Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/481

CHINA (LANGUAGE AND LITEBATUBE) 469 oribed to Lew Tih-shing. The ts'adu-shoo or cursive character is an extremely abbreviated hand, much used in rough draughts and daily transactions. It was introduced about the same date as the preceding, by a scholar named Chang Pih-ying. The fceae-shoo or ty- pographic character is the square form gene- rally used in books and printed documents, which was introduced about the llth century. The three latter kinds are in general use at the present day. Great pains are taken by the Chinese to secure the correct and graceful form of their characters, and the most minute rules are laid down for their formation, both as to the order of sequence and proportions, which are carefully enforced by the teachers. All the characters in the language are reck- oned to be made up of the eight elementary parts contained in the character ^ ydng, sig- nifying eternal, i.e., a dot, horizontal line, per- pendicular line, hook, spike, sweep, stroke, and dash. There is a small native work con- taining 92 short rules for writing, illustrated by examples. These examples, with a partial translation, have been published by Davis, in the "Transactions of the Koyal Asiatic Soci- ety," vol. i., under the title Eugraphia Sinensis. Dictionaries of the characters are numerous, and, as may be supposed, it was necessary to adopt some artifice in the arrangement of these, in order that by a fixed method any character might be easily discovered in the mass. To effect this, a certain number of dis- tinguishing characters were at an early age selected, to which all the others might be re- spectively referred. These are termed pod by the Chinese, which has been variously translated elements, keys, and radicals. The latter is probably the most convenient term. The number of these radicals has varied in dif- ferent ages. The Shwo-wan has 540 ; the Yuh- peen, completed in 523, has 542 ; the Luy-peen, by Sze-ma Kwang, has 544; in the Luh shoo ptUn e, which appeared early in the Ming dy- nasty, the number of radicals is reduced to 360 ; in the Ching yun wuy peen, published about the beginning of the 17th century, there are 239, and a supplementary class of charac- ters at the end, not referable to any radicals ; the Tsze wuy, which was published at a later period of the same dynasty, contains only 214 ; and the two principal dictionaries that have been published during the present dynasty, Chmg tsze fung and K'ang he tsze teen (which latter forms the basis of Medhurst's " Chinese and English Dictionary "), have both adopted the number fixed by the Tsze wuy. These are divided into 17 classes, according to the number of their strokes. In the 1st class are 6 radicals, each composed of a single stroke; the 2d class has 23 radicals of 2 strokes each ; the 3d class has 31 of 3 strokes ; 4th class, 35 ; 5th, 22; 6th, 29; 7th, 20; 8th, 9; 9th, 11; 10th, 8; llth, 6; 12th, 4; 13th, 4; 14th, 2; 15th, 1; 16th, 2; 17th, 1. These for the greater part represent elementary hieroglyphs, and are probably as judicious a selection as could have been made. Gonc.alvez has re- duced the number of the radicals to 127 in his Diccionario China- Portuguez, but it is doubtful if his system will ever extend beyond the work in which it first appeared. Most of the radicals represent generic ideas, and have been classed by EMd under the following 10 cate- gories : 1st, celestial objects, as sun and moon ; 2d, atmospheric phenomena, as wind and rain ; 3d, human properties and relations, as head and father ; 4th inferior animals, as tiger, bird, and fish ; 5th, elements of nature, as fire and water; 6th, terrestrial productions, as wheat and rice ; 7th, abstract qualities, as black and bitter ; 8th, weapons and utensils, as lance and dish ; 9th, verbs, as to walk and to follow ; 10th, miscellaneous terms, as error and garments. Under one or other of these heads every char- acter in the language is to be found, and in very many instances the radical gives the ge- neric idea of the special character sought. The radicals do not hold any uniform position in the characters. Some are placed on the right side, some on the left, some at the top, some at the bottom, some in the middle, some on both sides, some surrounding the supplementary part, some embracing the top and right side, some the top and left side, some the left side and bottom, some at one of the corners, and a number of others promiscuously placed; all which must be learned from practice. Many of them are very much abbreviated and altered in form when used in composition, so as scarcely to bear any resemblance to the isolated figures. Under each radical in the dictionary, the related characters are arranged seriatim, according to the number of addi- tional strokes ; so that having discovered the radical and counted the number of extra strokes, it is in most cases a very simple pro- cess to pick out the character in question. There is a great difference in the number of characters attached to the various radicals. According to the Tsze wuy, which contains about 30,000 characters, the 140th radical, ts'adu, herb, has 1,423 under it; the 85th, shw&y, water, has 1,330 ; the 75th, muh, tree, has 1,230; the 64th, show, hand, has 1,012; the 30th, Who, mouth, the 61st, sin, heart, the 38th, ned, woman, all have large numbers con- nected with them; and so on through the whole list, the numbers gradually decreasing till we come to the 138th, lean, a limit, which has only 5 characters under it. The character having the greatest number of strokes is f| ping, the sound of thunder, the last under the 173d radical, ppf yd, rain, being a quadrupli- cate form of "jjj luy, thunder. In some works of a higher class, pedantic authors are in the habit of using strange and obsolete forms, in place of the ordinary characters. In novels and books of light reading many of the char- acters are so much abbreviated that a special