Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 edition. Excerpt: ...left of the K /zingYang (Fane); rides in the carriage with the phoenix (bells), drawn by the azure-dragon (horses), and carrying the green flag; wears the green. ' number' of earth, gives eight, the 'number' of the months of spring; but this, to me at least, is only a jargon. _ 1 This was one of the sacrifices of the house; see paragraph 6, 1 page 116, and especially the seventh paragraph of Book XX. As the door is the place of exodus, it was the proper place for this sacrifice in the spring, when all the energies of nature begin to be displayed afresh. Among the five viscera, --the heart, the liver, the spleen, the lungs, and the kidneys, ---the spleen corresponds to the element of earth, and therefore it was made prominent in this service, in the season when the earth seems to open its womb beneath the growing warmth of the year. 2 These are all phenomena of the spring. The third of them is differently expressed in Hwai-nan Bze, the Taoist grandson of the founder of the Han dynasty (see Book V of his works), and in the I-Isia Hsiao Kang, showing that this text of the Li Ki was taken from Lii Pfi-wei, if the whole Book were not written by him. They read fig E jk, which Professor Douglas renders, 'Fish mount (to the surface of) the water, bearing on their backs pieces of ice.' But the meaning of the longer text is simply what I have given. Ying-ta says, ' Fishes, during the intense cold of winter, lie close at the bottom of the water, attracted by the greater warmth of the earth; but, when the sun's influence is felt, they rise and swim near to the ice.' E =' with their backs near to the I ice. What is said about the otter is simply a superstitious misinterpretation of its habit of...