It is likewise strange to find the “Heen or Toen foreigners” credited in a sixteenth-century native cyclopædia, with having introduced into China a system of astronomy denominated the “Four Heavens,” and obviously based on a quadruplicate division of the Heaven similar to the division of the empire instituted by Yaou (Wylie, Israelites in China, op. cit. p. 19).
The current Chinese name for Christians has been “Cross-worshippers,” and it is odd to note that the ancient Chinese seem to have regarded the symbolism of the Christian cross as closely identical with that of their swastika, and to have concluded that the foreign “Heaven” religion rested on the same basis as theirs.
Referring the reader to Wylie's valuable researches and Edkins' Religion in China for information concerning the establishment of colonies of Manicheans, Mohammedans and of successive Christian missions, etc., in China, I shall but quote the following passage from Marco Polo's travels (pp. 167 and 168) because it shows how the doctrine of the quadruplicate division of all things, celestial and terrestrial, led to a broad tolerance of opinion in the famous Tartar prince, Kubla Khan, who, in 1260, at Kanbalu=Peking, honored the Christian festivals. “And he observed the same at the festivals of the Saracens, Jews and idolaters. Upon being asked his motive for this conduct, he said: ‘There are four great Prophets who are reverenced and worshipped by the different [pg 306] classes of mankind. The Christians regard Jesus Christ as their divinity; the Saracens, Mahomet; the Jews, Moses; and the idolaters Sagomombarkan (Buddha) the most eminent amongst their idols. I do honor and show respect to all of the four, and invoke to my aid whichever of them is in truth supreme in heaven.’ ” This attitude of mind and that of the Chinese towards the Christian Cross can only be fully understood and appreciated when it is realized that their “imperial ruler of Heaven” was the pole-star and that the Ursa Major described each year the sign of a cross in the heaven which ever impressed upon them quadruplicate division and differentiation and the union of four in one. It is doubtlessly owing to the same reason that the Chinaman of today finds it possible to believe in, at once, the three great national religions which exist in China. Edkins has explained that, whereas “Confucianism speaks to the moral nature, Taouism is materialistic and Buddhism is metaphysical; thus, they are supplemental to each other and are able to co-exist without being mutually destructive” (op. cit. p. 60). Somewhat apart from these three state religions and embodying the most ancient ideas and traditions of the race, exists the elaborate and solemn “Imperial worship,” the study of which Edkins designates as “specially interesting because it takes us back to the early history of the Chinese people and introduces us to many striking points of comparison with the patriarchal religion of the Old Testament and with the worship of the kings of Nineveh, Babylon and Egypt.” The same authority states that “the account given by Herodotus of the religion of the ancient Persians shows that it consisted in much the same usages as those now found in Chinese Imperial worship” (op. cit. pp. 6, 22, 18 and 30). In the preceding pages it has been shown that the fundamental principles of the primitive religions of China and America were identical, but that their subsequent stages of development or evolution were strikingly divergent. The following study of certain details connected with the “Imperial worship” brings out a marked differentiation in the Chinese and Mexican cult of heaven and earth.
The altar of Heaven at Peking consists of three circular marble terraces, the uppermost of which is paved with eighty-one stones arranged in circles. It is on a round stone in the centre of these circles that the Emperor kneels and is considered to occupy the centre of the earth. In the worship of Heaven, offerings are made [pg 307] to the heavenly bodies, the Sun, Moon, the Pole-star, Great Bear, five planets and twenty-eight constellations. The worship at the altar of Earth consists of offerings to the mountains, rivers and seas.
This arrangement is strikingly unlike that of the ancient Mexicans, who associated the sun only with the Above, the male principle and the blue heaven, and worshipped the nocturnal heaven, the moon and stars, with the earth, darkness and the female principle.
It is interesting to note the marked effect, produced by the two different modes of classification, upon the subsequent development of the state religions of China and Mexico. In the latter country where the contrast of light and darkness and of the duality of nature seems to have been most powerfully felt, the gradual institution, on a footing of equality of a diurnal masculine and nocturnal feminine cult or of a separate sun and moon worship, led to the formation of two equally powerful castes of priest-astronomers who devised their respective calendars and cults and ultimately stood in open rivalry and antagonism towards each other, as children of heaven and light: sun worshippers; and children of earth and darkness: moon worshippers. In China, as the cult of earth was subordinate from the first and all heavenly bodies were included in the worship of Heaven, there was no opportunity for any rivalry to develop in the superior caste of astronomers who jointly ruled, instituted their calendar and altered it under influences emanating from India.
Heaven and Earth were jointly worshipped at the same altar until A.D. 1531, when it was decreed that there should be separate altars and that the worship of Earth should be separately conducted (Edkins). At the same time, while the Emperor acts as the high-priest of Heaven, we find associated with him, from remote antiquity, the Empress, the representative of the Earth-mother.
The fact that the roll of Chinese emperors records heavenly and earthly, light and sombre, emperors, and that empresses have repeatedly occupied the throne, seems to indicate that, in remote antiquity, a male and a female line of rulers, personifying the dual principles of nature, alternately assumed prominence in power. This natural outgrowth of the cult of heaven and earth, which has its parallel in Mexico, seems to afford an explanation of the usurpation and retention of power exercised by the present Empress [pg 308] of China, who is probably ruling in her own right, as the representative of the earth or dark principle. As such she is the exact equivalent to the ancient Mexican Cihua-coatl, or “Woman-serpent;” and modern China supplies us with an episode in the development of the fundamental set of ideas it holds in common with ancient America, closely resembling the historical dissension which led in ancient Mexico to a separation of the two cults and the establishment of two separate governments, under their respective male and female rulers.
Although the difference in primitive Chinese and Mexican definitions of heaven and earth worship is evidently accountable for this fact, it is nevertheless interesting to note that it was in A.D. 1531 only that the Chinese cult of heaven and earth separated and the process of disintegration began to be set into activity. From an evolutionary point of view, the imperial religion of China stands to-day at a far less advanced stage of development than the prehistoric Mexican state religion. This circumstance might be passed over without comment did it not strikingly coincide with the undeniable fact that the essentially inorganic and monosyllabic Chinese language stands far lower in the scale of linguistic development than the incorporative and polysynthetic American languages, the most perfected types of which are the Maya and the beautiful and refined Nahuatl which abounds in delicate metaphors and formulas of exquisite politeness, indicative of the high degree of culture and antiquity of the native race.
If the preceding comparative study of the Chinese and ancient Mexican civilizations be briefly summarized, the result is as follows: Both civilizations alike rest on a foundation of pole-star worship and the set of ideas which naturally proceed from this i. e., central impartial power extending in constant rotation to the four quarters, figured by the swastika, and the recognition of the all-pervading duality of nature. These primitive concepts and their inevitable outgrowths, which might naturally occur to human beings of the same grade of intellect in similar conditions and circumstances and be most powerfully impressed upon the mind of man in circumpolar latitudes beside a few resemblances in names, which I shall proceed to point out, are nearly all that the Chinese and ancient Mexicans may be safely said to have had in common. At a date obviously anterior to 2356 B.C., when they were formulated, the Chinese had made definitions [pg 309] of heaven and earth and of the five elements which radically differ from those of the ancient Mexicans and Mayas.