Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 27.djvu/511

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SECT. II.

THE NÊI 𝖅EH.

477

it was taught to use the right hand. When it was able to speak, a boy (was taught to) respond boldly and clearly; a girl, submissively and low. The former was fitted with a girdle of leather; the latter, with one of silk^[1].

↑ The account which follows this of the teaching and training of the brothers and sisters is interesting; and we may compare it with what is said in volume iii, p. 350, of the different reception given to sons and daughters in the royal family, though the distinction between them is not accentuated here so strongly. The passage treats of the children in a family of the higher classes, but those of the common people would be dealt with in a corresponding manner according to their circumstances. And even in the early feudal times the way was open for talent and character to rise from the lower ranks in the social scale, and be admitted to official employment. The system of competitive examinations was even then casting a shadow before. To number the days was, and is, a more complicated affair in China than with us, requiring an acquaintance with all the terms of the cycle of sixty, as well as the more compendious method by decades for each month. The education of a boy, it will be seen, comprehended much more than what we call the three Rs. The conclusion of paragraph 33 gives the translator some difficulty. Zottoli has—"et petet exerceri lectionibus sermonisque veiitate," and my own first draft was—"he would ask to be exercised in (reading) the tablets, and in truthful speaking." But it is making too much of the boys of ancient China to represent them as anxious to be taught to speak the truth. The meaning of the concluding characters, as given in the text, is that assigned to them by Kǎng Hsüan.
There is nothing in what is said of the daughters to indicate that they received any literary training. They were taught simply the household duties that would devolve on them in their state of society; though among them, be it observed, were the forms and provision for sacrifice and worship. It will be observed, also, at how early an age all close intercourse between them and their brothers came to an end, and that at ten they ceased to go out from the women's apartments. On what is said about the young men marrying at the age of thirty I have spoken in a note on page 65.

[1] The account which follows this of the teaching and training of the brothers and sisters is interesting; and we may compare it with what is said in volume iii, p. 350, of the different reception given to sons and daughters in the royal family, though the distinction between them is not accentuated here so strongly. The passage treats of the children in a family of the higher classes, but those of the common people would be dealt with in a corresponding manner according to their circumstances. And even in the early feudal times the way was open for talent and character to rise from the lower ranks in the social scale, and be admitted to official employment. The system of competitive examinations was even then casting a shadow before. To number the days was, and is, a more complicated affair in China than with us, requiring an acquaintance with all the terms of the cycle of sixty, as well as the more compendious method by decades for each month. The education of a boy, it will be seen, comprehended much more than what we call the three Rs. The conclusion of paragraph 33 gives the translator some difficulty. Zottoli has—"et petet exerceri lectionibus sermonisque veiitate," and my own first draft was—"he would ask to be exercised in (reading) the tablets, and in truthful speaking." But it is making too much of the boys of ancient China to represent them as anxious to be taught to speak the truth. The meaning of the concluding characters, as given in the text, is that assigned to them by Kǎng Hsüan.
There is nothing in what is said of the daughters to indicate that they received any literary training. They were taught simply the household duties that would devolve on them in their state of society; though among them, be it observed, were the forms and provision for sacrifice and worship. It will be observed, also, at how early an age all close intercourse between them and their brothers came to an end, and that at ten they ceased to go out from the women's apartments. On what is said about the young men marrying at the age of thirty I have spoken in a note on page 65.

[1]