The worst of venturing on any piece of Chinese antiquarian lore is that one is immediately buffeted by wild experts, without any possibility of replying. Yesterday we alluded to the engraved stone on the sacred mountain Naa Yo Shan in Hunan and gave a translation of its inscription. Fnough said, and too much. Comes at once the following The Chinese Noah was not Yao but Vu, often called Ta Yu—Yu the great. The Chinese usually begin the enumeration of their ancient Kings thus;—Yao, Shun, Vu Tang Scme think Yao and Shun are mythical; others believe they are historical personages around whom myths have gathered. Yao is said tu have ascended the throne B.O. 2357 and abdicated 70 years Jater in favour of Shun who was found, like Elisha, at the plough, and to whom Yao gave his two daughters in marriage. The Chinese flood happened in Shun's day and he chose Vu to drain the floods from the Empire; a task accomplished after nine years' Jabour, As for the Vu tablet of which you have secured a rubbing, it is referred to by the Rev. G. G. Warren in Couling's Encyclopaedia Sinica p, 229 in the following terms: At the southern extremity of the Hengshan range is the peak named Koulou on which the Vu tablet stands. Legge has shown in hic Prolegomena that the monument 1s a comparatively modern fraud."
Well. it will amuse Mr. F. E. Taylor, the origin of this controversy. too far away in his Tasmania orchard to be got at. Next Sinologue, please.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.