Great religions of the world

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CONFUCIANISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. By Herbert A. Giles, LL.D., Professor of Chinese in Cambridge University 3

BUDDHISM. By T. W. Rhys Davids, LL.D., Ph.D., Professor of Pali and Buddhist Literature IN University College, London ... 33

II

GREAT RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD For a poem, the following theme was presented :

" The azure precipice was half concealed in a mass of rolling clouds."

In addition to essays and poems, several general papers of questions are set to the candidates. These comprise classical exegesis, history of ancient and mediaeval China, ancient geography, etc., and are almost identical, mutatis mutandis, with papers on the languages and literatures of Greece and Rome, such as are set, for instance, at the annual examination of candidates for the Indian civil service. Here is a specimen of a classical question :

" Mao Chang in his edition of the Odes interprets ' The Guests at the Feast ' to mean that Duke Wu was upbraiding Prince Yu. Han Ying in his edition says that Duke Wu is here repenting of his fault of drunkenness. Which editor is to be followed?''

Here is a question on the competitive system :

"During the Tang dynasty (A. D. 618-907), personal appearance, fluency of speech, handwriting, learning, and decision were all taken into account at the examinations. How were the various merits of the candidates tested?''

It is the fashion to deride the Chinese curriculum, and to cry out for the introduction of ''science/' which would, no doubt, be very advantageous in many ways. At the same time, it must be confessed that the Chinese classics have had precisely the effect attributed by Professor Jebb, in his lecture on ''Humanism in Education/' to the classics of Greece and Rome. Discarding the past tense for the present, his actual words apply with surprising force to the China of to-day :

" At the close of this century, the classics still hold a virtual monopoly, so far as literary studies are concerned, in the public schools and universities. And they have no cause to be ashamed of their record. The culture which they supplj^, while limited in the sphere of its operation, has long been an efficient and vital influence, not only in forming men of letters and learning, but in training men who afterwards gain distinction in public life and in various active careers/'

Several noble specimens of Confucianists have disappeared during the present reign. Shen Paocheng (1819-79), who first distinguished himself against the Tai-ping rebels, was a stern Confucianist and, withal, a capable man of business. In 1867 he became director of the Foochow Arsenal, which he started with the aid of M. Prosper Giquel, in the face of much opposition, launching his first gunboat in 1869. Successful as an administrator, he gained a lasting name for probity, courage, and frugality, leaving behind him in material wealth literally no more than he brought with him into the world.

Another of&cial of the same class was Ting Jih-chang (1823-82). He was connected with the arsenals at Soochow and Foochow. He was a commissioner for the settlement of cases arising out of the Tientsin massacre. He became governor of Fuhkien, and in 1878 was sent to Foochow to arrange a very serious missionary difficulty in connection with some building operations. A Confucianist to the backbone, he earned the full respect of all foreigners, and when he withdrew into private life he carried with him a spotless reputation.

With such a father as Tseng Kuo-fan, whose dying injunctions to his children compare favorably with Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son, it is hardly a matter for wonder that the Marquis Tseng (1837-90), once ambassador to the Court of St. James, should have continued the best traditions of Confucianism. He promoted to his utmost the establishment of peaceful relations between China and foreign nations, and his death was a severe loss to Great Britain in particular.

Probity, like its opposite, seems to run in families. In the same year with the Marquis Tseng died his uncle, Tseng Kuo-chuan, younger brother of Tseng Kuo-fan. He had risen to be Viceroy of the Two Kiang, and had consequently held the lives and fortunes of myriads of his countrymen in the palm of his hand. It is only necessary to add that at his death the people of Nanking went into public mourning, from which it may be inferred that, given the right material, Confucianism need be no hinderance to an upright and unblemished career.

