The linguistic ideas of Edward Harper Parker.

• Author: Branner, David Pragger
• Position: British historian

INTRODUCTION

Edward Harper Parker (1849-1926) was a remarkable scholar whose work is now quite forgotten. He is best known as a British historian of China from the era of Herbert Giles (1845-1935), that is to say, from the last third of Queen Victoria's reign to the period between the World Wars. Parker and Giles were easily the most influential writers of their time in introducing Chinese culture to the English-speaking world. If they were not properly historians according to today's fashion, they were at any rate history writers of great influence in their day. And even if that day was the zenith of meddling by the European world in the political affairs of East and South Asia, it would be foolish to condemn the leading men of that time automatically and without open-minded examination. Philip Marshall, evaluating the contributions to Chinese history of both Parker and Giles, writes of an "unmistakably positive thrust in the works of Giles and Parker that played such an important role in the West's appreciation of China and the Chinese" (1984: 538).

In his day, Parker was known to the foreign community in China as an indefatigable worker and one of the most knowledgeable of non-Chinese about the Chinese language. A British consular official, he left a great many books and articles on Chinese history, economics, and foreign relations. He read Chinese constantly, and seems to have had an insatiable appetite for miscellaneous facts. He took a number of long trips in southern and western China and published travelogues about his experiences, which (since he apparently spoke excellent Chinese and was unquenchably curious about the details of the world around him) are still informative today. In the backs of certain journals one finds page after page crammed with his random jottings on every conceivable Chinese subject - and many of the early columns were evidently unsigned. In 1899 he remarked that he had been at this for "a full quarter century" (1899d: 92). He published notes on the Hmong and Loi languages (1892b and c), articles on the regional names of various plants, a long review of Maa Jiannjong's (1845-1900) Chinese grammar, lists of Hakka sayings and popular songs (shan'ge), and even a whole series of (not very good) rhymed English translations of classical poetry. He translated extensively from ancient and modern Chinese histories. But the most distinctive and least appreciated element of Parker's frabjous intellectual life and personality was his research on Chinese dialectology, which is the subject of this paper.

PARKER'S LIFE

I have been able to find only very sketchy information about Parker's life. The two best sources are Werner (1926) and Who Was Who (1929). Parker was from Liverpool. His mother died when he was eleven. His father was a "surgeon" - in the parlance of the day, a kind of manual tradesman, of considerably lower standing than a "physician." Parker studied just a year of Chinese in London under the eminent James Summers (1828-91) and then went, at the age of twenty, to work in Peking as Student Interpreter for the British Consular Service in 1869. He lived in China from then until his retirement in 1895, apart from stays in England and Canada in 1875-77 when he studied law, and in 1882 when he was called to the Bar. Over his several decades in the consular service in China he served in more than a dozen Chinese cities as well as in Korea, and was involved as an advisor to his Government in Burma on what were apparently intelligence matters involving China. Parker must have enjoyed a fairly strenuous life: in addition to his travels, he lived in Szechwan for a year, and in Hainan for two. According to one of his obituaries he had a Chinese wife - a very rare thing among Chinahands in his day. I have been able to find no information about her, though since he has so much Hakka material - popular sayings, shan'ge (1881 a, 1882e, 1883b), family histories - perhaps she was Hakka, without bound feet? Like "squaw men" in every society he had a reputation for special familiarity with his wife's culture, and his linguistic expertise was no doubt a part of that; I suppose he must have spoken Chinese at home with his wife. After his return to Liverpool he was appointed Reader in Chinese at University College there, and in 1901 he additionally became Professor of Chinese at Victoria University in Manchester. Parker had a daughter, Mary, who seems to have been living alone with or near him in Liverpool at the time of his death.

Edward Werner remembered Parker as being "of medium stature, fairly stout, broad-chested, and with rather large blue eyes" (1926: ii). Parker's recreations were listed in Who Was Who as travelling and walking, which I find fitting and in keeping with the image of the man as something of an explorer, a man with great curiosity. Philip Marshall describes him, based on a photograph taken at the age of 70, as "a much milder looking individual" than the "naturally combative" Giles (1984: 525). He presented a famously cantankerous public face, but in that he was no different from many other ferocious scholars of his time - one thinks of the "bare knuckles and rolled-up sleeves" of Julien, Schlegel, Pelliot, Karlgren (Coblin 1989: 314). Imperialism bred imperious men. From his writing style one can guess that Parker must have been sarcastic and energetic, and evidently it was out of this ebullience that he chose Juangtzyy's surname for himself at the very beginning of his career (1886b: 51).

