15. The son of Heaven at this time offers a lamb
(to the ruler of cold), and opens the (reservoirs of)
ice. Before (using it generally), they offer some in
their principal apartment or in the ancestral temple[1].
16. On the first ting day[2] orders are given to the chief director of Music to exhibit the civil dances and unfold the offerings of vegetables[3] (to the inventor of music). The son of Heaven, at the head of the three ducal ministers, his nine high ministers, the feudal princes (at court), and his Great officers, goes in person to see the ceremony. On the second ting* day orders are given again to the same chief to enter the college, and practise music (with his pupils).
17. In this month at the (smaller) services of supplication[4] they do not use victims. They use offerings of jade, square and round, and instead (of victims) skins and pieces of silk.
18. If in this second month of spring the governmental proceedings proper to autumn were observed,
- ↑ Compare vol. iii, page 445. Where there was an ancestral temple, the ice would be presented there. The people who had no such temple might present it before the spirit-tablets of their deceased in their principal apartment, where these were set up.
- ↑ The fourth and fourteenth cycle days.
- ↑ The offerings were small and scanty in this month, fruits not yet being ready for such a use. Cress and tussel-pondweed are mentioned among the vegetables which were presented on this occasion.
- ↑ The received text here means not "services of supplication," but sacrifices. That which I have adopted is found in 𝖅hâi Yung, and is approved by the Khien-lung editors. It is a necessary alteration, for in paragraphs 9 and 15 we have instances of victims used this month at sacrifices. The change in the text is not great in Chinese, the character 祈 for 祀.
