differences of pronunciation.' Both admit that the tonal system was not completed before our fifth century; and both agree that the tones of characters were liable to change. The difference of opinion between them lies more in words than in things. I concur with Twan in accepting the existence of three tones during the Chow dynasty; and it will be found that the rhymes of the odes, as given at the end of each piece, have more than a sufficient amount of verisimilitude and consistency. SECTION II. THE ANCIENT PRONUNCIATION OF THE CHARACTERS, AND THE 1. After all that has been said in the preceding section on the rhymes of the She, the student is soon struck by what he cannot at first but regard as the imperfection of many of them. It is evident from the structure of an ode that such and such lines were intended in attempting to read the She. The actual difficulty with the rhymes) to rhyme; but he can in no way make them do so. Whatever the dialect to which he may have given his special attention, he sees that either the characters were pronounced and toned under the Chow dynasty very differently from the manner in which he has learned to enunciate them, or that the writers of the odes were astonishingly indifferent to the correctness of their rhymes, and content often with a remote approximation to similarity of sound in them. If he have recourse to the aid of the rhyming dictionaries which are current throughout the empire, and which, though representing an older pronunciation than that of the present day, must yet be followed by all poets and poetasters, his difficulty is brought before him with increased definiteness. There is hardly a single ode which will stand the test of an examination by the rhyme-and-tone classes in those dictionaries. We are come to a subject encompassed with perplexity; but much has been done by native scholars to unfold its complications, and to enable us to understand how the Chinese spoke and rhymed in the remote age of the Chow dynasty. I will endeavour to give a brief and clear view of the result of their researches in a few paragraphs, following the method of my own mind in its endeavours to grasp the subject, and giving in notes the fuller information which will help others to comprehend the processes and acquiesce in the conclusions. 2. In Choo He's edition of the She, we have a multitude of notes. to assist us in reading the text, and making out the rhymes. It is always said that such and such a character rhymes with such and The system of rhyming the) such another; that is, it is to be read differentShe by poetical license. ly from its ordinary pronunciation that it may give the necessary rhyme; and all these hëeh yun, as they are called, are reproduced in the K'ang-he dictionary. This method of rhyming the odes was first reduced to a system by Woo Yih, or Woo Ts'ae-laou,2 a scholar of the Sung dynasty, a little earlier than Choo He. He published a Work, which I have not seen, under the name of Yun-poo, which we may translate 'The Rhyme-mender.' Mr. Wylie observes upon it, that it is chiefly valued as being the earliest attempt to investigate the theory of the ancient sounds, but it is said to be a very faulty production.'3 Whatever conclusions Woo came to as to the ancient sounds, he appears to have determined that, in reading the She, the standard pronunciation of his own day was to be adopted, and that, wherever words, evidently intended to rhyme, yet did not rhyme according to that standard, then the pronunciation of one or more of them should be changed, and a rhyme effected by heeh yun, or poetical license. Unreasonable as this method was, and impracticable in any alphabetic language, practicable only in the ideographic Chinese, it found multitudes of admirers and followers. Even Choo He, we have seen, adopted it; and Seu Ch'en of the same dynasty has given it as his opinion, that 'it was not till the Rhyme-mender was published that the pieces in the Book of Poetry could be regarded as poems.4 But the discrepancy between the rhymes of the She and those which had subsequently come to prevail was patent to scholars long before the Sung dynasty. Ching Heuen himself wrote a treatise on the subject; and, all through the time of the Three kingdoms, the Tsin, and other dynasties, on to the T'ang, various writers gave Morrison defines the phrase as-two syllables that rhyme;' Medhurst as'rhyme; and Williams as to rhyme; harmonious cadence or tone.' But all these accounts of it fail to indicate its most important and frequent significance, that the rhyme is one of an assumed poetical license, where one of the characters has a pronunciation assigned to it which it does not in ;-see General Notes other circumstances have.. 2吳域 or吳才老韻補; on Chinese Literature, p. 9. 徐序吳才老韻補日自補韻之 書成然後三百篇始得為詩 5毛詩音 their views upon it. The conclusion in which they rested seems to have been that enunciated by Luh Tih-ming, that 'the ancient rhymes were pliant and flexible, and there was no occasion to make any change in them to suit modern pronunciations."6 The question has received the most thorough sifting during the present dynasty; and Koo Yen-woo, Këang Yung, and Twan Yuhtsae, all mentioned in the preceding section, endeavouring, one after another, to exhaust the field, have left little to be gleaned, it seems to me, by future labourers. To prepare the reader to appreciate the results at which they have arrived, it will be well to set forth, first, the rhyme-system current at the present day, as given in the Thesaurus of the K'ang-he period, and next, the more extended system given in the Kwang yun dictionary, and which represents the rhymes as they were classified in the T'ang and Suy dynasties. 