Sidelights on Chinese Life Part 15

_To face p. 208._]

Now, it is evident that at an early stage in human thought, the idea of men and women suffering such terrible torments in the prison-houses of the under world touched men with infinite compa.s.sion, and a new doctrine was conceived that was intended to mitigate the horrors connected with the retribution for wrong-doing. This was the famous theory of metempsychosis, which has permeated the whole of the East, and has made a permanent impression upon every one of the native religions.

Metempsychosis, as it is understood in China, declares that every adult sixteen years after entering the Land of Shadows is allowed to depart to be born again into some position on earth. There is a general release to every one, good, bad, and indifferent, and once more they may return to the upper world and be relieved from the pain and gloom of that sunless realm.

But even in this great act of mercy the ideas with regard to retribution for evil and reward for virtue are sedulously maintained. The bad man who is let out of the hideous prison in which he has been confined is not to be allowed to escape the consequences of his previous vicious life. He is allowed to return to the world again, but he will appear perhaps in the shape of a pig or a dog, or some other of the lower animals.

It is for this reason that the Buddhists are so opposed to the taking of animal life. The animal upon whose flesh they are feeding may have been when he lived before on the earth a notorious criminal, who for his iniquities has been degraded by being transformed into, say, a buffalo.

Wrong-doing is a serious matter, and though released from the pains of h.e.l.l and allowed back again to earth, the criminal must pay the penalty in the debased condition in which he is allowed to live once more amongst men. A c.o.c.k that is waking the morn with his shrill and defiant cries may have been a man that a few years ago lived in another part of the Empire, and who for his wickedness has been condemned to take the shape of the animal whose voice fills the barnyard with its echoes. It may take a good many births before these two individuals shall have expiated the crimes they committed, and shall be allowed again the dignity of appearing amongst mankind on earth.

Even in regard to the criminals who are undergoing the extreme tortures that the King of the Land of Shadows knows how to inflict, the thought of mercy comes in to break upon the monotony of their suffering. Every year for the whole of August their prison doors are opened and their chains and fetters are unloosed, the great entrance to the upper world is thrown wide open, and they are allowed their freedom to wander once more at their own will wherever they like throughout the whole of the Chinese Empire. So firmly is this belief held by the people of this country, that during the whole of their seventh month in every town and city and almost every village in China, tables are spread out in the open with every ordinary luxury that usually appeals to the Chinese tastes. There are roast chickens and ducks, and ducks' eggs, and a variety of savoury vegetables, delicately cooked and browned, so that the very look of them makes the mouth water. These are left for hours where only the blue sky looks down upon them, and the hungry spirits that have been famished in their prison-houses tearing up and down, with invisible forms, through the air, feast and feast again upon the good things that the benevolent have spread out for their use.

The Buddhist Church has devised a system by which it can give deliverance to the imprisoned souls without waiting for the seventh moon. They have invented a service which is called "The breaking open the prison doors,"

and consists of chanting certain rituals, and going through a lot of mummery, as the result of which the person for whom the service is performed suddenly finds the torturer stay his hand, the saw that had been ruthlessly grinding through his limbs gently and tenderly removed from his body, and with a polite bow he is ushered through the prison gates into the Shadowy Land outside to wander at his own free will, until the sixteen years are up, and he is reborn again into the world in that particular shape that the King may think that he deserves.

This process is a very expensive one and brings in a considerable revenue to the Church, especially when the person who is incarcerated has wealthy relatives on earth. This service reminds one of the practice of which Roman Catholic priests were accused at the time of the Reformation,--of professing, for a consideration, to lighten the pains and sorrows of those in purgatory, which was one of the princ.i.p.al abuses denounced by the Reformers in Germany in the sixteenth century, and has actually been said to have been borrowed from the Buddhists.

With regard to the men who have lived the average life, or who have distinguished themselves for their n.o.bility of character in their previous state of existence, the King sees that they shall be properly rewarded when they pa.s.s away from under his jurisdiction. Some of the more noted are born to be kings or mandarins, or men with lofty t.i.tles that shall bring them great honours and emoluments. Others, again, become sages or statesmen and famous literary characters, whose writings will influence a nation for many generations. The ordinary rank and file compose the usual members of society that one finds throughout the towns and villages of the Empire, and who are the steady law-abiding citizens upon whom the Government mainly depends for the preservation of law and order.