One eminent Confucianist is still working for his cause, in a manner which compels the admiration of his opponents. Chang Chih-tung, Viceroy of the Two Hu, devotes much of the time which he can snatch from a busy hfe to the encouragement of Confucian learning. He has founded a college and a library for the benefit of poor students. He is a poor man himself, in spite of the high posts he has filled. He is master of a trenchant style, and has written against the opium habit and against the practice of cramping women's feet. He is hostile to foreigners and to Christianity, from the very natural desire to see his own countrymen and Confucianism paramount. Yet he is known to the general public as the one incorruptible viceroy.

Manners and customs, convenient or inconvenient, if founded, as many of them are, upon the authority of the Confucian canon, remain fixed in the national life even more deeply than is found to be the case among Western peoples. The practice of employing a go-between in marriage, the illegality of marriages between persons of the same surname, the unwritten regulation that the axle-trees of all carts in the same district shall be of uniform length — these and many similar customs, fully in force at the present day, are based upon well-known passages to be found in different parts of the canon. Especially has the patriarchal system taken deep root, so deep, in fact, that, short of an entire upheaval, it is not easy to see how it can ever be eliminated from the social life of China, over which its domination is complete. Since the days of Confucius, with fihal piety as its foundation-stone, patriarchahsm has prevailed over the empire, the unit of civilization being not the individual, but the family. The father, and after his death the mother, has absolute power over all the children, until the sons enter upon an official career, when they can be reached only with the consent of the emperor, and imtil the daughters pass by marriage under the patria potestas of another family. At eighteen or nineteen the sons marry, and bring their wives under the paternal roof. The eldest brother succeeds to the headship and responsibilities of the family, and the subordination of his younger brothers to him is only less marked than that of his children.

Altogether the patriarchal system has many advantages. It knits close the family ties. All earnings or income go to a common fund; and individuals, in days of failure and distress, are not left to their own resources. Labor is thereby provided with a defence against capital, and a steady equilibrium is maintained. It is, no doubt, a check to individual enterprise, and a direct encouragement to clannishness and its evils. On the other hand, it is equally an encouragement to morality and thrift. One thing is quite certain — either it is admirably adapted to the temper of the Chinese people or a long communion has adapted them to it.

The Confucian temple, mentioned above, de-

i6 serves particular notice, pla3ang as it does an important part in what ma\^ be called, for the want of a better term, the state religion of China. Almost since the death of Confucius himself, certainly since the second centur}^ B. C, there appears to have been some sort of shrine commemorative of his name and teachings. At the present moment there must be what is called a Confucian temple, distinguishable b3^ its red walls, in all cities above a certain rank throughout the empire. In those temples are ranged, in a particular order, a large number of tablets inscribed with the names of Confucius and of his disciples, of Mencius, and of various great men whose personal efforts have in past times contributed to keep alight the torch of Confucianism. Many tablets have, doubtless, slipped in which ought not to be there, and some names with indisputable claims have been excluded ; but, altogether, the collection is fairly representative of the class intended, and may be regarded as the literary Valhalla of China. Twice a year, in spring and in autumn, offerings of food and wine are set out before these tablets. Early in the morning the local officials, in full dress, assemble at the temples; musicians play, the officials burn incense and prostrate themselves before the tablet of Confucius, and a troupe of trained performers go through certain set movements, after the style of the tragedy dances of ancient Greece. The whole ceremony is commemorative, not intercessory or propitiatory in B 17 any sense, no form of prayer being used. Yet it has been scouted by many missionaries as worship, in the same way as the ceremonies commemorative of ancestors have been scouted, with more justification, as ancestral worship.

