There is nothing esoteric in Buddhism. Buddhism is the very opposite of esoteric--it is a religion for the people at large, for the poor, the suffering, the ill-treated. Buddha protests against the very idea of keeping anything secret. There was much more of that esoteric teaching in Brâhmanism. There was the system of caste, which deprived the Sûdras, at least, of many religious privileges. But I do say that even in Brâhmanism there is _no such thing as an esoteric interpretation of the Sâstras._ The Sâstras have but one meaning, and all who had been properly prepared by education had access to them. There are some artificial poems, which are so written as to admit of two interpretations. They are very wonderful, but they have nothing to do with philosophical doctrines. Again, there are erotic poems in Sanscrit which are explained as celebrating the love and union between the soul and God. But all this is perfectly well known, there is no mystery in it.
At the end of January Pierre went to Moscow and stayed in an annex of his house which had not been burned. He called on Count Rostopchin and on some acquaintances who were back in Moscow, and he intended to leave for Petersburg two days later. Everybody was celebrating the victory, everything was bubbling with life in the ruined but reviving city. Everyone was pleased to see Pierre, everyone wished to meet him, and everyone questioned him about what he had seen. Pierre felt particularly well disposed toward them all, but was now instinctively on his guard for fear of binding himself in any way. To all questions put to him-- whether important or quite trifling--such as: Where would he live? Was he going to rebuild? When was he going to Petersburg and would he mind taking a parcel for someone?--he replied: "Yes, perhaps," or, "I think so," and so on.
His immediate successor, Cn. Naevius (d. c. 200 B.C.), was not, like Livius, a Greek, but either a Roman citizen or, more probably, a Campanian who enjoyed the limited citizenship of a Latin and who had served in the Roman army in the first Punic war. His first appearance as a dramatic author was in 235. He adapted both tragedies and comedies from the Greek, but the bent of his genius, the tastes of his audience, and the condition of the language developed through the active intercourse and business of life, gave a greater impulse to comedy than to tragedy. Naevius tried to use the theatre, as it had been used by the writers of the Old Comedy of Athens, for the purposes of political warfare, and thus seems to have anticipated by a century the part played by Lucilius. But his attacks upon the Roman aristocracy, especially the Metelli, were resented by their objects; and Naevius, after being imprisoned, had to retire in his old age into banishment. He was not only the first in point of time, and according to ancient testimony one of the first in point of merit, among the comic poets of Rome, and in spirit, though not in form, the earliest of the line of Roman satirists, but he was also the oldest of the national poets. Besides celebrating the success of M. Claudius Marcellus in 222 over the Gauls in a play called _Clastidium_, he gave the first specimen of the _fabula praetexta_ in his _Alimonium Romuli et Remi_, based on the most national of all Roman traditions. Still more important service was rendered by him in his long Saturnian poem on the first Punic war, in which he not only told the story of contemporary events but gave shape to the legend of the settlement of Aeneas in Latium,--the theme ultimately adopted for the great national epic of Rome. Entry: LATIN
GRANET, FRANÇOIS MARIUS (1777-1849), French painter, was born at Aix in Provence, on the 17th of December 1777; his father was a small builder. The boy's strong desires led his parents to place him--after some preliminary teaching from a passing Italian artist--in a free school of art directed by M. Constantin, a landscape painter of some reputation. In 1793 Granet followed the volunteers of Aix to the siege of Toulon, at the close of which he obtained employment as a decorator in the arsenal. Whilst a lad he had, at Aix, made the acquaintance of the young comte de Forbin, and upon his invitation Granet, in the year 1797, went to Paris. De Forbin was one of the pupils of David, and Granet entered the same studio. Later he got possession of a cell in the convent of Capuchins, which, having served for a manufactory of assignats during the Revolution, was afterwards inhabited almost exclusively by artists. In the changing lights and shadows of the corridors of the Capuchins, Granet found the materials