Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/479

 COLLECTANEA.

A Votive Offering from Korea.

The object shown in the plate (IX.) is a votive offering from a shrine on the top of the Charyong Pass, in Korea, about 60 // south of Gensan. It was taken (in the interests of science) by my brother, Mr. J. Cole Hartland, from the shrine on the 25th November, 1898. It is a rough iron casting six inches long, nearly two inches high, and weighing about one and a quarter pounds, of an animal, said to be a tiger.

A shrine of some kind is found at the top of every pass in the south and south-east of Asia. Usually it is a mere heap of stones, or of sticks, or leaves, to which the passing traveller is expected to add his contribution. Sometimes, however, it is more pre- tentious, and attracts more shapely offerings. It is, as a rule, dedicated to the local genius, or divinity. In Mongolia such a shrine is called obo, and is consecrated by lamas. The French traveller Poussielgue describes one between Urga and Kiachta, adorned with a statue of Buddha roughly carved from two blocks of stone, beside which a large urn of granite stood for the burning of incense, while around were posts covered with offerings of rags paper, rolls of prayers, even with purses of money and objects made of the precious metals. ^ No traveller may pass over one of these shrines without an offering, however humble, and a prayer. Mr. T. T. Cooper, the author of Travels of a Pioneer of Commerce in Pigtail and Petticoats, gives an amusing account of how he was married in Eastern Tibet unawares to a girl named Lo-tzung, and compelled, to his annoyance, to take her with him for some distance on his journey. At the top of a hill they reached a large mound of stones. " Lo-tzung," he says, " having contributed

' Andree, Eth>iographische Farallekn, vol. i., p. §3, citing Poussielgvie.