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$Title{History Of Religions
Chapter I: Part I}
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$Author{Foot Moore, George}
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$Subject{heaven
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$Date{1913}
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Title:       History Of Religions
Book:        Religions Of China
Author:      Foot Moore, George
Date:        1913

Chapter I: Part I

The Religion Of The State

     Origins - Canonical Books - Nature Worship - Divination - Ancestor
Worship - Modern Cultus - Veneration of Confucius - Religious Ideas - The Gods
- Heaven and the Moral Order - The State - Heaven and the Life of the
Individual - Moral Obligations - Ceremoniousness and Reverence.

     The scene of the mythical history of the primitive Chinese is in the
north-western corner of China proper, in the present provinces of Kan-su and
Shen-si.  Thence the progenitors of the dominant race pushed eastward along
the line of the Yellow River (Hoang-ho), and spread out in its basin (Shan-si,
Shan-tung, Ho-nan) to the sea, gradually reaching south to the valley of the
Yang-tse Kiang, which was, even under the Chou dynasty, the extreme south of
the empire.  The myths of the origins of Chinese civilisation in the Shuking
carry its development along with this expansion, and the provinces named above
are the stage of the legendary history of the early dynasties.  There is no
hint of an antecedent migration from Mongolia or Tibet.  So far as tradition
knows the people was native in its earliest seats and its culture was
autochthonous; and, notwithstanding the attempts that have been made to
connect this civilisation with that of Egypt or Babylonia, Western scholars
generally concur on the latter point with the Chinese.

     The country which in the course of centuries they made their own was not
an uninhabited wilderness.  The classical texts in their accounts of
historical times as well as of the prehistoric ages have much to say about
barbarous tribes in all quarters, whom they qualify by such designations as
"big bowmen," "dogs by the fire," "huddled vermin." These barbarians do not
seem to have presented any serious obstacle to the Chinese occupation, and
they certainly made no contribution to Chinese civilisation.

     Chinese history presents a long array of dynasties, ascending to remote
antiquity, accompanied by a precise chronology which, leaving Fu-hi and
Shen-nung out of the reckoning, brings the first "historical" emperor,
Huang-ti, to the throne in 2704 B.C.  These dates were, however, computed
under the Han dynasty (206 B.C. - 8 A.D.); another system, considerably
shorter, is found in the "Bamboo Books," according to which Huang-ti acceded
in 2491 B. C.  The attempt to find a fixed point in an eclipse mentioned in
the Shu-king in the reign of Chung-k'ang has not led to any assured results;
the first astronomically ascertained date is the year 776 B.C.  The historian
Sze-ma Ts'ien (ca. 163-85 B.C.) does not undertake to give an exact chronology
before 841 B.C., with which year the second period in the history of the Chou
dynasty begins.

     The traditional dates of the early dynasties to which we shall have
frequent occasion to refer below are as follows: Hia, 2205-1766 B.C., Shang,
1766-1122; Chou, 1122-841, 841-249; (interregnum, 249-221); Ts'in, 220-206;
Western Han, 206 B.C. - 8 A.D.; Eastern Han, 25-220 A.D. ^1

[Footnote 1: These dates are taken from Arendt, "Synchronistische
Regententabellen zur Geschichte der Chinesischen Dynastien," in Mitteilungen
des Seminars fur orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin, Jahrgange, II-IV.]

     In China certain books have for many centuries been accepted as
regulative in religion, morals, and government.  They are not regarded as
revealed or inspired: their authority is due solely to the prescription of
antiquity or to the wisdom and virtue of their reputed authors; but no
professed revelation has exerted a more absolute supremacy over the minds of
men or more completely dominated a whole civilisation.  These books are the
five Canonical Books (King) and the four Classics (Shu. ^1) The Canonical
Books are the Shu-king, or Book of Historical Documents; the Shi-king, or Book
of Poetry; the Yih-king, or Book of Permutations (a manual of divination, in
whose unintelligible oracles speculation has discovered occult philosophy);
the Li-ki, or Rites and Ceremonies; and Ch'un-ts'iu (Spring and Autumn), a
meagre chronicle of the principality of Lu from 722 to 481 B. C.  The four
Classics are the Lun-yu, Conversations of Confucius (Legge, "Confucian
Analects"); the Ta-hioh, or the Great Teaching; the Chung-yung, or Doctrine of
the Mean; and Meng-tsze, the teaching of the philosopher Mencius.

