With constant reiteration of such admonitions it is probable that, court officials finally contrived to Is tr Lion on Hexting Masture? take hunting traditionally disreputable and that whatever breeds of dogs were used in hunting deteriorated or died out, but it is likely that the association of. a hunting dog with a prince cropped 1 time, because of ageial customs, and per ed through sufficient generations-to establish the dog among. the conventional animals that should ne-company a great lord to the other world. Hig likeness would then be taken' from crude old statues or drawings and might easily later have been confused with the cqually crude representation of the Buddhist lion. A great majority.of the guardian lions at Chinese gateways wear a collar with what look like bells attached by rings, as does the animal in stone whose photograph we reproduce. Collars with hells scarcely seem suitable to lions and though I have studied a number of Chinese Buddhist paintings of the T'ang Dynasty in which hor are represented (in one instance it is a lifelike lion) T have found none decorated with collars. The ingling of the hunting dors in action with metal rings attached to their collars, is mentioned in the Odes of Chi, however, so we do know that does wore collars and were suppered to be heard when in action, 4 Our a very sturdy one indeed and if his variety survives it can only be in the Tibetan mastiff, a hue shaggy ferocious beast of an exceptionally stocky build for a big dog. His tors age, as we know, im-Tactrian Greek seulpture and when one reads of dogs being brought into the Chow court from 1, in the West, at a time when_most of Kanvu was within the Chow dom ah strongly tempted to believe that they were Tibetan dogs-used in the chase and that oar beast from the Ming Tombs, and most of the guardian ions Ae well, are traditional presentations of some such hunting slog in which the Chinese have long,
can therefore-no longer identify as) Sica enned to be ined
Buddhist lion, <The' Stone Pillars One feature, of every such pro-menado as the approach to the Ming Tombs, unfortunately left out of our photographs, is a pair of upright stone pillars. which always comes before all the. beasts and attendants. The two finest in China stand in front of the main entrance to the Imperial Palace in' Peking, though those at the' Ming Tombs are not be despised. They are insigning of the greatest distinction and challenge one to guess their symbolic meaning. They suggest at once the Jrminsit, the two pillars in the holy places of the ancient Teutonic tribes, which were held in such great veneration and which Christian missionaries made such an-effort wherever they wont to have thrown down, Some of the Jrmineul were winged il entrance to the Imperial Palsee in Peking and were therefore supposed by the Romans to be dedicated to Mercury. 'There is some old town in Germaty, pere helm,, where they' still Trmineul annually and knock them down in pious holiday fervour, The common Chinese name for the Chinese pillars of distinction is Liao Chu, which can be translated ight pillar" or even vulgarly "lamp post." The Liao of this combination is not ordinary light however; but meant anciently the flame from the sacrificial fire, and con all the pillars of this kind that T have seen, including those at the Ming Tombs, are carved whi might be taken for cloud flames. Perhaps they are simply conventionalized sacrificial fires oF perhaps in primitive temple and tomb "arrangements they marked the sites for sacrifice. It would be of real interest if the solution of this problem threw light on the disputed character of the Irminsul, In old German sui (now siiule) of course means pillars, like the chu in the Chinese combination, but Trmin (which appears inthe name, Ermentrade). cooms to" ment. only' honourable, though 'I believe that philologists have never agreed upon the exact meaning. The ° first syllable, Tr, at any rate, is com monly assumed to be the primitive word for that which is honourable, noble, or sacred, running through all Tanguages from Sanserit to Irish, cropping out in such names as Aryan, Iran and Brin; and certainly in Vedic language the nobility, described as the Arya, were distinguished from the rit aff by their attention to the ritual of the sacrificial flame, All of which is very interesting, but does not bring the Irminel any closer to the Linn Chu, though we'might like to think it did.
With this the writer will assume that he has demonstrated that he could write something new around the photographs of the stone animals and will rest upon his Inurels, In order to protect ther uniform ed men from being positively identi fied by agents of armed kidnappers and robbers, and so that gangsters enn not obtain revenge against those who have distinguished them= selves in the performance of their duty, the police authorities have given each Chinese constable a false number to wear on. his collar. 'Thus, there may be eight, ten, oF more' wearing the same number, and, as it has no bearing on official records or on Provisional Court proceedings, or with the presenta tion of decorations, the numbered identity of the constable is not common knowledge.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.