revolution in Japan broke out, which re-instated the Mikado in the place of the Tycoon as Emperor. As it was not certain whether the new government in Japan would continue to furnish means for the education of the young men, the then Foreign Minister, Lord Stanley (now Lord Derby), apparently thought it imprudent on the part of the Foreign Office, which facilitated the original project, to incur even a temporary liability, or to await communications on the subject from the new gov ernment. The young strangers were therefore sent back to Japan, but not before some of them had made considerable progress in English. The writer of these remarks gave to one of them, K. Nakamura, as he was leaving England, Samuel Smiles' Self Help, with a few brief remarks on its high educational value. He was much gratified at receiving some time since K. Nakamura's published translation into Japanese of the greater portion of the book, which was no doubt completed before the end of 1871. A few introductory remarks in the Chinese square character make kind mention of the gift of the original, with the name of the giver in the Chinese and Japanese characters, and in English above. A well written letter in English conveying warm thanks in simple language accompanied the work. The general character of Mr. Smiles' work is so well known, and its reputation is so firmly established, that it does not require any notice or commendation here. It must however be a source of the highest and purest satisfaction to Mr. Smiles to know that his excellent work will now probably exercise the same masculine and wholesome influence on the rising generation in Japan which it has already exercised in England and her dependencies. As an incentive to vigorous practical effort and perseverance, amid difficulties, trials, and disappointments, no better present can be offered to the young, either in this country or Japan. In this respect both the author and the translator have conferred no small amount of benefit on their respective countries. H. W. FREELAND. Correspondence & Notes. Some Remarks on the Japanese Proverbs. The short paper under this heading in the February number of the Phoenix was highly interesting, and I trust Mr. Aston will extend his collection of these Oriental specimens of what old Fuller in his "Worthies" defined as "much matter decocted into few words," and give us the benefit in a future number. In the meantime I may perhaps be allowed to make a few annotations on those already given, and I may be pardoned if I add a few corrections, particularly of the classical references. To begin with, Lord Russell seems to be wrongly credited with the definition of a proverb assigned to him, for the elder D'Israeli had used it, if I mistake not, before him. However, to the first example: The contrast between the change of the human, and the continuance of the vegetable creation, is well shown, and the Latin quotations are a good illustration, but the line of Borbonius is incorrectly cited (a very common error) and should be "Omnia (not Tempora) mutantur." In the next the reference to Terence (v. Andr. 3, 3, 23) should be amended, the proper word being integratio. By the way, Richard Edwards of Queen Elizabeth's time appropriated Terence's words in his madrigal: "The falling out of faithful friends The "Pauper ubique jacet," aptly given, connects the Japanese saying with our own, that "Poverty makes us acquainted with strange bed-fellows." Ă good anecdote of the queen above alluded to is told, of which these words of Ovid remind me; seeing a poor student lying by the road-side, as she thought, asleep, she remarked "Pauper ubique jacet." The scholar's reply startled Her Majesty; it was "In thalamis, Regina, tuis hác nocte jacerem, Si foret hoc verum—pauper ubique jacet.” In the eleventh proverb we have a general application of what we only use for the devil. No. 12 I take to be an exemplification of “ubi cadaver, ibi aquile." No. 13 is curious, as current among a people like the Japanese, long segregated from others, and as frogs in the well persistently refusing to know anything about the great ocean. No. 14 requires some explanation. Does it mean that if you give him your confidence he will not betray it? or that it is presenting Newcastle with coals? Veneration of age (No. 15) suggests Chaucer: 66 Agen an olde manne, hore upone hys hede, No. 16 recals Luke iv. 23, "Physician heal thyself." At No. 18 there is in the illustration the usual misquotation of the Virgilian line " Non (not haud) ignara mali." The late Bishop of Antigua, Dr. Rigaud, once told me of a man who made much money by betting on this! No. 22 is the Latin maxim, Audi alteram partem. No. 23 is precisely the "Cum Romae fueris, Romano vivite