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$Unique_ID{bob00783}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of Religions
Chapter I: Part II}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Foot Moore, George}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{heaven
tablets
emperor
sacrifice
altar
earth
spirits
religion
chinese
state}
$Date{1913}
$Log{}
Title:       History Of Religions
Book:        Religions Of China
Author:      Foot Moore, George
Date:        1913

Chapter I: Part II

     Music had a large place in the liturgy of the ancestral temple; various
percussion and wind instruments were stationed in the open court of the hall;
in the hall itself stringed instruments were used.  Dances were also performed
on these occasions.  "The dancers move with their flutes to the music of the
organ and the drum, while all the instruments perform in harmony.  All this is
done to please the meritorious ancestors, along with observances of all
ceremonies." The dances, which were taught by the director of music, were
pantomimic, and were accompanied by singing.  The favourite one represented
the evolutions of Wu's army on the night before his victory over Shang.  The
ruler himself, with shield and battle-axe, took part in it, "to give pleasure
to the august personators of the dead." The sacrifices to the ancestors were
clearly distinguished from the food which was set out beside the corpse while
it lay in the house and by the grave at the funeral.  The latter is merely a
pious provision for the needs of the departed; after the interment a
personator was designated, a stool and a mat for viands placed before him, and
the "sacrifice of repose" performed - "the service of him as living is over,
and that for him in his ghostly state begins." Following this ceremony the
spirit tablet of the deceased was set in its place in the ancestral temple,
next his grandfather and opposite his father.  The custom on the last point
varied; but the significance of the distinction is not affected.

     The character of the Chinese state religion has remained through all the
centuries essentially unchanged.  The cultus, however, has long outgrown the
"simplicity" which the idealising compilers of the Li-ki attribute to the
antique ritual.  The imperial sacrifice to Heaven in recent times was one of
the most grandiose acts of worship ever performed by men. ^1

[Footnote 1: The following description of the sacrifice according to the
ritual of the late Manchu dynasty is taken chiefly from an article by Henry
Blodget, "The Worship of Heaven and Earth by the Emperor of China," in the
Journal of the American Oriental Society, XX (1899), pp. 58-69; and from John
Ross, The Original Religion of China, pp. 295-312, where diagrams of the park
and altar will be found.  Since the abdication of the emperor (Feb. 12, 1912)
there has been no one to offer these imperial sacrifices, and the present
administration has apparently allowed the whole official cultus to lapse.]

     The altar of Heaven stands in an extensive walled park in the southern
suburb of Peking.  It is a circular structure of pure white marble, rising in
three concentric stages, surrounded by richly carved marble balustrades, to a
height of about eighteen feet.  The lowest stage is two hundred and ten feet
in diameter, the second one hundred and fifty, and the highest, the flat top
of the altar, ninety feet.  The ascent is by steps at the four cardinal points
of the compass.  In the vicinity of the altar is a small round temple, in
which the tablets of Heaven and of the imperial ancestors are kept, two
smaller temples for the tablets of the deities of lower rank which have a part
in the cultus, repositories for the sacrificial vessels and other apparatus of
worship, a slaughter-house for the victims, a furnace or pyre for burning the
holocaust, and the hall of abstinence in which the emperor spends the night
before the sacrifice, fasting.

     The ceremonies begin some time before dawn.  The emperor, in azure robes
(the colour of heaven), attended by a procession of princes and dignitaries of
the state, takes his place at the southern gateway of the precincts
surrounding the altar; the tablets are brought from the temples in which they
are housed and set in their proper places on the altar.  On the top of the
altar on the north side, facing south, under a canopy of blue silk, is placed
the tablet of Heaven, bearing the inscription, "Throne of Sovereign Heaven,
Supreme Emperor"; on the east and west, facing each other, are the tablets of
the imperial ancestors, the place of honour, on the left of the tablet of
Heaven, being occupied by that of the founder of the dynasty.  These tablets
also stand in canopies of blue silk.

