Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 27.djvu/69

 present day also, at festal entertainments. It was a kind of archery, with darts instead of arrows, and the hand instead of a bow; "the smallest," as King says, "of all the games of archery," and yet lessons for the practice of virtue and for judging of character might be learned from it. It is interesting to us, however, simply as a game for amusement, and a sufficient idea of it may be gained from this Book.

Two might play at it, or any number. The host and guest in the text are the representatives of two sides or parties. It was a contest at pitching darts into the mouth of a pot or vase, placed at a short distance from the players, —too short a distance, it appears to us. There was nothing peculiar in the form of the vase of which we have an account in paragraph 10. We are surprised to read the description of it in the late Dr. Williams' Syllabic Dictionary, under the character for Hû:—"One ancient kind (of vase) was made with tubes on each side of the mouth, and a common game, called Thâu Hû, was to pitch reeds into the three orifices." This would have been a different jar, and the game would have been different from that here described, and more difficult.

The style of the Treatise is like that of the Î Lî, in the account of the contests of archery in Books VIII-XI, to which we have to refer to make out the meaning of several of the phrases.

The Book should end with paragraph 10. The three paragraphs that follow seem to have been jotted down by the compiler from some memoranda that he found, that nothing might be lost which would throw light on the game.

Then follows a paragraph, which may be pronounced unintelligible. The whole Book is excluded from the expurgated editions.

The Zû Hsing, or "Conduct of the Scholar," professes to be a discourse delivered to duke Âi of Lû on the character and style of life by which scholars, or men claiming to