FOOTNOTES:
[301] "The Religion of China," in Religious Systems of the World (8th ed.), pp. 61 seq.
[302] Quarterly Review, October 1907, p. 374.
[303] The Evolution of Religion (3rd ed.), vol. i. p. 40.
[304] The Dragon, Image and Demon, pp. 77 and 88.
[305] The Middle Kingdom (1883 ed.), vol. ii. p. 253-4.
[306] Chinese Characteristics (5th ed.), p. 185.
[307] The Lore of Cathay, p. 275.
[308] None perhaps more pitiful than that which is related in the Revue des Deux Mondes of September 15, 1900. I forbear to quote this story, as it would not be fair to do so without hearing "the other side."
[309] The Spectator, August 22, 1908, p. 267.
[310] Religion in China (1893 ed.), p. 153.
[311] For brief accounts of this celebrated episode, see Prof. Parker's China and Religion, pp. 197-203; Williams's Middle Kingdom (1883 ed.), vol. ii. pp. 299 seq., and Max Müller's Last Essays (Second Series), pp. 314-18.
[312] Parker, op. cit. p. 202.
[313] "Considering," writes Sir Charles Eliot, "what would have been the probable fate of Chinamen in Rome who publicly contradicted the Pope on matters of doctrine, it is hardly surprising if K'ang Hsi dealt severely with the rebellious foreign religion." (Quarterly Review October 1907, p. 375.)
[314] The Middle Kingdom (1883 ed.), vol. ii. p. 253.
[315] Evidence of these things may be found passim in such journals as China's Millions. Some typical cases are mentioned by Arthur Davenport in his interesting work China from Within. He also quotes in full the case referred to on p. [332] (footnote 3).
[316] The processes of beatification and canonisation in Rome and China are in many respects similar. Some years ago the Archbishop of Rouen and other prelates addressed a letter to the Pope with regard to Joan of Arc, begging the Holy See to declare that "this admirable girl practised heroically the Christian virtues ... and that she is consequently worthy of being inscribed among the Blessed and of being publicly invoked by all Christian people." After the lapse of some years Pope Pius IX. duly "proclaimed the heroic quality of Joan of Arc's virtues, and the authenticity of the miracles associated with her name"; and since then, as is well known, the French heroine has gone through the process of beatification. (See Times of April 13, 1909.) In China a man or woman who was distinguished during life for some heroic action or for pre-eminent virtue may—in suitable circumstances—be recommended by the local officials for canonisation, and if the Emperor wills it to be so he issues a decree whereby that person becomes a saint or a god (whichever term we prefer) and is officially entitled to be the recipient of public worship. The memorial in which the magistrates set forth the virtues of the dead man—and the miracles performed at his tomb if there happen to have been any—might be translated almost word for word from similar memorials sent to Rome by orthodox Christian prelates; and the Chinese Emperor gives his decision in the matter in very much the same terms as are adopted by the Pope. Cf. Farnell's Evolution of Religion, p. 77.
[317] Asiatic Studies (Second Series), 1906 ed., p. 155.
[319] This word "worship" is not a strictly correct translation of the Chinese pai. "To visit or salute ceremoniously" would, as a rule, be a fairer rendering.
[320] Lun Yü, ii. 24 (Legge's translation).
[321] Sir Charles Eliot, in The Quarterly Review, October 1907, p. 362.
[322] Ancestor-worship and Japanese Law by Nobushige Hozumi (Tokyo, 1901), pp. 4 seq. For a similar view see Tylor's Primitive Culture (4th ed.), vol. ii. p. 113.
[324] In case the reader should be misled into the belief that this opinion is shared by all foreigners in China, I quote some words recently published by the Rev. J. Macgowan in his work Sidelights on Chinese Life (pp. 75-6). The root of ancestor-worship, he says, "lies neither in reverence nor in affection for the dead, but in selfishness and dread. The kindly ties and the tender affection that used to bind men together when they were in the world and to knit their hearts in a loving union seem to vanish, and the living are only oppressed with a sense of the mystery of the dead, and a fear lest they should do anything that might incur their displeasure and so bring misery upon the home." This view is not, I think, a fair one.
[325] According to Mencius the most unfilial of sons is he who does not become the father of children.
[326] For a criticism of the theory, cf. Montesquieu, L'Esprit des Lois, vi. 20. But see also some very appreciative remarks by the same writer on the Chinese theory of Filial Piety, as applied to both domestic and political relationships, in Book xix. 17-19.
[327] See above, pp. [9], [15].
[328] Cf. the beautiful prayer-poem of the Chinese king Hsüan Wang, attributed to the ninth century B.C. (For text and translation see Legge's Chinese Classics, vol. iv. pt. ii. pp. 528 seq.)
[330] It need not be supposed that there was anything unique about Confucius's agnosticism. There is evidence enough that he did not stand alone in his attitude of uncertainty with regard to the spiritual world. The writings of Mo Tzŭ (Micius), who taught an attractive philosophy of his own in the fourth and fifth centuries B.C., show inferentially that the question of whether there was or was not a world of spirits was a frequent subject of debate among the learned. Micius himself took the view that "there are heavenly spirits and there are spirits of the hills and streams, and there are spirits of the dead also." He hotly combated the view (which must have been widely current) that no such spirits existed. The subject remained a stock question for debate; indeed once it had been raised, how could it ever have ceased to agitate men's minds? The philosopher Wang Ch'ung (first century A.D.) was a materialist, and besides flouting many prevalent superstitions, such as those relating to virgin-births and other prodigies, he entered the lists against those who sought to prove that dead men continue to have a conscious existence or can exercise any control or influence over their living descendants.
[331] Both of these enlightening observations are quoted with evident approval by the Rev. H. C. Du Bose in his work The Dragon, Image and Demon (New York: 1887), pp. 87-8.
[332] O. K. Davis in the Century Illustrated Magazine, November 1904. This is quoted by Prof. H. A. Giles in Adversaria Sinica, p. 202.
[333] Nobushige Hozumi in Ancestor-Worship and Japanese Law, p. 2.
CHAPTER XV
TAOISM, LOCAL DEITIES, TREE-WORSHIP
It is not only Confucianism, with its grand ethical system, its acquiescence in Nature-worship and its cult of ancestors, that has built up the curiously unsymmetrical edifice of Chinese religion. Taoism and Buddhism must also be taken into account; and if one can find for them but few words of praise it is only fair to remember that the Taoism of to-day has very little in common with the lofty if sometimes rather misty speculations enshrined in that remarkable old classic the Tao Tê Ching, and that Buddhism—as now practised in north-eastern Shantung and indeed in the greater part of China (excluding certain famous monastic centres)—is perhaps irrevocably degenerate and corrupt. The Tao Tê Ching, the sacred book of Taoism, is generally supposed, probably on insufficient grounds,[334] to have been written by a philosopher known as Lao Tzŭ, said to have been an elder contemporary of Confucius, in the sixth century B.C.
