680
Hsi Wang Mu ® £ #. The Royal Lady of the West, a
legendary being supposed to dwell upon the E*un»lan moantains
and to have been visited there by Mu Wang. In her garden
grow the peaches which ripen but once in 3000 years and confer
immortality upon those who eat them. Later tradition has given
her a husband called ^ ^ ^ the Royal Lord of the East.
681 Hsia-hou Hsüan ^ ^ ^ (T. ^AC ^ ). A man of great probity, who lived at the close of the Han dynasty, and finally took service under the House of Wei, A.D. 220, rising to be President of the Sacrificial Court. He was popularly said to be as purely transparent as though he had <the sun and moon inside his breast. A daughter of *his married a man who was cousin to Ts*ao Shuang, and was left a widow. When Ts*ao Shuang was executed and the whole family exterminated, and her father was persuading her to marry again, she cut off her ears; and when her relatives in a body tried to force her to remarry, she settled the matter by cutting off her nose.
682 Hsia Sung ^ j^ (T. ^ ^). A.D. 985-1051. A native of Td-an in Hupeh, who rose to high o£Bce under the Emperor Jen Tsung of the Sung dynasty. While still a young man he vnrote some verses on a silk handkerchief; and on these being shown to Yang Hui-chih, the latter cried out "This is the stuff of which Ministers are made!*' He was a man of learning, well-read in the Classics, history, genealogy, geomancy, and law; but he was greedy of gain and could not get on with his colleagues, so that he never was long in the capital. During his service in the provinces he did his best to put down wizards and the black art. He was ennobled as Duke, and canonised as ^^•
683 Hsia Yen g^ (T. ^^). A.D. 1482-1648. Graduating as chin shih in 1517, he became a Censor and gained great
popularity as a reformer and opponent of the eunuchs. Li 1528