officer should be carried lower still. 3. When one is holding an article belonging to his lord, though it may be light, he should seem unable to sustain it. In the case of a piece of silk, or a rank-symbol of jade, square or round, he should keep his left hand over it. He should not lift his feet in walking, but trail his heels like the wheels of a carriage. 4. (A minister) should stand (with his back) curved in the manner of a sounding-stone[1], and his girdle-pendants hanging down. Where his lord has his pendants hanging at his side, his should be hanging down in front; where his lord has them hanging in front, his should descend to the ground. 5. When one is holding any symbol of jade (to present it), if it be on a mat, he leaves it so exposed; if there be no mat, he covers it with (the sleeve of) his outer robe[2].
2. 6. The ruler of a state should not call by their names his highest ministers, nor the two noble ladies of her surname, who accompanied his wife to the harem[3]. A Great officer should not call in that way
an officer who had been employed by his father, nor
- ↑ The sounding-stone which the writer had in mind could not have been so curved as it is ordinarily represented to be in pictures, or the minister must have carried himself as Scott in his "Fortunes of Nigel," ch. 10, describes Andrew the Scrivener.
- ↑ P. Zottoli translates this paragraph by:—"Deferens gemmas, si eae habent sustentaculum, tunc apertam indues diploidem; si non habent sustentaculum, tunc clausam." The text is not easily construed; and the commentaries, very diffuse, are yet not clear.
- ↑ When a feudal prince married, two other states, of the same surname as the bride, sent each a daughter of their ruling house to accompany her to the new harem. These are "the noble ladies" intended here.
