,(آفتاب)

(b), sun; Chand (), moon; Akhtar (), star; Gul (K), rose; Lála (a), tulip; or from any quaint idea, as Ashk (), tear; Figan ), lamentation; Hairat (), astonishment (or stupor, the sixth station on the mystic road).

Some of the fancy names affected by poets of the court of Dehli were very popular, and borne by various authors. In the index to the biographies of Urdú poets in Sprenger's Catalogue, I find fourteen Bétábs (impotent), twelve Ridhas (content), nine Fidas (redemption), six Gharibs (poor), eight Ishks (desire), nine Dils (heart), and two Bedils, literally heartless, but used in the sense of lovesick.

The importance which attached to these fancy names may be judged of by an incident which is related in Sprenger's work. A poet who claimed the royal name of Sultan, assumed the fancy title of Khán-zamán, khan of the age. Another poet assumed the Takhallus of Sultan; whereupon Khán-záman offered him one thousand rupees if he would change it, and when he refused to do so, he threatened to put him to death. The poet withstood both promises and threats, and kept his Takhallus.

M. De Tassy informs us that it has become a rule when a poet writes in more than one language, he should assume a separate Takhallus for each. Thus Hafiz Calandar Baksh of Paniput, a writer of the present day, takes the name of Bedam (), breathless, for his Hindustani poems, Zirak (j), ingenious, for those in Persian, and when he composes in Arabic he becomes Alim (e), the learned. The late Mr. Bland, in a letter on the life of Masaud, which appeared in the Journal Asiatique for 1853, also mentions the custom of bilingual or trilingual poets assuming a distinctive name in their compositions in different languages, and gives as an instance the case of an author who assumed the name of Fénai in his Persian Gazals, and of Newái when he wrote in the Jagatai Turki.

It remains only to add a word or two on the fancy names of poetesses. Literary ladies have never been very numerous

in the East, and very few of those whose names and works have come down to us are distinguished by poetical names, perhaps because the proper names usually conferred on them in later times were so fanciful that they could not be improved. There is in Sprenger's Catalogue a biographical notice of ladies who have risen to fame, twenty in number, most of them being of Tatar origin, and some have written poetry in their native language. The Takhallus of only one of them is specified, and her poetical name, Nisai, is taken from her own proper name, Fahkr annissa, l, glory of women. But the name Bedili,, that of another of these ladies, is a known Takhallus, and given above. Atún,, furnace or oven, reads very like one, and so do the names Hijabi,

expressive of, عصمتی and Ismati, عفتی,fati حجابی

modesty or seclusion. The names Bibi Hayat, EE, life, or Mihri,, sunny, were probably the proper names of the ladies. Mention is made in Sir G. Ouseley's work of a beautiful and learned lady, the wife of the Sultan of the Arabian Irak, in the eighth century of the Hejra, who studied the art of poetry with her husband under Selman of Sáva. Her name, Dilshad Khatun, betokening joy or hilarity, might pass for a Takhallus, but there is no reason to suppose that it was one. I have only met with two other specimens of these poetical names assumed by ladies in Sprenger's lists: one lady bears the name Jan,, life; and another that of Kakuli,, from a Persian word meaning a curl or lock of hair.

I propose to continue the subject in another paper, and deal with the proper names of Musselman women. I shall endeavour to trace the changes which the system of nomenclature, as developed by the Arabs, has undergone in other countries, and in later times, adding some general remarks on points of resemblance or contrast which Eastern names present to those of Europe.

238

ART. X.-Principles of Composition in Chinese, as deduced from the Written Characters. By the Rev. Dr. LEGGE, Professor of Chinese at Oxford.

It has often been said that

there is no Grammar in Chinese;
When we speak of “
When we speak of "grammar,"

and the statement is true.
with reference to the written characters, or even to the
spoken language, of the people of China, the term must be
understood in a peculiar sense. Grammar, as the Greek
derivation shows, has to do with words, and is applicable
only to languages that have an alphabet; whereas the Chinese
written characters were at first pictures and ideagrams, and
they have continued to be so substantially during all the
millenniums of their use, down to the present day.

