18 THE SILK GODDESS 



rear towers with structures on them, and houses with windows and doors. 

 They toasted, grilled, boiled and roasted. They produced must and 

 sauces. They dealt with the flax and silk so as to form linen and silken 

 fabrics. 



~No deity, or presiding genius of silk culture seems to have been 

 known at the time of the foregoing text. 



31. It is however in the same work that a statement which has been \s 

 expurgated from the received edition, refers to the Sien Ts'an (580-9628) as 

 Tutelary Genii in the following terms : "In the first month of spring 



the Hou fei, i.e. the wife of the King or Prince, after having 



fast of animal food, offers a sacrifice at the Sien Ts'aii or First Silk- 

 worms, &c."The passage is quoted in a cyclopedia of the Xth century 79. 

 And a gloss in the same work explains Sien Ts'an by T'ien sze 80 , the 

 quadriga of heaven which consists of four red stars of the Scorpio; 

 this was one of the many names of fang the fourth of the 28 zodiacal 

 constellations, and the most important of spring. It was looked upon 

 as announcing the forthcoming harvest. The commentary is important 

 as it tends to show that Sien lYan was not a proper name and simply 

 an appellative of season. And the statement does not say to which 

 tutelary god or spirit the sacrifice was offered. We do not find however 

 confirmation of this identification of the Q uadri ga-of-heaven with the 

 Sien Ts'an in any of the many appellatives of that group of stars 81 . 

 The commentator was ill-informed, or the appellative was a popular one 

 which has not found its way in astronomical literature. It is only the,. 

 Niii sin, the third constellation of winter which shows some references to 

 silk culture. A secondary star-group within, the Fu Kwang or T h e * 

 B a s k e t-w i t h-h a n d 1 e s is said by the Boo k-o f-S tars to preside 

 at the rearing of silkworms 82 . As the B ook-of-s ta r s although based .. 

 upon an older work of the same title, has been recast at the time of the 

 T'ang dynasty (618-906) the selection of this presiding star-group may 

 be not much older than that period. It does not appear in the short list 

 of stars given in the Er-ya of the Confucian era. 



32. Another interesting statement concerning the part played by the 

 Emperor himself with reference to the Sericulture is made by Tchang 

 Vhwa (.232-300 a.d. 83 ), in his 'Becords of remarkable things,' 

 where he states that in the first months (of the year) of the Tchou, the 

 Ti, or Emperor, did make the census of the silkworms, and presented it 

 with the proper sacrifice (ts:) to the tutelary deities of the land (sAe) 

 that they would be favorable to the seeds of the silkworms 84 . 



