THE priests of _Fo_ in China are the same as the priests of _Boudh_ are
in India, from whence their religion passed into China in the first
century of the Christian æra. The temples and the monasteries of China
swarm with them; and they practice, ostensibly at least, all the
austerities and mortifications of the several orders of monks in Europe,
and inflict on themselves the same painful, laborious, and disgusting
punishments which the faquirs of India undergo, either for the love of
God, as they would have it supposed, or to impose on the multitude, as
is most probably the real motive. In China, however, they are generally
esteemed as men of correct morals: and there is reason to believe, that
the calumnies heaped upon them by the Catholic missionaries are for the
most part unfounded, and were occasioned by the mortification they
experienced in finding their ceremonies, their altars, their images,
their dress, to resemble so very nearly their own.
It is scarcely necessary to observe that our umbrellas are borrowed from
the Chinese. The poorest person has one of these machines to keep off
the rain; but in China they are made of paper, and the wood part is
entirely of bamboo. The hats of the common people are in fact a kind of
umbrella; they are generally made of rice straw plaited, and so large
that they equally defend the face from the rays of the sun and cover the
shoulders from the rain. That which the priest carries under his arm is
small in proportion of some of those worn by the peasantry. In moderate
weather a Chinese, though close shaved, except as to the little lock of
hair growing from the crown, generally goes bareheaded.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 12
]
Plate XII.