The Chinese Name for the Turks

Abstract

by Professor Homer H. Dubs. I am concerned over the policy of one of our great foundations in promoting research generally into the recent or current situation in China to the neglect of the past. I am worried over the decreasing interest in humanistic studies about China in China and Japan. Already there is a noticeable shortage of young Chinese acquainted with their own classical tradition. Needless to say, I am also concerned over a political situation which bars all but a handful of interested Europeans and Japanese and Australians from travelling in and residing on mainland China, there to soak up the language and mores of the area, consult with Chinese scholars and see the sites and treasures of the past. Think of it: a whole generation of young teachers in our institutions here and elsewhere who have never been to Peking, or visited Ch'ang-an, or travelled up the Yangtze Gorges, or climbed T'ai-shan, or seen the Buddhist grottoes at Ta-t'ung or Lungmen! How can they get the feel of what they are reading without this geographic background? True, Arthur Waley has done it. But how many Arthur Waleys are there? One final word: every now and then I take heart because of indications that European and American scholars outside our field of learning are at long last beginning to take Asia into account when they write in general of any subject under the sun. This practice is by no means universal. Several years ago I suggested to the editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica that they revise some of their general articles to take Asia into account. Specifically I mentioned the one on Calligraphy, which dealt almost exclusively with European penmanship. I pointed out that there were marvels of calligraphy in the Arabic and Chinese worlds, and that the University of Chicago Press had even published a book in 1935 by Lucy Driscoll and Kenji Toda on the Chinese art. But my letter must have found its way into the dustbin, for the 1964 edition of the EB has in it the same old screed. But there are exceptions. Here is my most recent example. It occurs in a review of Maurice Daumas (ed.) : Histoire generate des techniques I, written by Lynn White, Jr. White takes Daumas to task for brushing aside the civilizations of Asia and the New World as having no bearings on the western industrial era, and adds: The technicians of the non-European cultures have been vastly ingenious and patient. It is difficult to name a minor-not to say major-invention or discovery which has not been absorbed into our modern technology. Here is a true student of the middle ages speaking. This is the kind of talk I think we all like to hear. May it become more common.