Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/668

was naturally extremely limited, and by degrees, in some instances by the addition of strokes, and in others by a combination of one or more of these primary characters, the written language has been formed as it is at the present day. In tracing the growth of the later characters we are assisted by the native philologists, who have divided them into six classes.

The first they call Siang hing, lit. characters representing the forms of the objects meant, or, as we should say, hieroglyphics, such as those just mentioned, and about 600 more, as, for example, ʘ jih, “the sun,” 馬 ma, “a horse,” &c.; and of these are composed, with a few exceptions, the 214 determinative or radical characters, one of which enters into the composition of every character in the language.

The second class is called Chi sze, lit. characters indicating things, that is to say, characters intended to represent Ideas to the mind by the position of their parts. Thus the character ʘ tan, “dawn,” in which the sun is represented as appearing above the horizon, belongs to it, and also such characters as 上 shang, “above,” and 下 hea, “beneath,” which are formed in the one case by placing a man above the medium level, and in the other below it.

The third class is made up of Hwuy i, lit. characters combining ideas, or ideographics. This class is formed by uniting two or more significant characters to give the idea of a third. Of the time when these characters were invented we know nothing; but it is plain that their introduction must have given a very extended scope to the language, and they offer an interesting study, as, in many instances, giving us an insight into the moral and social conditions of those who framed them. For instance, if we analyze the character 信 sin, “sincere,” we find that it is formed by the combination of the characters 人 Jin, “a man,” and 言 yen, “words,” a collocation of ideas which speaks well for the honourable truthfulness of the ancient Chinese, and which, when the unfortunate failing in this respect of their descendants is borne in mind, is decidedly opposed to the Darwinian theory as applied to language. The character 皇 Hwang, “Emperor,” is another belonging to this class, which gives anything but a contemptible notion of the moral standard of the people. This symbol was originally written thus , and was composed of the characters meaning “oneself” and “ruler;” the emperor was therefore to be ruler of himself, or autocrat in the true sense of the term; for how can a man, said the ancient sages, rule others unless he first learn to be master of himself? Curiously enough, by the omission of a stroke, this character has assumed its present corrupted form, which consists of parts signifying “white” and “ruler,” and this, as was mentioned in a recent letter from the St Petersburg correspondent of the Times, has been literally translated by the Mongols into Tchagau Khan, and then by the Russians into Biely Tsar, or White Tsar, the name by which the emperor of Russia is now known throughout all Asia.

Another character in this class is 明 ming, “brightness,” which is composed of a combination of the sun and moon to indicate brilliancy. Altogether, of these ideographics there are said to be about 700 in the language, although some writers have held that this class is a very much larger one, and have justified their belief by analyses which, to say the least, are far-fetched. Callery quotes a Jesuit work, in which it is stated that the character 船 chuen, “a ship,” contains to the eye of faith—and we should imagine to that eye alone—a reference to the Flood, since it consists of chow, “a ship,” 八 pă, “eight,” and 口 kow, “a mouth,” plainly pointing, adds the writer, to Noah's ark with its eight inhabitants; and that 婪 Ian, “to covet and desire,” bears traces of Eve's guilt in its component parts, which are 女 neu, “a woman,” and 木 muh, “a tree,” twice repeated, illustrating the longing desire which overcame our first parent when between the trees of life and of good and evil.

The fourth class is the Chuen choo, or characters which, being inverted, either in form or sound, assume different meanings. These number about 372, and are formed in two ways,—either by some slight alteration of the character, as the turning of a stroke or of strokes to the left instead of the right, as, for instance, the character for the hand pointing to the left in this way means “left,” and when turned thus means “right;” or by changing the sound of the character, and with the sound the meaning. Of this kind are such characters as 樂, which when pronounced yŏ means “music,” and when lŏ, ‘delight,” and 易, which as i means “easy,” and as yih means to “change.”

The fifth class is the Chia chieh, lit. characters having borrowed meanings, and consists of about 600 characters, which are applied, as is indicated by the name of the division, in a double sense, and hence have been called metaphorical. As an illustration of this class, Chinese writers adduce the character 失 shi, “an arrow,” which, from the straight course of an arrow, has come to signify “direct,&rdquot &ldquot;right,” “a word spoken to the point.”

The sixth class, which is known as the Chieh shing, or phonetic, embraces over 20,000 characters. The adoption of these phonetics was the turning-point in the progress of Chinese writing. As was the case with the Egyptians, the Chinese found that, having exhausted their power of invention in forming hieroglyphics and ideographics, a further development of the characters was necessary; and, like the subjects of the Pharaohs, they adopted certain characters to represent certain sounds. As to when, or by whom, this system was inaugurated, whether it was introduced from abroad, or whether it was the product of native intelligence, history is silent; but when it was once decided on, the language rapidly increased and multiplied. “A character,” writes a well-known Chinese author, “is not sterile; once bound to another, it gives birth to a son; and if this be joined to another, a grandson is born, and so on.” The characters, then, which belong to the class called phonetic are composed of two parts, namely, the primitive or phonetic element, that is to say, one of the characters which have been chosen to represent certain sounds, and which gives the sound to the whole character, and one of the 214 determinatives or radical characters of the language.

One or more of these determinatives enter into the composition of every character in Chinese, and as a very large proportion of them are plainly hieroglyphics, they may be said to be the foundation of the written language. As might be expected from their nature as hieroglyphics, they include the most remarkable objects of nature, such as the sun, moon, a river, a mountain, fire, water, earth, wood, stone, &c.; the chief parts of the human body, as the head, the heart, the hand, the foot, the eye, the ear &c.; the principal parts of a house, as the roof, the door, &c.; domestic animals, such as the sheep, the cow, the horse, the dog, &c.; the primary relations of society, as father, mother, son, daughter, &c.; qualities, such as great, small, straight, crooked, high, low, long, &c.; and actions, such as to see, to speak, to walk, to run, to stop, to enter, to follow, &c. They are thus admirably adapted to form generic terms, and this is the part they play in composition with the primitives. For instance, into the composition of every character signifying anything made of wood such as a table, a chair, a club, &c., the determinative character meaning “wood” is introduced, and it then serves much the same purpose as do the words “mat” and “steam” in the compounds “matshed” and “steamboat.”