Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

4450 CHINESE FISHINGcovered by this period, if the Line claimed adherents, ^ Netsmade of fine bamboo, with bags arranged in front of woodenstockades planted on the banks of rivers, 2 were the generalmethod. 3Although the Chinese have produced quite a considerableliterature on Fishing, the path of a writer unversed intheir language is, from the absence of translations, compassedabout with many difficulties. The trail winds dimand Serbonian, even if, as was my good fortune, a friendlyhand holds out now and then a torch to guide his falteringsteps.The dividing Hne between the historical and the nonhistoricalin China does not cut clearly and without breaks.History as distinct from legend was assumed till recently tobegin between 900 and 800 B.C.,but three archaeological discoverieshave affected previous chronological conceptions.1. The inscribed hone fragments (till the advent of paper,c. 100 B.C., bones, stones, bronzes and tablets of wood servedfor papyri) found in Honan apparently carry as far back asc. 1500 B.C., and shed quite new light on the character of theearly Chinese script. Among the divination tablets I hadhoped for some fish omens similar to those of Assyria, Greece,and Rome, or some trace of the belief still current in SouthernChina that certain fish, as the Dolphin in the Mediterranean,were weather-prophets : but, owing probably to the drycharacter of the country of which they are the voice or ratherthe testament, none survive.^2. The wooden tablets at Tunhuang along the Great Wallwhich illumine social conditions and deal largely with thecommissariat of the army.3. The MSS. at the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, foundabout 1907. Coming from a Buddhist monastery, they givein the main Buddhist texts, but also (as do the Egyptian^ / shih ching, i. 5, v. i., ii. 8, apud Vi''erner." Ibid. i. 5, iii. 4.3 Ibid. i. 8. ii. 5.* To my friend Dr. Lionel Giles of the British Museum, and to his father,Prof. H. A. Giles of Cambridge, my thanks are due for leading and kindly lights.' See L. C. Hopkins in New China Review, 1917, 1918, 1919.