Consequently, almost an infinite variety in the sounds of the characters arise from this mode of learning them, while the meanings remain fixed; though there still remains enough resemblance in the sounds to show their common origin, as, _bien_, _meen_, _mien_, and _meeng_, all meaning _the face_, and written with the same character. The local differences in p.r.o.nunciation are so great within a few hundred miles, in some parts of China, that the people barely understand each other when they speak; and even in two towns fifty miles apart, the local patois can be detected, though the dissimilarity is not so great as to prevent their inhabitants conversing together. For purposes of intercourse among civilians, who being from distant parts of the empire, might otherwise find considerable difficulty in making themselves understood if each spoke his own local patois, there is a court dialect which not only civilians, but all educated men are obliged or expected to understand.

This is the common p.r.o.nunciation over the northeastern provinces of Chihli, Shantung, Nganhwui, and Kiangsu, and somewhat in the contiguous provinces also, though everywhere in these regions with some slight local variations. This dialect is called _kwan hwa_, and has been usually termed the _mandarin[109] dialect_, but it is properly the Chinese spoken language, and the variations from it are the dialects and patois. It is evident, however, that one sound of a character is no more correct than another; for there being no sound in any character, each one calls it as he has been taught, while all give it the same meaning, exactly as Europeans do with the numerals. Of course, no one can read or write Chinese before he has studied it, and the apparent singularity of people from China, j.a.pan, and Annam all being able to communicate by writing but not converse by speech, is easily explained by the different sounds they give the characters. It is, however, really no more singular than that scholars in all Christian nations understand each others' music and arithmetic, after they have learned those sciences and the mode of notation.

The diversity of p.r.o.nunciations tends naturally to break up the nation into small communities, and the Chinese owe their present h.o.m.ogeneity and grandeur in no small degree to their written language; for, however, a man may differ in his speech, he is sure that he will be everywhere understood when he writes, and will understand every one who writes to him. It has also been a bond of union from its extensive literature, at once the pride of its own scholars, and the admiration of surrounding nations. It is perhaps owing to the fact that the literature of China contains the canons of the Budhist religion and the ethics of Confucius, that it was adopted by the j.a.panese, Coreans and Annamese. These nations have taken the characters of the Chinese language, and given them such names as pleased them. In j.a.pan and Corea, there has been no uniform rule of adoption, but the Annamese, who formerly had more intimate connexions with China than at present, approach much nearer to the sounds spoken by the Chinese.

The nature of the relations between these three nations and China, therefore, somewhat resembles that which European nations, we may suppose, now would have towards ancient Greece and Rome, if they still existed as independent powers, and should be visited by scholars from the sh.o.r.es of the Baltic, whose native countries, however, had risen no higher in civilization and morals than their source. The comparison is not complete in all respects, but near enough for a.n.a.logy. The j.a.panese have never paid tribute to China, but have been invaded by her armies, and in their turn have ravaged the eastern coasts of the continent. The isolated policy their rulers have adopted, has prevented our tracing those philological comparisons between their original language and those of Siberia or central Asia, which would elucidate its origin. The j.a.panese up to the time of the sixteenth dari, named Ouzin Tenwo, had no written character, all the orders of government being proclaimed viva voce. In the year B.C. 284, this monarch sent an emba.s.sy to the southern part of Corea, to obtain learned persons who could introduce the civilization and literature of China into his dominions, and obtained Wonin, who fulfilled the royal wishes so satisfactorily, that the j.a.panese have since accorded him divine honors. Since his day, the Chinese characters have been employed among the j.a.panese. However, as the construction of the j.a.panese language differs materially from that of the Chinese, and as the same Chinese character has many meanings, which would be expressed by different words in the native j.a.panese, confusion and difficulty arose in the use of the symbolic characters.

But it was not until the eighth century, that a remedy was provided by the invention of a syllabary, a middle contrivance, partaking chiefly of the nature of an alphabet but containing some traces of hieroglyphics.

