The numerous caves on the mountain have endless stories connected with them. One is supposed to be the haunt of nine great demons. Once upon a time some audacious monks determined that they would probe its mysteries. They advanced some distance into the interior without accident, when suddenly they were met by a prodigious bat that breathed fire. The monks turned round and walked away, wiser and sadder. Another cave—the Thunder Cavern—is the haunt of a ghostly dragon, who lurks in the depths of a gloomy tarn. This cave, with its lake, has probably a very ancient history, for it seems to be associated in some way with animistic worship, of which there are many traces on Omei.[31] In seasons of drought it is or was formerly the custom to go to the cave with offerings of rich silks. If rain did not speedily fall as a result of the offerings, the correct procedure was to insult the dragon by throwing into his cave a dead pig and some articles of a still more disagreeable nature. This infallibly raised the wrath of the dragon, who immediately issued forth from his damp and gloomy home and roared. This meant thunder, and then the rain fell and all was well.
Mount Omei has several famous trees. Of one of them this story is told. In the Hui Tsung period (1101-25) of the Sung dynasty there was a very old tree, which about the year 1112 was torn open by a violent storm. Inside it was found a Buddhist monk, alive, in a state of ecstatic trance. The whole of his body was covered with his long hair and whiskers, and his nails were so long that they encircled his body. The emperor having heard of this living relic of the past, directed that he was to be carefully conveyed to the capital. Having with difficulty induced him to emerge from his tree, the messenger asked him his name. "I am the disciple," he replied, "of Yüan Fa-shih of Tung Lin. My name is Hui Ch'ih. I came to Omei on pilgrimage and entered into meditation in this tree. How is my master Yuan? Is he well?" "Your master Yuan," said the imperial emissary, "lived in the time of the Chin dynasty, and died seven hundred years ago." Hui Ch'ih answered not a word, but turned his back and resumed meditation in his tree. A somewhat similar story is as follows. In the fourteenth century of our era there was a monk who had chosen for the scene of his meditations the hollow interior of an ancient decayed tree. There he sat cross-legged in silent contemplation until he was about eighty years of age. His piety apparently communicated some mysterious vitality to the tree, for suddenly it underwent an extraordinary change: the withered branches put forth fresh shoots, green foliage reappeared, and the gaping fissure in the trunk closed up, leaving the contemplative monk inside. The chronicler goes on to remark with ill-timed levity that the monk had begun by taking possession of the tree, but the tree had ended by taking possession of the monk. It is understood, however, that the accident by no means interrupted his meditations, and that he is still sitting cross-legged in the darkened interior of his sylvan retreat, wrapped in profound reverie.
There is a legend that the Buddha himself visited Mount Omei, and his footprint in a rock is still shown near the summit, though in this age of little faith its outline is scarcely recognisable. As one of the monasteries also possesses an alleged Buddha's tooth it is clear that the fame of Omei ought to be as far-reaching as that of Adam's Peak and Kandy combined; but Ceylon and China are not the only countries that rejoice in the possession of footprints and teeth of the Buddha.
MYTHS OF THE PATRON SAINT
The local myths that have gathered round the name of the patron saint of Omei, P'u Hsien[32] Bodhisattva, who is said to have brought the sacred books of Buddhism from India to China on the back of an elephant, and deposited them on the mountain, are quite devoid of historical foundation, for P'u Hsien was merely one of the numerous figures invented by the Mahayana Buddhists to fill up the broad canvas of their vast symbolical system.[33] He represents, or rather is, the Samanta Bhadra of Indian Buddhism, and figures as such in that great Chinese Buddhist work, the Hua Yen Ching,[34] one of the voluminous productions of Nāgārjuna.[35] The monks of Omei have invented the famous elephant-ride simply because Samanta Bhadra is always associated with an elephant in such authoritative Mahayana works as the Saddharma-Pundarîka. The third last chapter of that work (in Kumarajiva's translation) deals with P'u Hsien, who is represented as declaring to the Buddha that he will "mount a white elephant with six tusks" and take good monks under his special protection, shielding them from gods, goblins and Mara the Evil One. The monks of Omei say that having come to the mountain on his elephant he established himself there as a teacher of the Law of Buddha, and attracted three thousand pupils or disciples. It is quite possible that one of the original Buddhist hermits or monks of Omei acquired so great a celebrity that he became identified in the popular imagination with P'u Hsien. Something of the kind certainly happened in the case of other Bodhisattvas—Manjusri and Avalokiteçvara, for instance. But all trace of historic truth soon vanished in myth. In a Buddhistic work that relates to Omei, P'u Hsien is described as the eldest son of the Buddha himself. "The Tathâgata (Buddha) sits on a great lotus consisting of 1000 leaves. Each leaf has 3000 Universes. Each Universe has a Buddha to expound the Law, and each Buddha has a P'u Hsien as eldest son (changtzŭ)." This is not an attempt to identify P'u Hsien with Rahula, the son of the historical Buddha; it refers to the Mahayana doctrine that Samanta Bhadra or P'u Hsien is the spiritual son or reflex of the celestial Vairocana, one of the five mythical Buddhas, just as Gautama Sakyamuni (the historical Buddha) was supposed to be the earthly embodiment of the celestial Bodhisattva Avalokiteçvara, the spiritual son or reflex of the celestial Buddha Amitabha. As regards the significance of the elephant, it need only be mentioned here that in Indian Buddhistic mythology this animal (apart from its sacred association with the well-known dream of the Buddha's mother) is symbolical of self-control.[36]
CHINESE BUDDHIST MONKS IN "UNDRESS."
CHINESE BUDDHISM
The earliest religious buildings on Mount Omei were no doubt solitary hermitages, erected by recluses whose religious enthusiasm impelled them to find in the deep recesses of its forests and gorges a welcome retreat from the noise and vanity of a world that they despised. As time went on, richly-endowed monasteries—nobler and more splendid than any now existing—rose in its silent ravines and by the side of its sparkling water-courses, and opened their doors to welcome those whom spiritual ecstasy or longing for a life of philosophic contemplation, or perhaps the anguish of defeated ambition, drove from the haunts of men. But gradually as religious fervour died away, the mountain recluses and solitary students of early days were succeeded by smaller men, distinguished neither for piety nor for scholarship. It must, indeed, be confessed that no tradition of sound learning has been kept up in the Buddhist Church in China. To some extent the lack of scholarship among Chinese Buddhists may perhaps be traced not too fancifully to the practice and teaching of Bodhidarma,[37] the so-called twenty-eighth patriarch of the Indian Buddhists, and the first of the patriarchs of China. He it was who, having landed in China early in the sixth century of our era, at once made it his business to discourage book-learning in the monasteries and to inculcate the doctrine that supreme enlightenment or mystical union with the Buddha can only be achieved by disregarding all exoteric teaching and by passive contemplation. By the recognition of all phenomena, including one's own personality, as illusory, the mind was to be maintained in a condition of intellectual quiescence and receptivity, whereby it would be in a fit state to enter into communion with the Absolute. Of Bodhidarma the story is told that he sat for nine years in one position looking at a wall, which is a crude way of explaining that he was a contemplative mystic. In China his teachings have undoubtedly had a sterilising influence on thought, somewhat similar—though for different reasons—to the baneful influence exercised in Europe by the too-exclusive devotion of the mediæval schoolmen to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.