7 replies to this topic

[fcharton]

Did someone say "Terrien de la Couperie"?
http://www.goldenage...54language.html

Hehe, Terrien's theories provide a perfect basis for all fancy theories on great ancients, hidden civilisations etc... But seriously, Terrien didn't speculate on the Atlanteans, or similar things (the above is a quote of a quote, once again...), but did try to prove a link between China and Babylon, from a linguistic basis. Here's Cordier, a more commendable sinologist, about him (from his General History of China, published in 1920, translation mine):

Whereas a number of scholars had noted some similitudes between cuneiform characters and chinese script, just like others had found resemblances between them and egyptian hieroglyphs, Terrien de Lacouperie did renew and try to provide a solid foundation to the doctrine of a babylonian origin of chinese civilisation. An astute and paradoxal mind, with more imagination than science, knowledge more broad than deep, who knew not assyrian, and only knew of chinese what he had learned from European books, Terrien, without respect for chronology, based himself on relatively recent texts, taking for granted their dubious authenticity, and often relying on facts which belonged more to folklore than to history, in order to adapt event to a preconceived theory. He therefore managed to build an edifice which may look imposing from the outside, but collapses as soon as one touches it. Let us give him justice, though, he had the great merit of proposing a lot of ideas, most of them wrong, but some correct, therefore unearthing problems which had, for long, been neglected by scholars.

Terrien de Lacouperie presents some of the most prominent traditions which, he believed, were learned by the Bak tribes before they mgrated, for instance the legendary memory of:
" A great cataclysm, which seems connected to the Great Flood, Sargon and details about his life, under the new name of Chen Noung (Shennong), Dungi teaching writing to the Bak tribes, Nakhounte, as Nai Houang Ti (Nai Huangdi), with event related to Koudour Nakhounte and his conquest of Babylonia in 2293 BC, the appearance of beings, half fish half men, in connection with the introduction of writing, the symbolic tree of life and its links to the calendar, etc..."

All in all, this would mean that China received its civilisation from Bak tribes, the Pe Sing (Baixing) of the Chinese Classics. These Bak Sings would have had blue eyes, coloured faces and hair which were not black, differenciating them from the black haired chinese people (the limin from the Classical Books). Later, we will see, in the thrid century BC, Qin Shihuangdi give his people the name of Black Heads, which would mean the Baixing are not the "hundred families" as sinologists used to think, ie the designation of the great families from the Zhou states, as Legge suggests, but specific tribes named Bak, Bai, in Terrien's theory, ceasing to mean "one hundred", and becoming a simple phonetic which was once pronounced Bak, an unproven fact. Thus, all the theory of a chinese civilisation inherited from the Bak tribes is based upon an unproven postulate, which is formally contradicted by all chinese texts, as Harlez has shown.

Interestingly, Terrien's theories are connected with other speculations on the origins of civilisations in general, and chinese civilisation in particular. Biot (first translator of the Bamboo Annals), considered that the "baixing", or "limin", were the actual migrants, who had come from the north west somewhere at the beginning of the third millenium BC, and gradually replaced the aboriginal populations. Wieger proposed a (very shortlived) alternative, which supposed that Chinese civilisation had moved northwards towards the Yellow River, at about the same period.

But perhaps the most curious theory was suggested by Bailly (in the late 18th century) and developped by Buffon (the naturalist). To them, all ancient civilisations had a common origin, which was to be found in the north of central asia. It would have split at some point, giving birth to both the sumerian, and the chinese...

Of course, no one believes in these theories now, but this does not make studying them less interesting, I'll leave the final word to Cordier (a bit dated as this was written in 1920, but still relevant I think).

The lack of sufficient proofs the above authors provide for their theories, does not mean that we should reject any hypothesis as impossible. The problem of the origin of the Chinese is still open. We find the chinese encamped on the banks of the Yellow River, but where did they come from? Who were the non chinese tribes they found in the regions they settled? That we cannot solve this problem now does not make it disappear. One cannot eliminate an event, or a character, from history, just because their existence is not proven by documents. One cannot neglect traditions, which might be based upon monuments, or elements which we have not discovered yet, or are no longer extant. If history as we know it, if archaeology, are not sufficient to give us a key to the origins of Chinese, this just proves that we are ignorant of the past. Maybe the link which connects China to the rest of humanity is to be found in such a distant past that modern generations cannot trace back to it. This belongs to the field of prehistory, which, in the case of China, is still for us an unchartered territory.