for that one picture to the painting of which, with varying success, he devoted his life. In 1802 he left Paris for Rome, where he remained until 1819, when he returned to Paris, bringing with him besides various other works one of fourteen repetitions of his celebrated Choeur des Capucins, executed in 1811. The figures of the monks celebrating mass are taken in this subject as a substantive part of the architectural effect, and this is the case with all Granet's works, even with those in which the figure subject would seem to assert its importance, and its historical or romantic interest. "Stella painting a Madonna on his Prison Wall," 1810 (Leuchtenberg collection); "Sodoma à l'hôpital," 1815 (Louvre); "Basilique basse de St François d'Assise," 1823 (Louvre); "Rachat de prisonniers," 1831 (Louvre); "Mort de Poussin," 1834 (Villa Demidoff, Florence), are among his principal works; all are marked by the same peculiarities, everything is sacrificed to tone. In 1819 Louis Philippe decorated Granet, and afterwards named him Chevalier de l'Ordre St Michel, and Conservateur des tableaux de Versailles (1826). He became member of the institute in 1830; but in spite of these honours, and the ties which bound him to M. de Forbin, then director of the Louvre, Granet constantly returned to Rome. After 1848 he retired to Aix, immediately lost his wife, and died himself on the 21st of November 1849. He bequeathed to his native town the greater part of his fortune and all his collections, now exhibited in the Musée, together with a very fine portrait of the donor painted by Ingres in 1811. Entry: GRANET
Epicurus died of stone in 270 B.C. He left his property, consisting of the garden ([Greek: Kêpoi Epikourou]), a house in Melite (the south-west quarter of Athens), and apparently some funds besides, to two trustees on behalf of his society, and for the special interest of some youthful members. The garden was set apart for the use of the school; the house became the house of Hermarchus and his fellow-philosophers during his lifetime. The surplus proceeds of the property were further to be applied to maintain a yearly offering in commemoration of his departed father, mother and brothers, to pay the expenses incurred in celebrating his own birthday every year on the 7th of the month Gamelion, and for a social gathering of the sect on the 20th of every month in honour of himself and Metrodorus. Besides similar tributes in honour of his brothers and Polyaenus, he directed the trustees to be guardians of the son of Polyaenus and the son of Metrodorus; whilst the daughter of the last mentioned was to be married by the guardians to some member of the society who should be approved of by Hermarchus. His four slaves, three men and one woman, were left their freedom. His books passed to Hermarchus. Entry: EPICURUS
HUME, ALEXANDER (c. 1557-1609), Scottish poet, second son of Patrick Hume of Polwarth, Berwickshire, was born, probably at Reidbrais, one of his family's houses, about 1557. It has been generally assumed that he is the Alexander Hume who matriculated at St Mary's college, St Andrews, in 1571, and graduated in 1574. In _Ane Epistle to Maister Gilbert Montcreif_ (Moncrieff), _mediciner to the Kings Majestie, wherein is set downe the Experience of the Authours youth_, he relates the course of his disillusionment. He says he spent four years in France before beginning to study law in the courts at Edinburgh (l. 136). After three years' experience there he abandoned law in disgust and sought a post at court (_ib._ l. 241). Still dissatisfied, he took orders, and became in 1597 minister of Logic, near Stirling, where he lived until his death on the 4th of December 1609. His best-known work is his _Hymns, or Sacred Songs_ (printed by Robert Waldegrave at Edinburgh in 1599, and dedicated to Elizabeth Melvill, Lady Comrie) containing an epistle to the Scottish youth, urging them to abandon vanity for religion. One poem of the collection, entitled "A description of the day Estivall," a sketch of a summer's day and its occupations, has found its way into several anthologies. "The Triumph of the Lord after the Manner of Men" is a song of victory of some merit, celebrating the defeat of the Armada in 1588. His prose works include _Ane Treatise of Conscience_ (Edinburgh, 1594), _A Treatise of the Felicitie of the Life to come_ (Edinburgh, 1594), and _Ane Afold Admonitioun to the Ministerie of Scotland_. The last is an argument against prelacy. Hume's elder brother, Lord Polwarth, was probably one of the combatants in the famous "Flyting betwixt Montgomerie and Polwart." Entry: HUME
