It was, therefore, at the epoch of the decadence of the Indian Empire, that rhyme usurped poetry. It would be difficult today to say whether it was an innovation or a simple renovation. However it may be, it is probable that it passed rapidly from the ruling nation to subject nations where it was diversely welcomed according to the language and particular mind of each people.
If one can believe the annals of the Indians, China was one of their colonies for a long time schismatic and rebellious.[1] If one can lend faith to the most ancient tradition of the Chinese, they form from time immemorial a body of autochthonous people.[2] The discussion of this historic difficulty would be out of place here. Suffice it to say, that the Chinese having commenced by having rhymed verses, and preserving by character and by religion, with an inviolable respect, the ancient usages, have never had but a mediocre poetry, absolutely foreign to epopœia.[3] Their principal sacred books, called Kings, are composed of symbolic or hieroglyphic characters, forming by groups sorts of tableaux, of profound and often sublime conception, but bereft of what we would call eloquence of language. These are mute images, incommunicable by means of the voice, and which the reader must consider with the eyes and meditate long upon in order to comprehend them.
The Tartars who reign today in China and who are distinguished from the others by the epithet of Manchus, although possessors of a formed tongue whose richness
- ↑ Institut. of Hindus-Laws. W. Jones, Works, t. iii., p. 51. Asiat. Research., vol. ii., p. 368.
- ↑ Hist. génér. de la Chine, t. i., p. 19. Mém. concern. les Chinois, t. i., p. 9, 104, 160. Chou-King. Ch. Yu-Kong, etc., Duhalde, t. i., p. 266. Mém. concern., etc., t. xiii., p. 190.
- ↑ The She-King, which contains the most ancient poetry of the Chinese, is only a collection of odes and songs, of sylves, upon different historical and moral subjects. (Mém. concer. les Chinois, t. i., p. 51, et t. ii., p. 80.) Besides, the Chinese had known rhyme for more than four thousand years. (Ibid., t. viii., p. 133-185.).
