Religions of Ancient China

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RELIGIONS OF ANCIENT CHINA

by Herbert A. Giles




Professor of Chinese at the University of Cambridge,
Author of "Historic China," "A History of Chinese
Literature," "China and the Chinese," etc., etc.


First Published 1906 by Constable and Company Ltd., London.



PREPARER'S NOTE

This book was published as part of the series Religions: Ancient
and Modern.

The Psychological Origin and Nature of Religion, by J. H. Leuba.
Judaism, by Israel Abraham.
Celtic Religion, by Professor E. Anwye.
Shinto: The Ancient Religion of Japan, by W. G. Aston, C.M.G.
The Religion of Ancient Rome, by Cyril Bailey, M.A.
Hinduism, by Dr. L. D. Barnett.
The Religion of Ancient Palestine, by Stanley A. Cook.
Animism, by Edward Clodd.
Scandinavian Religion, by William A. Craigie.
Early Buddhism, by Prof. T. W. Rhys Davids, LL.D.
The Religions of Ancient China, by Prof. Giles, LL.D.
Magic and Fetishism, by Dr. A. C. Haddon, F.R.S.
The Religion of Ancient Greece, by Jane Harrison.
The Religion of Ancient Egypt, by W. M. Flinders Petrie, F.R.S.
Pantheism, by James Allanson Picton.
The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, by Theophilus G. Pinches.
Early Christianity (Paul to Origen), by S. B. Slack.
The Mythologies of Ancient Mexico and Peru, by Lewis Spence, M.A.
The Mythology of Ancient Britain and Island, by Charles Squire.
Islam, by Ameer Ali, Syed, M.A., C.I.E.
Mithraism, by W. G. Pythian-Adams.

The publishers were: Constable and Company Ltd, London; Open Court
Company, Chicago. The 1918 edition was printed in Great Britain by
Butler & Tanner, Frome and London.




RELIGIONS OF ANCIENT CHINA



CHAPTER I -- THE ANCIENT FAITH

Philosophical Theory of the Universe.--The problem of the universe has
never offered the slightest difficulty to Chinese philosophers. Before
the beginning of all things, there was Nothing. In the lapse of ages
Nothing coalesced into Unity, the Great Monad. After more ages, the
Great Monad separated into Duality, the Male and Female Principles in
nature; and then, by a process of biogenesis, the visible universe was
produced.

Popular Cosmogeny.--An addition, however, to this simple system had to
be made, in deference to, and on a plane with, the intelligence of the
masses. According to this, the Male and Female Principles were each
subdivided into Greater and Lesser, and then from the interaction of
these four agencies a being, named P'an Ku, came into existence. He
seems to have come into life endowed with perfect knowledge, and his
function was to set the economy of the universe in order. He is often
depicted as wielding a huge adze, and engaged in constructing the world.
With his death the details of creation began. His breath became the
wind; his voice, the thunder; his left eye, the sun; his right eye, the
moon; his blood flowed in rivers; his hair grew into trees and plants;
his flesh became the soil; his sweat descended as rain; while the
parasites which infested his body were the origin of the human race.

Recognition and Worship of Spirits.--Early Chinese writers tell us that
Fu Hsi, B.C. 2953-2838, was the first Emperor to organize sacrifices to,
and worship of, spirits. In this he was followed by the Yellow Emperor,
B.C. 2698-2598, who built a temple for the worship of God, in which
incense was used, and first sacrificed to the Mountains and Rivers. He
is also said to have established the worship of the sun, moon, and five
planets, and to have elaborated the ceremonial of ancestral worship.

God the Father, Earth the Mother.--The Yellow Emperor was followed by
the Emperor Shao Hao, B.C. 2598-2514, "who instituted the music of the
Great Abyss in order to bring spirits and men into harmony." Then
came the Emperor Chuan Hsu, B.C. 2514-2436, of whom it is said that he
appointed an officer "to preside over the worship of God and Earth,
in order to form a link between the spirits and man," and also "caused
music to be played for the enjoyment of God." Music, by the way, is said
to have been introduced into worship in imitation of thunder, and was
therefore supposed to be pleasing to the Almighty. After him followed
the Emperor Ti K'u, B.C. 2436-2366, who dabbled in astronomy, and "came
to a knowledge of spiritual beings, which he respectfully worshipped."
The Emperor Yao, B.C. 2357-2255, built a temple for the worship of
God, and also caused dances to be performed for the enjoyment of God
on occasions of special sacrifice and communication with the spiritual
world. After him, we reach the Emperor Shun, B.C. 2255-2205, in whose
favour Yao abdicated.

