﻿NO. 7 SMITHSONIAN EXPLORATIONS, I926 12/ 



Mongol Dynasty, the Taoists took hold of them and converted them 

 into Taoist temples. They were, however, soon restored to the Bud- 

 dhists again. 



The purpose of my own visit to this place was to explore the lime- 

 stone caves ; that of Mr. Yiian. to investigate the coal region still 

 further west ; so on the morning of the next day, each of us pursued 

 his own task. The whole region here is limestone formation, divisible 

 into many different strata. A deep ravine cuts the ground into two 

 perpendicular walls, north and south, in which are several rows of 

 caves, most of them inaccessible, while some are well fitted for early 

 human habitation. Of these I visited five, in the hope of unearthing 

 some paleolithic remains, but the search proved fruitless. We left 

 the mountain on the next day by a different route and made a further 

 search at the foot of the mountain — only to be disappointed again. I 

 had a long discussion with Mr. Yiian in the evening as to the exact 

 route we should follow, and finally came to the conclusion that, so 

 far as my personal work was concerned. I should follow [tartly the 

 historical sites and partly the i)robably pre-historic settlements as my 

 guides, so at lo a. m. on March 2(1 we left for Yao-ling. 



'I'lie exact location of the tomb of the Emperor Yao is a long- 

 debated question. Previous to the Mongol Dynasty, this tomb was 

 usually located in Shantung. The tomb in P'ing-yang Fu was not so 

 well known at that time. The argument for its location in Shansi is 

 that as Yao retired at quite an advanced age, it is improbable that 

 he should subsequently have inspected his distant domains and died 

 so far away from home. As the tomb in P'ing-yang Fu is near his 

 supposed capital, it is probably the true one — if. indeed, there be a 

 tomb of this Emperor ; but since the very existence of such a person 

 is doubtful, we can only consider both tombs as variations, merely, of 

 the same myth. All these considerations passed through my mind 

 while we were riding towards the tomb of the Emperor. When we 

 inquired about the way to Yao-ling, the natives simply stared at us, 

 and it was a long time before we made out that the local name for 

 the place is Shen-lin (Spirit Forest). There we arrived late in the 

 evening, and found it surrounded by a wall enclosing a building of 

 modest size, a solitary temple in the midst of mountains, where we 

 stayed that night. 



The tomb is quite high, pyramidal in shape and half encircled by a 

 rivulet (fig. 134). It was officially lost for a long time, but was re- 

 discovered in the Ming Dynasty, according to the inscription in the 

 temple. The arguments as to whether this is the real tomb are dififi- 