[Footnote 1: The enumeration and classification is comparatively modern,
perhaps from the time of the Sung dynasty (960-1127 A. D.).]

     All these books are associated in one way or another with the name of
Confucius (551-478 B. C.).  He is commonly regarded as the compiler of the
first four Canonical Books and the author of the fifth; the Analects are a
collection of his sayings, chiefly in intercourse with his disciples; the
Great Teaching and the Doctrine of the Mean are attributed to disciples of the
sage or to his grandson; Mencius (372-289 B. C.) is the greatest of his
successors.  Criticism - native as well as foreign - demands some
qualifications of this comprehensive attribution, but does not impugn the
right of this whole literature to be called in a general sense Confucian.

     The emperor Shi-huang-ti (246-210 B. C.), who in 220, after long years of
war, brought all China under one rule and erected on the ruins of the anarchic
feudalism that had prevailed for centuries a firmly centralised empire,
recognising in the veneration for the past fostered by the Confucian
literature a grave peril to the new order of things which he had established,
and being convinced that nothing short of extirpation would avail, issued in
213, an edict ordering that the official chronicles of the states, except
those of his own country, Ts'in, should be destroyed; all copies of the
Shu-king and the Shi-king in the hands of private scholars were to be burned
within thirty days; to possess these books, or even to talk about them with
other scholars, was forbidden under penalty of death. The only writings
exempted by this decree were works on medicine, divination (to which class the
Yih-king belongs), and agriculture. ^1 The persecution, though severe, was not
long continued; the emperor died in 210, and his short-lived dynasty fell in
206.  Under the following dynasty, scholars set themselves with all diligence
to recover the treasures of antiquity, which had acquired an enhanced value
from the effort to annihilate them.  The existing texts of the ancient books
proceed from this restoration and recension by the scholars of the earlier Han
period (206 B. C. - 8 A. D.).  The Li-ki was compiled in the same age from
various memoirs on rites and customs, chiefly representing the usages of the
Chou dynasty (1122-249 B. C.).  From that time on these writings have
possessed canonical character; in particular the Confucian teachings have
enjoyed an authority which had not before been universally conceded to them.

[Footnote 1: The text of the decree may be found in Legge, Life and Teachings
of Confucius, pp. 7-9: Scholars do not learn what belongs to the present day,
but study antiquity.  They proceed to condemn the present time, leading the
masses of the people astray and into disorder.]

     The religion of China may be summarily defined as a union of nature
worship and ancestor worship.  At the most remote time of which any record is
preserved it appears fully systematised and regulated, and its character has
remained substantially unchanged to the present day.  Worship is offered to
heaven; to the heavenly bodies, and to the weathergods - cloud, rain, wind,
and thunder; to the regents of the seasons; to earth; to mountains, rivers,
and seas; to the spirits of the soil and the crops; to the tutelary deities of
the empire and its subdivisions and of cities and towns; to the spirits of
former sovereigns, statesmen, and sages, the inventors of the arts of
civilisation (including the first matchmaker), the patrons of various
industries, and to the penates of the household.

     All these powers are conceived as spirits.  They are classified as
celestial, terrestrial, or human, but this distinction of sphere does not
imply a difference of kind.  The relative rank of the spirits is defined in a
kind of table of precedence patterned after the organisation of the feudal
monarchy.  At the head stands Heaven, the Supreme Emperor, followed by Earth,
with the titles of a great feudatory prince.  The deceased emperors of the
reigning dynasty come next, outranking the sun and moon.

     The public cultus is a function of the state; the sacrifices, minutely
described in the liturgical works, are offered at stated seasons or on
particular occasions by persons of suitable rank in the government; there is
no other priesthood.  Worship is performed for the people, not by them. Only
at the sacrifices at the village altar to the local spirit of the soil is the
presence of representatives of each family presumed, and at the clan sacrifice
to the spirit of their own fields.  The worship of the family ancestors
constitutes the private religion of all classes.  Besides the offerings to the
manes, the common people had by law but one sacrifice; some reared their altar
to the guardian of the door, others to the guardian of the cooking furnace.

