Fig. 1.—The Yin-yang and Pa-kua
There are besides many primitive beliefs traceable for the most part to Nature-worship, which prevailed in China long before the days of Confucius, Lao-tzŭ or Buddha. Some of these have been incorporated in the later religious systems, especially in that of Taoism, which was ready to adopt any form of demonology. The oldest system is that expounded by the legendary Fu Hsi, in which the phenomena of Nature were explained by reference to the mystic diagrams revealed to him on the back of a dragon horse (lung ma) which rose from the Yellow River. These are the pa-kua or eight trigrams formed by the permutations of three lines, broken and unbroken, as in Fig. 1. A more common arrangement of them is according to the points of the compass, and enclosing another ancient device, the Yin-yang, a circle bisected by a wavy line, which symbolises the duality of Nature, yin being the female and yang the male element.
Demons abound in Chinese superstitions, and the demon face appears early in art on the ancient bronzes, from which it was sometimes borrowed by the porcelain decorator. This is the face of the t’ao t’ieh (the gluttonous ogre) supposed originally to have represented the demon of the storm, and as such appropriately appearing against a background of “cloud and thunder” pattern, as the key-fret is called by the Chinese. Afterwards the t’ao t’ieh seems to have been regarded, on homœopathic principles, as a warning against greed. Demons also appear in complete form in certain battle scenes and conflicts, such as the combat of the demons of the water and of air which proceeds in front of a group of Chinese dignitaries seated in the Kin-shan temple on the Yangtze river (see Plate [134], Fig. 2).
The sky and the stars of course contribute their quota of divinities. Beside the Taoist star-gods of Longevity, Honours and Happiness, there is the Jade Emperor or supreme lord of the universe, Yü wang shang ti, who is represented in mandarin dress holding a ju-i sceptre and closely resembling Lu Hsing, the star-god of Honours. There is, too, the goddess of the Moon with a butterfly ornamenting the front of her robes, and a mirror in her right hand, besides the other denizens of the moon—Liu Han, the moon-hare and the moon-toad. A cassia tree also grows in the moon, and the “cassia of the moon” is a symbol of literary success.
The Sun is represented as a disc on which is a three-legged bird; and it is probable that the sun-disc is represented also in the so-called “pearl”[505] which is pursued or grasped by dragons; but this idea of the power of the storm threatening the sun was lost sight of in later art, and “a dragon pursuing a pearl” was considered a sufficient description of the motive. A curious scene depicting a mandarin shooting arrows at a dog in the sky alludes to the dog who devours the sun and so causes the eclipse.
The zodiacal animals are named on p. [211] (vol. i), and the four points of the compass are symbolised by the azure dragon for the East, the white tiger for the West, the black tortoise for the North, and the red bird for the South. The romance of two stars is embodied in the story of the Spinning Maiden (Chih Nü) and her lover, the Cowherd (Ch’ien Niu), who are separated for all the year save on one night when the “magpies fill up the Milky Way and enable the Spinning Damsel to cross over.”
Chang Ch’ien, the celebrated minister of Han Wu-ti, was one of the first great travellers of China, and among the legends which grew around his exploits is one which makes him ascend the Milky Way and meet the Spinning Damsel herself. This story arose because he was reputed to have discovered the source of the Yellow River, which had hitherto been supposed to rise in heaven, being in fact a continuation of the Milky Way. Chang Ch’ien is sometimes represented in Chinese art as floating on a log-raft on the Yellow River, and carrying in his hand a shuttle given to him by the Spinning Maiden.[506] The poet Li T’ai-po is also figured in the same kind of craft, but he is distinguished by a book in place of the shuttle.
Motives borrowed from the animal world are frequent on porcelain, though they represent to a large extent mythical creatures, first and foremost of which is the dragon. We need not enter into the conflicting theories as to the origin of the Chinese dragon. Whether he sprang from some prehistoric monster whose remains had come to light, or was evolved from the crocodile, he appears in any case to have belonged to Nature-worship as the power of the storm and the bringer of fertilising rain. There, are, however, various kinds of dragons—those of the air, the sea, the earth—and the monster takes many different forms in Chinese art. The archaic types borrowed by the porcelain decorators from ancient bronzes and jades are the k’uei lung
or one-legged dragon, and the ch’ih lung