The usual time of sixteen years that the popular theory gives before a person is again reincarnated into the world may in special circ.u.mstances be very considerably shortened. A man or woman, for example, enters the Land of Shadows with a first-cla.s.s reputation. In some mysterious way the King knows his whole history and is prepared to treat him liberally. After watching his conduct for some time, and marking that he still continues to exhibit the same admirable features that made him a power before he died, he hastens on his rebirth, considering what a loss society in the upper world would suffer from his absence. He is therefore sent back into the world, but never into the same locality from which he originally came. The recollection, moreover, of the scenes and sights and strange mysterious experiences that he pa.s.ses through in that gloomy, sunless land are all blotted out from his memory. No story is ever told of that life by any one of the countless millions that have come under the sway of "Yam-lo," the Yama of the Hindoos and the mighty King of Hades, and though men have implicit faith in the myth that the Buddhist Church has propagated, never in the history of the past has any one hinted at any personal experience that he has pa.s.sed through in any of the many periods in which he must have been a dweller in the land of gloom and twilight.

There is, indeed, the story of an adventure connected with the Shadowy Land that puts one in mind of the Greek hero, who went down to Tartarus in search of his beloved wife who had been torn from him by death, but it appears in a book of fairy tales, and as the writer was a man of a romantic turn of mind no one is inclined to take his statement as sober history.

The story describes how a certain young man had become enamoured of a certain damsel who had bewitched him with her black eyes and her fascinating manners. He had seen her one day as she pa.s.sed along the street with some girl friends, and he had been so entranced with her beauty, that he had fallen desperately in love with her. So fully had he made up his mind that he could never dream of ever having any one else for his wife, that he was making arrangements to engage a middle-woman to discuss the question of marriage, when he was told that the girl had been taken suddenly very ill, and in a few hours she had died.

The news distressed him beyond measure and almost broke his heart.

Pondering over his great sorrow he determined that he would descend into the Dark World and try and discover in what part of China the woman that he had fallen in love with would appear when "Yam-lo" decided to let her return again to earth. With the licence of the romancer, the writer of the fiction declared that he successfully accomplished his purpose, and that the dread King, touched by the devotion he had shown, not only shortened the time of residence of the girl within his dominions, but also managed in some way or other to let him see the "Book of Life and Death," where the exact date of her rebirth was recorded and the locality where she was to reside. The lover returned to earth, though the writer does not explain how he could do that without a rebirth, which would have obliterated all knowledge of the past, and would have quenched his pa.s.sion for the girl.

At any rate, he leaves the Land of Shadows, and, guided by the information he had obtained there, he proceeds directly to the new home into which she has been born, and after various adventures that belong to the region of fancy and romance she becomes his wife.

No sober writer has ever dared to suggest that the men and women who have travelled into the unknown and mysterious land where perpetual shadows rest, and where the gloomy torture chambers for the unrepentant criminals and transgressors of this world are to be found, ever whisper the secret of what they have seen when they are once more born again into the world.

The mystery has been well preserved by the ages, and the Buddhist Church has discreetly kept its own counsel about a matter that every one longs to penetrate, but which countless mult.i.tudes for a thousand generations have with absolute unanimity refused to say one word about.

This is all the more remarkable because there is a most pa.s.sionate desire amongst the living to find out what the inhabitants of the gloomy land are doing, and there is a cla.s.s of women who get their living by professing to be able to penetrate the mystery and describe what is going on there.

These persons resemble very much the Witch of Endor, who is recorded to have called forth the prophet Samuel from the invisible world to predict the calamity that was going to fall upon King Saul in the battle to take place on the morrow.

These women are utterly illiterate, and belong to what may be called the lower middle cla.s.s of society. They are shrewd and clever, and have a rough persuasive manner with them that commands the belief of the less intelligent women that resort to them to learn about the relatives and friends that have been removed by death. There is the most profound faith in their utterances, for though they do make mistakes and say things about the deceased that are contrary to fact, they so often hit upon real facts that the inquirer, astonished that they should know something that was supposed to be a family secret, at once jumps to the conclusion that they must certainly be inspired by the spirits.