After this failure Louis set to work to repair his mistakes. The duke of Bourbon was won over by the gift of the government of the centre of France, and Dunois and Chabannes by restoring them their estates. Two months after he had granted Normandy to Charles, he took advantage of a quarrel between the duke of Brittany and his brother to take it again, sending the duke of Bourbon "to aid" Charles, while Dunois and Chabannes prepared for the struggle with Burgundy. The death of Duke Philip, on the 15th of June 1467, gave Charles the Bold a free hand. He gained over Edward IV. of England, whose sister Margaret he married; but while he was celebrating the wedding Louis invaded Brittany and detached Duke Francis from alliance with him. Normandy was completely reduced. The king had won a great triumph. It was followed by his greatest mistake. Eager as he always was to try diplomacy instead of war, Louis sent a gift of 60,000 golden crowns to Charles and secured a safe conduct from him for an interview. The interview took place on the 9th of October 1468 at Péronne. News came on the 11th that, instigated by the king of France, the people of Liége had massacred their bishop and the ducal governor. The news was false, but Charles, furious at such apparent duplicity, took Louis prisoner, only releasing him, three days later, on the king signing a treaty which granted Flanders freedom from interference from the parlement of Paris, and agreeing to accompany Charles to the siege of his own ally, Liége. Louis made light of the whole incident in his letters, but it marked the greatest humiliation of his life, and he was only too glad to find a scapegoat in Cardinal Jean Balue, who was accused of having plotted the treason of Péronne. Balue thereupon joined Guillaume de Harancourt, bishop of Verdun, in an intrigue to induce Charles of France to demand Champagne and Brie in accordance with the king's promise to Charles the Bold, instead of distant Guienne where the king was determined to place him. The discovery of this conspiracy placed these two high dignitaries in prison (April 1469). Balue (q.v.) spent eleven years in prison quarters, comfortable enough, in spite of the legend to the contrary, while Harancourt was shut up in an iron cage until 1482. Then Louis, inducing his brother to accept Guienne,--where, surrounded by faithful royal officers, he was harmless for the time being,--undertook to play off the Lancastrians against Edward IV. who, as the ally of Charles the Bold, was menacing the coast of Normandy. Warwick, the king-maker, and Queen Margaret were aided in the expedition which in 1470 again placed Henry VI. upon the English throne. In the autumn Louis himself took the offensive, and royal troops overran Picardy and the Maconnais to Burgundy itself. But the tide turned against Louis in 1471. While Edward IV. won back England by the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury, Charles the Bold besieged Amiens, and Louis was glad to make a truce, availing himself of the double dealing of the constable, the count of Saint Pol, who, trying to win an independent position for himself in Picardy, refused his aid to Charles unless he would definitely join the French nobility in another rising against the king. This rising was to be aided by the invasion of France by John II. of Aragon, Yolande, duchess of Savoy, and Edward IV. of England, who was to be given the old Plantagenet inheritance. The country was saved a desperate civil war by the death of the king's brother, Charles, the nominal head of the coalition, on the 24th of May 1472. Louis' joy on receiving news of this death knew no bounds. Charles the Bold, who had again invaded France, failed to take Beauvais, and was obliged to make a lasting truce. His projects were henceforth to be directed towards Germany. Louis then forced the duke of Brittany to make peace, and turned against John V. count of Armagnac, whose death at the opening of March 1473 ended the power of one of the most dangerous houses of the south. The first period of Louis' reign was closed, and with it closed for ever the danger of dismemberment of France. John of Aragon continued the war in Roussillon and Cerdagne, which Louis had seized ten years before, and a most desperate rising of the inhabitants protracted the struggle for two years. After the capture of Perpignan on the 10th of March 1475, the wise and temperate government of Imbert de Batarnay and Boffile de Juge slowly pacified the new provinces. The death of Gaston IV. count of Foix in 1472 opened up the long diplomatic struggle for Navarre, which was destined to pass to the loyal family of Albret shortly after the death of Louis. His policy had won the line of the Pyrenees for France. Entry: LOUIS
