The third historical emperor was Huang-ti, the “Yellow emperor,” according to the literal translation. Ssï-ma Tsʽién, the Herodotus of the Chinese, begins his history with him; but Fu-hi and Shön-nung are referred to in texts much older than this historian, though many details relating to their alleged reigns have been added in later times. Huang-ti extended the boundaries of the empire, described as being originally confined to a limited territory near the banks of the Yellow river and the present city of Si-an-fu. Here were the sites of cities used as capitals of the empire under various names during long periods since remote antiquity. To Huang-ti, whose reign is said to have commenced in 2704 according to one source and in 2491 according to another, are ascribed most of the cultural innovations which historians were not able otherwise to locate within historical times. Under Huang-ti we find the first mention of a nation called the Hun-yü, who occupied the north of his empire and with whom he is represented to have engaged in warfare. The Chinese identify this name with that of the Hiung-nu, their old hereditary enemy and the ancestors of Attila’s Huns. Even though the details of these legendary accounts may deserve little confidence, there must have been an old tradition that a nation called the Hun-yü, occupying the northern confines of China, were the ancestors of the Hiung-nu tribes, well known in historical times, a scion of whose great khans settled in territory belonging to the king of Sogdiana during the first century B.C., levied tribute from his neighbours, the Alans, and with his small but warlike horde initiated that era of migrations which led to the overrunning of Europe with Central-Asiatic Tatars.
Fu-hi, Shön-nung and Huang-ti represent a group of rulers comprised by the Chinese under the name of San-huang, i.e. “The Three Emperors.” Although we have no reason to deny their existence, the details recorded concerning them contain enough in the way of improbabilities to justify us in considering them as mythical creations. The chronology, too, is apparently quite fictitious; for the time allotted to their reigns is much too long as a term of government for a single human life, and, on the other hand, much too short, if we measure it by the cultural progress said to have been brought about in it. Fu-hi’s period of hunting life must have lasted many generations before it led to the agricultural period represented by the name Shön-nung; and this period in turn could not possibly have led within a little more than one hundred years to the enormous progress ascribed to Huang-ti. Under the latter ruler a regular board of historians is said to have been organized with Tsʽang-kié as president, who is known also as Shi-huang, i.e. “the Emperor of Historians,” the reputed inventor of hieroglyphic writing placed by some authors into the Fu-hi period and worshipped as Tzʽï-shön, i.e. “God of writing,” to the present day. Huang-ti is supposed to have been the first builder of temples, houses and cities; to have regulated the calendar, to which he added the intercalary month; and to have devised means of traffic by cars drawn by oxen and by boats to ply on the lakes and rivers of his empire. His wife, known as “the lady of Si-ling,” is credited with the invention of the several manipulations in the rearing of silkworms and the manufacture of silk. The invention of certain flutes, combined to form a kind of reed organ, led to a deeper study of music; and in order to construct these instruments with the necessary accuracy a system of weights and measures had to be devised. Huang-ti’s successors, Shau-hau, Chuan-hü, and Ti-kʽu, were less prominent, though each of them had their particular merits.
