CHINESE FOLKLORE AND SOME WESTERN ANALOGIES. 



B}^ Frederick Wells Williams. 



It is customaiy in the West to consider the civilization of China as 

 a thing by itself, without relation to the factors which have influenced 

 or evolved our own type of culture. The ways of men at the opposite 

 ends of Asia have diverged widely and long indeed, but we can no 

 longer deny the proofs, if not of their common origin, at lea.st of their 

 frequent intermixture and of their development under substantially 

 similar conditions. With many of these proofs the trained scientist 

 must be left to deal, and it is unlikely that anything save the bare 

 results of his investigations will become popular reading. Almost the 

 only exception to the general truth of this statement is to be found in 

 the study of the myths and legends of these exotic peoples and their 

 comparison with folklore elsewhere. Here, happily, the process is as 

 interesting as the result desired. If we treat patientl}'' the fantastic 

 brood with which primitive man surrounds himself, even humoring a 

 little their eccentricities, we are promised in time a key to their caba- 

 listic lore and an answer to the mysteiy of man's origin. 



Something has already been done to show the connection between 

 customs and superstitions, as well as between languages, in the Indo- 

 European race group. The ghosts and monsters of ancient India and 

 Persia reappearing in classical and mediseval garb in Europe declare 

 again the essential unity of one of the world's great families. It 

 remains to show the remoter but still evident affinity between all the 

 races of man. Such investigations carry us far away in time as well 

 as space. Through the welter of fancies, characterizing the mental 

 processes of primitive and savage peoples seeming to live in their 

 imaginations rather than in a world of material matter, we may trace, 

 perhaps, the dimly remembered forms of antediluvian creatures that 

 continued their existence down to a period when man had to struggle 

 with them for supremacy. An inspection of the fossil remains of 

 mesozoic saurians suggests the familiar dragon common to the mythol- 

 ogy of all races alike, and the obvious inference that these supposed 

 flights of imagination were only disordered memories of tierce contests 

 with actual animal enemies long since disappeared. In this sense the 

 contest between Bel and Tiamat in early Babylonian myth finds its 