The Taoist philosophy, as set forth in that book, may or may not have been indigenous to China; some writers insist that it was wholly a product of Chinese speculation,[335] while others trace it to early Indian philosophy[336] and even connect it with Buddhism.[337] Though its doctrines are metaphysical as well as ethical, Taoism is to some extent comparable with Confucianism, in which the ethical element is predominant. Indeed most writers have admitted that in enunciating the noble doctrine "Return good for evil," Lao Tzŭ rose to a height never quite attained by Confucius, though the latter also anticipated Christianity by formulating a version of the Golden Rule. One of the best outline comparisons ever attempted between the two systems of Taoism and Confucianism is that recently made by a sympathetic American writer,[338] who concludes with the carefully-weighed and highly important utterance that the two codes combined "furnished at once the foundation and superstructure of as pure, high, and at the same time practical system of ethics as the world has ever seen. It need fear comparison with none. Even that laid down in the Bible, if carefully separated from the religious element here and there intermingled with it, can do no more for man than this ancient system of the Far East can do. And why should it be otherwise, since the two are similar almost to identity, and are, as has been claimed, the necessary outgrowth of the same human spirit."
There is no better augury for future good relations between the thinkers and scholars (if not the Governments and peoples) of East and West than the recent growth of a tolerant and generous spirit on the part of European students of oriental ethic and religion. One still hears constantly of "heathen" and "pagan"—words which, however inoffensive in their original meaning, have come to be regarded as somewhat opprobrious epithets; but that there is a very decided change for the better coming over missionary enterprise in China can be proved very simply by a comparison between the sympathetic appreciation shown in the passage from which the above statement is quoted (written, be it noted, by one who is keenly interested in missionary work in China) and the almost inconceivable bigotry and narrow-mindedness shown by many missionary writers only a few years ago. Even Dr. Legge, the laborious and conscientious translator of the Chinese classics, allowed his Christian prepossessions, as we have already seen, to obscure his judgment and stultify his conclusions. "Their sages, falsely so called," is how he refers to some of the greatest ethical teachers the world has seen.[339] "In January, 1882," writes a doctor of divinity, "a distinguished missionary in China attacked Max Müller as a foe to missions and as a heathen because he had instituted the series of translations of the Sacred Books of the East. The translation itself was an offence; but the use of the title Sacred definitely fixed Müller's status. Moreover, at even a later date, some missionaries in answer to the query from Chinamen 'Where now is Confucius?' were prompt to reply 'In hell.'"[340]
The missionaries of to-day (let us hope against hope that there are no exceptions) have abandoned their old savage belief that the "heathen" as such are destined for eternal damnation. This change of belief is of itself sufficient to revolutionise the attitude of Christian peoples towards those who are not Christians, and surely it makes the need of proselytising the "heathen" infinitely less urgent than it seemed to be when that theory still held sway. "If God be father of all," writes a missionary of fourteen years' standing in China, "it is as impossible to believe in the Bible as the sole written depository of the Spirit of God as in the condemnation of the heathen which once we were constrained to believe it taught."[341]
It is perhaps more necessary to lay emphasis on the value of pure Taoism as an ethical system than on that of the Confucian code, for one is apt—especially if one lives among the Chinese—to condemn Taoism almost unheard on account of the gross superstitions that characterise it at the present day. Popular Taoism is and for many centuries has been a compound of jugglery and fraud, of pseudo-religion and pseudo-philosophy. With all this Lao Tzŭ had nothing to do. That great man and his brilliant successor Chuang Tzŭ—who has been styled the St. Paul of Taoism—founded their theory of life and conduct on a mysterious entity called Tao, a word which has been variously translated Reason, Realisation, the Norm, the Word (λόγος), the Way, the First Cause, Nature, the Idea of the Good (in the Platonic sense), the Creative Principle, Truth, the Metaphysical Absolute, Virtue, Wisdom, God. This is no place for a discussion of the philosophical principles of pure Taoism, which has no visible existence among the farmers of Weihaiwei. All that need be said here is that to understand Tao and to regulate one's life according to Tao was to be a chên-jên, a true man, a Taoist.
As time went on Taoism became ninety-nine parts "ism" to one part Tao: it dabbled in alchemy, fortune-telling and astrology, and its votaries (who included several Chinese emperors) gave themselves up to a search for the elixir of immortality and the elusive secret of the transmutation of metals. The torch of a lofty philosophy passed into the hands of men who, instead of using the light to aid them in the search for the sublime Tao, soon quenched it in the stagnant waters of witchcraft and demonology. Some writers seem to have assumed that Lao Tzŭ, in spite of the acknowledged fact of his intellectual and moral greatness, was in some mysterious way the unwitting cause of the later corruptions: but, as has been said, a clear distinction must be drawn between popular Taoism (which has little or nothing to say of Tao) and the philosophic Taoism which has made a noble and permanent contribution to the ethical consciousness of the Chinese people.[342] Popular Taoism probably existed, in some form or other, long before the time of the compiler of the Tao Tê Ching. The astrology and alchemy and demonology that give the former many of its characteristic features may have existed in China from a very remote age. The extreme antiquity of superstitions of this kind in other parts of Asia is an undeniable fact: the records of the early civilisation of Chaldæa give us statements concerning the sorcerers and astrologers of that country that might be applied almost without alteration to the charm-mongerers and adepts of Chinese Taoism.[343] The philosophy of Lao Tzŭ may be compared with a pure sparkling stream that bubbled up amid the crags of a lofty range of mountains; when it had flowed down the hillside and began to meander through the fields and villages below, its limpid waters became ever more and more defiled by the foulness and refuse of the plains. Perhaps it would be equally true to say that the source of the river of popular Taoism lies among the mists and marshes of some trackless and pestilential jungle; that its waters throughout the whole of its visible course are muddy and impure; and that the clear mountain stream that flowed from the doctrines of Lao Tzŭ and his interpreters and successors was only a tributary stream whose crystal waters were soon lost in the turbid flood of the main river. It was a clear perception of the fundamental difference between the philosophy of Lao Tzŭ and popular Taoism that induced a recent Japanese writer, Kakasu Okakura, to confer upon the former the name of Laoism, after its founder, and to relinquish to the latter the barren glory of the name of Taoism;[344] thus in contemplating the unattractive mythology and crude rituals of the Taoism of the temples we must beware of laying any of the responsibility for such follies on the grand though shadowy figure of "the Old Philosopher," in spite of the fact that his image has taken its place in the Taoist Trinity of gods who are supposed to reign (though not to rule) over the phenomenal Universe.
