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The Twelve Provinces is a term used in ancient Chinese histories to refer to territorial divisions during the reigns of the mythological emperors Yao and Shun of the
The Twelve Provinces is a term used in ancient Chinese histories to refer to territorial divisions during the reigns of the mythological emperors Yao and Shun of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors
According to Chinese mythology and traditional Chinese historiography, the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors () were a series of sage Chinese emperors, and the first Emperors of China. Today, they are considered culture heroes, but they wer ...
.
Records in histories
The "Annals of the Five Emperors" (五帝本紀) section of ''Records of the Grand Historian
The ''Shiji'', also known as ''Records of the Grand Historian'' or ''The Grand Scribe's Records'', is a Chinese historical text that is the first of the Twenty-Four Histories of imperial China. It was written during the late 2nd and early 1st ce ...
'' mentioned:
Shun felt that the land north ofVolume 85 of the ''Ji Province Ji Province, also known by its Chinese name Jizhou, was one of the Nine Provinces of ancient China. It is referenced in Chinese historical texts such as the ''Tribute of Yu'', ''Erya'' and ''Rites of Zhou''. It consisted of lands north of the Y ...was too wide, so he createdBing Province Bingzhou, or Bing Province, was a location in ancient China. According to legend, when Yu the Great (–2100 BC) tamed the flood, he divided the land of China into the Nine Provinces. Historical texts such as the ''Rites of Zhou'', and "Treatise ...; Yan and Qi were too vast and distant, so he formedYou Province You Prefecture or You Province, also known by its Chinese language, Chinese name Youzhou, was a prefecture (''Zhou (country subdivision), zhou'') in North China, northern China during its imperial era. "You Province" was cited in some ancient so ...out of Yan, and Ying Province out of Qi, hence there were the Twelve Provinces.
Book of Han
The ''Book of Han'' is a history of China finished in 111 CE, covering the Western, or Former Han dynasty from the first emperor in 206 BCE to the fall of Wang Mang in 23 CE. The work was composed by Ban Gu (32–92 CE), ...
'' recorded that in 30 BC Gu Yong
Gu Yong (168 – November or December 243), courtesy name Yuantan, was a Chinese calligrapher, musician, and politician. He served as a minister and the second Imperial Chancellor of the state of Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms period o ...
(谷永) mentioned:
There was a great flood in Yao's time, the land was divided into the Twelve Provinces...
Yan Shigu
Yan Shigu () (581–645), formal name Yan Zhou (), but went by the courtesy name of Shigu, was a famous Chinese historian, linguist, politician, and writer of the Tang dynasty.
Biography
Yan was born in Wannian (, in modern Xi'an, Shaanxi). Hi ...
of the Tang dynasty
The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, c=唐朝), or the Tang Empire, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an Wu Zhou, interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed ...
wrote this annotation in volume 85 of the ''Book of Han'':
The Twelve Provinces were Ji, Yan, Yu,Qing The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ..., Xu, Jing,Yang Yang may refer to: * Yang, in yin and yang, one half of the two symbolic polarities in Chinese philosophy * Korean yang, former unit of currency of Korea from 1892 to 1902 * YANG, a data modeling language for the NETCONF network configuration p ..., Yong, Liang,You In Modern English, the word "''you''" is the second-person pronoun. It is grammatically plural, and was historically used only for the dative case, but in most modern dialects is used for all cases and numbers. History ''You'' comes from ...,Bing Bing most often refers to: * Bing Crosby (1903–1977), American singer * Microsoft Bing, a web search engine Bing may also refer to: Food and drink * Bing (bread), a Chinese flatbread * Bing (soft drink), a UK brand * Bing cherry, a varie ..., andYing Ying may refer to: People * Yíng (嬴), a Chinese surname, the ancestral name of Qin Shi Huang, first Emperor of China in the Qin dynasty, and some contemporary rival royal families such as the Zhaos * Yīng (应), a Chinese surname from the Z ...(營). (十二州謂兾、兗、豫、青、徐、荊、揚、雍、梁、幽、並、營也。) Ban Gu et al. ''Book of Han'', Volume 85, Biographies of Gu Yong and Du Ye (including annotations by Yan Shigu).
See also
*Nine Provinces
The term Nine Provinces or Nine Regions (), is used in ancient Chinese histories to refer to territorial divisions or islands during the Xia dynasty, Xia and Shang dynasty, Shang dynasties and has now come to symbolically represent China. "Pro ...
* Eighteen Provinces
References
External links
{{Ancient Chinese provinces Chinese words and phrases Provinces of ancient China