HISTORY OF THE CHINESE LANGUAGE
I
Chinese antique script can be traced to a time when tying knots in ropes or strings was used to make records in daily life, a nice reminiscence of which we see even today in the alphabets of certain languages written from a horizontal line downward, such as Sanskrit. It is also possible that the ancient Greek alphabets were derived from the same custom. This method of making records must have been a common practice among early civilizations, and it can still be found among some aboriginal tribes in South America. Ages passed and sank into oblivion and we do not know much about this development. It was not until the time when the Assyrians were busy building their separate towns or town-states and the Egyptians their pyramids (thus circa 3,000 B.C.), that the Chinese began to use a written language, marking the dawn of a new culture in the world—the entrance into the historic period. In a broader sense, the archaic signs, symbols, designs, pictograms, etc. can all be taken as the foundation and original source of the written language. As the Chinese tradition goes, it was the sage-king or culture-hero Bau Hsi 庖牺, later called Fu Hsi 宓牺, (because there was no light explosive labial sound in ancient Chinese), who first designed the eight trigrams. By placing one trigram above another, sixty-four hexagrams came into existence. It is highly probable that these designs had in the primitive society certain social usages also, and hence possessed a sociological value, although this still remains a hypothesis. But we fail to understand why any relation of the eight trigrams with the primeval language should be ruled out. The very first trigram Ch’ien 乾, meaning ‘Heaven’, written in a slightly slanting position is the character Ch’i 气(1) meaning ‘air’ or ‘breath’, with the same pronunciation just a little inflected, and the trigram Kan 坎(2) is the word for ‘water’ in the ancient script written horizontally, as in the word Yi 益, meaning ‘to pour water into a vessel’. That these forms of the archaic script later developed into a special mystic or metaphysical system for the purpose of oracle consultations, and thus fell away from their ordinary linguistic or social usages, is a theory quite tenable.(3)
The reputed inventor of Chinese writing was a sage named Ts’ang Chieh 苍颉. Of him we know only that as an officer or the history recorder in the court of Huang Ti 黄帝, the first king in China (about 2698–2598 B.C.), he coded the whole language. Yet it can hardly be supposed that one man, be he a sage or however otherwise endowed, could have invented or shaped by himself alone an entire written language and then had it printed (since printing had not yet been dreamt of) and issued for public use. To invent an alphabet for the spoken language, which has in fact been done by one or two men in the history of certain races, is another thing. It was rather perhaps that many words invented in the ancient society were already in use when a certain learned master Ts’ang Chieh came forth and brought them to a certain standardization. Henceforth they became fixed types and perhaps caused less confusion in public writing. The collection or codification of this man was then regarded as a final authority. Further speculations we need not make, since the traditional legend ends there.
Ever since then historians have generally agreed that China stepped into its historical period about 2698 B.C. Again ages and ages, dynasties and dynasties passed without many vestiges being left to posterity. Among the most ancient relics of the language found in recent times, inscriptions on tortoise shells must be mentioned. (Plate I) Batches of tortoise shells have been unearthed since 1899 in Honan, a province in the central part of China, and they were found to bear inscriptions which were oracle records. This opened a new field of research in philology as well as in ancient history. Among the many pamphlets written on this subject by modern researchers, the collected work entitled Oracle Records from the Waste of Yin by the famous Canadian preacher and scholar Menzies is the most noteworthy. So far about five thousand words have been discovered, but nearly half of them remain unidentified. Words well recognized and generally agreed upon by scholars count less than one thousand. A renowned scholar of the Academica Sinica recently reconstructed certain chronological tables of a Calendar of the Yin Dynasty (1766–1122 B.C.) from the materials so far available. This was a task of tremendous difficulty and laborious effort, with the aim of shedding new light on ancient history. It was not entirely successful. Next to the inscriptions on tortoise shells must be mentioned the inscriptions on bronze vases and tripods, etc., of the Chow Dynasty (1122–256 B.C.), which are very well known. (Plates IV, V)
In the Chow Dynasty children of eight years of age were sent to grammar schools or “schools of small learning” and taught by tutors the signs and words of the six categories, which will be treated presently; this “small learning” meant in later ages a great branch of knowledge now called philology. These signs and words were supposed to be the traditional writings handed down from Ts’ang Chieh. Between 827 and 781 B.C. an officer or historian in the imperial court formed another style of writing, known afterwards as Ch’ou Shu 籀书 (either because his name was Ch’ou 籀, or because it was meant ‘to be read’, taking the word Ch’ou in its verbal sense), a very elegant and complicated calligraphy which was also taught to pupils. This newly formulated written language codified and compiled into a lexicon of fifteen chapters was also called Ta Ch’uan 大篆 in contrast to the Hsiao Ch’uan小篆 of the Ch’in Dynasty (246–207 B.C.), signifying ‘Major’ and‘Minor’ scripts respectively.(4) Up to the Ch’in Dynasty there were at least three different scripts in vogue:
1) The Ku Wen 古文, or Archaic Script, said to have descended from Ts’ang Chieh, and used down to that period in which many of the Confucian classical works—discovered about a hundred years after the Ch’in Dynasty—were written;
2) The Ch’ou Shu 籀书 or Ta Ch’uan 大篆 of the Chow Dynasty which we still see on bronzes; and
3) The Hsiao Ch’uan 小篆 or ‘Minor Script’ used in the Ch’in Dynasty which was derived from the ‘Major’.
