Some Chinese Ghosts/Appendix 1
Appendix.
N o t e s.
"The Soul of the Great Bell." — The story of Ko-Ngai is one of the collection entitled Pe-Hiao-Tou-Choué, or "A Hundred Examples of Filial Piety." It is very simply told by the Chinese narrator. The scholarly French consul, P. Dabry de Thiersant, translated and published in 1877 a portion of the book, including the legend of the Bell. His translation is enriched with a number of Chinese drawings; and there is a quaint little picture of Ko-Ngai leaping into the molten metal.
"The Story of Ming-Y." — The singular phantom-tale upon which my work is based forms the thirty-fourth story of the famous collection Kin-Kou-Ki-Koan, and was first translated under the title, "La Bachelière du Pays de Chu," by the learned Gustave Schlegel, as an introduction to his publication (accompanied by a French version) of the curious and obscene Mai-yu-lang-toú-tchen- hoa-koueï (Leyden, 1877), which itself forms the seventh recital of the same work. Schlegel, Julien, Gardner, Birch, D'Entrecolles, Rémusat, Pavie, Olyphant, Grisebach, Hervey-Saint-Denys, and others, have given the Occidental world translations of eighteen stories from the Kin-Kou-Ki-Koan; namely, Nos. 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 14, 19, 20, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 34, 35, and 39. The Chinese work itself dates back to the thirteenth century; but as it forms only a collection of the most popular tales of that epoch, many of the stories selected by the Chinese editor may have had a much more ancient origin. There are forty tales in the Kin-Kou-Ki-Koan.
"The Legend of Tchi-Niu." — My authority for this tale is the following legend from the thirty-fourth chapter of the Kan-ing-p'ien, or "Book of Rewards and Punishments," — a work attributed to Lao-tseu, which contains some four hundred anecdotes and traditions of the most curious kind:—
Tong-yong, who lived under the Han dynasty, was reduced to a state of extreme poverty. Having lost his father, he sold himself in order to obtain . . . the wherewithal to bury him and to build him a tomb. The Master of Heaven took pity on him, and sent the Goddess Tchi-Niu to him to become his wife. She wove a piece of silk for him every day until she was able to buy his freedom, after which she gave him a son, and went back to heaven. — Julien's French Translation, p. 119.
Lest the reader should suppose, however, that I have drawn wholly upon my own imagination for the details of the apparition, the cure, the marriage ceremony, etc., I refer him to No. XCVI. of Giles's "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio," entitled, "A Supernatural Wife," in which he will find that my narrative is at least conformable to Chinese ideas. (This story first appeared in "Harper's Bazaar," and is republished here by permission.)
"The Return of Yen-Tchin-King." — There may be an involuntary anachronism in my version of this legend, which is very pithily narrated in the Kan-ing-p'ien. No emperor's name is cited by the homilist; and the date of the revolt seems to have been left wholly to conjecture. — Baber, in his "Memoirs," mentions one of his Mongol archers as able to bend a two-hundred-pound bow until the ears met.
"The Tradition of the Tea-Plant." — My authority for this bit of folklore is the brief statement published by Bretschneider in the "Chinese Recorder" for 1871:—
"A Japanese legend says that about A.D. 519, a Buddhist priest came to China, and, in order to dedicate his soul entirely to God, he made a vow to pass the day and night in an uninterrupted and unbroken meditation. After many years of this continual watching, he was at length so tired that he fell asleep. On awaking the following morning, he was so sorry he had broken his vow that he cut off both his eyelids and threw them upon the ground. Returning to the same place the following day he observed that each eyelid had become a shrub. This was the tea-shrub, unknown until that time."
Bretschneider adds that the legend in question seems not to be known to the Chinese; yet in view of the fact that Buddhism itself, with all its marvellous legends, was received by the Japanese from China, it is certainly probable this legend had a Chinese origin, — subsequently disguised by Japanese chronology. My Buddhist texts were drawn from Fernand Hû's translation of the Dhammapada, and from Leon Feer's translation from the Thibetan of the "Sutra in Forty-two Articles." An Orientalist who should condescend in a rare leisure-moment to glance at my work might also discover that I had borrowed an idea or two from the Sanscrit poet, Bhâminî-Vilâsa.
"The Tale of the Porcelain-God." — The good Père D'Entrecolles, who first gave to Europe the secrets of Chinese porcelain-manufacture, wrote one hundred and sixty years ago:—
"The Emperors of China are, during their lifetime, the most redoubted of divinities; and they believe that nothing should ever stand in the way of their desires. . . .
"It is related that once upon a time a certain Emperor insisted that some porcelains should be made for him according to a model which he gave. It was answered that the thing was simply impossible; but all such remonstrances only served to excite his desire more and more. . . . The officers charged by the demigod to supervise and hasten the work treated the workmen with great harshness. The poor wretches spent all their money, took exceeding pains, and received only blows in return. One of them, in a fit of despair, leaped into the blazing furnace, and was instantly burnt to ashes. But the porcelain that was being baked there at the time came out, they say, perfectly beautiful and to the satisfaction of the Emperor. . . . From that time, the unfortunate workman was regarded as a hero; and his image was made the idol which presides over the manufacture of porcelain."
It appears that D'Entrecolles mistook the statue of Pou't'ai, God of Comfort, for that of the real porcelain-deity, as Jacquemart and others observe. This error does not, however, destroy the beauty of the myth; and there is no good reason to doubt that D'Entrecolles related it as it had been told him by some of his Chinese friends at King-te-chin. The researches of Stanislas Julien and others have only tended to confirm the trustworthiness of the Catholic missionary's statements in other respects; and both Julien and Salvétat, in their admirable French rendering of the King-te-chin-thao-lou, "History of the Porcelains of King-te-chin" (a work which has been of the greatest service to me in the preparation of my little story), quote from his letters at considerable length, and award him the highest praise as a conscientious investigator. So far as I have been able to learn, D'Entrecolles remains the sole authority for the myth; but his affirmations in regard to other mat- ters have withstood the severe tests of time astonishingly well, and since the Tai-ping rebellion destroyed King-te-chin and paralyzed its noble industry, the value of the French missionary's documents and testimony has become widely recognized. In lieu of any other name for the hero of the legend, I have been obliged to retain that of Pou, or Pu, — only using it without the affix "t'ai," — so as to distinguish it from the deity of comfort and repose.
