RELIGIOUS RITES IN CHINA
There are three great religions in China--Buddhism, Taoism, and the
worship of Nature. The worship of Nature, in which is embodied their
highest idea of an Invisible Deity, is the purest form of religion in
China. Its Temples are situated in a magnificent Park in the Chinese
City of Peking. The Temple of Heaven, the most imposing of the group,
spherical and triple-domed, rears its proud height here and is visible
from afar. Its triple dome tiled, without, in the sacred green of
Nature and vaulted within in Heaven’s own blue, is surrounded by groves
of century-old arbor-vitæ. In other parts of the great Park are the
scarcely less splendid Temples to the Earth, to the Sun and Moon and to
Agriculture, and grandest, most unique of these Temples, is that to the
Invisible Deity. Its foundations are the Earth, its walls are limitless
Ether, its dome Heaven’s own vault! On its great open altar this
Nature worship has its culmination and reaches its highest fulfilment.
This altar is the Holy of Holies, the tabernacle of the group of
Temples consecrated to the worship of Nature.
It is built in the center of a great marble-paved space with the
secular arbor-vitæ radiating therefrom in long concentric avenues. It
is of pure white marble, round as is the Earth. The Trinity in Nature
and its Infinity are symbolized in its three superposed circles. Each
of the circular platforms is surrounded by an exquisitely carved
balustrade and approached by flights of nine steps each, to the north,
south, east, and west. The central point of the great upper circle thus
represents the center of the Universe, accessible from every point of
the compass.
Here in this symbolic center of the world, in this great Temple, whose
walls are Space, whose towers are Infinity, on this great triple altar,
canopied with Heaven itself, the Emperor of China, “Son of Heaven,”
glorifies the Invisible Deity and sacrifices for the prosperity of “the
Great, Pure Kingdom” and his people. This worship of the Invisible
Deity has no Priestly Hierarchy. The Emperor of China is its one High
Priest. He alone is worthy, as the Son of Heaven, to perform its unique
ceremonies, on its one great Altar, in its single great Temple of China.
The Emperor prepares himself for the great ceremony of the semi-annual
celebration on this altar by a rigorous fast of three days, spending
the final night before the celebration in a vigil in the Great Park of
the Nature Temples, where there is a Purifying Palace set aside for
his use. This glorification of the Invisible Deity at the summer and
winter solstices is the most solemn act performed by the Emperor in his
quality of Son of Heaven.
[Illustration: TEMPLE OF HEAVEN--PEKING]
The Emperor is not only the one High Priest worthy to sacrifice on the
great altars to the Invisible Deity, the Priestly Hierarchy of the
whole of this Cult of Nature is vested in his Sacred Person. He alone
offers sacrifices in the Temples of Heaven and the other Great Temples,
at times set aside in the Book of Rites, and on special occasions. When
famine devastates the land, when drought or any other National Calamity
is visited upon the Empire, the Emperor prays in these Temples for its
cessation, for he is not only the High Priest, but as “Son of Heaven”
is the expiator for the afflictions visited upon his people by Heaven,
and he publicly holds himself responsible for the misfortunes of the
Empire. According to the Book of Rites, he says in time of trouble, “I
will purify myself by sacrifice that these calamities may be lifted
from the Empire and the people. I alone am responsible.”
The great semi-annual celebration to the Invisible Deity is not only
the most solemn of the religious rites the Emperor performs; it is at
the same time the most formal of his official acts as ruler of the
Great Empire. He prepares himself, by fasting and subduing the body,
for the religious rite; for the official ceremony as Emperor of China,
he is accompanied by all his ministers and the highest nobles of the
land and surrounded by splendid pomp and Imperial pageantry.
Though in his triple quality of Emperor, High Priest, and Expiator,
he personally sacrifices only in the great Temples to Nature the
Emperor has all the religions of his Empire under his protection and
is their nominal Head. He assists indiscriminately at Buddhist or
Taoist ceremonies, and encourages with impartiality both cults. But
these religions have priestly hierarchies, and complicated Rituals,
and the Emperor is only the “Ex-officio” Head and High Priest. All the
festivals and fasts of both are celebrated in the Palace.
The Chinese are not a religious people, though so moral a race. They
are rather followers of a philosophy than members of religious bodies.
The two most popular religions of China, Buddhism and Taoism, have
become more or less outward forms. They are empty shells which may
once have contained the Spirit, but have now become mere conventional
representations of ancient rites. The Chinese people are really
Confucians, and Confucianism is a system of ethics, a philosophy
rather than a religion. Whether they be Buddhists or Taoists, they are
all followers of Confucius, and live by the rules the Great Sage has
laid down for them. The doctrines of Buddha and Laotze have become so
incrusted with error in China as to afford no moral or ideal help to
their followers. The Chinese participate indiscriminately in either
of these religious rites, many of which have become mere outward
spectacular ceremonies, where there is a great deal of display and much
form, but very little real worship. They get all their moral support
from the writings of Confucius and all their ideals from communion with
Nature. They are really philosophers and worshipers of Nature, and the
Emperor’s semi-annual sacrifice on the altar of Heaven and those at the
Temples of Nature typify the real worship of the people.