Francois

[DaMo]

http://books.google....id=_UmMaqoaDC4C

Terrien de la Couperie's Western Origin of the Early Chinese Civilisation is now on Google Books. It provides a revealing insight into prevalent theory about Chinese history circulating in the late 19th century. It is only a preview, of course, so not everything is in there. However, there is quite bit about his theorized Western origins of early Chinese language and writing, claims of the Zhou being like red-haired Kirghiz, something about influence on the Xiongnu, claims that Chinese did not get nephrite indigenously, and other alleged similarities in culture, artifacts and astronomy. Perhaps most interestingly, these is some text about his theory that the "Bak" tribes under the leadership of the Yellow Emperor emigrated from West Asia to China and settled/civilized it. These theories and others influenced later writers to likewise claim Western origins for Chinese civilization, like the early 20th century Ernest Sevier Cox, who explicitly referred to it in his book White America.

[asiaconqueror]

Do you mean this book traces the origin of chinese civilization from west asia? Looks to be more of a theory, however I would be interested to know what evidence it offers...

Most chinese history began with "Yellow River civilization" and with mythology such as Yellow Emperor. However, before that, we do not know where chinese originated from, other than some pre-historical people such as Peking man.

[Yun]

The European theory of Western origins for Chinese civilization can in fact be traced back quite far. The best-known early proponent of the theory is probably Joseph de Guignes, a pioneering French sinologist of the 18th century:

He maintained that the Chinese nation had originated in Egyptian colonization, an opinion to which, in spite of every argument, he obstinately clung. He published a number of articles arguing that Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters were related, one deriving from the other.

http://en.wikipedia....seph_de_Guignes

De Guignes is also known for originating the theory that the Huns of late Roman history were originally the Xiongnu of Chinese history.

But De Guignes himself was not the first to speculate an Egyptian origin for the Chinese writing system. The Jesuit A. Kircher made the same suggestion in the mid-to-late 17th century. The French priest Huet also argued in 1716 that similarities between the writing systems, spoken language, religious beliefs, and agricultural practices of the ancient Egyptians and Chinese were evidence of a common origin; he further claimed that the Chinese practice of prohibiting foreign merchants from entering their country was a legacy of the same practice Strabo observed in the ancient Egyptians!

But it was de Lacouperie who in 1894 first proposed the theory that the Chinese civilization came from Babylon/Mesopotamia and not Egypt. He identified the Elamite king Kutir-Nakhunte, whom Babylonian records mentioned leading a 'Bak' people on a migration to the east, as Huangdi (the 'Yellow Emperor'), and Sargon the Great as Shennong. He also pointed to perceived similarities between the Chinese and Babylonian calendars. This theory gained support from various European, Japanese, and Chinese scholars in the early 20th century, but has since lost much of its earlier popularity.

More reading can be found on this thread at the Chinese-language forum guoxue.com:
http://bbs.guoxue.co...d.php?tid=46455

[fcharton]

Here's an old thread where those were mentioned
http://www.chinahist...?showtopic=7931

(there are quite a few threads on Terrien, and ancient western theories about the origins of China, merging them into one, perhaps?)

Francois

[Yun]

Francois, thanks for reminding me about that thread! Your first post was excellent and much more detailed than mine above. Too bad most of the responses were quite shallow. Rather than merge that thread with this one (and risk re-introducing the shallowness here), I will paste what you wrote then:

I am currently reading a book by Henri Cordier (1849-1925) called A general history of China (Histoire Générale de la Chine, Paris 1920). The beginning chapter lists a number of western theories on the origins of the Chinese, which date from the 17th, 18th and 19th century.

This is a summary of the theories Cordier presents (and which he all dismisses as crazy), but which tell an interesting tale of the early western historiography of China.


One of the early questions western historians asked about China was “where does this civilisation come from?” Cordier presents a number of theories, which I summarize here.

One of the first person to offer a theory (which would last for nearly three century) was the German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680). In 1654, he proposes the idea that Chinese were descendents of Egyptians. His argument is based upon chinese writing. In a famous passage, Kircher observes that, as the Egyptians, the Chinese first used pictograms, which, as the language evolved and became more complex, turned into ideograms. Interestingly, Kircher comments on the old “knot writing”. Another noteworthy point was that Kircher did not know chinese. As a good Jesuit, he relied on “his” local sources, mostly fathers Boym and Grueber.

