Proceedings at Boston, May 20th, 1874. THE Society held its Annual meeting, as usual, in the Library of the American Academy, Athenæum building, Boston, at 10 o'clock, a. M., the President in the chair. The Treasurer's report for the year was read, and, having been referred to an auditing Committee, was examined and accepted. It shows the income and outgoes of the year to have been as is stated below: $1,618.75 A general report as to the increase of the Library during the year was presented, the details of accessions being left to be given in the printed Proceedings. The Directors announced that, in consideration of the nonappearance during the year of any continuation of the Journal, they had voted that no annual assessment be levied on the members for the year 1874-75. Further, that they had appointed the Semiannual meeting to be held in New York, on Wednesday, October 28th, designating Prof. Short and Dr. Ward of New York, with the Secretaries, a Committee of Arrangements for it. The following gentlemen were then nominated by the Directors as candidates for Corporate membership, and were duly elected by ballot : Prof. Felix Adler, of Ithaca, N. Y.; Rev. Howard Osgood, of New York; Prof. Charles P. Ötis, of Boston. The election of officers for the ensuing year being now in order, Messrs. Trumbull of Hartford, Merrill of Andover, and Ward of New York were appointed a Committee of nomination. They reported the names of the following gentlemen, who were balloted for and duly elected: President-Prof. E. E. SALISBURY, LL.D., Rev. N. G. CLARK, D.D., of New Haven. "Boston. Washington. "New Haven. "Cambridge. Vice-Presidents Hon. PETER PARKER, M.D., Mr. A. I. CоTHEAL, Prof. W. H. GREEN, D.D., Directors Prof. A. P. PEABODY, D.D., Dr. CHARLES PICKERING, Prof. CHARLES SHORT, LL.D., "New Haven. Cambridge. "New Haven. "New York. "New York. "Princeton. "Cambridge. "Boston. "New York. "New York. The Corresponding Secretary called the attention of the Society to its losses by death during the past year. The list included the names of three Corporate members, Mr. Charles Astor Bristed, of New York, and of one Corresponding member, Dr. Francis Mason, missionary in Burmah. The Secretary gave a somewhat full sketch of the life and literary labors of Mr. Bristed, who had for some years been a member of the Society, though never taking a personal part in its proceedings; he also spoke, more briefly, of Col. Meline, elected only a year since to its membership. Dr. Peabody bore testimony to the high scholarship of Prof. Crosby, and to his eminent services in the cause of education. Dr. Anderson and Dr. Ward eulogized the character of Dr. Mason, and described his work, both as missionary and as scholar. He had, in some of his visits to America, been present and offered communications at the Society's meetings, and had repeatedly, and down to a very recent period, furnished articles to its Journal. His principal scholarly works are a volume of various information on Burmah, and an edition of Kaccayana's Pali grammar, which forms a part of the series of the Bibliotheca Indica, published at Calcutta. He was born in 1799. The correspondence of the half-year was presented, and some extracts from it were read. Dr. C. H. Brigham, of Ann Arbor, Mich., had sent an account of the finding of a little manuscript roll, in Ethiopic, on the premises of the Michigan Central Railway at Jackson Junction, apparently dropped there by some traveller. He added a full description of the MS., which is evidently not very old, is well preserved and neatly written, and illustrated with sev eral pictures. It is a liturgy. Rev. T. C. Trowbridge, missionary in Asiatic Turkey, being present, addressed the Society on the college of Western learning now sought to be established at Aintab; and also spoke of the many and rich opportunities in that region for antiquarian research. Communications were now called for and presented. 1. On a Greek Inscription from near Beirut, published in the Second Statement of the American Palestine Exploration Society, October, 1873, by Prof. F. P. Brewer, of Columbia, S. C. The following is proposed as a revision of the last six lines. The preceding part of the inscription is very faulty, but seems to give the name of a Phoenician who obtained the sovereignty of Heliapolis. 5 6 7 8 9 10 Αίψα μάλ' ἐκτελέων [ἐργ] όσσα νόῳ φρόνει [* Ασ]τεο[ς εύ]νο[]η [λ]αῷ μέγα θαῦμα τ[έλεσσεν] Οφρα διηνεκέως ὁμαλὴν ὁδὸν ἐπανύοντες Φεύγωμεν χαλεπ[7]ς ύψος ὁδο[ε]πλαν[]ης. Translation. 'While very promptly executing whatever works he devised for Phoenicia herself, so great a work even as the following did he finish from good will to the city, a great wonder to the people, when down from the peaks midway he made an even path, in order that by using a road that was level throughout we may avoid the height of painful wandering.' The letters in brackets are the only ones that vary from the published text, which in most of those places was "recognized with difficulty." We have changed ZO to AΣ (7), and EI to H (10), and have inserted EY (7), K (8), and the iotas in lines 7 and 10. The measure is the elegiac distich. The only irregularity in the last four lines would be removed if we could read ¿§avioνTEç at the end of line 9. The road which our inscription commemorates seems to be the one referred to in a well known Latin inscription in the vicinity, which says: M. Aurelius Antoninus montibus inminentibus Lico flumini caesis viam delatavit. 