Chinese art / [Stephen Wooton Bushell].

  • Stephen Wootton Bushell
Date:
[1909]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Chinese art / [Stephen Wooton Bushell]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    a complete list of which we must refer to his book entitled Western Origin of the Early Chinese Civilisation, 1894. A totally opposite view is upheld by Perrot and Chipiez in their well-known Histories of the Ancient Arts of Egypt, Chaldcea, and Assyria, etc., where they say :—• “ During the period with whicli we arc concerned, China might as well have been in the planet Saturn for all she had to do with the ancient world, and we need refer to her no more, except now and then perhaps for purposes of illustration.” The truth must lie somewhere between these extremes, but there is hardly space to discuss the subject here, or to make any attempt to reconcile such conflicting authorities. The peculiar Chinese script would seem to be, at any rate, of purely indigenous origin and growth. Native scholars trace out carefully and correctly its main stages of development ; how the original pictures (whi) of objects and conditions were first used singly or in multiple combination ; how they were subsequently employed phonetically for other monosyllables of similar sound ; till the device was finally hit upon of prefixing or affixing a radical, or determinative, to distinguish words of the same sound but of different meaning. This last is the principle on which the multitudinous characters (tzu) of the Chinese lexicon have been formed, composed as they are of a radical, which determines the sense, and a phonetic, which suggests the sound, and in the same lines all newly invented characters must be pencilled. Chinese scholars reverence the written script and hire men to col- lect every scrap of manuscript or printed paper to be burned after- wards with due ceremony. Calligraphy is a branch of the fine arts in China, and the penman who can write elegantly in sweeping lines with a flowing brush is ranked above the artist. The highest reverence is paid to any ancient relics of stone and bronze with inscriptions, a long series of books under the heading of Corpus Inscriptionum having been printed during the last thousand years, the bibliography of which would fill many pages. Two indispensable dictionaries of the ancient script for the
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