Definition of "Kiang"

The series of these great events began in the year 1333, fifteen years before the plague broke out in Europe: they first appeared in China. Here a parching drought, accompanied by famine, commenced in the tract of country watered by the rivers Kiang and Hoai.

1888, J. F. C. Hecker, “Causes.-Spread.”, in B. G. Babington, transl., The Black Death and the Dancing Mania‎, page 24

The cult center of this vast playground for water spirits and connoisseurs of water was on the mainland in a region on the east shore of the lake that came to be known as Pa-ling. Its official name in T’ang times was sometimes Yüeh-yang and sometimes Yüeh-chou. This is where the waters of the lake merged with those of the Hsiang and the Kiang—but then their shores were certainly contoured differently than now. This worshipful place was at the northern limit of the goddess's domain; still it remained the most ancient and venerable heart of that domain. It had been a sacred center in the distant past, belonging to the marshes of Yün-meng "Cloud Dream," extending north and south on both sides of the Kiang,⁴¹ in the kingdom of Ch’u:

1973, Edward H. Schafer, “The Medieval Cult of the Great Water Goddesses”, in The Divine Woman: Dragon Ladies and Rain Maidens in T’ang Literature‎, University of California Press, page 58