China and the Chinese Part 3

But under the influence of systematic study, coupled with a fair amount of perseverance, these difficulties disappear, and leave the triumphant student amply rewarded for his pains.

LECTURE II

A CHINESE LIBRARY

A CHINESE LIBRARY

The endowment of a Chinese chair at Columbia University naturally suggests the acquisition of a good Chinese library. At the University of Cambridge, England, there is what I can only characterise as an ideal Chinese library. It was not bought off-hand in the market,-such a collection indeed would never come into the market,-but the books were patiently and carefully brought together by my predecessor in the Chinese chair during a period of over forty years' residence in China.

The result is an admirable selection of representative works, always in good, and sometimes in rare, editions, covering the whole field of what is most valuable in Chinese literature.

I now propose, with your approval, to give a slight sketch of the Cambridge Library, in which I spend a portion of almost every day of my life, and which I further venture to recommend as the type of that collection which Columbia University should endeavour to place upon her shelves.

The Chinese library at Cambridge consists of 4304 volumes, roughly distributed under seven heads. These volumes, it should be stated, are not the usual thin, paper-covered volumes of an ordinary Chinese work, but they consist each of several of the original Chinese volumes bound together in cloth or leather, lettered on the back, and standing on the shelves, as our books do, instead of lying flat, as is the custom in China.

Division A contains, first of all, the Confucian Canon, which now consists of nine separate works.

There is the mystic _Book of Changes_, that is to say, the eight changes or combinations which can be produced by a line and a broken line, either one of which is repeated twice with the other, or three times by itself.

--------- --- --- --------- --------- --- --- --------- etc.

These trigrams are said to have been copied from the back of a tortoise by an ancient monarch, who doubled them into hexagrams, and so increased the combinations to sixty-four, each one of which represents some active or pa.s.sive power in nature.

Confucius said that if he could devote fifty years to the study of this work, he might come to be without great faults; but neither native nor foreign scholars can really make anything out of it. Some regard it as a Book of Fate. One erratic genius of the West has gone so far as to say that it is only a vocabulary of the language of some old Central Asian tribe.

We are on somewhat firmer ground with the _Book of History_, which is a collection of very ancient historical doc.u.ments, going back twenty centuries B.C., arranged and edited by Confucius. These doc.u.ments, mere fragments as they are, give us glimpses of China's early civilisation, centuries before the historical period, to which we shall come later on, can fairly be said to begin.

Then we have the _Book of Odes_, consisting of some three hundred ballads, also rescued by Confucius from oblivion, on which as a basis the great superstructure of modern Chinese poetry has been raised.

Next comes an historical work by Confucius, known as the _Spring and Autumn_: it should be Springs and Autumns, for the t.i.tle refers to the yearly records, to the annals, in fact, of the native State of Confucius himself.

The fifth in the series is the _Book of Rites_. This deals, as its t.i.tle indicates, with ceremonial, and contains an infinite number of rules for the guidance of personal conduct under a variety of conditions and circ.u.mstances. It was compiled at a comparatively late date, the close of the second century B.C., and scarcely ranks in authority with the other four.

The above are called the Five Cla.s.sics; they were for many centuries six in number, a _Book of Music_ being included, and they were engraved on forty-six huge stone tablets about the year 170 A.D. Only mutilated portions of these tablets still remain.

The other four works which make up the Confucian Canon are known as the Four Books. They consist of a short moral treatise ent.i.tled the _Great Learning_, or Learning for Adults; the _Doctrine of the Mean_, another short philosophical treatise; the _a.n.a.lects_, or conversations of Confucius with his disciples, and other details of the sage's daily life; and lastly, similar conversations of Mencius with his disciples and with various feudal n.o.bles who sought his advice.