It may be asked, "Are there no words then in Chinese?" and I reply, To be sure there are. The fathers of the Chinese people spoke before they wrote, just as the fathers of every other people did. When they felt the necessity or impulse to make a permanent record of events in the past, or of contracts between individuals and communities, they tried to do so by means of knotted cords. No details of this device have been preserved. We only know that it existed as a fact in the mental and social development of the people. It proved inadequate for the purpose intended; and about 5000 years ago there began the formation of written characters.

These were in the first place pictures of objects. To pictures there succeeded demonstrative figures or symbols, designed to awaken by their form the idea in the mind of the writer, or the phenomenon before it. A third class of characters followed, in which two or more of those already existing were put together, so that their meanings should

blend in the compound; which thus became the symbol of a fresh concept.

On these three principles of formation about 1500 characters came into existence. Slight changes were made in the figures of some of them, to form new characters with new names; and others of them were employed, without alteration of name, to represent different ideas. Two additional classes of characters were thus constituted; but they are hardly entitled to special consideration. The figures comprehended under them, added to those in the three earlier classes, do not carry the whole number up to 2500.

But at this point the Chinese makers hit on what we must call a phonetical principle; they combined two of their existing characters, so that one of them should indicate in a general way the signification of the compound, and the other its name. This method of making characters admitted of indefinite application; and as a matter of fact, more than nine-tenths of all the characters contained in the K'ang-hsî Dictionary were formed by it. I suppose that you have some knowledge of the principles of formation in these six classes of the Chinese characters. It will be sufficient for my purpose, in referring to them to-day, to show that there is nothing in the forms of the first five classes to indicate the pronunciation of them, and nothing in those of the sixth class to indicate their pronunciation after the fashion of words in an alphabetic language.

Let us take, as a specimen of the pictorial characters, that which represents the sun, and has the derivative signification of day. It is now written ; but originally it was a picture of the sun-, or some nearer approximation to the appearance of the great luminary. They now call it zah; anciently they called it nit, or something like that, as it appears in Niphon, the name of Japan. It was the name in their common speech of the sun. If it had been called sun, or sol, or os, it would, as a picture, have answered its purpose equally well.

Let us take as a specimen of the demonstrative characters that which represents the number three. It is written,

and was called sam, or, as it is now called in Mandarin, san. But it would have equally served its purpose if it had been called three, or tres, or tiga.

Let us take two examples of the third class of characters, -compounds formed on the principle of suggestive combination. There is the character B, ming, made by combining the pictures of the sun and moon, H, and ♬, called zäh and yüeh. It means bright, brightness, to brighten, brightly; but its name-ming-has nothing to do with the names of its component parts, zäh and yüeh. There is again the character ‡, shû, made by combining the pictures of a style or pencil and breath issuing from the mouth, to give the idea of speech,

and E, called yü and yüeh. Its earliest meaning was a written character, and it came to signify a book or books. It tells its meaning to the mind through the eye-' the pencil speaking; but its name shû is in no way formed from the names yü and yüeh of its component parts.

We may pass over the fourth and fifth classes of characters, as they have no peculiarity calling for remark in connexion with the subject before us; but the first three classes of which I have adduced illustrations are really Origines Scripturæ Sinica, and we see clearly that their meaning is quite independent of the names by which they are called. То use the words employed by Father F. Lenormant, of them and of other primitive ideographic symbols: "Representing directly and exclusively ideas, their signs were absolutely independent of the words by which the spoken idioms of the peoples who made use of them expressed the same ideas. They had their own existence and signification apart from all pronunciation of them; nothing in them figured their pronunciation, and the written language was in fact so distinct from the spoken, that either of them might be very well understood without any knowledge of the other."1 Let us now take two examples of the sixth and last, and very much the largest class of characters,-those in which

1 See the Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines, d'après les Textes et les Monuments; under the direction of MM. Ch. Daremberg et Edm. Saglio, Article Alphabetum.