

524 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [November, 1910. 



paper on which squares of gold-leaf had been stamped and 

 longer pieces of paper on which pseudo-Chinese characters 

 were printed. I say pseudo-Chinese characters advisedly, for 

 although they were doubtless copied directly or indirectly from 

 some Chinese prayer, they had become so* degenerate in the 

 process that they could no longer be recognised as characters 

 at all. Advertisements from tins of canned fruit and other like 

 commercial products were fixed up with the squares of gold- 

 leaf and the sham Chinese prayers. 



The object of worship in this shrine consisted of an upright 

 figure carved in wood and gilt. It had probably been intended 

 by the sculptor for an image of Buddha, but a wooden sword 

 had been inserted in one hand, and it was recognized by the 

 people of the islands as representing the guardian spirit of the 

 caves. The figure stood on a rhinoceros skuil, and round it 

 was piled a most heterogeneous collection of natural curiosities, 

 rude clay images of cattle, vases containing incense sticks 

 and Buddhist reliquiaries. The natural objects included croco- 

 diles' skulls, sharks' jaws, sawfishes' "saws" and stones of 

 peculiar natural shape, especially pieces of stalagtite or stalag- 

 mite that had assumed a vague resemblance to the human form. 



The shrine is interesting as illustrating the bastard 

 Buddhism, or rather the animism disguised under a thin 

 veneer of Buddhism", that prevails among the more primitive 

 population of Lower Siam. The advertisements offered at it 

 have perhaps peculiar interest as illustrating the belief that a 

 spirit cannot distinguish between the real and the ideal. The 

 man who offered the covering of a tin of canned lichis, 

 offered, in virtue of the pictures on the paper, not only the 

 fruit in its glorified presentiment, but also the factory in which 

 it had been prepared. 



