Twelve Provinces
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
| Twelve Provinces | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese | 十二州 | ||||||
| |||||||
Records in histories
The "Annals of the Five Emperors" (五帝本紀) section of Records of the Grand Historian mentioned:
Shun felt that the land north of Ji Province was too wide, so he created Bing Province; Yan and Qi were too vast and distant, so he formed You Province out of Yan, and Ying Province out of Qi, hence there were the Twelve Provinces. [1]
Volume 85 of the Book of Han recorded that in 30 BC Gu Yong (谷永) mentioned:
There was a great flood in Yao's time, the land was divided into the Twelve Provinces...
Yan Shigu of the Tang dynasty wrote this annotation in volume 85 of the Book of Han:
The Twelve Provinces were Ji, Yan, Yu, Qing, Xu, Jing, Yang, Yong, Liang, You, Bing, and Ying (營).
