Shiji – The Book of Enlightenment

Since ancient times, those who have been appointed by heaven as emperors, how can they not seal Zen? There are many people who are busy performing the ritual of sealing Zen without the necessary auspicious signs and auspicious events, and there has never been a person who does not go to Taishan after the necessary auspicious signs and auspicious events of sealing Zen have appeared. There are people who have become emperors by the mandate of Heaven but have not accomplished the great work of ruling the world, there are people who have reached the age of Liangfu but their morality is not comparable to the great deed of sealing Zen, and there are people whose morality is comparable and who have no flaws in performing the rite of sealing Zen, and so very few of them have been able to perform the rite of sealing Zen. It is said in the Chuan that “if the rites are not performed for three years, the system of rites will be abolished; if the music is not performed for three years, the music will be spoiled.” Whenever there was a prosperous time, the feudal rites were held to repay the merits of heaven, while in a bad time, the rites were stopped and no rites were performed. Since it was more than a thousand years ago, or a few hundred years ago, the rituals of Feng Zen have been mutilated or even destroyed, and the details of the rituals could not be recorded for posterity.

According to the Shangshu (The Book of the Shang Dynasty), Shun was in the Xuangui Yuheng (Jade Balance) to organize the seven governments. He then offered sacrifices to the heaven, to the six clans, to the mountains and rivers, and to the gods and goddesses. Receive the group of queen held Ruiyu, choose the auspicious month and auspicious day, meet with the four mountain lords and lords of the pastoral guards, will be received by Ruiyu back to them. In February of that year, to the east patrol, arrived at Dai Zong. Dai Zong, is Mount Tai. He burned firewood to start a prairie fire and offered sacrifices to the mountains and rivers according to the order of precedence. Then he had an audience with the Eastern Queen. Dong Hou, is the eastern lords. Reconcile the four seasons with the relative error of the moon and the sun, unify the sound law and weights and measures, repair the five rites and the five jade, three silk, two life, one death and other ranks of people’s gifts to the ZhiXi. In May, the inspection to Nanyue. Nanyue, is Hengshan. In August, the inspection to Xiyue. Xiyue, is Mount Hua. In November, the inspection to the North Mountain, the North Mountain, is Mount Heng. All the same rituals with Dai Zong. Zhongyue, that is, Songgao Mountain, a five-year inspection.
Yu followed this inspection system. Fourteen generations later, to the emperor Kong Jia, there is obscene virtue, good god sacrifice, the god was desecrated, there are two dragons left. Three generations after that, Tang, in his campaign against Xia Jie, wanted to remove the altar of the Xia sacrificial shrine, thought it was inappropriate and stopped, and made a literal enjoinment named Xia She. After that, when Emperor Taewu, there was a mulberry and a cereal tree in one plant, which was born in the courtyard and grew to be as thick as an arch in one night, and Taewu was very afraid. Yi Cheok said, “Demons can’t defeat virtue, and evil can’t suppress righteousness.” Tae-woo then practiced virtue and good governance, and the Sang-gu tree withered and died of its own accord. Yi Cheok told Wuham about this incident, and Wuham recorded it as four articles of “Ham and Again”, and Wuham’s name has been passed down since then. Thereafter, fourteen generations, the emperor Wu Ding got Fu said (yuè, month) for the phase state, the Yin dynasty flourished again, known as Gaozong. When a pheasant, mounting the tripod ear, crowed, Wuding became afraid, and Zu Ji said, “Cultivate virtue and you need not be afraid.” Wuding heeded his words, and the empire remained peaceful. In the fifth generation, Emperor Wu Yi was killed by a thunderbolt because of his negligence of the gods. In the last three generations, Emperor Zhou was a lecherous man, and King Wu raised an army to crush him. Thus, it seems that the gods and goddesses were honored in the beginning, but later on, they were gradually neglected and slackened.
According to the Zhou Guan (Officials of the Zhou Dynasty), on the day of the winter solstice, sacrifices were made to heaven on the southern outskirts of the city in anticipation of the summer solstice, and on the day of the summer solstice, sacrifices were made to the gods of the earth. Both use music and dance so that the gods will accept your salute. The Son of Heaven sacrificed to the famous mountains and rivers in the world, treating the Five Mountains as if they were the three dukes’ rites, and the Four Dukes as if they were the vassals’ rites, while the vassals only sacrificed to the famous mountains and rivers within their territories. The four blasphemies are the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, the Huai Shui and the Ji Shui. The place where the son of heaven sacrifices is called Mingtang and Piyong, and the place where the vassals sacrifice is called Pangong.
