"Ten thousand provinces were then all in a state of perfect tranquillity."

Lee-khee, vol. iv.

The collective in this sentence is the character hyen, the third from the right, here equivalent to 'all.'

11. The numeral

wàn, 'ten thousand,' has been already mentioned as having the force of a collective pronoun ;* and even the foregoing sentence furnishes a proof: 'wan pang,' 'ten thousand provinces,' cannot be understood literally; it means, the whole empire.'

12. Lastly, the Numeral puh, 'a hundred,' is often so used as evidently to have the force of the collective' all:''Puh-sing,' a hundred families, is an expression often used by Chinese authors, to denote the common people; and the following quotation from the third volume of the Ee-king, shews that it is also applicable to things;

In this sentence puh, the first character to the right, cannot be understood

See page 214.

as implying simply 'a hundred;' united with wooh, things, it obviously has the force of the collective' all.'

It now re

We have thus examined the various kinds of pronominal characters which the Chinese language possesses, and on a retrospective view, it will appear, that of these, few languages possess a richer variety. mains for us to examine how far they are affected by the accidents of gender, number and case.

Of the GENDER, NUMBER and CASE of the Pronouns.

The nature of the Chinese language might naturally lead us to expect, that its Pronouns would be less affected by Gender, Number, and Case, than those of any other language. What relates to these, therefore, as applicable to the Pronouns, may be easily included in one section.

The fact

Gender-Among the Personal Pronouns, those which designate the third person, are the only ones likely to be affected by gender. is, however, that gender has no place in the Chinese personal pronouns. They have no character to distinguish the feminine of the third person singular, nor even to mark the neuter gender. He, she, and it, are expressed by the same character, and are to be distinguished only by the connection in which they stand. This however will not appear strange to those who recollect, that in English the three genders are expressed in the plural number by the same word, 'they,' is equally applicable to men, to women, and to things inanimate of whatever description they be; and it is from the context alone that we can ascertain which of the three is intended. This is the

case with the Chinese personal pronouns in the singular number, as well as the plural: t'ha, he, denotes a woman, a book, a country, as really as a man; which is equally true of ee, and of pée, as far as they are personal pronouns.

This circumstance however is not peculiar to the Chinese language. It is true that the Sungskrit language, like the highly cultivated languages of Greece and Rome, admits a variety in the pronouns expressive of every distinction in gender; but this is far from being universally the case with the dialects originating in the Sungskrit language. In those of Bengal and Hindoostan, the third personal pronoun has no distinction of gender: he, she and it are expressed by the same word, and it is only when the pronoun, being an adjective, unites itself with a substantive, that the difference of gender can be ascertained in any other way than by the connection. Since this then is the case with certain languages of the east, really possessing inflections, it can excite little surprize that it should be thus with the Chinese.

Of Number. It is in the Pronouns, more than in any other part of the Chinese language, that we find traces of this grammatical distinction, which is carried to so great an extent in the Greek and the Sungskrit languages. The reader must not expect however, that any alteration is made in the pronominal characters themselves, to render them capable of expressing number; such an alteration, however slight, would transform each pronoun into a different character, as has been already hinted in treating of the formation of the characters. It is only by the addition of other characters that any difference of number is expressed even in the pronouns. The characters generally used for this purpose are these six;

The original meaning of these characters, will, in some measure, serve as a clue to their being at length used as particles expressive of number. It is a fact, that originally every pronominal character, as well as every substantive with which a plural idea would agree, was deemed capable of expressing the plural as well as the singular number; and that the number was determined wholly by the context or by certain circumstances attending the substantive. But as the pronouns, particularly in discourse, would be frequently introduced without that connexion which could instantaneously enable the hearer to decide, whether one or many were intended, it became desirable that some mode should be adopted to determine this independently of the connection. Hence the characters just mentioned, were gradually brought into use, all of which, except mun, (the first and that most frequently used, though not the most ancient,) express a collective idea.

But in adducing authorities for this application of these characters, we are deprived of our usual resource the standard works of the Chinese. In these, most of the characters mentioned, occur indeed; but it is in their proper and original meaning; scarcely one of them is found as simply forming the plural number. No vestige of this appears however in the Shoo-king, the Shee, nor even in the Lee-khee. Nor has Confucius any thing of it in any of his works: the Tchin-chyeu, the Lun-yu, the Ta-hyoh, and the Choong-yoong are alike destitute of these particles as used to de

note the plural number of pronouns ; as are the works of Mung, who wrote nearly two hundred years later than the Chinese sage, and who was the last of the original Confucian school. Nor indeed is this feature in the pronouns scarcely visible in the best commentators on those two writers, Chyu-hee, and others, who by their own acknowledgment lived fifteen hundred years posterior to Confucius. So that, frequent as these particles of number may now be, they are scarcely known in the standard works of the Chinese. In these the singular and the plural both of nouns and pronouns, are to be distinguished only by circumstances, or by the connection in which they stand.

Within the last seven hundred years, however, the characters under consideration have been occasionally used to denominate the plural number. One of the earliest instances of this which the writer has met with, occurs. in the comment on the second volume of Lun-yu, where the commentator, explaining the terms 'sin,' 'former,' and its opposite 'hyeu,' 'the latter,' does it thus,

"First advancing,' and 'last advancing,' is as though he had said, 'the ancients,'

the moderns."

Comment on Lun-yu, vol. ii.

In this sentence the collective character py, class, species, &c. is united with