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



but only to these, and not to any other spirit. 1 The spirits of the 

 great mountains and rivers are treated in the ritual by the emperor as 

 ministers subject to him. 



In the Chung yung (Legge, Chinese Classics, Vol. I, p. 404) Con- 

 fucius says: "By the ceremonies of the sacrifices to Heaven and Earth 

 (kiao she) they served God (Shang-ti), and by the ceremonies of the 

 ancestral temple they sacrificed to their ancestors. He who under- 

 stands the ceremonies of the sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, and the 

 meaning of the several sacrifices to ancestors, would find the govern- 

 ment of a kingdom as easy as to look into his palm!" As Legge under- 

 stands, the service of one being, God, was the object of both these 

 ceremonies. Would it mean that in the view of Confucius at least, 

 Earth was also subject to the Supreme Ruler? 2 The difficulty arising 

 from the Chinese texts is to decide whether such notions spring up 

 from popular religion or are the outcome of individual philosophical 

 speculation. 



Though the god or gods of the Soil and the deity of Earth are two 

 distinct types moving on opposite lines of thought, there are neverthe- 

 less mutual points of contact in the cult rendered to them and ideas 

 fusing from the one into the other, for, after all, the god of the soil 

 invariably roots in the ground which is part of the earth. Of chief 

 interest to us with reference to the present subject is the image under 

 which the god of the Soil was revered. The material of which it was 

 made was common stone in distinction from the nobler substance 

 of jade reserved for Earth. This shows the wide gulf separating the 

 two in general estimation. Jade is the product of earth, but at the 

 same time the essence of Heaven perfected under supernatural influ- 

 ences. Stone is simply a species of earth and the most solid object 

 found within the domain of things created by the soil; it was therefore 

 selected as the material to figure the spirit of the Soil. 3 Though there 

 is no doubt that these images go back to a great antiquity, there is 

 no description given of them earlier than in 705 a. d. It was then 

 proposed to make them five feet long (which is the number corresponding 

 to Earth) and two feet wide (two corresponding to the female principle 



*J. Edkins, Religion in China, p. 31. 



2 The passage has been one of great controversy among the Chinese commentators. 

 To overcome the difficulty, it has been proposed by some that the word Hou-t'u " the 

 sovereign Earth" has been suppressed for the sake of brevity after Shang-ti, and 

 they accordingly translate, "By the sacrifices kiao, they did homage to the Ruler 

 Above, by the sacrifices she, to Earth," a view adopted by Couvreur (Les quatre 

 livres, p. 44). — If J. Ross (The Original Religion of China, p. 65) infers from this 

 sentence that God is thus removed to a greater distance from man, and approached 

 through the visible media of Heaven and Earth, this is too rational an explanation 

 and no longer in agreement with Chinese thought. 



3 Chavannes, Le T'ai Chan, p. 477. 



