130 A CASE OF RITUALISM 



ancestors who had become spiritual beings created a realm 

 of thought that made people think a little more seriously and 

 tread a little more softly. 



When the great day of the worship of Heaven arrived, 

 crowds of people lined the way and looked with reverence 

 and awe on the Grand Coach in which rode the Son of 

 Heaven — he was such peculiarly on that day; they gazed 

 upon the long cavalcade : sometimes also on the irreverent 

 crowd of royal females that followed in the imperial train. 

 In the silence of the night the vigil was observed by the- 

 King and his officials, and the darkness as well as the flush 

 of the dawn itself gave the whole scene a great feeling of 

 mysticism and spirituality. 



The austere simplicity of the great altar for the Chiao 

 sacrifice of Heaven, the solemn precincts of the T'ai Miao 

 with its endless halls and courts and corridors where the 

 living could meet with the dead ancestor, the solemn stillness 

 all contributed to the creation of devout. feelings that res- 

 ponded in gratitude to the love and kindness of those gone. 



Such then roughly is a picture of the mental state of 

 the people in ancient times, a thousand or 2000 years B.C. 

 They were imbued with the majesty of the emperor who was 

 the living embodiment of the divinity that dwelt in some 

 star, and to which he had a correspondence — the emperor was 

 the embodiment of a divine star — not always the same star: 

 different dynasties naturally were under different stars. 

 Being such he alone could discharge the great function of the 

 Chiao, Wang, Ti. These are exclusively royal prerogatives : 

 as absolute, as exclusive as the ceremonies of the Church of 

 Rome m the dispensations of its sacraments. Indeed there is 

 much similarity in the animism that rules either. 



The Chiao" is a word meaning suburb, country as 

 opposed to the town. The great altar was built outside the 

 capital in the Chiao or Suburb : and hence the sacrifice 

 itself came to be known as the Chiao, the great sacrifice to 

 Heaven. WaxgI was the sacrifice to the mountain ranges; 

 and the Ti% was the quinquennial sacrifice of all the clans, 

 but its full significance and intention is not known to-day. 

 Now the king alone could perform these sacrifices. It was 

 not permissible for feudal lords to do so. The feudal state 

 of Lu however assumed the kingly prerogatives of celebrating 

 this Chiao sacrifice and thus committed a great sacrilege. 

 Almost as great a sacrilege as it would appear to some were a 

 nonconformist minister to celebrate in place of the pope. 

 This is our case of Eitualism. 



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