(growing) grain; but they should not have a great hunting.
17. When the husbandmen present (the first-fruits of) their wheat, the son of Heaven tastes it along with some pork, first offering a portion in the apartment behind (the hall of the) ancestral temple.
18. In this month they collect and store up the various medicinal herbs. Delicate herbs (now) die; it is the harvest time (even) of the wheat. They decide cases for which the punishments are light; they make short work of small crimes, and liberate those who are in prison for slight offences[1].
19. When the work with the silk-worms is over, the queen presents her cocoons; and the tithe-tax of cocoons generally is collected, according to the number of mulberry trees; for noble and mean, for old and young there is one law. The object is with such cocoons to provide materials for the robes to be used at the sacrifices in the suburbs and in the ancestral temple.
20. In this month the son of Heaven (entertains his ministers and princes) with strong drink and with
(much) observance of ceremony and with music[2].
- ↑ There does not appear to be any connexion between the first sentence of this paragraph and the remainder of it. The medicinal herbs are collected while all their vigour is in them. For the things in the second sentence the "summer heats" make a premature harvest; and this seems to lead to the third topic,—the saving those charged with slight offences from the effects of that heat in confinement.
- ↑ The Khien-lung editors have a note here, which is worth quoting, to the effect that as the great solstitial sacrifices and the seasonal sacrifices of the ancestral temple do not appear in this Book, the drinking here was at court entertainments.
