“Hoang-ta-tie, of T’anchen, who lived under the Sung, followed the craft of a blacksmith. Whenever he was at his work he used to call, without intermission, on the name of Amita Buddha. One day he handed to his neighbors the following verses of his own composition to be spread about:—
‘Ding dong! The hammer-strokes fall long and fast,
Until the iron turns to steel at last!
Now shall the long, long day of rest begin,
The Land of Bliss Eternal calls me in!’
“Thereupon he died. But his verses spread all over Honan, and many learned to call upon Buddha.”[896]
To deny to the Chinese or any people of Asia, whether Central, Upper, or Lower, the possession of any knowledge, or even perception of spiritual things, is perfectly ridiculous. From one end to the other the country is full of mystics, religious philosophers, Buddhist saints, and magicians. Belief in a spiritual world, full of invisible beings who, on certain occasions, appear to mortals objectively, is universal. “According to the belief of the nations of Central Asia,” remarks I. J. Schmidt, “the earth and its interior, as well as the encompassing atmosphere, are filled with spiritual beings, which exercise an influence, partly beneficent, partly malignant, on the whole of organic and inorganic nature.... Especially are deserts and other wild or uninhabited tracts, or regions in which the influences of nature are displayed on a gigantic and terrible scale, regarded as the chief abode or rendezvous of evil spirits. And hence the steppes of Turan, and in particular the great sandy Desert of Gobi have been looked on as the dwelling-place of malignant beings, from days of hoary antiquity.”
Marco Polo—as a matter of course—mentions more than once in his curious book of Travels, these tricky nature-spirits of the deserts. For centuries, and especially in the last one, had his strange stories been completely rejected. No one would believe him when he said he had witnessed, time and again, with his own eyes, the most wonderful feats of magic performed by the subjects of Kublai-Khan and adepts of other countries. On his death-bed Marco was strongly urged to retract his alleged “falsehoods;” but he solemnly swore to the truth of what he said, adding that “he had not told one-half of what he had really seen!” There is now no doubt that he spoke the truth, since Marsden’s edition, and that of Colonel Yule have appeared. The public is especially beholden to the latter for bringing forward so many authorities corroborative of Marco’s testimony, and explaining some of the phenomena in the usual way, for he makes it plain beyond question that the great traveller was not only a veracious but an exceedingly observant writer. Warmly defending his author, the conscientious editor, after enumerating more than one hitherto controverted and even rejected point in the Venetian’s Travels, concludes by saying: “Nay, the last two years have thrown a promise of light even on what seemed the wildest of Marco’s stories, and the bones of a veritable Ruc from New Zealand lie on the table of Professor Owen’s cabinet!”[897]
The monstrous bird of the Arabian Nights, or “Arabian Mythology,” as Webster calls the Ruc (or Roc), having been identified, the next thing in order is to discover and recognize that Aladdin’s magical lamp has also certain claims to reality.
Describing his passage through the great desert of Lop, Marco Polo speaks of a marvellous thing, “which is that, when travellers are on the move by night ... they will hear spirits talking. Sometimes the spirits will call him by name ... even in the daytime one hears these spirits talking. And sometimes you shall hear the sound of a variety of musical instruments, and still more commonly the sound of drums.”[898]