Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 27.djvu/143

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SECT. I. PT. I.
THE THAN KUNG.
125

in burying it in the same grave (with his father) at Fang[1].

11. When there are mourning rites in the neighbourhood, one should not accompany his pestle with his voice[2]. When there is a body shrouded and coffined in his village, one should not sing in the lanes [2]. For a mourning cap the ends of the ties should not hang down.

12. (In the time of Shun) of Yü they used earthen- ware coffins[3]; under the sovereigns of Hsiâ, they surrounded these with an enclosure of bricks. The people of Yin used wooden coffins, the outer and inner. They of Kâu added the surrounding curtains and the feathery ornaments. The people of Kâu buried those who died between 16 and 19 in the coffins of Yin; those who died between 12 and 15 or between 8 and 11 in the brick enclosures of Hsiâ; and those who died (still younger), for whom no mourning is worn, in the earthenware enclosures of the time of the lord of Yü.

13. Under the sovereigns of Hsiâ they preferred what was black. On great occasions (of mourning), for preparing the body and putting it into the coffin, they used the dusk; for the business of war, they used black horses in their chariots; and the victims which they used were black. Under the Yin

dynasty they preferred what was white.


  1. This paragraph is generally discredited. The Khien-lung editors say it is not to be relied on.
  2. 2.0 2.1 These two rules are in Book I, i. Pt. iv, 43, page 89.
  3. In a still earlier time, according to the third Appendix of the Yî (vol. xvi, p. 385), they merely covered the body on the ground with faggots.