Travels in China by Sir John Barrow (top e book reader .txt) 📕

The Doctor is equally unfortunate in the discovery which he thinks he has made of a want of order in classing the elements according to the number of lines they contain. The instances he gives of such anomaly are in the two characters of 母 moo, mother; and 田 tien, cultivated ground: the first of which he is surprised to find among the elementary characters of four lines, and the latter (which he asserts to be still more simple) among those of five. The Chinese, however, are not quite so much out of order as the Doctor seems to be out of his province in attempting a critique on a language, of which he really possesses a very superficial knowledge. The first character 母 moo is composed of strokes and the second 田 tien of strokes; the one of four and the other of five lines according to the arrangement of Chinese dictionaries, and their elementary treatises.

Among the roots or primitives that most frequently occur are those expressing the hand, heart, mouth, and the five elements, earth, air, fire, wood, and water. Man is also a very common root.

The composition of characters is capable of exercising a very considerable degree of ingenuity, and the analysis of them is extremely entertaining to a foreigner. As in a proposition of Euclid it is necessary to go through the whole demonstration before the figure to which it refers can be properly understood, so, in the Chinese character, the sense of the several component parts must first be known in order to comprehend the meaning of the compound. To endeavour to recollect them without this knowledge would be a laborious and almost impossible effort of the mind. Indeed, after this knowledge is acquired, the sense is sometimes so hid in metaphor, and in allusions to particular customs or ways of thinking, that when all the component parts of a character are well understood, the meaning may yet remain in obscurity. It may not be difficult to conceive, for instance, that in a figurative language, the union of the sun and moon might be employed to express any extraordinary degree of light or brilliancy; but it would not so readily occur, that the character foo or happiness, or supreme felicity, should be designed by the union of the characters expressing a spirit or demon, the number one or unity, a mouth, and a piece of cultivated ground, thus 福. This character in the Chinese language is meant to convey the same idea as the word comfort does in our own. The character implying the middle of any thing, annexed to that of heart, was not inaptly employed to express a very dear friend, nor that with the heart surmounted by a negative, to imply indifference, no heart; but it is not so easy to assign any reason why the character ping, signifying rank or order, should be expressed by the character mouth, repeated thrice, and placed like the three balls of a pawnbroker, thus 品, or why four of these mouths arranged as under, with the character ta, great, in the center, should imply an instrument, or piece of mechanism. 器. Nor would it readily occur why the character 男 nan, masculine, should be made up of tien, a field, and lee, strength, unless from the idea that the male sex possesses strength, and only can inherit land. But that a smoothness or volubility of speech 唫 should be designed by koo, mouth, and kin, gold, we can more easily conceive, as we apply the epithet silver tongue pretty nearly on the same occasion.

If the Chinese had rigidly adhered to the ingenious and philosophical mechanism they originally employed in the construction of their characters, it would be the most interesting of all languages. But such is far from being the case. New characters are daily constructed, in which convenience, rather than perspicuity, has been consulted.

It will follow from what has been said, that every compounded character is not only a word, but also a definition, comprehending in visible marks its full explanation; but no character, however compounded, can have more than a monosyllabic sound, though each part when alone has a distinct sound, as well as sense. Thus, "Happiness," though compounded of four distinct characters, shee, a demon; ye, one; koo, a mouth, and tien, a piece of cultivated ground, has only the simple monosyllabic sound foo, which is unlike that of any one of its compounds.

The sounds and various inflexions incidental to languages in general, are not necessary to be attended to in the study of the Chinese characters. They speak equally strong to a person who is deaf and dumb, as the most copious language could do to one in the full enjoyment of all his senses. It is a language addressed entirely to the eye, and not to the ear. Just as a piece of music laid before several persons of different nations of Europe would be played by each in the same key, the same measure, and the same air, so would the Chinese characters be equally understood by the natives of Japan, Tunquin, and Cochin-China; yet each would give them different names or sounds, that would be wholly unintelligible to one another. When, on the present voyage, we stopped at Pulo Condore, the inhabitants, being Cochin-Chinese, had no difficulty in corresponding, by writing, with our Chinese interpreters, though they could not interchange one intelligible word.

Although, with the assistance of a good dictionary and a tolerable memory, a knowledge of such of the Chinese characters, as most frequently occur, may be obtained by a foreigner; yet the ambiguity to which they are liable, on account of the frequent figurative expressions and substitution of metaphor for the literal meaning, renders their best compositions extremely obscure. Another, and not the least, difficulty to a learner of this language arises from the abridgment of the characters for the sake of convenience, by which the eye is deprived of the chain that originally connected the component parts. In short, it is a language where much is to be made out that is not expressed, and particularly so in what is called fine writing; and a thorough knowledge of it can only be acquired from a familiar acquaintance with the manners, customs, habits, and opinions of the people. Those missionaries even, who have resided in the country the best part of their lives, and accepted employments about the palace, are frequently at a loss in translating and composing the official papers that are necessary to be made out on the occasion of an European embassy.

It is, however, a matter of surprize that, after all that has been published in Europe by the Jesuits of the grandeur, the magnificence, the learning, and the philosophy of the Chinese, so very few persons should have taken the trouble to make themselves acquainted with the language of this extraordinary nation. So little was a professor of Chinese, at Rome, versed in the language he professed to know, that he is said[16] to have mistaken some characters found on a bust of Isis for Chinese, which bust and the characters were afterwards proved to be the work of a modern artist of Turin, made after his own fancy. In Great Britain we have known still less of the Chinese language and Chinese literature than on the continent. It is not many years ago, that one of the small copper coins of China, stamped in the reign, and with the name, of the late Tchien-lung (or as he is usually called in the southern dialect of China Kien-long) was picked up in a bog in Ireland, and being considered as a great curiosity, was carried to an indefatigable antiquary, whose researches have been of considerable use in investigating the ancient history and language of that island. Not knowing the Chinese character, nor their coin, it was natural enough for him to compare them with some language with which he was acquainted; and the conclusion he drew was, that the four following characters on the face were ancient Syriac; and that the reverse (which are Mantchoo letters) appeared to be astronomical, or talismanic characters, of which he could give no explanation.