春秋時代の聘禮について

Abstract

As one link in a continuing study of rites, this paper examines "diplomatic rites 聘禮, " or the rites providing for the exchange of missions between the various feudal states of ancient China during the Spring and Autumn period. In doing so, it will try to describe the historical character of that age as well. First, taking the Ceremonial 儀禮 as its main source, the paper gives an ordered, analytical description of the concrete processes involved in "diplomatic rites." It also indicates the "egalitarian" relations which existed among those countries involved in these rites. The paper then discusses the jade tablet used in the diplomatic rites. This jade tablet was a very peculiar ritual utensil which held great significance in every rite in which it was used. While the jade tablet was first given to the party whom the diplomatic mission visited, the rites demanded that it be returned. Since the jade tablet was believed to be possessed with the ancestral spirits of the party owning it, its presence served as a substitute for the presence of those ancestral spirits. Accordingly, this paper suggests that in the Spring and Autumn period "diplomatic rites" were considered as rites in which living persons, as well as their ancestral spirits, joined together in negotiations. Also, the paper considers the "egalitarian" nature of relations among the various feudal states and the rites which regulated them as having originated out of the Spring and Autumn period worldview that the various feudal states were themselves associations of ancestral worshippers comprised of living human beings and their ancestral spirits. Essentially the "diplomatic rites" were ones which embodied the historical character of the Spring and Autumn period in which human relations were firstfully mediated by ancestral spirits. Accordingly, with the Warring States' period, which had a very different historical character, the "diplomatic rites" which once had flourished in the Spring and Autumn period, gradually vanished.