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Symbols of Parentage in Archaic Chinese Part II
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Extract
MR. KUO MO-JO, in his essay to establish the original identity of the characters now written tsu and
shê, asserts that in early ages men held the male organ to be a manifestation of divine power. Sometimes, he says, they termed this power
tsu, and sometimes
shê, as in the expression
ch'ih shê, to hurry to the shê, that is, to hurry forward bearing the phallic divinity on their shoulders. This custom still exists. A gentleman of Yang Chou
(a city in Kiangsu Province) informed Kuo that at mid-Spring, in the second month of Spring, on the shang ssŭ Festival day (i.e. 6th of the Chinese moon), the Yang Chou practice was to make enormous paper models of the male and female emblems, one of each, and for a procession of men and women carrying these on their shoulders, to hurry along to burn them in front of the Shun Yang Temple. This is called
ying ch'un, Welcoming the Spring.
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- Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1941
References
1 Quoted, Kuo says, from Mo Tzŭ (4th and 5th century b.c.).