punishable with 50 or more blows of the bamboo, or with banishment, they shall not permit such person to assist at the ceremony, on penalty of forfeiting themselves the aforesaid one month's salary.
The superintendant of the rites, if ignorant of the cause of mourning, or former misconduct, of a member of the assemblage, shall not be liable to the penalty; but it shall be levied on those who, being subject to such disabilities, do not make known the same.
Moreover, all those officers of government shall be liable to the same forfeiture, who, after having taken the oaths of abstinence, do not pass the night apart from their families, if on duty in the provinces, or at their official apartments, if on duty at court.
If the animals, precious stones, silks, grain, and other articles introduced in the grand sacrifices and oblations, are not of the quality, and in the state prescribed by the ritual regulations[1], the superintendants shall be punished with 50 blows j if an article of any kind is wanting, the punishment shall be encreased to 80 blows, and if any one of the altars is wholly unprovided, the punishment shall be further encreased to 100 blows.
If the officer of government having the charge of the animals reserved for sacrifice at grand solemnities, does not rear and feed them in the manner, and according to the practice by law established, so that any one of them becomes lean, or is otherwise injured, he shall suffer 40 blows, and be liable to a punishment proportionally greater by one degree, as far as 80 blows, for every addition of one to the number of animals so circumstanced. When any one or more of these animals die in consequence of such neglect, the punishment shall be further encreased one degree.
- ↑ The code of ritual regulations which, in this division of the Penal Laws, is frequently referred to, is, as might be expected from the national character and peculiar habits of the Chinese, extremely voluminous; and the subject likewise occupies a very considerable portion of the great Chinese work already noticed under the title of Ta-tfing-hoey-tien.
