THE EIGHT IMMORTALS OF THE TAOIST RELIGION 55 



characters takes up the narrative of the Eight Genii while 

 it is almost impossible to trace anything in all the other 

 works. This undoubtedly shows that even the contents of 

 this book, A Mission of the Eight Genii to the East can 

 scarcely be true so far as historical accuracy is concerned. 

 We cannot help admitting that a great deal of this book is 

 fictitious and that the miraculous feats and mysterious 

 encounters ascribed to the Eight Genii are the inventions of 

 imagination.* Nevertheless, it contains accounts of the 

 Immortals in an eclectic form. The traditional narratives are 

 interwoven with fictitious elements which the author deemed 

 worthy of such noble and supernatural characters as the 

 Immortal Eight. For the purpose of the present treatise, 

 only those traditional narratives will be given, while the 

 fictitious elements that savour of present imagination are 

 eliminated. 



The subject will be treated in the following pages in 

 three sections. Section I will take up a general discussion 

 of the rise and development of the belief of genii in the 

 Taoist religion, their characteristics and habitations, and 

 some theoretical problems concerning them. Section II 

 will confine itself to the narration of the lives of the Eight, 

 individually. Section III will deal with the Eight Genii as a 

 whole, together with some incidents of the group that are 

 popular in the land. 



The romanizations of the names of the Eight Immortals 

 are according to Dr. Giles in his Chinese Biographical 

 Dictionary . 



I. 



"Taoism embraces the primeval religion of China, and 

 all the intellectual tendencies which did not find satisfaction 

 in Confucianism. To these belong the various experiments 

 in natural philosophy, and in connection with them the 

 belief in the possibility of overcoming death by means of 

 the elixir of immortality. By this, man enters on everlasting 

 life, leads a higher existence above the range of material 

 laws, in beautiful grottoes, on the sacred mountains, or on 

 the islands of the blessed, and so on. It is worthy of note 

 that such a belief, which bears some faint resemblance to the 

 Christian belief of the Resurrection, should have found 

 acceptance from the earliest to most recent times among the 

 sober minds of the Chinese. There is a record of the names 

 -of thousands of people who are supposed to have reached 

 this condition of immortality, and the life history of many of 



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