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[[underlined]] APPENDIX II. [[/underlined]] 17. 

    The ruling classes, like those of the more properly "Chinese" states to the north, worshiped their ancestors, as well as a Sky-God; and there seems also to have been a divinity with a bull's head and mainly agricultural functions (later taken over by the Chinese, who knew him as Shên Nung 神農, the "Divine Husbandman"). 
The kings of Ch'u, revered by their subjects as the earthly vicegerants, if not the actual incarnations, of the Sky-God, [[superscript]] (47) [[/superscript]] kept a close grasp 
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(47)
    On the concept of kingship in Ch'u, see the [[underlined]] Tso chuan [[/underlined]], VII, v, 6, and XI, iv, 15. In these passages, Ch'u's supreme god is called T'ien, not Shang Ti---a fact which may point to affinity with the Chous rather than with their predecessors the Shangs. Regarding this point, see Creel, [[underlined]] The Birth of China, [[/underline] page 342. 
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on power, entrusting important posts only to their own near kinsmen. Hence we hear of no great families growing up to endanger the state, as so often happened to feudal China proper. Women enjoyed much more liberty, and participated in public affairs to a far greater extent, than was thought decorous in the north. In many of these respects Ch'u, as we might have anticipated, showed a strong resemblance to the great Indo-Chinese kingdoms of later and even recent times ([[underlined]] cf. [[/underlined]] note 311, page 346 of the text). 
    The masses were, as we have seen, most probably of the T'ai linguistic stock in the main. They are described as living chiefly on rice and fish, believing in evil spirits and sorcerers, and worshipping many petty divinities. Their status was one of unmitigated serfdom, and they were greatly oppressed with corvées. About the middle of the 6th century B.C. a cadastral survey of the state was made, and the system of peasant land tenure in vogue in ancient China proper was introduced. About the same time great diking and draining operations were undertaken, undoubtedly to control floods and increase the area of irrigated rice-land.
The T'ai people, like their kinsmen the Chinese, have always been 
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