These nine works are practically learned by heart by the Chinese undergraduate. But there are in addition many commentaries and exegetical works-the best of which stand in the Cambridge Library-designed to elucidate the true purport of the Canon; and these must also be studied. They range from the commentary of K'ung An-kuo of the second century B.C., a descendant of Confucius in the twelfth degree, down to that of Yuan Yuan, a well-known scholar who only died so recently as 1849. These commentaries include both of the two great schools of interpretation, the earlier of which was accepted until the twelfth century A.D., when it was set aside by China's most brilliant scholar, Chu Hsi, who subst.i.tuted the interpretation still in vogue, and obligatory at the public compet.i.tive examinations which admit to an official career.

Archaeological works referring to the Canon have been published in great numbers. The very first book in our Catalogue is an account of every article mentioned in these old records, accompanied in all cases by woodcuts. Thus the foreign student may see not only the robes and caps in which ancient worthies of the Confucian epoch appeared, but their chariots, their banners, their weapons, and general paraphernalia of everyday life.

Side by side with the sacred books of Confucianism stand the heterodox writings of the Taoist philosophers, the nominal founder of which school, known as Lao Tzu, flourished at an unknown date before Confucius. Some of these are deeply interesting; others have not escaped the suspicion of forgery-a suspicion which attaches more or less to any works produced before the famous Burning of the Books, in B.C. 211, from which the Confucian Canon was preserved almost by a miracle. An Emperor at that date made an attempt to destroy all literature, so that a fresh start might be made from himself.

But I do not intend to detain you at present over Taoism, about which I hope to say more on a subsequent occasion. Still less shall I have anything to say on the few Buddhist works which are also to be found in the Cambridge collection. It is rather along less well-beaten paths that I shall ask you to accompany me now.

In Division B, the first thing which catches the eye is a long line of 217 thick volumes, about a foot in height. These are the dynastic histories of China, in a uniform edition published in the year 1747, under the auspices of the famous Emperor Ch'ien Lung, who himself contributed a Preface.

The first of this series, known as _The Historical Record_, was produced by a very remarkable man, named Ssu-ma Ch'ien, sometimes called the Father of History, the Herodotus of China, who died nearly one hundred years B.C.; and over his most notable work it may not be unprofitable to linger awhile.

Starting with the five legendary Emperors, some 2700 years B.C., the historian begins by giving the annals of each reign under the various more or less legendary dynasties which succeeded, and thence onward right down to his own times, the last five or six hundred years, _i.e._ from about 700 B.C., belonging to a genuinely historical period. These annals form Part I of the five parts into which the historian divides his scheme.

Part II is occupied by chronological tables of the Emperors and their reigns, of the suzerains and va.s.sal n.o.bles under the feudal system which was introduced about 1100 B.C., and also of the n.o.bles created to form an aristocracy after the feudal system had been swept away and replaced by the old Imperial rule, about 200 B.C.

Part III consists of eight important and interesting chapters: (1) on the Rites and Ceremonies of the period covered, (2) on Music, (3) on the Pitch-pipes, a series of twelve bamboo tubes of varying lengths, the notes from which were supposed to be bound up in some mysterious way with the good and bad fortunes of mankind, (4) on the Calendar, (5) on the Stars, (6) on the Imperial Sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, (7) on the Waterways of the Empire, and lastly (8) on Commerce, Coinage, etc.

Part IV deals with the reigns, so to speak, of the va.s.sal n.o.bles under the feudal system, the reigns of the suzerains having been already included in Part I.

Part V consists of biographies of the most eminent men who came to the front during the whole period covered.

These biographies are by no means confined to virtuous statesmen or heroic generals, as we might very reasonably have expected. The Chinese historian took a much broader view of his responsibilities to future ages, and along with the above virtuous statesmen and heroic generals he included lives of famous a.s.sa.s.sins, of tyrannical officials, of courtiers, of flatterers, of men with nothing beyond the gift of the gab, of politicians, of fortune-tellers, and the like.

This principle seems now to be widely recognised in the compilation of biographical collections. It was initiated by a Chinese historian one hundred years B.C.

His great work has come down to us as near as possible intact. To the Chinese it is, and always has been, a priceless treasure; so much so that every succeeding Dynastic History has been modelled pretty much upon the same lines.