If it can be confidently asserted that the people of Weihaiwei know little or nothing of Laoism, it must be admitted that they still cling with apparent fondness to the puerile imaginings of Taoism. In respect of Confucianism they perform (with zeal and sincerity) the traditional rites of ancestor-worship, and with respect to Buddhism they support (with less zeal and less sincerity) a few priests to burn incense for them on stated days before the image of the Buddha or some favourite p'u-sa such as the "Goddess of Mercy": but in other respects Taoism may be said to be the religion that monopolises the largest share of their attention. The greater number of temples in the Territory are Taoist—excluding the Ancestral Temples (Chia Miao), which are not open to the public. Most of these Taoist edifices are poor in outward appearance and their interiors are often dirty and evil-smelling; while the images of the numerous Taoist deities are of cheap manufacture and tawdry in ornament. A casual visitor might suppose the gods were left entirely to themselves; for he may go through a dozen temples and not find a single worshipper or a single priest. But if he scrutinises the altars he will find, amid the dust and cobwebs, the ashes of incense-sticks and sometimes the remains of little offerings in the shape of cakes or sweetmeats,—just enough to show that the gods are not quite forgotten. It is only the largest temples that have resident priests; the smaller ones are either in charge of apprentices or pupil-priests or are visited from time to time (as on occasions of annual festivals or theatrical shows) by priests who exercise spiritual superintendence over a group of temples scattered over a considerable area.
The Taoist priests as a class are neither well-educated nor zealous in discharge of their simple duties, but it would be a mistake to suppose that they are all abjectly lazy or energetic only in vice and crime. The Weihaiwei priests are as a rule fairly respectable in private life; one of them has done and is doing really good work by inducing people to cure themselves of the opium habit. A Taoist temple is generally the property of a group of villages and the "living" is in their gift. When a vacancy occurs in a "living," a new priest is selected by the hui-shou or committee of elders who transact most of the public business of the villages concerned, and the appointment is absolutely within their discretion. But once a priest has been appointed it is (or was) as difficult to turn him out as it is to remove a clergyman from his benefice in England. In Weihaiwei the usual procedure for getting rid of a disreputable priest (whether Taoist or Buddhist) is to present a petition to the magistrate, setting forth the reasons why the priest's continued residence in the locality is considered undesirable. The British Government, needless to say, makes no difficulty about his prompt expulsion as soon as satisfactory evidence against him is forthcoming.
Some of the priests of Weihaiwei are office-bearers in the Tsai Li Sect—a "total abstinence" society (in some places semi-political in character) which has claimed a large membership in the Weihaiwei district ever since the days of the military colonists. There are gradations of rank among the Taoist priests, but as a rule each is practically independent of the rest. The Taoist "Pope" himself—the dispenser of amulets and charms who resides in the Dragon-Tiger Mountains (Lung-hu Shan) of southern Kiangsi—has no direct authority over the priests of eastern Shantung, or if such authority exists in theory it is not exercised in practice. The official duties of the priests consist in very little more than looking after the temple buildings, seeing to the repair of the images when their clay arms and legs fall off (this is a duty they often shirk), and calling the attention of the deities to the presence of lay visitors who have brought offerings and desire to offer up prayers. Their services as magicians and retailers of charms are also invoked from time to time by private persons.
Men and women (especially women) pay occasional visits to the temples when they wish to implore the aid of a favourite deity in connection with some family matter such as the approaching birth of a child, or some hazardous business venture, or the illness of a relative; and in such cases they often make vows to the effect that if their prayers are granted they will make certain additional offerings of money and incense.
Apart from these visits the temples are usually deserted except on one or two annual occasions such as the celebration of a local festival. The temple then becomes one of the centres of attraction—indeed in all probability it is a god's birthday that is being celebrated—and its precincts are thronged from morning to night by crowds of well-dressed men and women and children, eager to register their vows or make their petitions. The worshippers knock their heads on the ground as an acknowledgment of humility and powerlessness, while the priest strikes a tinkling bronze bowl with a view to awaking the god from his slumbers. In front of every image stand jars containing sticks of burning incense, sending up clouds of fragrant smoke. The courtyard resounds with fire-crackers and bombs which are supposed to frighten away any wandering spirits of evil. Dense fumes arise from heaps of burning paper representing money, prayers and charms, all of which, through the spiritualisation wrought by fire, are expected to reach the immaterial region of the unseen spirits.
In front of the temple stands the open-air stage where a group of masked or painted actors, clad in robes resplendent with colour and gleaming with gold embroidery, strive by means of extravagant gestures and high-pitched voices to interpret, for the benefit of a dense crowd of eager sightseers, their conception of some fantastic old-world legend or some tragic episode in the bygone history of China.
To enumerate all the gods and goddesses, great and small, that crowd the Taoist pantheon would be tedious. Popular Taoism provides deities or spiritual patrons for all the forces of nature, diseases (from devil-possession to toothache), wealth and rank and happiness, war, old age, death, childbirth, towns and villages, trades, mountains and rivers and seas, lakes and canals, heaven and hell, sun, moon and stars, roads and places where there are no roads, clouds and thunder, every separate part and organ of the human body, and indeed for almost everything that is cognisable by the senses and a great deal that is not. It need hardly be said that no Taoist temple in existence contains images of all these spiritual personages, or a hundredth part of them. Each locality possesses its own favourites.
The Ts'ai Shên or God of Wealth is popular in Weihaiwei no less than elsewhere. He has become so important a deity to the Chinese that though he belongs to Taoism the Buddhists have been compelled to find room for him in their temples in order to attract worshippers who might otherwise go elsewhere. China's guests from the Western hemisphere have sometimes selected the "god of wealth" as a mark for special scorn and ridicule, though why they should do so is not quite apparent, inasmuch as the devotion to money-getting is quite as strong and prevalent among Englishmen and Germans and Americans as it is among the Chinese. Moreover, after a careful consideration of the kind of prayers that are addressed to the god of wealth and the popular attitude towards him and his gifts, I am satisfied that he is merely regarded as the dispenser in moderate quantities of the ordinary good things of life. The farmer who prays to Ts'ai Shên in the local temple does so in the hope that the god will enable him to sell his crops for fair prices so that he may continue to bring up his family amid modest prosperity. It is very much as if he were to say "Give us this day our daily bread": in fact he sometimes uses almost those very words.
