Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 27.djvu/73

 Until the student fully understands the object of the Treatise, the paragraphs seem intricate and heavy, and the work of translation is difficult.

After capping comes in natural order the ceremony of marriage; and we are glad to have, in the first portion of this Book, so full an account of the objects contemplated in marriage, the way in which the ceremony was gone about, and the subsequent proceedings by which the union was declared to be established.

The writer made much use of the chapters on marriage in the Î Lî. Nothing is said of the age at which it was the rule for a young man to marry; and this, we have seen, is put down, in other parts of this collection, as thirty. The same age is mentioned in the Kâu Lî, XIII, 55, on the duties of the marriage-contractor. But marriage, we may assume from the case of Confucius himself, actually took place earlier in ancient times, as it does now. The Зze, or name of maturity, which was given at the capping, is commonly said to be the name taken at marriage, as in Morrison's Dictionary, I, i, page 627.

The duties set forth in the Book, however, are not those of the young husband, but those of the wife, all comprised in the general virtue of "obedience." After the tenth paragraph, the author leaves the subject of marriage, and speaks of the different establishments of the king and queen and of their functions. So far what is said on these topics bears on marriage as it sets forth, mystically, that union as analogous to the relations of heaven and earth, the sun and moon, and the masculine and feminine energies of nature; and the response made by these to the conduct of the human parties in their wedded union.