These three scripts differed to a greater or lesser extent from each other, and a general tendency toward simplification can be clearly seen in the course of development of nearly three thousand years.
In the short-lived Ch’in Dynasty, Chinese culture suffered a great change because, under the absolute power of a tyrant, books were burned and scholars were persecuted in a way no less severe perhaps than the religious inquisitions in mediaeval Europe. Another form of writing in plain square shape known as Li Shu 隶书was forced into use among the people by the government. Compared to any of the former scripts, it was even more abbreviated and convenient to write. Its original purpose was to save time in offices so as to meet the extraordinary exigencies of the state in marshalling great masses of the population into public services and to control great numbers of forced labourers, etc. By this time, the Archaic Script which we designated as “1” above had gradually fallen into disuse.
In studying the several ancient histories of China, along with which the Five Classics must also be taken into consideration, we find that the Chow Dynasty exceeded its two previous dynasties in cultural development, particularly in a very well cultivated propriety. The latter is called Li 礼 in Chinese and has no exact equivalent in English. It is variously translated as “mores” or “rites”. It is something like a gentleman’s code but much more than that, the cultivation of a godly behaviour, good, beautiful and exuberantly rich both in form and content. The same high aesthetic sense and taste can be seen in the artistic geometrical designs, decorative motives and written words on bronze vessels and musical instruments commonly exhibited in museums of the world today. That the script, Ta Ch’uan (“2” above) could not be suited to ordinary practical purposes is beyond doubt, but the Hsiao Ch’uan (“3” above), though much reduced in complexity, was still a very cumbersome though elegant handwriting, one that required no less time in its practice than the others. The chief minister of the Ch’in Dynasty, Li Sse 李斯, who suggested the burning of books and other tyrannical measures, was himself a good scholar and calligrapher in this script, and many stone inscriptions written by him are left to us. He also compiled a lexicon giving only three thousand words in their standardized forms and he called it The Book of Ts’ang Chieh. Two other scholars, also high officials of the court, did the same thing; one compiled a dictionary of six chapters and the other, of seven chapters, both making broad references to the Ch’ou Shu. In the beginning of the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.–220 A.D.) certain unknown schoolmasters combined these three books into a work of fifty-five chapters of sixty words each, calling it also The Book of Ts’ang Chieh. This collected edition was later called The Three Ts’angs Book 三苍.
Here we need not go into much detail about the ancient lexicography. New dictionaries were compiled thereafter, so that up to the first century B.C. two more volumes were added to that collected work, bringing the total number of words to 7,380. It was edited as a single volume and also called The Three Ts’angs Book. Other scattered works existed with new words not included therein.
Coming back to the scripts we find that there were eight kinds at the beginning of the Han Dynasty, as follows:
1) Ta Ch’uan 大篆 or Major Script, mentioned above, many of which are given in this book as examples of antique scripts.
2) Hsiao Ch’uan 小篆 or Minor Script, in which nearly all the words in the second place in the illustrative pages are written.
3) Ke Fu 刻符 or the script for engraving on tallies, which were usually made of bamboo and used in the army.
