Mister Ma’s Grammar Guide to Literary Chinese. The Original Chinese Text of the Mashi Wentong with Chinese-English Character and Word Glossaries

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This Grammar on Literary Chinese by Ma Jianzhong (1845-1900) was the first of its kind ever to be written by a native Chinese on Chinese and was published in 1898. It came at a time when Imperial China was in decline not only by loss of her sovereignty to the then Western colonial powers and when there was a strong feeling of insecurity about the relevance of ancient native Chinese culture in a modern world and its continued existence under the rising pressure to modernise in order to cope with the West and the rest of the modern world. Chinese Language Planning and Reform for the purpose of creating a national standard language and to spread literacy in all parts of society was seen as an essential part of such a modernisation process. Ma’s work was only a first step in a longer series of research work and language planning and reform projects to follow in the decades after him. This book offers Ma’s original Chinese text with Chinese-English glossaries at the end for Western students and researchers in Chinese Linguistics.