National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

*Orient*, 200-202), SCHLEGEL (in *TP*, III, 495-510; VI, 247-257), BUSHELL (*JRAS*, NS, XII, 531-532),
ROCKHILL (*The Land of the Lamas*, 339-341), CHAVANNES (*Doc. sur les Tou-kiue*, 169), myself (in
*BEFEO*, IV, 299-303, and *TP*, 1912, 357-358), HIRTH and ROCKHILL (*HR*, 151-152), and LAUFER (in
*Aufsätze... Ernst Kuhn... gewidmet*, Munich, 1916, 205-208); add the bibliography in MACOKIN,
*Materinskaya filiyaciya* (*Izv. Vost. Instituta* of Vladivostok, XXXIII, 2-3; XXXVI, 51-53). The
various « kingdoms of Women » must be dealt with separately, and, as far as possible, the
notices concerning them examined in chronological order.

I. THE « KINGDOM OF WOMEN » TO THE NORTH-WEST OF CHINA.

The earliest mention I can trace of this kingdom occurs in the *Huai-nan-tzŭ*, published in
139 B. C., ch. 4 (*ti-hsing hsün*). In the list of barbarian countries « outside the seas », counted from
north-west to south-west, after the « White Folk » and the « Prosperous (?) Folk », and before the
« One-legged » and the « One-armed », *Huai-nan-tzŭ* lists the 女子民 Nü-tzŭ-min, or « Women Folk »,
and the 丈夫民 Chang-fu-min, or « Men Folk » (cf. ERKES, in *Ostasiat. Zeitschr.*, V, 65-66, where
the translation «from north-east to south-west» is a slip). Kao Yu's commentary (c. 200 A. D.) says
that the people of the Women Folk had no beard, so that « all looked like women », but this is a
certain error due to a mistaken rationalism. Among the Men Folk, according to the same commen-
tator, everybody had the appearance of men (*i. e.* never of women), wearing yellow clothes and caps
and hanging swords at the wrist.

The same names occur in another work of Han times, the *Shan-hai ching* (7, 1-2; 16, 2 *a*), as
those of nations in the west, « outside the seas »; there they are written Nü-tzŭ 國 kuo, « Kingdom of
Women », and Chang-fu kuo, « Kingdom of Men ». The text says that in the Kingdom of Women
two women live together; water surrounds them. The commentator, Kuo P'o (276-324), adds :
«[In that country] there is the Yellow Lake (黃 池 Huang-ch'ih; in an identical passage, possibly drawn
from Kuo P'o, which occurs in the 金 樓 子 *Chin-lou tzŭ* written by the Emperor Yüan of the Liang
in the middle of the 6th cent. [5, 11 *a*], this name is written 橫 池 Hêng-ch'ih or 潢 池 Huang-ch'ih);
women (*fu-jên*) enter it to bathe, and on coming out they are pregnant; if they give birth to a boy, he
dies when he is three years of age ». Kuo P'o, and the modern commentator Pi Yüan (1730-1797),
pronouncing against Kao Yu's commentary on *Huai-nan-tzŭ*, have adduced as a confirmation
(7, 1 *b*; 16, 2 *a*) the similar story in the *San-kuo chih* which will be quoted further on; they were right
in their contention, but not when they mixed up two different Kingdoms of Women. For the Kingdom
of Men, Kuo P'o explains that there are there « no women » (*wu fu-jên*; this is not an alternative name
of the Kingdom, as stated by ERKES, *loc. cit.*, 66). He also says that the Shang Emperor T'ai-wu
(c. 1600 B.C.) had sent in search of drugs a certain 王 孟 Wang Mêng who, passing the Mother Queen of
the West (Hsi-wang-mu), arrived at this place where, his food exhausted, he lived on the fruit of trees
and dressed in the bark; he never had a wife, but out of his own body gave birth to two sons, from
whom men folk descended. The *T'ai-p'ing yü-lan* (790, 4 *a*) quotes from the lost 括 地 圖 *K'uo-
ti t'u*, a work of uncertain date but prior to 527 A. D. (cf. *Sui ching-chi chih k'ao-chêng*, 6, 53 *b*; the
*K'uo-ti t'u* is cited in the commentary on the *Shui-ching chu*, the author of which, Li Tao-yüan, died
in 527), a passage almost identical with the one in Kuo P'o's commentary, except that the two sons