In most countries of the civilized world, the buildings appropriated for religious worship and the repositories of their gods, are generally held sacred. In the monasteries of those parts of Europe, where inns are not to be found, the apartments of the monks are sometimes resorted to by travellers, but in China the very sanctum sanctorum is invaded. Every corner is indiscriminately occupied by men in power, if they should require it. Sometimes, also, the whole building is made a common place of resort for vagrants and idlers, where gamblers mix with gods, and priests with pick-pockets. In justice, however, it must be observed, that the priests of the two popular religions which predominate in the country shew no inclination to encourage, by joining in, the vicious practices of the rabble; but having no pay nor emolument from government, and being rather tolerated than supported, they are obliged to submit to and to overlook abuses of this nature, and even to allow the profane practices of the rabble in the very hours of their devotion. Yet there is a decency of behaviour, a sort of pride and dignity in the deportment of a Chinese priest, that readily distinguish him from the vulgar. The calumnies, which some of the Roman Catholic missionaries have so industriously circulated against them, seem to have no foundation in truth. The near resemblance of their dress and holy rites to those of their own faith was so mortifying a circumstance, that none of the missionaries I conversed with could speak with temper of the priests of China. I could not even prevail on our interpreter of the propaganda fide, who still manifested a predilection for the customs of his country in every other respect, to step into the temple where the altar was placed; nor could he be induced, by any persuasion, to give or to ask an explanation of their mysterious doctrines.
There is no subject, perhaps, on which a traveller ought to speak with less confidence, than on the religious opinions of the people he may chance to visit, in countries out of Europe, especially when those opinions are grounded on a very remote antiquity. The allegorical allusions in which they might originally have been involved, the various changes they may since have undergone, the ceremonies and types under which they are still exhibited, in their modern dress, render them so wholly unintelligible that, although they may have been founded in truth and reason, they now appear absurd and ridiculous; equally inexplicable by the people themselves who profess them, as by those who are utter strangers. The various modes, indeed, under which the Creator and Ruler of the Universe is recognised by various nations, all tending to one point, but setting out in very different directions, can only be understood and reconciled by a thorough knowledge of the language, the history, and the habits of the people; of their origin and connections with other nations; and, even after such knowledge has been obtained, it is no easy task to separate fable from metaphor, and truth from fiction. For these reasons, the religion of China appears to be fully as obscure and inexplicable as that of almost any other of the oriental nations. The language of the country, added to the jealousy of the government in admitting foreigners, have thrown almost insuperable obstacles in the way of clearing up this intricate subject; and those few, who only have had opportunities of overcoming these difficulties, were unfortunately men of that class, whose opinions were so warped by the prejudices imbibed with the tenets of their own religion, that the accounts given by them are not always to be depended upon. As I have already observed, they cannot bring themselves to speak or to write of the priests of China with any degree of temper or moderation.
It would be presumptuous in me to suppose, for a moment, that I am qualified to remove the veil of darkness that covers the popular religion of China. But as, in the practice of this religion, it is impossible not to discover a common origin with the systems of other nations in ancient times, it may not be improper to introduce a few remarks on the subject, and to enquire if history will enable us to point out, in what manner they might have received or communicated the superstitions and metaphysical ideas that seem to prevail among them. The obvious coincidence between some parts of the mythological doctrines of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, with those of China, induced the learned Monsieur de Guignes and many of the Jesuits to infer, that a colony from Egypt, at some remote period, had passed into China. This however does not appear probable. The Chinese are not a mixed but a distinct race of men; and their countenance has nothing of the ancient Egyptian in it. Nor indeed is it necessary to suppose any such connection, in order to explain the vestiges of Egyptian mythology that may appear in their temples. We are informed by history that when Alexander marched into India, about three centuries before the birth of Christ, many learned Greeks accompanied him on this memorable expedition; and we are further informed that, two centuries after this period when the persecutions and cruelties of Ptolemy Physcon expelled great numbers of learned and pious Greeks and Egyptians from the city of Alexandria, they travelled eastward in search of an asylum among the Persians and the Indians; so that there is nothing extraordinary in meeting with Greek and Egyptian superstitions among nations of the East; even where no vestige of their language remains. For it may be observed that, whenever colonies emigrate from their own country and settle among strangers, they are much more apt to lose their native language, than their religious dogmas and superstitious notions. Necessity indeed may compel them to adopt the language of the new country into which they have emigrated, but any compulsive measures to draw them to another religion serve only to strengthen them in their own. The French refugees at the Cape of Good Hope totally lost their language in less than seventy years; and, singular as it may appear, I met with a deserter from one of the Scotch regiments, on the borders of the Kaffer country, who had so far forgot his language, in the course of about three years, that he was not able to make himself intelligible by it. Many languages, we know, have totally been lost, and others so changed as scarcely to preserve any traces of their original form[35].
