146 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. X. 



of the most ancient religious notions of the Chinese. As early as in 

 the Shu king (Chou shu, T'ai shih shang, I, 3; ed. Couvreur, p. 172) 

 we read in the beautiful speech of Wu Wang: "Heaven and Earth are 

 like father and mother of all beings, and of all beings, it is man alone who 

 is endowed with reason. Who excels in intelligence and sagacity, is 

 made the supreme sovereign ; the supreme sovereign is the father and 

 the mother of the nation." 1 In this text, Heaven and Earth are char- 

 acterized as living creative forces comparable to the propagating 

 faculty of a father and mother. The Chinese have certainly not 

 yet spoken directly of the "Mother Earth" in those early days, but 

 what is apparent is the fact that the idea of Earth being or acting like 

 a mother was subconsciously latent in their minds, and that the em- 

 peror partakes not only of the nature of Heaven but also of Earth. 2 



And then the passage in the Li ki (IX, I, 21; ed. Couvreur, Vol. 

 I> P- 587; Legge, Vol. I, p. 425): "The sacrifices to Earth were made 

 to honor the beneficent actions of Earth (ti) ; for Earth (ti) carries all 

 beings, while Heaven holds the constellations suspended. We derive 

 wealth from Earth, 3 we derive the regulation of our labors from Heaven. 

 For this reason, we honor Heaven and love Earth, and we therefore 

 teach the people to return them thanks." The relations of the people, 

 i. e. the farmers, to these two factors upon which they depended for 

 their existence could not have been better expressed; they honored 

 Heaven and loved Earth, as they honored their father and loved their 

 mother, and therewith the farmer's emotional religion was bound up. 

 It was a wide-spread deep-rooted national sentiment, it was a subject 

 of instruction, the key-note of the lessons given to the people. 



In "the Doctrine of the Mean" (Chung yung), the word ti occurs 

 constantly as the correlative of t'ien, the phrase THen Ti "Heaven and 

 Earth" being now the component parts, and now the great powers, 

 of the universe, as a dualization of nature, producing, transforming, 

 completing. 4 It has been said that Chinese religion does not know of 



Compare Yi king (Shuo kua chuan, 10): " Kien is Heaven and is therefore 

 called the father; kun is Earth and is therefore called the mother." 



2 The philosopher Wang Ch'ung (first century A. D.) says likewise: "The emperor 

 treats Heaven like his father and Earth like his mother. In accordance with human 

 customs, he practises filial piety, which accounts for the sacrifices to Heaven and 

 Earth." (Forke, Lun Heng, Part I, p. 517.) This symbolism penetrated the whole 

 life of the sovereign. The rectangular wooden body on which his chariot rested 

 represented the Earth, and the circular shape of the umbrella planted on the chariot 

 represented Heaven; the wheels with their thirty spokes symbolized sun and moon, 

 and the twenty-eight partitions of the umbrella the stars (Biot, Vol. II, p. 488). 



3 1, e. it is the giver of all earthly goods produced by the soil. Hence, in a passage 

 of the Lun yii (Legge, The Chinese Classics, Vol. I, p. 168), the word t'u "earth" 

 assumes the meaning of comfort, worldliness, of which only the average small- 

 minded man thinks, whereas the superior man aspires for good qualities. 



4 Legge, The Chinese Classics, Vol. I, pp. 460, 461. 