2. On the use of 3 in Hebrew with Negative Particles, by Prof. C. M. Mead, of Andover, Mass. The object of this investigation was to ascertain, if possible, by what means the Hebrew language distinguished a partial from a universal negation. To this end an attempt was made to make a complete list of all the passages in which 3 is used with negative particles, and to classify them according to the position of in the sentence, and according to its being definite or indefinite. Noldius, in his Concordantiae Particularum, adduces only ninety-three passages, dividing them into two classes: those in which precedes, and those in which 3 follows, the negative. He finds three passages, Num. xxiii. 13, Deut. xviii. 1, and I Sam. xiv. 24, in which the negation is designated as partial. But the two latter are as clear instances of universal negation as any that could be found. Num. xxiii. 13 is the only passage referred to by Ewald and Gesenius as exhibiting a partial negation, though they make the impression that there is something like a consistent principle governing the matter-Gesenius affirming (or implying) that, when is made definite, the negation is partial; Ewald, that the negation is partial when is equivalent to totus, as distinguished from omnis. The result of the investigation is that both of these representations are inaccurate, and that there is no law of construction determining the question. Of the 326 cases examined, only six present unequivocal instances of partial negation. Of these six, it is true that five occur in sentences in which is definite; but the vast majority of instances in which it is definite exhibit universal negations; and in Lev. xvi. 2, where it is indefinite, the negation is clearly partial. The other five sentences are Num. xxiii. 13, Josh. vii. 3 (bis), I Kings xi. 13, 39. Of these six cases, three are found with, and three with , connected with . There is, however, a class of sentences in which the negation cannot be regarded as strictly partial or strictly universal, but rather as a negation of a universal affirmation. E. g. Gen. viii. 21, I will not again smite any more every thing living." Here it is declared that there will not be another universal deluge; whether some or none will hereafter be destroyed, is left undetermined. Of such passages about twenty-five may be found, though it is manifest that the line of distinction between such negations and either of the two other classes must be somewhat indeterminate. A few of them border upon the partial negation: viz. Num. xi. 14, Eccl. vii. 21, Is. lxv. 8, I Chron. xxix. 34. It might have been anticipated that, as in English, a partial negation would be most unambiguously expressed by prefixing the negative particle immediately to the word denoting universality, instead of having the verb intervene between them. But, singularly enough, there are no instances of this position of the words in all the Hebrew Scriptures. The two apparent exceptions (I Kings xi. 39 and Ps. cxv. 17) are only apparent; for, in both, the construction is elliptical, and a verb is to be supplied. It is true, however, that in the analogous construction of with (usually), whenever (as happens in four passages) the negative immediately precedes D, the combination has the meaning 'not always; whereas, out of the thirty cases in which these words are separated by a verb, in twenty-seven the combination unmistakably means 'never;' and in only one of them (Lam. iii. 31) does it express a partial negation unequivocally. One can hardly resist the conclusion that in the spoken language the same distinction may have existed in regard to ; but, as the matter now stands, we can only say that. so far as the extant literature is concerned, the general law is that with nega tives expresses a universal negation; the exceptions are ascertained only by the sense of the passage or of the context. 3. On the Chinese sieu as Constellations, by Prof. W. D. Whitof New Haven. ney, Prof. Whitney spoke on this subject somewhat as follows: By an oversight of the learned editor of the new edition of Colebrooke's Essays (Prof. Cowell, of Cambridge), I find myself there quoted (vol. ii., pp. 281, 282) as favoring Biot's opinions respecting the history of the Chinese system of sieu, and the derivation from it of the corresponding system of Hindu nakshatras. The quotation is from the notes to the Surya-Siddhanta, published in the Society's Journal, vol. vi., 1860. Four years later than that. however, in a special article on the subject, printed in the eighth volume of the Journal (first part, 1864), I explicitly and entirely rejected Biot's view, and did my best to prove its untenability from the data which he himself furnished-as it seemed to me, with satisfactory success. I am led to revert once more to the subject, partly in order to reiterate my confidence in my later argument and its result; but chiefly in order to call attention to certain sources of information, not then accessible to me, which leave no further doubt or question respecting the matter. Biot everywhere defines and describes the sieu as single determinative stars, selected by the ancient Chinese as standards of reference for observations on other stars, because, being situated near the equator of B. C. 2350, they nearly coincided in right ascension with the principal circumpolar stars, which the still earlier Chinese had been in the habit of observing with particular attention. So far as I know, he lets slip only at a single point so much as a hint that any one had ever thought of the sieu as constellations. At the foot, namely, of his second table, in the series of articles in the Journal des Savants of 1840 (and repeated in that of 1861), he gives the meaning of some of the