The characters of this syllabary were formed by taking Chinese characters, either in whole or in part, and using them phonetically, but as indivisible syllables. Consequently, every one of them contained a vowel sound, rendering the language very euphonous. The characters in this syllabary were called _katakana_, i. e. "parts of letters." There were at first forty-seven, but another was added some years after in order to express the final _n_, as _ma-mo-ra-n_, instead of _ma-mo-ra-nu_, making forty-eight, the present number. This syllabary and that invented for the Cherokees by Guess, are the only two in the world. The number of sounds has been increased from forty-eight to seventy-three, by the addition of diacritical marks to some of the syllables. This syllabary enabled the j.a.panese to express the sounds of their vernacular without difficulty. But the long use of the Chinese had already introduced a great number of sounds from that language into it, besides giving the people a liking for the elegant and ingenious combinations of that unwieldy medium of thought, so that the scholars in the country still cultivated the more difficult language, and wrote their books in it. The incorporation of Chinese sounds into the native j.a.panese, seems to have arisen from the necessity of distinguishing between the various meanings of the Chinese character, so that while the native word would express one, the original sound would express another, but the unchangeable symbol stand for both to the eye.

The admiration of the Chinese characters, led in time to the invention of a second syllabary, having the same sounds but far more difficult to learn from the number of characters in it and their complicated forms.

It is called _hirakana_, or "equal writing," because it is intelligible without the addition of Chinese characters; it is now the common medium of communication, in epistolary composition of all kinds, story books, and other everyday uses. There are one hundred and one characters in the _hirakana_, or nearly three modes of writing each of the forty-eight syllables, and they are run together as rapidly and far more fancifully than in our own running-hand, when that is compared with the Roman character. The characters are mostly contractions of Chinese characters used simply as phonetic symbols, without any more reference to their meaning than in the _katakana_. The more ancient of the two is now usually employed in dictionaries, by the side of Chinese characters in books to explain them to the reader, or at their bottom to indicate the case of the word. In reading a Chinese book, a good j.a.panese scholar makes a kind of running translation into his own vernacular, sometimes giving the sound, and sometimes giving the sense, and the _katakana_ is used in the latter case, to indicate the tense, or case of the native word. Having the Chinese language as well as its native stores to draw from, the j.a.panese is both copious and flexible, and by its syllabic construction, also euphonious and mellifluous, in these respects being far superior to the Chinese. The following stanza is from one of the Dutch writers; it is written with thirty-one syllables.

Kokorodani makotono, Michi ni kanai naba, Inorazu totemo kamiya Mamoran.

There are still two other syllabaries, one called _Manyo-kana_, and the other _Yamato-kana_, both of which are formed of still more complicated Chinese characters, also used phonetically. Neither of these syllabaries is generally used entirely alone, but the three are joined together or interchanged somewhat according to the fancy of the writer, in a manner similar to Archdeacon Wrangham's famous echo poem. Such a complicated mode of writing has this unfortunate result, however, of so seriously obstructing the avenues to the temple of science, that the greatest part of the common people are unable to enter, and must be content with admiring the structure afar off. Most of them content themselves with learning to write and read in the _hirakana_, and get as much knowledge of Chinese as will enable them to read the names of places, signs, people, &c., for which those characters are universally used. Besides the phonetic use of Chinese characters in these syllabaries, they are employed very extensively as words, with their own meanings, partly because they are more nervous and expressive in the estimation of the writer than the vernacular, and partly to show his learning and shorten his labor. Commonly, characters so used are called by their j.a.panese meanings, but sometimes too by their Chinese names.[110]

The connection between the Chinese and j.a.panese, therefore, is very intimate, and presents a curious instance of a.s.similation between a symbolic and syllabic language, though at the cost of much hard study and labor to acquire the mongrel compound. It is another example of Asiatic toil upon the media of thought, rather than investigations in the world of thought and science itself; for no people who possessed invention, research, or science, would ever have enc.u.mbered themselves with so burdensome a vehicle of communication. The Chinese do not attend to the j.a.panese language, and have no knowledge of its structure, or the principles on which it has combined with their own. Their intercourse with j.a.pan is entirely commercial; that of the j.a.panese with them, chiefly literary.

The Coreans have also adopted the Chinese character, but without many of the elaborate modifications in use among the j.a.panese. They have had more intercourse with the Chinese, but have not been able to make their polysyllabic words a.s.similate with the monosyllables of the Chinese.

They have invented an alphabet, the letters of which combine to form syllables, and these syllabic compounds are then used like the j.a.panese characters to express their own words. The original letters consist of fifteen consonants, called _ka_, _na_, _ta_, _la_ or _ra_, _ma_ or _ba_, _pa_, _sa_ or _sha_, _nga_, _tsa_ or _cha_, _ts'a_ or _ch'a_, _k'a_, _t'a_, _p'a_, _ha_, and _wa_; and eleven vowels, _a_, _ya_, _o_, _yo_, _oh_, _yoh_, _u_, _yu_, _u_, _i_, and _ah_. The combinations of these form altogether one hundred and sixty-eight syllables, the last fourteen of which are triply combined by introducing the sound of _w_ between the consonants and some of the vowels, as _kwa_, _ts'hwo_, &c.

