Page:Ningpo to Shanghai.djvu/71

Rh are directed by astrologers to devote the youth to his service ;&mdash;an injunction to be evaded only by the enlistment of a substitute&mdash;male or female. In proportion to the male servers, the number of nuns throughout the empire, is very inconsiderable (21).

Attached to the Choey-yen-sze are some 240 acres (1400 mow) of land, and in the value of the timber of the domain, alone, the establishment is rich. When spoken to of the rebellion going on in adjacent provinces, and of the fears that must be entertained for the continuance of their order, but little from which an opinion can be formed is given by the priests in reply;&mdash;they are passive on the subject, and patiently await the coming of what, in their opinion, appears to be inevitable&mdash;a rev olution throughout the country. Conveniently blind though they be, they are not so bigotted as to be ignorant of the fact that the religion, or rather the mummery they practise is entirely unworthy the light of reason.  At the top of the gorge N.N.W. from the Choey-yen-sze is another Monastery of thirty priests, a building which, though no older in establishment than the grander one below, is not particularly substantial in appearance, being constructed of wood principally. On the way to it, and immediately in the rear of the north wall of the Choey-yen-sze, is a pleasant summer house; and a quarter of an hour's walk further on, on the left, is the small building or Cremating house in which the bodies of the deceased priests are burnt to ashes. It is a small hexagon of eight feet sides, and similar height, with a coved roof, all built of brick. When Buddhism was practised with more strictness then it now appears to be, the legend runs that priests disobedient to the rules of the order were burnt alive here ;&mdash;but such deeds have not occurred within the present century. 