CHAP. III.] DIVINATION IN ANCIENT CHINA.

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is the lesson of God. All the multitudes of the people, instructed in this amplification of the perfect excellence, and carrying it into practice, will thereby approximate to the glory of the Son of Heaven, and say, 'The Son of Heaven is the parent of the people, and so becomes the sovereign of all under the sky.'

vi. Sixth, of the three virtues.-The first is correctness and straightforwardness; the second, strong rule; and the third, mild rule. In peace and tranquillity, correctness and straightforwardness (must sway); in violence and disorder, strong rule; in harmony and order, mild rule. For the reserved and retiring there should be (the stimulus of) the strong rule; for the high(-minded) and distinguished (the restraint of) the mild rule.

It belongs only to the sovereign to confer dignities and rewards, to display the terrors of majesty, and to receive the revenues (of the kingdom). There should be no such thing as a minister's conferring dignities or rewards, displaying the terrors of majesty, or receiving the revenues. Such a thing is injurious to the clans and fatal to the states (of the kingdom); smaller affairs are thereby managed in a one-sided and perverse manner, and the people fall into assumptions and excesses.

vii. Seventh, of the (means for the) examination of doubts.1Officers having been chosen and appointed for divining by the tortoise-shell and the stalks of the Achillea, they are to be charged (on occasion) to execute their duties. (In doing this) they will find (the appearances of) rain, of clearing up, of cloudiness, of want of connexion, and of crossing; and the inner and outer

1 "The tortoise," says Kû Hsî, "after great length of years becomes intelligent; and the Khî plant will yield, when a hundred years old a hundred stalks from one root, and is also a spiritual and intelligent thing." The two divinations were in reality a questioning of spiritual beings, the plant and the shell being employed, because of their mysterious intelligence, to indicate their intimations. The way of divination by the shell was by the application of fire to scorch it till the indications appeared on it; and that by the stalks. of the plant was to manipulate in a prescribed way forty-nine of them, eighteen different times, till the diagrams were formed Sacred Books of the East, vol. iii. p. 145.

diagrams. In all (the indications) are seven ;-five given by the shell and two by the stalks; and (by means) of these any errors (in the mind) may be traced out. These officers having been appointed, when the divination is proceeded with, three men are to interpret the indications, and the (consenting) words of two of them are to be followed.

When you have doubts about any great matter, consult with your own mind; consult with your high ministers and officers; consult with the common people; consult the tortoise-shell and divining-stalks. If you, the shell, the stalks, the ministers and officers, and the common people, all agree about a course, this is what is called a great concord, and the result will be the welfare of your person and good fortune to your descendants. If you, the shell and the stalks, agree, while the ministers and officers and the common people oppose, the result will be fortunate. If the ministers and officers, with the shell and stalks, agree, while you and the common people oppose, the result will be fortunate. If the common people, the shell, and the stalks, agree, while you, with the ministers and officers, oppose, the result will be fortunate. If you and the shell agree, while the stalks, with the ministers and officers, and the common people, oppose, internal operations will be fortunate, and external undertakings unlucky. When the shell and stalks are both opposed to the views of men, there will be good fortune in being still, and active operations will be unlucky.

viii. Eighth, of the various verifications.-They are rain, sunshine, heat, cold, wind, and seasonableness. When the five come, all complete, and each in its proper order, (even) the various plants will be richly luxuriant. Should any one of them be either excessively abundant or excessively deficient, there will be evil.

There are the favourable verifications:-namely, of gravity, which is emblemed by seasonable rain; of orderliness, emblemed by seasonable sunshine; of wisdom, emblemed by seasonable heat; of deliberation, enblemed by seasonable cold; and of sageness, emblemed by seasonable wind. There are also the unfavourable verifications:-namely, of recklessness, emblemed by constant rain; of assumption, emblemed by constant sunshine; of indolence, emblemed by constant heat; of hastiness, emblemed by constant cold; and of stupidity, emblemed by constant wind. He went on

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ZOROASTRIANISM.