Some of the more famous of these witches are constantly being resorted to by sorrowing relatives, so that they make a very comfortable living, whilst a few lay by money and in time become quite wealthy. But I will here describe one or two cases that have come under my own knowledge as having actually occurred. A lady in respectable society had lost her daughter, who was eighteen years of age. Both the girl and her mother were devotedly attached to each other. The latter, anxious to know how the loved one was faring in the dark country where no sun or moon or stars ever shone, called in a witch that she might describe to her the condition of her daughter.

The witch having seated herself, the ancestral tablet that was believed to contain the spirit of the dead maiden was placed upon a high table and several sticks of incense were burned in front of it. The mother then in a loud, clear voice called out the name of her daughter, her age, and the date on which she had died, and she entreated her to come and reply to the questions that the witch was now going to put to her.

The woman, who had been sitting with a stern and stolid looking face as though wrapped in spiritual meditation, now addressed the girl who it was believed had obeyed the summons of the mother. "Is your name Pearl?"

"Yes." "Did you die on such a date and were you eighteen years of age then?" These questions are asked in order to identify her, and to prevent her from being confused with any other vagrant spirit that might have wandered here in order to play a trick upon her.

"Now tell me," the witch continues, "how are you in the world of darkness, and whether you are happy in your life there." "Oh! I am pretty well," is the answer that comes at once in reply to these questions, "but I cannot say that I am very happy. I am continually thinking of how distressed my mother is at my death. I know that she is thinking of me morning, noon and night, and that her heart is full of sorrow because she feels that she will never see me again. With regard to my condition in this gloomy land, it is not all that I could wish, but it is on the whole bearable. I am living in the house that mother had made for me and that was burned at my grave, so that in that respect I have nothing to complain of."

The question of what friends she has made, is answered by the statement that she lives very much alone and that she knows hardly any one, but that her father, who came into the Land of Shadows some time before her, occasionally visits her, though, singular to say, she makes no suggestion about planning to live with him. It would seem from the popular, though somewhat vague ideas on this subject, that relatives keep strictly apart from each other in that mysterious country, and though they do now and again come and see each other, the intimate relationships that they sustained with one another whilst they were on earth are almost entirely broken off in that other country.

Another very important question was now put to her, viz. "Do you find that your grave is dry or wet?" and she at once replied that she has been quite satisfied as far as that is concerned, for that her mother has evidently taken great pains that the rain or running streams from the higher ground above it shall not flow in upon it. It would seem that the Chinese hold that in some mysterious way the condition of the dead is very largely affected by the wetness or dryness of the grave in which they have been buried. This explains the extreme care with which they select the spots in which to lay their friends that have departed this life.

There is a cla.s.s of men called geomancers, who get their living by giving their professional opinion as to the suitability or otherwise of plots of land that people have in view to use as graves. There are certain conditions that these must fulfil, or else they will be rejected. One of these is that they must be dry. This specially the case in the South of China, where a wet piece of land would attract the white ants, and in a very short s.p.a.ce of time the coffin would be eaten up by them, and worms and noxious insects would then have free access to the body.

But, independent of this disastrous result, damp seems to be a potent factor that affects the happiness of the departed, which not only renders their life more miserable in the other world, but which also induces them in revenge for the want of care of the living to send all kinds of misfortunes upon the homes they have left.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CEMETERIES.

_To face p. 216._]

The mother at this stage asked the witch to describe what her daughter looks like. Taking a black cloth which is usually one of her paraphernalia, she puts it on her head, letting it droop down over the face, and getting into an a.s.sumed kind of trance, she begins in a slow and solemn chant to describe the scenes that she pretends she sees in the Land of Shadows. "The country that lies before me," she says, "is a gloomy one, and there is no sun to be seen. Shadows lie everywhere, and an air of depression rests upon the hills and on the plains that stretch before my vision. I see men and women pa.s.sing up and down the roads, but they all look like spectres, for there is no laughter on their faces, and no signs of joy about them. They seem to be oppressed with a sense of their desolate condition. But wait! here is the figure of a young girl standing by a bridge looking into the sullen stream that is flowing rapidly and with scarcely a sound underneath it. She is about eighteen years of age, and though her face is pale and has caught the colour of the land in which she lives, she does not seem to be in bad health. Her house, which is on the bank of the river, is a very pleasant one and has a courtyard, a guest-room, and a bedroom. She has a pleasant face, and one that could be very sunny did she not live in so gloomy a country. She has a spray of jessamine in her hair, and her dress is put on with exquisite taste." "Ah!

that is my daughter indeed," exclaims the mother. "Jessamine was her favourite flower, and she was always so neat about her person, and had such fine taste about her dresses," and here, overcome with the sad thoughts that filled her heart, her tears began to flow and she sobbed forth the bitterness of her heart in words of anguish and despair.

