L C Hopkins
Biographic Data
| ID | 3853558 |
|---|---|
| NAME | L C Hopkins |
| GIVEN NAMES | L C |
| FAMILY NAME | Hopkins |
| SIGNATURE | HOPKINS L C |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 57 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 57 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1895 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1949 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Eclectic Preferences
The title of this short essay is not the outcome of any foible on my part towards a chance euphonious coupling of two not ill-suited concepts. The phrase indeed, being short, simple, and succinct, should convey accurately the motive and method which have together dictated the form of this study. Restricted as it had to be, the field of research is still wide, and the flowers that grow therein are not only time-worn, but their types show many and …
A Cryptic Message and a New Solution
This defiant little inscription of three words has held its secret through twenty centuries. On the Bone relics of the Honan Find it is not uncommon, but in the inscribed Bronzes, even the oldest, it is not met. Brief and perhaps paltry as it may seem, it has not failed to engage the attention of Chinese spécialists without any very convincing conclusion. But on one point Chinese critics do concur. These small three-word entries are no part of th…
The Shaman or Chinese Wu
The Shaman or Wizard of the proto-historic Orient, his vocation, his reputation, his strange psychosis, his claim to thaumaturgic powers, and his place in the social structure of his community, are not all these written in the chronicles of the. Works of de Groot and Shirokogaroff
The Bearskin, another pictographic reconnaissance from primitive prophylactic to present-day panache
Among the several hundred archaic forms preserved in the inscriptions on the bone fragments of the Honan Find which research has failed to identify there is a minority demanding special attention. And in it perhaps the most outstanding challenge to aggressive epigraphists is the figure appearing in Plate II. This inscription discloses a human shape of grotesque design. Above the emaciated and linear frontal figure of a man, appears an object cove…
Sunlight and Moonshine
It seems difficult and sometimes futile to try to pursue in this year 1942 the essentially peaceful studies in ancient Chinese writing that have appeared for many years in the JRAS
Symbols of Parentage in Archaic Chinese Part II
MR. KUO MO-JO, in his essay to establish the original identity of the characters now written tsu and shê , asserts that in early ages men held the male organ to be a manifestation of divine power. Sometimes, he says, they termed this power tsu , and sometimes shê , as in the expression ch'ih shê , to hurry to the shê , that is, to hurry forward bearing the phallic divinity on their shoulders. This custom still exists. A gentleman of Yang Chou (a …
Symbols of Parentage in Archaic Chinese
A Few lines of introduction to the following paper seem advisable before presenting to readers of the Journal a summary of an essay by that ultra-modern Chinese scholar, Mr. Kuo Mo-jo. On the other hand it may be that the limited but steadily growing body of students of Chinese art and archæology in America and Europe will, so to speak, sniff at any “introduction” to Mr. Kuo. However, let it go. In brief the author is deeply versed in the history…
Records of David's Deer as Hunted by Shang-yin Sovereigns
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The Rescue of the Chinese Rhinoceros
Some twenty-four years ago there was carried on a high and formidable argument between two Professors of Chinese concerning the rhinoceros and his Chinese name. In the end each contestant remained, as is usual in such literary warfare or “incidents”, of the same opinion still, while the third parties to the dispute finding their minds in some confusion on the matter, concluded that either Professor A was in the right, or else, perhaps, it was Pro…
The Ancestral Message
In the passage of nearly forty years since the first discovery of the Honan relics and their strange inscriptions, great has been the progress in their decipherment. How much and how solid this gain in knowledge has been, the present writer can perhaps appreciate better than more recent students, when he looks back at his own notes and the correspondence that passed betweenthe late Mr. Frank Chalfant and himself
Archaic Chinese Characters Being some intensive studies in them
Having already discussed the first of the two forms used for Summer, we may examine the second, and attractive theory of its origin put forward by Mr. Yeh Yü-sên. This theory is freely cited by Mr. Tung Tso-pin in Part 3 of the Excavations at Anyang (Academia Sinica ), 1931, especially on pp. 511–514. Mr. Yeh observes: “When the ancients invented characters for the Four Seasons—Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter—I surmise that in each case they d…
Archaic Chinese Characters Being some intensive studies in them
The solution about to be proposed is quite new. By such Chinese specialists as may see it, if any, I confidently expect it to be derided. By the few Western students who concern themselves with this branch of inquiry, it will perhaps seem rather improper, rather improbable, and “rather interesting, all the same”
Archaic Chinese Characters Being some intensive studies in them Part 1
The Chinese numeral 4 is a syllable pronounced ssŭ , and was originally written by four horizontal lines, , but by the time of the Han Dynasty (and perhaps before, for the formoccurs on the Stone Drums), and ever since, the scription as above was substituted. And the question with which this note is concerned is: What was the origin of this substituted form ? The author of the Shuo Wen makes the Lesser Seal Version , his 503rd Radical, and descri…
The Cas-chrom v. the Lei-ssŭ
