Types of mankind, or, Ethnological researches, based upon the ancient monuments, paintings, sculptures, and crania of races, and upon their natural, geographical, philological and Biblical history / illustrated by selections from the inedited papers of Samuel George Morton and by additional contributions from L. Agassiz, W. Usher, and H.S. Patterson ; by J.C. Nott and Geo. R. Gliddon.

  • Nott, Josiah C. (Josiah Clark), 1804-1873.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Types of mankind, or, Ethnological researches, based upon the ancient monuments, paintings, sculptures, and crania of races, and upon their natural, geographical, philological and Biblical history / illustrated by selections from the inedited papers of Samuel George Morton and by additional contributions from L. Agassiz, W. Usher, and H.S. Patterson ; by J.C. Nott and Geo. R. Gliddon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    749/800 (page 693)
    geometry, land-surveying, and music. The reverend Fathers Bouvet, Regis, Jartoux, Fri- delli, Cardoso, de Tartre, de Mailla, and Bonjour, at government expense, made official maps of the different provinces of China, after European methods ; and, at the same time that such labors familiarized the whole of these Propagandic missionaries with Chinese literature, Fathers Amiot, Gaubil, and Du Ilalde, devoted their leisure more especially to minute study of Chinese archaeology. In one word, the admiration avowed by the Jesuits for Chinese civilization on the one hand, and the influence which Chinese philosophy pos- sessed over their intellects on the other, had led to such a fusion at l’e-kin, during the 17th century, that one is at a loss to decide whether the Chinese were becoming converts to spi- ritual Christianity, or whether the disciples of Loyola were adopting the materialistic “ doc- trine of the Lettered.” Unhappily for our desires to solve this curious problem, certain puritanic Dominicans arrived from Rome; and, Pandora-like, let loose fanatic ills heretofore preserved hermeti- cally. It was they who started that everlasting question whether the Chinese word chang-ti be a syuonyme for “ God” or the “sky.” Pig-tailed converts to Christianity d la Jisuite were incontinently bambooed by hog-tails d la Dominicain ; for heretical notions upon an equivocal point by. aliens indicated for Mongol salvatory “credo.” Khoung-tseu’s “uni- versal charity” being interrupted by swinish brawls at which the writers of Leviticus {b\\) would have shuddered, policemen duly reported their real causes to mandarin magistracy: which reports, in official course, reached a new embodiment of the Sun upon earth, Young- tching. This unsophisticated Tartar at once relieved himself, and his successors for more than a century, of these foreign theologers, by shipment of a live cargo, including mission- aries Jesuit and Dominican, consigned to Macao under judiciary “bill of lading,” about the years a. d. 1721-25. It is to the Jesuits, nevertheless, that impartial science looks back, gratefully, for throw- ing the portals of Chinese history widely open to European Sinology: and it is especially to the late Remusat, Klaproth, and Ed. Biot, as to MM. Stanislas Julien and Pauthier, that our generation owes the reappearance of Chinese studies on the continent, since the demise of the famed historian of the Iluns, Deguignes. At Paris, the Chinese department of the Bibliothhque Imperiale comprehends quantities stupendous of that country’s literature. Every element for our purposes being in conserfhence accessible, we proceed, Pauthier’s works in hand, to sketch 1st, — the mode through which archaeologists in China have defi- nitely tabulated, in precise stratifications, the relative order of national events; and 2d,— to present a chronological table of Chinese dynasties, from such tabulations accruing. It is as certain as any other fact in history (512) that about 1000 years b. c., parallel with the reign of Solomon, books existed in China with such titles as these: — “Laws of the administration of ancient kings;” and that recurrence was common to “ancient docu- ments.” It is also certain that arts and sciences continued to prosper down to the year 484 b. c., (513) when Confucius compiled the Chou-king, sacred book of the Chinese, from anterior documents. Literature was immensely diffused among the “Lettered” in China; when, b. c. 213, Chi-lioang-ti burned all the books which torture could extort, together with multitudes of their readers; (514) because the latter quoted the former against his imperial innovations. Nevertheless, this splendid miscreant served practical objects, not altogether indefensible, when he relieved the empire of its “old-fogiedom;” to judge by the withering oration of his prime-minister, Li-sse: “ Prejudiced in favor of antiquity, of which they admire even the stupidities, they are full of disdain for every thing which is not exactly chalked after models that time has nearly effaced from the memory of man. Incessantly they have in their mouths, or .it the tips of their pencils, the three llo-aug [the Chinese august triad], and the, five Ti [the Chinese pentateuchj.” Nearly 2000 years previously, disputes among religious sects in China had risen to such (611) XI. 7. (612) Chine ; pp. 59, 194, 200. (513) Chou-king, Preface du Pire Gaubil; Pautbier’s “ Liv. Sac. de 1'Oricnt,’' Paris, 1843; pp. 1, 2. (514) Chine; pp. 222-228.