THE SHE KING; OR, THE BOOK OF ANCIENT POETRY

52 THE CHINA OF THE BOOK OF POETET.
to sacrifices offered to some one monarch. They
would be celebrated on particular occasions connected
with his achievements in the past, or when it was sup
posed that his help would be specially valuable in con
templated enterprises.
There were also other services performed in the temple
of ancestors which were of less frequent occurrence, and
all known by the name of te. That term was applied in
a restricted sense to the annual sacrifice of the summer
season; but there were also " the fortunate te," when
the Spirit-tablet of a deceased monarch was solemnly
set up in its proper place in the temple, 25 months after
his death; and " the great te," called also licah, cele
brated once in five years, when all the ancestors of the
royal House were sacrificed to, beginning with the
mythical emperor Kuh, to whom their lineage was traced.
There is no description in the She of the ceremonies used
on those occasions.
With regard to all the ceremonies of the ancestral
temple, Confucius gives the following account of them
and the purposes they were intended to serve in the
Doctrine of the Mean, ch. XIX. 4 :—" By means of them
they distinguished the royal kindred according to their
order of descent. By arranging those present according
to their rank, they distinguished the more noble and the
less. By the apportioning of duties at them, they made
a distinction of talents and worth. In the ceremony of
general pledging, the inferiors presente'd the cup to their
superiors, and thus something was given to the lowest to
do. At the [concluding] feast, places were given ac
cording to the hair, and thus was marked the distinction
of years."
5. The habits and manners of the ancient Chinese
Manners and generally, as they may be learned from the
CM tener"- She, will be found set forth in a variety of
al'y- particulars in an essay by M. Bdouard Biot,
whose early death was a great calamity to the- cause of
Chinese study. It appeared in the Journal Asiatique
for November and December, 1843. It was not possible
for him in his circumstances, and depending so much as
he did on Lacharme's translation of the odes, to avoid
falling into some mistakes. The pioneers in a field of
THE CHINA OF THE BOOK OF POETET. 53
literature so extensive as the Chinese could not but fall
into many devious tracks. It is only by degrees that
Sinologues are attaining to the proper accuracy in their
representations of the subjects which they take in hand.
On two or three points I subjoin some additional observ
ations.
i. That filial piety or duty is the first of all virtues is
a well-known principle of Chinese moralists; and at the
foundation of a well-ordered social State they place the
right regulation of the relation between husband and
wife. Pages might be filled with admirable sentiments
from them on this subject; but nowhere does a funda
mental vice of the family and social constitution of the
nation appear more strikingly than in the She. In the
earliest pieces of it, as well as in the latest, The low status
we have abundant evidence of the low status of woman, and
which was theoretically accorded to woman, poygamy-
and of the practice of polygamy. Biot has referred to
the evidence furnished by the last two stanzas of II. iv.
VI. of the different way in which the birth of sons and
that of daughters was received in a family. The family
there, indeed, is the royal family, but the king to whom
the ode is believed to refer was one of excellent
character; and the theory of China is that the lower
classes are always conformed to the example of those
above them. The sentiments expressed in that ode are
those of every class of the Chinese, ancient and modem.
\Vhile the young princes would be splendidly dressed
and put to sleep on couches, the ground to sleep on and
coarse wrappers suffice for the princesses. The former
would have sceptres to play with; the latter only tiles.
The former would be-—one of them the future king, the
others the princes of the land; the latter would go
beyond their province if they did wrong or if they did
right, all their work being confined to the kitchen and
the temple, and to causing no sorrow to their parents.
The line which says that it was for daughters neither to
do wrong nor to do good was translated by Dr Morrison
as if it said that "woman was incapable of good or
evil; " but he subjoins from a commentary the correct
meaning,—that " a slavish submission is woman's duty
and her highest praise." She ought not to originate