The story of the next century and a half is the story of Sil-la’s decline and fall. The following is the list of omens which tradition cites as being prophetic of that event. A white rainbow pierced the sun; the sea turned to blood; hail fell of the size of hens’ eggs; a monastery was shaken sixteen times by an earthquake; a cow brought forth five calves at a time; two suns arose together; three stars fell and fought together in the palace; a tract of land subsided fifty feet and the hollow filled with blue black water; a tiger came into the palace; a black fog covered the land; famines and plagues were common; a hurricane blew over two of the palace gates; a huge boulder rose on end and stood by itself; two pagodas at a monastery fought with each other; snow fell in September; at Han-yang (Seoul) a boulder moved a hundred paces all by itself; stones fought with each other; a shower of worms fell; apricot trees bloomed twice in a year; a whirlwind started from the grave of Kim Yu-sin and stopped at the grave of Hyŭk Kŭ-se. These omens were scattered through a series of years but to the Korean they all point toward the coming catastrophe. It was in 735 that the Emperor formally invested the king of Sil-la with the right to rule as far north as the banks of the Ta-dong River which runs by the wall of P‘yŭng-yang. It was a right he had long exercised but which had never before been acquiesced in by China. The custom of cremating the royal remains, which had been begun by King Mun-mu, was continued by his successors and in each case the ashes were thrown into the sea. The first mention of the casting of a bell in Korea was in the year 754 when a bell one and one third the height of a man was cast. The records say it weighed 497,581 pounds, which illustrates the luxuriance of the oriental imagination. In 757 the names of the nine provinces were changed. Sŭ-bŭl became Sang-ju, Sam-yang became Yang-ju, Ch’ŭng-ju became Kang-ju, Han-san became Han-ju, Ha-să became Myŭng-ju, Ung-chŭn became Ung-ju, Wan-san became Chŭn-ju, Mu-jin became Mu-ju, and Su-yak (called Mok-yak in the other list) was changed to Sak-ju. Following hard upon this came the change of the name of government offices.