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One of the inost brilliant military exploits of the century was the famous expedition of Ch'en T'ang from Chinese Turkestan into Sogdiana in 36 B.C., to take the head of the Hun Shaui-yii (emperor) Chih-chih. This man had murdered a Chinese envoy, had fled to Sogdiana, and established his capital on the Talas River east of the Issyk Kul 1). Professor Duyvendak has translated the Chinese account of their attack upon that capital, and shown that this account was probably made from a series of paintings 2). He has furthermore published some random remarks of mine about that expedition 3). The present paper constitutes an appendix to Dr. Duyvendak's study and a correction of a statement I made in those remarks. The particular phrase I propose to study occurs in the description of the defenders at Chih-chih's capital. The Chinese account describes "more than a hundred foot-soldiers, lined up on either side of the gate in a fish-scale formation" 4). Now a "fish-scale formation

Han chi, j 'J " , by Hsiin Yiieh f *9 (lived A.D. 148-209), which says after mentioning Kao-tsu, "Taboo Pang. Chi ; was the 'style' of [Liu] Pang. [Pang] means 'the state"'. Now "the State" is entirely too appropriate a given name for an Emperor who was born on a farm and only raised himself to the emperorship by his own efforts. Furthermore the Shih chi a p (by Ssui-ma Ch'ien J,J M , lived ca. 145-86 B.C.) merely says, "His 'style' was Chi" (cf. E. Chavannes, Memoires Historiques, II, 325), and does not mention any given name. The Han Shu 'J (mostly by Pan Ku Jf [,, lived 32-92 A.D.) says merely that his surname was Liu, and does not cite his name. This history however makes various persons address him by name. Before he acquired a title, these persons always call him Liu Chi. Thus, not only is the name Pang suspicious from its meaning, but the oldest sources carefully refrain from mentioning it. Yet if Hsiin Yiieh knew that Kao-tsu's given name was Pang, Ssu-ma

In a previous article, "The Date of the Shang Period" 1), it was asserted that the astronomical evidence provided by certain inscribed oracle bones published by Mr. Dung Dzo-bin of Academia Sinica makes definite an eleventh-century date for the Jou conquest and places King Wu-ding's reign about I2oo B.C. Now Mr. Dung has independently published his own interpretation, in which he continues to support a date earlier by a century 2). A report and discussion of his paper may consequently be of interest. Mr. Dung offers substantially the same account of the seven eclipse records as I did 3). He adds two more eclipse records, which I did not consider, because they mention neither a day nor a month, so that their dates are indeterminate. In dating these eclipses, he employs my "Canon of Lunar Eclipses for Anyang and China, -I400 to -IOOO" 4). For the most important eclipse, that mentioned in Eclipse Record IV, Mr. Dung still accepts the eclipse of I3Ii B.C., Nov.

It has often been said that the nature of the Chinese language forbids the effective development of a philosophy because of the impossibility of expressing philosophical ideas in that language. This notion has been expressed most recently by Prof. Heinrich Hackmann in his book, Chinesische Philosophie. His argument is as follows: All culture, especially intellectual culture, is built upon language. But the nature of the Chineselanguage is such that it forbids the clear and accurate expression of philosophical ideas. The Chinese language is monosyllabic, tonic, and uninflected. As a result, there can be only a small number of syllables, about 400, and only a small number of characters in common use, 2-4000. There are two inevitable results: (1) a paucity of words for expressing concepts, with the result that it is impossible to express a highly developed world of ideas of objects and concepts, connections and relations, such as is required for the development of an adequate philosophy, and (2) a paucity of means for expressing relationships something which is achieved in other languages by grammatical inflections and grammatical constructions -; with the result that it is impossible to attain scientific accuracy and

Wang Mang was one of the cleverest moulders of educated public opinion that China has ever had. By his manipulations of that opinion he was able to take advantage of the fact that three successive emperors had no living sons to succeed them. He thus made himself emperor (9 A.D.). Thereupon he inaugurated certain economic reforms, which, combined with a series of natural calamities and misgovernment, brought about banditry, rebellion, and his own death. He has been praised as "one of the greatest statesmen China has ever produiced", a socialist who was ahead of his time and who failed merely because he lacked the modern facilities for government checks and controls 1). Marxists have lauded him as the world's first revolutionist. My own study of the documents, however, has convinced me that Wang really cared little or nothing for the interests of the people; he ruthlessly sacrificed them in furthering his own ends. The credit for his remarkable reforms must be given to the Confucian literati who first propounded these conceptions and incor