The Tenth Court.

His Infernal Majesty, Chuan Lun,[750] reigns in the Dark Land, due east, away below the Wu-chiao rock, just opposite the Wu-cho of this world. There he has six bridges, of gold, silver, jade, stone, wood, and planks, over which all souls must pass. He examines the shades that are sent from the other courts, and, according to their deserts, sends them back to earth as men, women, old, young, high, low, rich, or poor, forwarding monthly a list of their names to the judge of the First Court for transmission to Fêng-tu.[751]

The regulations provide that all beasts, birds, fishes, and insects, whether biped, quadruped, or otherwise, shall after death become chien,[752] to be born again for long and short lives alternately. But such as may possibly have taken life, and such as must necessarily have taken life, will pass through a revolution of the Wheel, and then, when their sins have been examined, they will be sent up on earth to receive the proper retribution. At the end of every year a report will be forwarded to Fêng-tu.

Those scholars who study the Book of Changes, or priests who chant their liturgies, cannot be tortured in the Ten Courts for the sins they have committed. When they come to this Court their names and features are taken down in a book kept for the purpose, and they are forwarded to Mother Mêng, who drives them on to the Terrace of Oblivion and doses them with the draught of forgetfulness. Then they are born again in the world for a day, a week, or it may be a year, when they die once more; and now, having forgotten the holy words of the Three Religions,[753] they are carried off by devils to the various Courts, and are properly punished for their former crimes.

All souls whose balance of good and evil is exact, whose period, or whose crimes are many and good deeds few, as soon as their future state has been decided,--man, woman, beautiful, ugly, comfort, toil, wealth, or poverty, as the case may be,--must pass through the Terrace of Oblivion.

Amongst those shades, on their way to be born again in the world of human beings, there are often to be found women who cry out that they have some old and bitter wrong to avenge,[754] and that rather than be born again amongst men they would prefer to enter the ranks of hungry devils.[755] On examining them more closely it generally comes out that they are the virtuous victims of some wicked student, who may perhaps have an eye to their money, and accordingly dresses himself out to entrap them, or promises marriage when sometimes he has a wife already, or offers to take care of an aged mother or a late husband’s children. Thus the foolish women are beguiled, and put their property in the wicked man’s hands. By-and-by he turns round upon and reviles them, and, losing face in the eyes of their relatives and friends, with no one to redress their wrong, they are driven to commit suicide. Then, hearing[756] that their seducer is likely to succeed at the examination, they beg and implore to be allowed to go back and compass his death. Now, although what they urge is true enough, yet that man’s destiny may not be worked out, or the transmitted effects of his ancestors’ virtue may not have passed away;[757] therefore, as a compromise, these injured shades are allowed to send a spirit to the Examination Hall to hinder and confuse him in the preparation of his paper, or to change the names on the published list of successful candidates; and finally, when his hour arrives, to proceed with the spirit who carries the death-summons, seize him, and bring him to the First Court of judgment.

Ye who on the 17th of the 4th moon swear to carry out the precepts of the Divine Panorama, and frequently make these words the subject of your conversation, may in the life to come be born again amongst men and escape official punishments, fire, flood, and all accidents to the body.

The place where the Wheel of Fate goes round is many leagues in extent, enclosed on all sides by an iron palisade. Within are eighty-one subdivisions, each of which has its proper officers and magisterial appointments. Beyond the palisade there is a labyrinth of 108,000 paths leading by direct and circuitous routes back to earth. Inside it is as dark as pitch, and through it pass the spirits of priest and layman alike. But to one who looks from the outside everything is seen as clear as crystal, and the attendants who guard the place all have the faces and features they had at their birth. These attendants are chosen from virtuous people who in life were noted for filial piety, friendship, or respect for life, and are sent here to look after the working of the Wheel and such duties. If for a space of five years they make no mistakes they are promoted to a higher office; but if found to be lazy or careless they are reported to the Throne for punishment.

Those who in life have been unfilial or have destroyed much life, when they have been tortured in the various Courts are brought here and beaten to death with peach twigs. They then become chien, and with changed heads and altered faces are turned out into the labyrinth to proceed by the path which ends in the brute creation.

Birds, beasts, fishes and insects, may after many myriads of kalpas again resume their original shapes; and if there are any that during three existences do not destroy life, they may be born amongst human beings as a reward, a record being made and their names forwarded to the First Court for approval. But all shades of men and women must proceed to the Terrace of Oblivion.