Every Chinese family possesses a shrine, be it only a shelf, where stand the wooden tablets of ancestors. Before these, incense is burned daily, with ceremonial prostrations. Twice a month, bowls of food are offered in addition. Once every year, at a certain date in spring, all respectable Chinamen make an effort to visit their ancestral burying-grounds. The spirit-path leading to the grave is swept ; the tomb itself is carefully dusted ; food and wine are offered up; and pieces of paper supposed to represent money are burned in large quantities. The food and wine are intended, in the opinion of the masses, for the spirits to eat and drink; and the fact that neither one nor the other is ever, to all appearances, touched, is explained by saying that the spirits consume only the flavor, leaving the grosser parts as they were. The money is supposed to pass through the agency of fire into the possession of the spirits for whom it is intended, and to be of actual use to them in their spiritual condition; but, to show that such superstitions have simply overlaid the earlier and purer element in the custom, it may be mentioned that coined money was not known until nearly three centuries after the death of Confucius. The same test may be applied equally

i8 with regard to geomancy, without the aid of which no site for a grave is ever finally chosen.

What Confucius thought about even a simple commemorative ceremonial is difficult to gather from his shadowy utterances, such subjects being uncongenial to him. It is recorded of him that "he made his oblations as though the dead were present/' which need not be pressed to mean more than that his observance of the ceremonial was earnest rather than perfunctorj^. The general public, however, are inclined to interpret the words literally, and it is now customary to add a short prayer asking for the blessing of the departed upon all family undertakings. From the general spirit, however, of the teachings of Confucius, it seems clear that he would not have sanctioned superstitious rites. Offerings of food and wine, as may be seen from the Odes, were presented to departed spirits long before his time; and, at the utmost, he would be merely approving an already established system. The offerings themselves wxre probably regarded by him much as we regard offerings of wreaths and flowers at the tombs of departed relatives or heroes, scarcely as an appeal to the physical senses of the dead.

The learned Jesuits of the seventeenth century, headed by Ricci, declared the ancestral worship of the Chinese to be nothing more than a civil rite, and in no way incompatible with the profession of the Christian faith; and had this declaration been allowed to stand, the probability is that the Catholic religion would now be the religion of China. The Jesuits were opposed, however, by the ignorant Dominicans; and, the question being referred to the pope, it was decided in favor of the latter. A great opportunity was thus missed. Some Protestant missionaries have been inclined to extend a degree of toleration to ancestral worship. Others have gone so far as to make it a rule to refuse baptism to responsible adults unless the ancestral tablets have been previously handed over. The importance of this cult at the present day may be gauged by an imperial edict, in which Li Hung Chang is instructed to desecrate and destroy the ancestral tombs of the fugitive reformer, Kang Yu-wei.

Many learned Chinese have labored to show that the Three Teachings — meaning Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism — are in reality at one. Confucianism is now completely tolerant of the other two. Without public temples, and without a priesthood, it exists by virtue of its influence alone, while the teachings of the Buddhist and Taoist are amply supported by all the instrumental details which so much commend a religion to the masses. An important compromise has been affected, to which this happy tolerance is due. On every Buddhist and Taoist altar there stands, practically out of sight, hidden among candlesticks, vases of flowers, and incense - burners, a small tablet, recording more by its presence than by its inscription, which is about the equivalent of "God save the Queen/' as something independent of all religious bias, political allegiance to his Majesty the Emperor. Confucianism asks for no more; it will not even permit any effigy or likeness of Confucius to be set up in any such place of worship. The exhibition of this tablet offers a fair comparison with the exhibition of the royal arms once so frequently seen on the tower arches of churches, but not now regarded as a necessary item in church decoration. Christian missionaries have not seen their w^ay to the same compromise. They have usually shown themselves unduly sanguine as to some imaginary canker eating out the heart of Confucianism. In 1 86 1 Dr. Legge wrote of Confucius as follows: ''His influence has been wonderful, but it will henceforth wane. My opinion is, that the faith of the nation in him will speedily and extensively pass away.'' Forty years have passed since these words were penned, yet the hold of his wonderful influence seems to-day as strong as ever. And this in spite of the fact that, as has been shown above, little or nothing has been done by the emperors of the nineteenth century to stimulate zeal in the cause.

Those missionaries have done well who have recognized the depth and strength of this influence. At the missionary conference in 1877, Dr. Edkins used these words :

" Confucianism is the citadel of the enemy, raising its battlements high into the clouds and manned by multitudes who are animated by a belief in their superiority and their invincible strength. The taking of this fortress is the conclusion of the war."

