192
N° of Column
27.
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Omens
below the black, offer it along with wine and dried
meat (?) and it will be auspicious.
If sounds are heard on a chen day it bodes ill; parents will die. Offer a peach tree branch 6 inches 8 mu long. Write.
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NOTES
1 Cheng Te-K'un, Archaeology in China, Heffer, Cambridge, vol. II (1960) p. 90. For the ning ceremony see the same volume p. 55. For further dismembering ceremonies see note 11.
2
* In Song times canine teeth, bile and penises were thought to possess medicinal properties. See D. Bodde Festivals in Classical China, Princeton University Press (1975) p. 321,
"For an entertaining if not always accurate account of the discovery of the Dunhuang manuscripts, see Peter Hopkirk Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, John Murray, London (1980). The manuscripts discovered by Aurel Stein are in the British Library, those discovered by Paul Pelliot in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Manuscript numbers preceded by "P", refer to manuscripts in the Pelliot collection.
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During the Song, the same offence carried the death penalty. Two cases of scholars found guilty of possessing astronomical works are on record; the life of the first man was spared because the book in his possession was incomplete but the second man was executed. See Li Tao * Xu zizhi tongjian chang bian * j.123, pp.1a, b and
續資治通鑑長編 j.14, p.10b.
* P. 3608, chapters 9 to 14. This manuscript contains characters introduced in 689 which, while remaining in official use only until the end of Empress Wu's reign, continued to be used elsewhere until well into the 9th century. See D. Twitchett Printing and Publishing in Medieval China, Frederic C.Beil, New York 1983, p. 88 note 2.
The most inauspicious themes associated with dogs are: the mating of dogs with pigs, thought by Jing Fang to indicate moral laxity in the nation's women (quoted by the Shou Shenji (juan 6) from the Yichuan); dogs growing horns, the birth of deformed dogs and dogs which suddenly begin to speak or sing. In this connection a tale from the lost part of the Shuyi ji by Ren Fang # preserved in the Gu Xiaoshuo Gouchen tells of a dog which suddenly began to sing and wittily announced the demise of two brothers. Although the animal was beheaded and its head buried by the side of a road the evil inherent in this supernatural phenomenon could not be averted and the brothers did indeed die. See Wei Jin Nanbei Chao Zhiguai Xiao Shuo Yanjiu 魏晉南北朝志怪小說研究 by Wang Guoliang, Wenshi Xue Shubanshi, Taipei (no date), p. 148.
* E.A. Schafer "The Auspices of Tang" in The Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 83, No. 2, p. 210.
* E.S. Schafer, op.cit, p. 202 “Our knowledge of popular omens lore is limited to a few random notes made by inquisitive scholars".