The custom has always been for the incoming dynasty to issue the history of the dynasty it has overthrown, based upon materials which have been gathered daily during the latter's lease of power. At this moment the Historiographer's Department in Peking should be noting down current events for the use of posterity, in the established belief that all dynasties, even the most powerful, come to an end some day.

In addition to the Dynastic History proper, a custom has grown up of compiling what is called the "Veritable Record" of the life of the reigning Emperor. This is supposed to be written up every day, and with an absolute fidelity which it is unnecessary to suspect, since the Emperors are never allowed under any circ.u.mstances to cast an eye over their own records.

When the Hanlin College was burnt down, in 1900, some said that the "Veritable Records" of the present dynasty were destroyed. Others alleged that they had been carted away several days previously. However this may be, the "Veritable Records" of the great Ming dynasty, which came to a close in 1644, after three hundred years of power, are safe in Division B of the Cambridge Library, filling eighty-four large volumes of ma.n.u.script.

The next historical epoch is that of Ssu-ma Kuang, a leading statesman and scholar of the eleventh century A.D., who, after nineteen years of continuous labour, produced a general history of China, in the form of a chronological narrative, beginning with the fourth century B.C. and ending with the middle of the tenth century A.D. This work, which is popularly known as _The Mirror of History_, and is quite independent of the dynastic histories, fills thirty-three of our large bound-up volumes.

There is a quaint pa.s.sage in the old man's Preface, dated 1084, and addressed to the Emperor:-

"Your servant's physical strength is now relaxed; his eyes are short-sighted and dim; of his teeth but a few remain. His memory is so impaired that the events of the moment are forgotten as he turns away from them, his energies having been wholly exhausted in the production of this book. He therefore hopes that your Majesty will pardon his vain attempt for the sake of his loyal intention, and in moments of leisure will deign to cast the Sacred Glance over this work, so as to learn from the rise and fall of former dynasties the secret of the successes and failures of the present hour. Then, if such knowledge shall be applied for the advantage of the Empire, even though your servant may lay his bones in the Yellow Springs, the aim and ambition of his life will be fulfilled."

Biography, as we have already seen, is to some extent provided for under the dynastic histories. Its scope, however, has been limited in later times, so far as the Historiographer's Department is concerned, to such officials as have been named by Imperial edict for inclusion in the national records. Consequently, there has always been a vast output of private biographical literature, dealing with the lives of poets, painters, priests, hermits, villains, and others, whose good and evil deeds would have been long since forgotten, like those of the heroes before Agamemnon, but for the care of some enthusiastic biographer.

Among our eight or ten collections of this kind, there is one which deserves a special notice. This work is ent.i.tled _Biographies of Eminent Women_, and it fills four extra-large volumes, containing 310 lives in all. The idea of thus immortalising the most deserving of his countrywomen first occurred to a writer named Liu Hsiang, who flourished just before the Christian era. I am not aware that his original work is still procurable; the present work was based upon one by another writer, of the third century A.D., and is brought down to modern times, being published in 1779. Each biography is accompanied by a full-page ill.u.s.tration of some scene in which the lady distinguished herself,-all from the pencil of a well-known artist.

Three good-sized encyclopaedias, uniformly bound up in ninety-eight large volumes, may fairly claim a moment's notice, not only as evidencing the persistent literary industry of the Chinese, but because they are all three perfect mines of information on subjects of interest to the foreign student.

The first dates from the very beginning of the ninth century, and deals chiefly with the Administration of Government, Political Economy, and National Defences, besides Rites, Music, and subordinate questions.

The second dates from the twelfth century, and deals with the same subjects, having additional sections on History and Chronology, Writing, p.r.o.nunciation, Astronomy, Bibliography, Prodigies, Fauna and Flora, Foreign Nations, etc.

The third, and best known to foreign scholars, is the encyclopaedia of Ma Tuan-lin of the fourteenth century. It is on much the same lines as the other two, being actually based upon the first, but has of course the advantage of being some centuries later.