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 Shun may refer to one of the following: *To shun, which means avoiding association with an individual or group * Shun (given name), a masculine Japanese given name *Seasonality in Japanese cuisine (''shun'', 旬) Emperor Shun * Emperor Shun (� ...

of the

Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors The Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors were two groups of mythological rulers in ancient north China. The Three Sovereigns supposedly lived long before The Five Emperors, who have been assigned dates in a period from 3162 BC to 2070 BC. Today ...

Records in histories

The "Annals of the Five Emperors" (五帝本紀) section of ''

Records of the Grand Historian ''Records of the Grand Historian'', also known by its Chinese name ''Shiji'', is a monumental history of China that is the first of China's 24 dynastic histories. The ''Records'' was written in the early 1st century by the ancient Chinese hist ...

'' mentioned:

Shun Shun may refer to one of the following: *To shun, which means avoiding association with an individual or group * Shun (given name), a masculine Japanese given name *Seasonality in Japanese cuisine (''shun'', 旬) Emperor Shun * Emperor Shun (� ...
felt that the land north of Ji Province was too wide, so he created
Bing Province Bingzhou, or Bing Province, was a location in ancient China. According to legend, when Yu the Great (c. 2200 BC-2100 BC) tamed the flood, he divided the land of China into the Nine Provinces. Historical texts such as the ''Rites of Zhou'', and "Tr ...
;
Yan Yan may refer to: Chinese states * Yan (state) (11th century – 222 BC), a major state in northern China during the Zhou dynasty * Yan (Han dynasty kingdom), first appearing in 206 BC * Yan (Three Kingdoms kingdom), officially claimed indepe ...
and Qi were too vast and distant, so he formed
You Province You Prefecture or You Province, also known by its Chinese language, Chinese name Youzhou, was a prefecture (''Zhou (country subdivision), zhou'') in North China, northern China during its imperial era. "You Province" was cited in some ancient so ...
out of Yan, and Ying Province out of Qi, hence there were the Twelve Provinces.

Volume 85 of the ''

Book of Han The ''Book of Han'' or ''History of the Former Han'' (Qián Hàn Shū,《前汉书》) is a history of China finished in 111AD, covering the Western, or Former Han dynasty from the first emperor in 206 BCE to the fall of Wang Mang in 23 CE. I ...

'' recorded that in 30 BC

Gu Yong Gu Yong (168 – November or December 243), courtesy name Yuantan, was a minister and the second Imperial Chancellor of the state of Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms period of China. Born in the late Eastern Han dynasty in the Jiangdong r ...

(谷永) mentioned:

There was a great flood in Yao's time, the land was divided into the Twelve Provinces...

Yan Shigu Yan Shigu () (581–645), formal name Yan Zhou (), but went by the courtesy name of Shigu, was a famous Chinese historian, linguist, politician, and writer of the Tang Dynasty. Biography Yan was born in Wannian (, in modern Xi'an, Shaanxi). Hi ...

of the

Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an Zhou dynasty (690–705), interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dyn ...

wrote this annotation in volume 85 of the ''Book of Han'':

The Twelve Provinces were Ji,
Yan Yan may refer to: Chinese states * Yan (state) (11th century – 222 BC), a major state in northern China during the Zhou dynasty * Yan (Han dynasty kingdom), first appearing in 206 BC * Yan (Three Kingdoms kingdom), officially claimed indepe ...
, Yu,
Qing The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speaki ...
, Xu, Jing,
Yang Yang may refer to: * Yang, in yin and yang, one half of the two symbolic polarities in Chinese philosophy * Korean yang, former unit of currency of Korea from 1892 to 1902 * YANG, a data modeling language for the NETCONF network configuration pr ...
, Yong, Liang,
You In Modern English, ''you'' is the second-person pronoun. It is grammatically plural, and was historically used only for the dative case, but in most modern dialects is used for all cases and numbers. History ''You'' comes from the Proto- ...
,
Bing Bing most often refers to: * Bing Crosby (1903–1977), American singer * Microsoft Bing, a web search engine Bing may also refer to: Food and drink * Bing (bread), a Chinese flatbread * Bing (soft drink), a UK brand * Bing cherry, a varie ...
, and
Ying Ying may refer to: People * Yíng (嬴), a Chinese surname, the ancestral name of Qin Shi Huang, first Emperor of China in the Qin Dynasty, and some contemporary rival royal families such as the Zhaos * Yīng (应), a Chinese surname from the Z ...
(營). (十二州謂兾、兗、豫、青、徐、荊、揚、雍、梁、幽、並、營也。) Ban Gu et al. ''Book of Han'', Volume 85, Biographies of Gu Yong and Du Ye (including annotations by Yan Shigu).

References

External links

{{Ancient Chinese provinces Chinese words and phrases Provinces of Ancient China

Records in histories

See also

References

External links