عنيد
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THE CHINA REVIEW.
logy he gives no quarter to the idea that Chinese roots may be compared to Indo- European roots. Consequently I bave to suffer much condemnation for venturing to promulgate the doctrines of China's Place in Philology.
It is to be hoped that a few year swill re- real a new phase in the attitude of the com- parative philologists and that there will be more freedom allowed in the use of methods, so that an attempt to compare both Chinese roots and the principles of Chinese grammar with the roots and grammatical principles of European languages will not be represented again by the strict school of comparative philology as necessarily unscientific.
The Index to the Shwo-wen by Mr. Chal- mers will be extremely useful and will save much time in searching. Students are much indebted to him for constructing it,
His care and industry in the investigation of forms shew how much he might do if he would also attend to letter changes and dialects. It is certainly unfortunate that his work on Kanghi, of which we have now the first instalment, contains no indication that he has studied the thirty-six initials. When for example he writes, he is clearly wrong and wrong only from want of study- ing the subject. It should be written with b; for proofs I may refer to existing dialects, to Julien's Méthode de Transcription, to the Japanese transcription and to my two Grammars, together with China's Place, and Introduction. He may say that he is publishing his abridgement of Kanghi from a Canton point of view. But that is not what we all want. If the syllabic spelling meant & as the initial of such a word and not 2, let it be said before the rest of the work is completed, so that the student may feel as much confidence in the author's way of representing the initials as in his way of representing the finals. This will render the book much more useful to Students.
Mr. Chalmers has not stated the source in each case from which Kunghi's Commission took the spelling he selects. The Student
will have to refer back to Kanghi to know this. A mark Dy or Key might be printed near the spelling to show whether Mr. Chalmers is using for example the Tang- yün or the Kwang-yun. This would save time in verifying the spelling.
1 mention these things in the hope that it may not be too late to introduce these resi improvements.
I would press the first of these improve- ments because also the book will be saleable
among the Chinese. It is much better that this piece of information about the initials and finals of the Syllabic spelling, which wa are able to give them, should be presented in its integrity than in the very imperfect form in which native Students of sounds will find it in Mr. Chalmers' first volume.
What a help it would be to these meu, and to European students if on page 11, 16, Mr. Chalmers would explain
and
Tas indicating a running line of dis-
tinction between surds and sonants, so that #ki,&gi, ting, du, ping,
bing should all be recognized as sepa- rated by the naturally developed pronuncia- tion at the time when the syllabic spelling was introduced.
It would also be an advantage if he would
drop the phrases 北音南音 us too
indefinite, or at least state what dialects he
So also it would be an means by them. advantage if he would state which mandarín is meant by the phrase E and the swuuds of what period by the 古音
In the "Prefatory explanations" there appears to me to be too much of Wang Yang-an, and too little of himself in the part which treats of sounds. Not knowing the proper use of the alphabet, how can the Chinese collaborateur be able to make plaiu the differences between ancient and modern sounds or between north and south pronun- ciation ?
Barring these drawbacks the book will be extremely useful to me, and I doubt not to others. The way of printing in triple rows
NOTES AND QUERIES.
is highly convenient. The spacing after each word is a real comfort. The bringing together of characters having one phonetic
is a great boon to philologists.
May the 康熙字典撮要 Lavo A
rapid sale.
J. EDKINS.
NOTES ON CHINESE GRAMMAR.-The Edi- tor of the "Celestial Empire" 28th July, 1877 (Vol. IX., No. 4, page 96), while re- viewing these "Notes," makes the following remark:
"We should here, in our ignorance, like
to ask if such a phrase as 分人以財 (quoted from Julien) meaning "to distribute riches to men" could possibly exist in
or anything else. Take away and the remainder is intelligible enough. Unfortun- ately, we have no competent native scholar at hand to whom we might refer the question.” The phrase in question, I here heg to remark, occurs in Mencius (Book III., Pt. I., Ch. IV., 10; Legge, p. 128), and reads in
fuli :-- 分人以財謂之惠人 以善謂之忠: it is translated by Dr. Leggo as follows: "The imparting by a man to others of his wealth, is called a kind- ness. The teaching others what is good, is called the exercise of fidelity,"
N. N.
RUSSIAN SINGLOGISTs (Vol. V., p. 408).- With respect to the famous ode to a Deity by Gabriel Derskayin (as the name is given by the Querist), I may observe that D. E. K. probably means the Russian poet Derjavin (the to be pronounced as in French) who has written an ode to a Deity (Boy),
Leontycwsky, one of the members of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission at Peking from 1820 to about 1830, a good Chinese scholar, translated this odo into Chinese, and as he had sent copies of his translation to Russia some of the Russian newspapers of that time (especially the Sibirsky Vestnik if I am not mistaken) made much ado about it. However it is certain that the Chinese did not pay the slightest attention to this ode, which has never been printed. I am not
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aware where D. E. K. has got the information, that the Chinese Emperor had it printed in letters of gold on white satin and hang up in his palace. The Russians know nothing about it. Dorjavin's ode to the Deity has been translated into German and into French, but I do not remember where.
Aa to the translations of the works of Bioboorin, I beg to refer the Querist to Messrs. P. and 0. von Moellendorff's excel- lent book on the European works treating of China,
E. BRETSCHNEIDER,
QUERIES.
ASSYRIA AND CHINA,-Under the char acter kun Dr. Williams, in his Syllabic Dictionary (p. 454), refers to the following remarkable coincidence of Assyrian and Chi-
nese customs;---
followers carrying screens over & general in his chariot; such as is seen in Assyrian sculptures. Can any of the readers of the China Re- view inform me, what authority Dr. Wil- bams could have derived this very interest- ing statement from?
N. P.
The phraselih kuh, is evidently derived from Kanght's Imperial Dictionary, where, under kuh, it is given as a quo- tation from the Tso Chuen (Duke Seuen, IV year), The phrase means there, as the context plainly shows, "the bamboo screen above the wheel," the whole sentence being translated by Dr. Legge (Ch'un Ts'ow, I., p. 297) as follows, "a second arrow skirted in the same way the curvature above the pole and then pierced the bamboo screen above the wheel." Kanghi's Dictionary adds the following quotation from a commentary, “a war chariot has no awning; in the case of a nobleman, bis attendant holds (in the hand) a bamboo screen
); where this is fixed over the hub of the wheel ), it is cal- ledih kuh."
This is, no doubt, the souree from which Dr. Williams derived his inspiration for the first half of his sentence, but it will be seen,
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