Mr. Bailly, with some other learned and ingenious men, was of opinion, that many fragments of the old and absurd fables of China are discoverable in the ancient history of the Hindus, from the birth of Fo-shee, the founder of the empire (Fo-hi, as the French write the word,) until the introduction of Budha, or Fo. Like the Hindus, it is true, they have always shewn a remarkable predilection for the number nine. Confucius calls it the most perfect of numbers. But the Scythians, or Tartars, have also considered this as a sacred number. It is true, likewise, they resemble some of the Indian nations, in the observance of solstitial and equinoxial sacrifices; in making offerings to the manes of their ancestors; in the dread of leaving no offspring behind them, to pay the customary obsequies to their memory; in observing eight cardinal or principal points of the world; in the division of the Zodiac, and in a variety of other coincidences, which the learned Mr. Bryant accounts for by supposing the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Indians, to be derived from one common stock, and that some of these people carried their religion and their learning into China. No proof however is adduced, either by him or others, of such a communication; and an assertion directly the contrary might have been made with equal plausibility.
That the Chinese do not owe their origin to the same stock, their physical character is of itself a sufficient proof. The small eye, rounded at the extremity next the nose, instead of being angular, as is the case in that of Europeans, its oblique instead of horizontal position, and the flat and broad root of the nose, are features or characters entirely distinct from the Hindu, the Greek, or the Roman; and belong more properly to the natives of that vast extent of country, which was known to the ancients by the name of Scythia, and, in modern times, by that of Tartary. There is scarcely in nature two of the human species that differ more widely than a Chinese and a Hindu, setting aside the difference of colour, which however modern enquiries have determined to have little or no relation to climate, but rather to some original formation of the different species. The Mantchoo, and indeed all the other Tartar tribes bordering upon China, are scarcely distinguishable from the Chinese. The same colour, except in a few instances as I have elsewhere observed, the same eyes, and general turn of the countenance prevail, on the continent of Asia, from the tropic of Cancer to the Frozen Ocean[36]. The peninsula of Malacca, and the vast multitude of islands spread over the eastern seas, and inhabited by the Malays, as well as those of Japan and Lieou-kieou, have clearly been peopled from the same common stock. The first race of people to the northward of Hindostan, that possess the Tartar countenance, so different from that of the Hindus, are the inhabitants of Bootan. "The Booteeas," says Captain Turner, "have invariably black hair, which it is their fashion to cut short to the head. The eye is a very remarkable feature of the face; small, black, with long pointed corners[37], as though stretched and extended by artificial means. Their eye-lashes are so thin as to be scarcely perceptible, and the eye-brow is but slightly shaded. Below the eyes is the broadest part of the face, which is rather flat, and narrows from the cheek-bones to the chin; a character of countenance appearing first to take its rise among the Tartar tribes, but is by far more strongly marked in the Chinese."
The heights of Tartary, bulging out beyond the general surface of the globe, have been considered, indeed, by many as the cradle of the human species, or still more emphatically, and perhaps more properly, as the foundery of the human race. This opinion did not arise solely from the vast multitudes of people corresponding with the Tartar character, that are spread over every part of the eastern world, and who in countless swarms once overran all Europe, but was grounded on a supposition, that the whole surface of the globe, or the greater part of it, has at one time been submerged in water, and that Tartary was the last to be covered, and the first that was uncovered; and the place from whence, of course, a new set of creatures were forged as in a workshop, from some remnant of the old stock, to be the germs of future nations.
Almost every part of the earth, indeed, affords the most unequivocal indications that such has actually been the case, not only in the several marine productions that have been discovered in high mountains, at a distance from any sea, and equally deep under the surface of the earth; but more especially in the formation of the mountains themselves, the very highest of which, except those of granite, consisting frequently of tabular masses piled on each other in such regular and horizontal strata, that their shape and appearance cannot be otherwise accounted for, or explained by any known principle in nature, except by supposing them at one time to have existed in a state of fluidity, by the agency of fire or of water, a point which seems to be not quite decided between the Volcanists and the Neptunists. The heights of Tartary are unquestionably the highest land in the old world. In America they may, perhaps, be exceeded. Gerbillon, who was a tolerable good mathematician and furnished with instruments, assures us, that the mountain Pe-tcha, very inferior to many in Tartary, is nine Chinese lees, or about fifteen thousand feet, above the level of the plains of China. This mountain, as well as all the others in the same country, is composed of sand stone, and rests upon plains of sand, mixed with rock salt and saltpetre. The Sha-moo, or immense desert of sand, which stretches along the north-west frontier of China and divides it from western Tartary, is not less elevated than the Pe-tcha, and is said to resemble the bed of the ocean. Some of the mountains starting out of this sea of sand, which its name implies, cannot be less than twenty thousand feet above the level of the eastern ocean.