     The emperor, the Son of Heaven, is the religious head of the nation, and
the worship of powers on which the welfare of the whole empire depends is his
exclusive prerogative; for a subject to sacrifice to Heaven was open
declaration of his purpose to seize the throne.  It is in the emperor's power
to enlarge the pantheon, to promote or reduce the spirits in rank, to
establish or abolish sacrifices, and revise the ritual.  If the spirits of the
soil and crops, after having received the proper offerings, allow floods or
drought, he can remove them and designate others in their place, exactly as he
removes princes who do not do their duty by the altars of these spirits.  The
inertia of ancient custom and the conservative force of antiquarian tradition
stood in the way of too free a use of these attributes of religious
sovereignty; yet in the course of time very considerable changes have been
made in the public cultus.

     According to the Li-ki, the emperor sacrificed to Heaven and Earth, to
all the famous mountains and great rivers, and to the spirits of the soil and
the crops of the whole empire; the vassal princes to the tutelary genius of
their region, to the spirits of the soil and crops of their states, and to the
mountains and rivers in their territory.  In the centralised monarchy the same
principle prevailed: the governors, prefects, and magistrates offered
sacrifices to the spirits of their provinces, departments, or districts.

     The ancient books do not often give detailed descriptions of the worship,
and the particulars which may be gathered from them represent the usage of
different periods, chiefly of the later centuries of the Chou dynasty.  The
general features are, however, sufficiently distinct.  The imperial sacrifices
to Heaven and Earth were offered in the southern and the northern suburbs of
the capital respectively.  When a new capital was laid out the locations were
determined by divination, and the altars were inaugurated by sacrifices.  The
stated annual sacrifices were at midsummer and midwinter.  The account of the
worship of Heaven in the Li-ki, ix, 2, 2, emphasises the simplicity of the
ancient ritual.

     At the great suburban sacrifice the Son of Heaven welcomed the arrival of
the longest day.  It was a great act of thanksgiving to Heaven, and the sun
was regarded for the occasion as the seat of the Spirit of Heaven.  The space
marked out was in the southern suburb, the place most open to the brightness
and warmth of the heavenly influence.  The sacrifice was offered on the
ground, which had been swept for the purpose, to mark the simplicity of the
ceremony.  The vessels used were of earthenware and gourds.  The victim was a
single red bull calf, "to show the estimation of simple sincerity" - not the
costliness of the victim, but the spirit of the worshippers is regarded.  The
road that the emperor was to traverse on his way from the palace to the suburb
was sprinkled and swept by the people, who also kept torches burning in the
fields near by.  The emperor, arrayed in ceremonial robes, rode from the
palace "in the plain carriage, because of its simplicity." The victim, which
had been kept in a clean stall for three months, was brought out, and, after
inspection, was killed with a knife to the handle of which bells were
attached, and burned on a blazing pile of wood.

     The great annual sacrifice was not the only occasion of worshipping
Heaven, nor was the capital the only place.  In the second summer month was
held the great summer sacrifice to the Supreme Emperor (Heaven) for rain. An
autumn sacrifice of a ram to the Supreme Emperor, and to King Wen, "associated
with Heaven," was offered in the Brilliant Hall.  When about to set out on a
tour of inspection, the emperor made a sacrifice with the usual forms to
Heaven, offered the I sacrifice at the altar of Earth, and the Shou sacrifice
in the fane of his father.  In an imperial progress to the four quarters of
the empire, Shun offered in each a burnt offering to Heaven, and sacrificed in
order to the hills and rivers.  Before setting out with his army to depose the
last Shang emperor, Wu offered special sacrifice to the Supreme Emperor,
presumably at his own residence.  The worship of Earth was performed in the
northern suburb of the capital, where a great mound was raised; the victim, a
young bull, was not burned but buried in the mound, being thus made over
directly to the Earth. Sacrifices to the sun were offered at an altar east of
the capital; to the moon, in a pit or hollow on the west.

