CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 67 
affect our judgment. As the balance of credibility inclines in 
favour of the longer estimate, up to the 24th century B.c., 
the chronology of China may be pronounced to be historic. 
Can we trace our way back to Hwang Tt? 
12. We must plunge now into the shadowy ages before YAo, 
and try if we can diseover in them any traces of what can be 
considered historical narration.. There must have been men, 
subjects and rulers, anterior to him. Even in the “Sh,” 
Shun speaks in one place of “the barbarous tribes that were 
disturbing the Great, Bright Land,’* and in another, of “the 
emblematic figures delineated by the ancients”+ on robes of 
state. Can we find anywhere contemporaneous accounts of 
those “ancient” men? It is plain to me that Sze-m4 Ch’ien 
had no written documents with dates in them earlier than 
those of the Shi Ching. He begins his history, as I have 
already stated, with Hwang Ti. Hwang Ti is followed by 
his grandson, Chwan-hsii. After him comes the Ti Ch’4, also 
a grandson of Hwang Ti, but not a son of Chwan-hsii. 
Then we have two sons of this Ti Ch’4, first Chih, who soon 
comes somehow to a bad end, and gives place to his brother, 
the famous Yao. But in his chapter on the five Ti, Ch’ien 
assigns no length to the reign of Hwang Ti, nor to those of 
the sovereigns between him and Yao. 
The Bamboo Annals assign to Hwang Ti a reign of 
100 years; to his son, whom Chien barely mentions, a very 
short record, with no specification of the length of his reign ; 
to Chwan-Hsii, 78 years, and to the Ti Ch’ 63 years. A note 
adds that his son Chih was deposed after a short reign of 
nine years. 
In the ordinary chronological tables, six years are allowed 
to Ch’ih, Yao’s brother. Yao’s first year is B.C. 2357; the Ti 
Ch’i’s, 2432; Chwan-hsii’s, 2510; Hwang Ti’s son Ch’ih’s, 
2594; and Hwang Ti’s, 2697. 
When we compare what Ch’ien says about Hwang Ti with 
what we find in other books, his language must be pro- 
nounced very careful and subdued. The Bamboo Annals, for 
instance, say that in Hwang Ti’s 59th year the chiefs of “ the 
Perforated Breasts” and of * the Long Legs” came and made 
their submission to him. There is a book called 7'he Book 
of Hills and Rivers (concerning which Mr. Wylie inclines to 
the opinion that it existed in the Chau dynasty and portions 
of it probably earlier), in this book it is said that anciently 
* Part TI, i; 20; + Part: IT)-iv, 4: 
