Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/191

 told in support of this identification is thus translated in Anderson's British Museum catalogue:—"In the period Yuan-Yu (1086–1094 ) there lived an old man in the capital of China. He was only three feet high, and of this measure his head formed the moity. Every day he went into the city and foretold the future to the people. With the proceeds of his prophetic trade he bought saké, and when he had drunk freely he would strike his head and say, 'I am a sage, and can bestow the gift of long life.' A certain man having seen him, painted his portrait, and presented it to the Emperor, who summoned the strange being to the palace, and after regaling him with saké, asked how many were the years he numbered. He made no reply, but told many stories of past ages, and suddenly vanished, no one knew whither. On the following morning it was announced that the light of the South Pole Star had, on the previous evening, touched the Imperial palace. The Emperor then comprehended that the old man was an incarnation of the Star of Longevity, and preserved his portrait with the deepest veneration. The pictures drawn at the present day are derived from this, but in late years representations of the deer, crane, and tortoise, animals emblematic of long life, have been placed by the side of the sage." Chinese modern literature identifies the old man as Tung Wang-kung, one of the first beings evolved from chaos by the spontaneous volition of the primordial principle, and as the husband of the fairy Si Wang-mu (Japanese Sei-ô-bô), who usually appears in the form of a richly dressed female with a royal tiara, standing on a cloud and accompanied by two girl attendants, one of whom holds a dish of peaches, the