A century later (1716), Huet, bishop of Avranches, expanded on this theory, explaining that both Indian and Chinese civilisations were founded by Egyptians. Both Mairan (1759) and De Guignes (1759) and Warburton (1762) concur, De Guignes dating the arrival of Egyptians in China at 1122 BC, the beginning of the Western Zhou dynasty, which were said to have come from the West (which proves that De Guignes was not ignorant of Chinese history).

Curiously, this theory found some support from chinese living in Europe. In 1762, Needham showed hieroglyphs found on a bust of Isis, and showed them to a chinese in Vatican city, who pretended that they were similar to ancient chinese scripts (similar claims were made until late in the 19th century).

These theories were mostly based on the observation that Chinese and Egyptian scripts used pictograms. However, they were criticised by other scholars : Freret (1718) comments that chinese pictograms could have appeared without any external influence, Parennin, a Jesuit based in China contested Mairan, and Leroux Deshauterayes did send a number of observations to De Guignes in 1759. Finally, Cornelius De Pauw did observe, in 1771, that by 1122 BC, Egyptians used a very simplified form of writing, and that the idea that they might have exports the old and inefficient hieroglyphs to China was spurious.

The nicest piece of criciticism comes from Voltaire (1773) who wrote : « Il nous a paru, par exemple, que les Chinois ne descendent pas plus d’une colonie d’Egypte que d’une colonie de Basse Bretagne. Ceux qui ont prétendu que les Egyptiens avaient peuplé la Chine ont exercé leur esprit et celui des autres. Nous avons applaudi à leur érudition et à leurs efforts ; mais ni la figure des Chinois, ni leurs mœurs, ni leur langage, ni leur écriture, ni leurs usages, n’ont rien de l’antique Égypte.» (It seemed to us, for instance, that Chinese are no more descended from an Egyptian colony than from a settlement of Lower Normandy. Those who pretended that Egyptians had populated China strained their mind and that of others. We had to praise their erudition and effort, but neither the appearance of chinese, nor their customs, language, writing and usages, have anything to do with Ancient Egypt.).

Still the Egyptian theory was very popular, and was reinforced by the purported discovery, in 1834, of chinese wares in Egyptian tombs (even though it was then shown, from the poems written on the wares, that these were much later, post Tang, and probably of the Ming era).

In 1842, Pauthier asserted that chinese characters were descended from Egypt. Note that by that time, a lot of ancient chinese historical texts had been translated (eg. the Zhushu Jinian was translated by Biot in 1841). The last version of the Egyptian theory named Ramses II (Sesostris) as the conqueror of China (based on an interpretation of Diodorus of Sicily, and Herodote).

By the middle of the 19th century, this theory was discredited, on the basic of racial arguments. Morton (1846) observes that the physical features of Egyptians hardly match those of the Chinese.

Morton’s views mark a brutal change in western theories on the origins of Chinese civilisation. Until then, the main focus was on chinese writings. By the middle of the 19th century, the realisation that Sanskrit and European languages were derived from a common, older, family (Indo European), brought to the forefront a second school of interpretations, which assumed that all civilisations came from one very ancient culture.

At the end of the 18th century, Buffon (1778) and Bailly (1775) had assumed that all civilisations (western and chinese) originated from a “mother civilisation”, which lived in northern asia. Gobineau (1853) considers that the Chinese were originally white people, who came from India, and that Chinese myths were a rewriting of ancient Indian stories.

The last, and most famous proponent of such ideas was Terrien de Lacouperie (followed, later by Ball), who asserted that Chinese civilisation originated in Bak (ie was Chaldean). Terrien assumed that Shennong was a derivation of Sargon, Huangdi (Nai Huangdi) being Nakhunte. For him, Chinese myth originated in ancient Mesopotamian myths, which had been brought with them by the first settlers. The Baixing (hundred families) were to be interpreted as the “people of Bak”.

However, as western sinology developed, these theories were confronted with a lot of contradictions, mostly from Biot and Harlez (1895). And, by the end of the 19th century, the modern idea that Chinese civilisation developed independently was widely accepted.


Francois

[Yun]

I've also merged another 2007 post by Francois with this one!

I have a question: Why did de Lacouperie date Nakhunte's conquest of Babylon to 2293 BC? The Wiki article on the Elamites says this took place around 1158 BC ( http://en.wikipedia...._Elamite_Period ).

[moobie]

To them, all ancient civilisations had a common origin, which was to be found in the north of central asia.

I do believe that Sumerians had their origins in Northern Central Asia, among Uralics or Altaics most likely.