CHINA.

New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 39, 13 December 1842, Page 4

CHINA.

ORIGIN OK THE WAR. (Continued from No. 37. J The Chinese Schoolmaster merely tenches letters and the science of manners; they do not cultivate the abstract sciences ; geometry and mathematics, with the study of general history and astronomy, are not taught, and the pupils are therefore very deficient in a general knowledge of the world. Chinese gentlemen study nothing but the history and poetry of China, and the opinions of their old philosophers. They never study any foreign-language. Very few females can read or write. The prevailing opinion is, that domestic duties are enough for the ladies, and, besides, there exists an apprehension that the art of writing and reading may be misemployed, or perverted to bad purposes. At school Chinese boys begin by committing to memory two or three small books merely to learn the characters, which they also write daily. Then they pass to the Four Books of Confucius, and after they have learnt these, they study the Five Sacred Books, the greater part of which they commit to memory. They are taught the most implicit obedience to their parents, and such is considered the authority and power of the father over his child, that he may put his son to death, and be punished only by a moderate fine.

Their cemeteries are judiciously placed without the towns, on barren hills, where there is no risk of the dead being disturbed by agricultural operations. When a man dies, his frieifds say “ he is gone to ramble amongst the immortals.” White is the colour used for mournimr. o The relatives offer a sort of worship at the tombs of the deceased. They assemble round the grave on certain days consecrated to their memory, and the spirits of their ancestors seem to be reverenced as a sort of household gods.

LANTUAGE, EDUCATION, AND LITERATURE. The Chinese is an earlier language than the Sanscrit or mother tongue of Central Asia ; it is a monosyllabic Language, and] words expressing more than one sensation, or object, or names of persons, arc formed by the union of single words. Thus the name of the sage whom we call Confucius is Con-fut-see, the Speaker of Wisdom. The Chinese language has, besides the provincial varieties, two great and distinct features—the written and the spoken languages. The written or Mandarin Chinese, is the language of religion and literature, and the laws, and of the Government; and throughout the coasts and islands of China, Corea, Loo Choo, and the Japan Islands, the native of China Proper, or a foreign traveller, finds, upon addressing himself to the natives in the ordinary tongue, he is not understood ; but if he write his wants in the written language, his wishes or wants are immediately comprehended. The written character of the Chinese differs much ■ from the written character of the Asiatics, and appears to the scholar, at first sight, to approximate to the ancient Hebrew Phoenician, or Palmyrene ; but, upon more minute examination, it is found to approach nearer to the most ancient of known characters, the cuneiform, or arrow-headed character, not that of Persepolis, but the more ancient upon the bricks of Babylon. WRITTEN LANGUAGE. The writing of the Chinese and the formation of their symbols differ from those of the whole world, and they still retain the original mode by which mankind has attempted to" perpetuate the remembrance of things by some imitative symbol. Thus the characters expressing the sun and moon stand for light, those of a man and a mountain signify hermit, a bird and a mouth express song , and the verb to hear is represented by the combined character for an ear and a door.

The number of primitive elements or symbols, according to Dr. Morrison, is 373; of these •characters 214 are heads of classes or-radicals, or outline characters, each having a distinct meaning and use; from these radicals, combinations are formed, representing by their union a third : for example, the characters signifying sun and moon united, signify light and brightness. Thus from 214 elements spring 1,600 primitives, each producing nearly SO derivatives, and the peculiar composition of the language may be conceived by the following passage from Mr. Barrow : “The characters are divided into six classes by philologists, viz.:—'lst. Those resembling the object. 2d. Those pointing out some quality or accident. 3d. Those arising from combination of ideas. 4th. Characters partly to give the idea, and partly the sound. stli. Representing opposites by inversion. 6th. Borrowed, metaphorical,’ or illusive. As a specimen of the 3d and ,6th classes—a hand and a staff united denote a man ruling in his family, or a father; words and to exchange mean to ‘ converse’ or ‘ speechthe middle and’ heart ‘ fidelity/ the mouth and gold, ‘ volubility of speech,’ high and horse, ‘ fraud’ (i. e. to be on one’s high horse). ‘ To flatter’ is composed of words, and to lick; ‘levity,’ of ‘ girl,’ and ‘thought.' As an illustration of the metapho-

