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.

The Tang account, and its doubt

Xu Song's Jiankang Shilu (Tang), juan 1, "Wu, Part 1," narrating the history of Jinling and the First Emperor's eastern tour, agrees with this entry and adds the two sources of the Qinhuai:

當始皇三十六年，始皇東巡，自江乘渡，望氣者云：「五百年後，金陵有天子氣。」因鑿鍾阜，斷金陵長隴以通流，至今呼為秦淮。其淮本名龍藏浦，其上有二源：一發自華山，經句容西南流；一發自東廬山，經溧水西北流，入江寧界二源合，自方山埭西注大江。其二源分派屈曲，不類人功，疑非秦始皇所開。古老相傳，方山西瀆江土山三十里，是秦始皇開，又鑿石硊山西而疏決此浦，後人因名秦淮也。

Translated: In the thirty-sixth year of the First Emperor, he toured east and crossed at Jiangcheng. The aura-watchers said, "Five hundred years hence Jinling will have a Son of Heaven's aura." He therefore cut through Zhongfu and broke the long ridge of Jinling so that the water might flow through, and to this day it is called the Qinhuai. This Huai was originally named Longzang Pu, and it has two sources: one from Huashan, flowing southwest through Jurong; one from Donglu Mountain, flowing northwest through Lishui into the Jiangning border, where the two sources join and, from the Fangshan Dam, flow west into the great river. The two branches wind and divide, unlike human work, and I suspect it was not opened by the First Emperor. An old tradition holds that the earthen hill thirty li west of Fangshan, where the river reaches the Yangtze, was opened by the First Emperor, who also cut the western side of Shihui Mountain and dredged this inlet, so that later ages named it the Qinhuai.

Two points follow. First, one of the two sources of the Qinhuai "from Donglu Mountain, flowing northwest through Lishui" matches the gazetteer's "the river north of the county is this one", and is a first-hand Tang text linking Lishui to the source of the Qinhuai. Second, Xu Song, already in the Tang, concluded that he "suspects it was not opened by the First Emperor," and the story is prefaced with "an old tradition" — so this entry preserves its legendary character.

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

First, 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. Xu Song's Tang Jiankang Shilu already doubts that the river "was opened by the First Emperor" and calls the story "an old tradition"; this entry repeats the gazetteer's wording without treating it as established fact.

Second, the date differs: the gazetteer and the Shiji, "Basic Annals of the First Emperor of Qin," give "the thirty-seventh year", while Xu Song's Jiankang Shilu gives "the thirty-sixth year"; the two are set side by side without preference.

Third, a search of the Shiji, "Basic Annals of the First Emperor of Qin," found no explicit record of "cutting the ground at Jinling to open the Qinhuai"; 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. On these grounds the confidence level is set to medium.