[228] Strabo, lib. xvi. [229] In China the dragon is peculiarly the emblem of imperial power, as with us the lion is of the kingly. The Emperor is said to be seated on the dragon throne. A five-clawed dragon is embroidered on the Emperor's court-robes. It often surrounds his edicts, and the title-pages of books published by his authority, and dragons are inscribed on his banners. It is drawn stretched out at full length or curled up with two legs pointing forwards and two backwards; sometimes holding a pearl in one hand, and surrounded by clouds and fire. [230] The _Yih King_--extracts from papers by Monsieur De la Couperie, in the _Journal_ of the Royal Asiatic Society. "The _Yih King_ is the oldest of the Chinese books, and is the mysterious classic which requires '_a prolonged attention to make it reveal its secrets_'; it has peculiarities of style, making it the most difficult of all the Chinese classics to present in an intelligible version." "We have multifarious proofs that the writing, first known in China, was already an old one, partially decayed, but also much improved since its primitive hieroglyphic stage. We have convincing proofs (_vide_ my 'Early History of Chinese Civilization,' pp. 21-23, and the last section of the present paper) that it had been borrowed, by the early leaders of the Chinese Bak families [Poh Sing] in Western Asia, from an horizontal writing traced from left to right, the pre-cuneiform character, which previously had itself undergone several important modifications. "At that time the Ku-wen was really the phonetic expression of speech. (By an analysis of the old inscriptions and fragments, and by the help of the native works on palæography, some most valuable, I have compiled a dictionary of this period.) "If the _kwas_, which were a survival of the arrows of divination known to the ancestors of Chinese culture before their emigration eastward," &c. &c.--Vol. xiv. part 4.