The following Lectures were delivered during March, 1902, at
Columbia University, in the city of New York, to inaugurate the
foundation by General Horace W. Carpentier of the Dean Lung Chair of
Chinese.
By the express desire of the authorities of Columbia University
these Lectures are now printed, and they may serve to record an
important and interesting departure in Oriental studies.
It is not pretended that Chinese scholarship will be in any way
advanced by this publication. The Lectures, slight in themselves, were
never meant for advanced students, but rather to draw attention to, and
possibly arouse some interest in, a subject which will occupy a larger
space in the future than in the present or in the past.
HERBERT A. GILES.
Cambridge, England,
April 15, 1902.