ABSTRACT
According to the laconic record of the Han-shu, on the first day of the eleventh month of the first year of T‘ai-ch‘u, the day of the winter solstice, the Emperor made sacrifice to the Supreme Power in the Hall of Spirits.1 The day corresponds with what would have been 25 December 105 b c had the western calendar been in use, and the economy of expression whereby the event is described may be paralleled by a famous entry in the Court Circular o f St James (London) for 12 May 1937. This entry told the reader that ‘The coronation of the King and Queen took place in the Abbey Church of Westminster this day’ . The entry had hardly been composed with a view to describing the intense emotion of the occasion, in which a sense of national pride and loyalty was intermingled with profound solemnity and a spontaneous outburst of rejoicing. Implications of a similar nature were almost certainly involved both in the act of wor ship which took place near Mount T ‘ai at the end of 105 b c and in the symbolical and institutional changes which were intro duced six months later. These implications derived from the intellectual outlook of the period and reveal the religious attitude of the state and the dynasty’s sense of purpose and imperial achievement.
