There may be many lessons to be learnt from a Buddhist ordination; many deep meanings are doubtless signified by its ritual: I only attempt here to recall the colouring.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE SACRED MOUNTAIN OF OMI.
Luncheon with a Chief Priest.—Tigers.—Mysterious Lights.—The View of a Lifetime.—Pilgrims.—Glory of Buddha.—Unburied Priests.
It was very hot in Chungking in 1892—too hot, we feared, for us to bear, worn out as we were by the emotions and excessive heat of the river journey, entered upon too late in the summer. So, while we yet could, we secured four bearer sedan-chairs, with blue cotton awnings six yards long, after the fashion of this windless province, and, with bath-towels to bind round our heads, and sun-hats, and dark glasses, and all that following necessary for a land journey of between twenty and thirty men, were carried for a fortnight through a rich agricultural district, a region of salt wells and petroleum springs, on through the white-wax country to the foot of sacred Omi. A letter written at the time to a cousin, with whom I had two years before driven through our own lovely Lake country, and who I knew shared my delight in strange surroundings and the unexpected, will best reproduce the exhilaration consequent on emerging from the green luxuriance of semi-tropical vegetation with its steamy hothouse air. It was written from our first resting-place upon the romantic mountain-side.
"Wan Nien Sze, July 26th, 1892.
"With whom do you think we have been lunching to-day? I have had tea with gold-miners in Alaska, and luncheon in a lumber camp in British Columbia, and dinner with a party of Chinese merchants in Chungking; but to-day, of all people in the world, it was with the chief priest of a Buddhist monastery on the sacred mountain of Omi! And very good the luncheon was! I really felt fed—always a matter of question when one is living upon tinned things. He did not sit down with us; but he entertained us by his conversation, and we had our own tablecloth and forks and spoons, and our own servant to wait upon us. The room was all set out with red cloths beautifully embroidered in pale blue, hanging on the front of the side-table, over the backs of the chairs, and down from the seats, on which were cool summer cushions. There were twelve courses besides the rice; and quite a number of monks and pilgrims assembled to see us eat. Our room opened into the temple, where Puhsien (gigantic) sat upon the altar on a sort of leopard. I believe some people say Puhsien was the son of Sakyamuni or of Gautama, pronounce them how we will. But the high-priest says, 'Omito Fo!' (Blessed is Fu, or Buddha!) as a greeting, and interlards all his talk with it: 'I am so glad you like your dinner, Omito!' 'We are very poor; we want two hundred thousand tiles to roof the temples, Omito!' etc., etc. We found beignets of pumpkin flowers in dough perfectly delicious. But our man-servant says, 'Yes, but you put in a catty [1⅓ lb.] of flour, and you get only three ounces.'
"It was a regular charity lunch; for directly it was over the high-priest entered into further details,—how the rooms we were lodging in wanted repairing, and how everything did (which is quite true), and how we could see every one who came to worship was very poor, and the last Europeans who lodged there gave about £15, and he thought it would be so nice if we gave £25. And he brought the subscription list out, and the brush to write with; and positively would not let our Boy write down £2 10s.—twice as large a sum as I thought necessary. Then another priest begged too. They begged and begged, till I said at last, determined to interrupt them, 'There is a Tibetan image in the temple behind I do so want you to come and show me.' Then every one burst out laughing at such a very palpable attempt to change the conversation. However, our modest sum got written down, and the chief priest nearly wept. He came to show us the Tibetan image, and he seemed to find it absolutely uninteresting. It holds a little white rabbit in one hand, and a rosary with very large beads in the other, and looks as conceited as it is possible to look. But as he said it was made on the mountain and not in Tibet, we did not photograph it and him together.
"As far as we can make out, this mountain was sacred long before Buddhism; and every day crowds of pilgrims come—numbers of Chinese women, with their bandaged feet wrapped up in husks of Indian corn to make it easier to walk up the steep flights of steps that lead up ten thousand feet to the top of the mountain. How they manage it, I cannot think. The saying is, 'If you are a bad man with sins unrepented, and go up the mountain, you die.' Six men are said to have thus died this year. There is a wonderful bronze Puhsien riding on a colossal bronze elephant, beautifully made, each of its feet standing on a lotus flower. This is in a temple just behind ours, with a dome, and made of bricks, both very unusual in China, and said here never to have been built, but to have come in a single night.
"But I cannot tell you how I wish to get away from all these temples. They begin to oppress me so,—all the people prostrating themselves, and then offering incense before each image in turn (and there are so many!), and lighting a candle before each. They arrive with great baskets full. And they come out of the temple with a rapt expression. And then our white long-haired terrier springs out on them, and they start so! We do not know what to do; because they call him a lion-dog (he is the Chinese idea of a lion), and seem to regard him as a semi-sacred thing. I do not want him to go into the temples at all. And the thresholds are so high he cannot get over; but there is always some one who will hand him over, and then the conceited dog shakes his sides and frisks about among the worshippers. This worship has been going on for thousands of years; and yet I do not believe any one has an idea about Puhsien!
"Then there is Kwanyin over and over again, like a Byzantine Virgin and Child, with a very sweet face on this mountain, and a child on her knee. And women come and pray for children, and carry away little dolls. The more I think of it, the less I know what I believe about it all. Nara, where they had worshipped for so many years in Japan, seemed to be haunted. But this mountain does not feel haunted, nor as yet does it feel sacred. But so far we are only up three thousand feet, with mosquitoes all alive about us, and scissor-grinders shrilling their souls out in just, I should think, the highest note possible for the human ear to hear, besides others more like other scissor-grinders.