This was the end of the witch's visions, and having received her fee of about twopence, she went off with a smiling face to explore the mysteries of the Land of Shadows for the benefit of other sorrowing ones whose sight could only reach to the scenes and people of this world.

Many of the scenes in which these second-sighted women engage are really most interesting, and supposing for the moment that the pictures described are inventions of their own--which, of course, they indignantly deny--they usually manage to import into them a fine sense of poetical justice that one would hardly expect from minds so illiterate and so untutored as they always possess.

On one occasion a wealthy man invited one of these women to his home to call up a vision of his father, who had died a few months before. It will make the story more plain by explaining that the old man had been a mandarin, who had been notorious everywhere wherever he had held office for his avaricious, grasping disposition. His ability to accept bribes was immense, and no case came before him but was finally decided not on its own merits, but by the amount that either the prosecutor or the defendant was able to give him.

When he died he had a grand funeral, and houses and wives and concubines, and male and female slaves, fashioned at great expense in paper, were burned at the grave, which by some mysterious and unexplained way were to follow him into the Land of Shadows, where he could set up house on the same princely scale that he had been accustomed to on earth. Nothing had been neglected that money could purchase to make his life in the Dark World as thorough a success as it was possible to ensure, for in addition to a complete suite of furniture and kitchen utensils, and the providing even of a dog to guard the house from robbers, immense quant.i.ties of ingots of gold and silver, and piles of dollars and copper, all in paper, were dispatched by a fiery way into the land of gloom to prevent him from suffering any hardships that money could prevent.

It was felt in his late home that everything had been done that religion or money could suggest, for not only had every convenience for living a high-cla.s.s life been lavishly provided, in paper, but Buddhist priests had been engaged to perform the most elaborate services to deliver him from the pains and sufferings of the infernal prisons, in case Yam-lo should have decided to have him imprisoned in one of them. These last had cost them thousands of dollars, which they had willingly spent, however, since they had been solemnly a.s.sured by the priests that their relative had been safely delivered from the horrors of the gaol in which he had been confined.

The witch having arrived, the ancestral tablets of the deceased mandarin, elaborately carved and chased with gold, were placed on a magnificent black wood table. Incense sticks were then lighted, and the usual questions identifying the spirit were asked and satisfactorily settled.

This preliminary is a very essential one, for it has often been discovered that the inhabitants of the Land of Shadows retain many of the peculiarities of character that they had in the land of the living, and the witches are frequently taken in by vagrant spirits, who a.s.sume the name of others in order to obtain the offerings that are being presented to their friends in the other world.

The witch being satisfied that the spirit of the dead mandarin was really in the tablet before her, asked him if he was happy in the dark land, when it burst out into sorrowful complaints about the utter wretchedness of the life he was leading. Yam-lo, because of his exactions and disregard of the claims of justice when he was a ruler, had condemned him for his sins to be a chair-bearer, and his days were now spent in the severest toil, and at night he was tortured with cold, for he had not enough clothes to put on to keep out the damp air that struck a chill into his very bones.

"But did you not receive the mansion I burned for you," broke out the son in an excited tone, "and the servants, and the thousands of gold and silver, that would have enriched you until you were released from that terrible land by being born again into the world of men?" "I have received nothing of all the offerings you made me," the father replied, "for Yam-lo intercepted them, because my life had been such a bad one, and he declared that I deserved to suffer misery and degradation; and so I am working as a chair coolie, bearing hardships and sorrow every day of my life."

"And is there nothing we can do for you?" asked the son. "Yes, there is one thing that will be of great service to me, in my present miserable condition. Buy two hundred pairs of straw sandals, such as chair-bearers wear, and send them to me at once; also a few rain hats to keep me from the wet. My feet are cut and lacerated with the rough roads, and I am continually wet through with the rain that seems to be always falling in this gloomy land, so that my life is one continued misery." With the promise that these things would be burned and sent to him, the _seance_ ended, and the family were left to mourn the sufferings of the man who had brought upon himself such a terrible fate through his pa.s.sion for money, and because he had wished to enrich his family so that they should not know what want was after he had been taken away from them.