     No worship appears in the canonical books so closely associated with the
worship of Heaven as that of the mountains and rivers.  It is repeatedly
recorded in the Shu-king that the emperor sacrificed to Heaven and to the
mountain and rivers.  It is believed that these control climatic influences -
both the physical climate and what may be called the spiritual climate, the
Feng-shui.  Especial mention is made of the four mountains, one in each
quarter of the empire: T'ai in the East, in the modern province of Shan-tung;
Hua in the West, in Shan-si; Heng in the South, in Hu-nan; and another Heng in
the North, in Chih-li.  Later a fifth was added to these famous mountains,
Mount Sung, in Ho-nan; and with the expansion of the empire four "frontier
mountains" in the new provinces were added. Under the late Manchu dynasty
fifteen mountains and hills, in three groups of five, had a place in the
imperial worship.  The four great rivers, upon which a large part of the
country depended for its prosperity, but whose devastating floods were a
constant menace, had a rank among the gods corresponding to their power for
weal or woe.  The four seas, which according to mythical geography bound the
earth, or, what is the same thing, the dominion of the Son of Heaven, follow
the great rivers in the sacrifice to the waters.  The princes of the states -
in later times the governors of the provinces - sacrificed to the mountains
and rivers within their territory.

     Of scarcely inferior importance was the worship of the spirits of the
soil and the crops.  The imperial altar to them stood under the open sky, "to
allow the influences of heaven and earth to have full development upon it," at
the right of the palace, while the ancestral temple was on the left.  In the
capital of each state there was an altar to the territorial spirit of the
soil, and the offering of sacrifice to these spirits was the highest religious
function of the ruling prince.  The villages had their altars to the local
spirit; while heads of clans offered to the spirit of their fields on the
altar in the court of their houses, "all recognised in it the source of their
prosperity." The season of this sacrifice was the second spring month.  In the
emperor's sacrifice three victims, a bull, a ram, and a boar were offered; the
princes offered only the last two.  A hymn supposed to have been used in an
autumnal thanksgiving to these spirits is preserved in the Shi-king.

     Another sacrifice having reference to the success of the tillage is that
to the Father of Husbandry, a mythical emperor of the remotest antiquity,
Shen-nung by name, who first taught men how to plough and plant; with him were
associated in worship the worthies who introduced the various kinds of grain,
and many others who in different ways had contributed to the development of
agriculture, such as the inventors of dikes and irrigating canals.

     An ancient agricultural ceremony fell in the first spring month, when the
emperor, attended by his ministers and high dignitaries, proceeded in state to
a field in the southern suburb, and there, with his own hand guiding the
plough, ran three furrows across the field; the ministers followed him,
turning up five or nine furrows according to their rank.  The object of this
ploughing, according to the texts, was to provide the materials for sacrifice,
on the principle that the worshipper should present only what he had raised or
made.  We should be inclined to connect the ceremony with the prince's
ploughing in India and elsewhere, the religious inauguration of the ploughing
season, and still more primitively a performance of magical efficacy.  As the
emperor thus not merely superintended the tillage of the country, but formally
participated in it, so the empress took part in the nurture of silk-worms, the
gathering of the cocoons, and the spinning and weaving of the silk from which
the sacrificial vestments were made.

     Mention must be made, finally, of the household sacrifices to the five
penates, offered, at different seasons of the year, by the emperor, the vassal
princes, and the highest officers, to the guardians of the door, the furnace,
the central court, the gate, and the path.  Common people, as we have seen,
had but one of these altars, making their choice between the first and second.

