along the bounding divisions are gourds. The fruit is sliced and pickled, To be presented to our great ancestors, That their distant descendant may have long life, And receive the blessing of Heaven[1].
We sacrifice (first) with clear spirits, And then follow with a red bull; Offering them to our ancestors, (Our lord) holds the knife with tinkling bells, To lay open the hair of the victim, And takes the blood and fat[2].
Then we present, then we offer; All round the fragrance is diffused. Complete and brilliant is the sacrificial service; Grandly come our ancestors. They will reward (their descendant) with great blessing, Long life, years without end.
Ode 7. The Phû Thien.
Pictures of husbandry, and sacrifices connected with it. happy understanding between the people and their superiors.
It is difficult to say who the 'I' in the piece is, but evidently he and the 'distant descendant' are different persons. I suppose he may have been an officer, who had charge of the farms, as we may call them, in the royal domain.
Bright are those extensive fields, A tenth of whose produce is annually levied[3]. I take the old
- ↑ Here, as in so many other places, the sovereign Power, ruling in the lots of men, is referred to as Heaven.
- ↑ The fat was taken from the victim, and then burnt along with fragrant herbs, so as to form a cloud of incense. On the taking of the 'blood,' it is only said, that it was done to enable the sacrificer to announce that a proper victim had been slain.
- ↑ This line, literally, is, 'Yearly are taken ten (and a) thousand;' meaning the produce of ten acres in every hundred, and of a thousand in every ten thousand.
erected the huts in which they lived, while they were actively engaged in their agricultural labours.
