Part 14 (2/2)

A Chinese tombstone is usually stereotyped in the cold and dreary statement it has to make about those who lie beneath it. On the top is the name of the dynasty or of the place where the person was born, then in a perpendicular line in the centre of it is the s.e.x and family name of the deceased. To the left, in smaller letters, is the name of their sons, and positively nothing else. There is no loving record of their virtues, and no hope expressed as to any meeting them in the future. They seem to have dropped completely out of life, as far as any mention is made of them. It is true that in the wors.h.i.+p at the graves on the ”Feast of Tombs,” and in the ancestral temples on the anniversary of their death, they are spoken to as though they were still living; but they are approached on those occasions not in the loving and affectionate way that was done when they were alive, but rather as spirits that must be propitiated in order to send blessings on their former homes, or coaxed into good humour so as to cause them to refrain from hurling calamities upon the friends whom they have left behind them.

But whilst death is a secret that none may fathom, it has not led men to give up in despair the hopes of solving it. The Chinese, whilst feeling themselves unable to find out what lies behind it, have built up a mythical and yet at the same time a very human conception of what the ”Shadowy World” is supposed to be like. Having nothing to guide them in their thoughts but the world of matter around them, they have imagined that Hades is an exact counterpart of China, and that it has its emperor and great and small mandarins, and provinces and counties with exactly the same names that these have in the actual and visible lands of the Celestial Empire.

That this is the conception of the thinkers and writers of this country is evident from one of the fairy stories contained in a popular work which gives a large number of exciting and wonderful incidents where the fairies are the princ.i.p.al actors in the stirring events that are recorded.

In this it is told how that a certain scholar became seriously ill, and it became evident that unless some great change took place, he would soon die. As he lay in great pain and weariness on his bed, a man of stately and dignified appearance, and one that he had no recollection of ever having seen before, suddenly stood in the doorway of his bedroom, and, saluting him with a pleasant smile, invited him to rise and go with him.

”I have a horse outside ready to carry you,” he said, ”and I want you to accompany me on a journey that I wish you to take with me.” ”But I am too ill to get up,” the scholar said. ”I feel so weak that I can hardly lift my hand, and to attempt to travel would certainly end in failure.” ”Oh!

no,” gently said the stranger, who was really a fairy, ”with my a.s.sistance I think you will be able to manage it,” and taking him by the hand, he tenderly raised him from the bed and led him with slow and faltering footsteps into the open s.p.a.ce in front of the house, where a white horse, beautifully caparisoned, awaited his coming.

No sooner had he mounted on its back than his disease seemed in an instant to vanish from him, and he felt himself light-hearted, and with a keen appreciation of the beautiful scenery through which they were pa.s.sing. It seemed, however, very singular to him that he could not recognize ever having seen it before. It was all new and strange, and it had a beauty and a fascination about it that he had never experienced in any of his previous travels.

After some hours, they came to a magnificent city, whose walls towered high like those that might belong to the capital of an empire. Pa.s.sing through one of its lofty gates, he noticed how wide its streets were, and how crowds thronged them, though they seemed shadowy and unreal, and there was a silence and a gloom about them that he had never seen in any city that he had ever visited before. After winding in and out through these s.p.a.cious thoroughfares, they came at last to what seemed to the scholar like a royal palace, so grand and imposing was its appearance.

Entering through its ma.s.sive doors, and ascending numerous flights of stone stairways, he was led by his guide into a magnificent reception-room, where a number of what looked like mandarins of high official rank were sitting as though they awaited his coming. The chief one amongst them had a kingly air about him, and it seemed to him that he strongly resembled the pictures he had often seen of the King of the Shadowy World. Pointing him to a seat close by a table on which were paper and pens and ink, and at which another scholar was seated, a subject for examination was given them both, upon which they were to write an essay.

As soon as they were finished they were handed up to the royal-looking personage, who after carefully examining them both, decided that the one written by our scholar was decidedly the best, and was worthy of the highest commendation and praise. ”In consideration of the talent you have shown, and your evident ability to do useful service for the State, I appoint you to be the prefect in a certain city in the Province of Honan,”

said the kingly president.

The scholar now realized for the first time that he was really dead, and that the n.o.ble-looking man that had been examining him was after all the King of the Shadowy World. Trembling at the truth that had just burst upon him, his thoughts flew back like a flash of lightning to his widowed mother, and, rising from his seat, he pleaded with pa.s.sionate earnestness with the King to give him back his life and allow him to return to earth and live as long as his mother, so that he might comfort and care for her in her declining years.

His Majesty was deeply moved with this exhibition of filial piety, and turning to one of the men sitting on the bench asked him to bring him the ”Book of Life and Death,” in which the destined hour of every human being's life was recorded, in order that he might see how many years the mother had still to live. Turning to the page where her birth and death were recorded he found that she had still nine years to live.

