LEGENDARY ASSOCIATIONS
It is, indeed, true that "many-fountain'd" Omei would lose a great part of its spell if the mists were to melt away into garish daylight. No more could the pilgrim pour into the ears of wondering listeners tales of how, when ascending the mountain amid gloom and silence, he had suddenly heard his own praises of the Lord Amitabha re-chanted by spirit voices; how a rift in the curtain of white cloud had suddenly disclosed landscapes of unearthly loveliness, with jewelled palaces and starry pinnacles such as were never raised by the hands of men; how he had caught glimpses of airy forms that passed him with a sigh or a whisper, but left no traces in the forest or the snow and made no sound of footfall; or how when approaching unwittingly the edge of some terrible abyss he had felt the touch of a ghostly finger that led him back to safety.
It is believed that the Lolos, who are not Buddhists, worshipped on Mount Omei a triad of deities of their own, and it is at least certain that men of that race are sometimes met on Omei's slopes. But the earliest legendary associations of the mountain are in Chinese minds naturally connected with those mythical progenitors of the Chinese people—Fu Hsi and Nü Wo. This carries us back to the twenty-ninth century B.C. Both these mysterious persons have their "caves" on Mount Omei, but they are in such inaccessible situations that no mortal eye has ever seen them. The first of the legendary hermits was a holy man named T'ien Chên Huang Jên,[24] the Heavenly Sage and Imperial Man. He lived in the age of phœnixes and unicorns; and on Mount Omei he once received a visit from Huang Ti,[25] the Yellow Emperor, who flourished in the twenty-sixth century B.C. Though one of the few of the world's monarchs who appear to have lived long enough to celebrate the centenary of their succession to the throne, Huang Ti wished to attain the crowning distinction of immortality. It was to acquire the elixir of life from the Heavenly Sage that Huang Ti paid him his memorable visit. A short record of the conversation between the Sage and his imperial disciple has been preserved, and we may gather from it that Huang Ti derived from the interview a good deal of sound practical advice, but the Sage seems to have skilfully evaded the main point. He kept his secret, but made such excellent personal use of it that he is supposed to have lived for at least a millennium or two, and indeed his death has not yet been recorded. In order to keep count of time he acquired the useful habit of changing his name with each successive epoch,[26] and his name in the Chou dynasty—which occupied the throne about a millennium and a half after the Yellow Emperor's time—was the singularly appropriate one of The Old Man.
THE MONK OF A THOUSAND YEARS
Omei-shan—like other sacred mountains in China—has always been famous for the medicinal value of its roots and herbs, and the monks still derive no little benefit from their sale. Perhaps it was among these herbs that The Old Man found his elixir of life, and if so he did not remain in exclusive possession of the secret. The records of Omei are full of accounts of recluses and others whose span of life extended far beyond the normal. One of them is known to legend as Pao Chang,[27] but more popularly as Ch'ien Sui Ho Shang,[28] or "The Monk of a Thousand Years." The period of his long and useful life is given in the records. He was born in the twelfth year of Wei Lieh Wang of the Chou dynasty, and died in the eighth year of Kao Tsung of the T'ang dynasty at the ripe old age of precisely one thousand and seventy-one. He was a native of India, but came to China in the Chin dynasty (265-419 of our era) and went to worship at the shrine of P'u Hsien Bodhisattva on Mount Omei, where he spent the declining centuries of his life. According to another account his arrival at Omei was a good deal earlier than the Chin period, for his name is connected with the most famous of all the Omei stories—one which refers to the reign of Ming Ti of the Han dynasty.
This story relates to the foundation of what may be called the Buddhistic history of Omei and the beginning of its long religious association with its patron saint, P'u Hsien Bodhisattva. We are told that in the reign of Ming Ti (58-75 of the Christian era) a certain official named P'u[29] happened to be on Mount Omei looking for medicinal herbs. In a misty hollow he suddenly came upon the footprints of a deer. They were shaped not like the footprints of an ordinary deer but like the flower of the lotus. Amazed at the strange sight, he followed the tracks up the mountain. They led him continually upwards until at last he found himself on the summit, and there, at the edge of a terrible precipice, they disappeared. As he gazed over the brink he beheld a sight most strange and wonderful. A succession of marvellous colours, luminous and brilliant, gradually rose to the surface of the vast bank of clouds that lay stretched out below, and linked themselves together in the form of a glorious iridescent aureole. P'u, full of wonder at so extraordinary a spectacle, sought the hermitage of the famous "Monk of a Thousand Years" and told him his strange story. "You are indeed happy!" said the monk. "What you have seen is no other than a special manifestation to you of the glory of the great Bodhisattva P'u Hsien: fitting it is, therefore, that this mountain should be the centre from which his teachings may be spread abroad. The Bodhisattva has certainly favoured you above all men." The end of the whole matter was that P'u built, on the spot from which he had witnessed the sublime manifestation, the first of the Buddhist temples of Mount Omei, and dedicated it to P'u Hsien Bodhisattva; and the present monastic buildings known as the Hsien Tsu Tien and its more modern neighbour the Chin Tien occupy in the twentieth century the site chosen for the original P'u Kuang Tien, or Hall of Universal Glory,[30] in the first century.
LEGENDS
This story is interesting as carrying back the Buddhistic traditions of Omei to the very earliest days of Buddhism in China. My readers will probably remember that it was in the same epoch—the reign of Ming Ti—that the emperor had his famous vision of the Golden Man, which is supposed to have led to the introduction of Buddhism into China under direct imperial patronage. The story is also of interest as embodying the first record of the remarkable phenomenon known as the Glory of Buddha, which has always been one of the principal attractions of the mountain and may well have been the real cause—as the story itself indicates—of its special sanctity.
The other curiosities of Omei are so numerous that most of them cannot even be referred to. Near the foot of the mountain is a scooped-out rock which is said to have once formed a bath in which pilgrims were required to go through a course of purification before ascending the mountain. This, if true, is curious and suggestive. There is a spot shown where a miraculous lotus-plant—the lotus is sacred to the Buddha—used to blossom in every season of the year. There is a flying bell, the tolling of which has been heard in many different parts of the mountain, though it is never moved by human hands. There are rock-inscriptions written by emperors and empresses and by the great Sung dynasty poet, Su Tung-p'o. Not far from the Wan-nien monastery—perhaps the second oldest on the mountain—is a stream called the Black Water. In the T'ang dynasty a wandering monk, looking for a home, came to this stream and wished to cross it, for he espied on the further bank a spot which he thought would make an excellent site for a hermitage. But the stream was turbulent and violent and he could not cross. Suddenly out of the midst of the torrent came a huge tiger. The tiger looked at the monk, and the monk, unabashed, looked at the tiger. The wild beast recognised a teacher of the Good Law, and lay down at his feet, tamed and obedient. The monk mounted on his back and was carried safely across the water. The tiger has gone and the monk has gone, but the story must be true, for a bridge was built to span the Black Water at the spot where the miracle occurred, and it is known as the Tiger Bridge to this day. In another place there is a great split rock inside which a mighty dragon slumbered for untold ages. One night in a terrible thunderstorm the rock was cleft asunder by lightning. The dragon flew away and was never seen again, but the story is true, because the sundered rock is still there and can be touched.
FAMOUS CAVES AND TREES