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flocked out of the temple, adjourned to their respective rooms, divested themselves of their official robes, and the senseless figures were left to themselves with the lamps burning before them."

The annexed ground-plan of the temple and monastery may serve to convey some idea of the nature and extent of this old establishment.

The nine-storied pagodas of China, of which that in Kew Gardens is a poor copy (the originals being more lofty, if not more substantial), are connected with the religion and worship of Fo, bearing about the same relation to a temple that the campanile, or bell-tower, does to a church in Italy. Images of that deity, and of the various gods and saints associated with him, are found in niches of the wall, in mounting the spiral staircase which conducts to the summit. Although Budha is not now worshipped in India, he is at least considered as the ninth incarnation of Vishnu. It may therefore be conjectured that the nine stories of the pagodas in question have some reference to this circumstance, the real meaning of the number never having been exactly ascertained. Again, in our progress through the interior, with Lord Amherst's embassy, pagodas with only seven stories were met with; and it is possible that this number may convey a mystical allusion to the seven Budhas who are said to have existed at different periods. Wherever these pagodas are in good repair (for many are mere ruins), they are found attached to extensive establishments partaking of the nature of foundations, with a portion of their revenues derived from land adjoining. They are enriched by the contributions and bequests of their votaries, and most of them support a crowd of idle and ignorant priests; but the government has nothing to do with their maintenance. The books of the Budhist religion, which are read and chanted in these establish

ments, are partly translated into Chinese from the originals in the Pâli language, a dialect of the Sanscrit: and in the person of the Grand Lama of Thibet (whose soul on quitting the body is supposed instantly to animate that of an infant) the doctrine of transmigration is said to be practically illustrated.

The indifference, and even repugnance, which is displayed by the government of China Proper towards the professors of Budhism,* becomes quite altered on the other side of the Great Wall towards Mongol Tartary. When Gerbillon was sent by the emperor in company with a Chinese mission beyond the wall, one of the principal Lama priests did not come out of his tent, nor even send a civil message to the representatives of the emperor, who (no doubt with authority from the sovereign) performed a sort of adoration to the living idols. These, in their swinish laziness and stupidity, are supposed to display a kind of mystical abstraction from mundane affairs, and an absorption into the divine nature of Fo. The truth seems to be, that a faith which is good enough for the barbarous and ignorant nomades of Tartary is not so well suited to the comparatively enlightened and sensible Chinese, with whom the rational system of Confucius (with all its faults and imperfections) must ever hold the supreme rank, even under a Tartar dynasty whose native religion is Budhism.

It is specifically urged against the doctrines of Fŏ by the Confucians, that they unfit men for the business and duties of life, by fixing their speculations so entirely on another state of existence as to lead some fanatics to hang or drown themselves in order to anticipate futurity; nay, two persons have been known to commit suicide together

* The Tae-ping insurgents made short work of all they fell in with, professing as they did to exterminate idolatry.

with a view to becoming man and wife in the next world. The priests are sometimes accused of employing their superstitious arts in seducing women; societies of women at least, called Ny-koo, a species of nuns or female devotees, are encouraged by them. The tricks occasionally made use of by the priests resemble the practices of the fakirs in India. Le Comte tells a story of a bonze who went about in a vessel stuck full of nails (something like that in which the Carthaginians are said to have shut up Regulus), and, pretending that it was a merit to relieve him from his pain, he sold these nails to the devout at so much per head.

Their notion of total abstraction, or quietism, seems to aim at getting rid of all passions, even of thought itself, and ceasing to be urged by any human desires; a species of mental annihilation. Certainly, to judge by its effects on the priests, the practice of Budhism appears to have a most debasing influence. They have, nearly all of them, an expression approaching to idiotcy, which is probably acquired by that dreamy state in which one of their most famous professors is said to have passed nine years with his eyes fixed upon a wall! They say, with reference to their system of moral retribution, that what a man receives now is an indication of his conduct in a former state; and that he may augur his future condition by his behaviour in this life. The merit, however, would seem to consist as much in inaction as action, in the abstinence from evil, or the mere self-infliction of pain, as the practice of good. They make up an account with heaven, and demand the balance in bliss, or pay it by sufferings and penances of their own, just like the papists of Europe.

Independently, however, of Budhism, the Chinese have a great idea of the efficacy of charitable and merciful acts, and of the merit of alms-giving. "The good and evil

deeds of the fathers (they say) will be visited on the children and grandchildren." The emperor himself, on occasions of drought and public calamities, or when some of the imperial house are ill, grants general pardons and amnesties. The same ideas are attached to public fasts, when a severe interdict is laid on the slaughter of animals, and no meat can be offered for sale. Such was the case at Canton in 1834, on the occurrence of the inundations. The system of promiscuous almsgiving is one principal encouragement to beggary. It has been mistakenly asserted that there are no beggars in China, while there are, in fact, a great many, notwithstanding the religious attention paid to the claims of kindred. Beggars are seldom turned away from houses and shops without a trifle, which they extort by their whining and persevering importunities.

In a work of some note on morals, called 'Merits and Demerits examined,' a man is directed to keep a debtor and creditor account with himself of the acts of each day, and at the end of the year to wind it up. If the balance is in his favour, it serves as the foundation of a stock of merits for the ensuing year; and if against him, it must be liquidated by future good deeds. Various lists and comparative tables are given of both good and bad actions in the several relations of life; and benevolence is strongly inculcated in regard, first, to man, and, secondly, to the brute creation. To cause another's death is reckoned at one hundred on the side of demerit; while a single act of charitable relief counts as one on the other side. This method of keeping and dangerous a system

a score with heaven is as foolish of morality as that of penances and indulgences in the Romish church. To save a person's life ranks, in the above work, as an exact set-off to the opposite act of taking life away; and it is said that this deed of merit

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will prolong a person's life twelve years. A pretty correct idea of Chinese moral sentiment might be gathered from the scale of actions there given. To repair a road, make a bridge, or dig a well, ranks as ten; to cure a disease, as thirty; to give enough ground to make a grave, as the same; to set on foot some very useful scheme or invention, ranks still higher. On the other hand, to reprove one unjustly counts as three on the debtor's side; to level a tomb, as fifty; to dig up a corpse, as one hundred; to cut off a man's male heirs, as two hundred; and so on. These notions are not peculiar to the Budhist sect, but prevail universally among the Chinese, who are as little troubled with sectarian divisions and animosities as any people in the world, simply from a feeling of general indifference.

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A paper by the Rev. Mr. Gutzlaff, in the second volume of the Chinese Repository,' contains a very correct account of Budhism as it now exists in the celestial empire. He observes of the priests, that they scarcely address themselves to the understanding, "but are content with repeating the prayers delivered to them in the Pâli, to them an unintelligible language; and they pay their adoration to an indefinite number of images, according to the traditions of their religion. In China, where the peculiarity of the language precludes its being written with alphabetic accuracy, the Pâli degenerates into a complete jargon," wherein the sound is imperfectly preserved, and the meaning wholly lost. Mr. Gutzlaff tried in vain to decipher the hard words, and, after all his inquiries among the priests, succeeded so little in satisfying himself, that he was obliged to relinquish the point. They seem, in fact, to repeat their prayers altogether by rote, and to be ignorant of the meaning of a very considerable portion of their sacred books.

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