China and the Chinese

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China and the Chinese

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Title: China and the Chinese
Author: Herbert Allen Giles
Release Date: March 20, 2006 [EBook #18021]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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CHINA AND THE CHINESE

CHINA AND THE CHINESE
BY
HERBERT ALLEN GILES, LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF CHINESE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE LECTURER (1902) ON THE DEAN LUNG FOUNDATION IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

NEW YORK THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, Agents. 66 Fifth Avenue
1902
All rights reserved.

Copyright, 1902, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped October, 1902.
Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

PREFACE
The following Lectures were delivered during March, 1902, at Columbia University, in the city of New York, to inaugurate the foundation by General Horace W. Carpentier of the Dean Lung Chair of Chinese.
By the express desire of the authorities of Columbia University these Lectures are now printed, and they may serve to record an important and interesting departure in Oriental studies.
It is not pretended that Chinese scholarship will be in any way advanced by this publication. The Lectures, slight in themselves, were never meant for advanced students, but rather to draw attention to, and possibly arouse some interest in, a subject which will occupy a larger space in the future than in the present or in the past.
HERBERT A. GILES.
Cambridge, England, April 15, 1902.

CONTENTS
LECTURE I
THE CHINESE LANGUAGE
Its Importance--Its Difficulty--The Colloquial--Dialects--"Mandarin"-- Absence of Grammar--Illustrations--Pidgin-English--Scarcity of Vocables --The Tones--Coupled Words--The Written Language--The Indicators-- Picture Characters--Pictures of Ideas--The Phonetics--Some Faulty Analyses ... 3
LECTURE II
A CHINESE LIBRARY
The Cambridge (Eng.) Library--(A) The Confucian Canon--(B) Dynastic History--The "Historical Record"--The "Mirror of History"--Biography-- Encyclop?dias--How arranged--Collections of Reprints--The Imperial Statutes--The Penal Code--(C) Geography--Topography--An Old Volume-- Account of Strange Nations--(D) Poetry--Novels--Romance of the Three Kingdoms--Plays--(E) Dictionaries--The Concordance--Its Arrangement-- Imperial Catalogue--Senior Classics ... 37
LECTURE III
DEMOCRATIC CHINA
The Emperor--Provincial Government--Circuits--Prefectures--Magistracies --Headboroughs--The People--The Magistrate--Other Provincial Officials-- The Prefect--The Intendant of Circuit (Tao-t'ai)--Viceroy and Governor--Taxation--Mencius on "the People"--Personal Liberty--New Imposts--Combination--Illustrations ... 73
LECTURE IV
CHINA AND ANCIENT GREECE
Relative Values of Chinese and Greek in Mental and Moral Training--Lord Granville--Wên T'ien-hsiang--Han Yü--An Emperor--A Land of Opposites--Coincidences between Chinese and Greek Civilisations--The Question of Greek Influence--Greek Words in Chinese--Coincidences in Chinese and Western Literature--Students of Chinese wanted ... 107
LECTURE V
TAOISM
Religions in China--What is Tao?--Lao Tzu--The Tao Tê Ching--Its Claims--The Philosophy of Lao Tzu---Developed by Chuang Tzu--His View of Tao--A Taoist Poet--Symptoms of Decay--The Elixir of Life--Alchemy-- The Black Art--Struggle between Buddhism and Taoism--They borrow from One Another--The Corruption of Tao--Its Last State ... 141
LECTURE VI
SOME CHINESE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
Origin of the Queue--Social Life--An Eyeglass--Street Etiquette--Guest and Host--The Position of Women--Infanticide--Training and Education of Women--The Wife's Status--Ancestral Worship--Widows--Foot-binding-- Henpecked Husbands--The Chinaman a Mystery--Customs vary with Places-- Dog's Flesh--Substitutes at Executions--Doctors--Conclusion ... 175

LECTURE I
THE CHINESE LANGUAGE

CHINA AND THE CHINESE
THE CHINESE LANGUAGE
If the Chinese people were to file one by one past a given point, the interesting procession would never come to an end. Before the last man of those living to-day had gone by, another and a new generation would have grown up, and so on for ever and ever.
The importance, as a factor in the sum of human affairs, of this vast nation,--of its language, of its literature, of its religions, of its history, of its manners and customs,--goes therefore without saying. Yet a serious attention to China and her affairs is of very recent growth. Twenty-five years ago there was but one professor of Chinese in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; and even that one spent his time more in adorning his profession than in imparting his knowledge to classes of eager students. Now there are all together five chairs of Chinese, the occupants of which are all more or less actively employed. But we are still sadly lacking in what Columbia University appears to have obtained by the stroke of a generous pen,--adequate funds for endowment. Meanwhile, I venture to offer my respectful congratulations to Columbia University on having surmounted this initial difficulty, and also to prophesy that the foresight of the liberal donor will be amply justified before many years are over.
I have often been asked if Chinese is, or is not, a difficult language to learn. To this question it is quite impossible to give a categorical answer, for the simple reason that Chinese consists of at least two languages, one colloquial and the other written, which for all practical purposes are about as distinct as they well could be.
Colloquial Chinese is a comparatively easy matter. It is, in fact, more