Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 8 (Chinese and Japanese).djvu/95

Rh anthropomorphism in early Chinese worship is recorded as having occurred in the Chow dynasty, and there is no available knowledge of its extension to other objects of worship which continued to be regarded as abstract forces, principles or laws.

These local deities impersonated the source of the kindly fruits of the earth in the district where altars were erected or offerings made. The local deities of a rich, prosperous district were on the same footing as those of a poor one. There is no record of the use of a local god for tribal supremacy or tribal propaganda. If prosperity reigned in one district, the local god of the soil was thanked by the presentation of costly offerings, but he was not heralded as greater than the local gods of neighbouring districts, nor made the occasion of hostile attacks upon supposed inferiors. There were no jealousies and quarrels among different localities based upon the help of superior local deities, as there were between the Israelites on the one hand and the tabernacles of Edom, the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagarenes on the other. These deities were dependent for their prestige on the quality of the soil where they were worshipped, and the early Chinese would have thought of carrying the fertile soil of one district into the sterile fields of another, as soon as of transferring a local deity from its own habitat to another place. The deity was the essential essence of the local soil and could not be detached from It. Thus everywhere there was worship offered to these gods on the basis of their perfect equality. This was not henotheism, for over and above this local deity who could control the visible world of matter was Heaven, Supreme Ruler of the Invisible forces of nature.

Worship of nature among the ancient Chinese was national, tribal and local; at the present time it remains national and local. The great national centre is the Temple of Agriculture in Peking, which is a large enclosure on the west side of the street opposite to the Temple of Heaven. Here in the spring