CHAPTER V. POPULAR GODS AND GODDESSES. If ANY exposition of the religious systems of the Chinese which did not give some account of the gods and goddesses whom the people delight to honour, would be extremely incomplete. the Chinese do not trouble themselves much about religious doctrines, they are very much interested in the canonized mortals and imaginary beings whom they suppose to dispense the blessings and the ills of life. Their religion is essentially a cultus. The worshipper who kneels at the shrine of Confucius will also worship the Taouistical Pak-te; and, on special occasions, Taouist and Buddhist priests may be seen praying in the same national temple. "Like master, like man," is a proverb which is capable of being applied to a nation and its gods, and this chapter about the gods and goddesses of the Chinese may help the reader to understand the people. In China the military and the learned classes divide between them the honours and emoluments of the state, and Kwan-te, the god of war, and Man-chang, the god of learning, have their votaries everywhere. Kwan-te, a distinguished general in the third year of the Christian era, was not canonized until nearly eight hundred years after his death. Now he has a state temple in every provincial, prefectoral, and district city of the empire; and, morning and evening, in almost every house, adoration is paid before the representation of him which stands on the ancestral altar. He is regarded as the protector of the peace of the empire, and of its multitudinous families. The immediate occasion of his being canonized is said to have been the drying up of the large and numerous salt-wells in the province of Shansi. This calamity was a cause of great perplexity and distress. The ministers of the Emperor Chin-tsung, like the magicians whom Pharaoh summoned to read his dreams, were helpless, and in his perplexity Chin-tsung turned to the ArchAbbot of the Taouists, who declared that the wells had been dried up by an evil spirit. An appeal must therefore be made to Kwan-te, who now reigned as a king in the world of spirits. The emperor straightway wrote a despatch to Kwan-te on the subject of his conversation with the Arch-Abbot, and the Imperial communication was conveyed to the departed warrior in the flames of a sacred fire. An hour had scarcely elapsed, when Kwan-te appeared in mid-heaven riding on his red-coloured charger. The god declared that until a temple had been erected in his honour, the petition of the emperor could not be attended to. A temple was accordingly erected with much haste, and so soon as the top-stone had been placed, the salt wells again yielded their supplies. It is said that Kwan-te appeared in 1855 to the generalissimo of the Imperial forces, whom he enabled to defeat the rebels near Nankin. For this interposition, the Emperor Hien-fung placed him on a footing with Confucius, who had been regarded till then as the principal deity in the national Pantheon. In the porch of the state temple of Kwan-te, at Canton-one of the finest temples in the city-is a figure of the red horse of the god, beside which stands the figure of a stalwart armour-bearer, as if waiting to receive the commands of his master. Even armour-bearer and horse have their votaries; and in the large town of Cum-lee-hoi in the silk districts of Kwang-tung, I saw women worshipping these images, and binding small bags or purses to the bridle rein of the charger. Man-chang is especially worshipped by collegians and schoolboys. He is supposed to record their names in a book of remembrance, and to inscribe opposite each name the character of the individual. In front of his idols there is generally an angel bearing this book of remembrance in his hand. He was famous for his great literary attainments, and his love of virtue. It is v.] MAN-CHANG. 145 recorded of him, as of many other Chinese sages, that his parents were very old when he was born; and one of his grandfathers was the emperor who invented the bow and arrow. While a mere boy Man-chang mastered the most profound works without the aid of a teacher; and when he died, the gods in conclave called upon him to be the tutelary deity of aspirants to literary distinction. In all the principal cities of the empire there are state temples 1 in honour of this god. In Canton there are no fewer than ten. The offerings presented to Man-chang are bundles of onions, and sometimes his altars are covered with bunches of these too odorous bulbs. His votaries are not confined to students, and I have seen persons of both sexes, and of all ranks of life among them. On one occasion I ventured to ask a man who with his wife had been engaged in earnest prayer to this god, what blessings he sought. He replied that he and his wife were desirous that their children should become well versed in classical literature, and so be qualified to hold high political positions. His most important temple is at Chutoong-yune, the principal city of the district in which Manchang was born. On one of the beams which support the roof is a brazen eagle, from the bill of which a long cord hangs in front of the altar. Attached to the cord is a pencil with which the deity is supposed to write mystic scrolls on a table covered with sand, or, as others say, upon sheets of paper placed on the table. These written oracles, the productions of a crafty priesthood, are generally announcements of impending calamities, and are forwarded to the authorities in order that they may adopt precautionary measures. In 1853, when Kwang-tung was overrun with rebels, a communication of this nature was forwarded to the governor-general of the province. It called upon the people to eschew rebellion as one of the greatest crimes, and Yeh, who was then governor-general, embodied the oracle in a proclamation, which was posted in the crowded thoroughfares of Canton and its suburbs. As might be expected, where so much depends on the recurrence of rain, one of the most prominent of the deities who 1 These temples, like those in honour of Kwan-te, are reserved for the worship of government officials. VOL. I. L |