176 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I42 



image and offerings of food and wine are made to it. Also sometimes 

 as part of the ceremony is the painting of the pupils of the eyes. A 

 story in the Chinese history of the three kingdoms is that of a 

 painter who painted a picture of a dragon so well that it looked alive. 

 Later he painted in the pupils of the eyes, and the dragon flew away. 



Images in the homes and in the temples vary in height from a 

 few inches to over 100 feet. The great stone Buddha across the 

 Min River from Lo-shan is over 200 feet high and is by far the larg- 

 est and tallest in West China. 



Some of the images of the gods in the temples have three eyes, 

 one on each side of the nose and one in the middle of the forehead. 

 Much more rarely there are four eyes. Some of the largest images 

 of Kuanyin, with a thousand arms and hands, have an eye in the 

 palm of each hand. It is believed that these unusual eyes enable the 

 gods to see the good and evil in men's hearts and also the demons, all 

 of which are generally invisible. 



Some of the gods whose images are worshiped are noted national 

 heroes, such as Kuan-ti, Yo-fei, and Chu-ko Liang, commemoration 

 being actually a motive for deification. Of course there is the idea 

 that they have supernatural power and that if worshiped they will 

 use this superhuman potency for the benefit of the worshipers. 



Many of the gods who are deified men are patron deities of the 

 occupations pursued by these men when living. Because they were 

 very successful in these occupations, they are supposed to have super- 

 human wisdom and power which become available to those who wor- 

 ship them. A few examples are Tu-k'ang, the god of brewers and 

 those who sell liquor; Shen-nung, the god of agriculture; Lu-pan, 

 the god of carpenters; Chang-yeh, the god of butchers; Chang- 

 huang the god of cooks; Wen-ch'ang, Confucius, and Ts'ang-chih, 

 gods of scholars; and Hua-t'o, the god of surgeons. 



The deification of men has gone on until very recent years. Dur- 

 ing the occupation of Szechwan by Yunnan troops, following the 

 attempt of Yuan Shih-kai to become emperor of China, a Yunnan 

 officer governed so well in a certain locality that the people deified 

 him and worshiped him. I heard of a man near Ya-an who, because 

 he contributed money to the temples so liberally, was deified and 

 worshiped while he was still living. In a small shrine outside the main 

 entrance of the Ta-o-ssu monastery on Mount Omei was the image 

 of an old man who was still living in 1927. He was very devoted to 

 Buddhism and made large contributions to the Ta-o-ssu temple. He 

 was therefore deified and his image placed in this shrine and wor- 