The sounds and meanings of Chinese characters are expressed in this syllabary in the duoglott works prepared by the Coreans for learning Chinese; while it is used by itself in works intended for the natives.

The Coreans have not, like the j.a.panese, unnecessarily increased the difficulty of their own language by employing a great number of signs for the same sound, but are content with one series. It is to be hoped that this facility results in a greater diffusion of knowledge among the people. The j.a.panese have the inflections of cases, moods, tenses and voices, in their language; but these features are denoted in Corean by the collocation of the words, and the words themselves remain unchanged as in Chinese. The sounds of the Corean are pleasant, and both it and the j.a.panese allow many alterations and elisions for the sake of euphony. Further investigation will probably show some connection originally between the Corean and Manchu languages, though the former of these has been more modified by the Chinese than the latter.[111]

The people of Annam have adopted the Chinese characters without making a syllabary or alphabet to express their own vernacular. The inhabitants of this country are evidently of the same race as the Chinese, and now acknowledge a nominal subjection to the emperor of China by sending a triennial emba.s.sy to Peking, partly commercial and partly tributary. The sounds given to the Chinese characters are, however, so unlike those given them in China, that the two nations cannot converse with each other. The Annamese have many sounds in their spoken language which no Chinese can enunciate. The court dialect is learned by educated men, and books are written and printed in Chinese. The sounds given to the characters are all monosyllabic, and slight a.n.a.logies can be traced running through the variations; but they offer very little a.s.sistance to any one, who, knowing only one mode of p.r.o.nunciation, wishes to learn the other.

Much of the interest connected with the investigation of the Chinese and its cognate tongues, arises from the immense mult.i.tudes which speak and write them; and from the influence which China has, through the writings of her sages, exerted over the minds and progress of her neighbors.

There is nothing like it in European history; but the spell cast over the intellects of the millions in eastern Asia, by the writings of Confucius, Mencius, and their disciples, is likely erelong to be broken by the infusion of Christian knowledge, the extension of commerce, and a better understanding of their political and social rights by the mult.i.tudes who now adopt them.

For much of the information embraced in this memoir on China, j.a.pan, and the adjacent countries, I am indebted to the Chinese Repository, (a monthly journal printed at Canton), and more especially to one of its accomplished editors, Mr. S. Wells Williams. This gentleman during a residence of twelve years in China, has made himself familiar with the written and spoken language of the Chinese, and is ranked, by some of the eminent Sinologists of Europe, among the profoundest adepts in that branch of literature and philology. Mr. Williams has also studied the j.a.panese language, which he reads and speaks; and is probably the only man in America familiar with the languages of China and j.a.pan. Several natives of j.a.pan, driven by adverse winds from their native sh.o.r.es, found their way to China, and were subsequently taken by an American ship to Yedo, but were not permitted to land. From these men, Mr.

Williams has learned the spoken j.a.panese, and as much of the written language as they could impart. This gentleman is at present in New York making arrangements for getting founts of Chinese, j.a.panese, and Manchu type, for printing in these languages.

The Chinese Repository is a monthly journal, printed at Canton, and is edited by the Rev. Dr. Bridgman and Mr. Williams. It contains much valuable information relating to China, j.a.pan, and the eastern Archipelago, and frequently memoirs, translated from the j.a.panese and Chinese. On the whole, it may with truth be said to embody more information than any other work extant, on these countries.

Mr. Williams has now in press a new work on the Chinese empire, which will contain an account of its general political divisions, including Manchuria, Mongolia, Ili and Tibet, their geographical and topographical features. The natural history of China; its government, laws, literature, language, science, industry and arts. Social and domestic life--History and Chronology--Religion; Christian missions; intercourse with other nations; and a full account of the late war with England.

The history of the introduction of Christianity into China, in the seventh century of the Christian era, the traces of which still exist; and of the Jews in China, are subjects which are now attracting attention. It would occupy too much s.p.a.ce to give any particulars in this brief memoir. In the list of late works on China, will be found references to such books as treat of the subject, to which the attention of the reader is directed.

