Royal Asiatic Society

“ If, however, we remark the striking similarity that exists between the persons, the manners, the dispositions, and the policy of the two nations, we cannot but recognize them to be of one family; and the fact of the Japanese making use of the Chinese written language, and rencing the books of Confucius, may fairly be considered as evidence that they carried them from China, at, or some time previous to, the period in question. [8] The earliest traditions of every country must be listened to with distrust, unless corroborated by circumstantial proof ”

“ Remarks on the use of Captain Rater's Altitude and Azimuth Instrument.—By Lieutenant J. Campbell, Assistant Surveyor General 137 XII.—
Observations on Professor Wilson's Historical Sketch of the Kingdom of Pandya, in the Sixth Number of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.—By the Rev. Wm. Taylor 142 XIII.—
Honary Meteorological Observations made at the Equinoxes and Solstices, agreeably with the suggestion of Sir John Herschel. ”

“ Kelly & Walsh on sale of Journals, &c. 4 20 By„ Book Case. 35 By„ Binding publications in Library of the Society. 50 10 By„ Stationery. 3 90 By„ Clerk's Salary. 60 By„ Clerk's petty expenses. 2 13 By„ Postage on letters and Journals. 16 41 By„ Balance with Honorary Treasurer. 11 35 By„ do. in Chartered Bank. 342 43 By„ do. in Mercantile Bank. 278 61 $1473 93 J. O. Anthonisz, Honorary Treasurer, Straits Branch Royal Asiatic Society. ”

“ All institutions and inventions, of whose real origin no history remains, [2] have been referred to them as to a common source; but the grave appellation of Emperor is only applied by the ignorant and the unthinking, to savages who first taught their cotemporaries to make fishing nets, to till the ground, and live together in a state of society. [3]
In order to prove how little dependence can be placed on the accounts which the Chinese give of their own antiquity and inventions, I need only produce the following quotation from the abstract of history given by Du Halde. ”

“ And we do hereby grant our especial licence and authority unto all and every person and persons, bodies politic and corporate (otherwise competent) , to grant, sell, alien, and convey in mortmain unto, and to the use of the said Society, and their successors, any messuages, lands, tenements, or hereditaments, not exceeding such value as aforesaid. And our will and pleasure is, that our first Commissioner, for the time being, for the Affairs of India, shall be a Vice-Patron of the said body politic and corporate. ”

“ The graphic beauty of a written language, which approaches so near to the hieroglyphic as the Chinese, where many of the characters are intended as pictures of the idea to be conveyed, where the variety of the lines, or strokes, is so great, and their combinations are so numerous, must be allowed at once to exceed, and to be more difficult of attainment than, that of the alphabetic writing of Europe. ”

“ Every member of the Society shall be entitled to one copy of the Journal, deliverable at the place of publication. The Council shall have power to present copies to other Societies and to distinguished individuals, and the remaining copies shall be sold at such prices as the Council shall from time to time direct. ”

“ Among the objects of Natural History, which attracted the attention, and excited the wonder of the followers of Alexander the Great, when that illustrious conqueror carried his victorious arms across the Indus, was the Banyan, or Indian Fig-tree. It is well known that that extraordinary man, whose talents, as well as achievements, have certainly no parallel in history, was generally imbued with a love of science, and, as Pliny expresses it, inflamed with a passion for Natural History. ”

“ Making but few friends in society, and being of a particularly retiring disposition, he seemed to reserve an overfull share of his attractions for those that could heartily sympathise with him in old fellowship. ”

“ The agglomeration of families into communities, united socially but not politically, is also to be considered. Lastly, the Clan, Society, Tribe or Nation as a political unity, either isolated, confederate, or subordinate, must be investigated in all its institutions, customs and relations ... ”

“ The Chinese, themselves, are cunning enough to know, that "knowledge is power;" and, though they have, of late years, gradually relaxed in their vigilance, and may at length be considered to have relinquished the point, [7] the jealousy with which they, not very long ago, regarded the attainment of their language by Europeans, sufficiently shewed the importance that they attached to it, and the consequences that they foreboded, from such knowledge, to their selfish interests. ”

“ Whatever passed through the hands of Aristotle, on subjects of Natural History, must be allowed to have had a value beyond that which any other writer could have given it, both on account of his acuteness and intellectual superiority, and of the channels, through which his information was de- rived. It is not possible to conceive, as has before been intimated, that among the natural curiosities of India, of which, through the interposition of Alexander, he obtained a knowledge, such a phenomenon in the vege- table world, as the Banyan-tree, should have escaped him ”

“ But it is not alone for the purpose of learning to write, that Chinese writing is to be studied; without some practice in this way, it is impossible to fix many characters in the memory, and no man can properly be considered to learn the language, who does not devote a portion of his time to this important branch of the subject. ”

“ To attain skill in writing it, is more or less the aim of every educated Chinese; and to impart that skill, is the object of the work, whose rules I have translated, and given its examples, in the following pages.
Of the two points, correctness and elegance, the first only is absolutely required of students, at their public examination; [4] though, of course, if the latter exist, it is held to be an additional recommendation. If graphic skill be ever held cheap in China, [5] it is only in the possession of him who can lay no claim to the higher attainments of solid erudition. ”

“ Guided by the light of reason, he applied the energies of a powerful intellect to the Study of man, and grounded his doctrines on the fixed and immutable principles of human nature. His works are at this day the Sacred Books of the Chinese, and when compared with the evanescent relics of Fŏ and of Laou-keun, confirm the superiority of truth over the fictions of artful, and the ravings of fanatical teachers. ”