The late Dr. Carstairs Douglas, a high authority, also said that he thought

"Confucianism a far greater enemy to Christianity than Buddhism or Taoism, just as Mohammedanism in India and Africa is a greater enemy than heathenism; in each case for the same reason, because of the large amount of truth it contained. Missionaries ought to study Confucianism carefully, and thankfully use all that is good in it, pointing out its great deficiencies and wisely correcting its errors."

The late Dr. Faber reduced the chief of these errors to twenty-four in number, exception to some of which might possibly be taken by differently constituted minds — e. g., ''the assertion that certain musical melodies influence the morals of the people is absurd.''

In 1877 Dr. Legge stated that the impression left on him b3^ Confucianism was as follows :

" With very much that is good in it, it still is rather humdrum and inadequate to the requirements of our humanity, a bed shorter than that upon which a man can stretch himself, and a covering narrower than that in which he can wrap himself."

The Rev. A. Smith, author of Chinese Characteristics, says:

" It is acknowledged that there is in Confucianism much that is excellent concerning the relations of man, and many points in which the doctrines of Christian revelation are almost echoed,"

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If such be the case, it would seem that the sooner missionaries devote themselves to a close study of Confucian doctrines; the better. This view prevails now much more widely than a few years ago. In the preface to his Les Quatre Livres, 1895, Pere Couvreur, S. J., declares that:

Mr. Teitaro Suzuki has recently given similar testimony, without reference to Christianity :

" In Confucius and his doctrine are solidly crystallized the essence and the ideal of the Chinese people. When we understand Confucius, we understand the Chinese."

It is difficult, however, to see what real fusion can be brought about of Christianity w^ith Confucianism. We are confronted, on the threshold of the latter, by the dogma that man is born good, and that his lapse into evil is wholly due to his environment. Here Christianity would find a compromise impossible. It has scarcely the accommodating breadth of Buddhism, which established itself in Japan in the sixth century A. D., not by denouncing the false gods of the Japanese, but by promptly canonizing all the Shinto ancestor-gods as Bodhisatvas, second only to Buddha himself. But it might be possible to take a hint from Pope Gregory, who in A. D. 601 addressed a letter to the Abbot Mellitus, then starting for

England, pointing out that the temples of the English ought not to be destroyed, but rather ''converted from the worship of devils to the service of the true God, that the nation . . . may the more familiarly resort to the places to which they have been accustomed/' The old sacrifices were also to be retained in form, '' to the end that, while some gratifications are outwardly permitted them, they may the more easily consent to the inward consolations of the grace of God/' Dr. Legge wrote, in 1877 :

" Christianity cannot be tacked on to any heathen rehgion as its complement, nor can it absorb any into itself without great changes in it and additions to it. Missionaries have not merely to reform, though it will be well for them to reform where and what they can ; they have to revolutionize ; and, as no revolution of a political kind can be effected without disturbance of existing conditions, so neither can a revolution of a people's religion be brought about without heat and excitement. Confucianism is not antagonistic to Christianity, as Buddhism and Brahmanism are. It is not atheistic like the former, nor pantheistic like the latter. It is, however, a system whose issues are bounded by earth and by time ; and, though missionaries try to acknowledge what is good in it, and to use it as not abusing it, they cannot avoid sometimes seeming to pull down Confucius from his elevation. They cannot set forth the gospel as the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation, and exhort to the supreme love of God and of Christ, without deploring the want of any deep sense of sin, and of any glow of piety in the followers of the Chinese sage. Let them seek to go about their work everywhere — and I believe they can do so more easily in China than in other mission fields — in the spirit of Christ, without striving or crying, with meekness and lowliness of heart. Let no one think any labor too great to make himself familiar with the Confucian books. So shall missionaries in China come fully to understand the work they have to do ; and the more they avoid driving their carriages rudely over the master's grave, the more likely are they soon to see Jesus enthroned in his room in the hearts of the people."

