The sage of the Chinese Emperor Wu Ti, who followed the course of the Yellow River so as to reach the celestial Paradise, saw, in addition to the moon-rabbit, or hare, the “Old Man of the Moon”, the Chinese Wu Kang and Japanese Gekkawo, the god of love and marriage. He is supposed to unite lovers by binding their feet with invisible red silk cords. The “Old Man in the Moon” is, in Chinese legend, engaged in chopping branches from the cassia tree of immortality. New branches immediately sprout forth to replace those thus removed, but the “Old Man” has to go on cutting till the end of time, having committed a sin for which his increasing labour is the appropriate punishment.
A Buddhist legend makes Indra the old man. He asked for food from the hare, the ape, and the fox. The hare lit a fire and leapt into it so that the god might be fed. Indra was so much impressed by this supreme act of friendship and charity that he placed the exemplary hare in the moon. A version of this story is given in the Mahábhárata.
In European folk-lore the “Old Man” is either a [[147]]thief who stole a bundle of faggots, or a man who “broke the Sabbath” by cutting sticks on that holy day.
See the rustic in the Moon,
How his bundle weighs him down;
Thus his sticks the truth reveal
It never profits man to steal.
Various versions of the Man in the Moon myth are given by S. Baring-Gould,[24] who draws attention to a curious seal “appended to a deed preserved in the Record office, dated the 9th year of Edward the Third (1335)”. It shows the “Man in the Moon” carrying his sticks and accompanied by his dog. Two stars are added. The inscription on the seal is, “Te Waltere docebo cur spinas phebo gero (I will teach thee, Walter, why I carry thorns in the moon)”. The deed is one of conveyance of property from a man whose Christian name was Walter.
Wu Ti’s sage travelled through the celestial regions until he reached the Milky Way, the source of the Yellow River. He saw the Spinning Maiden, whose radiant garment is adorned with silver stars. She had a lover, from whom she was separated, but once a year she was allowed to visit him, and passed across the heavens as a meteor. This Spinning Maiden, who weaves the net of the constellations, is reminiscent of the Egyptian sky-goddess, Hathor (or Nut), whose body is covered with stars, and whose legs and arms, as she bends over the earth, “represent the four pillars on which the sky was supposed to rest and mark the four cardinal points”. Her lover, from whom she was separated, was Seb.[25] In China certain groups of stars are referred to as the [[148]]“Celestial Door”, the “Hall of Heaven”, &c. Taoist saints dwell in stellar abodes, as well as on the “Islands of the Blest”; some were, during their life on earth, incarnations of star-gods. The lower ranks of the western-cult immortals remain in the garden of the “Royal Mother”; those of the highest rank ascend to the stars.
Wu Ti’s sage, according to one form of the legend, never returned to earth. His boat, which sailed up the Yellow River and then along the “Milky Way”, was believed to have reached the Celestial River that flows round the Universe, and along which sails the sun-barque of the Egyptian god Ra (or Re). One day the Chinese sage’s oar—apparently his steering oar—was deposited in the Royal Palace grounds by a celestial spirit, who descended from the sky. Here we have, perhaps, a faint memory of the visits paid to earth from the celestial barque by the Egyptian god Thoth, in his captivity as envoy of the sun-god Ra.