588 CHINESE FOLKLOKE AND SOME WESTERN ANALOGIES. 



mouth of the cave, and when the drao-on was breaking his fast upon 

 this hors d'ceuvre, the dog attacked him with his teeth wliile little Ki 

 hacked away from behind so that the monster died. On hearing of 

 this mighty deed we are glad to learn that the Prince of Sueh asked 

 her hand in marriage and raised her to his throne. Here is an almost 

 perfect analogue to the Vedic Indra and Ahi, the Iranian Mithra and 

 Ahriman. the (rreek I^erseus and Andromeda, the British Beowulf and 

 Grendel, the Teutonic Siegfried, and a host of others. 



To the student of Chinese folkloie the special interest of Taoist 

 literature lies in the fact that, though dating from only the sixth cen- 

 tury B. C, as a j)hil<)sophical system, this so-called religion is based 

 upon and includes the oldest myths and legends indigenous to (Cistern 

 Asia. The po])ular success of Laotsz's doctrine and its permanence in 

 Chinese culture may be (juite contidently ascribed to its acceptance of 

 folklore creations handed down from ])rimitive man in Asia, for the 

 acknowledged ci»mh1 of every race, even tlie most advanced, has ever 

 been influenced by assimilating more or less unconsciously the ideas 

 with which its adhei-ents were most dee])ly iml)ued. To take an 

 instance that occurs instantly to the mind: It was not the wish of 

 Buddha or of Christ to countenance the worshij) of images; on the 

 contrary, l)oth preached against their use; but the great mass of those 

 who profess and call themselves followers of their teachings hu\'(> in 

 all ages i)owed down to wood and stone. Th(» head of the idol, indeed, 

 may be of refined gold, and its })urpose in the sanctuary ex})lained 

 esoterically. but its feet are of clay — the soil upon which the lowly 

 mass of woi-shipiM-s lived and worked and wondered for centuries ))efore 

 they heard the incarnate word pronuilgated. 



^Vith Laotsz, the philosopher of rationalism, w^e need therefore have 

 no concern here. ])ut with the cult which has assumed the name* of 

 Tao, though in practice uttei'Iy indifferent to the high j)urpose of his 

 abstru.se doctrine, ^\o are intimately involved as soon as we begin to 

 penetrate the current faiths and fancies of the Chinese people. 



It is in the writings of the earlier Taoist disciples that the fairy 

 m3'thology of primitive China first takes literary shape. One of them, 

 Chwang-cheu, after meditating long enough on nature to think that 

 nature was identical with himself, gave utterance to a doubt that has 

 been familiar in many guises to modern Western philosophers. ''For 

 when I dream I am a butterfly." he declared, "it is not for me to say 

 that the dream is m}' own, or whether it is a butterfly dreaming that 

 he is Chwang-cheu." Another, Lie-tsz, who wrote in the middle of 

 the fifth century B. C. , describes the fairy islands of the eastern 

 ocean, '"beyond the Pihai, at a distance of I know not how many 

 hundreds of thousands of li, where are five islands, each 80,000 li in 

 circuit, and lying 70.000 li apart. This distance is not supposed to be 

 too great for them to regard each other as neighbors. The towers 



