prehension has existed on this head, and scholars in Europe have been misled by the inventions of zealous champions of the Shintō religion into a belief in the so-called “Divine Characters,” by them alleged to have been invented by the Japanese gods and to have been used by the Japanese people prior to the introduction of the Chinese ideographic writing, it must be stated precisely that all the traditions of the “Divine Age”, and of the reigns of the earlier Emperors down to the third century of our era according to the received chronology, maintain a complete silence on the subject of writing, writing materials, and records of every kind. Books are nowhere mentioned till a period confessedly posterior to the opening up of intercourse with the Asiatic continent, and the first books whose names occur are the “Lun Yü” and the “Ch’ien Tzŭ Wên[1],” which are said to have been brought over to Japan during the reign of the Emperor Ō-jin,—according to the same chronology in the year 284 after Christ. That even this statement is antedated, is shown by the fact that the “Ch’ien Tzŭ Wên” was not written till more than two centuries later,—a fact which is worthy the attention of those who have been disposed simply to take on trust the assertions of the Japanese historians. It should likewise be mentioned that, as has already been pointed out by Mr. Aston, the Japanese terms fumi “written document,” and fude “pen,” are probably corruptions of foreign words.[2] The present, indeed, is not the place to discuss the
- ↑ 論語 and 千字文.
- ↑ Viz. of the Chinese 文 and 筆 (in the modern Mandarin pronunciation wên and pi). Mr. Aston would seem to derive both the Japanese term fude and the Korean put independently from the Chinese 筆. The present writer thinks it more likely that the Japanese fude was borrowed mediately through the Korean put. In any case, as it regularly corresponds with the latter according to the laws of letter-change subsisting between the two languages, it will be observed that the Japanese term would still have to be considered borrowed, even if the derivation of put from 筆 had to be abandoned; for we can hardly suppose Korean and Japanese to have independently selected the same root to denote such a thing as a “pen.” As to the correctness of the derivation of fumi from 文 there can be little doubt, and it had long ago struck even the Japanese themselves, who are not prompt to acknowledge such loans. They usually derive fude from fumi-te, “document hand,” and thus again we are brought back to the Chinese 文 as the origin of the Japanese word for “pen.”