4) Ch’ung Shu 虫书 or Worm Script, used especially for writing on banners.
5) Mu Yin 摹印 or the script for seals.
6) Shu Shu 署书 or Title Script, usually used for writing on envelopes or large title boards.
7) Shu Shu 殳书 or the script written and moulded on weapons only.
8) Li Shu 隶书, mentioned above.
It is understood that each word could be written in any of these eight styles, each suited to its purpose. The word is the same though the style may be different. Among these the eighth and the second are still very common nowadays, the first and the fifth are used and studied, but the other four are rarely seen.
It should be noted in passing that the sixth and seventh categories given above are not false repetitions or misprints. In Chinese these two names are written differently and pronounced in different tones though with the same sound, thus causing no confusion. But to any one unfamiliar with this language, these words “shu... shu... shu... shu... ”must sound like someone heaving repeated sighs of despair! Be that as it may, here we meet the tremendous obstacle in latinizing the language, because there are too many words with the same sound and the same tone but with different meanings. They can only be understood without confusion in context and in their written forms. It is a special feature of the Chinese language that different tones are given to a sound, usually a word, in order to enrich the vocabulary, because ultimately the number of linguistic sounds is limited. Since the words are written in a square form, it is easy to put a semicircle at any of the four corners to denote the tone. (These are written counter-clockwise.) A word without any such mark at a corner is read in its normal tone as it is pronounced. This method is undoubtedly unsuitable and impracticable in latinization.
Since the tone of every word must be learned along with its pronunciation, some device had to be invented to denote it. The method generally used in the past was to put the number 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 below the word, as is done in this book, a method which can only be used in a dictionary without causing confusion. A comparatively new method employs a straight line, a curve, a downward dash to the left or right placed above the vowel to denote the tones respectively. This is more convenient provided the reader does not confuse these signs with the long or short phonetic marks in English or the l’accent aigu and l’accent grave in French. On the whole latinization cannot be said to be a complete failure in China, as it helps the student in learning to speak Mandarin and prepares him for learning a European language. Nevertheless, even an expert finds deciphering these latinized words puzzling; and even if one has mastered this system one still remains illiterate in the language. This situation explains also the necessity of the special methods of training mentioned in the Introduction. It must be noted here that in spite of the failure of this movement of latinization, the other movement of abbreviation had a certain success. Ordinary words are written in their abbreviated forms with a lesser number of strokes, and that saves some time in writing. It has given to the written language almost a new physiognomy. However, history shows that oversimplification or abbreviation tends to cause uncertainties or perplexities (especially with regard to the words denoting numbers, which could easily be changed in legal documents) which always necessitated a return to the more complex forms. Perhaps this will prove to be the case in the future.
In a sense Chinese is a language that appeals more to the visual than to the auditory faculty. Those who have sharp eyes or a natural inclination towards visual forms will find the language easier than those particularly developed in their sense of hearing. Perhaps in Sanskrit the reverse is the case.
In the beginning of the Han Dynasty, there was a law that anyone above the age of seventeen wishing to enter the government service as an official scribe or clerk must be subjected to an examination on 9,000 words of Ch’ou Shu, and tested in the correct recognition of words in those eight styles. The best ones were given high offices, but officials who subsequently made mistakes in the words written on public documents and despatches, etc. were censured and impeached by the government. Gradually that law was not so strictly enforced and such examinations were no longer held after about 128 B.C. It was perhaps due to a general decline in the knowledge of the ancient scripts, which was natural since Li Shu (the 8th above) was so commonly used that there was no longer the necessity of such a profound learning. However, a knowledge so intimately connected with the education of the individual as well as the culture of the race was not to be lost, and two Emperors, Hsuan Ti 宣帝(79–49 B.C.) and Ping Ti 平帝(1–5 A.D.), both made encouraging revivals of the much degenerated study of etymology. Learned men, official scholars or private savants of fame were summoned from all over the land to the palace to lecture on this subject, and the best were given prizes. Much lost was recovered and hence The Three Ts’angs Book came into being.
