Feb., 1912. Jade. 145 



male into a female, nor can it be all of a sudden proclaimed as a female, 

 unless it was imbued with such latent qualities in popular imagination 

 which gradually led to this end with forcible logic. We are therefore 

 bound to assume that female elements and characteristics must have 

 been slumbering in the conception of this deity ages before the time of 

 the Han. 



A sharp distinction must be made, at the outset, between the deity 

 of Earth (t'u) and the Spirit of the Soil (she). The latter has been 

 made the subject of a very remarkable and fruitful study by Prof. 

 Chavannes. 1 The Spirit of the Soil is a decidedly male god of partially 

 anthropomorphic concept ; but it is a god restricted in power as to space 

 and to time, it is a god of territorial groups, of social communities 

 occupying a more or less limited area of the soil. There is a complex 

 system of an official hierarchy of a plurality of gods of the soil graduated 

 according to rank and power. The individual families harbor their 

 god of the soil, the territorial communities have their own, the terri- 

 torial officials have their own, and the feudal lords and the emperor 

 have their own. The imperial god of the soil is, so to speak, the partic- 

 ular property of the dynasty, and his power vanishes with the extinction 

 of the latter. The new rising dynasty chooses a new god of the soil 

 of its own by erecting to him a new altar, and neutralizes the action of 

 his predecessor by building an enclosure around his altar. The gods 

 of the soil, accordingly, are individual gods of a local and temporary 

 existence connected with the coeval living owners of the soil, living 

 and dying with them. 



The deity of Earth, however, is infinite in space and time. It 

 comprises the totality of the entire known earth, the limits of which 

 were unknown; it is permanent and eternal like Heaven, and the 

 second great cosmic power of nature acting in harmony with Heaven 

 towards the welfare of the whole creation. It is an almighty great 

 abstract deity like Heaven and the object of veneration and worship 

 on the part of the people, and in particular of the emperor, through 

 all generations. It is the telluric deity, whereas the Spirit of the Soil 

 merely shares the function of a terrestrial tutelary genius. 



Chavannes (/. c, p. 524) has adopted the point of view that the 

 sacrifice to Earth does not go back to times of a great antiquity, and 

 that only since the time of the Han Emperor Wu the dualistic cult 

 of Heaven and Earth has assumed a prodigious importance. I am 

 inclined to think that such a view cannot be upheld. 



The dual concept of Heaven and Earth as the deified omnipotent 

 powers of nature seems to me to have formed an essential constituent 



*Le Dieu du Sol dans la Chine antique, in his book Le T'ai Chan, pp. 437 et seq. 