more," of which the origin will be found in S. Augustin's Epistle, xxxvi, to Casulanus. I presume the one following to indicate a narrow mind, i. e., looking at a large object through a small medium. I recollect the Chinese of Hongkong used to describe one of the Governors of the colony as looking through the big end of the telescope, i. e., bringing his vision to bear on a petty field. Is this the idea? Nos. 25 and 26 bring up at once memories of Gray's Elegy and Mrs. Partington respectively, the latter pointing further back, to King Canute. I take No. 27 to express labour lost, like the cord of Ocnus or the pail of the Danaides. No. 28 I suppose has a parallel in "Gutta cavat lapidem non vi sed sape cadendo." "Fighting sparrows do not fear man" is evidently the equivalent of the blindness of rage as expressed in Virgil Æn, ii. 316: "furor iraque mentem Præcipitant" No. 33, with the caged bird longing for the clouds, brings Sterne and his starling before us: and reminds us of erato ton apeontōn as Pindar has it. The new broom sweeping is identical with our own familiar saying. No. 39 is meant, I imagine, to express danger, but the last half dozen of the proverbs seem all to require some elucidation. But to me the whole paper is very interesting, as may be guessed by my having gone through it at some length, and I beg to repeat the hope that Mr. Aston, or some fellow-labourer in Japan will continue the subject, and furnish us with a good and comprehensive collection of the proverbs of the country. W. T. MERCER, M.A. Chinese Seals found in Ireland. W. G. A. enquires for particulars respecting the history of Chinese seals found in Ireland. I may say that I was equally anxious myself to investigate this curious subject some years ago, and amongst other enquiries I made at the time, I wrote to the learned Secretary of the Royal Irish Academy, who gave me such information as satisfied me, and I hope will be of use to W. G. A. respecting their occurrence in Ireland. It happened one day, that an elderly lady came to the museum of the R. I. A., and in the course of her peregrinations her eye fell upon a curious little collection of these white porcelain cubes, having a little figure of an animal seated on each. She enquired what was the interest attaching to them, for she had several in her posession. The curator explained their history and the money value attached to them by a distinguished collector of Irish antiquities. The old lady hastened to explain their true history; her family for many years were engaged in the silk trade of Dublin, and large quantities of this material were distributed by them all over Ireland, to the various manufacturers of cut velvets, brocades, poplins and tabbinet, for which Ireland was famous. Their customers were numerous and well to do, and it was the custom of the house to make presents from time to time of little objects of value imported with the silk from China. If the curator would return with her to her home he could examine her specimens, still remaining in an old cabinet removed years before from the counting house. And sure enough, on opening the old article of furniture, there lay in one drawer, still packed in the original paper, the little Chinese curios as they came from the East. I had one given me many years ago, found in Wexford, which was said to have been picked up in a field, but as I myself found a curious little Chinese vase on a farm in Ireland, which had evidently been lost or thrown on the land with the "top dressing," I can easily satisfy myself that the old lady has cleared up the difficulty of the Chinese seals found in Ireland. J. H. LAMPREY, Librarian R.G.S. Mr. Ernest Satow requests us to state that the Episode in Japanese Ilistory, published in the November number, page 81, of this volume, was translated in 1865, when he laboured under the common error that Taiko-sama had been Shogun, and it is only just to Mr. Satow to say that he was then only commencing his studies of Japanese. Fishes of China. The twelfth volume of the Verhandelingen der K. Akademie van Wetenschappen in Amsterdam contains a very important memoir by the well-known Dutch ichthyologist, Dr. Bleeker, "Sur les Cyprinoides de Chine.' The author gives a list of some fifty species belonging to the family of Cyprinidae or carp-like fishes, which have been described by his predecessors; and he has been able to add about twenty more to this number, from collections made by the French travellers M. Daubry and the Abbé David on the Yangtzekiang, and preserved in the Paris Museum. He expresses a belief that this number, great as it is, barely represents one-half of the Cyprinoids actually inhabiting the fresh waters of the Chinese Empire. The forms resemble rather