CHAPTER IV.

THE CHINA OF THE BOOK OF POETRY, CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO THE EXTENT OF ITS TERRITORY, AND ITS POLITICAL STATE; ITS RELIGION; AND SOCIAL CONDITION.

APPENDIX:-RESEARCHES INTO THE MANNERS OF THE ANCIENT CHINESE, ACCORDING TO THE SHE-KING. BY M. EDOUARD BIOT.

From the Journal Asiatique for November and December, 1843.

dom of Chow.

1. A glance at the map prefixed to this chapter will give the reader an idea of the extent of the kingdom of Chow,-of China as The territory of the king- it was during the period to which the Book of 5 Poetry belongs. The China of the present day, what we call China proper, embracing the eighteen provinces, may be described in general terms as lying between the 20th and 40th degrees of north latitude, and the 100th and 121st degrees of east longitude, and containing an area of about 1,300,000 square miles. The China of the Chow dynasty lay between the 33d and 38th parallels of latitude, and the 106th and 119th of longitude. The degrees of longitude included in it were thus about two thirds of the present; and of the 20 degrees of latitude the territory of Chow embraced no more than five. It extended nearly to the limit of the present boundaries on the north and west, because, as I pointed out in the prolegomena to the Shoo, p. 189, it was from the north, along the course of the Yellow river, that the first Chinese settlers had come into the country, and it was again from the west of the Yellow river that the chiefs of the Chow family and their followers pushed their way to the cast, and took possession of the tracts on both sides of that river, which had been occupied, nearly to the sea, by the dynasties of Hea and Shang. The position of the present departmental city of Pin-chow in which neighbourhood we find duke Lew with his people emerging into notice, in the beginning of the 18th century before our era, is given as in lat. 35° 04', and long. 105° 46'.

The She says nothing of the division of the country under the Chow dynasty into the nine Chow or provinces, of which we real so much in the third Part of the Shoo, in connexion with the labours of Yu. Four times in the Books of Chow in the She that

famous personage is mentioned with honour, but the sphere in which his action is referred to does not extend beyond the country in the neighbourhood of the Ho before it turns to flow to the east, where there is reason to believe that he did accomplish a most meritorious work. Twice he is mentioned in the sacrificial odes of Shang, and there the predicates of him are on a larger scale, but without distinct specification; but T'ang, the founder of the dynasty, is represented as receiving from God the nine regions," and appointed to be a model to the 'nine circles' of the land. These nine regions and nine circles were probably the nine Chow of the Shoo; and though no similar language is found in the She respecting the first kings of Chow, their dominion, according to the Official book of the dynasty, was divided into nine provinces, seven of which bear the same names as those in the Shoo. We have no Seu-chow, which extended along the sea on the east from Tsingchow to the Keang river, and Chinese scholars tell us, contrary to the evidence of the She and of the Tso-chuen, that it was absorbed in the Ts'ing province of Chow. In the same way they say that Yu's Leang-chow on the west, extending to his Yung-chow, was absorbed in Chow's Yung. The number of nine provinces was kept up by dividing Yu's K'e-chow in the north into three;-K'e to the east, Ping in the west, and Yew in the north and centre. The disappearance of Seu and Leang sufficiently shows that the kings of Chow had no real sway over the country embraced in them; and though the names of Yang and King, extending south from the Keang, were retained, it was merely a retention of the names, as indeed the dominion of China south of the Këang in earlier times had never been anything but nominal. The last ode of the She, which is also the last of the Sacrificial odes of the Shang dynasty, makes mention of the subjugation of the tribes of King, or King-tsoo, by king Woo-ting (B.c. 1,323-1,263); but, as I have shown on that ode, its genuineness is open to suspicion. The 9th ode of Book III., Part III., relates, in a manner full of military ardour, an expedition conducted by king Seuen in person to reduce the States of the south to order; but it was all confined to the region of Seu, and in that to operations against the barbarous hordes north of the Hwae.

1 See II. vi. VI. 1: III. i. X. 5; iii. VII. 1: IV. ii. IV. 1.

2 IV. iii. IV. 1; V. 3.

IV. iii. III. 1, 7 and IV. 3. 4 Ch. XXXIII. The names of Yu's provinces were- -冀兗靑. 徐揚荆豫 梁 and 雍 ; those of Chow 幷幽冀兗青揚荆豫雍