456 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888. 



allowed by the vagueness of Lao Tze's w rifciugs both enabled and en- 

 couraged hjs so-called discii)les and adherents to graft upon the lead- 

 ing notions of his text an entirely adventitious code of natural and 

 psychical philosophy, which, on the one hand, expanded into a sys- 

 tem of religious belief, a simple travesty of Buddhism, and, on the 

 other, became developed into a school of mysticism, founded appar- 

 ently upon the early secrets of the professions of healing and divina- 

 tion, from whence it rose to occult researches in the art of transmut- 

 ing metals into gold and insuring longevity or admission into the 

 ranks of the genii. To all these firofessions and pretensions the title 

 of the religion or teachings of Tao was given, although they were in 

 reality in no wise countenanced by the doctrines of Lao Tze himself. 

 His professed disciples, Lieh Tze and ChuangTze in the fourth cen- 

 tury, and Huai Nan Tze in the second century B. C, progressively de- 

 veloped the mystic element thus introduced, and a notable impetus 

 accrued to it from the superstitious belief with which tbe pretensions 

 of the alchemists were received by the Emperor, Wu Ti, from whose 

 period onward the reverence paid to the founder of the sect began to 

 assume a divine character." In A. D. 666 he was for the first time 

 ranked among the gods, being canonized by the Emperor as " The 

 Great Supreme, the Emperor of the Dark First Cause," and his title 

 was again enlarged in 1013. The achievement of corporeal immor- 

 tality having been the chief aim of the sect named after him, the 

 founder, Lao Tze, naturally came to be considered the God of Longev- 

 ity, and as such he figures in all the paintings symbolical of a prayer 

 for " dignity, happiness, and long life," being usually depicted as an 

 aged man leaning upon a staff, his head being of abnormally lofty 

 proportions. 

 The pa-chi-hsiang or "Eight lucky Emblems" are of Buddhistic origin 

 and derived from India. Formed in clay or of wood, they are offered 

 on Buddhistic altars, and largely enter into the architectural deco- 

 . ration of the temples. They are found with variations both of shape 



and of detail. In their ordinary form they are : 



(1) A bell (chung), or more usually a wheel (lun), chakra, the wheel of 

 the law, with fillets. 



(2) A univalve shell (?o), the chank shell of the Buddhists, with fillets. 



(3) A state umbrella (san), with fillets. 



(4) A canopy {kai), with fillets. 



(5) A lotus-flower (lien-hua), without fillets; sometimes represented as a 

 Poeonia montan. 



(6) A vase with cover (kuan), with fillets. 



(7) Two fishes (erh yil), united by fillets. Said by some to be figurative 

 of domestic happiness. 



(8) An angular knot with fillets, termed ch'ang, the intestines, an emblem 

 of longevity. 



Another style of decoration, also consisting of eight emblems, is that 

 known as the pa-pao, or "eight precious things;" they vary consid- 

 erably in form, and the explanations of their meaning are unreliable 

 and conflicting. The more usual forms, all of which bear fillets, are: 

 (1) an oblate spherical object (chen), representing a pearl; (2) a 

 hollow disk inclosing an open square, possibly a copper cask em- 

 blematical of riches ; (3) an open lozenge, placed horizontally ; (4) 

 a lozenge placed horizontally, with a section of a second lozenge in 

 the upper angle ; (5) an object resembling in shape a mason's square 

 — the sonorous stone ching, emblematic by symphony of "good- 