     On the second stage of the altar are the tablets of inferior deities who
are associated with Heaven and the imperial ancestors in this worship. On the
east, facing west, in a blue tent, is the tablet of the sun, and by its side,
under one canopy, are the tablets to the seven stars of the Great Bear, the
five planets, the twenty-eight constellations of the lunar zodiac, and to all
the stars of heaven collectively.  On the west, facing east, is the tablet of
the moon, and by its side, under a common canopy, tablets to the four "heaven
spirits," viz., cloud, rain, wind, and thunder. Before each tablet are placed
the carcases of the proper sacrificial victims (calves, sheep, swine) and a
great array of food - soup, fish, flesh, vegetables, rice and rice-cakes,
dates, nuts, wine.  During the ceremonies upon the altar, a bullock is burnt
as a holocaust to Heaven on a pyre below.

     The emperor, attended by the princes and high dignitaries of state,
having ascended the altar, burns sticks of incense on small stands before the
tablets, to Heaven and his ancestors; then, kneeling, he lays before each a
jade stone and a piece of silk, and presents to each a bowl of broth.  A
libation of rice wine to Heaven follows, while an official reads aloud a
prayer.  The ministrants now ascend to the second terrace and offer before the
tablets incense, silk, and wine; a second and third libation by the emperor
follow; further offerings are presented to the deities of the second terrace;
the emperor elevates before the tablet of Heaven a chalice of wine and a dish
of meat.  Genuflexions and prostrations mark the progress and completion of
the rites, which are directed and announced by a master of ceremonies;
classical music and hymns accompany the whole ceremony.

     The objects which have been offered to the spirits, including the silk
and the written prayer, are now removed by attendants to a furnace and burned.
The tablets are ceremoniously returned to the temples from which they were
taken, and the emperor is escorted back to the palace.

     The altar of Earth, in a park north of the city, is a square structure of
dark-coloured stone, twelve feet high, in two stages, the lower one hundred
and six feet square, the upper sixty feet.  It is surrounded by a stone-walled
trench six feet wide, which at the time of sacrifice is filled with water.
Temples for the tablets, treasuries for the sacred vessels and utensils, and
the hall of abstinence correspond to those near the altar of Heaven.  The
great sacrifice is at the summer solstice.  On the top of the altar, on the
south side, facing north, under a canopy of yellow silk, is set the tablet of
Earth; on the east and west the tablets of the imperial ancestors, also under
yellow canopies - the colour of earth.  On the lower terrace on the west and
east are the tablets of the great mountains - fifteen in all - of the four
seas, and the four great rivers.  The offerings to Earth and the ancestors are
the same as in the sacrifice to Heaven, except that the jade and the silks are
yellow instead of blue, and the ritual is throughout closely similar; but at
the end the objects offered to the terrestrial spirits are buried, not burned.

     A definite symbolism is manifest in the circumstances of this worship.
The sacrifice to Heaven is at the winter solstice, when the powers of light
and warmth begin to prevail over the cold and dark of winter; the sacrifice to
Earth at the summer solstice, for the contrary reason.  For in the dualistic
physical philosophy of the Chinese, Heaven belongs to the Yang, the bright,
warm, male principle; Earth to the Yin, the dark, cold, female principle.  For
the same reason the altar of Heaven is south of the city; that of the Earth,
north; the former is white and round, like heaven; the latter dark and square
and surrounded by water, like the earth; Heaven has a round blue jade stone,
Earth a square yellow one; the canopies of the tablets and the vestments of
the emperor are of corresponding colours.

     A characteristics feature of the modern state religion is the veneration
of Confucius.  As if in amends for the attempt of the Ts'in emperor,
Shi-huang-ti, to annihilate the whole Confucian literature, the first ruler of
the Han dynasty, in 194 B.C., visited the tomb of the sage and offered a
bullock there; half a century later a temple to Confucius was erected at his
home in K'u-fou.  A decree issued in 267 A.D. ordained that four times a year
a sacrifice of a sheep, a hog, and a bull should be offered to Confucius both
on the imperial altar and at his home, and in 555 it was prescribed that a
temple should be erected in honour of Confucius and his favourite disciple,
Yen Hui, in the capital of every prefecture. To-day there is not a city in the
empire which has not one or more such temples.  The tomb of Confucius is one
of the holiest places in China; on the left and right of it are the tombs of
his son, Poh-yu, and his more famous grandson, Tsze-sze, and near by those of
the heads of his family, K'ung, for seventy generations.