Japanese and European types than those from tropical parts of Asia; but as our knowledge of the fish fauna of China increases, differences between the northern and southern parts will appear more definite. The memoir is beautifully illustrated by fifteen double plates, apparently representing the specimens of the natural size. The founder of Chinese ichthyology is unquestionably the late Sir John Richardson, who gave very detailed reports on the fishes collected in China by Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Belcher, and by Messrs. Reeves, father and son, the latter having supplemented their collections by a very valuable series of drawings. Their reports were published in the year 1843 or earlier; and it is a remarkable fact that no more recent collections of importance have been brought to England, although the number of English residents and travellers in China has increased greatly since that time.-The Academy. The Japanese "Mochi." We have assisted a time or two at the stirring of a plum-pudding before it was tied up for consignment to the pot, but the preparation of mochi, which may be said to be its Japanese equivalent during the coming festivities, is a much more serious affair, and our western ceremony is literally childs-play in comparison. The principal ingredient in this delectable and anything but digestiblelooking viand is clean rice, which, after being steamed, is beaten in a large pot in the street by two men formidably armed with heavy wooden mallets or "beetles," with handles somewhere about four feet long, till it becomes, in everything but colour, like the chewed india-rubber which ingenious school-boys occasionally manufacture. It is then shaped into cakes, which soon dry and harden, and is eaten either raw or toasted. It is occasionally coloured green or red, and altogether, we are inclined to think, must be rather "heavy" food. -The Hiogo News. We are, in consequence of the late publication of the present number, reluctantly obliged to postpone our notice of Dr. Hunter's, Our Musalmáns in India," received from Messrs Trübner & Co. Mr. W. G. Aston's "Grammar of the Japanese Written Language" is ready for publication, and copies may be had at the Office of the Phoenix. A notice of it will appear in our next issue. Printed and Published at 3, George Yard Lombard Street, London. The author of this work says: "On reading the history of olden times I have observed that the emperor Toba issued edicts prohibiting military men to belong to the families of Minamoto and Taira. I then believed that the ruling authority or great power in the state began at this time to belong to the military class, but when I proceeded to read the Miyoshi Kiyo tsura hōgi which relates the grievances arising from military garrisons, and the great military tenants of the land, I then learnt that this evil in the state was of long standing, and that it did not arise at that period. For at the beginning of our dynasty, and on the establishment of our kingdom, the form of government was very simple and concise. There was no distinction between civil and military, throughout the land all were soldiers, and the emperor was the commander-in-chief Oo Tomi 大臣 and Oo Murashi 大連 were the officers under him, and the rank of general was not yet distinguished. How then was it possible to use the terms "military class" and "military men!"* Thus it was, when the empire was at peace nothing took place; but if there happened to be war, then the emperor himself undertook the labour of a campaign, or else one of the princes of the blood royal or the empress acted for him, and did not venture to commit it to any subordinate. In this way the supreme power remained in the hands of the chief ruler of the nation, and all the land was peaceful, even the San kwan↑ = and Shiku shint肅慎 came and paid tribute, without ex ception. This lasted until, in the medieval times, in imitation of the Chinese form of government, officers became distinguished as civil or military, and an officer was appointed under the designation of commander-in-chief (or 'the General of the Six Fortresses'—Roku e no shō) and he led the Imperial troops. A war department, which formed one of the eight departments of government, was appointed also assistant officers to take charge of the tribute horses. In the remote provinces there were military organizations (Gun dant W two two tai Each which consisted of one-third of the able-bodied men of each province. Five men formed a go go made a ka five ka made a tar made a rio and ten rio made a dan had its own officers, six horses were allowed for every ka, and those men who were skilled in riding and archery were drafted into a body of cavalry. All performed garrison duty; some came to