rical use, the ‘ wWe of a magistrate’ is said to denote ‘an accomplished lady.’ ” Under the element or key which signilies heart, we shall find all the characters arranged expressive of the sentiments, passions, and affections of the mind: as grief, joy, love, hatred, anger, &c. The element water enters into all the compounds which relate to the sea, rivers, lakes, swamps, depth, transparency, &c. The key or element plant takes in the whole vegetable kingdom. Yen, a word, enter into the composition of those characters which relate to reading, speaking, studying, debating, consulting, trusting, &c. All the handicraft trades, laborious employments, and a great number of verbs of action, have the element hand for their governing character. Of the 214 radicals thus employed, not more than 150 can be considered as effective, the rest being very rarely employed in the combination of characters. Of the 40,000 characters, or thereabouts, contained in the standard dictionary of the language, 60 of the elements govern no less than 25,000. The most prolific is the element grass, or plants, which presides over 1,423 characters; the next water , which has 1,333 ; then the hand, which has 1,012. After these follow in succession the mouth, heart, and insect, each having about 900, then a word, man, and metal, each exceeding 700; next a reed, or bamboo, a woman, silk, a bird, flesh, mountain, &c., each governing from 500 to 600. The number of words in the Imperial Dictionary is 40,000, but the early writings of the period of Confucius contain scarcely 3,000 different characters. Now it is said, whoever has acquired 2,000 is never at a loss, and with 1,900 is in possession of all . the materials of the language. It is the apparent number of words that has prevented Europeans from a more general acquisition of this language; but the philological researches of Pote Montucci, Remusat, Du Ponceau, Morrin, Morrison, Arnot, and Myers, have shown that the Chinese language is as easily acquired as any of the Asiatic. Johnson’s Dictionary of the English language contains 38,000 word, and Noah Webster’s 47,000 words. Notwithstanding this amount, foreigners easily learn English. In writing Chinese there are five different kinds of hands in use : 1. The right character, or plain hand. 2. The walking character, or free hand. 3. The running hand. 4. The old hand. 5. The seal or sacred hand. The art of printing has been in use in China near 1,200 years ; but it was only used as impressions from wooden blocks. Dr. Morrison was the first man who-printed Chinese books from moveable types. Spoken Language. —There is no analogy whatever between the written and spoken languages, in their mode of composition. Thus when jih, the sun, and yue, the moon, are united together, to denote clear or illustrious, the Chinese do not pronounce their characters jih-yue, but ming, a dipthong sound. There are 330 monosyllables, each generally beginning with a consonant and ending with a vowel or liquid, or the double consonant N G. These monosyllables are by means of four modifications of sounds or intonations to each syllable, extended to about 1,300 words. Each word has, on an average, 100 different meanings, and only allowing three accents to each, there are still 33 sounds with the same accent, but whose signification is totally distinct. Hence, in reading a Chinese composition to a native audience, it cannot always be understood, except the reader wave his hand, or fan the characters themselves, or at any rate, the key from which they are derived. In colloquial intercourse, however, they remedy this deficiency by the addition of synonymes, which, becoming parts of the original language, render it in some degree, polysyllabic.

Thus a reader in China, even to a native audience, is, in fact, a translator from a written to a spoken language, totally different, and he must therefore “ fan the make the sign of it with his hand in the air, when the proper expression for it does not readily occur to him. The Chinese possess an unlicensed Press and abundance of books of ancient and modern literature, consisting of poetry, music, works of fiction, mythological legends, metaphysics, geography, and topography. Dr. Morrison collected 10,000 volumes of Chinese learning. A Daily Journal is printed in Canton, and at Pekin a weekly Gazette contains the orders of Government. The Chinese have possessed the rudiments of the physical sciences for centuries; but they owe their geographical and astronomical knowledge to strangers. An Arab, Jema-el-deen, in 1290 A. D., composed the Calendar, which was in use until 1664, when the Jesuits, or rather Adam Scliaaleger, revised and amended it; it then remained for five years in the hands of the natives, who so deranged it, that a German in the service of the Emperor, who was charged with its amendment, was compelled to expunge a month to bring the commencement of the year to the proper season. The Emperor keeps an astronomical board at Pekin, where there are a few persons who study astronomy and compose the national almanac. . The Russians have a college in the capital, where about ten persons are allowed to study

