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THE ANALECTS : /NTRODUCI'ION.
Concerning those pioneer days our evidence is of the
scantiest, for the authentic history of China goes back
little beyond the first millenium B.C. What little can be
learnt of those early days we find, along with another mitlenium
of semi-historical records, in what remains to us of
the Shu Ching _: i_ the editing of which is attributed
to Confucius, and also in the pages of Ss_-Ma Ch'ien
_J _ _, the Herodotus of China The Shu takes us
back to three great monarchs of yore, Yao, Shun and ¥/i
_ _ _, B. C. 2356--2197. Ss_-Ma Ch'ien, like the
Bamboo Books, goes three centmies still further back, to
the pe_-iod of Huang Ti j_ ;i_, 13. C. 2697. He also
makes a passing reference to Yen Ti :_ q_', i.e. Sh_n
Nung _II J_ the reputed founder of Agriculture, B. C.
2737, and successor of Fu Hsi _ _ the reputed
Founder of Chinese civilisation, who first introduced
clothing, cooking, dwelling in houses, and the art of writing
to the human, that is the Chinese race. Tradition and
imagination, local and imported, have carried back the
mythical period to the days of Sui J_n J:_ ;k., the discoverer
of the art of producing fire, to Yu Ch'ao ;_ _,
tlae Nest Possessor, or inventor of dwellings, and to Pan
Ku _ _'_ who chiselled out from chaos the heavens
and the. earth, the mountains and the seas. But such
legendary testimony to the evolution of human civilisation,
probably Hindu rather than Chinese, witnesses less to the
method than to the early recognition of the process.
In brief, then, we may say that, ignoring the purely
mythical, we posses three periods of Ancient History,wthe
legendary, which is not recorded in the Shu Citing;the