Miyako to protect the capital, others remained in their own provinces. The names of all were entered in a book. Every time there was an expedition, 10,000 men were easily collected, by issuing commands to the various parts. To every expedition there was a Shogun (General), a F'ku-Shōgun (Lieutenant-General), also a Gun-kan 將軍 (Inspector), a Gun-so (War 軍藍 軍曹 Aide), a Roku-ji (Secretary). When three corps d'armée were assembled there was a Taishōgun (Generalissimo). When a general went out on an expedition he received a sword from the emperor; this was called a setto If any one disobeyed his order when in the face of the enemy, he was allowed to judge for himself as to the punishment he deserved. When he returned he stated all the circumstances of the campaign, and the meritorious were rewarded in twelve grades, and the army was then disbanded. The weapons and instruments of war were stored in a magazine, being issued and collected under the command of the War Department. This, in brief outline, was the form of military arrangements in the medieval times, and although it was not quite so simple as that of the earlier period, still it was quite sufficient to prevent outbreaks, for if an insurrection occurred, tallies () were issued, and many thousand men and horses were speedily collected, who in ordinary times were dispersed over the country. Generals were elected from among the civilians, and when the war was over they threw off their helmets and armour and resumed the civilian dress, there was not even then a military class, or any purely military family. But when the Fujiwara clan, which was related to the emperor on the female side, assumed the authority, no one but a Fujiwara was allowed to hold office, and the charge of military affairs was left entirely in the hands of Minamoto and Taira, and then it was that the term "military families" arose.* ON MUHAMMADANISM IN CHINA. Muhammadanism like Buddhism entered China on two sides, by the sea and by Turkestan, that is to say by those two routes, which in early times were the only means of communication between China and the rest of the world, or the West. At both these widely separated frontiers of the Chinese empire, Muhammadanism first appeared in hostile guise. Before the Arabs took a prominent part on the world's stage, China's influence extended to Persia. The Arabs not only annihilated this friendly dependency of the T'ang sovereigns, but also struck a severe blow at their allies at Mavarennagar and Transoxiana, continuing their conquests to the very foot of the Tsung-ling mountains, where they were checked by the determined resistance of the Tibetans. These events in the West were paralleled by those which transpired on the sea-board of the extreme East. The first mention made of the Arabs, refers to their attack on Canton in 758 A.D., when they destroyed the government grain stores and public buildings, and afterwards retired to the sea. But, according to the best authorities, the first friendly intercourse between Chinese and Muhammadans was held at the sea ports, where the mutual interests of trade served to unite the two nations in bonds of friendship. However coldly the Chinese government may have regarded the foreign trade, the local officers thoroughly understood its advantages. As early as 1192 A.D., Chinese documents allude to the illegal practices of Muhammadan traders, which were countenanced by the governor of Canton upon grounds of Imperial policy, and in proof of the gain derived by foreign merchants from their trade with China, the same writer describes one of them as the richest man in the world, who, to quote his words, "treated gold like dirt." Towards the end of the eighth century, when the power of the emperors of China declined, and governors of provinces paid a mere outward respect to the sovereign, reserving to themselves almost independent sway within the limits of their jurisdiction, local interests came to be more closely studied, and the foreign trade developed more rapidly, and exercised a wider influence in the country. The earliest information about China in Arab writings was certainly derived from travellers who visited that country by sea, and their descriptions speak of a large Musalman population in the maritime towns, and of the hearty welcome they received from the Chinese. Arab writers (Suleiman and Masudi in the ninth and tenth centuries, Ibn Batuta in the fourteenth century,) bring prominently forward two facts, viz., first, that before the Yuen dynasty (1280-1367) the Muhammadans had no free access into China by land; secondly, that however large their numbers at the seaports, the Muhammadans in the southeast of China were only temporary residents, who came to trade, and had no