The tradesman who burns incense daily in front of a strip of paper inscribed with the name of the god of wealth does so because of "old custom," or from a vague idea that "it cannot possibly do harm and may bring some good luck," or from a more definite religious idea that without some support from the unseen powers—of which Ts'ai Shên is taken as a representative—his business will not prosper. The people of Weihaiwei have a very humble idea of what constitutes wealth. A man was described to me in an official petition as a "lord of wealth"—a common expression for a rich man. I had occasion to make enquiries into the state of this person's finances, and found that his total possessions amounted in value to about two thousand dollars Mexican—less than two hundred pounds. This was all the wealth he was "lord" of. The Chinese Buddhists—in spite of the admission of the Taoist god of wealth into their temples—have always, in their tracts and sermons, sternly discouraged the pursuit of wealth for its own sake. There is a saying which one meets with constantly in a certain class of Buddhistic work: The mean-minded man devotes his bodily powers to the heaping-up of money (that is, he regards money as an end in itself); the gentleman uses what money he has to develop his character (that is, he regards money as a means to an end).
Among other popular Taoist deities in Weihaiwei are the San Kuan or Three Mandarins, who are supposed to have a kind of ghostly superintendence over sky, earth and water. The three together form a trinity-in-unity, and as such are known as the San Kuan Ta Ti—literally, the Three-Officials-Great-God.
Several villages contain little tower-shaped shrines harbouring the image of the God of Literature, or rather of Literary Composition, who is supposed to reside in a constellation of six stars called Wên-ch'ang, forming part of Ursa Major. This deity, who takes his name from the constellation, receives the homage of literary men who aim at an official career, and is supposed to have appeared in several human incarnations, beginning with one Chang Chung in the Chou dynasty. Like many other gods of China he is thus nothing more nor less than a deified man.
IMAGE OF KUAN TI, WEIHAIWEI.
Kuan Ti, the God of War, is also a conspicuous figure in many temples, and he is officially "worshipped" in the cities in the second months of spring and autumn. He is one of the mightiest of all the Taoist gods, though his career as a deity has been quite a short one. He also (in the second century A.D.) was an ordinary mortal—a great soldier and hero named Kuan Yü, who performed many acts of valour at a time when China was given up to internecine strife. Long after his death he was canonised, but it was not till near the end of the sixteenth century that one of the Ming emperors raised him to what may be called divine rank. His position in China is equivalent to that of the Japanese Hachiman, who is also a deified human being. Honours have been heaped upon Kuan Ti by the present dynasty, and he has been raised to a theoretical equality with Confucius. Had the Boxers succeeded in driving all foreigners out of China it is possible that he (or the deified Empress-Dowager herself) might have been raised to a position of something approaching pre-eminence among the gods of China.
The walled city of Weihaiwei has, of course, its Kuan Ti temple, as we have seen in connection with the story of the great fishbone found by one of the Liu family.[345] In this temple there is a very large and heavy weapon which might be described as a kind of sword or spear. Weapons of this type are common enough in China, though when of such great size and weight as that in the Kuan Ti temple they are intended more for show than for use, and accordingly find a more appropriate position in a temple or an official yamên than on a field of battle. The Weihaiwei sword—if such it may be called—is of sufficient fame to be specially mentioned in the local Annals. It is there described, accurately enough, as being more than a chang in length (say about twelve English feet) and one hundred catties in weight (say one hundred and thirty-three English pounds). The blade is made of iron, and there is much skilful and delicate ornamentation in copper. "No other temple," says the Chronicle, "has anything like it. Old folks have handed down the tradition that it came out of the sea with a deep rolling sound (something like the lowing of cattle). The people of the neighbourhood heard the sound and went near the strange object. When they lifted it up and examined it, lo! it was a great sword. So they carried it off and presented it reverentially to the spirit of Kuan Ti." The god of war, obviously, was the proper person to possess a weapon which no human arm was strong enough to wield. The written account gives us no clear statement of how this Chinese Excalibur came out of the sea: but the present warden of the temple tells a somewhat prosaic story to the effect that it was found along with sundry other articles, including some arrows and two copper bells, in an open boat that was cast ashore in the Weihaiwei harbour. The arrows are still in the Kuan Ti temple; the bells are said to have been sent off to Wên-têng city, where presumably they still remain.
The Kuan Ti temple is said to have been the scene of at least one miracle. Once upon a time a Taoist priest, named Wu K'ao-yü, who was in charge of the temple, went out for an evening stroll. Darkness came on before he returned, and he then remembered that he had forgotten to light the altar lamps. He hunted about for some means of striking a light, but found none; so he decided to go to one of his neighbours and borrow a candle. He was grumbling at himself for his carelessness when suddenly, in his presence, the altar was illuminated by four brilliant lights. When he observed that they neither flickered nor went out he prostrated himself in reverence and repeated part of the liturgy. If the god could provide lights for himself, he argued, there was obviously no necessity for troubling the neighbours, so he went to bed like a sensible man, leaving the lamps to look after themselves.
The question arises, did he ever take the trouble to light the lamps again? To this the chronicler gives no reply. The priest was possibly gifted with powers which in these days might be termed mediumistic, for this was not his only remarkable experience of the kind. On one occasion he beheld, in a midnight vision, three elaborately dressed men, lively and active in manner and of handsome appearance. They looked at the priest and all cried out together, "Come quickly and save us!" This remark was twice repeated, and the speakers then vanished. The priest immediately arose, and without choosing his path allowed himself to be led by unseen influences down to the sea-beach. There he saw, lying at the edge of the surf, three copper images. Recognising them at once as images of the Three Prefects of the Sea-King's Palace, he picked them up reverently and deposited them in the principal hall of the temple. Rumours of the strange discovery soon spread far and wide, and crowds of worshippers came to the Kuan Ti temple to see the images for themselves and—incidentally—to make suitable offerings to the highly-favoured priest.
A much smaller deity than Kuan Ti but of greater importance to the people in their everyday life is the City-god—the Ch'êng Huang. Every walled city in China has a Ch'êng Huang Lao-yeh (His Worship the City-god) who acts as its guardian deity. On certain fixed days, such as the first and fifteenth of every month and on occasions of special dangers or disasters, the local officials visit the temple dedicated to this deity and burn incense in front of his image, which is generally clad in real robes and is of full human size. A similar ceremonious visit also takes place when a new magistrate arrives in the city and takes over the seals of office.
In many countries there was once a barbarous custom whereby human beings were sacrificed at the building of the gates or towers of a city wall and buried below the foundations.[346] Human blood was believed to add strength and stability to the wall, and the sacrificed human being was supposed to become its spiritual guardian. Sacrifices of this kind are believed to have taken place as recently as 1857, at the foundation of the Burmese city of Mandalay. Not only city-walls but bridges, temples, river-dykes, and indeed all buildings of importance were supposed to be enormously strengthened by the blood and bones of specially-slain human victims. In some cases, apparently, the wretched victims were buried alive. There is some reason for believing that human sacrifices occurred at the construction of the Great Wall of China in the third century B.C.