The formation of the earth affords a wide field for speculation; and, accordingly, many ingenious theories have been conceived to explain the various appearances which its surface exhibits. The best modern naturalists seem, however, to agree, that water has been one of the principal agents to produce these effects. The great Linnæus, whose penetrating mind pervaded the whole empire of nature, after many and laborious enquiries, acquiesced in the truth of the sacred writings, that the whole globe of the earth was, at some period of time, submerged in water, and covered with the vast ocean, until in the lapse of time one little island appeared in this immense sea, which island must have been of course the highest mountain upon the surface of the earth. In support of his hypothesis, he adduces a number of facts, many of which have fallen within his own observation, of the progressive retreat of the sea, the diminution of springs and rivers, and the necessary increment of land. Among the most remarkable of these are the observations made by the inhabitants of Northern Bothnia upon the rocks on the sea coast, from whence it appeared that, in the course of a century, the sea had subsided more than four feet; so that six thousand years ago, supposing the rate of retiring to have been the same, the sea was higher than at present by two hundred and forty feet. Such great and sensible depression of the water of the sea must, however, have been only local, otherwise, as I have elsewhere observed, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean would have joined within the period of history. The sea, it is true, in some parts of the world, gains upon the land, and in others the land upon the sea, but these effects arise from a different cause to that which is supposed to produce a general retreat. It is true, also, that in the neighbourhood of mountains and great rivers, very material changes have taken place in the course of a few ages. The fragments of the former, worn away by the alternate action of the sun and rains, are borne down by the torrents of the latter, and deposited in the eddies formed by the two banks of the rivers where they join the sea, producing thus alluvious land as, for example, the Delta of Egypt, which has gradually been deposited out of the soil of Abyssinia and Upper Egypt; the plains of the northern parts of China, which have been formed out of the mountains of Tartary; and those of India from the Thebetian mountains, and the other high lands to the northward and westward of the peninsula. As, however, a much greater proportion of the fragments borne down by rivers must be deposited in the bosom of the deep than on its shores, the sea by this constant and effective operation ought rather to advance than to retreat. We may therefore, perhaps, conclude that, whatever the changes may have been which the surface of the earth has undergone, with regard to the proportion and the portion of land and water, the appearances we now behold in various parts of the globe can only be explained by supposing some temporary and preternatural cause, or else by assuming an incalculable period of time for their production.
But to return from this digression to the more immediate subject of the present section. It is sufficiently remarkable, and no inconsiderable proof of the truth of the Sacred Writings, that almost every nation has some traditionary account of a deluge, some making it universal, and others local: presuming, however, the former to be correct, which is not only justified by the testimony of the author of the Pentateuch, but by natural appearances, it might perhaps be shewn, with no great deviation from the generally received opinion, that, instead of Persia being the hive in which was preserved a remnant of the ancient world for the continuation of the species, those who have supposed Tartary to be the cradle, from whence the present race of men issued, have adopted the more plausible conjecture. If it be borne in mind that, in every part of the Bible history, the expressions are accommodated to the understandings of those for whom they were intended, rather than strictly conformable to facts, and more consonant to appearances than realities, it may be supposed, without any offence to the most rigid believer, that by the mount Ararat was not strictly meant the identical mountain of that name, which has been recognised in Armenia, but rather the highest mountain on the face of the globe; for, if this were not the case, the Mosaic account would be contradictory in itself, as we are told that, "all the high hills that were under the whole Heaven were covered." This concession being allowed, we may suppose that the ark, instead of resting in Armenia, first struck ground in that part of Tartary which is now inhabited by the Eleuths, as being the most elevated tract of country in the old world. From these heights large rivers flow towards every quarter of the horizon. It is here that the sources of the Selenga are found, descending to the northward into the lake Baikal, and from thence by the Enesei and the Lena into the Frozen Ocean: of the Amour, which empties its waters to the eastward into the gulph of Tartary: of the two great rivers of China flowing to the southward, and of numberless lakes and rivers discharging their waters to the westward, some burying themselves in deserts of sand, and others working their way to the great lake of Aral and the Caspian sea.