Time advanced, studies progressed and knowledge increased. Here we meet the first great master in Chinese philology, Hsu Shên 许慎, who made an invaluable contribution to the culture of the race by compiling a comprehensive etymological dictionary called Shou Wen Chiai Tsu 《说文解字》, which means “Analysis and Explanation of Signs and Words”; henceforth this was held as an authoritative work and it is still used today. Researches in later ages were necessarily based upon this work. Hsu Shên was a highly reputed scholar “whose knowledge in the Five Classics was unequalled”, as the slogan of his time claimed. His biography, a brief one, is found in the History of the Later Han Dynasty by Fan Yeh (fasc. 69 b.) 范晔《后汉书》. This work, containing 9,353 words with 1,143 duplicated forms in fourteen chapters under 540 headings, was finished, as written in its appendix, on New Year’s Day in the twelveth year of Yun Yuan 永元 under the reign of Ho Ti 和帝, corresponding to 100 A.D. It was offered to the imperial court by his son Hsu Chun 许冲 on the first of the ninth month, according to the Chinese calendar, in 121 A.D. Hsu Chun was granted an audience with the Emperor Ho Ti on the 20th of the same month, and as a token of appreciation for the offering he was rewarded with forty bundles of fine cloth with the order that no further expression of gratitude need be made. This work was then preserved in the Imperial Library, an act of great honour to the scholar, and handed down through generations and generations to the present day.
What we call the introduction to a book was normally placed at the end in ancient times as the appendix, usually summarizing in brief what was contained in the book along with the intention and purpose of the author. Thus Hsu Shên’s Introduction stands separately as one fascicle and so, with the main work of fourteen chapters, the book is considered to consist of fifteen chapters. The main work, including annotations and explanations, contains 133,441 words, so a “small”learning in the Chow Dynasty had become a “great” learning by the time of the Han Dynasty. But we must not forget that before Hsu’s time many centuries had passed, and his interpretations, though based upon the traditional orthodox learning of his time, could not be entirely free from error, as brought to light by scholars in later generations. Among the many commentaries on his work, we need only take the two latest into consideration: one by Tuan Yue Tsai 段玉裁, and the other by Kuei Fu 桂馥, both brilliant philologists who lived from the end of the 18th to the beginning of the 19th century. The latter devoted nearly forty years to this work and the former more than thirty; in other words, each spent his whole life’s energy on it. It is interesting to note that although both lived in the same period and worked on the same subject, they neither knew each other nor did they ever see each other’s work. This is understandable because Kuei Fu spent most of his lifetime in the southwestern province of Yunan, thus somewhat isolated from the general or central academic field. Both works are now being used, and it would be unwise to try to judge which is more valuable. We can only say that both are equally great, and if any difference is to be found, it is only that Tuan’s Annotations placed more emphasis on phonetics, while Kuei’s Elucidations gave a comparatively broader treatment to meaning.
In about the same period works of other philologists followed, such as those of Nyu Hsu Yue,钮树玉; Hsu Cheng Ching, 徐承庆; Wang Yuen,王筠; Li Fu Sen,李富孙; Miao Kuei, 苗夔, in which new discoveries were made, and the mistakes of their forerunners corrected; but their main contribution was in the field of phonology, in categorizing the ancient sounds according to different rhymes. The seventeen categories formulated by Tuan, based upon Ku Ting Ling’s ten categories, were gradually enlarged and developed into twenty-one; that is to say, the division became more and more exact and precise. These twenty-one categories still stand as they were and studies have extended to the so-called “tendency of sound” 声势, explaining certain facts in ancient phonology which Tuan and his contemporaries could not explain. Apart from this not much progress has been made in this field during the past fifty years.
Besides these works on Hsu’s etymology there is another major reference book to be consulted, upon which the present book is based. It is Shou Wen T’ung Hsun Ting Sheng 《说文通训定声》 or Etymology—Generalized Explanations and Standardized Pronunciations by Chu Tsun Sheng 朱骏声 (1788–1858 A.D.). In the preface to this book the author stated that ten years had been spent and as yet it was still only a draft to be finished. In 1833 he gave a general idea of the framework of the book, saying that he wrote the preface previous to its completion lest it could never be finished. However, its fate was not so tragic, for we find in his biography that this book together with his other works was offered to the king in 1851. In phonetics he followed T’uan’s Annotations, yet he formed a special system of his own, and in the meaning and formation of words he also made numerous minor discoveries. In the order of arrangement by separate combinations of the six categories and in the explanations of words according to the six principles, which will be treated in the next chapter, he differed from Hsu Shên, and he elucidated many doubts and obscurities. This dictionary is still commonly used nowadays by advanced scholars, and less often by beginners.
