DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4668#0202
184 Note on Kalendar of Ancient China. [Ch.
branch (Apu-ter) for its commencement, supply the
titles of the characters ; while the number of days in the
sacred decade give the ten heavenly stems, and the
number of months in the civil year the twelve earthly
branches. There seems therefore little difficulty in
conceiving that the elements of the Eastern calculations
may have been obtained from that more central and far
more ancient civilization, particularly if we consider, as
many now admit, that the elements of religion and of
science were first imported into China from the head of
the Persian Gulf (the direct route from Egypt) * by the
famous tribe which bore the name of Bak ; which in the
hieroglyphic signifies the land of Egypt.
Turning now for a while from Professor Legge's valu-
able paper to the oldest of the religious books of China,
the Shu King, of which he has himself given a transla-
tion to the world, we are met by more than one passage
referring unmistakably to a superior condition of culture
formerly enjoyed and irrecoverably lost. At the end of
* The late Professor Do Lacouperie, to whose labours is chiefly
duo the tracing of a connection between the civilization of China and
the Bak tribe (proceeding, not from Babylonia itself, but from the
country immediately to the Eastward of it), has detected a certain
resemblance, in a considerable number of instances, between the
archaic characters employed by the two countries. But if a further
comparison be made with the corresponding characters of Egypt,
the Chinese will be found to resemble the latter with at least equal,
if not greater closeness, a circumstance which seems to point to a
common origin from the source more ancient than either. And an
immigration, it is to be observed, from the country East of Baby-
lonia into China would be a natural continuation of an emigration
to the head of the Persian Gulf; just as the latter course would be
a natural continuation of the original migration from Poont.
branch (Apu-ter) for its commencement, supply the
titles of the characters ; while the number of days in the
sacred decade give the ten heavenly stems, and the
number of months in the civil year the twelve earthly
branches. There seems therefore little difficulty in
conceiving that the elements of the Eastern calculations
may have been obtained from that more central and far
more ancient civilization, particularly if we consider, as
many now admit, that the elements of religion and of
science were first imported into China from the head of
the Persian Gulf (the direct route from Egypt) * by the
famous tribe which bore the name of Bak ; which in the
hieroglyphic signifies the land of Egypt.
Turning now for a while from Professor Legge's valu-
able paper to the oldest of the religious books of China,
the Shu King, of which he has himself given a transla-
tion to the world, we are met by more than one passage
referring unmistakably to a superior condition of culture
formerly enjoyed and irrecoverably lost. At the end of
* The late Professor Do Lacouperie, to whose labours is chiefly
duo the tracing of a connection between the civilization of China and
the Bak tribe (proceeding, not from Babylonia itself, but from the
country immediately to the Eastward of it), has detected a certain
resemblance, in a considerable number of instances, between the
archaic characters employed by the two countries. But if a further
comparison be made with the corresponding characters of Egypt,
the Chinese will be found to resemble the latter with at least equal,
if not greater closeness, a circumstance which seems to point to a
common origin from the source more ancient than either. And an
immigration, it is to be observed, from the country East of Baby-
lonia into China would be a natural continuation of an emigration
to the head of the Persian Gulf; just as the latter course would be
a natural continuation of the original migration from Poont.