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symbolic statement which parallels the set of technical acts which cluster together into the agricultural phase of sowing. Just as the graves are cleaned and repaired, the seed beds are cleaned and repaired.44 In the same light, the offerings on the grave make sense as a statement parallel to sowing. Meat and wine were offered to the graves and rice was offered to the seed beds. The grave offerings were probably shared between the dead and those who were presenting them. In Yuanjiang it was called to 'drink wine on the grave'. If these suggestions are correct, do they fit in an interesting way with our earlier reasoning? At any rate they lead us to a new and puzzling juxtaposition: graves are not only mountains, they are also seedbeds.
5. Money trees.
The other important feature of the spring grave worship was the erection of bamboo top-branches with paper money or paper strips hung on the twigs. This kind of ritual arrangement has a certain Southeast Asian flavour, but here we shall resist all temptations to make comparisons in this broader perspective. Here we deal with Chinese ritual phenomena in their Chinese setting.
I have discussed the sign of bamboo elsewhere,45 and from its contextual appearance in rituals in the lake area of Hubei and Hunan I induced the conclusion that it had ambiguous connotations to productive force and ‘driving-away' power. When the sweeping of the graves implied that they were swept with bamboo twigs, this may have entailed some sort of 'driving-away' or purification. A reminiscent practice is that of Jiangling where, on the 24th day of the twelfth moon, the doorways were swept with bamboo branches.46 It would, then, be possible to argue that the bamboos erected on the graves gave protection to the graves or the dead. But if so, what about paper money and paper strips? The latter are in all probability a version of the former. But what does it mean to hang paper money on bamboo branches?
A similar arrangement is mentioned in the essay Wuling jingdu lue. It is said that during the dragon boat races in the fifth moon there were special small boats on the river; their task was to supply the competitors with food and wine. Each of these small boats was equipped with two trees in which 'yellow money' had been hung. They also had 'multicoloured scrolls', drummers and flutists.47