The curious ancient figure illustrated in the last paragraph of Part I of this paper, ingeniously conjectured by Mr. Hsü-Chung-shu to stand for the modern character chüeh , in its sense of nobility, servesto introduce us to a peculiar word and its character, often used in Chinese texts dealing with the old-time agriculture
The Cas-chrom v. the Lei-ssŭ
The four unfamiliar syllables in the title of this paper seemed as originally written so like the heading of some important appeal from one of the less known Colonies to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, that a more informative sub-title appeared advisable
A Note on the Maneless Horse in Ancient China
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Archaic Sons and Grandsons A Study of a Chinese Complication Complex
At first sight it must seem strange that words so commonplace and simple, in whatever language, as sons and grandsons, should deserve discussion in the Journal of our Society. But any reader who should endure to the end of the following pages would readily admit that simplicity is the last quality tha emerges from the fog of forms and symbols examined
A Chinese Bronze Ritual Vessel
THE archaic Chinese bronze, which is the subject of this article, is in the collection of Captain the Hon. E. G. Spencer-Churchill. It belongs to the class called chüeh , which, among the ritual wine vessels, has the smallest capacity. A Chinese tradition assigns the origin of the peculiar shape to the form of a bird's head, and some support for this view is derived from supposed pictograms which are accepted as having been used to write chüeh in…
The Dragon Terrestrial and the Dragon Celestial
The formula “ Ch'ên is of the Dragon kind”, , ch'ên shu lung , applies to one of the , or Twelve Affinities, according to which each of the Cycle of Twelve Branches has an affinity to one of Twelve Animals. When this Cycle of Twelve Beasts was first known to the Chinese may be uncertain, but pure chance can hardly be responsible for the association in the list of ch'ên with lung , which must, at least, be the expression of a long tradition of aff…
Where the Rainbow Ends (An Introduction to the Dragon Terrestrial and the Dragon Celestial)
1. Among the less common Chinese decorative or symbolic themes is one whose norm may reasonably be regarded as a semi-circle terminating at each end in an animal's head. But arcs of the circle both less and more than the half are perhaps more frequent, and the curvature is likewise bent, as the applicational needs demand, into other modes of arch or loop. Instances of penannular bracelets and torques in other lands are perhaps also derivatives wh…
The Dragon Terrestrial and the Dragon Celestial
The Dragon is a Being, or rather, a nonentity, that though he never existed, has had to be invented. The human race soon found that it could not get on without him, and the imaginative fecundity of primitive man was called in to redress a biological oversight of Nature. When summoned to mythologic but influential life, he discovered no sinecure in his functions. Constant appeals from Oriental Rulers, Shamans, and the populace generally, to “co-or…
The Human Figure in Archaic Chinese Writing. Part II
In the Journal for 1923, pp. 386–90, in the Series of “Pictographic Reconnaissances”, Part V, a small set of ancient forms was discussed and illustrated which I gave reasons for considering the original scription of the word hsün , now written and meaning to question, examine with authority, and, in the phrase, chih hsün , standing for “bound captives”. It was there maintained that the archaic form represented a kneeling human figure having the a…
The Human Figure in Archaic Chinese Writing. A Study in Attitudes
Portraiture, as we now know, was a very early member of the nascent arts of primitive man. Palæolithic men were of necessity hunters. What they hunted on the plains and among the hills for food and covering, that they painted or carved on the walls and roofs of their cave dwellings and cliff shelters. The reindeer, the bison, the horse, the elephant were favourite objects of their vivid and impressionistic genius. What they lacked of imagination …
Pictographic Reconnaissances. Part IX and Index
All things must come to an end, and this series of papers, now running for ten years, is herewith concluded. This final instalment consists of an index, enabling a reader to find at once any character discussed in the series, with the year of the Journal and the page in the latter where the character appears. Naturally the years cannot pass without disclosing much that could be added or improved or qualified. But remembering that he who begins by…
Pictographic Reconnaissances
The enlightened generosity of certain anonymous Japanese gentlemen has given to the author of the Ku Chou P'ien the power to publish the outcome of some thirty-five years' researches on the ancient writing of China in the splendid form in which it now appears. As a scholar thus allowed to see such a result in his own lifetime, Mr. Tadasuke Tanata should he a happy man
Sino-Iranica
Sino-Iranica : Chinese Contributions to the History of Civilization in Ancient Iran. With special reference to the History of Cultivated Plants and Products. By Berthold Laufer, Curator of Anthropology. Chicago, 1919. - Volume 52 Issue 4
The Shaman or Chinese Wu
The Shaman or Wizard of the proto-historic Orient, his vocation, his reputation, his strange psychosis, his claim to thaumaturgic powers, and his place in the social structure of his community, are not all these written in the chronicles of the. Works of de Groot and Shirokogaroff
Pictographic Reconnaissances. Part VI
In presenting another instalment of these papers, and after reading the proofs, I am reminded (without being cheered) of the quatrain of an alleged competitor in the Newdigate prize poem on “Nebuchadnezzar”: “Nebuchadnezzar, when put out to grass, Like stallèd oxen, or the patient ass, Said, as he munched the unaccustomed food, ‘It may be eaten, but it is not good.’”
