The First Emperor Cuts the Ground and Opens the Qinhuai, 210 BCE

Background

The gazetteer records that the First Emperor toured east and, finding a royal aura at Jinling, had the ground cut. The entry follows immediately on the renaming of Jinling as Moling in the twenty-sixth year of the First Emperor, and belongs with the Qin administration of the region east of the Yangtze.

Time and place

The gazetteer records:

三十七年辛卯，冬，帝东巡，指金陵有王气，因凿之，后人名曰秦淮。今县北河即此。

Translated: In the thirty-seventh year, a xinmao year, in winter, the emperor toured east. He pointed out that Jinling had a royal aura, and had the ground cut on that account; later ages named it the Qinhuai. The river north of the county is this one.

Following the twenty-sixth year, "the thirty-seventh year" is the thirty-seventh year of the First Emperor, 210 BCE. The gazetteer identifies the water cut with the river north of Lishui County.

What happened

The gazetteer records only that the emperor toured east to Jinling and had the ground cut because of the royal aura there.

Consequences

The gazetteer says this water was "named the Qinhuai by later ages" and that "the river north of the county is this one", linking the upper reaches of the Qinhuai system within present-day Lishui to the Qin story of cutting the ground. In Yongyang Subdistrict of the present Lishui District, the Source of the Qinhuai River on Donglu Mountain is a district-level protected site and belongs to this water system.

Dating basis

This entry is far earlier than the establishment of Lishui County in 591 CE, the eleventh year of the Kaihuang era. At that time Lishui did not yet exist as a county: what is recorded here concerns the Lishui area and its predecessor Liyang County. The year 210 BCE corresponds to the sexagenary year given in the source and is a later conversion.

Uncertainties

Both "named the Qinhuai by later ages" and "the river north of the county is this one" are the gazetteer's own statements, and the cutting of the ground to break a royal aura is likewise written in the gazetteer's manner of recording anomalies. This entry repeats the gazetteer's wording without treating it as established fact, and the confidence level is set to medium. The relation between this water and the upper reaches of the Qinhuai as mapped today would require geographical and archaeological sources and is not discussed here.