[281] The Jupiter Pluvius of the neighbourhood.
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[282] A sneer at the superstitious custom of praying for good or bad weather, which obtains in China from the Son of Heaven himself down to the lowest agriculturist whose interests are involved. Droughts, floods, famines, and pestilences, are alike set down to the anger of Heaven, to be appeased only by prayer and repentance.
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[283] Planchette was in full swing in China at the date of the composition of these stories, more than 200 years ago, and remains so at the present day. The character chi, used here and elsewhere for Planchette, is defined in the Shuo Wên, a Chinese dictionary, published A.D. 100, “to inquire by divination on doubtful topics,” no mention being made of the particular manner in which responses are obtained. For the purpose of writing from personal experience, I recently attended a séance at a temple in Amoy, and witnessed the whole performance. After much delay, I was requested to write on a slip of paper “any question I might have to put to the God;” and, accordingly, I took a pencil and wrote down, “A humble suppliant ventures to inquire if he will win the Manila lottery.” This question was then placed upon the altar, at the feet of the God; and shortly afterwards two respectable-looking Chinamen, not priests, approached a small table covered with sand, and each seized one arm of a forked piece of wood, at the fork of which was a stumpy end, at right angles to the plane of the arms. Immediately the attendants began burning quantities of joss-paper, while the two performers whirled the instrument round and round at a rapid rate, its vertical point being all the time pressed down upon the table of sand. All of a sudden the whirling movement stopped, and the point of the instrument rapidly traced a character in the sand, which was at once identified by several of the bystanders, and forthwith copied down by a clerk in attendance. The whirling movement was then continued until a similar pause was made and another character appeared; and so on, until I had four lines of correctly-rhymed Chinese verse, each line consisting of seven characters. The following is an almost word-for-word translation:—
“The pulse of human nature throbs from England to Cathay,
And gambling mortals ever love to swell their gains by play;
For gold in this vile world of ours is everywhere a prize—
A thousand taels shall meet the prayer that on this altar lies.”
As the question is not concealed from view, all that is necessary for such a hollow deception is a quick-witted versifier who can put together a poetical response stans pede in uno. But in such matters the unlettered masses of China are easily outwitted, and are a profitable source of income to the more astute of their fellow-countrymen.
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[284] An official who flourished in the eighth century of our era, and who, for his devotion to the Taoist religion, was subsequently canonized as one of the Eight Immortals. He is generally represented as riding on a crane.
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[285] That is, by means of the planchette-table.
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