The Rev. A. Smith would carry the crusade to extremes. Summing up his fascinating, though one-sided, volume above quoted, he says :

" The manifold needs of China we find, then, to be a single imperative need. It will be met permanently, completely, only by Christian civilization."

Forty years ago the '' manifold needs " of Japan were prett}^ much what those of China are at the present day. All those needs, save one, have been supplied; and Japan now takes an important rank among the nations of the world. She has little or no religion, and does not seem to wish to have any more. Her ethical code, upon which the morals of her people are based, is a legacy from the days when every educated Japanese was a Confucianist. It is a practical, workaday code, setting forth a not unattainable ideal. It teaches virtue for virtue's own sake, and can no more be held responsible for the evils which flourish in China than Christianity can be held responsible for the evils which flourish in England. Yet this

2§ is overlooked to a wide extent. Dr. Legge traced the lying habits of the Chinese directly to the example of Confucius himself, on the strength of three passages, one of which occurs in an admittedly spurious work. In the first, Confucius applauds the modesty of an officer, who, after boldly bringing up the rear on the occasion of a retreat, refused all praise for his gallant behavior, attributing his position rather to the slowness of his horse. In the second, an unwelcome visitor calling on Confucius, the master sent out to say he was sick, at the same time seizing his harpsichord and singing to it, "in order that Pei might hear him.'' Dr. Legge lays no stress on the last half of this story, though it is impossible to believe that its meaning can have escaped his notice altogether. Lastly, when Confucius was once taken prisoner by the rebels, he was released on condition of not proceeding to Wei. ''Thither, notwithstanding, he continued his route,'' and when asked by a disciple whether it was right to violate his oath, he replied : '' It was a forced oath. The spirits do not hear such."

It seems almost to be now recognized that the time has come for giving up frontal attacks upon Confucianism. Apart from ancestral worship and the dogma that man is born in righteousness, there is really very little to attack, and the onset would be better diverted in the direction of Buddhism and Taoism. The cardinal virtues which are most admired by Christians are fully inculcated in the Confucian canon, and the general practice of these is certainly up to the average standard exhibited by foreign nations. When the first Chinese ambassador to England, Kuo Sung-tao, was leaving England for home, he said plainly that while in material civilization we were far ahead of China, our national morality was nothing less than shocking. It must, indeed, seem strange to a Confucianist that, with all our boasted influences of Christianity, it should still be necessary, for instance, to organize a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the ill-treatment of children being quite unknown in China. Female infanticide has, indeed, been charged upon Confucianism, but the glaring absurdity of such a charge can be made manifest in a few words. It is possible actually to prove a negative, and show that extensive infanticide cannot be practised in China. Ever}^ Chinaman throughout the empire, with the very rarest exceptions, marries young. If his wife dies, he marries again; it is not thought proper for widows to remarry, though some do so. Many well-to-do Chinamen take concubines; some two, three, and even four. Therefore, unless there is an enormous disparity in the numbers of boys and girls born, infanticide must be reduced to very narrow limits. Yet, as late as May, 1897, Mrs. Isabella Bishop said, at a meeting of the Zenana Missionary Society, that "of eleven Bible-women whom she had seen at a meeting in China, there was not one that had not put an end to at least five girl-babies/' It is a work of supererogation to add that few Chinawomen bear five children.

Buddhism, which may once have been a religion of pure and lofty conceptions, is now, as seen in China, nothing more than a collection of degrading superstitions, entirely beneath the notice of an educated Confucianist. Its tonsured priests are despised and ridiculed by the people, who openly speak of them as ''bald-headed asvses/' Taoism, once a subtle system of philosophy, has been debased in like manner. It has borrowed some of the worst features of Buddhism, which has in turn appropriated several of the absurdities of Taoism. The two, after centuries of rivalry, have long since flourished peacefully side by side.

