82 . Hntton Webster 



The lunar festivals found in China have doubtless been affected 

 by contact with Buddhism. In the T'ang dynasty Buddhist calcu- 

 lators were even invited to undertake an improvement of the 

 imperial calendar. The Chinese Ts'ing-Kzvei, or Regulations of 

 the Priesthood, a Buddhist document, enumerates, among others, 

 four festivals to be kept each month, at new moon and full moon, 

 and on the 8th and 23d days. These are called kin-ming s'i-chai, 

 ' 'the four feasts illustriously decreed " f^ it seems reasonable to 

 regard them as the Chinese variant of the uposatha. Among non- 

 Buddhists there is another custom of observing on the first and 

 fifteenth of each month a ceremony, anciently in honor of the 

 moon, but now particularly addressed to various deities, especially 

 the gods of wealth. At one time it was customary to sacrifice a 

 bullock to the moon on these days. On the feast day the courts 

 of justice and yamans or government residences, are closed.** 

 This festival, which appears to be of native origin, is now chiefly 

 celebrated as a holiday, though its connection with an early cult 

 of the moon, and perhaps, in remote period, with various lunar 

 taboos, is something more than a conjecture. 



An old writer tells us that in Japan there are three monthly 

 holidays connected with the moon, though now immovable feasts. 

 " The first is call'd Isitat^, and is the first day of each month. It 

 deserves rather to be call'd a Day of Compliments and mutual 

 Civilities, than a Church or Sunday." The second holiday is the 

 fifteenth of each month " being the day of the Full-Moon. The 

 Gods of the Country have a greater share in the visits, the Japa- 

 nese make on this day, than their Friends and Relations." The 

 third festival occurs on the twenty-eighth of each month, "be- 

 ing the day of the New Moon, or the last day of the decreasing 



''Joseph Edkins, Chinese Buddhism; London, 1893, p. 206. Cf. also the 

 posadha rite (Hastings, op. cit. iii. 554). 



^■'J. H. Gray, China, London, 1878,' i. 263 n\ The well-known Feast 

 of Lanterns comes on the fifteenth day of the eighth month. According 

 to national tradition this is the moon's birthday. The Japanese Feast of 

 Lanterns, celebrated on the thirteenth day of the seventh month of the 

 old calendar, is included by Professor P'razer among his examples of the. 

 periodic expulsion of ghosts (The Golden Bought iii. 86 sq.). 



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