s to certain signs showing that Heaven itself is
indignant at Yu-wang's crimes. One of these signs was an eclipse of the
sun which had recently occurred, the date and month being clearly
stated. This date corresponds exactly with August 29, 776 B.C.; and
astronomers have calculated that on that precise date an eclipse of the
sun was visible in North China. This, of course, cannot be a mere
accident; and since the date falls into the sixth year of Yu-wang's
reign, the coincidence is bound to increase our confidence in that part
of Chinese history. Our knowledge of it, however, is due to mere chance;
for the record of the eclipse would probably not have been preserved
until our days had it not been interpreted as a kind of _tekel upharsin_
owing to the peculiarity of the political situation. It does not follow,
therefore, as some foreign critics assume, that the historical period
begins as late as Yu-wang's reign. China has no architectural witnesses
to testify to her antiquity as Egypt has in her pyramids and temple
ruins; but the sacrificial bronze vessels of the Shang and Chou
dynasties, with their characteristic ornaments and hieroglyphic
inscriptions, seem to support the historical tradition inasmuch as
natural development may be traced by the analysis of their artistic and
paleographic phases. Counterfeiters, say a thousand years later, could
not have resisted the temptation to introduce patterns and hieroglyphic
shapes of later periods; and whatever bronzes have been assigned to the
Shang dynasty, i.e. some time in the second millennium B.C., exhibit the
Shang characteristics. The words occurring in their inscriptions,
carefully collected, may be shown to be confined to ideas peculiar to
primitive states of cultural life, not one of them pointing to an
invention we may suspect to be of later origin. But, apart from this, it
seems a matter of individual judgment how far back beyond that
indisputable year 776 B.C. a student will date the beginning of real
history.

In the 7th century central authority had declined to such an extent that
the emperor was merely the nominal head of the confederation, the
hegemony in the empire falling in turn to one of the five principal
states, for which reason the Chinese speak of a period of the "Five
Leaders." The state of Ts'i, corresponding to North Shan-tung, had begun
to overshadow the other states by unprecedented success in economic
enterprise, due to the prudent advice of its