The Model Emperors.—Most of the stories regarding the “Three Emperors” are told in comparatively late records. The Shu-king, sometimes described as the “Canon of History,” our oldest source of pre-Confucian history, supposed to have been edited by Confucius himself, knows nothing of Fu-hi, Shön-nung and Huang-ti; but it begins by extolling the virtues of the emperor Yau and his successor Shun. Yau and Shun are probably the most popular names in Chinese history as taught in China. Whatever good qualities may be imagined of the rulers of a great nation have been heaped upon their heads; and the example of their lives has at all times been held up by Confucianists as the height of perfection in a sovereign’s character. Yau, whose reign has been placed by the fictitious standard chronology of the Chinese in the years 2357–2258, and about 200 years later by the less extravagant “Annals of the Bamboo Books,” is represented as the patron of certain astronomers who had to watch the heavenly bodies; and much has been written about the reputed astronomical knowledge of the Chinese in this remote period. Names like Deguignes, Gaubil, Biot and Schlegel are among those of the investigators. On the other side are the sceptics, who maintain that later editors interpolated statements which could have been made only with the astronomical knowledge possessed by their own contemporaries. According to an old legend, Shun banished “the four wicked ones” to distant territories. One of these bore the name T ʽau-tʽié, i.e. “Glutton”; called also San-miau. T ʽau-tʽié is also the name of an ornament, very common on the surface of the most ancient bronze vessels, showing the distorted face of some ravenous animal. The San-miau as a tribe are said to have been the forefathers of the Tangutans, the Tibetans and the Miau-tzʽï in the south-west of China. This legend may be interpreted as indicating that the non-Chinese races in the south-west have come to their present seats by migration from Central China in remote antiquity. During Yau’s reign a catastrophe reminding one of the biblical deluge threatened the Chinese world. The emperor held his minister of works, Kun, responsible for this misfortune, probably an inundation of the Yellow river such as has been witnessed by the present generation. Its horrors are described with poetical exaggeration in the Shu-king. When the efforts to stop the floods had proved futile for nine years, Yau wished to abdicate, and he selected a virtuous young man of the name of Shun as his successor. Among the legends told about this second model emperor is the story that he had a board before his palace on which every subject was permitted to note whatever faults he had to find with his government, and that by means of a drum suspended at his palace gate attention might be drawn to any complaint that was to be made to him. Since Kun had not succeeded in stopping the floods, he was dismissed and his son Yü was appointed in his stead. Probably the waters began to subside of their own accord, but Yü has been praised up as the national hero who, by his engineering works, saved his people from utter destruction. His labours in this direction are described in a special section of the Confucian account known as Yü-kung, i.e. “Tribute of Yü.” Yü’s merit has in the sequel been exaggerated so as to credit him with more than human powers. He is supposed to have cut canals through the hills, in order to furnish outlets to the floods, and to have performed feats of engineering compared to which, according to Von Richthofen, the construction of the St Gotthard tunnel without blasting materials would be child’s play, and all this within a few years.
The Hia Dynasty.—As a reward for his services Yü was selected to succeed Shun as emperor. He divided the empire into nine provinces, the description of which in the Yü-kung chapter of the “Canon of History” bears a suspicious resemblance to later accounts. Yü’s reign has been assigned to the years 2205–2198, and the Hia Dynasty, of which he became the head, has been made to extend to the overthrow in 1766 B.C. of Kié, its eighteenth and last emperor, a cruel tyrant of the most vicious and contemptible character. Among the Hia emperors we find Chung-kʽang (2159–2147), whose reign has attracted the attention of European scholars by the mention of an eclipse of the sun, which his court astronomers had failed to predict. European astronomers and sinologues have brought much acumen to bear on the problem involved in the Shu-king account in trying to decide which of the several eclipses known to have occurred about that time was identical with the one observed in China under Chung-kʽang.
The Shang, or Yin, Dynasty.—This period, which preceded the classical Chóu dynasty, is made to extend from 1766 to 1122 B.C. We must now be prepared to see an energetic or virtuous ruler at the head of a dynasty and either a cruel tyrant or a contemptible weakling at the end of it. It seems natural that this should be so; but Chinese historians, like the writers of Roman history, have a tendency to exaggerate both good and bad qualities. Chʽöng-tang, its first sovereign, is represented as a model of goodness and of humane feeling towards his subjects. Even the animal world benefited by his kindness, inasmuch as he abolished all useless torture in the chase. His great minister I Yin, who had greatly assisted him in securing the throne, served two of his successors. Pʽan-köng (1401) and Wu-ting (1324) are described as good rulers among a somewhat indifferent set of monarchs. The Shang dynasty, like the Hia, came to an end through the reckless vice and cruelty of a tyrant (Chóu-sin with his consort Ta-ki). China had even in those days to maintain her position as a civilized nation by keeping at bay the barbarous nations by which she was surrounded. Chief among these were the ancestors of the Hiung-nu
