150 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. X. 



The same ideas still pervade modern China. In the temple of 

 Agriculture (Sien Nung Van) in Peking, north of the ground where the 

 emperor ploughs in the spring, there is a square terrace, five feet high, 

 and fifty feet on each side, from which the ceremonies of ploughing are 

 watched; there are further two rectangular altars there devoted to the 

 spirits of Heaven and Earth, respectively. In the Tai Miao, the 

 ancestral temple of the imperial family, there is still the altar to the 

 spirits of land and grain, fifty-two feet square and four feet high, built 

 of white marble; the terrace is laid with earth of five colors, distributed 

 in the above mentioned way among the cardinal points, yellow being 

 in the centre. The inner wall is 764 feet long, and is built with bricks 

 glazed in different colors on each of its four sides, according to position. 



It is of great interest to note the manner in which the image of 

 Earth has been reconstructed in the imperial temple of Earth (Ti Van) 

 of the present dynasty. In the Huang ch'ao li k% Vu shih 1 (Ch. 1, 

 p. 22 b) it is stated that the image in use there is the huang ts'ung 

 with reference to the passage in the Chou li quoted at full length 

 with the commentatorial annotations that yellow represents the color 

 of Earth, and that the ts'ung is square. Consequently, in the 

 K'ien-lung epoch, all stress was laid on these two features, — 

 yellow and square, and on this basis, an ideal reconstruction was 

 attempted by mere intuition. The result is shown in Fig. 70, 

 reproducing the wood-cut of the huang ts'ung in the imperial 

 Code of Rituals. It is, as described in the text, quadrangular, 

 some four inches and somewhat more in diameter, seven-tenths of an 

 inch thick in the centre and two-tenths of an inch thick along the 

 edges, the upper edge being convex, and the lower side having the 

 shape of a segment (the figure is certainly misdrawn in order to show 

 the appearance of this lower side). "The ornaments," it is said, 

 "are like mountain-formations, also they serve in symbolizing Earth." 

 The unilateral arrangement of this pattern is curious. Sentiment 

 may have prevailed that the bare quadrangular yellow jade piece 

 was, after all, insufficient to be a worthy representative of the deity, 

 and may have suggested the addition of this hill ornament. 



On the imperial Altar of the Tutelary Deities of the Soil and the 

 Harvest (She Tsi Van) of the present dynasty, the two are worshipped 

 under jade images consisting of a quadrangular solid foundation to 

 the upper and lower end of which a kuei is attached (Hang kuei yu ti, see 



1 A finely illustrated handbook describing the objects of the cult and the state 

 paraphernalia of the reigning dynasty, drawn up by order of the Emperor K'ien- 

 lung in 1759, and revised in 1766 (see A. Wylie, Notes on Chinese Literature, 

 p. 72). A copy of this rare and important work was procured by me for the John 

 Crerar Library of Chicago (No. 589); another copy is preserved in my collection 

 in the American Museum, New York. 