IBYCUS, of Rhegium in Italy, Greek lyric poet, contemporary of Anacreon, flourished in the 6th century B.C. Notwithstanding his good position at home, he lived a wandering life, and spent a considerable time at the court of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos. The story of his death is thus related: While in the neighbourhood of Corinth, the poet was mortally wounded by robbers. As he lay dying he saw a flock of cranes flying overhead, and called upon them to avenge his death. The murderers betook themselves to Corinth, and soon after, while sitting in the theatre, saw the cranes hovering above. One of them, either in alarm or jest, ejaculated, "Behold the avengers of Ibycus," and thus gave the clue to the detection of the crime (Plutarch, _De Garrulitate_, xiv.). The phrase, "the cranes of Ibycus," passed into a proverb among the Greeks for the discovery of crime through divine intervention. According to Suidas, Ibycus wrote seven books of lyrics, to some extent mythical and heroic, but mainly erotic (Cicero, _Tusc. Disp._ iv. 33), celebrating the charms of beautiful youths and girls. F. G. Welcker suggests that they were sung by choruses of boys at the "beauty competitions" held at Lesbos. Although the metre and dialect are Dorian, the poems breathe the spirit of Aeolian melic poetry. Entry: IBYCUS
Justin is a most valuable authority for the life of the Christian Church in the middle of the 2nd century. While we have elsewhere no connected account of this, Justin's _Apology_ contains a few paragraphs (61 seq.), which give a vivid description of the public worship of the Church and its method of celebrating the sacraments (Baptism and the Eucharist). And from this it is clear that though, as a theologian, Justin wished to go his own way, as a believing Christian he was ready to make his standpoint that of the Church and its baptismal confession of faith. His works are also of great value for the history of the New Testament writings. He knows of no canon of the New Testament, i.e. no fixed and inclusive collection of the apostolic writings. His sources for the teachings of Jesus are the "Memoirs of the Apostles," by which are probably to be understood the Synoptic Gospels (without the Gospel according to St John), which, according to his account, were read along with the prophetic writings at the public services. From his writings we derive the impression of an amiable personality, who is honestly at pains to arrive at an understanding with his opponents. As a theologian, he is of wide sympathies; as a writer, he is often diffuse and somewhat dull. There are not many traces of any particular literary influence of his writings upon the Christian Church, and this need not surprise us. The Church as a whole took but little interest in apologetics and polemics, nay, had at times even an instinctive feeling that in these controversies that which she held holy might easily suffer loss. Thus Justin's writings were not much read, and at the present time both the _Apology_ and the _Dialogue_ are preserved in but a single MS. (cod. Paris, 450, A.D. 1364). Entry: JUSTIN
FLODOARD (894-966), French chronicler, was born at Epernay, and educated at Reims in the cathedral school which had been established by Archbishop Fulcon (822-900). As canon of Reims, and favourite of the archbishops Herivaeus (d. 922) and Seulfus (d. 925), he occupied while still young an important position at the archiepiscopal court, but was twice deprived of his benefices by Heribert, count of Vermandois, on account of his steady opposition to the election of the count's infant son to the archbishopric. Upon the final triumph of Archbishop Artold in 947, Flodoard became for a time his chief adviser, but withdrew to a monastery in 952, and spent the remaining years of his life in literary and devotional work. His history of the cathedral church at Reims (_Historia Remensis Ecclesiae_) is one of the most remarkable productions of the 10th century. Flodoard had been given charge of the episcopal archives, and constructed his history out of the original texts, which he generally reproduces in full; the documents for the period of Hincmar being especially valuable. The _Annales_ which Flodoard wrote year by year from 919 to 966 are doubly important, by reason of the author's honesty and the central position of Reims in European affairs in his time. Flodoard's poetical works are of hardly less historical interest. The long poem celebrating the triumph of Christ and His saints was called forth by the favour shown him by Pope Leo VII., during whose pontificate he visited Rome, and he devotes fourteen books to the history of the popes. Entry: FLODOARD
