Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 3.djvu/57

 derived from the bamboo books makes the sovereigns to be thirty, but the aggregate of their reigns is only 508. Mencius says that between Thang, the founder of the dynasty, and Wû-ting, the twentieth sovereign (in the common scheme), 'there had been six or seven worthy and sage rulers ,'—leading to the conclusion that the number of twenty-eight sovereigns in all is not beyond the truth. In the fifteenth of the Books of Kâu the names of three of the Shang rulers are given, and the duration of their reigns,—to show how Heaven is likely to crown a good king with length of sway. They are Thâi Mâu, who reigned seventy-five years; Wû-ting, who reigned fifty-nine; and u-kiâ, who reigned thirty-three. The two schemes agree in the length of those reigns and of five others. From the statement in the o-kwan, to which I have referred above, that the Shang dynasty possessed the throne for 600 years, and Mencius' language that it lasted 'for 500 years and more,' we may believe that the 644 years of the common scheme are more likely to be correct than the 508 of the shorter.

The dynasty of Hsiâ lasted, according to the received chronology, 439 years, and according to the bamboo books, 431; so that the difference here between the two schemes is small. The former estimate carries us up to 2205, as the first year of Yü's reign.

I referred on page 13 to an eclipse of the sun, mentioned in the fourth of the Books of Hsiâ, as having occurred in the reign of Kung Khang, a grandson of Yü, and stated that P. Gaubil had found by calculation that on the day and month stated in the document, and in the quarter of the heavens given, an eclipse did occur in the fifth year of Kung Khang, that is, in 2156, and was visible at his capital at 6h 49′,  In 1840, J. B. Biot submitted a copy of Gaubil's calculations to the younger Largeteau, a member, like himself, of the Institute of France, who went over them with the lunar tables of Damoiseau and the solar tables of Delambre, and brought out the result that