Anon the many curious resemblances found to exist between Rome and China in ancient times those of 2 religious nature and those affecting legislation and government are the most remarkable. The Romans for instance had busts of all persons who had borne the office of Zdile, Prastor, or Consul, and these were placed in the hall of the family mansion in niches suited for them. They were brought out at funerals to personate the dead, together with their robes of office. The pictures or busts were images of the deceased. In China there was a representative of the deceased at the funeral banquet. The eldest son or grandson personated the dead, sat in his chair, and partook of the food and wine which were offered to him in succession. 'I'he remainder of the banquet was given to the family and the guests, The funeral customs of modern Chiva are now very much changed, but pictures of the deceased, with the titles of their offices, are carried in funeral processions still. At the sacrifices to Confucius the banquet is distributed among the families of scholars. Uhey thus share in the diver which is given by the municipality, and by the State, to the famous old world sage. 'I'he dead are represented by the tablet, the shen chu, which may be rendered "the standing representative of the spirit of the dead." At the funeral banquet ancient rales required a living representative and preferably a grandson. In the time of the Hia dynasty he stood. In the Shang dynasty B.C. 1,800 to B.C. 1,200 he sat, In the Chow dynasty there were six representatives of deceased ancestors, who were treated as guests at the banquet, All partook of the viands. A peculiar, weird idea belonged to this old custom of the ancient Chinese. Nhe soul was breath, which was liable to be scattered into thin air. Let us then, they said, put the grandson in the seat of the departed grandfather. He has his features, his gestures, and his expression. Him we will regard as the image of the deceased paterfamilias. It is only in this way, they thought, that we can preserve the patriarch of the clan from extinction. They called such a representative of the dead the corpse, but they explain that this word means "the image of the soul." Among all ancient literatures it is only in that of China that the persistent desire for immortality belonging to mankind has taken this special form, the reason! being found in the strong realism and the materialistic currents of Chinese) thought. In Italy on the other hand because the Greeks were there, and also the Phonicians, as teachers, the arts of painting and sculpture led to the custom of preserving in artistic form the beloved and honoured features of the dead.
Tmages are mentioned in Mencius as made of grass and rushes at first and afterwards of wood to be buried with the dead in order to provide the deceased with servants to wait upon him in the other world. The art of statuary was not then known. But these cannot be called images to be worshipped. If we look carefully through the classics and other oldest books of the Chinese for traces of image worship, we fail to meet with it. The first authentic instance of worshipped images such as we now see in China is found in the Shiki in the chapter on the Hiungnu Tartars*. In the second century before Christ an expeditionary force of 10,000 mounted meu was sent past Lanchou to the mountain then known as Yenchishan, now Shantan, to attack the Hiungnu. It is on the way to the Kiayikuan at the west end of the Great Wall, just where the recent rebellion of the Mahommedans has been raging. Here about B.C. 140 they defeated the Hiunguu and captured an image used in sacrificing to heaven, AOTEA. It is called a golden man, but it represented heaven. By the spread of Buddhism through Central Asia the Turks had learned the use of images in worshiping God. Tt was gilt as is the custom with images of Buddha in all countries where that religion prevails, The gold of Siberia has always been extensively used by the Buddhists who could obtain it to ornament the images they honour with worship; a gilt image always retains its brightness untarnished and the abundance of gold found in Siberin in ancient times appends to have been something like what it continues to be in Russian hands. Now there can be little doubt that of the many ten thousands of large gilt. idols now worshipped in China the greater part owe their bright appearance to Siberian gold. The commentator snys that when the army was sent which captured this image, the first mentioned by Chinese writers, at the chief seat of Turkish worship it was not the earliest seat of the worship. The powerful Emperor Chinshihuang had driven the Lurks away from the "Mountain of the Sweet Spring," #4 ji. This is a few miles to the North of the ancient Chinese capital Shangan, on the banks of the Ching River. The country on this side of the metropolis had been made fertile by irrigation through the ingenious use of the waters of this river. Before the emperor Chinshibuang led out his armies to conquer all China in the preceding century, he had irrigated the lands cultivated by his people in his hereditary territory. He thus secured domestic peace and national weath at home before undertaking external wars. Like the first Napoleon he had a genius for administration as well as for war. It was his achieve-
Chapter 110, ment to drive out the Turks from the banks of the Ching and the Wei, where they had maintained their worship, being charmed by the luxuriance of a rich agricultural country. But Wei-chao, the commentator on the history, writing in the third century after Christ, does not say anything of image worship existing when the Turks worship at their old altars in the vicinity of Hsianfu. The information given is limited to what took place in the time of the emperor Hanwuti about B.C. 140. Since the Turkish race were taught religion first by the Persians and afterwards by the Hindus we can not hesitate to regard the knowledge of the supreme rules of Heaven possessed by the Turks at that time as containing the ideas of Zoroaster and Shakyamuni combined. 'I'he Buddhists taught them to make a gilt image. The Persians taught them to adore the supreme Ruler or God; they combined the two things as the Buddhists all do who, while they honour the teaching of Shakyamuni, worship also the gods of the sky, the sun, the moon, and all the heavenly powers. In China itself before this time there were pictures of divine beings such as are referred to in the Shan-hai-king. It was, however, not till the Han dynasty that we have detailed accounts of the images and pictures of divine beings in the palaces, gardens, and parks of the emperors. This was before the Hindu Buddhists arrived, who, while they devoted themselves to the teaching of their philosophy, made special efforts to spread idolatry in every part of the land.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.