BIRDWOOD, SIR GEORGE CHRISTOPHER MOLESWORTH (1832- ), Anglo-Indian official and writer, son of General Christopher Birdwood, was born at Belgaum, in the Bombay presidency, on the 8th of December 1832. He was educated at Plymouth grammar-school and Edinburgh University, where he took his M.D. degree. Entering the Bombay Medical Service in 1854, he served in the Persian War of 1856-57, and subsequently became professor at the Grant Medical College, registrar of the university, curator of the museum, and sheriff at Bombay, besides acting as secretary of the Asiatic and Horticultural societies. His work on the _Economic Vegetable Products of the Bombay Presidency_ reached its twelfth edition in 1868. He interested himself prominently also in the municipal life of the city, where he acquired great influence and popularity. He was obliged by ill-health in 1868 to return to England, where he entered the revenue and statistics department of the India Office (1871-1902). Whilst engaged there he published important volumes on the industrial arts of India, the ancient records of the India Office, and the first letter-book of the East India Company. He devoted much time and energy to the encouragement of Indian art, on various aspects of which he wrote valuable monographs, and his name was identified with the representation of India at all the principal international exhibitions from 1857 to 1901. (See _Journal of Indian Art_, vol. viii. "The Life and Work of Sir George Birdwood.") His researches on the subject of incense (_Trans. Linn. Soc._ xxvii., 1871; _Ency. Brit._ 9th ed., "Incense," 1881; revised for the present edition by him), a good example of his mastery of detail, have made his historical and botanical account of this subject a classic. Nor can his lifelong association with journalism of the best sort be overlooked. From boyhood he was a diligent contributor of special information to magazines and newspapers; in India he helped to convert the _Standard_ into the _Times of India_, and edited the Bombay _Saturday Review_; and after his return to London he wrote for the _Pall Mall, Athenaeum, Academy_, and _Times_; and with Chenery, the editor of _The Times_, and others he took the initiative (1882) in celebrating the anniversary of Lord Beaconsfield's death as "Primrose Day" (April 19). He kept up his connexion with India by constant contributions to the Indian press; and his long friendships with Indian princes and the leading educated native Indians made his intimate knowledge of the country of peculiar value in the handling of the problems of the Indian empire. In 1887 he was created a K.C.I.E.; and, besides being given his LL.D. degree by Cambridge, he was also made an officer of the Legion of Honour and a laureate of the French Academy. Entry: BIRDWOOD
Now this story is, _mutatis mutandis_, the story of Buddha. It will suffice to recall the Buddha's education in a secluded palace, his encounter successively with a decrepit old man, with a man in mortal disease and poverty, with a dead body, and, lastly, with a religious recluse radiant with peace and dignity, and his consequent abandonment of his princely state for the ascetic life in the jungle. Some of the correspondences in the two stories are most minute, and even the phraseology, in which some of the details of Josaphat's history are described, almost literally renders the Sanskrit of the _Lalita Vistara_. More than that, the very word Joasaph or Josaphat (Arabic, _Y[=u]dasatf_) is a corruption of Bodisat due to a confusion between the Arabic letters for Y and B, and Bodisatva is a common title for the Buddha in the many birth-stories that clustered round the life of the sage. There are good reasons for thinking that the Christian story did not originate with John of Damascus, and a strong case has been made out by Zotenberg that it reflects the religious struggles and disputes of the early 7th century in Syria, and that the Greek text was edited by a monk of Saint Saba named John, his version being the source of all later texts and translations. How much older than this the Christian story is, we cannot tell, but it is interesting to remember that it embodies in the form of a speech the "Apology" of the 2nd-century philosopher Aristides. After its appearance among the writings of John of Damascus, it was incorporated with Simeon Metaphrastes' _Lives of the Saints_ (c. 950), and thence gained