The Duke of Zhou, who was the minister of King Cheng, set up a system whereby the Emperor of Heaven was to be matched with the God of Heaven by the God of Houji during the suburban sacrifices, and the Emperor of Heaven was to be matched with the God of Heaven by sacrificing the King of Wen in the Hall of Brightness during the ancestral temple sacrifices. Since the rise of Xia Yu, who was engaged in sacrificing the gods of the society, and Houji, who was successful in harvesting, there was a shrine for Houji, both suburban and social sacrifices have a long history.
After the Zhou Dynasty destroyed Yin for fourteen centuries, the world declined even further, rituals and music were abandoned, the lords acted at will, and King Yu of the Zhou Dynasty was defeated by the Injun Rong, so the capital of the Zhou Dynasty was moved eastward to Luyi, a city in the Luo Yi region. Duke Xiang of Qin attacked the Inu Rong to save the Zhou, and began to be classified as a vassal for his merits. As a vassal, Duke Xiang of Qin lived in the western part of the country and thought he was the representative of the god Shaowu, so he made a sacrifice to the White Emperor in the west, sacrificing a colt, a yellow ox and a billy goat. After sixteen years, Duke Wen of Qin went hunting in the east, and came to a place between two rivers, Wei and Wei, where he wanted to stay, and he got an auspicious omen from his fortune-telling. Duke Wen dreamed that there was a yellow snake whose body descended from the sky to the ground, and its mouth reached down to the fields around Shancheng. Duke Wen asked Shi Dun about the dream, and Shi Dun replied, “This is a symbol of the Heavenly Emperor, please sacrifice to it.” The ancient sacrifice of Shanshu was established, and the White Emperor was sacrificed with three sacrificial animals.
Before the establishment of the ancient sacrifice of Shaanxi, there was the Wuyang Wugu, an ancient sacrifice next to Yongcheng, and the Haoxu, an ancient sacrifice to the east of Yongcheng, which had been abandoned and not worshipped. It is said, “Since ancient times, the high ground of Yongzhou has been a gathering place for gods and goddesses, so it was established to sacrifice the head of the Heavenly Emperor, and the shrines and temples of other gods and goddesses were also gathered here. Sacrifices were added about the time of the Yellow Emperor, and suburban sacrifices were held until the late Zhou.” These words were not found in the classics, and were not spoken by the gentry.
Nine years after the ancient sacrifice was made at Shanshan, Duke Wen of Qin obtained a stone-like object and worshipped it in a city on the northern slope of Chencang Mountain. Sometimes it did not come for years, sometimes it came several times in a year, and often it came at night, and there was a light like a shooting star coming from the southeast, gathering in the city of the ancestral temple, like a rooster, and the sound of the rooster’s song was so loud that it drew pheasants to crow at night. One head of the animal was sacrificed, named Chen Bao.
Seventy-eight years after the ancient sacrifice was made, the Duke of Qin was established as the emperor and lived in Yongcheng by divination. Later, when his descendants extended their territory along the Yellow River, they set up their capital in Yongcheng, where many temples and shrines were built during this period. Many shrines and temples in Yongcheng were built during this period. Three hundred animals were used for each sacrifice. It was also a shrine for the sacrifice of Fu. Also tearing off limbs (zhé, zhe) and cracking dogs in the four directions of the city to defend against parasites.
He died in the second year of his reign. After another four years, King Xuan of Qin made a ancient sacrifice to the Qing Emperor south of the Weishui River.
Fourteen years later, Duke Miu of Qin took the throne and fell unconscious for five days; when he woke up, he said that he had dreamed of the Emperor of Heaven, who had ordered Miu to pacify the civil strife in the state of Jin. The historian wrote down the dream and hid it in his inner sanctum. Later generations said that Duke Mu of Qin had gone to heaven.
Nine years after Duke Miu of Qin became the throne, Duke Huan of Qi became the hegemon and called the lords to an alliance in Kwai Kiu, which gave him the idea of sealing the throne. Guan Zhong said, “In ancient times, there were seventy-two feudal lords who sealed Mount Taishan to Zen the father of Liang, but only twelve of them that I can remember.

