Page:Some Chinese ghosts (IA somechineseghost00heariala).pdf/185

 . — A three-stringed Chinese guitar. Its belly is usually covered with snake-skin.

. — Literally, "the Sweeping of the Tombs," — the day of the general worship of ancestors; the Chinese "All-Souls'." It falls in the early part of April, the period called tsing-ming.

. — Literally, "Temple of the Bell." The building at Pekin so named covers probably the largest suspended bell in the world, cast in the reign of Yong-lo, about 1406 A.D., and weighing upwards of 120,000 pounds.

. — The infinite being, or Universal Life, whence all forms proceed: Literally, "the Way," in the sense of the First Cause. Lao-tseu uses the term in other ways; but that primal and most important philosophical sense which he gave to it is well explained in the celebrated Chapter XXV. of the Tao-te-king. The difference between the great Chinese thinker's conception of the First Cause — the Unknowable, — and the theories of other famous metaphysicians, Oriental and Occidental, is set forth with some definiteness in Stanislas Julien's introduction to the Tao-te-king, pp. x-xv. ("Le Livre de la Voie et de la Vertu." Paris, 1842.)

. — The Dynasty of Thang, which flourished between 620 and 907 A.D., encouraged