Giles states further in connection with Chinese god-stones: “Under 532 B.C. we have the record of a stone speaking.” The Marquis Lu inquired of his chief musician if this was a fact, and received the following answer: “Stones cannot speak. Perhaps this one was possessed by a spirit. If not, the people must have heard wrong. And yet it is said that when things are done out of season and discontents and complaints are stirring among the people, then speechless things do speak.”[33]
Precious stones were, like boulders or mountains, linked with the Great Mother. In Egypt the red jaspar amulet, called “the girdle of Isis”, was supposed to be a precious drop of the life-blood of that goddess. Herbs were connected with precious stones, and were credited [[186]]with the attributes and characteristics of these stones. There are many references in Chinese, Indian, and other texts and folk-lores to gems that gleam in darkness. No gems do. The mandrake was similarly believed to shine at night. Both gem and herb were associated with the moon, a form of the mother-goddess, and were supposed to give forth light like the moon,[34] just as stones associated with the rain-mother were supposed to become moist, or to send forth a stream of water, or to shed tears like the “weeping trees”, and like the sky from which drop rain and dew. The attributes of the goddess were shared by her “avatars”.
The amount or strength of the “soul-substance” in trees, herbs, well-water, stones, and animals varied greatly. Some elixirs derived from one or other of these “avatars” might prolong life by a few years; other elixirs might ensure many years of health.
The difference between a medicinal herb and the herb of immortality was one of degree in potency. The former was imbued with sufficient “soul-substance” to cure a patient suffering from a disease, or to give good health for months, or even years; the latter gave extremely good health, and those who partook of it lived for long periods in the Otherworld.
Even the “spiritual beings” (ling) of China were graded. The four ling, as De Visser states, are “the unicorn, the phœnix, the tortoise, and the dragon”. The dragon is credited with being possessed of “most ling of all creatures”.[35]
Stones were likewise graded. Precious stones had more ling than ordinary stones. Precious stones are sometimes referred to as pi-si. One Chinese writer says [[187]]that “the best pi-si are deep-red in colour; that those in which purple, yellow, and green are combined, and the white ones take the second place; while those half white and half black are of the third grade”.[36]
Stones that displayed five colours combined apparently all the virtues of the five deities—the gods of the four quarters, and the sun, their chief. These were all children of the sixth deity, the Great Mother, who was the water on earth and the water above the firmament and the moon. The moon contained, as has been said, the “Pot” of fertilizing water which created all the water that flows into the Earth “Pot”. In China, as in Egypt and Western Europe, the Great Mother was the reproductive principle in Nature, the source of the moisture of life, the blood which is life, the sap of trees, the soul-substance in herbs, in fruit, in pearls, and in precious stones and precious metals—precious because of their close association with her.
It was the human dread of death and pain, the human desire for health and long life, and for the renewal of youth that instigated early man to search for the well of life, the plant of life, the curative herb, the pearl, and precious stones and precious metals. But before the search began, the complex ideas about the origin of life and the means by which it might be prolonged, which are reviewed in this chapter, passed through a long process of development in the most ancient centres of civilization. In China we meet not only with primitive ideas regarding life-giving food and water, but with ideas that had gradually developed for centuries outside China after the earliest attempts had been made to reanimate the corpse, not merely by painting it, but by preventing the body from decaying. In the history of mummification in Egypt [[188]]may be found the history of complex beliefs that travelled far and wide.[37] Even those peoples who did not adopt, or, at any rate, perpetuate the custom of mummification, adopted the belief that it was necessary to preserve the corpse. This belief is still prevalent in China, as will be shown, but magic takes the place of surgery.
In the next chapter evidence will be provided to indicate how the overland “drift” of culture towards China was impelled by the forces at work in Babylonia and Egypt. [[189]]