Page:China- Its State and Prospects.djvu/27

Rh the idea, that the whole is probably based on some indistinct recollections of the theory of the creation. Of the first man, they say, that soon after the period of emptiness and confusion, when heaven and earth were first separated, Pwan-koo was produced; his origin is not ascertained, but he knew intuitively the relative proportions of heaven and earth, with the principles of creation and transmutation. During the supposed reign of the celestial, terrestrial, and human emperors, they allege that the year was settled, the months and days arranged, and the hills and rivers divided; all which may be but distant allusions to the formation of the heavenly bodies, and the settlement of the earth and waters.

The next period of Chinese history is that which is said to have elapsed between Fŭh-he and the sages Yaou and Shun, which the Chinese denominate the age of the "Five Rulers," and at which Choo-foo-tsze begins his history. There is much difference among historians as to the arrangement of this era, and Choo-foo-tsze himself says, that "several things affirmed of this epoch were all pushed up by people who lived in subsequent ages." While, therefore, we might be unwilling to give full credit to what Chinese writers say of the events of this period, it is not improbable that much of it is drawn by tradition from the correct account of the antediluvian age handed down by Noah to his posterity. The coincidence of ten generations having passed away, the institution of marriage, the invention of music, the rebellion of a portion of the race, and the confused mixture of the divine and human families, closed by the occurrence of the flood, in the time of Yaou, might lead us to conclude, that in