All of them were only able to seal Zen after they were commanded by Heaven to be emperors.” Duke Huan of Qi said, “I conquered the Shanrong to the north and passed through the Liaozhu; I conquered the Daxia to the west and traveled to the Liusha, stopped my horse and climbed the Peier Mountain; I conquered the Zhaoling to the south and climbed the Xiong’er Mountain in order to look out over the Yangtze River and the Han River. For the military affairs such as the rebellion and called the vassals to meet the army three times, for political and diplomatic affairs such as six times, before and after the nine assemblies of the vassals, a unification of the world, none of the vassals dare to disobey me. What is the difference between this and the past three generations of emperors who were appointed by Heaven?” Guan Zhong then saw that it was impossible to convince Duke Huan with words, so he tried to stop him by setting up something difficult to do, saying, “In the ancient times, when a person performed Zen meditation, he had to use millet from the Ancient Shang region and grain from the Beili region to make common millet, and use three-roofed thatch from the rivers and Huaihuai region to make mats to present to the gods. The East China Sea was used to pay tribute to the flounder, the West China Sea to pay tribute to the winged bird, and then there were fifteen kinds of auspicious objects that appeared without asking for them. Now there is nothing auspicious, the phoenix and the unicorn have not descended, the jiagu has not been produced, and the fields are overgrown with pungent weeds, and the owls and other evil birds have appeared several times in the court; is it not a little bit inappropriate to want to seal the Zen temple under such circumstances?” So Duke Huan dismissed the idea of sealing Zen. In that year, Duke Miu of Qin sent Yiwu back to his country to be established as the ruler of Jin. Thereafter, he established a monarch for Jin three times and pacified the civil strife in Jin. Duke Miu died after a reign of thirty-nine years.
More than a hundred years later, there was Confucius who discussed the Six Arts. In the biography of the book, it was briefly mentioned that there were more than seventy new kings in the world who changed their surnames, and more than seventy of them were appointed to the throne of Taishan, but the rituals of the sacrificial altar and beans were not found in the discourse of Confucius, which was probably because it was difficult to record them. Someone once asked about the Shime Sacrifice, and Confucius said, “I don’t know. If one knows about the Shime Sacrifice, one understands everything under heaven as if one were observing one’s own palm text.” According to the Book of Songs, after King Zhou reigned and King Wen received the Mandate of Heaven, there was no matter of sealing Taishan in his government. King Wu died two years after the destruction of Yin, before the world was at peace. Therefore, the Zhou Dynasty could only be said to have been in harmony with virtue and government when King Cheng was in power, and it was only when King Cheng wanted to seal Mount Taishan that he came close to being justified. However, after that, the vassal states ruled with their ministers, and the Ji Clan of the State of Lu traveled to Taishan to offer sacrifices, which Confucius once ridiculed.
During this period, Janghong was working for King Ling of Zhou with his magic spells, and when the lords refused to meet the king of Zhou, the Zhou dynasty was too weak to punish them, so Janghong made his ghostly activities blatant and set up the ceremony of shooting the “Beaver’s Head”. The Beaver’s Head represents the lords who do not come to the court. He wanted to invite the vassals to come to court by virtue of the power of gods and monsters. The lords did not comply, and the Jin captured Jang Hong and killed him. The Zhou dynasty began to talk about magic and gods and monsters since Jang Hong.
A hundred years later, Duke Ling of Qin set up an ancient sacrifice in Wuyang to honor the Yellow Emperor and a lower sacrifice to honor the Yan Emperor.
Forty-eight years after that, Tai Shi Dan of the Zhou Dynasty met Duke Xian of Qin and said, “At first Qin and Zhou united, then united and then separated; they should unite again after five hundred years, and in seventeen years of unity a hegemonic king will appear.” When it rained in Liyang, gold fell with the rain. Duke Xian of Qin thought that he was blessed with the auspiciousness of gold in the Five Elements, so he made a sacrificial sacrifice to the White Emperor in Liyang.
One hundred and twenty years later, Qin destroyed the Zhou Dynasty, and the nine tripods of the Zhou Dynasty were transferred to Qin. Some say that after the destruction of the Taiqiu Temple in Song, the nine tripods sank in the Surabaya River under Pengcheng.
After another 115 years, the state of Qin unified the world.