     The spirits which have a place in this nature worship are not all nature
spirits.  The regents of the seasons, for example, are kings or ministers of
mythical antiquity; the earth-god, Hou-tsi, is said to have been a scion of
the line of Kung-kung, who was able to reduce the nine provinces to order;
Shen-nung, who taught men how to grow cereals, was the genius of husbandry; in
summer, at the season of the imperial sacrifice to Heaven for rain, sacrifices
were offered throughout all the districts to the various princes, high
ministers, and officers who had benefited the people, with prayers that there
might be a good harvest of grain.  At the suburban sacrifice, the successive
dynasties designated some worthy of more remote antiquity as "the mate of
Heaven"; in the time of the Chou dynasty, for example, this position was held
by Chi, the progenitor of the house; under the late Manchu dynasty the five
predecessors of the reigning emperor were worshipped on the altars of Heaven
and Earth with equal honours.  The wise and good sovereign, indeed, in life
"forms a trinity" with Heaven and Earth, and stands side by side with
spiritual beings; "in power of his goodness he is their match, and his
benefits extend at once to all things"; he is the fellow, the equal of Heaven;
he employs the agencies of nature - the seasons which are produced by Heaven
and the sources of wealth which are produced by Earth - as well as those of
human society.  In Chinese philosophy as well as in Chinese religion man's
nature is not separated by impassable limitations of kind or degree from that
of the other intelligent forces at work in the world, nor is he the least
among them.  The deification of great men is not, therefore, to the Chinese
mind what it appears to us, elevation to another kind of being.  It is to be
observed also that the spirits of men become tutelary divinities of families,
cities, provinces, or of the whole empire, or the patron divinities of arts or
occupations in which they excelled in their lifetime, thus continuing in the
spirit state their former functions.

     The religion of China had no oracles, but divination was resorted to on
all occasions - the designation of ministers, the selection of a capital or a
spot for a tomb, the choice of an auspicious day for sacrifice or for any
business, the infliction of the five major punishments "according to the
judgment of Heaven"; to forecast the character of the coming year, the issue
of a campaign, the outcome of an illness, the luckiness or unluckiness of a
sleeping chamber.  There are two chief modes of divination, by the stalks of
the yarrow (Chinese, shi) and by the tortoise-shell.  The details of the
manipulation have not been handed down, but it is known that a coating of some
thick black pigment was laid on one side of the tortoise-shell and fire
applied to the other side until cracks appeared in the coating which the
diviner interpreted according to the rules of his art; and that a bunch of
yarrow stalks was handled in such a manner that they formed diagrams.  The
Yih-king seems to be a handbook for the latter form of divination; the
hexagrams with the interpretation of which that book is occupied may
originally have been certain combinations of whole and broken lines formed by
the falling of the stalks.

     The two methods were practised by different classes of diviners.  The
tortoise-shell was regarded as the nobler, and was used by persons of higher
rank and about greater matters.  On some subjects either might be employed;
but if one of them had given an unfavourable response, it was not proper to
consult the other.  The conjunction was most propitious when the results of
the divination confirmed the judgments of the sovereign, the counsel of his
ministers, and the opinion of the people; this was called the great concert.
The tortoise-shell and the yarrow stalks are means by which the mind of Heaven
is disclosed, or that of the ancestors; in the latter case the divination
takes place in the ancestral temple.  In the words of the Shu-king, through
them the intelligence of Heaven is brought into connection with man.

     Prognostications were taken also from dreams, the interpretation of which
was the business of special diviners; and it appears that incubation was
practised.  When dreams coincide with divinations the auspicious omen is
double.  For the common people there were weather signs in the stars: "Some
stars love wind, and some love rain; the courses of the sun and moon give
winter and summer; the way in which the moon follows the stars gives wind and
rain." Portents of divers kinds were noted: a crowing pheasant lighting on a
sacrificial tripod, the appearance of fabulous beasts and birds, particularly
the "phoenix" (feng) and the "unicorn" (kie-lin).

     The worship of the ancestors of the family is the prime religious
obligation of all classes, from the highest to the lowest.  The higher ranks
have temples for this worship; the common people only a shrine in the
living-room of the house.

     According to the Li-ki, the ancestral temple of the Son of Heaven, in the
time of the Chou dynasty, had seven shrines: that of his "great ancestor"
facing the south; at the right and left of this shrine those of Wen and Wu
respectively; ^1 then, facing each other, the four immediate ancestors of the
reigning emperor, beginning with his great-great-grandfather.  The temple of a
vassal prince had five shrines, lacking those of the dynastic founders; high
officers had three - for the "great ancestor" (the founder of the house),
grandfather, and father; lower officials but one.

[Footnote 1: Wu-wang, first emperor of the Chou dynasty; Wen-wang, Duke of
Chou, father of Wu.  Wu ascended the throne, according to the Chinese
chronology, in 1122 B.C.]

