120 EXOGAMY IN CHINA 



him, it is said : "The King by (the grace of) Heaven has 

 gone far on high." 

 toiden Bough. In the Golden Bough, Frazer has given many in- 



ei.'leq?" " stances of the taboo attaching to the names of kings 

 and of the special avoidance of their names after death ; 

 Edkint, Religion and he quoted Dr. Edkins who says in his "Religion in 

 China" that "the proper name of the Emperor of 

 China may neither be pronounced nor written by any 

 of his Subjects." 

 sb'e'pmv ^ King Wan it is said that he "in sacrificing, 



v'oi. 28 p. 212". served the dead as if he were serving the living" . . . 

 "On the recurrence of their death-day, he was sad; in 

 calling his father by the name, elsewhere forbidden, he 

 looked as if he saw him. " 

 Op. eit. Pt. ill. The taboo must in the earliest times have applied 



not only to the names of the dead, but also to the 

 names of the object sacrificed to the dead, as we read 

 that: "According to the rules for all sacrifices in the 

 ancestral temple, the ox is called 'the creature with 

 the large foot'; the pig, 'the hard bristles'; a sucking 

 pig, 'the fatling'; a. sheep, 'the soft hair'; a cock, 

 'the loud voice'; a dog, 'the soup offering'; a pheasant, 

 'the wide toes'; a hare, 'the clear seer'; the stalks of 

 dried flesh, 'the exactly cut oblations'; dried fish, 'the 

 well considered oblation'; fresh fish, 'the straight obla- 

 tion." Water is called 'the pure cleanser'; spirits, 

 'the clear cup'; millet, 'the fragrant mass'; the large- 

 grained millet, 'the fragrant (grain)'; the sacrificial 

 millet, 'the bright grain'; paddy, 'the admirable vege- 

 table'; scallions, 'the rich roots'; salt, 'the saline briny 

 substance'; jade, 'the admirable jade'; and silks, 'the 

 exact silks.' " 



The various collections of the Eules of Propriety 

 or Ceremonial Usages which were brought together in 

 the 2nd and 1st Centuries B.C. and which form the 

 Li Ki were the accretions of many past ages. 



Many of the "rules" such as those just referred to 

 must have been acted on from the earliest days of 

 Chinese life, being coeval with the "sorcerers," whose 

 successors we find still in attendance upon the Ruler 

 in classical times. 

 cioiden Bough Had the Chinese thought, language and script led 



etseq.'c'p. 353. to the easy substitution of other "words" for "water," 

 "salt," "millet" or "pig," then, as among the tribes 

 instanced by Frazer, the names of tabooed persons or 

 objects would have been liable to frequent change. 