When Qin Shi Huang unified the world and became the emperor, some people said, “The Yellow Emperor gained the virtue of earth in the five elements, and there appeared the yellow dragon and the big earthworm. In the Xia Dynasty, a green dragon landed on the outskirts of the capital city, and the grass and trees grew extraordinarily strong and lush. The Yin dynasty gained the virtue of gold, which is why silver flowed out of the mountains. The Zhou Dynasty was characterized by the virtue of fire, and there was a red raven, a kind of talisman, which was produced. Now the Qin dynasty has changed the world of the Zhou dynasty, and it is the age of obtaining the virtue of water. In the past, when the Duke of Wen of Qin went out hunting, he had obtained a black dragon, which is the auspicious symbol of the virtue of water.” So Qin changed the name of the Yellow River to “De Shui”, and started each year with the tenth month of winter, with black as the color, six as the scale, the sound as the dalu, and the government as the decree.
In the third year of his reign, he toured the counties to the east and set up a shrine at Yishan Mountain in Zou County to glorify the merits of the Qin Dynasty. So he enlisted seventy Confucian scholars and doctors from Qilu as his entourage and came to the bottom of Mount Tai. Some of the Confucian scholars suggested, “In the ancient times, when the Emperor sealed the Zen temple, he rode on the car with the wheels wrapped in cattail grass because he was afraid of hurting the soil, stone, grass and trees on the mountain; and when he cleaned the ground, he used it as a sacrificial site, and used the mats to make the mats made of grass and grass, because it was easy to do and easy to comply with the rules.” Hearing that these arguments were different, and that they did not accord with reason, and were difficult to carry out, the First Emperor did not use the Confucian scholars. Instead, he ordered the people to repair and clean the roads, and climbed up from the yang slope to the summit of Mount Tai, where he set up a stone monument to glorify Qin Shi Huang’s merits and to show the reason why he should be enshrined in Zen. He descended from the yin slope and sacrificed to the gods of the earth at Liangfu Mountain. Many of the rituals of Zen were adopted from those used in Yongcheng to worship the Emperor of Heaven, and what was sealed and hidden was kept secret, so that the world could not know it and record it.
When Emperor Qin Shi Huang went to Mount Tai, he encountered a storm in the mountainside and took shelter under a big tree. The Confucian scholars, who had been demoted and could not take part in the rituals of Zen, ridiculed the Emperor when they heard that he was caught in a storm.
After the Zen ceremony, Emperor Qin Shi Huang continued his journey eastward to the sea, and along the way, he made sacrifices to the famous mountains, rivers and the eight gods, and prayed to the Immortals for blessings and blessings. Eight gods name since ancient times, some say it is since Qi Taigong made. The reason why Qi was named Qi was because of the god Tian Qi, one of the eight gods. The worship of Tian Qi has been abolished, and it is not known when it began. Eight gods: First, the Lord of Heaven, sacrificed to Tianqi, with the Tianqi Yushui, at the foot of the mountain on the southern outskirts of the city of Linzi. The second is the landlord, sacrificed to Taishan under the Liang father mountain. This is due to the nature of the sky like Yin, sacrifices it must be in the high mountains below, above the hill, called ancient sacrifice; the nature of the earth like Yang, sacrifices it must be in the low-lying areas of the round hill. Third, the Lord of the soldiers, sacrificing Chi You. Chi You shrine in the East Ping Lu of the Supervisory Township, for the western border of Qi. Four is the Yin Lord, sacrificed in the Sam Hill. Five is the Yang Lord, sacrificed in the Zhifu (fú, floating) Mountain. Sixth, the Lord of the Moon, sacrificed to Mount Lai. The above three in the north of Qi, near the Bohai. Seven is the sun, sacrificed to Mount Cheng. Mount Chengshan, with its steep walls and winding curves, is located in the most remote area of northeastern Qi, and is said to be the place where the sunrise is greeted. The eighth is the Lord of the Four Seasons, who is worshipped at Langxie Mountain. Langxie is in the eastern part of Qi, and is the place where the Tai Sui begins to run. Sacrifices of one head were used for all eight gods, while there were more or fewer witches and wizards, and the names and numbers of gui coins varied.
