THE CHINESE LION 



period at which this veneration gave way to simple curiosity 

 and the interest of the menagerie owner. In the temples of 

 the Persian goddess Anahita the lions were so tame that 

 they caressed visitors to her shrine in the most friendly 

 manner. 



In Greece lions were used by the priests of Cybele for 

 exorcising devils, as they are used in North Africa to this 

 day.* 



The lion was associated with Buddhism from a very early 

 date, for Asoka, the Buddhist Emperor of India, whose 

 conversion took place 260 B.C., and to whose extreme activity 

 Buddhism owes its world-wide expansion and possibly its 

 very existence, erected many stone and wooden pillars often 

 bearing Buddhist inscriptions and capped by a crouching 

 Buddhist lion. He orders one of the edicts to be chiselled 

 ' wheresoever stone pillars exist." This, together with the 

 active Chinese belief in charms and amulets, is very possibly 

 the origin of the innumerable lion-surmounted pillars found 

 throughout China in cemeteries, on the sign-poles of shops, 

 on bridges, and in fact wherever an opportunity for such 

 ornamentation occurs. f The figure of a lion is frequently 

 used as a charm in front of a Chinese door. A similar charm 

 exists in Assyria. " Spin together hair from a dog and hair 

 from a lion and thread three cornelians thereon, bind it on 

 and he shall recover," is a magical prescription against 

 sickness in that country .J The theory of subjection of the 

 lion to Buddha probably existed in Asoka's time. The lion 

 on the famous Lauriya pillar, for instance, was apparently 

 used to exemplify the subjection of the fiercest passions to 

 the gentle influences of Buddhism and possibly to vivify 



* Sir A. Pease, " The Book of the Lion." 



f For notes on the lion-pillars of Shensi, see Laufer, "Pottery of the Han 

 Dynasty," p. 240. 

 t " Semitic Magic," R. Campbell Johnson, p. Ixiv. 



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