e.
of that third part of old Tsin which in 403 B.C. was formally
recognized by the Emperor as the separate state of Ngwei),
including those of old Tsin, and also what may be termed the
general history of China, narrated incidentally. These Annals of
Tsin or Ngwei are usually styled the Bamboo Books, because they
were written in ink on bamboo tablets strung together at one end
like a fan or a narrow Venetian blind. They also speak shortly of
the Emperor Muh's expedition, and thus they also are useful for
comparing hiatuses, names, faults, and dates; both in general
history, and in the account of King Muh's expedition. Since the
discovery of these old documents (which had been buried for well-
nigh 600 years, and of which no other record whatever had been
preserved either in writing or by tradition), Chinese literary
wonder-mongers have exercised their wits upon the task of
identifying the unheard-of places mentioned; the more so in that
one place, and one king bearing the same foreign name as the
place--_Siwangmu_--was so written phonetically that it might
mean "Western-King-Mother.
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