Hard, cold, facts"travel south 100 miles over shifting sand and you will come to Bald Mountain where there is a large river flowing eastward"nothing whimsical about it.Ī most exhaustive study of historical backgrounds of the Shan Hai King was made by M. Inconsistencies certainly crept in during the condensationsbut the mile by mile record is no ephemeral dream, no elusive little visionary beam that someone was following. If one should read even a few sentences from those "tales," it would be obvious that those who wrote them were sincere. Have come down to us labeled "fairy tales." By the eighth century A.D., everyone was convinced that, like Aesop's Fables, they were excellent readingbut myths. One after another, early writers decided that the accounts in the Book of Mountains and Seas were whimsies and extravaganciesnot to be believed, but, nevertheless, good literature. Doubt arose as to the veracity of the ancients. Scholars looked all over China for some clue, and finding none, gave up. This is no collection of mythical or imaginary labyrinthine wanderings.Ībout the third century B.C., the Chinese themselves started looking in China to see whether or not they could identify some of the mountains described in the bookand they could not. Their records are simple, straightforward and forthright. They are all eye-witness accountseach person was somewhere. Many are minutely detailed, neatly setting down exact mileage from point to point the remainder, apparently having been written by more poetic souls, disregard mileage and grow lyrical over the beauties of nature. The material itself is complicated by the fact that there is no beginning or ending to any bookeach record as we now have it, starts on a mountain peak, wanders from peak to peak, covering 2,000 miles, and winds up on another peakwith no possible way of determining where, on the face of the globe, that first peak may have been located.Įach of the 18 books vary in contentsome are a few paragraphs long, others are pages. That which remains to work with is, at the very outset, extremely meagre. Of the ancient Book of Mountains and Seas, there exist today only those fragments that survived the burning of 213 B.C. Again, in the thirteenth century, all records and documents, once more, were ordered condensedthe fifth century original condensations were scrapped. The remainder was compressed into a few scanty pagesthe original volumes were destroyed. Another edict was issued to condense all books. In the fifth century A.D., records and documents concerning China's past, became so voluminous that it was both impossible to study them or to store them. His Premier, Le Sze, advised that the best way to accomplish that end was to burn all booksand therefore, the edict went out. The first Emperor of the Tsin dynasty decided to abolish all knowledge of the past and blot out history. In 213 B.C., all books in China were ordered burned. Whether the existing books deal with one country or 18 countries, is not known. Each book is a separate entity but no book has a beginning or an ending. There is no way of knowing whether the total number of books formed a sequence or in what manner one book followed another or even if the 18 books themselves follow in any sequence. The majority of French sinologists agree with the Chinese.Īs stated earlier, there were originally 32 books, and, of the 32 only 18 remain. to the Shan Hai King, stating however, that while its antiquity was certain, the date was disputable. A noted British sinologist has assigned an approximate date of the 10th or 11th centuries B.C. However, the compilation may have been completed after he took the throne. The Chinese say that the record was compiled by the great Yu, at the time when he was minister under the Emperor Shunprior to the time when he himself was Emperor. We do not know, today, what portion of the earth's surface it covers we do not know if it refers solely to China or to other places as well. Yet, it is referred to, with dignity, as our oldest known record of man's knowledge of the universe on which he lives. The book, it appears, has been considered to be so full of whimsy and fantasy that a translation has never been attempted since the waste of time would have been thought stupid. Although frequently referred to, it is an "unknown." No English translation has been made of the whole of itportions exist in French or Germanand Chinese themselves rarely read it. GEOGRAPHERS and historians alike acknowledge the Shan Hai King to be the world's oldest geography. Sacred Texts Earth Mysteries Index Previous Next
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