5i6 



NA TURE 



[Sept. 25, 18S4 



he could, a. Minister of the Tsi kingdom, encourage 

 trade without opposition from the literary class His 

 boo'c speaks of the trade then existing between the dif- 

 ferent parts of China and the outside countries, and men- 

 tons gold as a product of the ju and Han Rivers. Pear s 

 come from the south ; jade comes from Tartary ; white 

 ring plates come from the Kwun lun Mountain Money was 

 threefold. Pearls and jade were money of the first class 

 Gold was money of the second class. Knife money and 

 cloth were money of the third class. Tins being the state 

 of things at the beginning of the seventh century before 

 Christ, the stone hatchet period must be sought fa the. 

 back. It is said of the Emperor Cheng Tang, B.C. 1766, 

 that he coined gold ; and of the Emperor Shun, B.C. 22,5 

 that he hid gold in the earth to check the covetous sp it 

 of the people. In the book of history is recorded the 

 tribute which was offered to the Emperor from various 

 parts of China in the time of Yu, B.C. 2205. All the 

 common metals were included among the articles offered. 

 Recently a stone hatchet was found near kalgan in a 

 mound forty feet high. The mound belongs to a large 

 collection of graves, large and small about seven mi es 

 east of the city Yu cheu, and no miles west of I ekm 

 An ancient wall, nearly round, twenty feet high and about 

 eight miles in circuit, is still in existence there lne 

 mound in which the hatchet was found is in the line o 

 this wall-that is, the wall runs north-west and south-east 

 from it Hence the wall-builders did not regard the mound 

 as sacred, for it would not in that case have been made to 

 serve the purpose of a wall to their city on the south-west 



S ' There is another 1 .rge mound known as the grave of 

 Tai wan- It is a little to the east of the centre of the 

 inclosed space once a city, and the principal road runs 

 through the city by this mound from east to west. Rev 

 Mark Williams of Kalgan, who found the hatchet, and was 

 the first foreigner to draw attention to the old city, was 

 struck with the general resemblance of the mounds the 

 wall and the hatchet to what he is familiar with 111 Ohio. 

 So close was the similarity that it seemed to him to 

 require that the same class of persons who made the one 

 should have made the other. 



A Chinese archaeological work of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury " Fang yu ki yau," mentions the city but not the 

 mounds. The city, it says, was built m the reign of 

 Han kau tsu, B.C. 206 to i 9 4- Han kau tsu gave to his 

 brother Hi the title and principality of Tai wang, and this 

 was his residential city. The traces remain (it is added 

 in this book) of nine gates. A river from the north enters 

 the wall in the west, proceeds to the south-east, and from 

 thence flows to the Tsz River. This prince was attacked 

 bv the Hiung Nu Tartars, and they must have taken the 

 city for he fled to his brother in Shensi, and was degraded 

 to a lower title of nobility for cowardice shown on this 

 occasion. Before this, in the interval between the fall of 

 the Tsin dynasty and the establishment of the Han, there 

 had been two other persons who had been styled 1 ai wang 

 Hiang yu, who took the capital of the Tsm dynasty and 

 burnt its palaces, resolved to restore the feudal system 

 and made several kings. 



Ch iu hie was one of these, but he removed shortly 

 after to a different locality. After this there was another 

 occupant of this principality, Chen yu. He was appointed 

 bv the ruler of Chau. But soon Lieu pang subdued all 

 China and everything was changed. Besides these persons 

 there is mentioned in the year B.C. 457 another j ai wang. 