Now a general question may be asked: Since the Chinese language is so difficult, and students have already enough to do in memorizing so much of its vocabulary, why should they be burdened with ancient forms of the same words, not commonly used or even recognized by the common people? This involves the question of the usefulness of etymology in general. The answer to this can be given from diverse viewpoints. First of all, the so-called Minor Scripts given here have not entirely fallen out of use today, as they are found everywhere and especially on personal seals. Every citizen in China carries a seal with him as did the ancient Babylonians, and a seal impressed on any document takes the place of one’s signature, for a signature can easily be simulated, while a seal cannot. This is from a practical point of view. In the second place, without having a right knowledge of these principles (vide Chapter II) —especially the fifth and the sixth which must be learned afterwards—ancient texts can scarcely be read, let alone understood.
Generally speaking, the use or necessity of any branch of establi-shed knowledge in the academic field is never questioned. But when knowledge has ramified and grown to such unmanageable proportions that it has somehow to be curtailed, then doubts arise as to the use of certain specific divisions or subdivisions. Indeed, special studies in diverse subjects of ancient philology have often been considered excessive, but the contributions of etymology to cultural history can never be disputed. In the present case this much increased knowledge helps not only to illuminate the language learned, but to a great extent it helps one to commit it to memory in a more rational way.
This can be illustrated by tracing the derivation of a few English words. The word ‘omnibus’ is a combined form of the Latin ‘omnis’, meaning ‘all’, with the usual ending ‘ibus’. In modern English it denotes a vehicle on the streets and it is further abbreviated into ‘bus’. If the Latin original is learned, the meaning ‘for all’ is very clear to the student. He would appreciate the ingenuity of taking this word to denote such an object, and to commit it to memory would be effortless. Another example may be found in the word ‘restive’ which is often used incorrectly in place of ‘restless’. How did it come into being? When it is understood that this word usually refers to horses, then its sense of‘refractory’ or ‘rejecting control’ becomes clear, hence the interchange in the usage. Moreover, to understand the endless -logies, -sophies, -graphies, -pathies etc., in the modern world, one must know some Latin and Greek. Why should we not penetrate deep into the roots or stems or radicals of the old forms and constructions of Chinese, in order to secure some assured knowledge in a more rationalized way? When a puzzle has been solved, there will be a great intellectual satisfaction, and the mind will in that case be instantly enlightened; what then is the need of cramming and hard work in memorization?
With regard to the question of being burdensome, it is a different thing. Do we actually feel a burden when we learn, in addition to the word ‘Christ’ its Latin form ‘Christus’ and the Greek forms ‘chreo-’and ‘christos’? Yet the examples given in this book are only the antique forms of the same words of the same language. Unfortunately not every word now used can be traced to its origin so satisfactorily. Many non-orthodox explanations have arisen out of imagination, and they must be discarded.(5)
Next to the column of Minor Script in this book are the words of the written language now daily used. They had this as their common source, but they were more directly derived from Li Shu, a style showing only slight variations, in which there were many so-called “vulgar forms”. Just as there are colloquial expressions in the spoken language, so there are also unrefined forms in the written language. Most of them we cannot explain. Apart from these, there is another running style of writing called Ts’ao Shu 草书, also commonly used nowadays but rarely printed; it is still more difficult to recognize or to decipher unless one has undergone training in this script. It must have had another origin, probably Li Shu, which we cannot definitely ascertain, and it also took its standardized shape from the beginning of the Han Dynasty. One of the two styles of Japanese letters must have taken its inspiration from this source, since it shows a great resemblance to it, just as Japanese culture was almost entirely derived from its Chinese source in ancient times. Japan has now many fine calligraphists of this style whose writings we highly appreciate and admire, but since this is included in the field of art, we need not bring it into discussion. We shall discuss only the Hsiao Ch’uan, and the Proper Script 楷书 now used in writing and printing which must have originated in the Han Dynasty at about the same time, viz., in the second century before Christ.