“ For the Ethnology, of any given region the first requirement is a full and accurate description of each tribe in it, and in the adjacent and connected regions, as it exists at present and has existed in recent or historical times. This embraces the geographical limits and the numbers of the tribe, the Physical Geography of its locations, and its relations of all kinds to intermixed, surrounding, and more distant tribes. The environments of the race thus ascertained, the individual man must be described in his Physiological and Mental Characteristics and in his language. ”

“ Today, as never before, we need a new orientation toward Asian; we must intensity the cultural identity with our ancient kin, and make common cause with them in our drive toward prosperity and peace. For this we shall require the understanding of ourselves and of Asia that exceeds acquaintance; we require the kind of knowledge that can only be gained through unabating scholarship on our histories, cultures, social forces and aspirations, and through more active interaction with our friends and neighbors.
What threatens humanity in another area threatens our society as well. ”

“ He who ever carries his thoughts back to the past, will allow how ill we should have fared without it, on many critical discussions with a people, of all others the most extravagant in their assumptions, and the most difficult to manage; and he who can look beyond the present day to the future, may not only foresee (as long as our government neglects to make some sort of provision against such contingencies) the possibility of discussions still more embarrassing, and more difficult, than have ever yet occurred at Canton ”

“ I am well aware that the Japanese have been asserted by some to have peopled their islands as early as the 13th century before Christ, and that those people are said to disdain the very idea of being descended from the Chinese. ”

“ It should, however, be observed that the Malay writing is so far phonetic that the Roman characters, according to the system recommended by the Committee, will in the main give the spelling as well as the sound. Again, in order to help persons unacquainted with, or possessing but little knowledge of the language, it has been found absolutely necessary to mark the difference between short and long vowel sounds by accents of some kind, and great care is required to make these as intelligible as possible: and for simplicity's sake, as few as may be. ”

“ The work of Ordinary General Meetings shall be the transaction of routine business, the reading of papers approved by the Council, and the discussion of topics connected with the general objects of the Society. ”

“ Fate was adverse to both; neither brought their labours to full consumation. Under happier circumstances, both would have illuminated the world with best stores of yet dormant mysteries, wherein the complex skein of human races on this earth would have been disentangled and brought within our ken. While I mention Leyden and Logan as being men of much the same genius and power, it would be neglectful not to denote their differences. Leyden was born of the humbler classes, Logan of the middle. This is only interesting in so far as it points a moral and illustrates life's antithesis. ”

“ On this subject, his range of enquiry was as wide as it was persevering. I finally left the Far East in 1855, before he had entered into the midst of his labours in this direction: yet I had had fair opportunity of seeing his close application to the science of language. All languages were equally attacked by him European, Asian, African, American, and Polynesian—in their glossarial, phonetic and idiomatic phases, and particularly the latter. ”

“ The equinoctial regions are spontaneously fertile, and the arctic too unkindly barren: and industry, wealth, and civilization seem on this account to have been principally confined to the temperate zone, where there is at once necessity to excite labour, and production, to recompense it. I am well aware that there are other important circumstances, besides geographical situation, which influence the progress of nations: all I mean to say is, that the last cause does not seem generally to have met with the attention is deserves. ”

“ If, again, we go further north, to those Arctic Regions where men are still in a very miserable state, we shall find that there thay have no materials to work upon. Nature is such a niggard in the returns which she makes to labour, that industry is discouraged and frozen, as it were, in the outset. ”

“ If we confine our attention to it, the great mass of its characteristics are soon lost in a dark and seemingly impenetrable antiquity. But although each race, when thus taken by itself, vanishes along its separate path, it assumes an entirely new aspect when we compare it with other races. ”

“ Both were borderers, both men of intense energy and great powers of application. With all this Leyden was a poct, a poet above mediocrity. I am not aware that Logan ever wrote a verse. It is in the science of language that Leyden and Logan aro akin in genius, but Leyden's sphere was translation, Logan's analysis and comparison. Leyden was an antiquarian, Logan an explorer of things as they are, a far more difficult and deeper subject than the former, requiring great and comprehensive knowledge, a highly matured judgment, and close acuteness of critical powers. ”

“ No reasonable person, at the present day, will deny the necessity that there is, for some few, at least, of our countrymen being possessed of a competent and practical knowledge of the Chinese language. ”

“ National vanity and a love of the marvellous have influenced in a similar manner the early history of most other countries, and furnished materials for nursery tales, as soon as the spirit of sober investigation has supplanted that appetite for wonders, which marks the infancy of nations, as well as of individuals. ”

“ An intelligent observer says, ‘It is also remarkable how little the people of Asiatic countries have to do in the revolutions of their governments. They are never guided by any great and common impulse of feeling, and take no part in events the most interesting and important to their country and their own prosperity.’ M'Murdo on the Country of Sindh, in Journal of Asiatic Society, vol. ”

“ In so far as I am aware, Japanese has no near relation among the other languages of Asia, and it has certainly none whose relationship has been clearly established. There seems to be no such close affinity between the branches of the Turanian family as there is between the members of the Aryan family of languages, and it is doubtful whether any other language of Asia resembles Japanese as closely as the most widely separated branches of the Aryan family resemble each other. ”

“ What Leyden accomplished, therefore, was small as compared with Logan. In the science of races and languages, Logan's grasp was almost universal, enabling him to collate the lexicons, vocabularies and grammars of nations and tribes in the most distant parts of the globe, and clncidate their systems and constructions. ”

“ But they strongly recommend that to secure identification in all important documents, Chinese names should be written in the Chinese as well as in the Roman character.
3. The difficulties in the way of writing Malay in Roman letters are not so great still there are difficulties which everybody who has attempted to deal with the subject has felt. The chief of these is to be found in the circumstance that in Malay, more frequently than otherwise, the vowels are not expressed; so that here also as in Chinese, it is sounds and not letters that have to be represented. ”