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X. Pictographic Reconnaissances. Part II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

It is one pleasing feature of the absence of logical method in these palæographic excursions and alarums, that interesting irrelevancies are more easily introduced and less severely regarded than where a stricter scheme has been pursued.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1918

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References

page 389 note 1 Namely, the tablets containing the Book of History, the Record of Rites, the Classic of Filial Piety, and the Analects, which had been hidden at the time of the Burning of the Books, in the wall of the Confucian mansion, and were rediscovered there circâ b.c. 90.

page 393 note 1 Giles, , A Chinese Biographical Dictionary, p. 352.Google Scholar

page 399 note 1 It is so printed here, but, as will be seen in the examples on the Plate, the mouth of the curve is in most cases closed by a bar.

page 405 note 1 The .

page 407 note 1 The general rule (t'ung li) meant here is that followed by the Shuo Wen in treating what are called lien yü, lit. “connected words”, which for want of a better I translate by the term “dissyllabic phrase”. These lien-yü seem to the Chinese to have a more intimate mutual relation than any other couplets of words. The Shuo Wen's rule for lien yü is to give under the first syllable the full phrase, followed by the words of explanation of this phrase. Under the second syllable it inserts the full phrase only. Many of these dissyllabic phrases are alliterative.

page 407 note 2 In his edition of the Shuo Wen, under the character yün.

page 408 note 1 I understand this passage to mean that the force of the inspiring idea of the characters for yin and yün is only appreciated by viewing them together, as a pair, since each member of this pair has one, and lacks the other, of the correlative and differentiating signs chi and hsiung, good and evil, both of which are essential to the concrete illustration of the philosophic idea supposed to be expressed in the words yin-yün, and divided, as it were, between the two corresponding characters.

page 408 note 2 Namely, Tuan Yü-ts'ai, for whom Wang Yün frequently exhibits his admiration.

page 408 note 3 This reference to the “general rule of chuan chu characters” requires some explanation. According to the most modern view among Chinese scholars (from which I venture entirely to dissent), this long, discussed class among the Six Scripts or Liu Shu, , consists of pairs of characters which in the Shuo Wen occur with reciprocal explanations, and are therefore synonymous. Thus the character ling, the water-caltrop (Trapa), is explained by ch'i, and vice versa, and the two are considered to be chuan chu ().

page 411 note 1 JRAS., 10, 1917, pp. 804–5.Google Scholar

page 412 note 1 Sic. But on the previous page of his Y.H.S.K.K.S., p. 51, Lo had observed that Hsü Shun “was not aware that the figure , depicted a man kneeling, and is the character jên [this last statement, put without qualification, I doubt, for reasons I shall give in the future]. All Hsü's analyses under are erroneous”.

page 413 note 1 The passage is so important that I have made a copy of the facsimile text from the Ch¨n Ku Lu Chin Wen, , vol. viii, p. 12, see Fig. 241. It should be noticed that what Lo transcribes as two characters fan i, appears to be a single character in the original. Observe also that the word ti does not here mean the non-Chinese tribes so named, but = “to drive back”, as in the Odes, see Legge, 's Chinese Classics, vol. iv, pt. ii, p. 619.Google Scholar

page 416 note 1 There is an exception to the rule, formed by certain entering tone syllables attributed by Tuan Yü-ts'ai to non-entering tone syllables terminating in vowels, such as his 1st, 3rd, 7th, 8th, 12th, 15th, and 16th groups. The reasons for these exceptions seem obscure.

page 421 note 1 Chalfant has, in fact, catalogued a variant from the Honan bones almost identical with this hypothetical form.

page 422 note 1 Legge, 's The Chinese Classics, vol. iv, pt. ii, p. 339Google Scholar

page 423 note 1 Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed., vol. vi, p. 613.Google Scholar

page 425 note 1 The Chinese Classics, vol. iii, pt. ii, Index, p. 647.Google Scholar

page 425 note 2 Thus the lines chi mêng wei ho, wei hsiung wei p'o, wei hui wei t'o, “What dreams are lucky? Of brown bears and black bears, of vipers and cobras.” And there are other examples in the Odes.

page 428 note 1 Y.H.S.K.K.S., p. 67.