From early imperial times to the twentieth century, the emperor and officers of the court and civil bureaucracy offered cult sacrifice to the gods that governed the cosmos. The rituals that serviced these gods were based on and authorized by the ritual canons of the Confucian classics, and, as such, were the privileged domain of classically educated men called Ru, or "Confucians," who mastered that canon. Sacrifices were performed according to a regular calendar in temples inside the imperial capital, at open altars outside of the capital walls, and at ritual spaces throughout the empire down to the county level. The geographic expanse of these ritual complexes constituted the most visible signs of the extent of the Chinese imperium and provides concrete evidence of interaction between elite and popular religious practices. Successive dynasties drew from the precedents of the ancient canon to define and...