576 CHINESE FOLKLORE AND SOME WESTERN ANALOGIES. 



analogue in the encounters with the Chinese Lung, the most popular 

 and persistent monster of Farther Asia. And it is at least a curious 

 fact that the so-called ''dragons' bones" sold hj^ apothecaries in China 

 are fossilized teeth. So, too, the sea serpent, the unicorn (the Ki-lin) — 

 adopted as a royal emblem alike by ancient Israel and Japan — the 

 sphinx, and the phciMiix are common alike to Europe and China, 

 where they not onh' assume similar forms, but are ascribed the same 

 supernatural attributes. ' 



Such .scattered fragments of information upon this topic as have been 

 collected for this paper serve mcrel}' to illustrate the stud}^ of Chinese 

 folklore. Much must l)e learned before it can l)e placed on a scientific 

 basis. 



It will be convenient first of all to contrast the Chinese and Japan- 

 ese creation myths. According to the Taoist doctrine — which is of all 

 their speculative systems the most characteristicall}' Chinese— in the 

 beginning there was nothingness; then the indefinite produced the 

 definite, or finite rliuos, out of which came the rang ju'inciple, or 

 light, and following this came yin or darkness. From the alternations 

 of yang and yin, of daj" and night, were derived all things. The idea 

 is a simple one common to many of the earliest philosophies known. 

 It appears in the ancient cults of P^gypt, Babylonia, India, and Persia, 

 and can be fairly referred to the natural promptings of primitive man 

 as he first watched the operations of nature. The dualistic idea tiius 

 carried back to the beginning does not of itself imply a common origin 

 for the human race, nor need we consider it as other than self-evident 

 as soon as man l)egins to think. It ranges through the realm of Chi- 

 nese metaphysical speculations, but not, as in Persia, to the exclusion 

 of every other guiding principle. It is a similarity less remarka])le 

 than that of the triad idea which is also common to Babj^lonia, Egypt, 

 and China. Thus in the first two nations we have major triads Anu, 

 Ea, and Bel — heaven, the waters, and the earth — and Osiris, Isis, and 

 Horus, eternal elements of the visible universe personified and wor- 

 shiped; in the latter there is the same elemental division of nature 

 into the ^' Three Powers," heaven, earth, and man, no one of which is 

 fertile by itself, the union of all three embodying creative force. 



The cosmic myth of Taoism which thus esta])lishes man in this 

 supreme company does not, however, intimate that this element of a 

 primeval trinity was anything more than the prototype of the genus 

 homo. ""His bod}^," saA^s the document quoted, " was quadrangular 

 in likeness, his face was round, his wisdom and intelligence of heaven's 

 birth. He ever stood erect looking at the four quarters of the great 

 earth, even beholding all beneath to the utmost bounds of the horizon." 

 To this being, thus contemplating the created universe, came down on 



^ Compare an entertaining and suggestive study of this phase of folklore, entitled 

 "Mythical Monsters," by Charles Gould, London, 1886. 