Chinese. They have, with them a Russian clergyman. The English have no college at Pekin nor at Canton, but at Sincapore the Anglo-Chinese College, established by Doctors Milne and Morrison, offers to the European every facility for the acquirement of the Chinese tongue. The Chinese reckon their time by cycles of 60 years, and instead of numbering them, they give a different name to every year in the cycle. The first cycle, according to Dr. Morrison, began 2,700 B. C. We are now, therefore, in the 75th cycle. The day begins an hour before midnight, and is divided into twelve parts of two hours each, and instead of numbering the hours, a different name is given to each period of two hours. The months are of twentynine and thirty days each; the year has ordinarily twelve months, but a thirteenth is added whenever there are two moons whilst the sun is in one sign of the zodiac; this will occur seven times in nineteen years.

I The Chinese also date from the year of the reigning sovereign, and in that case there is no way of having a corresponding date, but by a list of emperors. The following is a list of those who have reigned for the last two centuries : Chwang-lei 1627 Shun-che 1644 Kang-he 1669 Yung-ching 1793 Keen-lung 1736 Kea-ding 1796 Taou-kwang .. (present emperor) 1821 THE CHINESE DYNASTIES. Chinese historians reckon thirteen dynasties before the Flood, which happened in the dynasty of Shun, a name famous in China; but the accounts up to that period are not to be relied upon. From that date to the birth of Christ, five dynasties existed, and towards the close of the last, the Han dynasty, a dreadful civil war broke out. It was called the “ war of the three nations,” the war having terminated in the establishment of three kingdoms. The last Emperor of this race was conquered by the other States, and was persuaded to re-' sign the imperial seal to the general of his enemies. His son and heir on this put his wife to death, and then killed himself. Up to the time of Genghis Khan, a Tartar chief, fifteen dynasties existed. That famous conqueror arose about the close of the last, and began the wars against China, by which the Chinese rulers were overthrown. The Grandson of Genghis Khan conquered China, and called his dynasty Yuen, during which the grand canal and the great wall were begun. Wickliffe the Reformer, and Marco Polo, who brought extraordinary accounts from China, lived about this time. A man named Choo then roused the Chinese, who expelled the Yuen Tartars, and established the Ming dynasty, which continued till the reign of Charles the First of England. The last Emperor of the race, shut up in his palace by a rebel Tartar subject, destroyed his family, and then committed suicide, six years before Charles died on the scaffold. The founders of this dynasty were Eastern or Manshur Tartars, who effected the conquest with ease, in consequence of a rebellion which then convulsed- the empire. No people, indeed, have suffered more from dissensions than the Chinese, and have thereby imbibed such a horror of civil war, that it has become a proverb—“ I would rather be a dog in the time of general peace, than a human being in the midst of wars.”

TAOU KWANG, PRESENT EMPEROR OP CHINA. Taou Kwang was born in 1781, during the life of his granfather, Keen Lung, at whose court Lord Macartney, and the news of a happy termination of a revolt in Thibet, arrived nearly at the same time. The first fifteen years of Taou Kwang’s life were spent at the court of Keen Lung, his grandfather, a man whose long reign of sixty years showed that the whole bent of his mind was set upon the subjugation of all the neighbouring kingdoms and nations, and the extirpation of not a few of them. Many a captive chief was brought to the imperial palace, and there made to writhe in all the agonies that ingenious, malice could devise for him. Such spectacles must have had a far greater effect in steeling the heart of the young prince, than all the virtuous lessons of Confucian lore could in the way of making it soft and sensitive. In 1820, he came to the throne ; though the following year, 1821, was, by imperial edict, commanded to stand in the calendar as the first of his reign. Taou Kwang, though a Tartar, was a disciple of the Confucian school, and was, of course, obliged to feign a wonderful readiness to comply with the rigor of its precepts; but the solicitations of his friends saved him this piece of penance and self-denial; and so, cutting asunder the thread of his poignant sorrows, he seized the reins of government in 1820, and ordered the following to be considered as the first of his administration. But hear the selfapplauding sufficiency with which he prefaced this declaration—“ All the kings [several kingdoms are tributary to China], Tartar lords, great statesmen, civil and military officers, have affirmed with one voice that Heaven’s throne must not long remain without an occupant.” (To be continuedJ