272 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. II. 



cally anterior data furnished by Indian Budhist inscriptions and native 

 histories, and by materials contributed in the annals of the Chinese 

 dynasties, and in the San Kokf Tsu Ran To Sets, so far as it relates to 

 the peninsula of Corea. 



The oldest and most important royal name in the inscriptions which 

 have been under consideration is that of King Sagota. In other inscrip- 

 tions, he and his successors are called Kings of the Kita in various 

 divisions, such as the Raba-kita and the Yoba-kita. These are the 

 Khitan of the Chinese historians, who are said to have occupied northern 

 China from before the middle of the tenth century until 1123 A.D^'. 

 One of the earliest Khitan emperors of China, from whose dynastic title 

 Marco Polo picked up the name Cathay, was Shekingtang, the founder 

 of the sub-dynasty of the How-Tsin in 936. His successor was Tse- 

 wang or Chuh-Te, and his, Le-Tsung-e, who is called a prince of How. 

 She-King-Tang, a brave general and wise administrator, adopted the 

 name of Kaou-Tsoo. In more than one Siberian inscription, the suc- 

 cessor of Sagota is called Dzuta or Shidzuta, a name sufficiently like that 

 of Chuh-Te, the successor of She-King-Tang, to demand attention. 

 The ancestry of Shekingtang or Sheketang is not given by the Chinese 

 historians, who represent him as a man of low extraction, but his im- 

 mediate predecessors were Ming tsung and his son Minte. It is very 

 evident that the Leaous, Hows, and Khitan, under Sheketang and 

 Chuhte, are the people, who, in the end of the fifth century, dwelt be- 

 tween the Obi and the Yenisei in Siberia; but Sheketang and Chuhte 

 belong, according to the Chinese annals, to the first half of the tenth 

 century^". Yet the Khitan were in Liaou-Tung long before, for the 

 historians of Corea state that they took possession of the northern part 

 of that peninsula between 684 and 689, or 250 years earlier, although 

 still 200 years later than the dated inscription of Sagota^". The Khitan 

 were strangers, invaders, and conquerors of China, whither they brought 

 not only their customs, language, and religion, but also their annals, 

 including the names of their former kings, Sagota and Dzuta. The 

 Chinese historians, without question, copied the names of these and other 

 kings, buried under Siberian tumuli, with some facts of their reigns, as if 

 they had been rulers in the Celestial Empire, equally with their successors 

 of four centuries later. There may, of course, have been a later Sagota 

 with a son or successor Dzuta, named after those of Siberia, for the 

 tendency of the Khitan is to repeat names of illustrious persons from 

 generation to generation, but the probability is that these Siberian kings 

 are the Chinese Sheketang and Chuhte of the Khitan. 



The Japanese Sagota is called Saga-no-teno or Sagateno, and he is 