     The temples throughout the empire are on the same general pattern.
Through a series of courts access is gained to the temple proper, the Hall of
the Great Perfection, at the end of which is the tablet of Confucius,
inscribed "The Blessed Sometime Teacher, Master K'ung," on the left and right
of which stand the tablets of two of his immediate disciples, Yen Hui and
Tseng-Ts'an, his grandson, Tsze-sze, and Mencius.  On the side walls are the
tablets of the disciples, the Twelve Sages, who stand next in repute, eleven
being pupils of Confucius himself, and the twelfth the great interpreter of
Confucianism, Chu Hi (1130-1200 A.D.), while on the sides of the principal
court are galleries containing the tablets of seventy-two others of minor
fame.

     The ritual is minutely prescribed: offerings are made at each new moon
and full moon, and with greater pomp at the beginning of the second month of
spring and the second month of autumn.  At the capital these sacrifices were
offered by the emperor either in person or, more commonly, by his
representative; in the provinces the civil magistrate of highest rank
officiates, assisted by other civil and military mandarins, the whole being
under the direction of a master of ceremonies.  Dishes of various kinds of
food, cups of wine, incense vases, and lighted candles are set out on three
tables before the tablets.  In the middle of the hall is laid a roll of white
silk, and before it the three victims stand.  The officials take their proper
stations, and the rites proceed in four stages: the greeting of the spirits,
the presentation of the offerings, the removal of the offerings, and the
parting salutation to the spirits.  The several liturgical acts are
accompanied by the singing of appointed hymns and instrumental music by a
chorus and orchestra posted on the terrace before the sacrificial hall; boys
in antique garb, carrying a flute in one hand and a pheasant's feather in the
other, go through stately dances in the court.  At the end of the service the
roll of silk is burned and the flesh of the victims distributed among the
humbler ministrants.  The celebrating mandarin then makes a last obeisance
before the tablet and with his train retires.

     The liturgy contains no prayers in the proper sense, either of petition
or thanksgiving, but praises of the sage; it is, so far as that goes, an act
of veneration rather than divine worship.  In 1906, however, in connection
with the divine worship.  In 1906, however, in connection with the educational
reforms, an imperial edict raised Confucius to the same rank with Heaven and
Earth, the motive being, it is said, to assert the supreme value of moral
education.

     The state religion of China, at the time when the canonical books were
written, was not only highly organised and in the possession of an elaborate
ceremonial, but it had definite and in some respects advanced religious ideas.

     The tutelary and departmental deities, whether by origin objects or
powers of nature or human beings, are all distinctly conceived as spirits, a
stage of development far removed from that which sees in the sun or the river
a living being.  These powers have no plastic, dramatic individuality, like
the gods of Greece; no mythology recites their exploits.  They have definite
functions, and by these alone they themselves are defined.  In this, as in
other respects, the religion of China strikingly resembles that of the Romans;
for a practical people it is enough to know what the gods do, and what their
worshippers have to do to secure their favour, without trying to imagine what
they are like.

     The powers operate in their own spheres: the mountains and streams, the
gods of cloud, rain, wind, and thunder, control the weather; the spirits of
the soil and crops give the increase to the husbandman's labours; the guardian
genii of the empire, the state, the city, protect the inhabitants; the spirits
of the fathers watch over and bless the family. For these good gifts men
approach them with sacrifice and prayer.  If neglected, they may desist from
the beneficent activities on which the welfare of all depends.

