Talking About The Antiquity Time's Rite Of Reception To Guests

There are two views about the classification of the ancient rite. One is thinking that the ancient rite contains 8 types and they are the rite of wearing caps, holding wedding ceremony, holding funeral, sacrificial offering, having audiences, sending regards, shooting and holding banquet;The other one is thinking it contains 5 types and they are the rite of dealing with the propitious things such as sacrificial offering, the bad things such as funeral, military, reception to guests and the jubilation such as wedding ceremony. This article will follow the second view. As one of the five-rite, the rite of reception to guests was a kind of important political system and etiquette system in the antiquity time and it was close related with the country's political rule. Certainly, the formation of any system has a developing and evaluating process, the rite of reception to guest is also just so, some phenomenon belonging to the rite of reception to guest had appeared in the primitive society time and it had been a complete regulation and system until Zhou Dynasty. According to the materials such as the classic of the time before Qin Dynasty, the archaeological finds and the literatures, we can deduce that the concrete forms of the rite of reception to guests have mainly contained the rites of having audiences, making treaties to be an alliance and taking patrols in the antiquity time. Basing on the concrete forms of the rite of reception to guests, we can see the developing course of the antiquity time's rite of reception to guests and the ritual culture.However, it can't be denied that the rite of reception to guests was not only a kind of historical phenomenon, political system or etiquette system, but also a kind of special cultural phenomenon in the antiquity time, and some other cultural phenomenon usually had been getting along with its holding such as the envoy's words appropriate to the occasion, the music's used being in the banquet, reciting poems to express one's wish and the jade's used being in the ritual occasions. They were merged with the concrete etiquette procedure. The objective of the phenomenon was completely adapted to the ruling class's intention and the social prevailing custom that it attached importance to the ethics in the antiquity time, and it manifested the characteristic of the antiquity time's culture that it attached importance to the practice of ethics and the political use. On the one hand it was approval to the culture of the antiquity time, on the other hand it reflected the culture of the antiquity time.This article will talk about the concrete form of the rite of reception to guests such as having audiences, sending regards, making treaties to be an alliance and taking patrols. Besides, it will also discuss some cultural phenomenon that were getting along with the rite of reception to guestsuch as the envoy's words appropriate to the occasion, reciting poems to express one's wish and the jade's used being in the ritual occasions from the historical, political and cultural angles so as to grasp the system of the rite of reception to guests wholly.