Note 280 — Chapter XIII · CONFUCIANISM—I

The parallels between Egyptian and Chinese culture are not perhaps very numerous or instructive; it may therefore be worth while to mention one that is not without interest though it is doubtless accidental. The Milky Way in Egypt was known as the Heavenly Nile: in China it is named the Heavenly River (T'ien Ho). It would perhaps be correct to translate the Chinese ho in this case as "Yellow River": for when the word ho (river) is spoken of without qualification it is the Yellow River (near the banks of which most of the old Chinese capitals were situated) that is understood. With the phrases Heavenly Nile and Heavenly Yellow River may be compared an old English name for the Milky Way—Watling Street. (See A. Lang's Custom and Myth [1901 ed.], p. 122.)