Page 38 - J. P Morgan Collection of Chinese Art and Porcelain

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

would really appear to have been some connection be-
tween the nascent civilizations of Chaldaea and China

at an early period.

With the emperors Yao and Shun, the last two of
the "Five Rulers," we stand on firmer ground, as they
are placed by Confucius at the head of the Shu King,
the classical annals compiled by him in the fifth century
before Christ, and idealized as perfect models of dis-
interested rule for all time. Their capital was at P'ing-
yang Fu in Shansi, where their memorial temple still

stands just outside the city wall, with gigantic images
of the two heroes, thirty feet high, in its central pavilion,
before which the reigning emperor Kuang-hsu, burned
incense on his return journey to Peking, in 1900.

Yao set aside his own son and called on the nobles

to name a successor, when Shun was chosen, who

worked as a potter at Hopin before he was called to
the throne. Shun, in his turn, passing by an unworthy
son, transmitted the throne to an able minister, the

great Yu. Yu departed from these illustrious prece-

dents, and incurred the censure of "converting the
empire into a family estate," and since his time the

hereditary principle has generally prevailed. Yu

gained his great reputation by the success of vast hy-

drographic works, continued for nine years, till the
country was rescued from floods, and finally divided
into nine provinces. His labors are described in the
Tribute of Yu, which is preserved in the early annals
and is generally considered to be a contemporary doc-

ument. He is said to have cast nine bronze tripod

vessels (ting) from metal sent up from the nine prov-

inces to the capital, situated near K'ai-feng Fu, in the
province of Honan, which were religiously preserved
for nearly 2000 years as palladia of the empire.

Yu was the founder of the Hsia dynasty, which was

succeeded by the Shang, and the Shang by the Chou,
as indicated by the following table of the period

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