[198] In the Book of Rites (I. Pt. i. v. 10), which dates, in its present form, only from the first century B.C., occurs this passage, “With the slayer of his father, a man may not live under the same heaven;” and in the Family Sayings (Bk. X. ab init.), a work which professes, though on quite insufficient authority, to record a number of the conversations and apophthegms of Confucius not given in the Lun-yü, or Confucian Gospels, we find the following course laid down for a man whose father has been murdered:—“He must sleep upon a grass mat, with his shield for his pillow; he must decline to take office; he must not live under the same heaven (with the murderer). When he meets him in the court or in the market-place, he must not return for a weapon, but engage him there and then;” being always careful, as the commentator observes, to carry a weapon about with him. Sir John Davis and Dr. Legge agree in stigmatizing this as “one of the objectionable principles of Confucius.” It must, however, be admitted that (1) a patched-up work which appeared as we have it now from two to three centuries after Confucius’s death, and (2) a confessedly apocryphal work such as the Family Sayings, are hardly sufficient grounds for affixing to the fair fame of China’s great Sage the positive inculcation of a dangerous principle of blood-vengeance like that I have just quoted.
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[199] The Chinese theory being that every official is responsible for the peace and well-being of the district committed to his charge, and even liable to punishment for occurrences over which he could not possibly have had any control.
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[200] See No. X., [note 75].
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[201] See No. X., [note 78].
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[202] No man being allowed to hold office within a radius of 500 li, or nearly 200 miles, from his native place.
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[203] This is a very common custom all over China.
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[204] Of all the Buddhist sutras, this is perhaps the favourite with the Chinese.
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[205] Contrary to the German notion that the spirit of the dead mother, coming back at night to suckle the child she has left behind, makes an impress on the bed alongside the baby.
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[206] Being, of course, invisible to all except himself.
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[207] A very ancient expression, signifying “the grave,” the word “wood” being used by synecdoche for “coffin.”
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