Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 27.djvu/454

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
420
THE Lî Kî.
BK. IX.

given to the human voice. Music comes from the expanding influence (that operates in nature); ceremonies from the contracting. When the two are in harmony, all things obtain (their full development).

7. There were no fixed rules for the various articles of tribute. They were the different products of the different territories according to their several suitabilities, and were regulated by their distances (from the royal domain). The tortoises were placed in front of all the other offerings;—because (the shell) gave the knowledge of the future. The bells succeeded to them;—because of their harmony, they were a symbol of the union of feeling that should prevail[1]. Then there were the skins of tigers and leopards;—emblems of the fierce energy with which insubordination would be repressed; and there were the bundles of silks with disks of jade on them,—showing how (the princes) came to (admire and experience) the virtue (of the king).

8. (The use of) a hundred torches in his courtyard began with duke Hwan of Khî. The playing of the Sze Hsiâ (at receptions) of Great officers began with Kâo Wǎn-𝖟ze[2].

9. When appearing at another court, for a Great officer to have a private audience was contrary to propriety. If he were there as a commissioner, bearing


  1. As we have no account anywhere of bells, made, being sent as tribute, many understand the name as merely = "metal."
  2. This and the five paragraphs that follow seem the work of another hand, and are not in the expurgated Kî, Duke Hwan was the first and greatest of "the five presiding princes" of the Khun Khiû period. He died B.C. 643. Kâo Wǎn-𝖟ze was a Great officer and chief minister of 𝖅in about a century after. The king alone might have a hundred torches in his courtyard.