[203] This is a very common custom all over China.
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[204] Of all the Buddhist sutras, this is perhaps the favourite with the Chinese.
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[205] Contrary to the German notion that the spirit of the dead mother, coming back at night to suckle the child she has left behind, makes an impress on the bed alongside the baby.
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[206] Being, of course, invisible to all except himself.
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[207] A very ancient expression, signifying “the grave,” the word “wood” being used by synecdoche for “coffin.”
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[208] The supposed residence of Kuan-yin, the Chinese Goddess of Mercy, she who “hears prayers” and is the giver of children.
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[209] The great Supreme Ruler, who is supposed to have absolute sway over the various other deities of the Chinese Pantheon.
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[210] Generally spoken of as an inauspicious phenomenon.
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[211] This is the Buddhist patra, which modern writers have come to regard as an instrumental part of the Taoist religion. See No. IV., [note 46].
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[212] To call attention to his presence. Beggars in China accomplish their purpose more effectually by beating a gong in the shop where they ask for alms so loudly as to prevent the shopkeeper from hearing his customers speak; or they vary the performance by swinging about some dead animal tied to the end of a stick. Mendicity not being prohibited in China, there results a system of black mail payable by every householder to a beggars’ guild, and this frees them from the visits of the beggars of their own particular district; many, however, do not subscribe, but take their chance in the struggle as to who will tire out the other first, the shopkeeper, who has all to lose, being careful to stop short of anything like manual violence, which would forthwith bring down upon him the myrmidons of the law, and subject him to innumerable “squeezes.”
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