 The account which speaks of him is in the Shin ki 

 chapter xliii., where the author is relating the fortunes of 

 the house of Chau. The elder sister of the Prince of Chau 

 was the wife of Tai wang. While brother and sister were 

 in mourning for their father, the former invited lai wang, 

 his brother-in-law, to a feast, and directed the cooks to 

 attack and kill him with their copper ladles, which they 

 had first used in presenting food to him. I lie widow 



afterwards committed suicide with her hair-pin. The 

 object of the ruler of Chau in the murder was to obtain 

 the dominions of the Tai wang for himself. The people 

 of the locality, adds the historian, pitied the unhappy 

 queen, and after her death named the mountain where 

 this event took place "the hill of the suicide with a hair- 

 pin," mo kl chi shan. When the Prince of Chau had 

 effected the murder, another work adds, he sent a mes- 

 senger to his sister to say, " To feel ind.fference for a hus- 

 band's death because it was caused by a brother would not 

 be kindness. To hate a brother for a husband s death would 

 not be right." After hearing this speech she committed 

 suicide, and the envoy at once followed her example and 

 put an end to himself. The feelings of the people were 

 much stirred by these events, and it seems likely that one 

 of the large mounds would be raised to the assassinated 

 Tai wan- This however is not certain, and the number, 

 names, a°nd dates of other persons who bore the title are 

 now beyond the reach of investigation. 



Several pieces of broken pottery were found by Mr 

 Williams in the neighbourhood of the mound, and their 

 pattern is different from modern crockery ware the 

 small mounds are in groups chiefly outside the wall and 

 seem to be all placed irregularly. The hatchet is .about 

 five inches long, and is made of a black stone not heav> 

 when held in the hand. It resembles 111 shape those 

 preserved in Ohio museums. 



On the whole, as the reader of this account will agree 

 the highest of the two large mounds is most likely the 

 tomb of the prince assassinated, in the manner here 

 described, in the year B.C. 457- The village in the .cent e 

 and the large mound second in size near it, popularly 

 called Tai wang, probably indicate that a later per- 

 sonage was buried there. . . J 

 I should add to this statement that there is in Kwan 

 chung a passage in the twenty-fourth chapter which is as 

 foflows :-" Hwan kung, ruler of Tsi, asked Kwan chung, 

 'What produce is there in the Tai country ? The philo- 

 sopher replied, ' White fox-skins. They are, howevei 

 Hear to buy. They appear in the sixth month when the 

 Jang Principle changes to yin. If you, the ruler of Tsi 

 offer to buy them at a high price, the peop e of the T| 

 kingdom will at once, from the hope of gam, go out in 

 force to hunt for them. Tsi keeps its gold and waits 

 Whfle the Tai people are hunting in the wilds and off 

 £ guard, their enemies on the north, the La, ti, will 

 a tack them, and in this case the Tai country will fall to 

 Tsf' The ruler of Tsi adopted this plan for obtain.* 

 possession of Tai, and sent envoys with money to nego- 

 S°?e fo white fox-skins. The King of Tai, hearing what 

 ey desired, said to his chief councillor, The monev 

 offered to us by Tsi is the very thing for want of which 

 we are not equal to the Lai ti people. It is fortunate that 

 ns proposal is made to us.' He then ordered his peoj 

 o b go out hunting for white fox-skins }'" V "V The 

 four months they searched without finding any. I he 

 La ti people learned that the Tai kingdom was not in a 

 state of defence, and attacked its northern frontier. The 

 Ta wan- in great fear gathered his troops and posted 

 t hen love a defile called the valley of Ta, The invasion 

 proceeded, and the Tai wang took his soldiers with him 

 and submitted to Tsi. So .11 less than three years Ta 

 Submitted to Tsi without its being necessary to spend 

 any ""oney on the purchase of the skins which Kwa, 



Ch T I n1s , pas"ge must by fair criticism be ascribed 1 no| 

 Kwan chung himself but to some unknown autho. of h 

 Se of the contending States three or four centuries later 

 There was no Tai kingdom in the time of Kwan clung 

 and invention of this sort was common in the period 

 the contending States. Kwan chung had ascribed to Inn 

 many expedients of statecraft which never occurred 

 him, and this of the fox-skins was amongst ^\ 