A Cryptic Message and a New Solution
This defiant little inscription of three words has held its secret through twenty centuries. On the Bone relics of the Honan Find it is not uncommon, but in the inscribed Bronzes, even the oldest, it is not met. Brief and perhaps paltry as it may seem, it has not failed to engage the attention of Chinese spécialists without any very convincing conclusion. But on one point Chinese critics do concur. These small three-word entries are no part of th…
Pictographic Reconnaissances. Part IX and Index
All things must come to an end, and this series of papers, now running for ten years, is herewith concluded. This final instalment consists of an index, enabling a reader to find at once any character discussed in the series, with the year of the Journal and the page in the latter where the character appears. Naturally the years cannot pass without disclosing much that could be added or improved or qualified. But remembering that he who begins by…
Pictographic Reconnaissances. Part VII
It would have been better that the explanation following should have formed an introduction to the series of papers under this heading, rather than a belated interjection at or near their end. But at any rate circumstances require that the explanation should not be further delayed
Pictographic Reconnaissances. Part V
A rigorous restriction of space in the Journal , which to the editor has all the virtues of necessity, and to the contributor most of the features of calamity, confines me to a few lines of preliminary matter. I should have wished to explain the use in these papers of the words “ ideogram ” and “ ideographic ”, but I cannot. I should also have liked to include entries on the important characters yin and yany of the dualistic system, which occur i…
Pictographic Reconnaissances. Part IV
That “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet”, Rudyard Kipling has impressed on us, and the dictum is widely accepted as an article of popular faith. But as an axiom it is not be to pressed without certain qualifications. Beyond doubt there prevail certain antipathies, dissympathies, and as it were static estṛangements of populations, deeply rooted in racial sub-consciousness, but capable of becoming profoundly dynamic unde…
Chau Ju-Kua
Chau Ju-Kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab Trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, entitled Chu Fan Chï. Translated from the Chinese and Annotated by Friedrich Hirth and W. W. Rockhill. St. Petersburg: Printing Office of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1912. - Volume 44 Issue 4
Art. IX.—On the Origin and Earlier History of the Chinese Coinage
The origin and earlier history of the Chinese coinage have been discussed in several European works, of which the most important are, in order of date, Dr. W. Vissering's “On Chinese Currency,” Leiden, 1877; Professor S. M. Georgievsky's “Drevneishia moneti Kitaichev” (The Ancient Chinese Coins), 1889; and M. Terrien de Lacouperie's “Catalogue of Chinese Coins,” printed by order of the Trustees of the British Museum, 1892
XXVIII Chinese Writing in the Chou Dynasty in the Light of Recent Discoveries
It is the aim of the following paper to present to the readers of this Journal the problem of the origin of Chinese writing as it appears at the opening of the historical period in the ninth century b.c., and to give some account of the new light thrown upon the subject by recent discoveries in North China. It is also my hope to show that there are reasons for endeavouring to stir an interest in this question of origin, and some grounds for defin…
The Bushell Bowl
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XXVII. A Funeral Elegy and a Family Tree inscribed on bone
The inscribed bone-fragment illustrated in the accompanying plates forms part of my collection, and was discovered among the large find of similar objects unearthed in 1899 in the province of Honan, North China. It is one of the larger pieces, measuring in its greatest length 10 inches by 71⁄4 at its broadest. The bone is part of the shoulder-blade of some domesticated animal apparently, and among the peculiarities it presents is the fact that at…
Note on the above
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Chau Ju-Kua
Chau Ju-Kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab Trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, entitled Chu Fan Chï. Translated from the Chinese and Annotated by Friedrich Hirth and W. W. Rockhill. St. Petersburg: Printing Office of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1912. - Volume 44 Issue 4
XVI. The Chinese Bronze known as the “Bushell Bowl” and its Inscription
In a recent paper in this Journal on “Chinese Writing in the Chou Dynasty in the light of Recent Discoveries”, I expressed the hope that I should be able shortly to publish in the Journal a list of the characters contained in the Chinese inscription of the Bushell Bowl, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, with their Lesser Seal equivalents, and some additional forms besides