Mother Mêng was born in the Earlier Han Dynasty. In her childhood she studied books of the Confucian school; when she grew up she chanted the liturgies of Buddha. Of the past and the future she had no care, but occupied herself in exhorting mankind to desist from taking life and become vegetarians. At eighty-one years of age her hair was white and her complexion like a child’s. She lived and died a virgin, calling herself simply Mêng; but men called her Mother Mêng. She retired to the hills and lived as a religieuse until the Later Han. Then, because certain evil-doers, relying on their knowledge of the past, used to beguile women by pretending to have been their husbands in a former life, God commissioned Mother Mêng to build the Terrace of Oblivion, and appointed her as guardian, with devils to wait upon her and execute her commands. It was arranged that all shades who had been sentenced in the Ten Courts to return in various conditions to earth should first be dosed by her with a decoction of herbs, sweet, bitter, acrid, sour or salt. Thus they forgot everything that has previously happened to them, and carry away with them to earth some slight weaknesses such as the mouth watering at the thought (of something nice), laughter inducing perspiration, fear inducing tears, anger inducing sobs, or spitting from nervousness. Good spirits who go back into the world will have their senses of sight, hearing, smell, and taste very much increased in power, and their physical strength and constitution generally will be much bettered. But evil spirits will experience the exact contrary of this, as a reward for previous sins and as a warning to others to pray and repent.

The Terrace is situated in front of the Ten Courts, outside the six bridges. It is square, measuring ten (Chinese) feet every way, and surrounded by 108 small rooms. To the east there is a raised path, one foot four inches in breadth, and in the rooms above-mentioned are prepared cups of forgetfulness ready for the arrival of the shades. Whether they swallow much or little it matters not; but sometimes there are perverse devils who altogether refuse to drink. Then beneath their feet sharp blades start up, and a copper tube is forced down their throats, by which means they are compelled to swallow some. When they have drunk, they are raised by the attendants and escorted back by the same path. They are next pushed on to the Bitter Bamboo floating bridge, with torrents of rushing red water on either side. Half way across they perceive written in large characters on a red cliff on the opposite side the following lines:--

“To be a man is easy, but to act up to one’s responsibilities as such is hard. Yet to be a man once again is harder still.

For those who would be born again in some happy state there is no great difficulty; It is only necessary to keep mouth and heart in harmony.”

When the shades have read these words they try to jump on shore, but are beaten back into the water by two huge devils. One has on a black official hat and embroidered clothes; in his hand he holds a paper pencil, and over his shoulder he carries a sharp sword. Instruments of torture hang at his waist, fiercely he glares out of his large round eyes and laughs a horrid laugh. His name is Short Life. The other has a dirty face smeared with blood; he has on a white coat, an abacus in his hand and a rice sack over his shoulder. Round his neck hangs a string of paper money; his brow contracts hideously, and he utters long sighs. His name is They have their reward, and his duty is to push the shades into the red water. The wicked and foolish rejoice at the prospect of being born once more as human beings; but the better shades weep and mourn that in life they did not lay up a store of virtuous acts, and thus pass away from the state of mortals for ever.[758] Yet they all rush on to birth like an infatuated or drunken crowd; and again, in their early childhood, hanker after the forbidden flavours.[759] Then, regardless of consequences, they begin to destroy life, and thus forfeit all claims to the mercy and compassion of God. They take no thought as to the end that must overtake them; and finally, they bring themselves once more to the same horrid plight.

FOOTNOTES:

[695] The Yü Li or Divine Panorama.

[696] The Divine Ruler, immediately below God himself.

[697] See No. XXVI., note 182.

[698] See Author’s Own Record (in Introduction), note 28.

[699] The three worst of the Six Paths.

[700] That the state of one life is the result of behaviour in a previous existence.

[701] Lit.--the skin purse (of his bones).

[702] Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism.

[703] Violent deaths are regarded with horror by the Chinese. They hold that a truly virtuous man always dies either of illness or old age.

[704] Good people go to Purgatory in the flesh, and are at once passed up to Heaven without suffering any torture, or are sent back to earth again.

[705] The Supreme Ruler.

[706] See No. I., note 36.

[707] Supposed to be the gate of the Infernal Regions.

[708] Hades.

[709] Literally, “ten armfuls.”

[710] To Heaven, Earth, sovereign, and relatives.

[711] Held to be a great relief to the spirits of the dead.

[712] It is commonly believed that if the spirit of a murdered man can secure the violent death of some other person he returns to earth again as if nothing had happened, the spirit of his victim passing into the world below and suffering all the misery of a disembodied soul in his stead. See No. XLV., note 267.

[713] A very common trick in China. The drunken bully Lu Ta in the celebrated novel Shui-hu saved himself by these means, and I have heard that the Mandarin who in the war of 1842 spent a large sum in constructing a paddle-wheel steamer to be worked by men, hoping thereby to match the wheel-ships of the Outer Barbarians, is now expiating his failure at a monastery in Fukien. Apropos of which, it may not be generally known that at this moment there are small paddle-wheel boats for Chinese passengers, plying up and down the Canton river, the wheels of which are turned by gangs of coolies who perform a movement precisely similar to that required on the treadmill.