Additional Deities.--Before, however, Shun ventured to mount the throne,
he consulted the stars, in order to find out if the unseen Powers were
favourable to his elevation; and on receiving a satisfactory reply, "he
proceeded to sacrifice to God, to the Six Honoured Ones (unknown), to
the Mountains and Rivers, and to Spirits in general. . . . In the second
month of the year, he made a tour of inspection eastwards, as far as
Mount T'ai (in modern Shantung), where he presented a burnt offering to
God, and sacrificed to the Mountains and Rivers."

God punishes the wicked and rewards the good.--The Great Yu, who drained
the empire, and came to the throne in B.C. 2205 as first Emperor of the
Hsia dynasty, followed in the lines of his pious predecessors. But the
Emperor K'ung Chia, B.C. 1879-1848, who at first had treated the Spirits
with all due reverence, fell into evil ways, and was abandoned by God.
This was the beginning of the end. In B.C. 1766 T'ang the Completer,
founder of the Shang dynasty, set to work to overthrow Chieh Kuei, the
last ruler of the Hsia dynasty. He began by sacrificing to Almighty
God, and asked for a blessing on his undertaking. And in his subsequent
proclamation to the empire, he spoke of that God as follows: "God has
given to every man a conscience; and if all men acted in accordance with
its dictates, they would not stray from the right path. . . . The way of
God is to bless the good and punish the bad. He has sent down calamities
on the House of Hsia, to make manifest its crimes."

God manifests displeasure.--In B.C. 1637 the Emperor T'ai Mou succeeded.
His reign was marked by the supernatural appearance in the palace of two
mulberry-trees, which in a single night grew to such a size that
they could hardly be spanned by two hands. The Emperor was terrified;
whereupon a Minister said, "No prodigy is a match for virtue. Your
Majesty's government is no doubt at fault, and some reform of conduct
is necessary." Accordingly, the Emperor began to act more circumspectly;
after which the mulberry-trees soon withered and died.

Revelation in a dream.--The Emperor Wu Ting, B.C. 1324-1264, began his
reign by not speaking for three years, leaving all State affairs to be
decided by his Prime Minister, while he himself gained experience.
Later on, the features of a sage were revealed to him in a dream; and
on waking, he caused a portrait of the apparition to be prepared and
circulated throughout the empire. The sage was found, and for a long
time aided the Emperor in the right administration of government. On the
occasion of a sacrifice, a pheasant perched upon the handle of the great
sacrificial tripod, and crowed, at which the Emperor was much alarmed.
"Be not afraid," cried a Minister; "but begin by reforming your
government. God looks down upon mortals, and in accordance with their
deserts grants them many years or few. God does not shorten men's
lives; they do that themselves. Some are wanting in virtue, and will not
acknowledge their transgressions; only when God chastens them do they
cry, What are we to do?"

Anthropomorphism and Fetishism.--One of the last Emperors of the Shang
dynasty, Wu I, who reigned B.C. 1198-1194, even went so far as "to make
an image in human form, which he called God. With this image he used
to play at dice, causing some one to throw for the image; and if 'God'
lost, he would overwhelm the image with insult. He also made a bag of
leather, which he filled with blood and hung up. Then he would shoot at
it, saying that he was shooting God. By and by, when he was out hunting,
he was struck down by a violent thunderclap, and killed."

God indignant.--Finally, when the Shang dynasty sank into the lowest
depths of moral abasement, King Wu, who charged himself with its
overthrow, and who subsequently became the first sovereign of the Chou
dynasty, offered sacrifices to Almighty God, and also to Mother Earth.
"The King of Shang," he said in his address to the high officers who
collected around him, "does not reverence God above, and inflicts
calamities on the people below. Almighty God is moved with indignation."
On the day of the final battle he declared that he was acting in the
matter of punishment merely as the instrument of God; and after his
great victory and the establishment of his own line, it was to God that
he rendered thanks.

No Devil, No Hell.--In this primitive monotheism, of which only scanty,
but no doubt genuine, records remain, no place was found for any being
such as the Buddhist Mara or the Devil of the Old and New Testaments.
God inflicted His own punishments by visiting calamities on mankind,
just as He bestowed His own rewards by sending bounteous harvests in due
season. Evil spirits were a later invention, and their operations were
even then confined chiefly to tearing people's hearts out, and so forth,
for their own particular pleasure; we certainly meet no cases of evil
spirits wishing to undermine man's allegiance to God, or desiring to
make people wicked in order to secure their everlasting punishment. The
vision of Purgatory, with all its horrid tortures, was introduced into
China by Buddhism, and was subsequently annexed by the Taoists, some
time between the third and sixth centuries A.D.