In some parts of the Empire there is still a curiously-prevalent belief to the effect that Governments and officials are in the habit of taking a toll of human life when they have any great engineering work on hand, and bad characters or misguided patriots who wished to bring odium upon foreigners have been known to circulate stories that Chinese children were being kidnapped by Western barbarians for the purpose of burying them under a railway or a fort or a dock or some great public building. There was a scare of the kind among a section of the poorer classes of Hongkong about eight or nine years ago, and in the little village known to Europeans as Aberdeen, on the Hongkong island, there was, in consequence, a small panic. A white ship, said the people, had been seen coming by night into Aberdeen harbour, the object of those on board being to kidnap Chinese boys and girls for purposes of foundation-sacrifices. Yet the people of that village had been under direct British rule for about sixty years! It would be interesting to know whether the Ch'êng Huang or City-god was originally a sacrificed human-being, but the Chinese will not admit such to be the case and it is difficult to procure evidence.
The Chinese of to-day profess to think that no such barbarous custom can ever have taken place in their country, but they are unquestionably wrong in this belief: indeed there is some reason to believe that the custom is not yet extinct in China.[347] As for the barbarity of the practice, the Chinese admit that the custom of slaughtering men and women at funerals, and even burying them alive in the tombs of kings and high officials, became extinct only in modern times.[348] Whatever may be the truth with regard to the origin of the Ch'êng Huang, the popular belief is that he is a kind of ghostly magistrate, and in modern times he is generally regarded as the spirit of a former magistrate who on account of his blameless life or devotion to the interests of the people died "in the odour of sanctity."
Changes and promotions sometimes take place among the city-gods just as among the living members of the Chinese civil service. The world of the dead is supposed to be a reduplication of the world of men. One might almost imagine that some rather dull-witted Chinese philosopher had heard, and grievously failed to understand, the Platonic doctrine of Ideas, and had then applied his new learning to the solution, by Chinese methods, of the mystery of the land from which no traveller returns. Provinces, cities, villages, officials and yamên-runners, houses and fields and cattle, and indeed all material things were and are vaguely supposed to have their immaterial counterparts in the world of shades. It is necessary to emphasise the word "vaguely," for no well-educated and very few illiterate Chinese seem to hold this belief with dogmatic definiteness, and indeed they are usually ready to join Europeans in criticising or deriding it. But it is a theory that certainly colours the traditional Chinese views of death and the beyond.
The city-god takes rank according to the status of the living magistrate: a prefectural city is superior to that of a district-magistracy, hence the city-god of the former takes precedence of the city-god of the latter. The deity that presides over the destinies of Weihaiwei city is thus very humbly placed among the hundreds and thousands of deities of his class, for Weihaiwei is only the seat of a hsün-chien[349]—the mere deputy of a district-magistrate. It is probable, too, that just as the Weihaiwei hsün-chien has become an even less important person than formerly, since the establishment of British rule over the territory that was once under his supervision, so his ghostly counterpart has been obliged to assume a humbler position than before in the ranks of the minor deities. Yet if local legends are to be credited the Weihai city-god was once quite competent to assert his authority and defend his reputation. It is generally supposed that a deity of this class has control only over the people of his own city and its subject territory: beyond those limits his powers do not extend. But that the Weihai god insisted at one time on respectful treatment even from strangers is proved by the following incident. In the seventeenth century a certain man named Chao, a native of the P'êng-lai district in the prefecture of Têng-chou, had come to Weihaiwei to transact business. The weather being hot he went into the Ch'êng Huang miao (temple of the city-god) for an afternoon nap, and sat down with his back to the god's image. A bystander, who was a local man, hastened to point out that his attitude was disrespectful. "It is not proper," he said, "to sit with your back to the god. Wouldn't it be wiser to turn sideways?" Chao smiled scornfully. "I am a P'êng-lai man; your god has no power over me. I propose to stay where I am."
THE BUDDHA OF KU SHAN TEMPLE
(see p. [402]).
Photo by Ah Fong, Weihaiwei.
THE CITY-GOD OF WEIHAIWEI (see p. [368]).
Soon afterwards he fell asleep. He slumbered long and deeply, and in the middle of the night he suddenly woke up and to his horror found himself bound hand and foot to one of the rafters of the roof, and there unseen hands proceeded to subject him to an unmerciful beating. The more he howled the faster and heavier came the blows. When he had suffered excruciating pain for what seemed to him a long time, the thongs that bound him were mysteriously loosened by ghostly fingers and he was lowered to the floor. Then the flogging began again, and the wretched Chao was driven screaming out of the temple precincts. Outside the gates he fell unconscious to the ground. When he came to himself he was hardly able to move; his body was still bruised and scarred, and when he tried to drag one leg after the other he writhed in agony. After many weary days the pains left him, but his contempt for alien gods was a thing of the past: he had become a grave and religious man. Before leaving the city on his return journey he took care to prove his remorse by presenting the outraged deity with a beautiful paper horse, which was of course despatched to the spirit-world through the usual agency of fire.
There is a quainter and more touching story told of the city-god of the neighbouring district-city of Jung-ch'êng. The Chinese, as we have seen,[350] regard three days in the year as specially consecrated to the spirits of the dead, just as there are three special holidays for the living. On each of the spirit-festivals the Ch'êng Huang is expected to hold a formal inspection of his city. His image is accordingly brought out of the dingy temple in which it usually reposes, placed in an official chair, and carried in a noisy and not very solemn procession through the principal streets of the town. The story goes that during one of these periodical excursions a young girl, a member of a well-known local family, was watching the procession with the keenest interest. As the god's palanquin passed the spot where she was standing, she saw the image—or believed she saw it—deliberately turn its face in her direction and smile at her with a look of friendly interest. Full of excitement the girl went home and poured out her tale in the ear of her mother. The good lady treated the story as a kind of joke and laughed gaily at her daughter's fancy. "It is clear," she said, "that Ch'êng Huang Lao-yeh wants you for his wife: so off you go to him."
A few days passed by and the girl became seriously ill. A doctor was called in, but all he did was to look wise, give her a charm to hang over her door, and make her swallow some disagreeable medicine. In less than a month after the meeting with the city-god the girl was dead. During the night following her death her mother had a strange dream. She was visited by the spirit of her dead daughter, who told her that she was now well and happy, for she had become the bride of the Ch'êng Huang. Needless to say the dream soon became the common talk of the neighbours, through whom it reached the ears of the district-magistrate. After evidence had been given and duly corroborated it was officially decided that the Ch'êng Huang's will had manifested itself in an unmistakable manner and that to thwart it would bring certain disaster on the city. The girl's body was therefore buried with much pomp and ceremony within the temple grounds, her image, robed in real silks, was installed in the central pavilion beside that of the god himself, and she received formal recognition as the Ch'êng Huang's consort.
