“Culture-drifts” can thus be followed in their results. Backward communities that adopted inventions in early times continue to use them in precisely the same manner as did those ancient peoples by whom they were first introduced. In like manner are early beliefs and customs still perpetuated in isolated areas. But it does not follow that all these beliefs had origin among the peoples who still cling to them. Some so-called “primitive” beliefs are really of highly complex character, with as long a history of development as has the primitive type of furnace utilized by the hill tribes of India.
ANCIENT BRONZE ASTRONOMICAL INSTRUMENTS ON THE CITY WALL, PEKING
In the next chapter it will be shown that in the jade beliefs of China traces survive of ideas not necessarily of Chinese origin—ideas that, in fact, grew up and passed through processes of development in countries in which jade was never found. For, as the Chinese bronze [[209]]implements are “not of primitive forms”, and therefore not indigenous, neither are all Chinese beliefs and customs “primitive” in the same sense, or, in the real sense, indigenous either. As the stimulus to work metals in China came from an outside source, so, apparently, did the stimulus to search for such a “life-giving” and “luck-conferring” material as jade come from other countries, and from races unrelated to those that occupied China in early times.
The beliefs associated with jade were developed in China, although they did not originate there; and these beliefs were similar to those attached to the pearls, the precious stones, and the precious metals searched for by the ancient prospectors who discovered and first worked jade in Chinese Turkestan and on the borders of China.
To sum up, it would appear that the elements of a religious culture, closely associated with the agricultural mode of life, and common to Sumeria and Egypt, passed across Asia towards China, reaching the Shensi province about 1700 B.C. At a much later period the complex culture of the Egyptian Empire period gradually drifted along the sea route and left its impress on the Chinese coast. Iranian culture, which was impregnated with Babylonian and Egyptian ideas, likewise exercised a persisting influence, and was renewed again and again.
One of the ultimate results of the rise of Persia as a world-power, and of the invasion of Asia by Alexander, was to bring China into direct touch with the Hellenistic world.
Indian influence is represented chiefly by Buddhism. In northern India Buddhism had been blended with Naga (serpent) worship, and when it reached China, the local beliefs regarding dragons were given a Buddhistic colouring. The Chinese Buddhists mixed the newly-imported [[210]]religious culture with their own. The “Islands of the Blest” were retained by the cult of the East, and the Western Paradise by the cult of the West. The latter paradise is unknown to the Buddhists in Burmah and Ceylon, but has never been forgotten by the Buddhists of northern China. A Buddha called “Boundless Age” was placed in the garden of the Royal Lady of the West, but that goddess still lingered beside the Peach Tree of Immortality, while the sky-goddess continued to weave the web of the constellations, and the pious men and women of the Taoist faith were supposed to reach her stellar Paradise by sailing along the Celestial River in dragon-boats or riding on the back of dragons. The Chinese Buddhists found ideas regarding Nirvana less satisfying than those associated with the Paradise of the “Peaceful Land of the West” and the higher Paradise of the “Palaces of the Stars”, in which dwelt the gods and the demi-gods of the older faiths.
Writing in this connection, Dr. Joseph Edkins says: “A mighty branch of foreign origin has been grafted in the old stock. The metaphysical religion of Shakyamuni was added to the moral doctrines of Confucius. Another process may then be witnessed. A native twig was grafted in the Indian branch. Modern Taoism has grown up on the model supplied by Buddhism. That it is possible to observe the modus operandi of this repeated grafting, and to estimate the amount of gain and loss to the people of China, resulting from the varied religious teaching which they have thus received, is a circumstance of the greatest interest to the investigator of the world’s religions.”[29] [[211]]