     When an emperor died and his soul-tablet was placed in the temple, his
predecessors were moved up one place, and the tablet of his
great-great-grandfather was transferred to the temple of the more remote
ancestors, which was a depository for the tablets as they were displaced. If
upon some particular occasion prayer was addressed to one of these remoter
ancestors, a space was marked off, an altar set up, and sacrifice offered.
The tablet of the "great ancestor," the first of the line, always kept its
place.  A similar rule applied to the ancestral temples of the princes and
high officials.  The tablets of the wife were set beside those of her husband.

     When a new capital or a new palace was built, an abode must be provided
for the spirits of the ancestors before the habitations of the living: "When a
man of rank is about to engage in building, the ancestral temple should have
his first attention, the stables and arsenal next, and the residence last."
When completed, the temple and the sacrificial vessels were consecrated by
pouring or smearing upon them the blood of the victims in the dedication
sacrifice, "to show how intercourse with the spirits was sought." The ancient
hymns in the Shi-king, many of which were composed for these ceremonies, give
vivid pictures of the worship in the emperor's ancestral temple.  Many
additional particulars may be gathered from the different books of the Li-ki.
The rites were similar, though less splendid, in the temples of the vassal
princes and of the high officials. Sacrifices were offered in the ancestral
temples regularly at the four seasons of the year, and at other times as
occasion might require - for instance, at the end of a war or in time of
drought.  A quinquennial (or triennial) sacrifice to all the ancestors is also
mentioned.  At the seasonal sacrifices the princes of the reigning house
assembled, and many of the provincial nobles came up to the court,
contributing by their presence to the splendour of the ceremonies.  Those who
were to take part in the sacrifice prepared themselves by fasting and various
purifications.

     The ancestors to whom worship was offered were represented by
"personators," living descendants of the same surname, the impassive solemnity
of whose demeanour as they sat in their places in the temple neither moving
nor speaking is proverbial: a ruler who neglects all his duties is said to sit
"like a personator of the dead." The spirits of the ancestors they
respectively represented, having been solemnly invoked, were believed to be
for the time embodied in the personators, who ate and drank of the offerings
as those in whose place they sat would have done, received the prayers through
the medium of a "prayer officer," whom we may perhaps call the prophet of the
ancestral oracle, made known the will of the ancestors, and pronounced to the
"filial descendant" their blessing on the sovereign and his line. ^1

[Footnote 1: The employment of personators was discontinued by Shi-huang-ti
(died 210 B.C.); since that time the ancestors have been represented at the
sacrifice only by their tablets.]

     The ancestral sacrifices were family feasts for the living and the dead;
viands were set out in profuse abundance and variety, and all the art and
mystery of Chinese cookery was brought into use.  The smaller dishes (sauces,
condiments, cakes, and the like) were prepared by the wife of the "filial
descendant" by whom the sacrifice was offered and the ladies of the household.
Cups of divers liquors made from millet went around.  The service, conducted
with minute and ceremonious observance of ritual, continued for many hours,
sometimes outlasting the day; and all who took part in it were, it is naively
said, much exhausted before it was over.  At the close, the "prayer officer"
announced to the filial descendant the satisfaction of the ancestors and
promised him their blessing: "Fragrant has been your filial sacrifice, and the
spirits have enjoyed your liquors and viands.  They confer on you a hundred
blessings, each as it is desired, each as sure as law.  You have been exact
and expeditious; we will confer on you the choicest favours in myriads and
tens of myriads." The blessings oftenest specified are long life and fortunate
posterity.  The bells and drums now signalised the completion of the
sacrifice; the "prayer officer" announced that the spirits had drunk to the
full; the personators of the dead rose from their seats, and, escorted by the
music, withdrew.  The spirits, who had come at the beginning of the service in
response to invitations, "tranquilly return" to their abode - that is,
according to the commentators, to heaven.  The servants and the women removed
the dishes and trays to an apartment in the temple behind the hall of the
ancestors, where a feast was spread for the near kinsmen of the sacrificer; on
the next day, after a supplementary sacrifice, a feast was given in the temple
to those who had personated the dead.