     But above this natural religion rises the conception of a sovereign and
moral rule in the world which is intimated in a king's plaint: "Oh! what crime
is chargeable on us now, that Heaven thus sends down on us death and
disorder?" Heaven (T'ien) is literally the sky, "the azure vault," and is
addressed in prayer, "O thou distant and azure Heaven," "O bright and high
Heaven, who enlightenest and rulest this lower world." It is not, however, as
the firmament or the void that Heaven is thus appealed to, but as a spirit -
the highest of spirits.  The pre-eminence of Heaven in Chinese religion is a
feature which it shares with the Mongol religions generally, in which the
heaven-spirit (called in some dialects "Tengri," a name etymologically cognate
with T'ien) occupies the same rank.  But the superiority of Heaven has
developed in China into supremacy.  Heaven is the Emperor (Ti), or more
commonly the Supreme Emperor (Shang-ti), the ruler of the world and of men.
Heaven is not merely the cause, mediate or immediate, of natural phenomena,
but the source of the order of nature (the Tao, or Way).  It is, however,
particularly as ruler of men that the idea of Heaven becomes more definitely
personal.  "Great Heaven is intelligent, and is with you in all your goings.
Great Heaven is clear-seeing, and is with you in all your wanderings and
indulgences."

     The personality of Heaven is moral not mythical; of anthropomorphism in
the proper sense there is hardly a trace.  "The toe-print of the Lord (Ti),"
where the mother of Hou-tsi miraculously conceived - apparently an allusion to
an ancient myth - is almost a solitary instance in the canonical books.  In
the same ode we read: "We load the stands with offerings, the stands of wood
and earthenware.  As soon as the fragrance ascends, the Most High Lord
(Shang-ti), well-pleased, smells the sweet savour." But such language, common
in the Old Testament, is very rare in the Chinese sacred books.  Even the
expression, "the Lord (Ti) said to King Wen," is so unusual that Confucian
scholars, with whom it is a dogma that Heaven does not speak, are moved to
explain it away.

     In an ode to the great Wen it is said: "King Wen is on high, Oh! bright
is he in heaven. . . . King Wen ascends and descends on the left and right of
the Lord," the divine sovereign in heaven being imagined seated in state, like
the emperor, the Son of Heaven, on earth.  But, again, a representation as
inevitable as this stands almost alone.  There is no celestial court with
ministers of various ranks; no angels bringing to God in heaven reports from
the world below, carrying his message to men, and executing his will on earth
in nature and history.

     But, none the less, Heaven is, in the ancient Chinese religion, a
personal god.  This appears most strikingly in odes in which the poet inveighs
against the injustice of Heaven.  Thus, a victim of intrigue and slander
appeals: "O vast and distant Heaven, who art called our parent, that without
crime or offence I should suffer from disorders thus great! The terrors of
great Heaven are excessive, but indeed I have committed no crime." In a period
of misgovernment and disorder another exclaims: "Great Heaven, unjust, is
sending down these exhausting disorders; great Heaven, unkind, is sending down
these great miseries." "O unpitying great Heaven, there is no end of the
disorder." "From great Heaven is the injustice." "Great and wide Heaven, how
is it that you have contracted your kindness, sending down death and famine,
destroying all throughout the kingdom? Compassionate Heaven arrayed in
terrors, how is it that you exercise no forethought, no care?  Let alone the
criminals - they have suffered for their guilt.  But those who have no crime
are indiscriminately involved in ruin." In another ode, written in a similar
situation, an officer admonishes his countrymen: Heaven is sending down
calamities; Heaven is exercising oppression; Heaven is displaying its anger;
revere the anger of Heaven.  Heaven in anger plagues the people with famine
and bad rulers - ignorant, oppressive, negligent.  The outcries against the
injustice of Heaven, like those of Job, derive all their force from the belief
that God is not unjust nor capricious; and this is the constant teaching, the
fundamental assumption, of the Chinese books: the rule of Heaven is moral.

     The moral rule of Heaven is seen in the political sphere.  The emperor
reigns by the appointment of Heaven.  But he must not presume on his divine
right: the appointment is not irrevocable.  Government was instituted by
Heaven for the good of the people, and if the sovereign abuses his powers or
neglects his duties for his own profit or pleasure, saying, "the people is
mine, and the appointment is mine," Heaven annuls its mandate.  When a royal
house becomes corrupt or effete, Heaven seeks out a suitable man to execute
its judgment of deposition, and confers on him its appointment to found a new
dynasty.  Heaven is, indeed, patient, it gives warnings which should lead the
offender to examine himself and mend his way; but if these are unheeded, the
doom falls.

