Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/667

title of Ta-Tsing, or “Great Pure,” and the first emperor, who was styled She-tsu-chang Hwang-te, adopted the title of Shun-che for his reign, which began in the year 1614. The legendary progenitor of these Manchoo rulers was Aisin Gioro, whose name is said to point to the fact of his having been related to the race of Neu-chih, or Kin, i.e., Golden Tatars, who reigned in Northern China during the 12th and 13th centuries. The present emperor, whose reign is styled Kwang-seu or “Succession of Glory,” is the eighth from the founder of the dynasty, and is the only ruler since the establishment of the line who has not succeeded as a direct descendant. Kang-he (1661–1722), for instance, was the third son of Shun-che; Yung-ching (1722–1735) was the fourth son of Kang-he; Keen-lung (1736–1795) was the fourth son of Yung-ching; Kea-king (1796–1820) was the fifteenth son of Keen-lung; Taou-Kwang (1821–1850) was the second son of Kea-king; Heen-fung (1851–1861) was the fourth of the nine sons who were born to the emperor Taou-kwang; and Tung-che (1862–1875) was the only son of Heen-fung. As by Chinese law the heir must be younger than the individual from whom he inherits, it became necessary when the Emperor Tung-che “became a guest in Heaven,” without issue, in 1875, to select as his successor one of the sons of one of his father's younger brothers, and the choice, which was recorded in his will, fell upon the infant son of the Prince of Chun, the seventh son of the Emperor Taou-kwang.

{{indent|In order to prevent the confusion which would arise among the princes of the imperial house were they each to adopt an arbitrary name, the Emperor Kang-he decreed that each of his twenty-four sons should have a personal name consisting of two characters, the first of which should be Yung, and the second should be compounded with the determinative she, “to manifest,” an arrangement which would, as has been remarked, find an exact parallel in a system by which the sons in an English family might be called Louis Edward, Louis Edwin, Louis Edwy, Louis Edgar, and so on. This device obtained also in the next generation, all the princes of which had Hung for their first names, and the Emperor Keen-lung (1736–1795) extended it into a system, and directed that the succeeding generations should take the four characters Yung, Meen, Yih, and Tsae respectively, as the first parts of their names. Eight other characters, namely, P’u, Yu, Hêng, K’è, Taou, K’ai, Tseng, Ke, were subsequently added, thus providing generic names for twelve generations. With the present generation the first four characters are exhausted, and the sons of the present emperor, should he have any, will therefore be P’u’s. By the ceremonial law of the &sdquo;Great Pure” dynasty, twelve degrees of rank are distributed among the princes of the imperial house, and are as follows:—1. Ho-shih Tsin Wang, prince of the first order; 2. To-lo Keun Wang, prince of the second order; 3. To-lo Baileh, prince of the third order. 4. Koo-shan Beitsze, prince of the fourth order ; 5 to 8. Kung, or duke (with distinctive designations); 9 to 12. Tseang-keun, general (with distinctive designations). The sons of emperors usually receive patents of the first or second order on their reaching manhood, and on their sons is bestowed the title of Beileh. A Beileh's sons become Beitsze; a Beitsze's sons become Kung, and so on.

Language and Literature.

The Chinese language is the chief among that small class of languages which includes the Tibetan Cochin-Chinese, Burmese, Corean, and Chinese, and which is usually described as monosyllabic. It is language in its most archaic form. Every word is a root, and every root is a word. It is without inflexion or even agglutination; its substantives are indeclinable, and its verbs are not to be conjugated; it is destitute of an alphabet, and finds its expression on paper in thousands of distinct symbols. It is then a language of monosyllabic roots, which, as regards the written character, has been checked in its growth and crystallized in its most ancient form by the early occurrence of a period of great literary activity, of which the nation is proud, and to the productions of which, every Chinaman even of the present day looks back as containing the true standards of literary excellence.

But in treating of the two branches into which Chinese naturally divides itself, namely, the written medium or characters and the spoken medium or sounds, we propose language to begin with the former. And in following this course we shall be doing no violence to the language, for it would be quite possible to separate the characters from the sounds, and to treat them as two languages, as indeed has already been partly done in Japan, where the Chinese characters were at one time in general use as representing the phonetic value of their Japanese equivalents. Beginning at the other end, but with a similar ultimate result, various members of the missionary body have published text-books and dictionaries in Romanized Chinese, that is to say, they have avoided the use of the characters by transcribing the sounds of the language in Roman letters. But since, though the characters are rich and copious to a degree, the sounds are out of all proportion poor, this last dismemberment presents the language in a very denuded form, and is at the same time attended with difficulties which only the most sanguine can hope to see overcome. The necessity of distinguishing between words having the same sound can only be met by the adoption of distinct diacritical marks for each word; and as one sound often represents as many as a hundred words, such a system cannot but be attended with confusion.

The characters of the language form the medium which speaks to the eye, and may be described as the equivalents of the written words of other languages; but unlike these, instead of being composed of letters of an alphabet, they are either symbols intended to represent images, or are formed by a combination of lines, or of two or more such symbols. All characters, say the Chinese lexicographers, had their origin in single strokes, or in hieroglyphics, and this, no doubt, is a correct view of the case. Legends differ as to who was the first inventor of writing in China. One attributes the invention to Fuh-he (3200 B.C.), who is also said to have instituted marriage, and to have introduced the use of clothing, and who caused the knotted cords, which had been up to that time in use, to be superseded by characters founded on the shapes of his celebrated diagrams. Another record states that Tsang Ke who lived 2700 B.C., was the Cadmus of China. According to received native accounts, Tsang Ke was a man of extraordinary ability, and was acquainted with the art of writing from his birth. While wandering in the neighbourhood of his house at Yang-woo, he one day met with a tortoise, and observing its shell distinctly and beautifully spotted, he took it home, and thus formed the idea of representing the objects around him. Looking upwards he carefully observed the figures presented by the stars and the heavenly bodies; he then attentively considered the forms of birds, and of mountains and rivers, &c., and from them at length originated the written character.

But however great the uncertainty may be as to who invented the first characters, we may take it for granted that they were simply pictures of the various objects of sense which were present to the eye of the writer. Thus, when he wished to express a mountain, he wrote, as did also the ancient Egyptians, a symbol which is written at the present day 山; now written 目, served him to signify “the eye,” and so on. But such a written medium