Page:Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China.djvu/346

338 TWENTIETH CENTURY IMPRESSIONS OF HONGKONG, SHANGHAI, ETC. Justice, his praise "flew in songs through the land."

He proved the efficacy of the doctrines taught by the ancient kings to work an entire transformation in the manners of the people. Of his literary labours, after his retirement from office, the verdict of posterity is that they are invaluable. They were directed to the collocation and arrangement of the works which now form the "King," being the second portion of the Chinese canonical scriptures.

The one original work of Confucius, called the "Spring and Autumn," with reference probably to the succession of the seasons, is a chronicle of his native state. Its purpose is to make the facts of history the means of conveying principles and truths — which his countrymen in each succeeding age have agreed to call inspired.

Confucius died in 479 B.C. ; and it was not until three hundred years afterwards that there was any imperial recognition of his transcendent character and services. From the time that the founder of the Han dynasty offered sacrifice at his tomb, Confucius has held a unique place in the veneration alike of rulers and people. Temples to " The Saint," the "Chief Doctor," the "Great Master," are in all provincial, prefectoral and district cities ; before his tablet the youth of the nation tow in schools and colleges ; and most Chinese of every sort and condition are wont to associate the religious faith which they have received with belief in Confucius.

Yet Confucius founded no religion ; he was, he declared, a transmitter, not a maker. There had come to him
 * "Legends of the saint and sage,
 * And tales that have the rime of age,
 * And chronicles of eld."

In these lay the moral and religious nuclei which were to become the " power centres of a system." These he may be said to have rediscovered and to have set in their proper relations. He collocated with a view to moral and religious sanctions in common life. The result is a system, not of theology but of morals. It should be added that the instructor of emperors and kings expressly refrained from treating those subjects which lie within the special domain of the King of all Sciences.

A Confucian China means a conservative China. To eradicate from the body politic vices that have grown with its growth, and strengthened with its strength, was a grand aim of the system. To accomplish this, ancient customs and practices must be restored in their primitive purity. This idea, blending with those of entire subordination and the utmost attention to family, social and civic usages commended the sage's teachings to the rulers. For the rest, insistence on the supremacy of parental authority and, all that is implied therein will account, perhaps more than aught else, for the enduring vitality of the great national tree of religion, "whose antique root peeps nut" from a mass of habits and observances that have grown up under the tree's wide-spreading branches, and in its grateful shade.

Turning our attention to in China as illustrated by a second "plant of stately form," standing side by side with Confucianism, so that branches intermingle and roots intertwine, we find ourselves looking at a tree that is not native to the soil.

Transplanted to China in the second century B.C., at which time there was already an extensive overland trade carried on between East and West, it found congenial conditions in which it soon flourished amain. The oft-told story of its first planting has not lost its charm, whether as myth or fact, Ming Tai (94 A.D.), the seventeenth emperor of the great dynasty of Han, had heard of the coming of the Prince of Peace, for whose advent the world had waited long, and ambassadors were despatched from China westwards to learn tidings. These fell in with votaries of Buddha and embraced their faith. Buddhist priests returned with the ambassadors to China, and Buddhism became established as one of the religions of the country. Decades have passed since Dr. Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to the empire, wrote concerning the religion of Buddha in China: "It is decried by the learned, laughed at by the profligate, and yet followed." The observation holds good to-day with a difference. The movements of the new time have been more unfavourable to this than to other ancient faiths of the people, and disintegrating processes have wrought more effectually in loosening its hold on the popular mind.

The spread of enlightenment has meant the diffusion of ideas subversive of grosser forms of idolatry which, in the course of centuries, had become accretions of Buddhism in China.

Shrines are less frequented and revenue has become more and more restricted to the endowments of temples and monasteries. These latter buildings have become objects of desire to leading promoters of the new education. Numerous, in most provinces, with surpassing advantages of situation in relation to centres of population, of extensive dimensions, and suitable in structure, it is not to be wondered at that proposals to appropriate Buddist temples and monasteries for the purposes of the new learning met with large favour in high places. There seems little doubt that a policy of confiscation, now begun, will be made thorough, for Buddhism, though a factor in the religion of most Chinese, is not a force so potent that it can resist official aggression, or inspire its votaries to any united or organised endeavour for its conservation as part of a national creed.

