with his parent's will, and left the province, that his younger brother might succeed to the throne. The younger, Shooh-ts' hee, however, on his father's death, went after his brother, and surrendered the kingdom to him; but Puh-ee refused to disobey his deceased father's command: upon which the younger, refusing to invade the rights of his elder brother, remained with

him in exile.* Respecting these he asks,

"Puh-ee and Shooh-tshee, what kind of men were they?" Lun-yu, b. iv.

Here yin, man, becomes plural, through its connection with the antecedent substantives, Puh-ee and Shooh-tshee.

Another mode of rendering a character plural, is that of affixing thereto, a term denoting multitude. The character wàn, which originally means ten thousand; but which is also used to denote all, constantly adds to a substantive a plural idea, of which many examples occur in the Ee-king. One may be selected from the third volume, where the writer, speaking of the

* These two worthies are said by Chyu-hee, in his comment on Confucius, to have been alive at the period of Woo-wang's ascending the throne (Ante Chr. 1120;) and that detesting him for having dethroned his nominal sovereign chyeu, though a tyrant, they withdrew into the mountains, and were never heard of more. The similarity which the story of these two brothers bears to that of Rama and Bharuta in the Ramayuna, seemed so striking, that I have taken some pains to ascertain the precise period in which the Chinse place these two princes. It is evident that Confucius, who lived about six centuries after them, esteemed them real personages. Quere, Did their story give birth to that of Rama, or the latter to theirs? Or are these two incidents similar, but totally independent of each other?

first emperor Pao-khee, (the celebrated Fo-hi,) describes the labour he underwent in observing the heavens, the earth, the form and colour of birds and beasts, that he might form the eight kwa, (which are nothing more than

the three broken lines placed in eight different positions :) this, according to the writer, he did,

情 ts'hing 之 tchee 物woóh 萬 wàn 類10ói 以

Yeé

"To describe the peculiar nature of all things." Ee-king, book iii.

In this sentence wan, all, (literally ten thousand,) the fourth character from the right hand, being united with the character wooh, thing, renders it plural.

An instance of the same kind occurs in the second volume of this ancient work, in which the writer gives us his idea relative to the production of

"Heaven and earth co-operated, and all things were produced."*

Ee-king, vol. ii.

This sentence is quoted partly for the sake of the doctrine it contains relative to the origin of all things. Whatever this be, it is certainly as old as Confucius, if not much older; as he collected this ancient and abstruse work, and added thereto a copious commentary. The probability is, that by thyen, heaven, is here

In this example, Wan, in the third perpendicular line from the right, is again found united with wooh, thing, which it then renders plural.

There are several other characters used to convey an idea of multitude; Ind such are tchoòng, many, all; tchyéa, divers, many, all;

M

ting,. a multitude; and kyai, all. The character fwan, is also often used to convey a collective idea. Tchoòng, tchyéa, and fwan, constantly precede the substantive, if it be added; but with these, the substantive is generally omitted in their most esteemed works. The two latter, ting and kyai, constantly follow the substantive: ting, however, is chiefly used to form the plural of pronouns; as ngó ting, we; neé ting, ye; of which more under the head of Pronouns. Of the use of kyai the following example occurs in the second volume of Mung, where that philosopher repeating a conversation which formerly took place between See ma nyeu and Tse-hya,

two disciples of Confucius, introduces the former lamenting his desolate state as having no brothers, in the following words,

meant yang, the efficient and operative principle described in the Chinese Dictionaries, and that by thee, the earth, is meant the inferior principle, or in other words, matter; and if this be correct, the doctrine of two principles, matter and spirit, was early in China as well as in India; whence it is possible, that the doctrine of Confucius himself, did not, at bottom, differ so widely from that of the Vedas, and of the ancient Greek philosophers, relative to matter and spirit being the two first principles, as from his reverence for heaven we might be led to imagine.

୮

"Men, all, have brothers; I alone have none." Mung, vol. ii.

Here kyai in the first line to the right, following yin, man, causes it to be understood in the plural number.

The answer of Tse-hya contains an example of kyai used alone. "If,” says he, "the superior man, in his intercourse with mankind, manifest all that regard and esteem for them which his character implies," he will have

no cause to lament his being without relatives; for, adds he,

From these examples, it is easy to perceive, that the Chinese characters undergo no change in order to denote number; but that this is either expressed by certain characters added, or sufficiently implied in the connection. That this is consistent with perspicuity, however, we have sufficient proof in our own language, in such sentences as these, "If a man have a hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray; doth he not seek that one sheep," &c.

Bb 2

of Case.

Deficient however as the Chinese language may seem in Gender and Number, it is not so as it regards Case. To point out the relation which one substantive bears to another, or the precise mode in which an action is connected with the object it affects, seems so important, that it is difficult to conceive how a language could exist without this being done in some degree. In certain languages furnished with a copious grammatical apparatus, this indeed is done in a double way, by varying the termination, and by the use of prepositions, which mode the Greek language adopts to a considerable extent. The first of these methods is of course incompatible with the Chinese language; but in Prepositive characters to designate the various cases, the Chinese are by no means deficient; on the contrary they have a sufficient variety to express, not merely the cases generally found in European grammars, but also the Instrumental and the Locative of the Sungskrit. As the due application of these constitutes a principal part of what may be strictly termed, the grammar of the Chinese language, it will be worth the labour to examine the force and meaning of these characters with some degree of minuteness.

The Nominative and the Accusative cases require no preposition. They are merely the characters in their natural state, as examples will sufficiently shew. Examples of the Nominative indeed are innumerable; and whether it consist of the name of a person, of a pronoun, or a common substantive, it is equally destitute of any addition. The following sentence furnishes an ex