Il8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I42 



duced the Eight Trigrams, and the Eight Trigrams determine the 

 lucky and the unlucky." The Chinese in West China affirmed with- 

 out hesitation that this is the key to their more primitive philosophy 

 and practices, and that the two i ^ or powers are the yin and the 

 yang. 



Prof. Clifford H. Plopper, in "Chinese Religion Seen through the 

 Proverbs," gives this same proverb exactly in the form given above 

 except in the last phrase, which he translates as follows: "Out of 

 Nothingness was born the Great Extreme; this produced the Yin 

 and Yang; these then produced the four Symbols; they the eight 

 diagrams ; and they the sixty- four hexigrams." (Plopper, 1926, p. 20.) 

 While the word i means powers, the powers meant here are the 

 yin and the yang, so that Dr. Plopper's rendering is correct, although 

 it is not a literal translation. Williams, in his dictionary, "A Syllabic 

 Dictionary of the Chinese Language," gives "a power as in nature" 

 as one of the meanings of i, and many Chinese in West China have 

 assured the writer that this is the meaning here. (Williams, S. Wells, 



1909, P- 393-) 



In 1929, after nine years of searching for a name in the Chinese 

 language for this mysterious potency that pervades all things and is 

 the power found in fcngshui and other magical practices, I made the 

 following statements : 



One who searches in the religion of the common people of China for a single 

 term denoting that mysterious potency, now designated by the word "mana" in 

 scientific circles, will be disappointed. There is no such single term. (Graham, 

 1929a, p. 235.) 



The writer is convinced, and advances as a tentative theory, that the con- 

 ception of a mysterious potency, often more or less vague and undefined, but 

 none-the-less real, is a primary key to the interpretation of the popular religion 

 of the Chinese people which has come down through the past millenniums, and 

 that its philosophical interpretation has been worked out in the conception and 

 doctrine of ym-yanri and fcngsluii. (Ibid., p. 237.) 



In his book, "Chinese Peasant Cults," published in 1940, Prof. 

 Clarence Burton Day quotes these two statements. He also quotes 

 J. C. Archer as suggesting the word ch'i ^ or breath as a possible 

 word for the mana concept and adds, 



We wish to put forward here the equally tentative theory that we shall find 

 in the word Ling g meaning "spirit force," "effective" or "efficacious," the 

 term for mana in Chinese religion for which we have been looking. As evidence 

 of this, we can here mention but five places where it occurs in the sense of 

 this underlying and rather immanent potency. (Pp. 171-172.) 



The first two instances given by Professor Day refer to the two 

 thunder and lightning charms mentioned by Dore in "Chinese Super- 



