thousand lî square were equal to 100 spaces of 100 lî square, and contained 900,000,000 mâu.
19. From mount Hǎng[1] to the southernmost point of the Ho was hardly 1000 lî. From that point to the Kiang was hardly 1000 lî. From the Kiang to mount Hǎng in the south was more than 1000 lî. From the Ho on the east to the eastern sea was more than 1000 lî. From the Ho on the east to the same river on the west was hardly 1000 lî; and from that to the Moving Sands[2] was more than 1000 lî. (The kingdom) did not pass the Moving Sands on the west, nor mount Hǎng on the south. On the east it did not pass the eastern sea, nor on the north did it pass (the other) mount Hǎng. All within the four seas, taking the length with the breadth, made up a space of 3000 lî square, and contained eighty trillions of mǎu[3].
20. A space of 100 lî square contained ground to the amount of 9,000,000 mâu. Hills and mounds, forests and thickets, rivers and marshes, ditches and
canals, city walls and suburbs, houses, roads, and
- ↑ See notes on pages 217, 218. I have said below "(the other) mount Hǎng;" but the names, or characters for the names, of the two mountains are different in Chinese.
- ↑ What is now called the desert of Gobi.
- ↑ As it is in the text = 80 × 10000 × 100000 × 10000 × 100000 mâu. A translator, if I may speak of others from my own experience, is much perplexed in following and verifying the calculations in this and the other paragraphs before and after it. The Khien-lung editors and Wang Thâo use many pages in pointing out the errors of earlier commentators, and establishing the correct results according to their own views, and I have thought it well to content myself with simply giving a translation of the text.
