CHAP. VI.
Language.—Literature, and the fine Arts.—Sciences.—Mechanics, and Medicine.
Opinion of the Chinese Language being hieroglyphical erroneous.—Doctor Hager's mistakes.—Etymological Comparisons fallacious.—Examples of—Nature of the Chinese written Character.—Difficulty and Ambiguity of.—Curious Mistake of an eminent Antiquarian.—Mode of acquiring the Character.—Oral Language.—Mantchoo Tartar Alphabet.—Chinese Literature.—Astronomy.—Chronology.—Cycle of sixty Years.—Geography.—Arithmetic.—Chemical Arts.—Cannon and Gunpowder.—Distillation.—Potteries.—Silk Manufactures.—Ivory.—Bamboo.—Paper.—Ink.—Printing.—Mechanics.—Music.—Painting.—Sculpture.—Architecture.—Hotel of the English Embassador in Pekin.—The Great Wall.—The Grand Canal.—Bridges.—Cemeteries.—Natural Philosophy.—Medicine.—Chinese Pharmacopoeia.—Quacks.—Contagious Fevers.—Small pox.—Opthalmia.—Venereal Disease.—Midwifery.—Surgery.—Doctor Gregory's Opinion of their Medical Knowledge.—Sir William Jones's Opinion of their general Character.
If no traces remained, nor any authorities could be produced, of the antiquity of the Chinese nation, except the written character of their language, this alone would be sufficient to decide that point in its favour. There is so much originality in this language, and such a great and essential difference between it and that of any other nation not immediately derived from the Chinese, that not the most distant degree of affinity can be discovered, either with regard to the form of the character, the system on which it is constructed, or the idiom, with any other known language upon the face of the globe. Authors, however, and some of high reputation, have been led to suppose that, in the Chinese character, they could trace some relation to those hieroglyphical or sacred inscriptions found among the remains of the ancient Egyptians; others have considered it to be a modification of hieroglyphic writing, and that each character was the symbol or comprehensive form of the idea it was meant to express, or, in other words, an abstract delineation of the object intended to be represented. To strengthen such an opinion, they have ingeniously selected a few instances where, by adding to one part, and curtailing another, changing a straight line into a curved one, or a square into a circle, something might be made out that approached to the picture, or the object of the idea conveyed by the character as, for example, the character 田, representing a cultivated piece of ground, they supposed to be the picture of an inclosure, turned up in ridges; yet it so happens that, in this country, there are no inclosures; the character, 口 a mouth, has been considered by them as a very close resemblance of that object; 上 and 下 above and below, distinctly marked these points of position; the character 人, signifying man, is, according to their opinion, obviously an abbreviated representation of the human figure; yet the very same character, with an additional line across, thus 大, which by the way approaches nearer to the human figure, having now arms as well as legs, signifies the abstract quality great; and with a second line thus 天 the material or visible heaven, between either of which and man it would be no easy task to find out the analogy; and still less so to trace an affinity between any of them, and 犬 which signifies a dog.
It is true certain ancient characters are still extant, in which a rude representation of the image is employed; as for instance, a circle for the sun, and a crescent for the moon, but these appear to have been used only as abbreviations, in the same manner as these objects are still characterized in our almanacks, and in our astronomical calculations. Thus also the kingdom of China is designed by a square, with a vertical line drawn through the middle, in conformity perhaps with their ideas of the earth being a square, and China placed in its center; so far these may be considered as symbols of the objects intended to be represented. So, also, the numerals one, two, three, being designed by 一 二 三, would naturally suggest themselves as being fully as convenient for the purpose, and perhaps more so than any other; and where the first series of numerals ended, which according to the universal custom of counting by the fingers was at ten, the very act of placing the index of the right hand on the little finger of the left would suggest the form of the vertical cross 十 as the symbol or representation of the number ten.
I cannot avoid taking notice in this place of a publication of Doctor Hager, which he calls an "Explanation of the Elementary Characters of the Chinese." In this work he has advanced a most extraordinary argument to prove an analogy between the ancient Romans and the Chinese, from the resemblance which he has fancied to exist between the numeral characters and the numeral sounds made use of by those two nations. The Romans, he observes, expressed their numerals one, two, three, by a corresponding number of vertical strokes I. II. III. which the Chinese place horizontally 一 二 三. The Romans designed the number ten by an oblique cross X, and the Chinese by a vertical one 十. This resemblance in the forming of their numerals, so simple and natural that almost all nations have adopted it, is surely too slight a coincidence for concluding, that the people who use them must necessarily, at some period or other, have had communication together. The Doctor however seems to think so, and proceeds to observe, that the three principal Roman cyphers, I. V. X. or one, five and ten, are denoted in the Chinese language by the same sounds that they express in the Roman alphabet. This remark, although ingenious, is not correct. One and five, it is true, are expressed in the Chinese language by the y and ou of the French, which it may be presumed, were the sounds that the letters I. and V. obtained in the ancient Roman alphabet; but with regard to the ten, or X, which, he says, the Chinese pronounce xe, he is entirely mistaken, the Chinese word for ten in Pekin being shee, and in Canton shap. This error the Doctor appears to have been led into by consulting some vocabulary in the Chinese and Portuguese languages; in the latter of which the letter X is pronounced like our sh. But admitting, in its fullest extent, the resemblance of some of the numerals used by the two nations, in the shape of the character, and of others in the sound, it certainly cannot be assumed to prove any thing beyond a mere accidental coincidence.
The earliest accounts of China, after the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope, being written by Portuguese missionaries, and the Chinese proper names still remaining to be spelt in the letters of that alphabet, have led several etymologists into great errors, not only with regard to the letter X, but more particularly in the m final, and the h incipient, the former being pronounced ng, and the latter with a strong aspirate, as sh. Thus the name of the second Emperor of the present dynasty is almost universally written in Europe Cam-hi, whereas it is as universally pronounced in China Caung-shee.
The learned Doctor seems to be still less happy in his next conjecture, where he observes that, as the Romans expressed their five by simply dividing the X, or ten, so also the ancient character signifying five with the Chinese was X or ten between two lines thus
indicating, as it were, that the number ten was divided in two; the Doctor seems to have forgotten that he has here placed his cross in the Roman form, and not as the Chinese write it; and it is certainly a strange way of cutting a thing in two, by enclosing it between two lines; but the learned seldom baulk at an absurdity, when a system is to be established. The Chinese character for five is 五.