Page:Elementary Chinese - San Tzu Ching (1900).djvu/106

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sovereign of the Chou dynasty (line 141), King Wên is regarded as its virtual founder, and is thus allowed to share posthumously in the honours of his son. Wên and Wu are the names under which they were severally canonised.]


191. Under the Hsia dynasty the throne was transmitted from father to son,
Hsia4 ch'uan2 tzŭ3
Hsia transmit child


Hsia see line 57.

Ch'uan see line 163.

Tzŭ see line 11. [Up to the time of the Great Yü, some virtuous man had always been chosen as successor to the reigning monarch, a system, which Yü himself strove to carry on. After his death, however, his nominee was set aside and his own son was appointed.]


192. making a family possession of the empire.
Chia1 t'ien1 hsia4
Family heaven below


Chia is composed of 冖 mien shelter as radical, and 豭 chia a boar, abbreviated, as phonetic. It is the equivalent of our word home, a pig under a roof forming an ideogram which should be especially suggestive to our neighbours in the sister isle.

T'ien see line 50.

Hsia is composed under its old form of a line below a line, thus forming an ideogram (line 75). It is now classed under radical 一 i one. [Under heaven, all beneath the canopy of the sky, is the common term for the empire, as being commensurate with the world. For the above two lines Eitel has, "(As to the time occupied by each Dynasty,) as the founder of the Hsia delivered the throne to his son (B.C. 2197), his family possessed all the country to Heaven subject."]