SYMBOLISM BUDDHIST AND LAMAIST LION 



Lamaism, for the Scriptures read : " When a man wishes to 

 obtain the milk of lions, he first makes an embroidered ball 

 of many colours and places this upon their path. Upon 

 seeing it the lions are attracted. Having played with it for 

 a long time the ball is soaked with milk. Thus may man 

 obtain its milk from the ball. Thence comes the saying of 

 the ancients that man is the wisest of all living beings.- This 

 is the very truth." * 



To the Chinese, Corea, possibly on account of its being 

 almost surrounded by the sea, is even more the home of the 

 ethereal lion than is Tibet. One of the earliest of Chinese 

 myths credits the sea with being the home of dragons. In 

 modern Chinese fable the dragon has nine children, of which 

 the lion is one. The Coreans turned this belief to great 

 profit up to recent years by stimulating the Chinese faith in 

 the great efficacy of the " Corean purify heart pill " a 

 nostrum which, considered to be extraordinarily powerful as- 

 a sedative for fever, recently shared with ginseng root the 

 wide reputation which caused its market value to be its 

 weight in gold. The pill was said to contain a large propor- 

 tion of lion's milk collected, in the manner indicated by the 

 Tibetan biblical legend, from cotton and cloth balls exposed 

 by night at the ends of the flag-poles of Buddhist temples, 

 and particularly accessible to the numerous lion-spirits 

 frequenting Corea on account of its proximity to the sea. 

 Since the abolition of the Corean embassies to Peking and 

 the annexation of the Hermit Kingdom by Japan, the sale of 

 this old-world nostrum has greatly diminished. 



Among the patrons of early Northern Buddhism were the 

 Scythians and Indo-Persians, a race of sun-worshippers. The 

 placing of a whelp beneath the paw of the western, or female, 

 lion outside Chinese temples may also be connected with 



* P'a Erh Ch'in Gospel. 



