BY HERBERT ALLEN GILES, LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF CHINESE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE LECTURER (1902) ON THE DEAN LUNG FOUNDATION IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
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…LECTURE IV
CHINA AND ANCIENT GREECE
Relative Values of Chinese and Greek in Mental and Moral Training —Lord Granville — Wen T*ienhsiang— Han Yu — An Emperor—A Land of Opposites— Coincidences between Chinese and Greek Civilisations—The Question of Greek Influence— Greek Words in Chinese—Coincidences in Chinese and Western Literature—Students of Chinese wanted 107…
On comparing the latter with Pegasus as he appears in sculpture, it is quite impossible to doubt that the Chinese is a copy of the Greek animal. The former is said to have come down from heaven, and was caught, according to tradition, on the banks of a river in
B.C. 120. The name for pomegranate in China is ” the Parthian fruit,” showing that it was introduced from Parthia, the Chinese equivathia being (…) which is an easy corruption of the Greek (…) the first king
of Parthia.
The term for grape is admittedly of foreign (…) fforigin, like the fruit itself. It is (…) pu t’ou. Here it is easy to recognise the Greek word BoT/}U9, a cluster, or bunch, of grapes. Similarly, the Chinese word for “radish,(…) lo po^ also of foreign origin, is no doubt a corruption of (…) it being of coursewell known that the Chinese cannot pronounce
an initial r. There is one term, especially, in Chinese which at once carries conviction as to its Greek origin. This is the term for watermelon. The two Chinese characters chosen to represent the sound mean “Western gourd,” i,e. the gourd
which came from the West. Some Chinese say, on no authority in particular, that it was introduced by the Kitan Tartars ; others say that it was introduced by the first Emperor of the socalledGolden Tartars. But the Chinese term is still pronounced si Jcua^ which is absolutely identical with the Greek word acKva^ of which Liddell and Scott say, “perhaps the melon.”
For these three words it would now scarcely be rash to substitute ” the watermelon.” p.p. 134 135
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