Without detailing the movements, positions, and practices of the assembled priests, officials, and common people at the service of the General Purification, we simply cite a few extracts from the ritual which may serve to show us the underlying concept of purification. While the ritual is only a part of the entire ceremony of the occasion, we are told that it is not infrequently recited without performing the ceremony. Moreover, while in ancient times the reader was always a member of the priestly Nakatomi tribe, at the present time the ritual is read by the officiating priest of each particular temple. The following excerpts are made from Florenz's translation: "Hear, all of you, assembled princes of the blood, princes, high dignitaries, and men of the hundred offices. Hear, all of you, that in the Great Purification of the present last day of the sixth month of the current year, [the Sovran] deigns to purify, and deigns to cleanse the various offenses which may have been committed either inadvertently, or deliberately, especially by the persons serving in the imperial court: (viz.) the scarf-wearing attendants, the sash-wearing attendants (of the kitchen), the attendants who carry quivers on the back, the attendants who gird on swords, the eighty attendants of the attendants, and, moreover, by the people serving in all offices." The ritual goes on to declare how the Sovran's dear progenitors, in a divine assembly, ordained that the "Sovran Grandchild's Augustiness should tranquilly rule the luxuriant reed-plain region of fresh young spikes as a peaceful country;" how they expelled with a divine expulsion the savage deities, and "silenced the rocks and trunks of trees;" how they let him go down from his heavenly place, "and dividing a road through the eightfold heavenly clouds," they sent him down and gave the land into his peaceful keeping. The ritual also makes mention of various kinds of offenses which need to be cleansed and purged away, and distinguishes them as "heavenly offenses" and "earthly offenses." Among the former are "breaking down the divisions of the rice fields, filling up the irrigating channels, and opening the floodgate of sluices," and the evacuation of one's bowels in improper places. Among "earthly offenses" are the cutting the skin of the living or the dead body so as to become defiled by blood, being affected with corns, bunions, boils, or proud-flesh; sins of adultery, the offense of using incantations, and various kinds of personal calamity.