabets, is lost in the earliest periods of post-diluvian history, but there can be no doubt that it is the most ancient language now spoken, and along with the Egyptian and cuneiform, among the oldest written languages used by man. The Ethiopic and Coptic, the Sanscrit and Pali, the Syriac, Aramaic, and Pehlvic, have all become dead languages; and the Greek, Latin, and Persian, now spoken, differ so much from the ancient style, as to require special study to understand the books in them: while during successive eras, the written and spoken language of the Chinese has undergone few alterations, and done much to deepen the broad line of demarkation between them and other branches of the human race. The fact, then, that this is the only living language which has survived the lapse of ages is, doubtless, owing to its ideographic character and its entire absence of sound as an integral factor of any symbol. Their form and meaning were, therefore, only the more strongly united because each reader was at liberty to sound them as he pleased or had been taught by local instructors. He was not hindered, on account of his local brogue, from communicating ideas with those who employed the same signs in writing. Upon the subsequent rise of a great and valuable literature, the maintenance of the written language was the chief element of national life and integrity among those peoples who read and admired the books. Nor has this language, like those of the Hebrews, the Assyrians, and others already mentioned, ever fallen into disuse and been supplanted by the sudden rise and physical or intellectual vigor of some neighboring community speaking a patois. For we find that alphabetic languages, whose words represent at once meaning and sound, are as dependent upon local dialects as is the Chinese tongue upon its symbols; consequently, when in the former case the sounds had so altered that the meanings were obscured, the mode of writing was likely to be changed. The extent of its literature and uses made of it were then the only safeguard of the written forms; while as men learned to read books they became more and more prone to associate sense and form, regarding the sound as traditionary. We have, in illustration of this, to look no further than to our own language, whose cumbersome spelling is in a great measure resulting from a dislike of changing old associations of sense and form which would be involved in the adoption of a phonetic system.
The Chinese have had no inducement, at any stage of their existence, to alter the forms of their symbols, inasmuch as no nation in Asia contiguous to their own has ever achieved a literature which could rival theirs; no conqueror came to impose his tongue upon them; their language completely isolated them from intellectual intercourse with others. This isolation, fraught with many disadvantages in the contracted nature of their literature, and the reflux, narrowing influence on their minds, has not been without its compensations. A national life of a unique sort has resulted, and to this self-nurtured language may be traced the origin of much of the peace, industry, population, and healthy pride of the Chinese people.