idea of proselytizing the Chinese, but passed a few years in the country just as Europeans do now, and returned home with pleasant recollections of the hospitality which they had received. We further learn from these writings that even this intercourse with foreigners at the seaports was interrupted by the rebellions in China, as for instance when Hankou was destroyed by Hwangtsiao, or when the empire of the Sung dynasty in Southern China was invaded by the Mongols, owing to which circumstance Marco Polo was prevented from seeing Muhammadans in that part of China. In his long description of Hang-chou (Kinsay, kingsz or capital, the modern Hang-cheu-fu), capital of Southern China, and of the Sung empire in 1127 A.D., Marco Polo never alludes to a Muhammadan population in that city, although he mentions having seen a Nestorian church (see Yule's Marco Polo, vol. ii. p. 145-173), but Ibn Batuta, who must have visited it before Marco Polo, says that one quarter of the city was entirely populated by Muhammadans, and that there were mosques and proof that Muhammadan propagandism had made muedzins, and a monastery of Sufi monks. Another no progress in China before the fourteenth century is that the name Hwei-hwei, applied to the Musalmans in China by the Chinese, was derived from a race of people who inhabited the heart of Mongolia, therefore the name could only have been introduced after Islamism had penetrated to the north-west of China, and it was only after its firm establishment in the north that the Chinese in the south-east became converts to its doctrines. The few Muhammadans who entered China by land during the T'ang dynasty (618-906) are described by Chinese writers to have been great rogues, they were probably merchants or attached to foreign embassies, and their constant quarrels and fights with the emperor's soldiers excites the anger of the learned Chinese historian Shi-gu, who says that they were finally expelled from the capital by the Manicheans. Marco Polo found Saracens predominant in Eastern Turkestan, but eastward of Lop-nor he rarely alludes to them, and generally supports the view of the prevalence of Nestorianismt over Muhammadanism in his time. * The Uigurs, according to Klaproth, were an obscure tribe, who in the second century B.C. inhabited the country watered by the Orkhon and Selenga rivers (Eastern Siberia), they established the kingdoms of Hami, Turfan and Urmutsi; he divides them into two tribes, the Hwei-hwei or Muhammadans, and the Uigurs, who were west of Khami, in 1209 they were subdued by Jingis Khan. Their alphabet was adopted by the Mongols. See Mémoires relatifs à l'Asie. They call this place Urumutsi O-lo-bok-che in Amoy where the word is used almost like an interjection Ah! "Old wife's tale!" "All bosh!" = The Nestorian church was at this time and in the preceding centuries diffused over Asia to an extent of which little conception is generally entertained, having a chain of bishops and metropolitans from Jerusalem to Peking. The church derived its name from Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, who was deposed by the council of Ephesus in 431. The chief point of Within the Tangut territory, i.e., to the east of Hami, and throughout China proper, Marco Polo found idolatry or Buddhism everywhere prevalent with one exception, the town of Jacin, on the. borders of Tibet, where he mentions having met with Saracens, who had probably followed the Mongols when Mangu Khan's hordes invaded and devastated those countries. The Tangut empire certainly took an important. place in deciding the fate of the Eastern world, and much of the history of Inner Asia during the mediæval ages prior to Jingis Khan's time would be far more intelligible were we to study with sufficient care the history of that empire. The dominion of the Tanguts was established in those districts on the north-west of China to which Islamism under its present form was transplanted. The ruling tribe of the Tangut empire, although descended from a branch of the Tibetans called the Tang-hians or Tanguns, derived its chief strength from the Uigurs, who inhabited the country both within and without the boundaries of China Proper as far west as Hami (Khamul) and Urumtsi. And here we have solved the celebrated riddle propounded by Sanang Setzen, the Mongol historian, who declared that in Jingis Khan's time the Uigurs were called Tanguts. This confusion in the nomenclature of these nations is apparent at the present day, for the Chinese call their Muhammadan countrymen Hweihwei, after the Uigurs, while the Turks call them Tungani, which is a corrupt form of Tangun, produced by a transposition of the two vowel letters in that word. (Tangut is the plural of Tangun). These Uigur-Tanguts