2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOTS COLLECTIUNS VOL. 8o 



VI. Public Ceremonies and Religious Festivals 42 



1. Important public ceremonies 42 



2. The great festivals 44 



VII. Divination, Lucky Days, Vows, Prayer, Relioious Oeferings, 



AND Worship 47 



1. Divination 47 



2. Lucky and unlucky days 48 



3- Oaths 49 



4. Vows 49 



5. Prayers 49 



6. Religious offerings 50 



7. Worship 51 



VIII. Temples and Sacred Places 54 



1. The relation of the tenii)k' to the community 54 



2. Confucian temples 54 



3. Contents of Buddhist and Taoist temples 55 



4. .Sources of temple incomes 55 



5. Temples as sacred places 56 



6. Sacred mountains 60 



IX. The Gods in Szechuan Provinxe 64 



1. Different representations of the Gods 66 



2. The list of Gods 70 



X. Summary and Conch'siox 79 



Bibliography 81 



PREFACE 



The materials for this paper were gathered at tirst hand in Szechuan 

 Province during the years 1919 to 1926. The idea of collecting the 

 data and of writing this paper was the result of a course in com- 

 parative religion under Prof. Alhert Eustace Haydon of the Uni- 

 versity of Chicago in 191 9. The writer gladly acknowledges his 

 unusual indebtedness to Prof. Playdon for inspiration to undertake 

 this study, and for supervising the writing of the manuscript. Thanks 

 are also due to Dr. Berthold Laufer for helpful suggestions. 



The fact that there are few written sources outside the Chinese 

 language has made this study on the one hand more difficult and on 

 the other hand more interesting. It is hoped that it will form a con- 

 tribution towards a better understanding of the Chinese religion. 



I. INTRODUCTION 



I. THE GEOGRAPHY OF SZECHUAN PROVINCE 



Szechuan lies cm the extreme west of China. It is a whole nation 

 in itself, ha\ing a [Xjpulation of over 60,000.000 and an area of over 