As might have been expected, there is a great diversity of opinion with regard to the dwellers in the Land of Shadows. Some hold that relatives do not know each other there, whilst even those who dispute this theory still believe that whilst they may visit each other occasionally, they never dream of reuniting the scattered members of a family and living together as they used to do before death divided them.

The general theory that after the lapse of sixteen years men and women are released and allowed to return to earth is subject to a good many modifications. A person of high moral character, for example, and one who has gained the approbation of the stern and inflexible Yam-lo by uprightness of life, is sent back many years sooner than the allotted time. Young boys and girls, unless they have developed decidedly vicious tendencies, are dismissed after a very short probation, to begin again the experiment of life that had been so rudely interrupted by the cruel enemy of our race.

It is a remarkable fact that there are no babies in that gloomy under world, for never having done any wrong against society, no sooner do they die than Yam-lo sends them back to life to begin once more their struggle with evil, by which their characters are to be developed, and, after a number of births, they may become the teachers and the sages of future generations.

This doctrine of metempsychosis has its fascination for a good many people, for where the future would otherwise be a dark, mysterious thing, with no ray of light to break the solemn darkness that broods over it, this breaks its awful monotony and gives men hope of escape from its mystery and power. A colonel was one day haranguing his soldiers just as they were about to engage the enemy. With the natural timidity of the Chinese soldier, they showed symptoms of alarm, and he was afraid that, carried away by their fears, they would incontinently bolt with the first sound of the bullets flying about their ears. What motive could he bring before them to induce them bravely to meet death? He could not appeal to their love of their country, for that does not exist in the hearts either of the common people or in the army. Neither could he bring forward high and lofty incentives from their religion, for though of a deeply religious nature, there is not a single system of belief in China for which any one, man or woman, would be willing to lay down their lives.

Looking at them with steadfast gaze, he said, "Soldiers, let me exhort you to be courageous in the presence of the foe to-day. You are better men than they are, and if you only stand firm they will fly in terror before you. Do not be afraid to die, for though you fall during the fight, remember that in sixteen years hence you will be men once more on earth, and for your valour Yam-lo may send you back to high positions in your country's service."

A poor incentive this to induce men to risk their lives on the battlefield, but it was the highest that this officer could think of, for the shout of "King and country" would have failed to inspire them, and idolatry produces no enthusiasm to raise a war cry at the sound of which death would cease to have any terrors.

One day a poor woman was bending over her baby that lay dead upon the bed.

The home was wretched and forlorn and showed signs of the greatest poverty. There was not a single comfort in it, and to add to its utter desolateness death had come and taken away the little joy that filled the mother's heart. Never had the house seemed so dreary as to-day, for the smile that used to fill her heart with sunlight and the childish voice that had thrilled her soul with the sweetest music, both had died out in the solemn stillness and silence of a sleep that would never know an awakening. "Oh, my dear little one!" said the heartbroken mother. "I shall never see you more, and your sweet laugh will never again fill me with gladness. Your life has been a short one, and very little happiness in it, for we are so poor that we could not give you the comforts I should have liked. And now my hope is that when you are born into the world once more, it will be into a family where they will be rich enough to give you every luxury, and where you will grow up to be a great scholar; and though I shall never see you, or be able to share in your good fortune, still as long as I live my thoughts will go out to you, where in some unknown part of China you will be living a happier life than you were able to do with me."

The whole conception of the Land of Shadows and of the doctrine of metempsychosis are a most pathetic attempt to penetrate the profound mystery that lies about death and the unknown future. Where no revelation from G.o.d has reached men on these two profound and mysterious subjects, they are bound to fashion out for themselves some theory that will be an attempt at least to solve some of the perplexities that the heart can never get rid of until some light has been thrown upon them. The Chinese theories are oftentimes vague and contradictory, and when they are put to the touch of logic, they fail utterly before its tests. They are as brave an effort, however, as has ever been made by any heathen people to construct a system that shall try and satisfy the cravings of the human heart about the unknown. They are profoundly human, and an exalted vein of righteousness runs throughout them. There is no paltering with evil, and no elevation of vice or impurity, and even their ideal ruler of the Land of Shadows, stern and severe as he is represented to be, can always unbend before the exhibition of goodness in any of the spirits under his control.