FABLE AND FOLKLORE 173 



three legs, as does the toad that the Taoists see in the 

 moon — but why three legs? Mrs. Ball answers this 

 question thus : 



The crow — known in China as wuya, and in Japan as karasu 

 ■ — is most intimately related to the sun. Ch'un Ch'iu in an 

 ancient poem says: ''The spirit of the sun is a crow with three 

 legs"; while again Hwai Nan Tse, an ancient philosopher, ex- 

 plains that this crow has three legs because the number three 

 is the emblem of yang [light, good] of which the sun is the 

 supreme essence. . . . The Chinese, it would appear, actually 

 believed in the existence of a three-legged crow, for in the 

 official history of the Wei dynasty — 3d century A. D. — it is 

 related that "more than thirty times, tributes consisting of three- 

 legged crows were brought from the neighboring countries. 

 . . . The principal of sun-worship [in Japan] was Amateresu 

 no Ohokami, from whom the imperial family traces its descent. 

 This divinity . . . had as her messenger and attendant ... a 

 red bird having three legs." 



Based on the fears and philosophy indicated above, the 

 soothsayers of India contrived a most elaborate scheme 

 of judging meanings from the actions of ravens and 

 crows, for little attention seems to have been paid to 

 ornithological distinctions; and this spread in very early 

 times to China and Thibet. It is a wonderful monument 

 of priestcraft, which has been elucidated by several 

 students of early Oriental manuscripts; and I am in- 

 debted to a profoundly learned discourse on the subject 

 by Dr. Berthold Lauffer. 52 Briefly the scheme was as 

 follows: 



A table or chart was constructed containing ninety 

 squares, each square holding an interpretation of one or 

 another sound of a raven's or crow's voice; but his 

 utterances were separated into five characters of sound, 

 and the day divided into five "watches," while the direc- 

 tion from which the bird's voice came may be from any 



