But a giant of the Lung-po country, setting out on his travels, had not taken many strides before he came to the region of the Five Islands, when with one cast of his line he hooked six of the turtles. Then, carrying them all on his back, he returned whence he came, and their shells he used for divination by the scorching process.[1] Thus robbed of their support, the two islands of Tai Yü and Yüan Chiao, after drifting off towards the North Pole, were lost in the vast deep; and the hsien' and holy sages, reckoned to number many hundreds of thousands, were thereby cut off from communication with their fellows.
When he heard of it, the Supreme Ruler of the Universe flew into a rage, and in order to punish the Lung-po country, diminished the size of its territory, and, also, reduced the stature of its people. Nevertheless, at the time of Fu Hsi and Shên Nung [i.e., in the legendary period, some 3,000 years B.C.] they still measured several hundred feet in height."[2]The next account to be quoted comes from the pen of the great historian Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien, aptly termed the Herodotus of China. His Historical Record[3] covers a period of approximately the first 3,000 years of Chinese history, and the following may be accepted as a summary of the belief in the Isles of the Blest prevalent towards the end of the second century B.C., the time when it was written. The passage is specially interesting, because its author was sceptical in regard to the claims and propaganda of the professional Taoists; indeed, elsewhere he openly discredits
- ↑ For an account of this method, v. Couling, J. N.-C. Br., K.A.S. vol. xlv. in an article about the oracle-bones, which, having lain buried for some thirty centuries, were in 1899 discovered in the province of Honan. It contains a list of the literature on the subject.
- ↑ Lieh Tzŭ, v. 3.
- ↑ Shih Chi, comprising 130 chapters, of which the first 47 have been rendered accessible to Western readers by the late Prof. Ed. Chavannes in his monumental work entitled Mémoires Historiques de Se-ina Ts‘ien, 1895-1905. Prof Chavannes has been followed to a great extent in the translations on pp. 42, 51-55, 57, 58. The edition of the Shih Chi here used is dated 1806.
