Manuscripts and Printing.—At the conclusion of this brief survey of Chinese literature it may well be asked how such an enormous and ever-increasing mass has been handed down from generation to generation. According to the views put forth by early Chinese antiquarians, the first written records were engraved with a special knife upon bamboo slips and wooden tablets. The impracticability of such a process, as applied to books, never seems to have dawned upon those writers; and this snowball of error, started in the 7th century, long after the knife and the tablet had disappeared as implements of writing, continued to gather strength as time went on. Recent researches, however, have placed it beyond doubt that when the Chinese began to write in a literary sense, as opposed to mere scratchings on bones, they traced their characters on slips of bamboo and tablets of wood with a bamboo pencil, frayed at one end to carry the coloured liquid which stood in the place of ink. The knife was used only to erase. So things went on until about 200 B.C., when it would appear that a brush of hair was substituted for the bamboo pencil; after which, silk was called into requisition as an appropriate vehicle in connexion with the more delicate brush. But silk was expensive and difficult to handle, so that the invention of paper in A.D. 105 by a eunuch, named Ts‘ai Lun, came as a great boon, although it seems clear that a certain kind of paper, made from silk floss, was in use before his date. However that may be, from the 1st century onwards the Chinese have been in possession of the same writing materials that are in use at the present day.
In A.D. 170, Ts‘ai Yung, who rose subsequently to the highest offices of state, wrote out on stone in red ink the authorized text of the Five Classics, to be engraved by workmen, and thus handed down to posterity. The work covered forty-six huge tablets, of which a few fragments are said to be still in existence. A similar undertaking was carried out in 837, and the later tablets are still standing at a temple in the city of Hsi-an Fu, Shensi. With the T‘ang dynasty, rubbings of famous inscriptions, wherein the germ of printing may be detected, whether for the style of the composition or for the calligraphic excellence of the script, came very much into vogue with scholars and collectors. It is also from about the same date that the idea of multiplying on paper impressions taken from wooden blocks seems to have arisen, chiefly in connexion with religious pictures and prayers. The process was not widely applied to the production of books until the 10th century, when in A.D. 932 the Confucian Canon was printed for the first time. In 981 orders were issued for the T‘ai P‘ing Kuang Chi, an encyclopaedia extending to many volumes (see above) to be cut on blocks for printing. Movable types of baked clay are said to have been invented by an alchemist, named Pi Shêng, about A.D. 1043; and under the Ming dynasty, 1368-1644, these were made first of wood, and later of copper or lead, but movable types have never gained the favour accorded to block-printing, by means of which most of China’s great typographical triumphs have been achieved. The process is, and always has been, the same all over China. Two consecutive pages of a book, separated by a column containing the title, number of section, and number of leaf, are written out and pasted face downwards on a block of wood (Lindera tzŭ-mu, Hemsl.). This paper, where not written upon, is cut away with sharp tools, leaving the characters in relief, and of course backwards, as in the case of European type. The block is then inked, and an impression is taken off, on one side of the paper only. This sheet is then folded down the middle of the separating column above mentioned, so that the blank halves come together, leaving two pages of printed matter outside; and when enough sheets have been brought together, they are stabbed at the open ends and form a volume, to be further wrapped in paper or pasteboard, and labelled with title, &c. It is almost superfluous to say that the pages of a Chinese book must not be cut. There is nothing inside, and, moreover, the column bearing the title and leaf-number would be cut through. The Chinese newspapers of modern times are all printed from movable types, an ordinary fount consisting of about six to seven thousand characters.
See J. Legge, The Chinese Classics (1861-1872); A. Wylie, Notes on Chinese Literature (1867); E. Chavannes, Mémoires historiques (1895-1905); H.A. Giles, Chuang Tzŭ (1889), A Chinese Biographical Dictionary (1898), and A History of Chinese Literature (1901); A. Forke, Lun-Hêng (1907); F. Hirth, The Ancient History of China (1908); L. Giles, Sun Tzŭ (1910).
(H. A. GI.)
[1] As to the origin of the names China and Cathay (the medieval name) see below § History. According to one theory the name China is of Malay origin, designating originally the region now called Indo-China, but transferred in early times to China proper. By the Chinese the country is often called Shih-pa-shêng, “the Eighteen Provinces,” from the number of its great territorial divisions. It is also called Chung-kwo, “the Middle Kingdom,” properly used of the central part of China, and Hwa-kwo, “the Flowery Kingdom.”
[2] A Chinese mile, li, or le = 0.36 English mile.
[3] For the Grand Canal the chief authority is Dominique Gandar, S.J., “Le Canal Impérial. Étude historique et descriptive,” Variétés sinologiques No. 4 (Shanghai, 1903); see also Stenz, “Der Kaiserkanal,” in Beiträgen zur Kolonialpolitik, Band v. (Berlin, 1903-1904), and the works of Ney Elias, Sir J.F. Davis, A. Williamson, E.H. Parker and W.R. Carles.
[4] Nevertheless there is considerable local traffic. The transit trade with Shan-tung, passing the Chin-kiang customs and using some 250 m. of the worst part of the canal, was valued in 1905 at 3,331,000 taels.
[5] The portion of the wall which abutted on to the sea has been destroyed.