250
THE Lî Kî.
BK. IV.
3. Its divine ruler is Thâi Hâo, and the (attending) spirit is Kâu-mang[1].
4. Its creatures are the scaly[2].
5. Its musical note is Kio, and its pitch-tube is the Thâi Зhâu[3].
6. Its number is eight[4]; its taste is sour; its smell is rank.
- ↑ Thâi Hâo, "the Grandly Bright," is what is called "the dynastic designation" of Fû-hsî and his line. By the time that the observances described in this Book had come into use, Fû-hsî and other early personages had been deified (帝), and were supposed to preside over the seasons of the year. To him as the earliest of them was assigned the presidency of the spring, and the element of wood, the phenomena of vegetation being then most striking. He was the "divine ruler" of the spring, and sacrificed to in its months; and at the sacrifices there was associated with him, as assessor, an inferior personage called Kâu-mang (literally, "curling fronds and spikelets"), said to have been a son of Shâo Hâo, another mythical sovereign, founder of the line of Kin Thien (金天氏). But Shâo Hâo was separated from Thâi Hâo by more than 1000 years. The association at these sacrifices in the spring months of two personages so distant in time from each other as Fû-hsî and Kdu-mang, shows how slowly and irregularly the process of deification and these sacrifices had grown up.
- ↑ The character for which I have given "creatures" is often translated by "insects;" but fishes, having scales, must form a large portion of what are here intended. "The seven (zodiacal) constellations of the east," says Wû Khǎng, "make up the Azure Dragon, and hence all moving creatures that have scales belong to (the element of) wood."
- ↑ Kio is the name of the third of the five musical notes of the Chinese scale, corresponding to our B (?); and Thâi Зhâu is the name of one of the twelve tubes by which, from a very early date, music was regulated. The Thâi Зhâu, or "Great Pipe," was the second of the tubes that give the "six upper musical accords."
- ↑ The "number" of wood is three, which added to five, the "number" of earth, gives eight, the "number" of the months of spring; but this, to me at least, is only a jargon.
