Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 27.djvu/351

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SECT. I.
THE QUESTIONS OF 𝖅ǍNG-𝖅ZE.
317

made, but before the day arrives, an occasion for the one year s mourning, or for that of nine months, or five months, have arrived, the youth shall be capped in his mourning dress."

10. "When all mourning is over, may a son continue to wear the cap which he has hitherto worn[1]?"

Confucius said, "When the son of Heaven gives to the (young) prince of a state or a Great officer his robes and the cap proper to each in the grand ancestral temple, the youth on his return home will set forth his offering (in his own ancestral temple), wearing the robes that have been given to him, and here he will drink the cup of capping (as if) offered by his father[2], without the cup of wine at the ceremony.

11. When a son is (thus) capped after his father's death, he is considered to be properly capped; he will sweep the ground, and sacrifice at his father's shrine. This being done, he will present himself before his uncles, and then offer the proper courtesies to the investors."

12. 𝖅ǎng-𝖟ze asked, "Under what circumstances is it that at sacrifice they do not carry out the practice of all drinking to one another?"

Confucius said, "I have heard that at the close of the one year's mourning, the principal concerned in it


  1. Till he was capped, a youth wore nothing on his head. But in the case supposed the youth's time for capping had arrived; and he had assumed a cap without the ceremony.
  2. When a father gave orders to his son about his capping or marriage, he gave him a cup of ordinary wine. The sweet wine was given to the youth by a friend or friends who had invested him with the cap. The real answer to 𝖅ǎng-𝖟ze's question is in paragraph 11.