As time went on the dead girl began to acquire some local fame as a healer of various diseases, and persons who believed she had cured their ailments took to buying little votive offerings such as tiny pairs of shoes, hair-combs, ear-rings, and other trinkets such as Chinese ladies love. These were all stored up in the temple, where many of them may still be seen. The citizens of Jung-ch'êng who tell the story to strangers and fear it will not be believed are in the habit of mentioning a prosaic little fact which, they think, must banish all doubt. Every morning, they say, a basin of clean water is taken by the priest into the inner room which is supposed to serve as the sleeping-chamber of the Ch'êng Huang and his wife. Having put the basin on its stand the priest discreetly withdraws. In half an hour he returns and takes the basin away: and lo! the water is clean no longer. This realistic touch is rather characteristic of Chinese tales of wonder. Whatever the real origin of the legend may be there is no doubt that the city-god of Jung-ch'êng does share the honours of local worship with a female spirit whose image rests beside his own; and if any one questions whether she was ever a living human being he may ask for an introduction to the descendants of the very family to which she belonged,—for their name is Ts'ai and their home is in one of the city suburbs, where they flourish to this day.[351]
Just as every town has its Ch'êng Huang Lao-yeh, so every village has its T'u Ti Lao-yeh or Old Father T'u Ti. He is of course inferior in rank to a Ch'êng Huang, and instead of possessing an ornate temple and being represented by a full-sized robed and bearded image he has no better resting-place, as a rule, than a little stone shrine three or four feet high. In the case of the Weihaiwei villages this shrine is generally situated on the roadside close by the village to which it belongs. The ordinary villager's ceremonial visits to the local T'u Ti miao or temple of the village-god are not very frequent. If he or any member of his family is sick he will beseech the T'u Ti to grant a restoration to health, and on such occasions, or after a cure has been effected, he will very often hang little flags of scarlet cloth—they are often mere rags—on a stick or pole in front of the shrine. The popular T'u Ti of a large village sometimes possesses a dozen of these simple offerings at one time. The death of a villager must be formally announced to the T'u Ti, whose duty it is to act as a kind of guide to the dead man when he finds himself for the first time in the bewildering world of ghosts. It is a common sight and a somewhat pathetic one to see a long row of wailing mourners, clad in loose and unhemmed sackcloth and with hair dishevelled, wending their way along the village street in the direction of the shrine of the T'u Ti to report the death of a relative or fellow-villager. The T'u Ti is, in fact, a kind of registrar of deaths: the unseen record kept by him in the underworld and the family record kept by the people in their homes or in their ancestral temples, are sufficient to satisfy all Chinese requirements in the matter of death-registration.[352] Births are not reported to the T'u Ti, who, being concerned chiefly with the world of spirits, is not supposed to take any special interest in the multiplication of living men. It is to the ancestors that a child's birth (if the child be a boy) is naturally supposed to bring joy and consolation.
SHRINE TO THE GOD OF LITERATURE (see p. [361]).
A T'U TI SHRINE (see p. [372]).
Beings like the Ch'êng Huang and T'u Ti and Hearth-god[353] and many other popular deities may be all regarded as included in the list of Taoist gods, but as far as ceremony or ritual goes they are really independent of Taoism: that is to say, no priestly intervention is necessary between the god and the person who prays. If the rites of Taoism and the major Taoist gods were expelled from the land, minor deities such as those mentioned might continue to attract just as much or just as little reverence as they do at present; similarly ancestor-worship would not necessarily be affected by the official abolition of the cult of Confucius.
The fact that the T'u Ti is supposed to interest himself in such matters as the death of individuals seems to suggest that he must have been in origin an ancestral god: but I cannot find any trustworthy evidence that this is so, though it seems that in some cases at least he (like the Ch'êng Huang) was a human being posthumously raised to quasi-divine rank. It is noteworthy as bearing on this point that no village in Weihaiwei, or elsewhere so far as I am aware, possesses more than one T'u Ti, though there may be two or more "surnames" or clans represented in the village; moreover, when a man migrates from one village to another he changes his T'u Ti, although his connection with his old village in respect of ancestral worship and such matters remains unimpaired. The T'u Ti, in fact, appears to be a local divinity who holds his position irrespective of the movements of families and changes of surnames. It may be that he is regarded as representing in some mysterious way the first settler in the locality concerned, or the first builder of the village. The Chinese T'u Ti seems to bear a considerable resemblance to the Uji-gami of Japan. As the name Uji implies, this deity was evidently at one time regarded as a clan-deity or tribal ancestor. But as a Japanese authority has told us, "the word Uji-gami or clan-god is now used in another sense, namely in the sense of the local tutelary god or the patron-god of a man's birthplace or domicile."[354] Dr. Aston says that the Uji-gami having originally been the patron-gods of particular families "became simply the local deities of the district where one was born."[355] It seems at least possible that the history of the T'u Ti has been similar to that of the Uji-Gami.
Perhaps Greek and Roman religion may help in throwing some light on the subject. Just as we find the ancestral cult forming a prominent element in the religion of Greece and Rome, so we find traces of the existence of something like a T'u Ti. Every family had its own altar and its own gods (namely its deceased ancestors), and every phratria or group of families "had a common altar erected in honour of a common deity who was supposed to be more powerful than the deities of the households taken separately."[356]
Like the Ch'êng Huang of the city of Jung-ch'êng, the T'u Ti of the Weihaiwei district are very often if not almost invariably provided with wives, who are known as T'u Ti P'o. The T'u Ti and his lady are represented by rough stone effigies, about a foot in height, which are placed side by side within the little stone shrine; or sometimes the lady has a separate shrine, of smaller size, beside that of her husband. Some T'u Ti are attended by two T'u Ti Po. On making inquiries into the reason for this at a village where the T'u Ti was thus distinguished, I was informed that the lady on his left (the place of honour) was his wife and the lady on his right his concubine. It was pointed out that the concubine's image was only about half the size of that of the wife, which was quite as it should be in view of her inferior status. Two explanations were offered as to why this particular T'u Ti had been allowed to increase his household in this manner: one was that he had won the lady on his right by gambling for her, the other was that the T'u Ti had appeared to one of the villagers in a dream and begged him to provide him with a concubine as he had grown tired of his wife. The villager called on the local image-maker the very next morning, the image-maker went to the shrine and took measurements, and in a few days a nice new concubine was placed by the T'u Ti's side. Whether the dreamer's material position underwent any marked improvement about this time is not recorded.
