Chinese Chronology and Cycles

GENERAL VIEW OF THE QUESTION.

“This inscription appears to possess an inherently authentic character, sufficient to dispel the doubts suggested by Mr. Legge, although there is a rather suspicious fact connected with it: we are only acquainted with it through ancient copies, and for many centuries the most thorough research has failed to rediscover the original.”

The Chevalier Paravey, in his Essay on the Unique and Hieroglyphic Origin of the Numbers and Letters of All Peoples original: "Essai sur l’origine unique et hierogliphique des chiffres et des lettres de tous les peuples" (Paris, 1826, page 34), makes the following remarks on the Tablet of Yu: “Regarding this inscription which has been cited in such a triumphant manner, we will merely say that it might just as likely have been traced on the rocks of the Euphrates or the Oxus A major river in Central Asia, now known as the Amu Darya as in China, and have been copied and re-transcribed from there in the so-called Middle Kingdom original: "pretended middle empire". The learned Gaubil, writing from Beijing original: "Peking"—who was, to say the least, as skilled as any European Sinologist original: "sinologue"; a scholar who studies Chinese language, literature, and history—does not even mention it in the very place (page 188 of his Chinese Chronology) where he discusses whether there are any very ancient monuments in China and concludes that there are none; even though he does mention the works of the Great Yu.” See also an article in the Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1868, in which the story about Yu’s tablet is regarded as apocryphal original: "apocryphal"; a story or statement of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being true. In the dissertation in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, North China Branch for 1868, page 78, referred to by Mr. Mayers,