Of the years that lie between the two points of time thus marked as the date of the entry of Buddhism into China, and our twentieth century impressions of its corruptions, decay, and impending sacrifice to the demands of the new time, we cannot write articularly. Attention should, however, be called to certain peculiarly attractive and instructive phases of its history as one of China's religions.

To realise the power that Buddhism once had over the minds and hearts of its adherents among the Chinese let it suffice to refer to the best known pilgrimages to its holy land. Among these the story of Fa Hien, translated by Rennisat, Beale, and Legge, may be cited. Here is seen the pious outgoings, the devout aspirations of the pure soul directed to things not akin to the "dust of this world," and the self-subjugation and self-abandonment that are possible only when the heart is inflamed, and the whole nature enlightened by the presence of a great truth that wholly possesses the soul. In Fa Hien's time, 399 A.D., and for seven centuries in all, Buddhists from India " came and went in a ceaseless stream."

At other periods it was under a ban, as in the middle of the ninth century A.D., when wellnigh fifty thousand monasteries and smaller shrines were destroyed, and about two hundred and fifty thousand inmates, male and female, had to find a way back into lay society.

It is still true that, throughout the land, Buddhism is the religion most in evidence. Its temples and pagodas stand among the fairest scenes, compelling the admiration of travellers on the inland waterways. On the upper slopes of mountains at commanding view-points, or by belts of charming woodland in the valleys, are the temples and altars of this religion. In the cities and towns its shrines are the most frequented, and its priests are constantly met with in contact with the people.

It became what it was to the Chinese, and what it might have continued to be, by processes of selection in the sphere of dogma and worship. Its leading doctrines changed their significance. The essential features of Guatama's teaching were discarded. China, in accepting Buddhism, held to its belief in a supreme God and in many lesser deities, good and evil. As an example, it may be noticed that in South China, and probably throughout the empire, every Buddhist temple has its shrine to Kwan Yin, concerning whom the story is told that she had merited Nirvana and was about entering heaven, when she was drawn back to earth again from the very threshold by the thought of the woes and miseries of men. Heaven was not for her until she had seen the sin-stricken and toil-worn sons of earth safely gathered there.

Buddhism, like Confucianism, is an example of the law of survivals. The chief strength of its creed lay, however, for the Chinese in its borrowed elements.

In his fine fragment, " Hyperion," Keats lays down a law which is ever in operation —
 * " First in beauty should be first in might."

Nothing noble in religious faiths is allowed to die. The " noble blends with noble things," and it thus serves to awaken in many that restless, unsatisfied longing which is met by a response of the soul to the highest truth in the revelation of the Son of God.

Taoism is a third tree of religion that has retained some of its earlier vitality, though it has long been marked by signs of decay, tending to downfall. Laotzv, its founder, was born half a century before Confucius. A probable, certainly a credible, part of his life-story is that he held the high office of keeper of the archives at the imperial court of the Chan dynasty. The leading doctrine taught by Laotzv, the venerable philosopher was that of abstraction from worldly cares. His chief speculations were concerning reason and virtue. There is a tradition that Confucius obtained an interview with the unorthodox teacher, but could find nothing to profit in his bold flight of imagination, "soaring like the dragon above the clouds of heaven."

On retiring from office, and whilst in the act of leaving his native state, Laotzv was prevailed upon to write the " Canon of Reason and Virtue," a short treatise containing rather more than five thousand words. This book has long been one of the chief puzzles of translators, and the mass of lore written for its elucidation has not sufficed to make clear some of the more abstruse utterances of its author.

A key to the part understanding of the To Tok King on the transcendal side is found in the following comprehensive definition of the Tao by a modern European writer : — Tao is "I.— The Absolute, the totality of being and things. 2.— The phenomenal world and