Parker expent much gleeful energy on his feud with Giles. In the years after the publication of Giles' dictionary, the pages of the China Review were filled with notes on errata for it. Many of these were submitted by Parker, but there are also lengthy notes by Erwin von Zach (1872-1942) and by some of Giles' original assistants. Parker's criticisms, however, went far beyond those of the others, and were the cause of the falling out between the two men. It was Parker who insisted on pointing out ad nauseam the endless material that Giles had lifted wholesale from Williams' 1874 dictionary, not even correcting many of Williams' errors and omissions. And Parker's errata, in particular, which appeared in his regular column at the end of the bi-monthly China Review, were hardly offered in the spirit of gentle correction. Marshall has not quite got the right word when he talks about Parker's "vitriolic attacks on the works of his fellow Sinologists" (1984: 525); it was not so much a matter of vitriol as of ostentatious haughtiness and playful scorn, in the heady tradition of the day. Here is a small sample of his winning style:

It is easy, in surveying Giles' Dictionary, to indicate many of the books the authors have not read; and indeed it would not be difficult to indicate those (not very many beyond the classics) they have read. (1894: 54)

I observe that Mr. Giles has come to terrible grief over the character . . . The reason evidently is that he has confused it with . . . But he has gone further. He has suppressed all the dialect sounds which I gave for the character and referred his readers to the totally different sound . . . . This is another instance of how lexicographers go on copying each other's mistakes. . . . Mr. Giles has no excuse as Kang-hi is perfectly plain. (1896: 558)

Since Mr. Giles has drawn attention to his own many virtues, I have been giving him a fair chance, but I find there is no use my going to Giles [' dictionary] for anything new. (1897: 740)

. . . A thorough knowledge of Chinese etymology (which Giles does not possess) is in any case necessary before K'ang-hi can be cited. (1898b: 173)

Giles' Dictionary is the last place to look for any intelligent explanation of. . . . (1898b: 176)

I have a few remarks to make on some of the Sir-Oracle utterances of the soi-disant Pope of Sinology. . . . (1899b: 280)

[Giles] places me on a level with himself, as an "obfuscator of origins," and a "suppressor of evidences." (1899c: 83)

Mr. Giles, who catches at any straw in order to support his absurd theory about the forgery of Lao-tsz's classic and personal history, argues that. . . . (1908: 174)

For his part, Giles wrote contemptuously of Parker's linguistic ability in such essays as "Critical Notes on some Translations from the Chinese by Mr. Parker" (1886) and "Mr. Parker as a Translator" (1896). But nothing in Giles' derisive public writings can match Parker's droll badgering - his acerbity was often eclipsed by his insolent sarcasm. Those were truly the great days of sinology, were they not? It is a pity that no one reads entertaining passages like these any more:

Giles' Dictionary affords endless sport to the merry, and we may look forward to many a long year of sparring yet. I find it quite a mental relief, after the serious studies of the day, to indulge in a little Giles-baiting. It is all the more agreeable, in that I know it can never do any harm; in pachydermatousness Mr. Giles would give points to a hippopotamus, if not indeed to a rhinoceros; and there is not more danger of my fine shafts wounding his grizzly hide than there is of a dum-dum bullet piercing the latter pachyderm's skin. I am glad to see "the boys" are waking up to the discussion. Mr. E. H. Fraser is not exactly a foeman worthy of my vainglorious steel, and in any case I can't be bothered hunting up his references and arguing with him; but I welcome him into the arena, if only for the purpose of airing views, and putting some life into sinology: moreover, I will answer anything, the issues of which are clearly defined, without referring me back to previous issues. Just as old China is being badgered by shrimp-like nibbles at Kiao Chow, Kwang-chou Wan, Port Arthur, &c., so is the rudis indigestaque moles of Giles' Dictionary being mercilessly gnawed at by the pigmies of sinology such as myself. If the basis is Williams[' dictionary]; if the dialects and introduction are mine; if the...