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Examination of Four Chinese Characters.
APRIL,
ART. IV. A short tract respecting four Chinese characters, which perform a very remarkable office in the writings of Mencius and his commentators, published at Paris, A. D. 1830. Trans- lated from the Latin of Stanislaus Julien, by S. R. WHILE reading and treating of Chinese books, it has long since ap- peared to me (and the opinion has every day become stronger), that some characters, in certain cases determined by a certain law, throw off altogether their primitive and accustomed signification, and then become merely the phonetic signs of regimen, by which the accusa- tive case is denoted.
Those we shall at present consider are four in number:
1st. The charactere, commonly signifying uti, utor, e, eĩ, etc., to use, I employ, of, from, &c.
2d. The character
in, &c.
3d. The character
yu, usually meaning a, ab, in, etc., from,
yu, commonly meaning in, causâ, propter, account of, &c.
etc., in, by reason of, on
4th. The character hoo, ordinarily importing in, propter, nota interrogationis, etc., in, on account of, a mark of interrogation, &c.
Until I shall attempt in a special dissertation more fully to set forth the doctrine from which flows a most copious abundance of princi- ples, and by the aid of which the greatest and most frequent diffi- culties are solved, I cannot refrain from submitting to my readers in a brief and compendious way the principal and most obvious uses of these characters, so far as they denote the accusative case; supported by some proofs from among the thousands which I have from time to time collected and arranged. For in my emendationes,' and espe- cially in the 4th section of Mencius, which embraces the V, VI, VII, and VIII chapters, many things occur which might justly be charg- ed upon me as faults, should I not openly avow my reasons for never having once declined from the royal way.*
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* The Ewang taou, or regia via, is the great subject of the discourses of
Mencius, and we conceive that M. Julien here delicately compliments himself for his rigid adherence to the opinions of the best Chinese commentators, many of whose writings he has most carefully studied and compared, and without whose sanction he has never advanced any interpretation of Mencius. M. Julien cer- tainly deserves the thanks of all Chinese students for his translation of Mencius; and the industry and judgment, which are displayed in it, reflect the highest credit on the anthor. He gives us in his preface the names of eight editions of the Four Books, embracing the interpretations of more than forty authors, all of
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