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to say, "The King should examine the (character of the whole) year; the high ministers and officers (that of) the month; and the inferior officers (that of) the day. If, throughout the year, the month, the day, there be an unchanging seasonableness, all the grains will be matured; the measures of government will be wise; heroic men will stand forth distinguished; and in the families (of the people) there will be peace and prosperity. If, throughout the year, the month, the day, the seasonableness be interrupted, the various kinds of grain will not be matured; the measures of government will be dark and unwise; heroic men will be kept in obscurity; and in the families (of the people) there will be an absence of repose.

"By the common people the stars should be examined. Some stars love wind, and some love rain. The courses of the sun and moon give winter and summer. The way in which the moon follows the stars gives wind and rain.”

ix. Ninth, of the five (sources of) happiness.-The first is long life; the second, riches; the third, soundness of body and serenity of mind; the fourth, the love of virtue; and the fifth, fulfilling to the end the will (of Heaven). Of the six extreme evils, the first is misfortune, shortening the life; the second, sickness; the third, distress of mind; the fourth, poverty; the fifth, wickedness; the sixth, weakness.2

And now let us pass from China to Persia, and look at the documents which remain to us of the great religion of the Magi-once the dominant creed of a mighty empire, now almost extinct in its ancient seat, and kept alive by the small community, numbering at the outside only some 150.000

1 Dr. Legge remarks, "It is hardly possible to see how this division enters into the scheme of The Great Plan."

2 Sacred Books, vol. iii. pp. 139-149.

souls, known as the Parsis, and for the last two centuries settled at Bombay. "As the Parsis are the ruins of a people [writes Professor Darmesteter], so are their Sacred Books the ruins of a religion. There has been no other great belief in the world that ever left such poor and meagre monuments of its past splendour. Yet great is the value which that small book, the Avesta, and the belief of that scanty people, the Parsis, have in the eyes of the historian and theologist, as they present to us the last reflex of the ideas which prevailed in Iran during the five centuries which preceded, and the seven which followed, the birth of Christ, a period which gave to the world the Gospels, the Talmud, and the Qur'ân. Persia, it is known, had much influence on each of the movements which produced, or proceeded from, those three books; she lent much to the first heresiarchs, much to the Rabbis, much to Mohammed. By help of the Parsi religion and the Avesta we are enabled to go back to the very heart of that most momentous period in the history of religious thought which saw the blending of the Aryan mind with the Semitic, and thus opened the second stage of Aryan thought.""

Such is the interest and importance of the sacred literature of the Parsis. The story of the opening up of that literature to European investigation is one of the most romantic in the history of scholarship. Until towards the end of the last

1 Sacred Books, vol. iv. Introduction, p. xii.

CHAP. III.]

ANQUETIL DUPERRON.

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century the Zend-Avesta, although manuscripts of it had been brought to Europe, was a sealed book to the Western world. It was about the year 1750 that Anquetil Duperron conceived the design of penetrating its secrets and of earning for himself the glory of being the first to explore those mysterious regions of religious thought. The aspiration might well have seemed Quixotic in the extreme, for the enthusiastic young Frenchman was without money, without friends, and but modestly equipped with scholarship. But, "audax omnia perpeti," he worked his way out to Bombay as a common sailor. Arrived there, after a very difficult and dangerous voyage, he found himself apparently little nearer his end than when he started, but fortunately the protection of the French Government was obtained for him. He set about learning the Avesta and Pahlavi languages, and after many rebuffs he acquired the confidence and friendship of learned Parsi priests. At last he thought himself sufficiently advanced to engage upon a translation of the Zend-Avesta, and in 1761 he returned to Europe bringing it with him, as well as some one hundred and eighty oriental manuscripts. In 1771 he published his great work, "Zend-Avesta, the work of Zoroaster, containing the theological, physical, and moral ideas of this law-giver, the ceremonies of the divine service which he established, and several important traits respecting the ancient history of the Persians, translated into French from