Yi 儀 may mean "right", "proper", "ceremony" (Baxter & Sagart 2011:80) "demeanor", "appearance", "etiquette", "rite", "present", "gift", or "equipment".
[citation needed] Li 禮, meanwhile, may mean "propriety", "ceremony" (Baxter & Sagart 2011:110) "rite", "ritual", "courtesy", "etiquette", "manners", or "mores".
[citation needed] According to some scholars (e.g. German Sinologist Alfred Forke), the text was first called the Yili in Wang Chong's treatise Lunheng (c. 80 CE);[1][2] however, Xing Wen contends that "儀禮" in the original Chinese text refers the ceremonies and rites themselves, not the book.
Sinologist William Boltz (1993:237) says this tradition is "now generally recognized as untenable", but believes the extant Yili "is a remnant of "a larger corpus of similar ceremonial and ritual texts dating from pre-Han times, perhaps as early as the time of Confucius; that much of this was lost by Han", while "some may have come to be preserved in the text known today as the [Liji]".
Three fragmentary manuscripts covering more than seven chapters were discovered in 1st-century Han tombs at Wuwei in Gansu in 1959.
It contains one of the earliest references to the Three Obediences and Four Virtues, a set of principles directed exclusively at women that formed a core part of female education during the Zhou.
The host lays the cup in the basket, and making a suitable reply, finishes the washing and goes up, the personator going up also.