12. These services having been completed, they
retire, and cook again all that was insufficiently done.
The dogs, pigs, bullocks, and sheep are dismembered.
The shorter dishes (round and square), the taller
ones of bamboo and wood, and the soup vessels are
all filled. There are the prayers which express the
filial piety (of the worshipper), and the benediction
announcing the favour (of his ancestors). This
may be called the greatest omen of prosperity; and
in this the ceremony obtains its grand completion[1]."
Section II.
1. Confucius said, "Ah! Alas! I look at the ways of Kđu. (The kings) Yû[2] and Lî[3] corrupted them indeed, but if I leave Lû, where shall I go (to find them better)? The border sacrifice of Lû, (however,) and (the association with it of) the founder of the line (of Kâu) is contrary to propriety;—how have (the institutions of) the duke of Kâu fallen into decay[4]! At the border sacrifice in Khî, Yü was the assessor,
and at that in Sung, Hsieh; but these were
- ↑ This last paragraph appears to me to give a very condensed account of the banquet to a ruler's kindred, with which a service in the ancestral temple concluded. Paragraphs 10, 11, 12 are all descriptive of the parts of such a service. Compare the accounts of it in the Shih II, vi, ode 5, and other pieces.
- ↑ B.C. 781-771.
- ↑ B.C. 878-828.
- ↑ That the sacrificial ceremonies of Lû were in many things corrupted in Lû in the time of Confucius is plain to the reader of the Analects. How the corruption first began is a subject of endless controversy. It seems to be established that special privileges were granted in this respect to the duke of Kâu and his son, Po-khin. Guarded at first and innocent, encroachments were made by successive princes, as the vigour of the royal authority declined; and by-and-by as those princes became
