186 



VOLUNTARY CONFINEMENT 



Chap. IX. 



well for a rice-field, but it will not answer for 

 a tomb." 



Much pleased with our descent into the glen 

 below the falls, we now returned to the temple 

 to make preparations for resuming our journey. 

 While breakfast was getting ready, I paid a visit 

 to the Superior, or High Priest, who had been dis- 

 covered in a small room or kind of cell by one of 

 our party the evening before. He was in volun- 

 tary confinement, and had been in this place for 

 nearly three years. The door of the cell was pad- 

 locked on the outside, and he received his food 

 and was communicated with through a hole in the 

 wall. He seemed a respectable-looking, middle- 

 aged man, rather corpulent for a Buddhist priest, 

 and his confinement did not seem to disagree with 

 him. He informed me the time of his voluntary 

 penance would expire in the third month of the 

 following year, and then he would leave his cell 

 and return again to the world. I believe such 

 examples of voluntary penance are not unusual 

 amongst the Buddhist priesthood. I saw another 

 in the old temple of Tein-tung ; he was a native 

 of Hang-chow-foo, the capital city of the province. 

 He told me he had already spent nine years of his 

 life in voluntary sechision,- — that is, he had been 

 shut up three times, and for three years each time. 

 When I made his acquaintance he was under- 

 going his fourth three years. This man was a 

 very superior specimen of the Buddhist priesthood, 

 open and frank in his manners, and was much 