Chinese Terms for God.--Before passing to the firmer ground,
historically speaking, of the Chou dynasty, it may be as well to state
here that there are two terms in ancient Chinese literature which seem
to be used indiscriminately for God. One is _T'ien_, which has come
to include the material heavens, the sky; and the other is _Shang Ti_,
which has come to include the spirits of deceased Emperors. These two
terms appear simultaneously, so to speak, in the earliest documents
which have come down to us, dating back to something like the twentieth
century before Christ. Priority, however, belongs beyond all doubt to
_T'ien_, which it would have been more natural to find meaning, first
the visible heavens, and secondly the Deity, whose existence beyond the
sky would be inferred from such phenomena as lightning, thunder, wind,
and rain. But the process appears to have been the other way, so far at
any rate as the written language is concerned. The Chinese script, when
it first came into existence, was purely pictorial, and confined to
visible objects which were comparatively easy to depict. There does not
seem to have been any attempt to draw a picture of the sky. On the other
hand, the character _T'ien_ was just such a representation of a human
being as would be expected from the hand of a prehistoric artist;
and under this unmistakable shape the character appears on bells and
tripods, as seen in collections of inscriptions, so late as the sixth
and seventh centuries B.C., after which the head is flattered to a line,
and the arms are raised until they form another line parallel to that of
the head.

Distinction between T'ien and Shang Ti.--The term _Shang Ti_ means
literally Supreme Ruler. It is not quite so vague as _T'ien_, which
seems to be more of an abstraction, while _Shang Ti_ is a genuinely
personal God. Reference to _T'ien_ is usually associated with fate or
destiny, calamities, blessings, prayers for help, etc. The commandments
of _T'ien_ are hard to obey; He is compassionate, to be feared, unjust,
and cruel. _Shang Ti_ lives in heaven, walks, leaves tracks on the
ground, enjoys the sweet savour of sacrifice, approves or disapproves
of conduct, deals with rewards and punishments in a more particular way,
and comes more actually into touch with the human race.

Thus _Shang Ti_ would be the God who walked in the garden in the cool of
the day, the God who smelled the sweet savour of Noah's sacrifice, and
the God who allowed Moses to see His back. _T'ien_ would be the God of
Gods of the Psalms, whose mercy endureth for ever; the everlasting God
of Isaiah, who fainteth not, neither is weary.

Roman Catholic Dissensions.--These two, in fact, were the very terms
favoured by the early Jesuit missionaries to China, though not with the
limitations above suggested, as fit the proper renderings for God; and
of the two terms the great Manchu Emperor K'ang Hsi chose _T'ien_. It
has been thought that the conversion of China to Christianity under the
guiding influence of the Jesuits would soon have become an accomplished
fact, but for the ignorant opposition to the use of these terms by the
Franciscans and Dominicans, who referred this question, among others, to
the Pope. In 1704 Clement XI published a bull declaring that the Chinese
equivalent for God was _T'ien Chu_=Lord of Heaven; and such it has
continued to be ever since, so far as the Roman Catholic church is
concerned, in spite of the fact that _T'ien Chu_ was a name given at the
close of the third century B.C. to one of the Eight Spirits.

The two Terms are One.--That the two terms refer in Chinese thought to
one and the same Being, though possibly with differing attributes, even
down to modern times, may be seen from the account of a dream by the
Emperor Yung Lo, A.D. 1403-1425, in which His Majesty relates that an
angel appeared to him, with a message from _Shang Ti_; upon which the
Emperor remarked, "Is not this a command from _T'ien_?" A comparison
might perhaps be instituted with the use of "God" and "Jehovah" in
the Bible. At the same time it must be noted that this view was not
suggested by the Emperor K'ang Hsi, who fixed upon _T'ien_ as the
appropriate term. It is probable that, vigorous Confucianist as he was,
he was anxious to appear on the side rather of an abstract than of
a personal Deity, and that he was repelled by the overwrought
anthropomorphism of the Christian God. His conversion was said to have
been very near at times; we read, however, that, when hard pressed by
the missionaries to accept baptism, "he always excused himself by saying
that he worshipped the same God as the Christians."