are remarkable not only for their political stability, which for three centuries (before the time of Jingis Khan) preserved to them their independence, enabled them to wage a successful war with the whole of China, at that time under the Sung rule, and to resist the encroachments of the Kitans and the Tchurché, as well as in all probability to check Jingis Khan's great adversary Wang Khan, better known as the Prester John (Prêtre Jean), to whom frequent allusion is made in Marco Polo's travels, but also for the extraordinary influence which they exercised on the civilization of the East. The Uigur-Tanguts combined Chinese civilization with Western ideas and the religion of Tibet, their learning was the result of contact with Chinese civilization, their characters were adopted by the Tchurché, the Kitans, and the Mongols, but it is to their influence on religious thought, an influence which has hitherto been imperfectly appreciated, that we wish particularly to direct the attention of our readers. The Tibetans, as we have already seen, imposed a barrier to the advancing tide of Arab invasion, but the Uigurs were their moral foes. The concurrent testimony of Chinese and Muhammadan writers the faith" in which they came short was (at least in its most tangible form) the doctrine that in our Lord there were two persons, one of the Divine word, the other of the man Jesus, the former dwelling in the latter as in a temple, or uniting with the latter " as fire with iron." Yule's Marco Polo, book i., chap. v., page 58, note 2. assigns the period of the T'ang dynasty as the date of their conversion to Manicheism, and the same writers affirm that the sympathy accorded to this religion by the Chinese emperors was attributable to their gratitude for the assistance afforded them by the Uigurs in crushing the Anlu-shán§ rebellion. The conversion of the Uigurs to Manicheism prevented Muhammadanism from extending further to the east. During the Yuen dynasty these Uigurs appear as Buddhists and as representatives of Buddhist learning. When the court of Peking wanted to revise the Chinese translation of the Buddhist books, it applied to Uigur scholars for assistance. Changchun found a collection of Buddhist books in the first Uigur town. We are inclined to believe that the learning of the Uigurs had great influence in developing the latest form of Lamaism. European missionaries were astonished at the resemblance which the external symbols of Lamaism bore to the ritual of Roman Catholicism, but had they known that Tson-hava, the founder of new Lamaism, was a Tangun by birth, and was therefore well acquainted with all the Christian religions they would not have had recourse to the influence of an evil spirit in order to explain the strange resemblance. The Uigurs adhered to Buddhism long after the fall of the Yuen dynasty, as late as the latter half of the sixteenth century (about 1570) mention is made by Chinese writers of the existence of Buddhist monasteries at Hami, while to the west of Turfan the population at that time was Muhammadan. Sultan Ali of Turfan made frequent descents on Hami, partially animated no doubt by religious jealousy. The inhabitants of Hami and the country east of it were sometimes under the protection of China, at other times they reverted to their former independence, but Chinese historians certainly make frequent allusion to natives of Hweihwei in the provinces of Kan-su and Shen-si in China Proper. We have now reached the epoch which we are inclined to assign as that of the first complete introduction of Muhammadanism into China. The Manicheans were a religious sect, founded by Mani, which, although it utterly disclaimed being denominated Christian, yet was reckoned among the heretical bodies of the church. It was intended to blend the chief dogmas of Parseeism or rather Magism as reformed by Zoroaster, with a certain number of Buddhistic views, under the outward garb of Biblical, more especially new Testament, history. They assumed above all two chief principles entirely antagonistic in their natures, whence had sprung all visible and invisible creation, and which were respectively styled the Light, the Good or God, and the Darkness, the bad matter or Archon. They each inhabited a region akin to their natures, excluding each other to such a degree that the region of darkness and its leader never knew of the existence of that of Light. Their doctrines certainly appear to have had a tendency, chiefly in the case of the uneducated, to lead to a sensual fanaticism, hurtful to a pure mode of life. Diocletian as early as 296 A.D. issued rigorous laws against them. Chambers' Encyclopædia. § A Greek Alexander, a descendant of one of the followers of Alexander the Great. |