Since the time of King Wei and King Xuan of Qi, Zou Yan and others wrote books on the five virtues of the end and beginning of the changes, to the Qin Emperor after the title of Emperor Qin there are Qi people to play this theory of the King of Qin, so the Qin Emperor adopted it. Since Song Bu Ji, Zheng Bo Qiao, Feng Shang, and Xian Men Gao, all of whom were from Yan, they practiced the magical arts of the immortals and Taoists, such as the dissolution of forms and the reliance on ghosts and gods. Zou diffractor to yin and yang iteration of the theory of the Lord of the number of lords, and Yan and Qi region of the sea practitioners can not pass his theory, so some of the absurd and strange, flattery, and seek cooperation from the rise of the people, the number of its uncountable.
Since King Wei of Qi, King Xuan of Qi, and King Zhao of Yan, people have been searching for the three sacred mountains of Penglai, Fangzhang, and Yingzhou. These three sacred mountains are rumored to be in the Bohai Sea, and the distance is not too far, but the difficulty lies in the fact that when they are about to arrive at the side of the mountain, there will be sea winds blowing to lead the ships away from the mountain. It is said that there have been people who have been there, the immortals as well as longevity medicine there. All the things on the mountain and all the beasts and fowls are white, and they build palaces of gold and silver. Before they came to the mountain, they looked at it as if it were a white cloud; but when they came to it, they saw the mountain of the three gods below the waters of the sea. But when they came to the mountain, they saw that the three mountains of the gods were below the waters of the sea, and when they wished to go up to the mountain, they were led away by the wind, and could not reach it. The worldly monarchs and emperors were all envious of them. After Qin Shi Huang united the world, he visited the sea, and there were countless magicians who talked about these things to him. The first emperor thought that he could not find the three sacred mountains by going to the sea himself, so he sent people with boys and girls to the sea to look for them. The ships came back from the sea, all with the excuse that they could not reach the wind, said that although they did not reach the mountain, they did see the three gods. The next year, the first emperor revisited the sea, to Luangxie, passing by Hengshan, take the road back to Shangdang. Three years later, he traveled to Jieshi Mountain, examined the square priests who were sent to the sea to look for the three divine mountains, and returned to the capital from Shangxian County. After five years, Emperor Shi Huang traveled south to Xiangshan Mountain, so he climbed Mount Huiji and came to the sea, hoping to get the elixir of immortality in the Three Gods Mountain in the sea, but failed to get what he wished for, and died of illness in Shachugong Palace on his way back.
In the first year of the Second Qin Dynasty, Qin II toured eastward to Jieshi Mountain and Hainan, passed through Taishan Mountain, and arrived at Huiji, where he sacrificed to the gods according to the rites in each place, and celebrated the merits of the First Emperor by writing a chronicle of events on the stone erected by him. In the fall of that year, the feudal lords rebelled against the Qin dynasty, and three years later, the Second Emperor was killed in a regicide.
Twelve years after the first emperor’s visit, the Qin dynasty collapsed. The Confucian scholars hated the Qin Dynasty for burning poetry and books, slaughtering and insulting the literati, the people resented the Qin laws, and the whole world betrayed the Qin Dynasty, and thus it was rumored that “Emperor Shi Huang went up to Taishan Mountain, but he was blocked by the storm and could not perform the ritual of sealing the Zen temple.” Since he did not perform the ritual of sealing Zen, how could he perform the ritual of sealing Zen without the virtue of sealing Zen, as claimed by the Fangshi?
In the past three generations, the state was built between the river and the Luo River, so Songgao Mountain was used as the central mountain, and the names of the other four mountains also coincided with their respective directions, and the four blasphemies were all to the east of Banshan Mountain. To the Qin emperor, built the capital of Xianyang, the five mountains, four blasphemies are in the east of the capital. Since the five emperors to the qin dynasty generations of the iterative rise and fall, the mountains or in the territory of the vassals, or in the kingdom of the son of heaven, the rituals of sacrifices have lost and beneficial, with the world is different, can not be counted. After the Qin Dynasty unified the world, the spirits and gods of heaven and earth and famous mountains and rivers that were often worshiped by ancestral officials were ordered to be written down in order.
So I know that since the east of Mount Banshan, there were five famous mountains and two large rivers to be worshipped. The name is Taihou. Taichung, that is, Mt. Hengshan, Taishan, Huiji, Xiangshan. The name of the water is Jishui and Huaishui. In the spring, annual sacrifices were held with dried meat and wine, and in addition, due to the warmth of the year, the river could not be frozen, or in the fall, due to drought, the river could not be frozen.