Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/188

 the altar of every Chinese Buddhist temple, as well as repeated ad infinitum in architectural decoration. They are derived from India."

Some other common symbolical devices are:—

17.—A circularly arranged seal character for sho, longevity. This ideograph has no less than a hundred different forms, and not infrequently a vase or a cup has for sole decoration different forms of the ideograph. It occurs in all kinds of combinations, and shares with the ideograph fuh ("felicity"), of which also there are many forms, the distinction of figuring most frequently in keramic decoration.

18.—A bat (fuh). The word "fuh," a bat, has exactly the same sound—though of course its ideograph is different—as fuh, felicity. Hence a delineation of a bat has come