Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 27.djvu/302

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
268
THE Lî Kî.
BK. IV.

Section II. Part I.

1. In the first month of summer, the sun is in Pî; the constellation culminating at dusk being Yî, and that culminating at dawn Wû-nü[1].

2. Its days are ping and ting[2].

3. Its divine ruler is Yen Tî, and the (attending) spirit is Kû-yung[3].

4. Its creatures are the feathered.

5. Its musical note is Kih, and its pitch-tube is the Kung Lü[4].

6. Its number is seven[5]. Its taste is acrid. Its smell is that of things burning.


  1. Pî is the name for the Hyades, or, more exactly, of six stars in Hyades, with μ and ν of Taurus; it is the nineteenth of the Chinese constellations. Yî is crater. Wû-nü is not so well identified. Williams says that it is "a star near the middle of Capricorn," but others say in Hercules. The R Yâ makes it the same as Hsü-nü (須女). Probably it was a star in the constellation Nü of Aquarius.
  2. The third and fourth stem characters of the cycle.
  3. Yen Tî ("the blazing Tî") is the dynastic designation of Shǎn Nǎng, generally placed next to Fû-hsî in Chinese chronology, and whose date cannot be assigned later than the thirty-first century B.C. Kû-yung in one account is placed before Fû-hsî; in a second, as one of the ministers of Hwang Tî; and in a third, as a son of Khwan-hsü (B.C. 2510-2433). He was "the Director of Fire," and had the presidency of summer.
  4. Kih is the fourth of the notes of the Chinese scale, and Kung Lü ("the middle Spine") the third of the tubes that give the six lower accords.
  5. The number of fire is 2, which + 5, that of earth, = 7.