•CHINESE FOLKLORE AND SOME WESTERN ANALOGIES. 598 



attached to both and unable to decide as to which has the better claim, 

 brings the case to the local magistrate, who orders the supjjliant to be 

 confined in a cell over night. On the morrow the rival liusbaiids look 

 into the room where she was placed, to find her bod}^ hanging from the 

 rafters. Suicide, it may be observed here, is so common in China as 

 hardly to occasion a remark in passing. The judge, after this discov- 

 ery, asks who will give the poor sacrifice to their jealous loves a decent 

 burial. The second husband declares that he was contending for a live 

 mate, not a dead one; the first, however, takes it upon himself to 

 perform the last sad rites in honor of his beloved, when she is brought 

 in and given to him alive and well. A straw figure had been dressed 

 in her clothes and suspended in her cell by the wily magistrate to test 

 the real sentiments of the two men. 



A third resembles the Bible stor^^ in all but its brutal Semitic 

 denouement. Two women had each a boy, but upon the death of one 

 infant his mother claims the surviving child. When the case is ])rought 

 before the justice he orders one of his domestics to take the lad and 

 train him for ofiicial life. As he supposed, the pretended mother 

 demurs, being only desirous of having the child herself; but tlie real 

 mother, glad of such an opportunit}' for her ofispring, tearfully con- 

 sents to losing him provided his future is secured. There is, we must 

 confess, a finer sentiment about this version than pertains to either the 

 Hebrew rendition or its Japanese analogue, in which latter the famous 

 Judge Oka orders each claimant to pullan arm of the child until it 

 leaves its socket. Naturally only one shoulder is dislocated in the 

 process, and the true parent is thereby discovered. To the Chinese 

 belongs the credit of telling this famous old story without hurt or even 

 threat of mischief to the child. ^ 



When Emerson declared that "the highest can not be spoken of in 

 words"' he intended no allusion to Polynesia and the Far East, but his 

 apothegm conveys perfectly the idea embodied in their widespread 

 practice of euphemism and tabu. The word tabu (tai^i) has become 

 too familiar to need explanation in any modern European language; 

 yet the institution with all its dread force has never perhaps been 

 adequately understood in the West. Doubtless in its original inception 

 it belongs to primitive man, and when the old Persian mo.iar.-hs pun- 

 ished contumacious officials by condemning them to stand in the open 

 court })v the palace gate, where it was death to feed or touch them, but 

 where "the guard compelled them to remain until they starved, they 

 simplv perpetuated a practice of their remote ancestors. No custom, 

 indeed, is more universal. For instance, the Tahitians wdl never use 

 the house or personal belongings of the dead. In ancientJapimji .u^' 



1 Compare also a C^i^^li^^ik^i"^^^^^ 

 I'histoire des religions (Musee Guiniet) 19<= annee 7. 38. ho. 2. bept.-Oct. IhJJ. j..l a.. 



