68 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



full of devils; while, in another, Hoang-ti gains his victory 

 by the aid of arms obtained from a celestial virgin, and 

 only by that means overthrows Khiang, who "had the 

 wings and body of a beast. n l 



The tribes which began the settlement of China are 

 believed to have maintained a jade traffic with western 

 Asia, the trade route of which was also a channel for the 

 trans-continental flow of intelligence. This commerce, 

 which had gradually decreased, appears to have revived 

 after the conquest of the country in uoo B. C., and the 

 establishment of a new dynasty therein by the Tchoii, an 

 energetic and powerful race of Kirghiz. origin, which had 

 occupied for centuries the territory bounding China on 

 the northwest. Not only did new learning arrive through 

 the increased traffic, but the Tchoii themselves had prob- 

 ably already acquired much astronomical and astrological 

 lore from Khorasmia, where a focus of such knowledge 

 had been established by a branch of the Aryan race in 

 about 1304 B. C. 2 



An interval of fifteen centuries separates the legend of 

 Hoang-ti from the one next in chronological order, wherein 

 a supposed reference to the magnet is contained, and which 

 according to one Chinese authority ascribes knowledge of 

 polarity to Tchoii-Kung, the founder of the Tchoii dy- 

 nasty, who is supposed to have obtained it from the sources 

 above mentioned. 3 A later and more complete version is 

 found in an historical memoir 4 written in the first half of 

 the second century of our era, a production which is, in 

 fact, an attempt to collect such fragments of ancient annals 

 as were believed to have survived the wholesale burning of 

 a thousand years before. It does not appear that this work 



, cit. snp., 102. 2 De Lacouperie, cit. sup. 



3 De Lacouperie, cit. sup., noting an amplified version of the lost 5 6th 

 chapter of Shoo King, written by Kwei Kuh tze in 4th century B. C. 



* The Szu Ki or Historic Memoirs of Szu ma thsian quoted in Thoung 

 Kian Rang Mou, Ed. of 1701, vol. I, fol. 9. Reproduced by Klaproth, 

 cit. sup., 79. 



