2nd century A.D., is a delightful book, packed with episodes of battle, heroism, self-sacrifice, skilful strategy, and all that goes to make up a stirring picture of strenuous times. Its author, who might almost have been Walter Scott, cannot be named for certain; but the work itself probably belongs to the 13th century, a date at which the novel begins to make its appearance in China. Previous to that time, there had been current an immense quantity of stories of various kinds, but nothing like a novel, as we understand the term. From the 13th century onwards, the growth of the novel was continuous; and finally, in the 17th century, a point was reached which is not likely to be surpassed.The Hung Lou Mêng, the author of which took Hung Lou Mêng. pains, for political reasons, to conceal his identity, is a creation of a very high order. Its plot is intricate and original, and the dénouement startlingly tragic. In the course of the story, the chief clue of which is love, woven in with intrigue, ambition, wealth, poverty, and other threads of human life, there occur no fewer than over four hundred characters, each one possessed of a distinctive personality drawn with marvellous skill. It contains incidents which recall the licence tolerated in Fielding; but the coarseness, like that of Fielding, is always on the surface, and devoid of the ulterior suggestiveness of the modern psychological novel. But perhaps Liao Chai. no work of fiction has ever enjoyed such vogue among literary men as a collection of stories, some graceful, some weird, written in 1679 by Pʽu Sungling, a disappointed candidate at the public examinations. This collection, known as the Liao Chai, is exceedingly interesting to the foreign student for its sidelights on folklore and family life; to the native scholar, who professes to smile at the subject-matter as beyond the pale of genuine literature, it is simply invaluable as an expression of the most masterly style of which his language is capable.
Drama.—Simultaneously with the appearance of the novel, stage-plays seem to have come into existence in China. In the earliest ages there were set dances by trained performers, to the accompaniment of music and singing; and something of the kind, more or less ornate as regards the setting, has always been associated with solemn and festive occasions. But not until the days of the Mongol rule, A.D. 1260–1368, can the drama proper be said to have taken root and flourished in Chinese soil. The probability is that both the drama and the novel were introduced from Central Asia in the wake of the Mongol conquerors; the former is now specially essential to the everyday happiness of the Chinese people, who are perhaps the most confirmed playgoers in the world. There is an excellent collection of one hundred plays of the Mongol dynasty, with an illustration to each, first published in 1615; there is also a further large collection, issued in 1845, which contains a great number of plays arranged under sixty headings, according to the style and purport of each, besides many others. Hsi Hsiang Chi. There is one famous play of the Mongol period which deals largely in plot and passion, and is a great favourite with the educated classes. It is entitled Hsi Hsiang Chi, or the Story of the Western Pavilion; and as if there was a doubt as to the reception which would be accorded to the work, a minatory sentence was inserted in the prolegomena: “If any one ventures to call this book indecent, he will certainly have his tongue torn out in hell.” So far as the written play is concerned, its language is altogether unobjectionable; on the stage, by means of gag and gesture, its presentation is often unseemly and coarse. What the Chinese playgoer delights in, as an evening’s amusement, is a succession of plays which are more of the nature of sketches, slight in construction and generally weak in plot, some of them based upon striking historical episodes, and others dealing with a single humorous incident.
Dictionaries.—The Erh Ya, or Nearing the Standard, is commonly classed as a dictionary, and is referred by native scholars generally to the 12th century B.C. The entries are arranged under nineteen heads, to facilitate reference, and explain a large number of words and phrases, including names of beasts, birds, plants and fishes. The work is well illustrated in the large modern edition; but the actual date of composition is an entirely open question, and the insertion of woodcuts must necessarily belong to a comparatively late age (see Military Writers).
With the Shuo Wên, or Explanation of Written Words, we begin the long list of lexicographical works which constitute such a notable feature in Chinese literature. A scholar, named Hsü Shên, who died about A.D. 120, made an effort to bring together and analyse all the characters it was possible to gather from the written Shuo Wên. language as it existed in his own day. He then proceeded to arrange these characters—about ten thousand in all—on a system which would enable a student to find a given word without having possibly to search through the whole book. To do this, he simply grouped together all such as had a common part, more or less indicative of the meaning of each, much as though an English dictionary were to consist of such groups as
| Dog-days |
| Dog-kennel |
| Dog-collar |
| Dog-meat |
| Dog-nap |
and so on.
| Horse-collar |
| Horse-flesh |
| Horse-back |
| Horse-fly |
| Horse-chestnut |
and so on.
Hsü Shên selected five hundred and forty of these common parts, or Radicals (see Language), a number which, as will be seen later on, was found to be cumbrously large; and under each Radical he inserted all the characters belonging to it, but with no particular order or arrangement, so that search was still, in many cases, quite a laborious task. The explanations given were chiefly intended to establish the pictorial origin of the language; but whereas no one now disputes this as a general conclusion, the steps by which Hsü Shên attempted to prove his theory must in a large number of instances be dismissed as often inadequate and sometimes ridiculous. Nevertheless, it was a great achievement; and the Shuo Wên is still indispensable to the student of the particular script in vogue a century or two before Christ. It is also of value in another sense. It may be used, with discretion, in testing the genuineness of an alleged ancient document, which, if an important or well-known document before the age of Hsü Shên, would not be likely to contain characters not given in his work. Under this test the Tao Tê Ching, for instance, breaks down (see Huai-nan Tzŭ).
Passing over a long series of dictionaries and vocabularies which appeared at various dates, some constructed on Hsü Shên’s plan, with modifications and improvements, and others, known as phonetic dictionaries, arranged under the finals according to the Tones, we come to the great standard lexicon produced under the auspices, and now bearing the name of the emperor Kʽang Hsi, A.D. 1662–1723.
But before proceeding, a rough attempt may be made to exhibit in English terms the principle of the phonetic as compared with the radical dictionary described above. In the spoken language there would occur the word light, the opposite of dark, and this would be expressed in writing by a certain Phonetic dictionaries. symbol. Then, when it became necessary to write down light, the opposite of heavy, the result would be precisely what we see in English. But as written words increased, always with a limited number of vocables (see Language), this system was found to be impracticable, and Radicals were inserted as a means of distinguishing one kind of light from another, but without altering the original sound. Now, in the phonetic dictionary the words are no longer arranged in such groups as
| Sun-light |
| Sun-beam |
| Sun-stroke |
| Sun-god, &c. |
according to the Radicals, but in such groups as
| Sun-light |
| Moon-light |
| Foot-light |
| Gas-light, &c. |
according to the phonetics, all the above four being pronounced simply light, without reference to the radical portion which guides towards the limited sense of the term. So, in a phonetic dictionary, we should have such a group as
| Brass-bound |
| Morocco-bound |
| Half-bound |
| Spell-bound |
| Homeward-bound |
| Wind-bound |
and so on, all the above six being pronounced simply bound. To return to “Kʽang Hsi,” as the lexicon in question is familiarly styled, the total number of characters given therein amounts to over forty-four thousand, grouped no longer under the five hundred and forty Radicals of Hsü Shên, but under Kʽang Hsi.
the much more manageable number of two hundred and fourteen,