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Rh It is not said that 'he came to the [vacant] seat,' that is, that he did so with the formal ceremonies proper to celebrate his accession to the marquisate. Tso asks why this notice was not given, and says it was because the duke He had gone out of the State. 'The duke,' says he, 'had fled out of the State and now re-entered it; but this is not recorded, being concealed (i.e., being ignored). To conceal the wickedness of the State was according to rule.' On the murder of duke Chwang's son Pan, who should have succeeded to his father, Shin, who became duke He, had fled to the State of Choo, and a boy of eight years old, known as duke Min, was made marquis, and when, within less than two years, he shared the fate of Pan, Shin returned to Loo, and took his place. What connexion all this had with the omission of the usual pageantry or ceremonies, and whether we have in it the true explanation of the absence of the usual notice, I am not prepared to say; but we cannot see what harm there could have been in mentioning duke He's flight from the State and subsequent return to it. A good and faithful chronicler would have been careful to do so, especially if the events did affect, as Tso says, the inauguration of the new rule.

The second instance of ignoring shall be one of more importance. It is well known that the lords of the great States of Ts‘oo and Woo usurped during the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw period the title of king, thus renouncing their allegiance to the dynasty of Chow which acknowledged them only as viscounts. It is by this style of viscount that they are designated in the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw; but the remarkable fact is that it does not once notice the burial of anyone of all the lords of Ts‘oo, or of Woo. The reason is that in such notices he must have appeared with his title of king. The rule was that every feudal lord, duke, marquis, earl, or baron, should after death be denominated as kung or duke, and to this was added the honorary or sacrificial epithet by which he was afterwards to be known. When a notice was entered in the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Loo, say of the burial of the marquis Ch‘ung-urh of Tsin, the entry was that on such and such a month and day they buried duke Wăn of Tsin. But the officers, deputed for the purpose from Loo, had assisted at the burial not of any duke of Ts‘oo or of Woo, but of king so and 41]