Turning to the filial son he said, ”Your prayer is granted, and for nine more years a fresh lease of life will be given you, and the man who has been examined with you to-day shall act in your place as prefect, till you can return and take up your post in Honan.”

This is a very pretty story, and we could wish that it were one that was founded on fact. The reason for quoting it here is to show how the other world is considered to be the exact counterpart of this, only life there is filled with gloom, for the shadows of a sunless land rest upon every department of society, and take away the joyousness and the hope that the bright sun s.h.i.+ning in a cloudless sky is apt to impart to men living in this upper world.

The conception that China should be the ideal that ought to be followed when the ”World of Shadows” was devised as an abode for the dead, has been carried out not simply in the arrangement that has been made with regard to its territorial and political divisions. Even society has been mapped out on the same lines as those we see in what may be called the Mother-country. The same businesses and callings are carried on by the dead as those they pursued when they were alive on earth, for it is an extraordinary fact that the inhabitants of the dark land have managed to be clothed with the same bodies that they had when in life, and whilst these are mouldering in the graves on the hillsides they seem in some mysterious way to have regained possession of them when they reached the other sh.o.r.e, and with the instinct of industry that is deep in the Chinese race, they no sooner get there than without any loss of continuity they begin to carry on the trades or professions that occupied them when they were in life.

The carpenter, for example, continues as soon as he can get his breath in the other world his old trade by which he has been lately earning his living. No one ever supposes that either enterprise or ambition will induce him to desire to enter upon any other line of life. The blacksmith with his brawny arms, and his muscles as hard almost as the metal that he has been working on, will naturally find his way to the smithy, and in that darkened land where only an evening light ever penetrates, the sparks will again be made to fly, and the red-hot metal, which glows with a brighter light in the subdued and gloomy atmosphere, will as of yore yield to his st.u.r.dy strokes and take the shape that he has in his mind.

The man in high position here will naturally gravitate, by a conservative law that secures the continuity of life, into the same social position there, whilst the men and women in the humbler ranks will just as certainly move into similar spheres when they pa.s.s the narrow bourne that divides the two lands from each other.

There is, of course, a great deal of vague statement and often a contrariety of opinion with regard to the other world and how things are carried on there. In such a profound subject and where speculation only can be relied upon for any thought upon the question, it is evident that the popular beliefs must often be at fault to explain difficulties that arise in the logical carrying out of any theories that may be held on a matter of such vast moment to the countless millions of this Empire.

There are certain leading ideas that men generally have about the World of Shadows and the condition of the men and women there, and when they are confronted with difficulties of details, they are either silent as to how these are to be explained, or they boldly acknowledge that they can suggest no solution to them, and they go on holding them precisely as they did before the objections were raised. The turbidity of mind that is const.i.tutional in a Chinaman, enables him to accept theories which are often in themselves self-contradictory, and in a Westerner would so shake his faith in them that he would infallibly reject them before long. The idols, for example, have so many vulnerable points about them, that these have simply to be stated to be at once accepted, but this does not seem to undermine the faith of their wors.h.i.+ppers in them. They will laugh with the objector, and will even suggest points that he had not thought of, and yet they will be as earnest and devoted in their belief in them as though no suspicion had ever been raised concerning them.

In addition to the belief already stated that Hades is but a continuation of the Chinese Empire in its social and political aspects and conditions, there is another one, most mysterious and most fateful, that is held by the ma.s.ses, and that is that where retribution had not been visited upon the transgressor in this life for the evils he has committed, it will be meted out to him in full measure by the King of the Land of Shadows when he comes within his jurisdiction.

This is a Buddhist idea that came to this country with the idols from India. It is true that the thought was dimly foreshadowed in the teachings of the early sages, who declared that ”virtue had its rewards, and vice its retribution, and that if neither the rewards nor the retribution had yet been meted out, it was because the time had not yet arrived for such action.” It was seen, however, that good men often died in sorrow, and their n.o.ble life had not been rewarded as the sages declared it would be, whilst men who had pa.s.sed their lives in the commission of great wrongs, acc.u.mulated great wealth, had sons and daughters born to them, and finally died without the prediction of the great teachers of the nation being verified.

The Buddhist doctrine about retribution in the next life filled up the s.p.a.ce that had been left undefined by the sages, and men everywhere have accepted it as a solution of the difficulty. The teachers of this faith are most emphatic in the way in which they preach it, and in many of the Buddhist temples there are gruesome and realistic pictures of the various kinds of tortures to which these men are condemned in the prisons or h.e.l.ls that are kept in Hades for the special benefit of the men and women that have violated the principles of Heaven during their stay on earth. These are forcible reminders to the wicked and unG.o.dly who will not repent and abandon their evil lives, that even though they escape the consequences of their misdeeds here, a day will surely come when in the prisons of the Land of Shadows they will pay the full penalty for the wrongs they have committed in their previous existence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BUDDHIST PRIEST.

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