China

Abstract

IT may be said at once respecting this book that it is without exception the very best elementary work on China with which we are acquainted in any European language. The author has resided for many years in China, and is in the forefront of the Chinese scholarship of our time; his work is, therefore, not only accurate, but it places the reader abreast of the latest researches. One of the most remarkable of these is fully explained at pp. 359-60. The Yih King, or Book of Changes, is the work for which the greatest antiquity is claimed by the Chinese. Some writers have placed it as far back as between 300 and 400 B.C. However this may be, the key to its interpretation has been entirely lost, although the best native scholars of all ages, including Confucius himself, have attempted to explain it. M. Terrien de la Couperie (assisted, we believe, by Prof. Douglas himself, though this fact is not mentioned), has succeeded within the last few years in showing that “instead of being a mysterious depository of deep divinatory lore, it turns out to be a collection of syllabaries such as are common in Accadian literature interspersed with chapters of astrological formulæ, ephemerides, and others dealing with ethnological facts relating to the Aboriginal tribes of the country; but all taking the form of vocabularies, and therefore as impossible to be translated in the sense in which every commentator, from Confucius downwards, has attempted to translate them as ‘Johnson's Dictionary’ would be.” Although we possess innumerable volumes on subjects connected with China, we have not until now a thoroughly trustworthy book covering the whole ground in a simple elementary manner. Some volumes recently published for popular reading on the countries of the East exhibit such lamentable ignorance, that we can only “gasp and stare” at their contents. Notwithstanding his own intimate knowledge of the subject, Prof. Douglas has consulted almost all that we have in our literature relating in any way to China, from Davis's Chinese poetry and Oppert's Susian texts, down to recent numbers of the English journals published in China. The two last chapters—that on “Language” and “Literature” —are models of clear and simple exposition of complicated subjects. Another excellence of the book is what we may call its perspective. The writer does not thrust any particular branch of his subject into undue prominence, to the detriment of the rest. The first chapter gives a brief sketch of Chinese history, the second of the system of administration; various chapters are then devoted to popular customs, to education, medicine, music, dress and food, architecture, honours, names, superstitions, religions, &c. There is also an excellent map. To the general reader who desires some accurate information respecting a country which is coming nearer to us every day, or to the student who wants a vade mecum, no better volume can be recommended.

China.

By Robert K. Douglas. (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1882.)