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CAROLE MORGAN
Other ceremonies involving dogs are mentioned in the Chou Li, the Chou Book of Rites (a utopian picture of Chou society compiled from late Chou, Chin and Han sources in the 1st Century B.C.). In the nu (()) sacrifice to drive away pestilence, a dog was dismembered and his remains buried in front of the main gates of the capital.10
The ba (*) sacrifice to ward off evil required the participation of the Emperor himself. Riding in a jade chariot it was his duty to crush a dog under the wheels of his carriage. An analysis of the character ba clearly shows what took place in the ceremony. The term ba is written with the radical for cart and a phonetic element (()) which originally meant an animal whose legs had been bound. It was the duty of a specially appointed official to supply a dog of one colour and without blemishes for the sacrifice.12
According to one author, Schindler, the origin of using dogs as sacrificial animals dates back to a primitive cult in honour of a dog-shaped god of vegetation whose worship later became amalgamated with that of Shang Ti, god of agricultural production and reigning deity of the Shang pantheon.13 The fact that alone among domestic animals dogs and horses were buried (dogs being wrapped in reed mats and horses in sheets) gives some support to this theory.14
In Chou times, horses too were used as sacrificial victims. In the ma (()) ceremony horses were used as chthonic sacrifices to the Earth Goddess;15 and Ssu Ma Ch'ien tells us that Duke Hsiang of Ch'in (776-766 B.C.) sacrificed a red colt to the White Emperor of the West.16 In such cases the horse to be sacrificed was first shot with an arrow and then buried.17
But as horses became more valuable the practice of using them as sacrificial victims gradually died out. By 103 B.C. Ssu-Ma Ch'ien informs us all live horses had been replaced by wooden statuettes except in cases such as the chiao (*) sacrifice, celebrated by the Emperor himself, during which he informed his ancestors that he was about to undertake a punitive expedition.18
Horses, however, were not only used as sacrificial animals, they were also entitled to a cult of their own.
According to the Chou Li it was the duty of an official, the Hsiao Jen, to sacrifice in Spring to the ma tsu ((马祖)), the ancestors of horses. It was the duty of the same official to honour the "tamer