VI.] THE SOUTHERN MONGOLS. 223 



impostors of all sorts, sheltered under a threadbare garb of 

 religion. 



Buddhism also, although of foreign origin, has completely 

 conformed to the national spirit, and is now a 



Buddhism. 



curious blend of Hindu metaphysics with the 

 primitive Chinese belief in spirits and a deified ancestry. In 

 every district are practised diverse forms of worship between 

 which no clear dividing line can be drawn, and, as in Annam, the 

 same persons may be at once followers of Confucius, Lao-tse, and 

 Buddha. In fact such is the position of the Emperor, who 

 belongs ex qfficio to all three of these State religions, and scrupu- 

 lously takes part in their various observances. There is even 

 some truth in the Chinese view that "all three make but one 

 religion," the first appealing to man's moral nature, the second to 

 the instinct of self-preservation, the third to the higher sphere of 

 thought and contemplation. 



But behind, one might say above it all, the old animism still 

 prevails, manifested in a multitude of superstitious . 



practices, whose purport is to appease the evil and and ancestry 

 secure the favour of the good spirits, the Feng- s /mi 

 or Fung-shui t "air and water" genii, who have to be reckoned 

 with in all the weightiest as well as the most trivial occurrences of 

 daily life. These with the ghosts of their ancestors, by whom the 

 whole land is haunted, are the bane of the Chinaman's existence. 

 Everything depends on maintaining a perfect balance between 

 the Fung-shui, that is, the two principles represented by the 

 "White Tiger" and the "Azure Dragon," who guard the ap- 

 proaches of every dwelling, and whose opposing influences have 

 to be nicely adjusted by the well-paid professors of the magic 

 arts. At the death of the late emperor Tung Chih (1875) a great 

 difficulty was raised by the State astrologers, who found that the 

 realm would be endangered if he were buried, according to rule, 

 in the imperial cemetery 100 miles west of Pekin, as his father 

 reposed in the other imperial cemetery situated the same distance 

 east of the capital. For some subtle reason the balance would 

 have been disturbed between Tiger and Dragon, and it took nine 

 months to settle the point, during which, as reported by the 

 American Legation, the whole empire was stirred, councils of 