great vogue, being translated into almost every European language. A famous Icelandic version was made for Prince Hakon early in the 13th century. In the East, too, it took on new life and Catholic missionaries freely used it in their propaganda. Thus a Tagala (Philippine) translation was brought out at Manila in 1712. Besides furnishing the early playwrights with material for miracle plays, it has supplied episodes and apologues to many a writer, including Boccaccio, John Gower and Shakespeare. Rudolph of Ems about 1220 expanded it into a long poem of 16,000 lines, celebrating the victory of Christian over heathen teaching. The heroes of the romance have even attained saintly rank. Their names were inserted by Petrus de Natalibus in his _Catalogus Sanctorum_ (c. 1380), and Cardinal Baronius included them in the official _Martyrologium_ authorized by Sixtus V. (1585-1590) under the date of the 27th of November. In the Orthodox Eastern Church "the holy Josaph, son of Abener, king of India" is allotted the 26th of August. Thus unwittingly Gautama the Buddha has come to official recognition as a saint in two great branches of the Catholic Church, and no one will say that he does not deserve the honour. A church dedicated _Divo Josaphat_ in Palermo is probably not the only one of its kind. Entry: BARLAAM
In the very earliest inscriptions that have come down to us, the so-called [Ch][Ch] _ku-wên_ or "ancient figures," all the above-mentioned forms occur. None are wholly pictorial, with one or two unimportant exceptions. These early inscriptions are found on bronzes dating from the half-legendary period extending from the beginning of the Shang dynasty in the 18th century B.C., or possibly earlier, down to a point in the reign of King Hsüan of the Chou dynasty, generally fixed at 827 B.C. They have been carefully reproduced and for the most part deciphered by painstaking Chinese archaeologists, and form the subject of many voluminous works. The following may be taken as a specimen, in which it will be noticed that only the last character is unmistakably pictorial: This is read: [Ch][Ch][Ch][Ch]--"Shên made [this] precious _ting_." These ancient bronzes, which mainly take the shape of bells, cauldrons and sacrificial utensils, were until within the last decade our sole source of information concerning the origin and early history of Chinese writing. But recently a large number of inscribed bone fragments have been excavated in the north of China, providing new and unexpected matter for investigation. The inscriptions on these bones have already furnished a list of nearly 2500 separate characters, of which not more than about 600 have been so far identified. They appear to be responses given by professional soothsayers to private individuals who came to them seeking the aid of divination in the affairs of their daily life. It is difficult to fix their date with much exactitude. The script, though less archaic than that of the earlier bronzes, is nevertheless of an exceedingly free and irregular type. Judging by the style of the inscriptions alone, one would be inclined to assign them to the early years of the Chou dynasty, say 1100 B.C. But Mr L.C. Hopkins thinks that they represent a mode of writing already obsolete at the time of their production, and retained of set purpose by the diviners from obscurantist motives, much as the ancient hieroglyphics were employed by the Egyptian priesthood. He would therefore date them about 500 years later, or only half a century before the birth of Confucius. If that is so, they are merely late specimens of the "ancient figures" appearing long after the latter had made way for a new and more conventionalized form of writing. This new writing is called in Chinese [Ch] _chuan_, which is commonly rendered by the word Seal, for the somewhat unscientific reason that many ages afterwards it was generally adopted for use on seals. Under the Chou dynasty, however, as well as the two succeeding it, the meaning of the word was not "seal," but "sinuous curves," as made in writing. It has accordingly been suggested that this epoch marks the first introduction into China of the brush in place of the bamboo or wooden pencil with frayed end which was used with some kind of colouring matter or varnish. There are many arguments both for and against this view; but it is unquestionable, at any rate, that the introduction of a supple implement like the brush at the very time when the forms of characters were fast becoming crystallized and fixed, would be sufficient to account for a great revolution in the style of writing. Authentic specimens