sieu-names, nearly all of which would fit groups better than single stars, while of one he says: "the Chinese character for Pi means the snare' (le filet), which is the figurative designation of the Hyades." I drew attention to this as a pregnant indication in my later article (Journal, viii. 43), and remarked that, in view of the Indian and Arabian aspects of the system, it might be dangerous to assume that, when an early Chinese authority names a sieu, only the single star can be meant which the later astronomers know by that name; or even that the division of the heavens, where one is mplied, is to be reckoned from star to star, and not, as in the other two systems, Simple proximity to the asterism named. And authorities which I am now able to cite raise this suspicion to a certainty. Thus, in the first place, Gaubil. the founder of European knowledge of Chinese astronomy, always speaks of the sieu as "constellations," and here and there defines the groups of which one or another is composed. So, for example, in Souciet's collection, vol. iii., p. 32: "One sees still that the constellation Fang [fifteenth sieu, 3, d, π, p Scorpionis] is so well pointed out by the number of four stars of which it is composed, and of which the bright one (la Lucide) is the chief." Again, M. Am. Sedillot, the eminent Orientalist and mathematician, in his Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire Comparée des Sciences Mathématiques chez les Grecs et les Orientaux (second part, Paris, 1849), gives the whole series of groups, and repeatedly points out that, "when the determining stars, which have suggested so many considerations, so many calculations. so many lofty hypotheses, are restored to the constellations of which they form a part, and which the Chinese themselves have adopted, we see reappear as if by enchantment the various parts of the Arab system, and are obliged at once to acknowledge that we have here really the twenty-eight lunar stations, and by no means divisions that are independent of the movements of our satellite." And once more, in a quite recent and independent work, by Mr. John Williams of London, entitled Observations of Comets, Extracted from the Chinese Annals (4to, London, 1871), the author, in the course of his Introductory Remarks on the Chinese astronomy in general, expresses himself as follows (p. xxi.): the Chinese divide the visible heaven into thirty-one portions; twenty-eight of these may be termed the stellar divisions, and receive their names from, or are determined by, an asterism, generally forming the central or principal one of the division. The determination by an asterism having the same name has been preferred by me to that by any particular star in that asterism, as being, to the best of my judgment, more in accordance with the Chinese mode of proceeding; in which, as far as my experience goes, the asterism alone is mentioned, and not any particular star in that asterism." And to the same effect later (p. xxvi.). Mr. Williams's definition of the asterismal groups accords quite closely with that of M. Sedillot. does, indeed, report also the series of determining stars; but he gives them as "according to Biot"-apparently, as finding no more ancient or genuinely Chinese authority on which to rely for them. And in the appendix to the work he presents a series of little star-charts, taken from native sources, in which each asterism is set down, in company with the other groups belonging to that division of the heavens to which the asterism gives name-the division being, as in the Hindu system, the circumjacent region, though not an equal twenty-eighth part of the ecliptic. He In these statements, now, is evidently implied the complete and irretrievable overthrow of Biot's view as to the sieu and their history; it has not a single leg left to stand upon, if the sieu are constellations and not determinants. And I find it extremely hard to understand how a savant who has shown elsewhere such simple and entire good faith in his own expositions and reasonings, often himself putting into our hands the means of refuting his errors, should have allowed himself at this point to ignore and omit a very important part of the evidence bearing upon his case. That he did not believe himself to be acting in good faith here also, I have not the least disposition to suggest; but great indeed must have been his prepossession, to warp his judgment to such an extent. The whole subject was one upon which he had an intense personal feeling, conceiving that his statements and arguments had been treated with undue disregard and disrespect by the Indianists, and that he had no justice to expect at their hands; and he was so under the dominion of preconceived opinion as to be incapable of receiving new light. His view of the Hindu system of nakshatras was wholly and perversely wrong, and even in his articles upon the Sûrya-Siddhânta he passed without the least notice alike the general (provisional) assent to his theory which it contains, and its specific objections to certain points in that theory. It must, I think, be conceded that, whatever may be in other respects his deserts as to the history of Chinese astronomy-of that I am no competent judge-his discussion of this particular institution has absolutely no value; so far as it is concerned, he has justified the worst of the suspicions expressed by Weber, which he resented so highly; he has added one more to the long list of those able mathematicians who have shown a disabling incapacity to discuss questions involving historical and documentary as well as scientific evidence. |