釋氏稽古略 1.67

1.67

His surname was Jiang. He succeeded the Fuxi Clan. He reigned through the virtue of Fire. His capital was in Lu (now the Circuit of Dongping, the territory of Yan Province in the 'Tribute of Yu'). At that time, people chewed plants and drank water, eating the fruits of trees and the meat of birds and beasts, and suffered many diseases. The Yan Emperor sought edible things and taught them to cook food with fire. At that time, grain rained down from heaven; he thereupon taught the people to sow the five grains, made pottery and worked metal, axes, ploughs, ploughshares, hoes, and weeders, to clear the brushwood, and the five grains flourished; thus he was called the Shennong ('Divine Husbandman') Clan. Furthermore, he tasted the hundred herbs, encountering seventy poisons in a single day. Deeming that one person alone could not provide sustenance, he established markets at midday to facilitate the exchange of goods. He recorded his officers using fire. He was on the throne for one hundred and twenty years. Huan Tan's Xinlun states: 'The Shennong Clan carved paulownia wood into a zither and twisted silk into strings to communicate the virtues of the gods and luminous spirits.' The Guangya states: 'The zither of the Shennong Clan was three chi and six cun in length, with five strings upon it called gong, shang, jue, zhi, and yu. King Wen of Zhou added two strings, called minor gong and minor shang.'