With all its merits, Confucianism is seriously wanting in attractiveness to the masses, who really know very little about it. It is a system for the philosopher in his study, not for the peasant at the plough-tail. It offers no consolations of any kind, save those to be derived from a consciousness of having done one's duty. The masses, who respect learning and authority above all things, accept Confucianism as the criterion of a perfect life. They daily perform the ceremonies of ancestral worship in all loyalty of heart, and then go off and satisfy other cravings by the practice of the rites and ceremonies of Buddhism and Taoism, which have so much more to offer by way of reward. Still, wherever Chinamen go they carry

2§ with them in their hearts the two leading features of Confucianism, the patriarchal system and ancestral worship.

During the past century, the sphere of Confucian influence has been enormously widened. Not to mention increase of population within the boundaries of China proper, there has been extension and consolidation in Turkestan, or the New Dominion, won by the victorious arms of Tso Tsung-tang in his campaigns of 1871-1878. Emigration, which was almost unknown in 1800, is in 1900 an e very-day detail at the ports of southern China.

According to the favorite Chinese theory of ''fulness and decay,'' it would only be expected that, after such a period of prosperity as was witnessed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the doctrine should suffer a temporary eclipse. Still, if this century has not been actually propitious to the peaceful development of Confucianism, opposition to Christianity has certainly proved a great stimulus, calling forth its worst features instead of its best — militant features of bigotry and fanaticism, of which Confucius, whose daily texts were reciprocity and forbearance, would have been the last to approve. Of this school, Chou Han, the fiend who excites villagers to murder peaceable missionaries, their wives and children, is the great living exemplar. Yet he, like the arch-fiend, should get his due. His own creed has often been attacked in a manner

CRSAT RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD

the reverse of tactful, well calculated to goad even the mildest-mannered Confucianist to fury.

If Buddhism and Taoism could be displaced by Christianity, and Confucianism be recognized in its true sense as a pure cult of virtue, with commemorative ceremonies in honor of its founder and of family ancestors who have gone before, one great barrier between ourselves and the Chinese would be broken down forever.

Herbert Allen Giles.

BUDDHA

Sakya-muni, Sarvarthasiddha, or, in the more common form, Buddha, founder of the religion named after him, was bom, according to some authorities, in Africa, and, according to equally learned ones, in India. There has been much speculation on this point in an effort to determine whether Buddhism was of African or Indian origin. Advocates of the former opinion call attention to the curled or woolly appearance of the hair on the statues of Buddha, while those holding the opposite opinion claim that his gold-colored complexion and his prominent aquiline nose disprove his African descent.

The latter also go further and not only fix the date of his birth variously as in the reign of Tshao-Wang, of the dynasty of Tsheu, or about 1029 B.C., and also about 622 B.C., but record incidents in his career indicating a greater familiarity with their subject, however legendary the "records" may be. Thus, we are informed that his father was the ruler of the ancient Hindu kingdom of Kapilavastu, at the foot of the Nepalese Mountains, about one hundred miles north of Benares, and that within a few days after his birth, according to custom, he was presented before the image of a deity, which inclined its head toward him as a presage of future greatness.

When the lad was ten years of age he was placed in the care of a spiritual instructor, under whom he developed "mental faculties of the first order," and became equally distinguished by his rare personal beauty. In the Ceylonese account of his life it is said that at the age of twenty he married "a noble virgin," by whom he had a son and a daughter.

About this time he began to apply himself to investigations into the miseries and depravities of mankind, and became so depressed with the conditions of his environment that he announced his intention of retiring from the world and becoming a hermit. Despite the efforts of his father to prevent him, he escaped from the guards set to watch his movements, and settled himself on

BUDDHA

the banks of a river in the Kingdom of Udifa, called in Mongol history Arnasara or Narasara. Here he dwelt for six years, and then returned to the world and began his career as a religious teacher at Warnashi or Varanasi, the modern Benares.