The rite of pitching darts into a jug (characterizing the content of the Confucian treatise "Li Ji")

The article analyses the contents of the fortieth chapter of the Confucian canon «Li ji» 「禮記」 - «Touhu»「投壺」. The text of «Li ji» was compiled at the beginning of the Han period. At that time, scientists developed political and ideological foundations of Chinese imperial state system. Ancient Chinese editors included the most important norms of social and religious ritual behavior in that text. Thus, the text of «Li ji» won a worthy position in the political culture of the traditional China. The chapter «Touhu» is one of the smallest parts of the ancient text, it contains only about 650 characters. However «Touhu» is devoted to a very important part of the life in the ancient society. The chapter «Touhu» describes the ancient rite of pitching darts into a jug, which was often practiced during banquets in order to have fun. Pitching darts into a jug was a kind of archery射箭 shejian, so touhu was a good way to train one’s marksmanship in limited space. The main actors of the ritual were the host 主 zhu, the guest 賓 bin and the master of the ceremony司射 sishe. The ritual was composed of a marksmanship competition o\between the host and the guest in pitching darts into a narrow-necked jug. According to the rules, the competition consisted of three sets. After one of the participants won a set, his victory was celebrated by exhibiting the victory sign 馬 ma on his side of the playground. Ma equaled one point. Winning all three sets meant getting all three signs ma and thus being undoubtedly victorious. In situations when one participant won two sets and got two signs ma and the other participant won only one set and got a single sign ma, the ancient Chinese used the principle «more absorbs less» 一馬從二馬 yi ma cong er ma, i.e. the participant who won two signs ma was the winner. The loser had to drink a goblet of wine as a penalty. Last paragraphs of the chapter «Touhu» contains warnings made for the young generation concerning behavior during the ritual. Using special signs, the compilers of the text fixed the order of music that accompanied the competition of pitching darts. With different kind of signs - round and square - they marked parts that were to be executed by different drums: small (military) and large. The text contains descriptions of the technical characteristics of the attributes which were used during the competition: darts 矢 shi, a jug壺 hu, an object to store counting tokens中 zhong. The length of darts varied and could depend on the place of competition. The darts had neither an arrowhead nor the feathers at the end. Their shape resembled chopsticks, but since the game touhu was linked to the archery practice shejian, the items used for the pitching were called shi i.e. arrows. Hu had a narrow mouth, a long neck and a big wide body. To give the jug hu stability, they poured small beans into it. Zhong was an attribute of the ritual, that was hollow inside and made of wood in the shape of a lying animal. There was a round hole in the back of the animal through which the counting tokens were inserted. Characteristics of the contents of the text is accompanied by the first Russian translation of this chapter, made by the author of the article.