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[[underlined]] APPENDIX II. [[/underlined]] 9.
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(23)
[[underlined]] Shih chi [[/underlined]], chapts. IV, fol. 3-b, and XXXI, fols. 1-a [[underlined]] sq. [[/underlined]] The tradition recounted here, although scoffed at by many scholars, has a ring of truth nevertheless. For even today it is the custom among the Tibeto-Burman tribes inhabiting the wooded hills of the Indo-Chinese borderland, that the older sons of a chief shall go out into the wilderness with bands of followers and found new villages of their own; while upon the youngest brother devolves the succession to his father's office. This custom, found in many other parts of the world, is called by sociologists "borough English", "ultimogeniture", or "junior right". Its recorded occurrence often aids us in tracing out cultural and even ethnic relationships.
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(24)
Both tattooing and cutting of the hair short are, or were until recently, characteristic traits of the T'ai (Shan) peoples, but not of the Tibeto-Burmans or of the Chinese. The latter indeed have regarded these practices with contempt, as marks of barbarism.
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Whatever the value attaching to the above tradition (for it seems more than a mere legend), its close conformity with the ethnological evidence suggests that it had at least a kernel of truth. Be that as it may, Ch'u is said to have had its definite beginning as a state when the second Chou king, Ch'êng Wang 成王, bestowed upon one of his followers, one Hsiung-i 熊繹, as a reward for his own and his forebears' loyalty to the Chou royal line, a fief in the Yangtze Gorges, a little below Pa, in the region where the modern provinces of Szechuan and Hupei adjoin. Its capital, Tan-yang 丹陽, stood on the left bank of the Yangtze, near the present river-town of Kuei-chow 歸州, in western Hupei. Hsiung-i was evidently not a native of the region; for he is represented as coming among his new subjects as a "civilizer". [[superscript]] (25) [[/superscript]]
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(25)
On the founding of Ch'u, see the [[underlined]] Shih chi [[/underlined]], chapt. XL, [[underlined]] ad init. [[/underlined]]
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Hsiung-i was granted the title of a [[underlined]] tzŭ [[/underlined]] 子 or a [[underlined]] nan [[/underlined]] 男 (words usually, though loosely, translated as "viscount" and "baron" respectively); but after the Chou Dynasty began to lose its grip on it feudatories, the rulers of Ch'u arrogated to themselves (at first intermittently) the
