But not only is Hiu in Chinese literature closely associated with the Emperor Tchuen-Hio: it is also closely bracketed with the season of the winter solstice. Schlegel gives many quotations to this effect from Chinese authorities, but he would refer all such allusions to the far back time between 14,000 and 13,000 B.C., when Hiu was in opposition to the sun at that season, not in conjunction with it as at Tchuen-Hio’s date. Of Hiu he writes:-- _Hiu, ou Tertre funéraire._[104] “C’est cet astérisme dont la culmination à l’heure _tsze_ (11^{h} de la nuit) annonçait le solstice d’hiver.... ‘Au solstice d’hiver,’ dit le Mémoire sur la divination par la tortue, ‘la course du soleil et des astres n’est pas encore complète, et ils sont conséquemment délaissés comme des orphelins (_Kou_) et vides (_Hiu_).’ Le solstice d’hiver était donc considéré par les Chinois comme la position d’un ‘orphelin au tombeau de ses parents.’ ... Le père Noël à traduit (_Hiu_) par Vacuum, Vide; mais nous préférons traduire litéralement par Tertre funéraire.”[105] [104] _Uranographie Chinoise_, p. 214. [105] _Ibid._ p. 217. Taking these various passages into consideration, we are, I think, led to feel that the probabilities in favour of Tchuen-Hio having chosen the star group Hiu to mark, in conjunction with the sun, the winter solstice, are greater than those in favour of a comparatively modern choice of that star group as a mark for the beginning of spring. Reading the passage of the _Histoire Générale_ as corrected above, we may assume that Tchuen-Hio intended to establish sure rules by which the Chinese were for the future to count their years from the _solstice_, and from the conjunction of sun and moon close to the star group Hiu. But we also know that the following of these sure rules was an impossibility. Either the season or the star mark must in the long course of ages have been abandoned. It would be a difficult, perhaps an impossible, task to ascertain how far, or in what manner, the attempt was made under successive dynasties to carry out the injunctions of Tchuen-Hio. We read in the _Confucian Analects_ that in answer to his “disciple,” who had asked him, “how the government of a country should be administered,” the Master said--as the first of five rules--“Follow the seasons of Hsiâ.” And in his note on this text the commentator says, “Confucius approved the rule of the Hsiâ dynasty. His decision has been the law of all the dynasties since the Ch’in.”[106] During all the centuries in which the Hea or Hsiâ dynasty held sway, _i.e._, from 2205 to 1766 B.C., the sure rules of Tchuen-Hio might have been carried out without much difficulty, for at the _new moon nearest to the winter solstice_ the sun would still have been in or _near to the constellation Hiu_ (see diagram), though at the date of Confucius, 551-479 B.C., this was no longer the case. Judging from the final