God in the "Odes."--The Chou dynasty lasted from B.C. 1122 to B.C.
255. It was China's feudal age, when the empire, then included between
latitude 34-40 and longitude 109-118, was split up into a number of
vassal States, which owned allegiance to a suzerain State. And it is to
the earlier centuries of the Chou dynasty that must be attributed the
composition of a large number of ballads of various kinds, ultimately
collected and edited by Confucius, and now known as the _Odes_. From
these _Odes_ it is abundantly clear that the Chinese people continued
to hold, more clearly and more firmly than ever, a deep-seated belief in
the existence of an anthropomorphic and personal God, whose one care was
the welfare of the human race:--

There is Almighty God;
Does He hate any one?

He reigns in glory.--The soul of King Wen, father of the King Wu below,
and posthumously raised by his son to royal rank, is represented as
enjoying happiness in a state beyond the grave:--

King Wen is on high,
In glory in heaven.
His comings and his goings
Are to and from the presence of God.

He is a Spirit.--Sometimes in the _Odes_ there is a hint that God, in
spite of His anthropomorphic semblance, is a spirit:--

The doings of God
Have neither sound nor smell.

Spiritual Beings.--Spirits were certainly supposed to move freely among
mortals:--

Do not say, This place is not public;
No one can see me here.
The approaches of spiritual Beings
Cannot be calculated beforehand;
But on no account should they be ignored.

The God of Battle.--In the hour of battle the God of ancient China was
as much a participator in the fight as the God of Israel in the Old
Testament:--

God is on your side!

was the cry which stimulated King Wu to break down the opposing ranks
of Shang. To King Wu's father, and others, direct communications had
previously been made from heaven, with a view to the regeneration of the
empire:--

The dynasties of Hsia and Shang
Had not satisfied God with their government;
So throughout the various States
He sought and considered
For a State on which He might confer the rule.

God said to King Wen,
I am pleased with your conspicuous virtue,
Without noise and without display,
Without heat and without change,
Without consciousness of effort,
Following the pattern of God.

God said to King Wen,
Take measures against hostile States,
Along with your brethren,
Get ready your grappling-irons,
And your engines of assault,
To attack the walls of Ts'ung.

God sends Famine.--The _Ode_ from which the following extract is taken
carries us back to the ninth century B.C., at the time of a prolonged
and disastrous drought:--

Glorious was the Milky Way,
Revolving brightly in the sky,
When the king said, Alas!
What crime have my people committed now,
That God sends down death and disorder,
And famine comes upon us again?
There is no spirit to whom I have not sacrificed;
There is no victim that I have grudged;
Our sacrificial symbols are all used up;--
How is it that I am not heard?

The Confucian Criterion.--The keystone of the Confucian philosophy, that
man is born good, will be found in the following lines:--

How mighty is God!
How clothed in majesty is God,
And how unsearchable are His judgments!
God gives birth to the people,
But their natures are not constant;
All have the same beginning,
But few have the same end.

God, however, is not held responsible for the sufferings of mankind.
King Wen, in an address to the last tyrant of the House of Shang, says
plainly,

It is not God who has caused this evil time,
But it is you who have strayed from the old paths.

The Associate of God.--Worshipped on certain occasions as the Associate
of God, and often summoned to aid in hours of distress or danger, was a
personage known as Hou Chi, said to have been the original ancestor
of the House of Chou. His story, sufficiently told in the _Odes_, is
curious for several reasons, and especially for an instance in Chinese
literature, which, in the absence of any known husband, comes near
suggesting the much-vexed question of parthenogenesis:--

She who first gave birth to our people
Was the lady Chiang Yuan.
How did she give birth to them?
She offered up a sacrifice
That she might not be childless;
Then she trod in a footprint of God's, and conceived,
The great and blessed one,
Pregnant with a new birth to be,
And brought forth and nourished
Him who was Hou Chi.

When she had fulfilled her months,
Her firstborn came forth like a lamb.
There was no bursting, no rending,
No injury, no hurt,
In order to emphasise his divinity.
Did not God give her comfort?
Had He not accepted her sacrifice,
So that thus easily she brought forth her son?

He was exposed in a narrow lane,
But sheep and oxen protected and suckled him;
He was exposed in a wide forest,
But woodcutters found him;
He was exposed on cold ice,
But birds covered him with their wings.

Apotheosis of Hou Chi.--And so he grew to man's estate, and taught
the people husbandry, with a success that has never been rivalled.
Consequently, he was deified, and during several centuries of the Chou
dynasty was united in worship with God:--

O wise Hou Chi,
Fit Associate of our God,
Founder of our race,
There is none greater than thou!
Thou gavest us wheat and barley,
Which God appointed for our nourishment,
And without distinction of territory,
Didst inculcate the virtues over our vast dominions.

