CHINESE CHRONCLOGY. 65 
the 644 years of the received chronology are too many, and 
the 508 of the Bamboo Books too few; and the difference 
between the two schemes has now increased to 208 years. 
To the Rise of the Hsia Dynasty. A Solar Eclipse. 
10. To Hsia, the first of the three feudal dynasties, the 
common scheme assigns 439 years, and the Bamboo Annals 
403. The former makes it begin in B.o. 2205, and the latter 
in 1961. The difference in the two schemes is not great as 
regards the duration of the dynasty, though they agree only 
in the length of three of the seventeen reigns which each 
specifies. Mencius says that from Yao and Shun to T’ang 
“there were 500 years and more.” If we allow, as both 
schemes do, 150 years for the period of Yéo and Shun, and 
add that number to 439 or 403, the sum in each case is under 
600 years. ‘The period usually assigned to the Hsia dynasty 
must be nearly correct. In the 4th of the Books of Hsia in 
the Shf, it is said that during the reign of Chung K’ang, 
the 4th of its kings, there was an eclipse of the sun in the 
sign Scorpio. The particular year is not mentioned, but 
only the month and the day. The received chronology 
refers it to the first year of his reign, the year B.c. 2159. 
There was, however, no such eclipse in that year; but 
Father Gaubil calculated that such a phenomenon occurred 
on the very month and day of Chung K’ang’s 5th year, 
Subsequent calculations, however, seem to have brought it 
out that that eclipse took place in the night, and could not 
have been visible at the then capital of China. Chinese 
astronomers of the 'l’ang dynasty are said to have proved 
that there was an eclipse fulfilling the conditions of the text 
of the Sha in B.c. 2127, which would take us into the reign 
of Chung K’ang’s son. I have been loth to give up the 
eclipse of Gaubil; but while any uncertainty attaches to it 
it should not be pressed into the service of chronology.* 
The period of Ydo and Shun. 
11. We come now to the earliest period of Chinese history 
for which the claim of documentary evidence can be ad- 
vanced with any show of reason, the period, namely, of Yao 
and Shun. 
The first two Parts of the Shi Ching are occupied with the 
* While writing this paper, I have received an elaborate article on this 
Eclipse by Dr. G. Schlegel, Professor of Chinese in the University of 
Leyden, and Dr. Franz Kiihnert, of the Imperial Observatory, Vienna. 
They think the most likely date for it is the 7th May, 2165 B.c. 
