138 A CASE OF RITUALISM 



celebration of the Chiao sacrifice in Lu was legal or illegal, 

 and whether it should have been observed at all, and not 

 spend their time on small details. The sages, he further 

 saj'S, always fixed their attention on this fundamental point. 



"The Master grieved over the decay of Chow, because 

 its Eites and Music proceeded from the Feudal Lords," says 

 Dr. Lin. "When he spoke of the Chiao and Ti of Luh, his 

 words implied sorrow at the decay of Chow. For how could 

 it be that the Chiao sacrifice of Heaven which was the 

 exclusive office of the King, be performed by the Feudal 

 Lords too? The King performed the sacrifice of the San 

 Wang to the Mountains and Kivers : the Feudal Lords must 

 also Wang (sacrifice). The King sacrificed (Ti) to the 

 fountain-head of their Ancestors and the Feudal Lords must 

 sacrifice too. If it be assumed they had the right to do 

 these things, then the Sage would not take it as a cause of 

 regret that the Eites and Music were observed by the Feudal 

 Lords. Since the death of Confucius, the Han scholars were 

 ignorant of the True Way; they seeing only that the Ch'un 

 Ch'iu made a record of the use of many of the Kingly func- 

 tions by Luh in their sacrifices began to talk a lot of non- 

 sense, premising that as Chow bestowed (on Luh) the Eites 

 and Music therefore not one of the scholars considered that 

 Luh was at fault : and thus threw to the winds the view of 

 the Sage that the sacrilege was great. These men only 

 sought for the illegality in small details. The Luh people 

 in their wrongful use of the Eites and Music were guilty of a 

 fundamental wrong. Even supposing that they had not 

 incurred the sin of the blasphemous use of the Eites by 

 divining four or five times, the vital question was — Could they 

 offer (Chiao) sacrifice under any circumstance ? Again su- 

 posing that they had used care in the tending of the sacred 

 animal, so that it did not die from disease, would it be right 

 for them to perform the (Chiao) sacrifice or not? At no 

 time was it lawful for them to Chiao or Wang. But these 

 petty details are not worth discussing. ' ' , 



In defence of Lu the plea has been advanced that the 

 rites it observed differed a little from the practices of Chow, 

 and therefore the ceremonies were free from the charge of 

 bearing an exact correspondence to the rites pertaining to 

 the kingly functions. This difference is that whilst Chow 

 held the Chiao on the winter solstice, Lu held it when "the 

 insects began to move" : the imperial sacrifice was made to 

 the Four mountains, but Lu limited this to two. Thus the 

 shifting of the times, and lessening the number gave a 

 different complexion to the whole, it was claimed. But 

 really in essence the two things were alike, and the alteration 