Other Deities.--During the long period covered by the Chou dynasty,
various other deities, of more or less importance, were called into
existence.

The patriarchal Emperor Shen Nung, B.C. 2838-2698, who had taught his
people to till the ground and eat of the fruits of their labour, was
deified as the tutelary genius of agriculture:--

That my fields are in such good condition
Is matter of joy to my husbandmen.
With lutes, and with drums beating,
We will invoke the Father of Husbandry,
And pray for sweet rain,
To increase the produce of our millet fields,
And to bless my men and their wives.

There were also sacrifices to the Father of War, whoever he may have
been; to the Spirits of Wind, Rain, and Fire; and even to a deity who
watched over the welfare of silkworms. Since those days, the number of
spiritual beings who receive worship from the Chinese, some in one part
of the empire, some in another, has increased enormously. A single
work, published in 1640, gives notices of no fewer than eight hundred
divinities.

Superstitions.--During the period under consideration, all kinds of
superstition prevailed; among others, that of referring to the rainbow.
The rainbow was believed by the vulgar to be an emanation from an
enormous oyster away in the great ocean which surrounded the world, i.e.
China. Philosophers held it to be the result of undue proportions in the
mixture of the two cosmogonical principles which when properly blended
produce the harmony of nature. By both parties it was considered to be
an inauspicious manifestation, and merely to point at it would produce a
sore on the hand.

Supernatural Manifestations.--Several events of a supernatural character
are recorded as having taken place under the Chou dynasty. In B.C. 756,
one of the feudal Dukes saw a vision of a yellow serpent which descended
from heaven and laid its head on the slope of a mountain. The Duke spoke
of this to his astrologer, who said, "It is a manifestation of God;
sacrifice to it."

In B.C. 747, another Duke found on a mountain a being in the semblance
of a stone. Sacrifices were at once offered, and the stone was deified,
and received regular worship from that time forward.

In B.C. 659, a third Duke was in a trance for five days, when he saw
a vision of God, and received from Him instructions as to matters then
pressing. For many generations afterwards the story ran that the Duke
had been up to Heaven. This became a favourite theme for romancers. It
is stated in the biography of a certain Feng Po that "one night he saw
the gate of heaven open, and beheld exceeding glory within, which shone
into his courtyard."

The following story is told by Huai-nan Tzu (d. B.C. 122):--"Once when
the Duke of Lu-yang was at war with the Han State, and sunset drew near
while a battle was still fiercely raging, the Duke held up his spear and
shook it at the sun, which forthwith went back three zodiacal signs."

Only the Emperor worships God and Earth.--From the records of this
period we can also see how jealously the worship of God and Earth was
reserved for the Emperor alone.

In B.C. 651, Duke Huan of the Ch'i State, one of the feudal nobles to
be mentioned later on, wished to signalise his accession to the post of
doyen or leader of the vassal States by offering the great sacrifices
to God and to Earth. He was, however, dissuaded from this by a wise
Minister, who pointed out that only those could perform these ceremonies
who had personally received the Imperial mandate from God.

This same Minister is said to be responsible for the following
utterance:--

"Duke Huan asked Kuan Chang, saying, To what should a prince attach the
highest importance? To God, replied the Minister; at which Duke Huan
gazed upwards to the sky. The God I mean, continued Kuan Chung, is not
the illimitable blue above. A true prince makes the people his God."

Sacrifices.--Much has been recorded by the Chinese on the subject
of sacrifice,--more indeed than can be easily condensed into a small
compass. First of all, there were the great sacrifices to God and to
Earth, at the winter and summer solstices respectively, which were
reserved for the Son of Heaven alone. Besides what may be called private
sacrifices, the Emperor sacrificed also to the four quarters, and to the
mountains and rivers of the empire; while the feudal nobles sacrificed
each to his own quarter, and to the mountains and rivers of his own
domain. The victim offered by the Emperor on a blazing pile of wood was
an ox of one colour, always a young animal; a feudal noble would use any
fatted ox; and a petty official a sheep or a pig. When sacrificing to
the spirits of the land and of grain, the Son of Heaven used a bull, a
ram, and a boar; the feudal nobles only a ram and a boar; and the common
people, scallions and eggs in spring, wheat and fish in summer, millet
and a sucking-pig in autumn, and unhulled rice and a goose in winter.
If there was anything infelicitous about the victim intended for God, it
was used for Hou Chi. The victim intended for God required to be kept in
a clean stall for three months; that for Hou Chi simply required to
be perfect in its parts. This was the way in which they distinguished
between heavenly and earthly spirits.