It has been mentioned that little red flags are often hung on a stick or pole close by the T'u Ti's shrine on behalf of persons whose ailments the T'u Ti is supposed to have cured. At first sight one might suppose that the flags were intended as thank-offerings to the T'u Ti, but though they certainly are regarded as such at the present day, I am strongly inclined to believe that they have a quite different origin. Similar customs in other parts of the world irresistibly suggest the idea that the piece of cloth was originally regarded as the vehicle of the disease which was supposed to have been expelled from the human subject.
Dr. Tylor refers to "that well-known conception of a disease or evil influence as an individual being, which may be not merely conveyed by an infected object (though this of course may have much to do with the idea) but may be removed by actual transfer from the patient into some other animal or object."[357] He goes on to consider many examples of the practical working of this conception, and draws special attention to the belief common to many parts of the world (though China is not mentioned) that disease can be banished by driving it into a rag and hanging it on a tree:—"In Thuringia it is considered that a string of rowan-berries, a rag, or any small article, touched by a sick person and then hung on a bush beside some forest path, imparts the malady to any person who may touch this article in passing, and frees the sick person from the disease. This gives great probability to Captain Burton's suggestion that the rags, locks of hair, and what not, hung on trees near sacred places by the superstitious from Mexico to India and from Ethiopia to Ireland, are deposited there as actual receptacles of disease; the African 'devil's trees' and the sacred trees of Sindh, hung with rags through which votaries have transferred their complaints, being typical cases of a practice surviving in lands of higher culture."[358]
YÜAN DYNASTY GRAVES (see p. [257])
A T'U TI SHRINE, SHOWING RAG-POLES AND TREE
(see p. [377]).
There are traces of a belief of this kind in Japan, and I have observed many proofs of it also in the border country between China and Tibet. There is good reason, I think, to believe that the custom of hanging rags in front of the T'u Ti's shrine has a similar origin. The fact that the rags are usually hung up after the patient has already recovered merely goes to show that the primitive meaning of the act has become obscured.
It is probable that the T'u Ti originally had nothing to do with the matter. Of what possible use to him could be a number of small pieces of ragged cloth, unless indeed he wished to make himself a patchwork quilt? But as soon as the significance of the suspended rag had been forgotten, the idea may very naturally have grown up that the practice was essentially a religious one and ought to be associated with some god: and what god so suitable as the local guardian-spirit—the T'u Ti—whose shrine was always conveniently close at hand, and who was supposed to take a personal interest in every villager? As soon as the rag came to be regarded as a votive-offering the Chinese would naturally select red—the colour of joy and good luck—as most acceptable to the god and most likely to win his favour. This theory will perhaps gain in reasonableness if it is explained that the uneducated Chinese of the north—including Weihaiwei—do actually believe to this day in the possibility of transferring certain diseases from a human being to an inanimate object. They declare that if a sick person rubs a piece of cloth over the part of his body in which he feels pain, and then throws the cloth away at a cross-road,[359] he will feel the pain no more. Wayfarers who see such cloths lying on the road will on no account touch them, as they are supposed to harbour the disease that has been expelled from the human patient.[360] There are similar beliefs in Korea[361] and elsewhere in Asia, and also in several countries of Europe.[362]
To confine ourselves to Weihaiwei, it should be mentioned that the sticks or poles in front of the T'u Ti's shrine to which the rags are fastened are inserted perpendicularly in the ground in front or at the side of the shrine, and are often made to represent, on a miniature scale, the well-known mast-like poles that stand outside the gates of official yamêns and the houses and family temples of the literary "aristocracy." But sometimes the shrine is shaded by the branches of a tree, and in such cases the rags may occasionally be seen hanging on the tree itself. It is possible that here we have something like a blending of three old beliefs or superstitions: the cult of the local tutelary god, faith in the magical expulsion of sickness, and the worship of sacred trees.
Tree-worship is one of the bypaths of Chinese religion. It is not connected, except as it were accidentally, with Confucianism, Taoism or Buddhism. But the bypath is worth exploring if only because it leads to a region of folk-lore and myth that is common to both China and Europe. The idea that certain trees are animated by more or less powerful spirits, or the distinct and still earlier view that certain trees are themselves the bodies of living divinities, is a belief that can be traced to almost every part of the world. It existed in ancient Rome,[363] where the sacred fig-tree of Romulus was an object of popular devotion; it existed among the ancient Jews at Hebron, Shechem, Ophrah and at Beersheba;[364] it existed in Pelasgian Attica and neighbouring regions thousands of years B.C.;[365] it existed in India in pre-Buddhistic and post-Buddhistic times—witness the history of the famous Bo-tree of Anuradhapura in Ceylon, to which pilgrims still flock in their thousands; it flourishes to this day in all the countries of Indo-China; it is to be found in Korea and in many islands of the Pacific; indeed traces of it exist in every part of the world, including western Europe and the American continent. No wonder Dr. Tylor says of "direct and absolute tree-worship" that it may lie "very wide and deep in the early history of religion."[366] Its extraordinary vitality in Europe may be estimated by the fact that though the early Christian missionaries on the Continent and in Britain anathematised it as idolatrous and endeavoured to stamp it out—sometimes adopting the method of cutting down a sacred grove and using the timber for building a Christian chapel[367]—traces of the belief in sacred trees actually survive in popular traditions and local customs up to the present time right across the Euro-Asiatic continent from England and Sweden to China, Malaya and the islands of Japan.[368] Folk-lore has much to tell us about talking trees, and trees that could plead for their own lives when the wood-cutter approached them with his axe. In 1606 Lincolnshire was reported to possess "an ash-tree that sighed and groaned."[369]
Apart from all consideration of the origin of maypoles, some faint traces of a surviving belief in holy trees have been found in recent years in Yorkshire.[370] In Switzerland it is a common belief of the people that walnut-trees are tenanted by spirits.[371] Dr. Frazer tells us that "down to 1859 there stood a sacred larch-tree at Nauders in the Tyrol which was thought to bleed whenever it was cut.... So sacred was the tree that no one would gather fuel or cut timber near it; and to curse, scold or quarrel in its neighbourhood was regarded as a crying sin which would be supernaturally punished on the spot. Angry disputants were often hushed with the whisper, 'Don't, the sacred tree is here.'"[372] The belief in trees animated by some kind of divinity or inhabited by spirits is parallel with many other ancient animistic beliefs. Just as the sea has its mermaids and nymphs and the streams have their naiads and water-kelpies and the mountains their gnomes and elves, so groves and single trees have their haunting spirits, dryads or gods. At the present day the popular faith in the existence of tree-spirits is exceedingly strong in such countries as Burma, the Shan States and Siam; indeed Buddhism was obliged to compromise with the pre-Buddhistic animism of those lands to the extent of finding a place for tree-nats or tree-spirits—as well as water-nats and numerous other fairy-like beings—in its general scheme of the cosmos.
