16 Introduction. 



knowing better on my part, but as a suggestion intimated by a con- 

 sideration of the new material here offered. This advance in our 

 knowledge is riot my merit, but merely the consequence of favorable 

 opportunities granted me by a fortunate chance. I cannot dwell here 

 on a literary discussion of the three Rituals. It is well known that 

 the Chou li was not put together until under the Han dynasty; never- 

 theless, it reflects the peculiar culture of the Chou period in such a 

 complete and systematic manner as could have only been written 

 at that time. It is a state handbook expounding in minutest detail 

 the complex organism of the governmental institutes of the Chou 

 emperors. There is no doubt that the book has been touched and 

 worked over, perhaps also interpolated as the Li ki, under the Han 

 editorship; but substantially and virtually, it is the property of the 

 Chou time. 1 The Han commentators were no more able to explain 

 intelligently many passages in it, as the culture of the Chou had perished 

 before the hatred and persecution of the Ts'in, and, as we now see to 

 our great surprise, interpreted quite wrongly most of the ceremonial 

 utensils of the Chou, which were no longer within the reach of their 

 vision. 



Here we must briefly touch one of the curious results of the follow- 

 ing investigation which will interest sinologues and archaeologists 

 alike. It seems that the Chinese commentators attempted to render 

 an account of the appearance of ceremonial and other antiquarian 

 objects either on the ground of oral traditions, or from hearsay, or, 

 in the majority of cases, on reconstructions evolved from their own 

 minds; but their comments are not based on a real viewing of the 

 objects concerned. This state of affairs is easily evidenced in general 

 by a glance at the so-called Illustrations to the Rituals, as the San li Vu 

 of Nieh Tsung-i of the Sung period (962 a. d.), or the illustrated vol- 

 umes of the K'ien-lung edition, which pretend to picture all objects of 

 importance mentioned in the ancient texts. It was always a source of 

 wonder to me how the Chinese got hold of these weak drawings which 

 bear the indelible stamp of unreality and depict many objects as, 

 e. g., weapons, carriages and houses, in a way which we must decry 

 as utterly impossible from a purely technical viewpoint; and there 

 is likewise reason to wonder that such figures could find their way 

 into foreign books (Biot, Pauthier, Zottoli, Legge, Couvreur) to illus- 

 trate ancient Chinese culture, and be passed as the real thing without 

 a word of comment or criticism. A comparison of these reconstructive 

 or purely imaginary pictures with the actual specimens of the Chou 



1 Edkins's criticism of the Chou li in his paper Ancient Navigation in the Indian 

 Ocean (Journal R. Asiatic Society, Vol. XVIII, p. 19) deserves special attention. 



