Sidelights on Chinese Life

by J. Macgowan

Metempsychosis, as it is understood in China, declares that every adult sixteen years after entering the Land of Shadows is allowed to depart to be born again into some position on earth. There is a general release to every one, good, bad, and indifferent, and once more they may return to the upper world and be relieved from the pain and gloom of that sunless realm.

But even in this great act of mercy the ideas with regard to retribution for evil and reward for virtue are sedulously maintained. The bad man who is let out of the hideous prison in which he has been confined is not to be allowed to escape the consequences of his previous vicious life. He is allowed to return to the world again, but he will appear perhaps in the shape of a pig or a dog, or some other of the lower animals.

It is for this reason that the Buddhists are so opposed to the taking of animal life. The animal upon whose flesh they are feeding may have been when he lived before on the earth a notorious criminal, who for his iniquities has been degraded by being transformed into, say, a buffalo. Wrong-doing is a serious matter, and though released from the pains of hell and allowed back again to earth, the criminal must pay the penalty in the debased condition in which he is allowed to live once more amongst men. A cock that is waking the morn with his shrill and defiant cries may have been a man that a few years ago lived in another part of the Empire, and who for his wickedness has been condemned to take the shape of the animal whose voice fills the barnyard with its echoes. It may take a good many births before these two individuals shall have expiated the crimes they committed, and shall be allowed again the dignity of appearing amongst mankind on earth.

Even in regard to the criminals who are undergoing the extreme tortures that the King of the Land of Shadows knows how to inflict, the thought of mercy comes in to break upon the monotony of their suffering. Every year for the whole of August their prison doors are opened and their chains and fetters are unloosed, the great entrance to the upper world is thrown wide open, and they are allowed their freedom to wander once more at their own will wherever they like throughout the whole of the Chinese Empire. So firmly is this belief held by the people of this country, that during the whole of their seventh month in every town and city and almost every village in China, tables are spread out in the open with every ordinary luxury that usually appeals to the Chinese tastes. There are roast chickens and ducks, and ducks’ eggs, and a variety of savoury vegetables, delicately cooked and browned, so that the very look of them makes the mouth water. These are left for hours where only the blue sky looks down upon them, and the hungry spirits that have been famished in their prison-houses tearing up and down, with invisible forms, through the air, feast and feast again upon the good things that the benevolent have spread out for their use.

The Buddhist Church has devised a system by which it can give deliverance to the imprisoned souls without waiting for the seventh moon. They have invented a service which is called “The breaking open the prison doors,” and consists of chanting certain rituals, and going through a lot of mummery, as the result of which the person for whom the service is performed suddenly finds the torturer stay his hand, the saw that had been ruthlessly grinding through his limbs gently and tenderly removed from his body, and with a polite bow he is ushered through the prison gates into the Shadowy Land outside to wander at his own free will, until the sixteen years are up, and he is reborn again into the world in that particular shape that the King may think that he deserves.

This process is a very expensive one and brings in a considerable revenue to the Church, especially when the person who is incarcerated has wealthy relatives on earth. This service reminds one of the practice of which Roman Catholic priests were accused at the time of the Reformation,—of professing, for a consideration, to lighten the pains and sorrows of those in purgatory, which was one of the principal abuses denounced by the Reformers in Germany in the sixteenth century, and has actually been said to have been borrowed from the Buddhists.

With regard to the men who have lived the average life, or who have distinguished themselves for their nobility of character in their previous state of existence, the King sees that they shall be properly rewarded when they pass away from under his jurisdiction. Some of the more noted are born to be kings or mandarins, or men with lofty titles that shall bring them great honours and emoluments. Others, again, become sages or statesmen and famous literary characters, whose writings will influence a nation for many generations. The ordinary rank and file compose the usual members of society that one finds throughout the towns and villages of the Empire, and who are the steady law-abiding citizens upon whom the Government mainly depends for the preservation of law and order.

The usual time of sixteen years that the popular theory gives before a person is again reincarnated into the world may in special circumstances be very considerably shortened. A man or woman, for example, enters the Land of Shadows with a first-class reputation. In some mysterious way the King knows his whole history and is prepared to treat him liberally. After watching his conduct for some time, and marking that he still continues to exhibit the same admirable features that made him a power before he died, he hastens on his rebirth, considering what a loss society in the upper world would suffer from his absence. He is therefore sent back into the world, but never into the same locality from which he originally came. The recollection, moreover, of the scenes and sights and strange mysterious experiences that he passes through in that gloomy, sunless land are all blotted out from his memory. No story is ever told of that life by any one of the countless millions that have come under the sway of “Yam-lo,” the Yama of the Hindoos and the mighty King of Hades, and though men have implicit faith in the myth that the Buddhist Church has propagated, never in the history of the past has any one hinted at any personal experience that he has passed through in any of the many periods in which he must have been a dweller in the land of gloom and twilight.

There is, indeed, the story of an adventure connected with the Shadowy Land that puts one in mind of the Greek hero, who went down to Tartarus in search of his beloved wife who had been torn from him by death, but it appears in a book of fairy tales, and as the writer was a man of a romantic turn of mind no one is inclined to take his statement as sober history.

The story describes how a certain young man had become enamoured of a certain damsel who had bewitched him with her black eyes and her fascinating manners. He had seen her one day as she passed along the street with some girl friends, and he had been so entranced with her beauty, that he had fallen desperately in love with her. So fully had he made up his mind that he could never dream of ever having any one else for his wife, that he was making arrangements to engage a middle-woman to discuss the question of marriage, when he was told that the girl had been taken suddenly very ill, and in a few hours she had died.