Royal Canon of Tsinh

The Royal Canon of Tsinh is a list of Tsinh rulers to whom supplication was paid regularly. While the canon first appears in historical works dating to the late 4th century and contains 43 members, a version revised based on the contents of the Springs and Autumns of Six States has put the figure at 70; their lifetimes are estimated to range from the 8th or 9th centuries BCE down to the point the canon was set to writing.

Contents

1	Kerap	Qrut	Prang	Neting	Met	Keq	Kerang	Sin	Nem	Ghwiq
2	Prang I
3	Qrut I	Nem Brilliant	(missing)	(missing)
4	Neting I	Kerap Ancestor	Keq Ancestor	(missing)	(missing)	(perhaps missing)	(perhaps missing)
5	Qrut II	Kerang I	Ting Face	Nem II Great
6	Kerap II	Neting II	Prang III	Sin I	Nem III	Keq II	Met Heir
7	Sin Later	Prang IV	Qrut III	(missing)
8	Kerang Later	Neting III	(missing)	Ghwiq Heir
9	Kerap III	Keq III	Prang V	Qrut Heir	Kerang Great
10	Qrut IV	Prang VI	Sin III	Prang VII Lesser
11	Qrut IV Defender	Neting IV	Met Middle	Sin Younger	Kerang III	Qrut V
12	Sin IV Outsider	Qrut VI Outsider	Kerap V	Neting V
13	Kerang III
12	Qrut V	Kerang IV
13	Prang Outsider	Kerap VI
14	Neting Glorious	Nem IV	Keq IV
15	Prang VIII Southerner
16	Kerang V
17	Sin	Kerap
18	Neting
19	Prang
20	Sin V
21	Qrut
22	Qrut
23	Qrut

Source

It is generally agreed that the reason why the Canon survives as such and in this way is the cyclic worship of royal ancestors, to whom offerings were made in order of the most remote to the most recently deceased. This was an continual affair at the royal court of Tsinh from at least the 2nd century BCE.

The scientific analysis of the Canon began in the Historical Revival of the mid-17th century, when the study of history became increasingly academic in the modern sense. In this period, the primary object of study was, indeed, genealogy, and it has been argued that the Canon was the reason why the study of history became modern in Themiclesia, since genealogy was a matter of fact and not usually susceptible to opinion. Scholars began to study the then-present Canon and noticed that it had rational gaps; the names of other rulers were discovered in the most archaic source known to them—Springs and Autumns—and added to the Canon.

Analysis

Orthodox vs. heterodoxy

The orthodox position on the Canon in Themiclesian historiography is to read it as a list of successive rulers, if not specifically as a sequence of father-son successions. This was maintained in the educational establishment as late as the 1945, by which time the analysis had been thoroughly discredited in academic circles.

The foremost argument against this analysis is that nothing in the Canon itself actually says so—it is a sequence of individuals to whom supplication is offered but does not define their biological relationship. Sources providing that the final members of the Canon are father-son successions are external to the Canon, and the more reliable early historians do state biological relationships when such are known and otherwise remain silent. Thus, in the 1700s, more learned individuals have accepted that beyond the last nine cycles (which contain only one member each with the exception of cycle 16, which has two members) biological relationships are not necessarily that between fathers and sons. However, in this period, the main alternative theory is that the Canon represents a successive list of kings who may be siblings or cousins.

Cycle 1

The first cycle, which has ten members in sequence of the Heavenly Stems, is usually considered mythical as their behaviour is fundamentally different from that in other cycles and quite transparent. Nevertheless, their inclusion in the Canon cannot have been recent and is likely to be ancient as well.

The following are considered laws of the Canon:

• Cardinal Names (names based on the Heavenly Stems) in each cycle do not repeat.
• Cardinal Names do not follow each other in their cardinal sequence.
• For the first 12 cycles, the first and second members of a cycle always receive the titles "Elder Brother" (大兄) and "Second Brother" (中兄) in the oracular texts and transcriptions, respectively.

It is directly observable that the early cycles (with exception of cycle 2) have more members, and the final three had one member each. The substance behind this change, however, is disputed and depends on what meaning is assigned to the cycle.