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Rh The Sëen-yu were not so easily disposed of. Tsin attacked this tribe in Ch‘aou’s 12th year, and in his 13th and 15th, but without any decisive success. In the 3d year of Ting the army of Tsin was defeated by it, but returned to the attack in the following year, assisted by a force from Wei. Soon after this, the great families of Tsin began contending among themselves, and no effective action could be taken against the Sëen-yu. The tribe maintained its independence on into the period of the Warring States, and finally yielded to the kingdom of Chaou about the year B.C.296.

Third, of the E. Confucius is reported, in the Analects, IX. xiii., as declaring that he would like to go and live among ‘the nine E,’ on which expression it is generally said that there were nine tribes of the E. There may have been so many originally, and Confucius may have used a phrase which had come down as descriptive of them from a former time. But we do not find nine tribes, nor even half that number, mentioned in the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw or in Tso’s Commentary. I believe that the power of the E tribes had been broken, and that many of them had disappeared among the inhabitants of the eastern States, before the time under our notice. We have to do only with the ‘E of the Hwae river,’ of ‘Këae,’ of ‘Lae,’ and of ‘Kin-mow.’

[i.] The tribes of the Hwae were the only E whose power and numbers were considerable in the Ch‘un-Ts‘ëw period. The Chuen on V. xiii. 3 mentions that they were at that time distressing the State of K‘e, so that they must have penetrated a long way north from the river about which lay their proper seats. From that time, for more than a hundred years, we do not again meet with them; but in the 4th year of duke Ch‘aou, at the first meeting of the States called by Ts‘oo, we find that the chiefs of these tribes were also present, and that they went on, immediately after, under the leading of Ts‘oo, to invade Woo. One other reference to them is all that occurs;—under the 27th year of Ch‘aou. Then, in the meeting at Hoo, Fan Hëen-tsze of Tsin, when enumerating the difficulties in the way of restoring duke Ch‘aou to Loo, says that the Head of the Ke family had succeeded in securing the adherence of the Hwae E. All these tribes fell in the end to the lot of Ts‘oo.

[ii.] Këae was the name of a small tribe of the E,—in the present Këaou Chow, department of Lae-chow. In the 29th year of duke He, their chief comes twice to the court of Loo, when Tso tells a   130]