“Fung-shui”, says De Groot, “denotes the atmospherical [[235]]influences which bear absolute sway over the fate of man, as none of the principal elements of life can be produced without favourable weather and rains.” It also means, he adds, “a quasi-scientific system, supposed to teach men where and how to build graves, temples, and dwellings, in order that the dead, the gods, and the living may be located therein exclusively, or as far as possible, under the auspicious influences of Nature”.[58]
The controllers of wind and water are the White Tiger god of the West, and the Blue (or green) Dragon god of the East. “These animals”, says De Groot, “represent all that is expressed by the word Fung-shui, viz., both æolian and aquatic influences, Confucius being reputed to have said that ‘the winds follow the tiger’, and the dragon having, since time immemorial, in Chinese cosmological mythology played the part of chief spirit of water and rain.”[59]
When the dead were buried it was considered necessary, according to Fung-shui principles, to have graves facing the south, and the Dragon symbol on the left (east) side of the coffin, and the Tiger symbol on the right (west) side, while the Red Bird of the south was on the front, and the Black Tortoise of the north on the back.
These symbols were, so to speak, set amidst natural surroundings that allowed the “free flow” of auspicious influences or “breaths”. A site for a burial-ground was carefully selected, due account being taken of the configurations of the surrounding country and the courses followed by streams.[60]
Not only graves, but houses and towns, were so placed [[236]]as to secure the requisite balance between the forces of Nature. De Groot notes that Amoy is reputed by Chinese believers of the Fung-shui system to owe its prosperity to two knolls flanking the inner harbour, called “Tiger-head Hill” and “Dragon-head Hill”. Canton is influenced by the “White clouds”, a chain of hills representing the Dragon on one side of its river, and by undulating ground opposite representing the Tiger. “Similarly”, he says, “Peking is protected on the north-west by the Kin-shan or Golden Hills, which represent the Tiger and ensure its prosperity, together with that of the whole empire and the reigning dynasty. These hills contain the sources of a felicitous watercourse, called Yu-ho or ‘Jade River’, which enters Peking on the north-west, and flows through the grounds at the back of the Imperial Palace, then accumulates its beneficial influences in three large reservoirs or lakes dug on the west side, and finally flows past the entire front of the inner palace, where it bears the name of the Golden Water.”[61]
Here we find jade and gold closely associated in the Fung-shui system.
As we have seen, white jade was used when the Tiger god of the West was worshipped; it is known as “tiger jade”; a tiger was depicted on the jade symbol. To the Chinese the tiger was the king of all animals and “lord of the mountains”, and the tiger-jade ornament was specially reserved for commanders of armies. The male tiger was, among other things, the god of war, and in this capacity it not only assisted the armies of the emperors, but fought the demons that threatened the dead in their graves.
There are traces in China of a tigress shape of the [[237]]goddess of the West. Laufer refers to an ancient legend of the country of Chu, which tells of a prince who in the eighth century B.C. married a princess of Yün. A son was born to them and named Tou Po-pi. The father died and the widow returned to Yün, where Tou Po-pi, in his youth, had an intrigue with a princess who bore him a son. “The grandmother ordered the infant to be carried away and deserted on a marsh, but a tigress came to suckle the child. One day when the prince of Yün was out hunting, he discovered this circumstance, and when he returned home terror-stricken, his wife unveiled to him the affair. Touched by this marvellous incident, they sent messengers after the child, and had it cared for. The people of Chʼu, who spoke a language differing from Chinese, called suckling nou, and a tiger they called yü-tʼu; hence the boy was named Nou Yü-tʼu (‘Suckled by a Tigress’). He subsequently became minister of Chʼu.”[62]
This Far Eastern legend recalls that of Romulus and Remus, who were thrown into the Tiber but were preserved and rescued; they were afterwards suckled by a she-wolf. The Cretan Zeus was suckled, according to one legend, by a sow, and to another by a goat. A Knossian seal depicts a child suckled by a horned sheep. Sir Arthur Evans refers, in this connection, to the legends of the grandson of Minos who was suckled by a bitch; of Miletos, “the mythical founder of the city of that name”, being nursed by wolves.[63] Vultures guarded the Indian heroine Shakuntala, the Assyrian Semiramis was protected by doves, while the Babylonian Gilgamesh and the Persian patriarch Akhamanish were protected and rescued at birth by eagles. Horus of Egypt was nourished and concealed by the serpent goddess Uazit, and in his boyhood made [[238]]friends of wild animals, as did also Bharata, the son of the Indian vulture-guarded Shakuntala. Horus figures in the constellation of Argo as a child floating in a chest or boat like the abandoned Moses, the abandoned Indian Karna, the abandoned Sargon of Akkad, and, as it would appear, Tammuz who in childhood lay in a “sunken boat”. Horus of the older Egyptian legends was concealed on a green floating island on the Nile—the “green bed of Horus”.[64]
The oldest known form of the suckling legend is found in the Pyramid Texts of Ancient Egypt. When the soul of the Pharaoh went to the Otherworld he was suckled by a goddess or by the goddesses of the north and south. The latter are referred to in the Texts as “the two vultures with long hair and hanging breasts”.[65] Here the vultures take the place of the cow-goddess Hathor. In Troy the cow-mother, covered with stars, becomes the star-adorned sow-mother.[66] Demeter had a sow form and Athene a goat form, and other goddesses had dove, eagle, wolf, bitch, &c., forms. The Chinese tigress-goddess is evidently a Far Eastern animal form of the Great Mother who suckles the souls of the dead and the abandoned children who are destined to become notables. Thus behind the wind-god, in the Chinese Fung-shui system, we meet with complex ideas regarding the source of the “air of life”, and the source of the food-supply. The Blue Dragon of the East is the Naga form of the Aryo-Indian Indra,[67] the rain-controller, the fertilizer, who is closely associated with Vayu, the wind-god; the dragon [[239]]is the thunderer, too, like Indra. The close association of the tiger- and dragon-gods in the Fung-shui system may account for the custom of decorating jade symbols of the tiger with the thunder pattern.[68]