The Wisdom of Confucius - 6 books in One Edition. Confucius

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      In addition to the chief temple at the village of the sage, there are, apart from the 1,500 city temples attached to the district examination halls, five others of a higher order. These are at the seat of the schism or emigration in Cheh Kiang ; at a place a day’s journey from Shanghai in Kiang Su ; in the Peking Palace ; in the old Tartar capital of Shan Si; and in the western province of Sz Ch’wan.

      Some of the Europeans who have visited the temple at Confucius village have described the ceremonies and the worship, but it does not appear that any have actually seen them performed : at Shanghai, and perhaps at other of the treaty ports, foreigners have witnessed the local sacrifices, which are of course on a smaller scale ; but in every instance the chief civil authority, accompanied by the military subordinates as well as his own, acts as a sort of high priest ; but this term is not approved by Dr. Legge, whether applied to the Emperor or to others. A slow time dance, something after the fashion of our minuets, is performed by fifty youths, and meanwhile the six bands, each of six players, discourse shrill music. The airs are the same as those played in Confucius’ time. The suovetaurilia and other symbolical offerings stand on tables between the incense vase flanked by two candles upon the altar and a roll of spotless white silk spread out upon the floor, the last ready for burning before the Sage’s tablets, after the departure of the spirit. But the offerings are mere expressions of devotion, in no way intended as expiations of sin. The high priest arrives at dawn, and is supposed, as in ancestor worship, to have fasted and contemplated for three days. The adoration which I saw offered to the Emperor of Annam in the spring of 1893, with its hymns, kneelings, and knockings, seems to correspond in most particulars, with the exception of the dance, to the worship of Confucius. Accordingly, the fact that in China, and the states of her subordinate neighbours, the so-called worship is offered to the living as well as the dead points to a radical divergence of idea, and exemplifies once more that these ceremonies approach rather the Byzantine idea of lay adoration than the Christian sentiment of religious worship. Confucius was as far as possible from regarding himself as a prophet, not to say a god. In using the expression ” Heaven gave birth to what virtue is in me,” he distinctly recognises himself as a created being, and owing duty as such to a higher than himself. To a certain extent he considered himself to be an instrument or expounder ( of this higher being. No prayer is offered to Confucius, nor is his assist-ance sought in any way ; and, as we have already shown, a Tartar dynasty 1,400 years ago prohibited the vulgar innovation, then being introduced by barren women, of seeking his mediation in their favour. Confucius is simply worshipped as one who codified learning ; as a sort of re-embodiment of the Duke of Chow, civil founder of the first truly historical imperial dynasty, whose memory was worshipped in Confucius’ time both at the imperial and ducal capitals, and whose tomb still lies near to that of Confucius. The worship offered to the Duke of Chow was simply a repetition of that which had always been offered to the manes of China’s best Emperors, who were what Sir Henry Maine describes in ancient western history and law as simply the Themistes or Assessors of the Deity, whether called Zeus or Ti. Or the sacrifices may be regarded as being made to them as earliest inventors or founders. Thus, one is worshipped as the founder of agriculture, another as the discoverer of the silk-worm, and so on. When we come to think of the importance of writing in the world, we have less difficulty in revering Confucius as a discoverer of records and history.

      1 ↑ One of his European expositors however styles Lao-tso ” a prophet of the gentiles,” because “five centuries before Christ he preached Christian doctrines.”

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