Stephen Wootton Bushell


Stephen Wootton Bushell CMG MD was an English physician and amateur Orientalist who made important contributions to the study of Chinese ceramics, Chinese coins and the decipherment of the Tangut script.

Biography

Bushell was born in Ash-next-Sandwich in Kent, the second son of William Bushell and Sarah Frances Bushell, University of London, where he excelled, winning prizes and scholarships in Organic Chemistry and Materia Medica, Biology, Geology and Palaeontology, Medicine and Midwifery, and Forensic Medicine. After graduation in 1866, he worked as a house surgeon at Guy's Hospital, and then in 1867 he worked as a resident medical officer at Bethlem Royal Hospital. He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University of London on 13 May 1868.
In January 1868, at the recommendation of Dr William Lockhart, Bushell was offered a position as physician to the British Legation in Beijing, China, with an annual salary of £600 and the promise that he could also engage in private practice at Beijing if he wished. He set sail for Shanghai on the last day of the next month, and except for a few periods of leave, he remained there for the next thirty-two years. On his first return to England, in 1874, he was married to Florence Jane Mathews, the daughter of a doctor from Bickley in Kent, and they returned to China together the next year.
Whilst in China he learned to read and speak Chinese, and published a number of articles on the art, numismatics, geography and history of China. He finally retired and returned to England in 1900, due to ill-health. After returning to England he published a number of books on Chinese porcelain and other subjects.
In 1897 he was made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George.

Travels in China

In autumn 1872, Bushell and Thomas G. Grosvenor, a secretary at the British Legation, went on a journey beyond the Great Wall of China to Inner Mongolia, and visited the ruins of Shangdu, the fabled summer capital of the Yuan dynasty. They were the first Europeans to visit Shangdu since the time of Marco Polo.

Study of ancient scripts

Bushell made important contributions to the study of the extinct Tangut, Khitan large, Khitan small, Jurchen and 'Phags-pa scripts.

Tangut

One of Bushell's many interests was numismatics, and he collected a number of coins issued by the Western Xia state with inscriptions in the Tangut script. To read the inscriptions on these coins he attempted to decipher as many Tangut characters as possible by comparing the Chinese and Tangut texts on a bilingual stele from Liangzhou. Using this methodology, in 1896 he was able to determine the meaning of thirty-seven Tangut characters, and could thereby identify the inscription on one of his Western Xia coins as corresponding to the Chinese Dà'ān Bǎoqián 大安寶錢. Although Bushell did not try to reconstruct the pronunciation of any of the Tangut characters, he was the first scholar to be able to decipher the meaning of any Tangut characters.
Bushell was also able to confirm that the unknown script on the six-script inscription on the Cloud Platform at Juyongguan on the Great Wall of China was Tangut, and not Jurchen, as had been asserted by several previous authors, in particular Alexander Wylie in an 1870 paper entitled "An ancient Buddhist inscription at Keu-yung Kwan".

Jurchen

Bushell discussed the Jurchen script in an article he published in 1897 entitled "Inscriptions in the Juchen and Allied Scripts". In this article he analyses in detail the Jurchen inscription on a stele from Kaifeng that has a list of "metropolitan graduates".

Khitan

Bushell discussed the Khitan small character and large character scripts in his article on the Jurchen script published in 1897, but did not attempt any decipherment or engage in detailed study of the two scripts. However he did publish a facsimile of a bronze 'fish tally' with a small character Khitan inscription that he had in his collection. Although he misidentified the script on the tally as "large Jurchen", the tally is an important example of the small Khitan script.

'Phags-pa

Although he did not actually publish anything relating to the 'Phags-pa script, during his time in China he acquired the only extant manuscript copy of the early 14th century rhyming dictionary of Chinese written in the 'Phags-pa script, which was sold to the British Museum by his widow in April 1909. This is the only surviving example of a dictionary written in the 'Phags-pa script, and is the single most important source for studying how Chinese was written in the 'Phags-pa script during the Yuan dynasty. This manuscript is now held at the British Library.

Study of Chinese art and ceramics

Bushell is best known for his books on Chinese art, and, in particular, Chinese porcelain. In 1883 he was appointed by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to purchase Chinese porcelain on their behalf, and he acquired a total of 233 pieces for the museum. He also acquired a number of items for the British Museum, including a Tibetan skull cup in 1887 and collection of bronzes in 1898.
Shortly before his retirement, and in the years following his return to England in 1900, he produced a number of important books on Chinese art, including two handbooks for the Victoria and Albert Museum, Oriental Ceramic Art and Chinese Art, and a catalogue of the Morgan Collection of Chinese porcelains, which at that time was on display at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. He also worked with Dr. George F. Kunz and Heber R. Bishop in writing producing the catalog of the Bishop Collection of Jade at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1906. His final work was a book about 16th-century Chinese porcelain with 83 coloured plates, incorporating a manuscript text in Chinese by Xiang Yuanbian 項元汴, a wealthy art collector from Jiaxing in Zhejiang province, with a translation into English by Bushell. The final proof copy of this book was delivered to his home just a few hours after Bushell's death.
After his death, his widow donated his collection of ceramics, antique pottery sherds, ancient Chinese knife and spade coins, hanging scrolls, and various other artefacts to the British Museum.

Study of Numismatics

Bushell also made important contributions to the study of East Asian numismatics. He was a member of the Royal Numismatic Society, collected coins, and wrote papers about Chinese numismatics - see the list of the publications below. After his death, his widow donated his Chinese coins to the British Museum.

Works

With William Thompson Walters and William M. Laffan
With William M. Laffan