A T'U TI SHRINE (see p. [372]).
Beings like the Ch'êng Huang and T'u Ti and Hearth-god[353] and many other popular deities may be all regarded as included in the list of Taoist gods, but as far as ceremony or ritual goes they are really independent of Taoism: that is to say, no priestly intervention is necessary between the god and the person who prays. If the rites of Taoism and the major Taoist gods were expelled from the land, minor deities such as those mentioned might continue to attract just as much or just as little reverence as they do at present; similarly ancestor-worship would not necessarily be affected by the official abolition of the cult of Confucius.
The fact that the T'u Ti is supposed to interest himself in such matters as the death of individuals seems to suggest that he must have been in origin an ancestral god: but I cannot find any trustworthy evidence that this is so, though it seems that in some cases at least he (like the Ch'êng Huang) was a human being posthumously raised to quasi-divine rank. It is noteworthy as bearing on this point that no village in Weihaiwei, or elsewhere so far as I am aware, possesses more than one T'u Ti, though there may be two or more "surnames" or clans represented in the village; moreover, when a man migrates from one village to another he changes his T'u Ti, although his connection with his old village in respect of ancestral worship and such matters remains unimpaired. The T'u Ti, in fact, appears to be a local divinity who holds his position irrespective of the movements of families and changes of surnames. It may be that he is regarded as representing in some mysterious way the first settler in the locality concerned, or the first builder of the village. The Chinese T'u Ti seems to bear a considerable resemblance to the Uji-gami of Japan. As the name Uji implies, this deity was evidently at one time regarded as a clan-deity or tribal ancestor. But as a Japanese authority has told us, "the word Uji-gami or clan-god is now used in another sense, namely in the sense of the local tutelary god or the patron-god of a man's birthplace or domicile."[354] Dr. Aston says that the Uji-gami having originally been the patron-gods of particular families "became simply the local deities of the district where one was born."[355] It seems at least possible that the history of the T'u Ti has been similar to that of the Uji-Gami.
Perhaps Greek and Roman religion may help in throwing some light on the subject. Just as we find the ancestral cult forming a prominent element in the religion of Greece and Rome, so we find traces of the existence of something like a T'u Ti. Every family had its own altar and its own gods (namely its deceased ancestors), and every phratria or group of families "had a common altar erected in honour of a common deity who was supposed to be more powerful than the deities of the households taken separately."[356]
Like the Ch'êng Huang of the city of Jung-ch'êng, the T'u Ti of the Weihaiwei district are very often if not almost invariably provided with wives, who are known as T'u Ti P'o. The T'u Ti and his lady are represented by rough stone effigies, about a foot in height, which are placed side by side within the little stone shrine; or sometimes the lady has a separate shrine, of smaller size, beside that of her husband. Some T'u Ti are attended by two T'u Ti Po. On making inquiries into the reason for this at a village where the T'u Ti was thus distinguished, I was informed that the lady on his left (the place of honour) was his wife and the lady on his right his concubine. It was pointed out that the concubine's image was only about half the size of that of the wife, which was quite as it should be in view of her inferior status. Two explanations were offered as to why this particular T'u Ti had been allowed to increase his household in this manner: one was that he had won the lady on his right by gambling for her, the other was that the T'u Ti had appeared to one of the villagers in a dream and begged him to provide him with a concubine as he had grown tired of his wife. The villager called on the local image-maker the very next morning, the image-maker went to the shrine and took measurements, and in a few days a nice new concubine was placed by the T'u Ti's side. Whether the dreamer's material position underwent any marked improvement about this time is not recorded.
It has been mentioned that little red flags are often hung on a stick or pole close by the T'u Ti's shrine on behalf of persons whose ailments the T'u Ti is supposed to have cured. At first sight one might suppose that the flags were intended as thank-offerings to the T'u Ti, but though they certainly are regarded as such at the present day, I am strongly inclined to believe that they have a quite different origin. Similar customs in other parts of the world irresistibly suggest the idea that the piece of cloth was originally regarded as the vehicle of the disease which was supposed to have been expelled from the human subject.
Dr. Tylor refers to "that well-known conception of a disease or evil influence as an individual being, which may be not merely conveyed by an infected object (though this of course may have much to do with the idea) but may be removed by actual transfer from the patient into some other animal or object."[357] He goes on to consider many examples of the practical working of this conception, and draws special attention to the belief common to many parts of the world (though China is not mentioned) that disease can be banished by driving it into a rag and hanging it on a tree:—"In Thuringia it is considered that a string of rowan-berries, a rag, or any small article, touched by a sick person and then hung on a bush beside some forest path, imparts the malady to any person who may touch this article in passing, and frees the sick person from the disease. This gives great probability to Captain Burton's suggestion that the rags, locks of hair, and what not, hung on trees near sacred places by the superstitious from Mexico to India and from Ethiopia to Ireland, are deposited there as actual receptacles of disease; the African 'devil's trees' and the sacred trees of Sindh, hung with rags through which votaries have transferred their complaints, being typical cases of a practice surviving in lands of higher culture."[358]