A Royal Relic of Ancient China
XVII Dragon and Alligator
The objects illustrated in the accompanying Plates are published with the aim of bringing to the knowledge of Orientalists and others a type of Chinese relic believed to be of unique design, and presenting an interest of more than one kind. Despite their excellent preservation, they must, for reasons given below, date back at least to the later half of the third century B.C., but how much earlier than that remains at present uncertain
XXX. A Chinese Pedigree on a Tablet-Disk
In a scholarly paper contributed to Baessler-Archiv this year under the title “Frühgeschichtliche Orakelknochen aus China”, the author, Fräulein Anna Bernhardi, has discussed various questions arising from the great find of inscribed bones in Honan Province, and has illustrated her paper partly from the Wirtz Collection of these objects now in the Royal Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin, partly from specimens in other cabinets. Considerable space …
Lun-Hêng. Part II
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Notes on “Les Documents Chinois Découverts par Aurel Stein dans les sables du Turkestan Oriental”, By Édouard Chavannes
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Les Documents Chinois découverts par Aurel Stein dans les sables du Turkestan Oriental. Publiés et traduits par Édouard Chavannes, Membre de l'Institut, Professeur au Collège de France. Oxford
Les Documents Chinois découverts par Aurel Stein dans les sables du Turkestan Oriental. Publiés et traduits par Édouard Chavannes, Membre de l'Institut, Professeur au Collège de France. Oxford: Imprimerie de l'Université, 1913. - Volume 46 Issue 2
Chinese Clay Figures. Part I
Chinese Clay Figures. Part I: Prolegomena on the History of Defensive Armor. By Berthold Laufer, Associate Curator of Asiatic Ethnology in the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. 1914. - Volume 47 Issue 3
V The Archives of an Oracle
Meagre and disappointing as it seems, the collection of phrases and sentences that follows has been extorted from the nearly nine hundred specimens of inscribed bone and horn fragments in my possession only after close study during six years. Whether the result is worth the work and the time, it is useless now to ask. But such as they are, I have desired to put before other workers the deciphered extracts from these unusual records for two reason…
XVI. The Archives of an Oracle
In these Notes the numbers refer to the similarly numbered phrases and sentences published in the January number of the Journal. 5. Here, and elsewhere on these bones, the word hsiang is always written with the once homophonous character for sheep, yang , both probably in ancient times being pronounced approximately tsāng
XX. The Chinese Numerals and their Notational Systems. Part II
With this Part we attack the series of the Normal Numerals, together with those characters which have been singled out, as homophones of more elaborate structure, to serve as Accountants' or Bankers' alternative forms, less liable to fraudulent alteration
XI. The Chinese Numerals and their Notational Systems
The Chinese people have two systems in current and concurrent use for writing their Numerals. Of these, one is the ordinary notation with characters of pictographic origin, except the first three cyphers
XXIII. Pictographic Reconnaissances
Chance molested by caprice has dictated the selection of the characters studied in the following paper, and now that their tale is told and the MS. copied, I find myself wishing I had made a different list and followed another method
The Wind, the Phœnix, and a String of Shells
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Funérailles de M. Édouard Chavannes, Membre de l'Academie. Le jeudi, 31 Janvier, 1918
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X. Pictographic Reconnaissances. Part II
It is one pleasing feature of the absence of logical method in these palæographic excursions and alarums, that interesting irrelevancies are more easily introduced and less severely regarded than where a stricter scheme has been pursued
Prehistoric China. Part I
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XIII. Pictographic Reconnaissances. Part III
A bad plan, they say, is better than no plan at all, and I think it must be so. Perhaps, too, a less morbid attraction to perplexing problems might have avoided, or more Pelmanistic concentration reduced, the unanticipated disproportion of treatment in the present instalment of these Papers
Sino-Iranica
Sino-Iranica : Chinese Contributions to the History of Civilization in Ancient Iran. With special reference to the History of Cultivated Plants and Products. By Berthold Laufer, Curator of Anthropology. Chicago, 1919. - Volume 52 Issue 4
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