employed in schools[1], and money to be received for redeemable offences. Inadvertent offences and those which could be ascribed to misfortune were to be pardoned, but those who transgressed presumptuously and repeatedly were to be punished with death. 'Let me be reverent! Let me be reverent!' (he said to himself.) 'Let compassion rule in punishment!'
He banished the Minister of Works to Yû island; confined Hwân-tau on mount Khung; drove (the chief of) San-miâo (and his people) into San-wei, and kept them there; and held Khwăn a prisoner till death on mount Yü. These four criminals being thus dealt with, all under heaven acknowledged the justice (of Shun's administration)[2].
4. After twenty-eight years the Tî deceased, when the people mourned for him as for a parent for three years. Within the four seas all the eight kinds of instruments of music were stopped and hushed. On the first day of the first month (of the) next year, Shun went to (the temple of) the Accomplished Ancestor.*
- ↑ This punishment was for officers in training; not for boys at school.
- ↑ The Minister of Works, Hwan-tâu, and Khwǎn are mentioned in the former Canon. Yû island, or Yû-Kâu, was in the extreme north of the present district of Mî-yun, department Shun-thien, Kih-lî.Mount Khung was in the district of Yung-ting, Lî Kâu, Hû-nan. San-miâo was the name of a territory, embracing the present departments of Wû-khang in Hû-pei, Yo-kâu in Hû-nan, and Kiû-kiang in Kiang-hsî. San-wei was a tract of country round a mountain of the same name in the present department of An-hsî, Kan-sû. Mount Yü was in the present district of Than-khǎng, Shan-tung.
