DOGS OF CHINA AND JAPAN 



of the present day, had recourse to the blowing of horns 

 and the beating of drums and brazen pots and pans. This 

 ridiculous custom was evidently in full force in the day 

 of Juvenal, who alludes to it in a description of a brawling 

 woman 



' Forbear your drums and trumpets, if you please, 

 Her voice alone, the labouring moon can ease.' " * 



The importance attached by the ancients to prompt 

 measures for countering this danger is shown by the fate 

 meted out to two inaccurate astronomers of antiquity, as 

 recorded in the Classics : " Now here are He and Ho. They 

 have entirely subverted their virtue and are sunk and lost in 

 wine. They have been the first to allow the regulations of 

 heaven to get into disorder, putting far from them their 

 proper business. On the first day of the last month of autumn 

 the sun and moon did not meet harmoniously in Fang. 

 The blind musicians beat their drums, the inferior officers 

 and common people bustled and ran about. He and Ho, how- 

 ever, heard nothing and knew nothing. The statutes of the 

 government say ' when they anticipate the time let them 

 be put to death without mercy ; when they are behind the 

 time let them be put to death without mercy.' " f 



This mythical dog is quaintly described in a popular work 

 on the Chinese minor deities. " The How Tien Ch'uan, or 

 Heavenly Barking Dog (belonging to the deity Erh Lang), 

 when sublimed from the earthly state, became a thin-bodied or 

 coursing dog, having the size of an elephant, and the likeness 

 of the strong and fierce owl which eats its parents. Its 

 head is as brass and its neck as iron. Terrible in battle, its 

 antagonist, however fierce and powerful, is quickly consumed, 

 even unto the last of his bones." To this idea of the existence 



* " China," J. H. Gray, vol. i, p. 267, 1878. 



f Legge's Chinese Classics, " Shoo King," Part III, Book IV, chap. ii. 



34 