THE HAUNTED TREE OF LIN-CHIA-YÜAN (see p. [381]).
In view of the almost universal prevalence of tree-worship of some kind or other it would be strange indeed if no trace of it could be found in China. It has been said by a writer on the subject that "there is very little evidence of the existence of tree-worship among Chinese,"[373] but as a matter of fact the evidence for its existence (though perhaps it is not to be found to any great extent in books) is abundant and conclusive. I have myself seen "sacred trees" in at least seven provinces of China—Chihli, Shansi, Honan, Shensi, Ssŭch'uan, Fuhkien and Shantung—and I have good reason to believe they are to be found in other provinces as well.[374] The trees are generally seen in the neighbourhood of a village or sometimes in the middle of a village-street; their branches are usually hung with votive-offerings and lettered scrolls, and below them are sometimes placed little altars with incense-burners and small dishes of sacrificial food. Such trees are regarded with veneration, and their decay or accidental destruction is looked upon as a public calamity. In north China the sacred tree seems generally though not always to be a Sophora tree, known by the Chinese as huai.[375] But any one who wishes to be convinced that tree-worship is still a living faith in China need not travel so far as the inland provinces: it is unnecessary to go further than Weihaiwei. Close to the picturesque village of Lin-chia-yüan (The Garden of the Lin Family) is a fine old specimen of the Ginkgo or Maidenhair tree,[376] known by the Chinese as the pai kuo or "white-fruit tree." It is believed in the neighbourhood to be inhabited by the spirit of a Buddha or Bodhisatva.
Here we have an interesting example of how Buddhism utilised local legends for its own purposes and for the advancement of its own interests. Close by the tree stands an old Buddhist temple that dates from the T'ang dynasty. Had there been no priests to mould the religious ideas of the neighbouring villages into a Buddhistic form the tree would still have been regarded as the abode of a spirit, but no one would have thought of suggesting that the spirit was that of a Buddha. The devout Christian need not jeer at the harmless wiles of the Buddhist priests in this little matter, for the European monks of the Middle Ages were equally ready to seize upon local superstitions and give them a Christian interpretation. "The peasant folk-lore of Europe still knows," says Dr. Tylor, "of that old tree on the Heinzenberg near Zell, which uttered its complaint when the woodman cut it down, for in it was Our Lady, whose chapel now stands upon the spot."[377] Exactly the same procedure was adopted, as is well known, with regard to the sacred wells and springs of our European forefathers. It was found a simpler matter to substitute the name of a Christian saint for that of a heathen divinity than to crush the popular superstitions altogether. "With a varnish of Christianity and sometimes the substitution of a saint's name," says the writer just quoted,[378] "water-worship has held its own to this day. The Bohemians will go to pray on the river-bank where a man has been drowned, and there they will cast in an offering, a loaf of new bread and a pair of wax candles." The bread, no doubt, represented the old heathen offering to the water-spirit, the candles represented the compromise with Christianity. But let us refrain from ridiculing the superstitions of "the heathen Chinee" so long as we possess such obvious relics of heathendom in our own quarter of the globe.
A VILLAGE
AT CHANG-CHIA-SHAN.
Signs are not wanting that the old belief in shên shu ("spirit-trees"), as they are called by the Chinese, is more or less rapidly decaying in this district. Certain villages, such as Chang-chia-shan, Wên-ch'üan-chai, Ho-hsi-chuang, Pao-hsin and others, possess fine old trees which, according to tradition, were once "worshipped," but are now only familiar and much-loved landmarks which the villagers would on no account allow to be removed. I do not refer only to the temple-groves and the little woods that shade the ancestral burial-grounds, for they, as we have seen,[379] derive their sanctity from causes not necessarily connected with tree-worship. I refer rather to the large isolated trees that one sometimes sees in or close to a village or overhanging the T'u Ti shrine. In the latter case it would be interesting to know whether it was the tree or the shrine that first possessed the site. Sometimes the little shrine is almost hidden by the low-hanging foliage of a group of trees—such trees having in all probability sprung from a parent-stem. Of the Khond tribes in British India it is said that when they settle in a new village "the sacred cotton-tree must be planted with solemn rites, and beneath it is placed the stone which enshrines the village-deity."[380] Whatever may have been the practice in Weihaiwei, it seems not improbable that similar rites once attended the planting of sacred trees in some parts of China.
The proximity of an ancient Buddhist temple is sufficient to explain how it is that the sacred tree of Lin-chia-yüan is supposed to be inhabited by a Buddhist spirit: but no one seems to have thought it worth while to proselytise the spirit of the most famous tree in the Territory, the sophora of the village of Mang-tao, which enjoys a celebrity extending far beyond the limits of the surrounding villages. Only a year or two ago a serious calamity befell the villagers of Mang-tao. During one night of dismal memory their famous tree caught fire and was destroyed. Their consternation was great, for the disaster seemed irremediable; but the local sages rose to the occasion, for they declared that the tree-spirit had grown tired of the old tree and had moved into a smaller one a few yards further up the village-street. As for the fire, it was explained as being t'ien huo—fire from heaven—sent purposely at the instigation of the migrated tree-spirit in order to prevent people from worshipping the wrong tree. A circumstantial story has already been invented in the village to this effect. A villager came with incense to pay his respects to the old tree which—unknown to him—was now untenanted. The tree-spirit from his new perch saw what was going on, and was much disgusted to perceive that the old tree, though he had abandoned it, was still the recipient of offerings. Grinding his branches with rage and jealousy at the vexatious spectacle, he persuaded heaven to send a mysterious wind that fanned the villager's lighted sticks of incense into a mighty flame, which speedily stripped the poor old tree of bark and foliage. Whatever the true cause of the fire may have been, the fact is indisputable that the tree was completely destroyed. Its blackened trunk has been removed by the villagers, so that not a trace of the tree now remains; while its proud successor is now decorated with the rags and other offerings that once hung upon its venerable branches.
The Mang-tao tree is prayed to for many things, but especially for recovery from illness, and the rags are chiefly the offerings of grateful worshippers whose prayers have met with favourable response. It is very possible that the rags were originally regarded as the mere vehicles of expelled diseases in accordance with the old superstition already described, but there is no doubt that the tree or the tree-spirit is looked upon as the power through which the diseases are driven out. The Mang-tao tree is often adorned with more than mere rags: cloth scrolls on which are inscribed mottoes and sentences expressive of gratitude and reverence are also to be seen on its branches. Grant Allen remarks that "Christianity has not extinguished the veneration for sacred trees in Syria, where they are still prayed to in sickness and hung with rags."[381] It is interesting to find in a remote Weihaiwei village—probably never visited by any European other than an occasional Englishman on official duty—a superstition that still flourishes in the very birthplace of Christianity.