     The emperor is responsible for the acts of all his subordinates, who hold
their appointment from him, and toleration of their misdeeds is imputed to him
as his own evil doing.  The sovereign is doubly responsible for his
subordinates, because, according to Chinese theory, if he is virtuous and
upright, they will be so by the force of his example, and vice versa.  It is
especially the outcry of the misgoverned people which provokes the divine
intervention, for "Heaven loves the people, and the sovereign should
reverently carry out this mind of Heaven." The leaders of the revolutions
which overthrew successively the dynasties of Hia and Shang, in the indictment
of their sovereigns by which they justify rebellion, proclaim that by
dissoluteness, neglect of religion, and above all by perpetrating and
permitting oppression, the emperor has forfeited his right to the throne, and
that they have been commissioned to carry out the sentence of Heaven.

     The appointment, or decree, of Heaven is recognised also in the life of
the individual: it is destiny.  It determines his allotted span of life and
his fortunes in life.  In this decree there is no partiality, no hatred, and
no mistake.  It is a mark of the "superior man" that he stands in awe of the
ordinances of Heaven while the "common man" does not know them, and therefore
does not stand in awe of them.  The superior man is quiet and calm, waiting
for the appointments of Heaven, while the common man walks in dangerous paths,
looking for lucky occurrences.  For the individual, as for the state, the
decrees of Heaven are not arbitrary, they are congruous with man's character.
Good and evil do not wrongly befall men, but Heaven sends down misery or
happiness according to their conduct. The way of Heaven is to bless the good
and make the bad miserable.  In its inspection of men below, Heaven's first
consideration is righteousness, and it bestows on them accordingly length of
days or the contrary.  On the appointment of Heaven in the life of private
persons the Shi-king and Shu-king, from their character, cannot be expected to
say much; Confucius and the philosophers are reticent for a different reason.
Of the beliefs of the common man about the ordering of his life we have no
indication.

     The course, or order of nature (Chinese, Tao, literally, 'way,
principle') ^1 is Heaven's Way.  The operations of nature are attributed
sometimes to the spirits which preside over the several departments of nature,
sometimes to Heaven directly; the latter always when these operations are
thought of as not merely physically effected but morally determined.  The
relation of Heaven to the inferior divine powers seems, however, not to have
been reflected upon.  There is no intimation that these powers are the agents
of Heaven's will or that Heaven works through them; that they should ever work
at cross-purposes with Heaven is doubtless inconceivable.  Like the princes of
the feudal empire, they had a considerable measure of responsible independence
in their own sphere, subject to the intervention of higher authority: if the
spirits of the soil and crops did not do their duty, the Son of Heaven, the
vicegerent of God, might depose them and give their offices to others.
Historically, the gods of this class, guardians of regions and localities,
genii of fertility, belong to the land and its agricultural civilisation,
while Heaven and the manes are elements of the older religion of the nomadic
Mongols.  The lack of complete co-ordination is thus explicable.

[Footnote 1: See below, pp. 49 f.]

     The old Chinese religion has neither a doctrine of creation nor a
cosmogonic myth.  Heaven and Earth, themselves the two greatest gods, produce
all things by the interaction of the opposites, heat and cold, light and dark,
male and female. ^1 The processes of nature which men see every day went on
through all the past as they do at present; that they had a beginning - and
when and how - was as little in men's minds as that they were eternal; they
are simply accepted.  Equally little did it occur to them that if Heaven and
Earth accounted for all the rest, they themselves remained to be accounted
for.  Chinese philosophy, indeed, early raised the metaphysical problem of the
ultimate principle; but it did not, as in Greece, find an anticipation of the
problem in religion.

[Footnote 1: Yih-king, the root of the later Confucian physical philosophy.
See Grube, Geschichte der chinesischen Litteratur, pp. 333 ff.  Of this
dualism there is no trace in the older literature.]