of the [Ch][Ch] _ta chuan_, older or Greater Seal writing, are exceedingly rare. But it is generally believed that the inscriptions on the famous stone drums, now at Peking, date from the reign of King Hsüan, and they may therefore with practical certainty be cited as examples of the Greater Seal in its original form. These "drums" are really ten roughly chiselled mountain boulders, which were discovered in the early part of the 7th century, lying half buried in the ground near Fêng-hsiang Fu in the province of Shensi. On them are engraved ten odes, a complete ode being cut on each drum, celebrating an Imperial hunting and fishing expedition in that part of the country. A facsimile of one of these, taken from an old rubbing and reproduced in Dr Bushell's _Handbook of Chinese Art_, shows that great strides had been made in this writing towards symmetry, compactness and conventionalism. The vogue of the Greater Seal appears to have lasted until the reign of the First Emperor, 221-210 B.C. (see _History_), when a further modification took place. For many centuries China had been split up into a number of practically independent states, and this circumstance seems to have led to considerable variations in the styles of writing. Having succeeded in unifying the empire, the First Emperor proceeded, on the advice of his minister Li Ss[)u], to standardize its script by ordaining that only the style in use in his own state of Ch'in should henceforward be employed throughout China. It is clear, then, that this new style of writing was nothing more than the Greater Seal characters in the form they had assumed after several centuries of evolution, with numerous abbreviations and modifications. It was afterwards known as the [Ch][Ch] _hsiao chuan_, or Lesser Seal, and is familiar to us from the _Shuo Wen_ dictionary (see _Literature_). Though a decided improvement on what had gone before, the Lesser Seal was destined to have but a short career of undisputed supremacy. Reform was in the air; and something less cumbrous was soon felt to be necessary by the clerks who had to supply the immense quantity of written reports demanded by the First Emperor. Thus it came about that a yet simpler and certainly more artistic form of writing was already in use, though not universally so, not long after the decree abolishing the Greater Seal. This [Ch][Ch] _li shu_, or "official script," as it is called, shows a great advance on the Seal character; so much so that one cannot help suspecting the traditional account of its invention. It is perhaps more likely to have been directly evolved from the Greater Seal. If the Lesser Seal was the script of the semi-barbarous state of Ch'in, we should certainly expect to find a more highly developed system of writing in some of the other states. Unlike the Seal, the _li shu_ is perfectly legible to one acquainted only with the modern character, from which indeed it differs but in minor details. How long the Lesser Seal continued to exist side by side with the _li shu_ is a question which cannot be answered with certainty. It was evidently quite obsolete, however, at the time of the compilation of the _Shuo Wên_, about a hundred years after the Christian era. As for the Greater Seal and still earlier forms of writing, they were not merely obsolete but had fallen into utter oblivion before the Han Dynasty was fifty years old. When a number of classical texts were discovered bricked up in old houses about 150 B.C., the style of writing was considered so singular by the literati of the period that they refused to believe it was the ordinary ancient character at all, and nicknamed it _k'o-t'ou shu_, "tadpole character," from some fancied resemblance in shape. The theory that these tadpole characters were not Chinese but a species of cuneiform script, in which the wedges might possibly suggest tadpoles, must be dismissed as too wildly improbable for serious consideration; but we may advert for a moment to a famous inscription in which the real tadpole characters of antiquity are said to appear. This is on a stone tablet alleged to have been erected on Mount Hêng in the modern Hupeh by the legendary Emperor Yü, as a record of his labours in draining away the great flood which submerged part of China in the 23rd century B.C. After more than one fruitless search, the actual monument is said to have been discovered on a peak of the mountain in A.D. 1212, and a transcription was made, which may be seen reproduced as a curiosity in Legge's _Classics_, vol. iii. For several reasons, however, the whole affair must be regarded as a gross imposture. Entry: 6