All the religious rites in China have their origin in, or are in
celebration of, some natural phenomenon or some periodical event in
Nature. They celebrate the summer and winter solstices, the equinoxes,
the New Year, the awakening of spring, when the sap (life-giving
element) begins to mount. The Harvest Moon is the time of the going to
rest of this life-giving element. Their complicated ceremonial is but
the crystallization of some simple observance of Nature’s fundamental
laws. This ceremonial has been kept alive all these centuries, because
of the vivifying spark of Nature which enkindled them. These rites
are now observed without a thought of their origin, but Nature still
remains their creative force. In spite of their conventions, the
Chinese have kept very near to Nature, and I believe this is the secret
of their wonderful vitality. They have been overrun and conquered by
many different races, and their assimilation of these conquerors is one
of the most astonishing things in the ethnic study of this wonderful
race.
No conquering race has ever changed the Chinese. Tartars, Mongols,
Manchus have all passed and become amalgamated with them. Their
conquerors have adopted the Chinese philosophy and religion, their
customs and habits, and even their system of government. And they have
never been able to impose any really new system of government upon the
Chinese.
These founders of Dynasties in China have all been “warriors bold” and
reckless marauders with little philosophy and no literature to speak
of. When the Manchus, the last of these conquerors, founders of the
present Dynasty, established themselves in Peking, in 1646, they were
a wild and warlike race. They, like all the other conquerors of China,
conciliated their vanquished foes by all sorts of concessions, and
they now rule by Chinese laws, and to-day are hardly distinguishable
from the Chinese. They have never made, any more than the other
conquerors, the slightest impress upon this calm and passive race; and
they have become Chinese. “To-day the Emperor Kwang-Hsu is recognized
as one of the best Chinamen in China.” The Manchu men to-day wear
Chinese dress. The Emperor, himself, shaves his head and wears the
queue, the one visible sign of degradation that is said to have been
imposed upon the Chinese at the time of the conquest. Oh! Irony of fate!
The Manchus are now as quiet and peaceful a race as the Chinese
themselves. They dread war. They live by the laws of Confucius. Though
not a race of thinkers or philosophers, they have come to have the
same ideals as the Chinese, and this, without the natural amalgamation
brought about by inter-marriage, for it is only within the last few
years that the Throne has issued an edict, allowing inter-marriage
between the Chinese and Manchu, and even, with this edict, up to this
time there has been very little mixture, by marriage, of the races. The
Chinese seem easily led and conquered, but their national vitality is
very vigorous, and has kept them pure in racial characteristics after
their thousands of years of national existence.
[Illustration: ALTAR TO THE INVISIBLE DEITY
In the Park of the Temple of Heaven]
The Festival of the Harvest Moon, which typifies the season when the
life-giving element in Nature goes to rest for the Winter, I have
already described. It is intermixed with legends and practices that
destroy its original meaning; but the ceremony to the awakening of
Spring has not departed from its original intention, and is simpler
and nearer Nature. The awakening of Spring, the day when the sap is
supposed to stir from its long sleep and to feel the first throes of
renewed life, is commemorated in a pretty, homely ceremony at the
Palace. The radish and young shoots of lettuce, the first vegetables
to receive the benefit of the rising sap, are presented on a silver
salver to Her Majesty by a kneeling eunuch. She partakes of them, and
then gives them to the young Empress and Ladies to taste of. When
Her Majesty raises the first radish to her lips, the young Empress,
Princesses, and Ladies assembled in her Throne-room, repeat the wish
for Imperial happiness, synonymous with “National prosperity.” This
wish is echoed by the high attendants in the ante-chamber, and reëchoed
by the eunuchs kneeling in the courts without, and still echoed and
reëchoed by every inmate of the Palace, until the waves of sound reach
to the outer walls. Then Her Majesty makes a wish that the sap may rise
in such abundance as to produce a fruitful season, that all the people
of the Great Empire may enjoy peace and plenty.
Thus are these first fruits of the awakening Spring partaken of with
a simple ceremony of praise and thanksgiving. Thus are these homely
plants consecrated with wishes made for the good of the country and the
happiness of its rulers. It was to me a beautiful ceremony, so simple
that it brought these people with all their conventions and all their
forms very near the heart itself of Nature.
The annual plowing of a furrow and sowing of the first seeds of the
year by the Emperor, the planting of a mulberry tree (to nourish the
silkworms) by the Empress, are other touches of Nature which show
how near the Chinese are to the heart of things. One of the honorary
offices which is considered a great mark of Imperial favor, and which
the highest ladies of the land receive with reverent gratitude, is to
be appointed “Guardian of the Cocoons”; for the silk industry is one
of the great sources of National prosperity in China. These ladies
of high degree, guardians of the cocoons, go in annual pilgrimage to
the mulberry groves, where the cocoons flourish, to make sacrifices
and prayers for the health and growth of the cocoon. Being so near
to Nature, the Chinese are naturally a pastoral people, a race of
agriculturists; and agriculture, being thus honored by the Sacred
Persons of Their Majesties, becomes a lofty ideal. Labor, which
the Emperor publicly performs, loses all taint and grows into an
Inspiration.