     The moral standard of the religion is high.  The anger of Heaven is
provoked not only by the vices and crimes of the mighty - by drunkenness and
lust, by idleness and dissipation, by arrogance, oppression, and cruelty, by
the luxury which lays heavy burdens on the masses - but by the indolent
self-indulgence which neglects the welfare of the people.  The ruler, as the
parent of the people, is responsible for the prosperity and happiness of his
subjects; a discontented people voices the disapproval of Heaven.  He must
surround himself with wise counsellors, and must employ in the government none
but intelligent and virtuous men; must see that order is maintained and the
laws enforced with a justice tempered by mercy.  He must himself be reverent
in his relations to the gods and sincere in his dealings with men, setting an
example of love to his fellows and respect to his elders, and showing kindness
to the distressed and suffering as if they were his children.  More than by
command and punishment, he should govern by education; and the most impressive
of teaching, the most potent influence, should be his own character.  Mindful
of his responsibility rather than his prerogative, he must feel that "a place
of difficulty is the Heaven-conferred seat." In a proclamation announcing the
beginning of his reign, T'ang, who overthrew the dynasty of Hia, says:

     It is given to me, the One Man (monarch), to secure the harmony and
tranquillity of your states and clans; and now I know not whether I may not
offend against the Powers above and below.  I am fearful and trembling, as if
I were in danger of falling into a deep abyss.  Let me be reverent!  Let me be
reverent!  (The Way of) Heaven is evident, and its appointment is not easily
preserved.  Let me not say that it is high aloft above me.  It ascends and
descends about our daily doings; it daily inspects us wherever we are.  I am
like a little child, without intelligence to be reverently attentive to my
duties; but by daily progress and monthly advance, I will learn to hold fast
the gleams [of knowledge] till I arrive at bright intelligence. ^1

[Footnote 1: Shi-king, III, 3, 3.]

     Humility is the mark of true greatness as well as of true goodness.
"Indulging the consciousness of being good is the way to lose that goodness;
being vain of one's ability is the way to lose the merit it might produce."

     The princes and magistrates, the officials of every grade, have, in their
narrower sphere, similar duties to their inferiors, with the added obligation
of loyalty to their superiors.

     The moral obligations of all classes are defined by the "five
relationships," namely, those between father and son, elder brother and
younger, husband and wife, ruler and subject, friend and friend - the cardinal
doctrine of Chinese ethics.  "From Heaven are the social relationships with
their several duties; we are charged with the enforcement of those five
duties." More detestable than robbers and murderers are the unfilial and the
unbrotherly, "the son who does not reverently discharge his duty to his
father, but greatly wounds his father's heart, and the father who does not
love his son," the younger brother who does not respect his elder, and the
elder who is not friendly to the younger.  The state must punish those who
thus violate the principles of human nature and the constitution of society.

     To an external view, ceremonious formalism characterises the ancient
Chinese worship.  In the apprehension of the worshippers themselves this
ceremoniousness is the natural expression of reverence, and "reverence" is, as
in the Old Testament ("the fear of the Lord"), the word which most adequately
expresses the religious frame of mind.  Reverent should be man's thought of
the powers of nature, above all, of the great moral power, High Heaven, and of
the spirits of the wise and good of former generations; reverent his feeling
and demeanour in their presence; reverent all his conduct as in the sight of
these unseen witnesses.

     Without reverence there is no worship; without sincerity no use in
sacrifice: "The spirits do not always accept the sacrifices that are offered
to them; they accept only the sacrifices of the sincere." Similar utterances
occur in the ritual books, for example: "Sacrifice is not a thing laid on a
man from without; it issues from within him, and has its birth in his heart."
The truly filial son offers sacrifices to his fathers without seeking anything
to be gained by them.  It is not the costliness of an offering that gives it
value, but the simple sincerity of the offerer - a single bull-calf was the
ancient sacrifice to Heaven.  "Officiousness in sacrificing is called
irreverence; and multiplying of ceremonies leads to disorder."

     The moral effect of the sacrifices on the worshippers is more often dwelt
upon than their influence on the spirits.  Sacrifice to the gods not only
expresses but engenders reverence: no one can perform the ceremonies in the
right spirit without being more reverent, that is, a more truly religious man.
Sacrifice to the ancestors cultivates filial piety and cements the bond of the
family.