3. In the K'ang-he Thesaurus the rhymes are represented by 106 characters, no regard being had to the The rhyme-system current at the present day.initial consonants of those characters. There are 15 in the upper first tone, as many in the lower first, 29 in the second or ascending tone, 30 in the third or departing tone, and 17 in the 4th, called the entering or retracted tone. Taking the first or even tone as the measure of the endings, this system gives us only 30; and, if we add to them those of the 4th tone, which we must spell differently in English, we obtain 47. But some of those endings, as, for instance the first two, cannot be, and never could have been, represented by any but the same letters in English,-which would reduce their number; while others, as the sixth and seventh, comprehend characters that, as they come upon the ear in conversation and recitation, cannot be represented by the same letters,—which would increase their number.7 Altogether, Medhurst makes out, upon 6古人韻緩不煩改字 7 Those representative words in the Thesaurus are: of the upper first tone, 東冬江·支微魚處齊佳灭眞文元寒删; of the lower first tone, 先蕭肴豪歌麻陽庚青蒸尤侵覃鹽成 of the second tone, 董腫講紙尾語麑薺蟹賄軫吻阮旱潜 銑籙巧皓舒馬養梗迥冇寢感儉; of the third tone,送,朱释窴未御遇霽泰卦隊長問,願翰 諫霰啸效號碼漾敬徑,宥沁,勘豔陷; of the fourth tone, 屋沃覺質物月曷點屑藥陌錫職緝合 葉洽 this system, 55 finals, or rhyming terminations; and as he makes the initials or consonantal beginnings in the language to amount to 20 and a mute,-зay 21, we have 21 ×55=1,155, as a near approximation to the number of possible sounds or enunciations in Chinese, a little more than one fortieth of the number of characters of which the language is made up. But the actual number is much smaller. Edkins gives the number of syllables, or distinct sounds in the Mandarin dialect, as 522, adding that in the syllabic dictionary of Morrison there are only 411. He says that if we were to accept the final m, and certain soft initials, which were still in existence under the Mongolian dynasty (A.D. 1,280-1,367), there would be at least 700 syllables.8 Williams states that the possible sounds in the Canton dialect which could be represented by Roman letters would be 1,229, while the actual number of syllables is only 707.9 It is always to be borne in mind that the rhyming endings, according to the present rules of Chinese poetry, are much fewer than the terminations diversified by the tones. 4. Ascending along the line of centuries from the era of K'anghe to the time of which the pronunciation is given in the Kwang-yun dictionary, a period of nearly a thousand years, we find the rhymThe rhyme-system) ing endings represented by nearly twice as many of the Tang dynasty. characters as in the Thesaurus, or by 206 in all. There are 28 in the upper first tone and 29 in the lower, 55 in the second tone, 60 in the third, and 34 in the fourth. 10 To the western Combining these into groups, according to the tones, we obtain: 回東董送屋;冬腫宋沃;江講释覺;支真 微尾未;魚語:虞爨遇;齊薺霽:佳泰卦: 灰賄隊;眞軫震質: 文吻問物:元阮願月: 寒旱,翰,曷; 删潸諫黠 [iii.]先銑 豪皓號; 蕭篠嘯: 肴巧效: 歌哿: 麻馬望: 陽·養漾藥: Ji ti 青敬錫:蒸迥徑職; 尤有:侵寢沁緝: 覃感勘合: 鹽琰豔葉:咸陷洽 This grouping of the characters shows that, though only the division of the first tone into an upper and a lower series is expressly mentioned, yet we must suppose a corresponding distinction carried into the other tones. Thus it is that we have about twice as many representatives of the characters in the 2d and 3d tones as of either of the upper or lower series of those of the 1st tone. The 4th tone characters are distributed under those of the other tones which end with consonants. This seems natural, and one accustomed to the Canton and other local dialects can hardly suppose that it is not the correct arrangement; yet it was in several instances an innovation, considerably on in the time of our Christian era. 8 Grammar of the Mandarin Dialect, p. 45. 9 Tonic Dictionary, Introduction, p. 23. 10 The Kwang-yun () is the oldest of the existing rhyming dictionaries. It appeared early in the Sung dynasty; but was confessedly based on an older work, which is lost, by Luh student of Chinese the earlier system commends itself as in some respects preferable to the more condensed one of the present day. It meets more fully the requirements of the ear in regard to several endings which we cannot represent by the same letters in any alphabetic language. On the other hand, however, it multiplies in several instances endings which we cannot in any way represent but by the same letters. For instance, the first two endings in the Fah-yen, a scholar of the Suy dynasty, who had employed the 206 representative characters. They are:- of the upper first tone, 東冬鍾江支脂之微魚虞模齊佳皆 灭咍眞諄臻文欣元魂痕寒桓删山; of the lower first tone, 先仙蕭青肴豪歌戈麻陽唐庚耕清 青蒸登尤侯幽侵覃談鹽添咸銜嚴凡; of the second tone, 董腫講紙止尾語爨姥蟹駭賄 海軫,準吻隱阮混很早紱濟產銑 小巧皓哿 果馬養蕩梗耿靜迥拯等有厚器寢感敢琰忝 儼聼檻范: of the third tone, 送宋用释眞至志未御遇暮霽祭泰, 卦, 怪夬隊代廢震掉門焮願恨翰換諫襉霰·線嘯 笑效號筒過 漾宕映諍勁徑證候幼沁勘 豔榛·釅陷鑑梵 of the fourth tone, 屋沃濁覺質術物迄月沒,曷末點 鍩屑嶭樂鐸麥陌昔,錫職德緝合盍業怙,治·狎 乏 Grouping these characters, according to the tones, we obtain: 冬腫米沃; 脂 鍾......用濁: 江講 東花送屋; 薺霽-祭:佳蟹卦; 皆駭泰怪: 灰賄隊- 陽養漾藥 唐蕩岩鐸: 庚梗映陌; [ii]先銑 小笑; 肴 巧效; 豪皓號: 麻 馬橋: 耕 青迥勁-徑錫;蒸極 登等嶝德: 尤有: 侯厚候 幼: 侵寝沁緝: 亞‧感协合: 談敢關 隐琰豔葉 嚴儼釅‧業; 添忝橋; 咸缣陷洽: 銜檻 凡范禁乏 |