[CHAPTER VII]
MOUNT OMEI
BUDDHIST MONASTERIES
Very few of the buildings now existing on Mount Omei can boast of antiquity, for a damp climate and the ravages of fire have in the past made short work of their fragile timbers. The monasteries are humble structures, being simply one-storied bungalows of wood. Compared with the richly-carved teakwood wats of Siam and kyaungs of Burma, they are unpretentious buildings with little decoration, and what there is possesses small artistic merit. Over the doorways and under the eaves hang sundry massive wooden boards, resplendent with richly-gilded characters, giving the name of the monastery and brief quotations from the Buddhist scriptures. Most of the tablets containing inscriptions or quotations have been presented by devout pilgrims, but the periodical regilding of the characters is paid for out of the corporate funds. The interiors are generally more imposing; for every monastery on Mount Omei is also a temple, and the decoration of the halls containing the images of the Buddha and his saints is generally on a fairly lavish scale. The larger temples have a series of such halls one behind the other, with courts or quadrangles intervening, the sides of each quadrangle being occupied by the monks' living quarters. There are also spacious quarters for visitors. The office in which the financial and other secular affairs of the monastery are administered is generally a small room on the left side of the first hall of images, corresponding to a room on the other side which is used as a kind of porter's lodge. In the latter room the monks spend a great deal of their time in the cold weather, and sit huddled round a charcoal brazier. From the middle of the room they can see, through the open door, every one who enters and leaves the temple by the main entrance; and one of them is generally deputed to attend on every group of visitors or pilgrims. All pilgrims bring their own food with them—the Chinese their rice, and the Tibetans their tsamba; but those whose appearance entitles them to respect, or who have given a substantial donation to the funds of the establishment, are invited to drink tea and eat sweetmeats, and warm themselves by the charcoal fire. The Buddhistic injunction to avoid taking life is rigorously obeyed on Mount Omei by visitors as well as residents, all of whom conform to a strictly vegetarian diet. The only persons who ever disregard this rule are some inconsiderate Europeans. Small subscriptions—generally in the form of copper "cash"—are placed on an offertory plate, or on the altar table in front of one of the principal images, and are deposited there by the pilgrims after they have finished their devotions. Those who wish to leave a permanent record of their visit, or whose donation exceeds a tael (say three shillings), inscribe their names or paste their cards in the subscription book, with a statement of the amount of their donations. An ingenious plan has been devised to relieve pilgrims of the necessity of carrying large quantities of coin up the mountain, and at the same time to invalidate excuses of want of money. In the town of Omei-hsien, where every pilgrim spends the night before beginning the ascent, he is visited by a banker or broker, who offers him little paper notes or chits called fei tzŭ, bearing various face-values from ten taels down to one hundred cash (about twopence). They are printed from wooden blocks, and in many cases the amount of money represented is inserted in writing. The pilgrim selects as many fei tzŭ as he thinks he may require or can afford, and pays over their face-value to the banker. The notes are handed as occasion requires, or benevolence prompts, to the temple treasurers, or are deposited on the altars, and are received in the temples as readily as coin. When a considerable collection of them has been made in any monastery they are sent down to the banker, who deducts his very small commission and settles the account either by sending silver in return, or by crediting the monastery with the amount in his books.
MONASTIC ENDOWMENTS
The monasteries naturally vary in size. Some of them are the homes of a score or more of monks and acolytes, while the smaller ones shelter but three or four. When a monastery is destroyed by fire or other cause, its elderly or infirm inmates lodge themselves temporarily in one of the neighbouring religious houses, while the more energetic go forth on a pilgrimage—sometimes as far as the Eastern sea-board—carrying with them a donation book for the purpose of collecting funds for rebuilding. When the monastery arises again from its ashes it is practically a new foundation with new endowments, even its name being sometimes altered. In spite of the apathy concerning religious matters that strikes every European observer as characteristic of China to-day, it is a significant fact that large subscriptions for religious purposes can always be obtained from the Chinese layman notwithstanding his protestations of contempt for the monastic ideal and for the idle and useless lives led by the vast majority of Chinese Buddhist monks.
Passing by the Pao-ning monastery, which is situated on the plain between the city and the mountain-base, I visited the monasteries of the White Dragon (Pai Lung Ssŭ), and the Golden Dragon (Chin Lung Ssŭ), and stopped for the night at the Wan-nien Ssŭ, formerly the White Water Monastery of P'u Hsien. This is one of the largest establishments on the mountain, and its written history goes back to the third century, if not further. It contains many objects of interest, the chief of which is the life-size bronze elephant discovered, or rather first described, by Baber. The very curious spiral-roofed brick building in which it stands—believed by Baber to have been erected by Hindu Buddhists not later than the sixth century of the Christian era—is unfortunately so small and shut in that it is impossible either to photograph the elephant or to view it from a proper standpoint. Baber believed that this edifice was, next to the Great Wall, the oldest building in China of fairly authentic antiquity, and he considered that the elephant was the most ancient bronze casting of any great size in existence,—perhaps fifteen centuries old. I have some reason, however, to doubt the alleged antiquity of both building and elephant.[50] Upon the animal's back is a bronze statue of P'u Hsien P'u Sa (Samanta Bhadra Bodhisattva), who, as I have said, is supposed to have come from India to Mount Omei on an elephant. Among modern curiosities at the Wan-nien Ssŭ is a small alabaster image of Gautama Buddha, which was recently brought from Burma by a Chinese Buddhist monk who had been on pilgrimage to the shrines of Mandalay and Rangoon. The same pilgrim presented a coloured print of the great Shwe Dagon pagoda at Rangoon, which is regarded by the monks of Wan-nien as a precious work of art, though its intrinsic value is, of course, trifling. There is also, in a separate building called the Hai Hui T'ang,[51] a supposed tooth-relic of Buddha, which is treated with strange lack of reverence.[52] But it is only an elephant's molar, and the monks know it.
FLORA OF MOUNT OMEI
Wan-nien Ssŭ is situated at a height of about 3,500 feet above the sea-level. The summit of the mountain (11,000 feet[53]) is therefore still a long way off; but as I succeeded in reaching it on the evening of the day on which I left Wan-nien Ssŭ, in spite of the fact that the path was often obliterated by snow and ice, I satisfied myself that the difficulty of the climb has often been much exaggerated. In dry weather, indeed, there is no reason why a healthy man of average physical vigour should not accomplish in one day the whole climb from base to summit: though such a feat of endurance would prevent him from paying much attention to the objects of interest on the way. The mountain sides are luxuriantly wooded, and it is only when the path approaches the edge of a precipice or a steep slope that any extensive view can be obtained during the greater part of the ascent. The silver fir, evergreen-oak, pine, cypress, laurel, birch, chestnut, spruce, nan-mu, maple (several species) and camptotheca acuminata are all to be met with, and there are innumerable flowering plants and ferns; but the character of the flora naturally varies a great deal at the different altitudes. On the exposed parts of the summit there is little but dwarf bamboos, junipers and rhododendrons, though in sheltered places I noticed the silver fir, liquidambar, yew, willow, pirus, and several kinds of shrubs. Other trees, like the alder, Chinese ash, and banyan, are confined to the plain or to the lower slopes. The banyans[54] of the Omei plain are magnificent trees, some of them of enormous girth.