The Syrian monument which has been often referred to, is one of great interest, and is believed by all who have examined the subject, to be genuine. This monument was discovered by some Chinese workmen, in the year 1625, in or near the city of Singan, the capital of the province of Shensi, and once the metropolis of the empire. The monument was found covered with rubbish, and was immediately reported to the magistrate, who caused it to be removed to a paG.o.da, where it was examined by both natives and foreigners, Christians and Pagans. It was a slab of marble, about ten feet long and five broad. It contained on one side a Chinese inscription, which was translated by Father Kircher into Latin, and by Dalquie into French. Mr. Bridgman has given an English translation, and has published the three versions, accompanied by the original Chinese, with explanatory notes. This inscription commemorates the progress of Christianity in China, and was erected in the year of the Christian era 718. Mr. Bridgman who is one of the most learned in the Chinese language, says in conclusion, that "there are strong internal evidences of its being the work of a professor of Christianity, and such we believe it to be."[112]

Other portions of this memoir might be very much enlarged, but would extend it beyond the bounds of the _resume_, which it is intended to give. There are besides other countries and people, accounts of which it would be desirable to give place to, particularly those of Central Asia, but they are unavoidably pa.s.sed over from the s.p.a.ce that would be required to do them justice. The object of this paper is to awaken the attention of readers to the geographical and ethnographical discoveries made within the last few years, all of which have a bearing on the history and progress of the human race. If the author has succeeded in so doing, he will feel abundantly repaid for his labor.

The recent works on China are embraced in the following list.

China; Political, Commercial and Social; with descriptions of the consular ports of Canton, Amoy, Ningpo and Shanghai, etc., etc. By R. Montgomery Martin. London, 1847.

Chinese Commercial Guide. Macao, 1844.

Voyage of the Nemesis; By W.D. Barnard. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1843. 2d ed. 12mo. 1846.

Events in China. By Granville Loch, R.N. 1844.

War in China. By Lieut. Ochterlony. 1844.

The Land of Sinim, with a brief account of the Jews and Christians in China, By a missionary. 12mo. N.Y., 1846.

Sketches of China. By J.F. Davis. 2 vols. 12mo. 1845.

The Jews in China. By J. Finn. 12mo. London, 1844.

Les Juifs de la Chine, par H. Hirsch, (extrait des Israelites de France). 1844.

Relation des Voyages faits par les Arabes et les Persans dans l'Inde et a la Chine, dans le IXth siecle de l'ere Chretienne, par M. Reinaud. Paris, 1845. 2 vols. 18mo.

Three years wanderings in China. By Robert Fortune. 8vo.

London, 1847.

The philological and other works on China, by M. Pauthier, a distinguished French scholar, are among the most valuable works in this department of learning. They embrace the following.

Sinico-aegyptiaca, essai sur l'origine et la formation similaire des ecritures figuratives Chinoise et egyptienne, etc. 8vo.

De l'origine des differents systemes d'ecriture. 4to.

Examen methodique des faits qui concernent le Thian-Tchu ou l'Inde; traduit du Chinois. 8vo.

Doc.u.ments statistiques officiels sur l'empire de la Chine; traduits du Chinois. 8vo.

La Chine, avec 73 planches. 8vo.

La Chine ouverte, aventures d'un Fan-kouei dans le pays de Tsin; ill.u.s.tre par Auguste Borget. 8vo. Paris, 1845.

La Chine et les Chinois, par le meme. 8vo. Paris, 1844.

Systema Phonetic.u.m Scripturae Sinicae, auctore. J.M. Callery. 2 vols. royal 8vo. Macao, 1842.

Narrative of the second campaign in China, by R.S. Mackenzie.

12mo. London.

A work by G. Tradescant Lay; and another by Professor Kid, have also been published on China.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In a paper read by Mr. Schoolcraft before the American Ethnological Society, it was clearly shown by existing remains, in Michigan and Indiana, plans of which were exhibited, that vast districts of country, now covered by forests and prairies, bear incontestable proofs of having been subject to cultivation at a remote period and before the forest had begun its growth.

[2] This figure of an extended hand is the most common of all the symbols of the aboriginal tribes of America. It is found on the ancient temples, and within the tombs of Yucatan. At the earliest period it was used by the Indians, in the United States, and at the present time, it is employed by the roving bands and large tribes from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, and from Texas northward.

[3] "Bottoms" and "bottom lands," are terms applied to the flat lands adjoining rivers. In the State of New York they are called "flats"--as the "Mohawk flats."