70 REV. PROFESSOR JAMES LEGGE, M.A., ON 
longest appendix tothe Yi Ching,* where those three person- 
ages are spoken of as having led the way in the processes of 
civilisation, and taught the savage people around them how 
to make nets for hunting and fishing, to cultivate grain and 
vegetables, to build houses for themselves instead of living 
in caves, and to make and use coffins, to subdue the ox and 
the horse for their service, and to hold markets at which to 
exchange commodities for their mutual benefit. 
Those old fathers especially invented written characters, 
and substituted them for the knotted cords which had been 
previously employed to-maintain the memory of events and 
engagements. 
Because these things are related in that appendix to the 
Yi Ching, the authority of Confucius has been pleaded for 
them; but only those portions of that appendix which com- 
mence with the formula, “The Master said,” can with any 
show of reason be ascribed to him, and that formula is not 
prefixed to those statements. All that we can say about 
them is, that when the appendixes to the Yi were made, pro- 
bably towards the end of the Chau dynasty and after the 
death of Confucius, such stories may have been current, and 
were gathered up and stereotyped in The Great Supplement. 
But nothing is said there about when or how long those 
three Hwang reigned. The late Mr. Mayers, adopting 
B.c. 2697 as the date for Hwang Ti, makes Shan Nang’s 
reign commence in 2739, and Fu-hsi’s, in 2852. In the 
Tables of Twan Chang-chi, published in 1814, we go through 
seven reigns before Hwang Ti, in the line of Shan-nang, up 
to the first year of that sovereign in 3322. Fifteen reigns in 
the line of Fuh-hsithen bring us to him; but there is no 
attempt to give the length of the period, only to Fub-hsi 
himself there is assigned a reign of 110 years. 
Immense Periods of the Later Taoists. 
14. But even these figures dwindle into insignificance 
before others which are to be found in books all later than 
our Christian era, and must be put down as nothing but the 
wild reveries of TAaoistic speculation; its wild reveries, 
especially after it had come into contact with Buddhist mis- 
sionaries from India, and learned something of the Indian 
doctrine of a succession of worlds. The earlier Taoist 
writers, Lao-tsze himself, Lieh-tsze, and Chwang-tsze, all 
* The Sacred Books of the East, xvi, pp. 382-5. 