[714] In order that their marriage destiny may not be interfered with. It is considered disgraceful not to accept the ransom of a slave girl of 15 or 16 years of age. See No. XXVI., note 185.

[715] The soil of China belongs, every inch of it, to the Emperor. Consequently, the people owe him a debt of gratitude for permitting them to live upon it.

[716] Do their duty as men and women.

[717] A Chinaman may have three kinds of fathers; (1) his real father, (2) an adopted father, such as an uncle without children to whom he has been given as heir, and (3) the man his widowed mother may marry. The first two are to all intents and purposes equal; the third is entitled only to one year’s mourning instead of the usual three.

[718] As taxes.

[719] Visitors to Peking may often see the junkmen at T‘ung-chow pouring water by the bucketful on to newly-arrived cargoes of Imperial rice in order to make up the right weight and conceal the amount they have filched on the way.

[720] That is, with a false gloss on them.

[721] In order to raise to nap and give an appearance of strength and goodness.

[722] Costermongers and others acquire certain rights to doorsteps or snug corners in Chinese cities which are not usually infringed by competitors in the same line of business. Chair-coolies, carrying-coolies, ferrymen, &c., also claim whole districts as their particular field of operations and are very jealous of any interference. I know of a case in which the right of “scavengering” a town had been in the same family for generations, and no one dreamt of trying to take it out of their hands.

[723] Chiefly alluding to small temples where some pious spirit may have lighted a lamp or candle to the glory of his favourite P‘u-sa.

[724] This is done either by making a figure of the person to be injured and burning it in a slow fire, like the old practice of the wax figure in English history; or by obtaining his nativity characters, writing them out on a piece of paper and burning them in a candle, muttering all the time whatsoever mischief it is hoped will befall him.

[725] Popularly known as the Chinese Pluto. The Indian Yama.

[726] The celebrated “See-one’s-home Terrace.”

[727] Regarded by the Chinese with intense disgust.

[728] Father’s, mother’s, and wife’s families.

[729] I know of few more pathetic passages throughout all the exquisite imagery of the Divine Comedy than this in which the guilty soul is supposed to look back to the home he has but lately left and gaze in bitter anguish on his desolate hearth and broken household gods. For once the gross tortures of Chinese Purgatory give place to as refined and as dreadful a punishment as human ingenuity could well devise.

[730] A long pole tipped with a kind of birdlime is cautiously inserted between the branches of a tree, and then suddenly dabbed on to some unsuspecting sparrow.

[731] If this is done in Winter or Spring the Spirits of the Hearth and Threshold are liable to catch cold.

[732] I presume because God sits with his face to the south.

[733] Pious and wealthy people often give orders for an image of a certain P‘u-sa to be made with an ounce or so of gold inside.

[734] Primarily, because no living thing should be killed for food. The ox and the dog are specified because of their kindly services to man in tilling the earth and guarding his home.

[735] The symbol of the Yin and the Yang, so ably and so poetically explained by Mr. Alabaster in his pamphlet on the Doctrine of the Ch‘i.

[736] One being male and the other being female. This calls to mind the extreme modesty of a celebrated French lady, who would not put books by male and female authors on the same shelf.

[737] The symbol on Buddha’s heart; more commonly known to the western world as Thor’s Hammer.

[738] Emblems of Imperial dignity.

[739] Supposed to confer immortality.

[740] Unfit for translation.

[741] This is ingeniously expressed, as if mothers were the prime movers in such unnatural acts.

[742] On fête days at temples it is not uncommon to see cages full of birds hawked about among the holiday-makers, that those who feel twinges of conscience may purchase a sparrow or two and relieve themselves from anxiety by the simple means of setting them at liberty.

[743] Bones are used in glazing porcelain, to give a higher finish.

[744] The seven periods of seven days each which occur immediately after a death and at which the departed shade is appeased with food and offerings of various kinds.

[745] To warm them.

[746] When they are born again on earth.

[747] Heart, lungs, spleen, liver, and kidneys.

[748] Many millions of years.

[749] The following recipe for this deadly poison is given in the well-known Chinese work Instructions to Coroners:--“Take a quantity of insects of all kinds and throw them into a vessel of any kind; cover them up, and let a year pass away before you look at them again. The insects will have killed and eaten each other, until there is only one survivor, and this one is Ku.”

[750] He who “turns the wheel;” a chakravartti raja.

[751] The capital city of the Infernal Regions.

[752] The ghosts of dead people are believed to be liable to death. The ghost of a ghost is called chien.

[753] On the “Three Systems.” See note 702, Appendix.

[754] Women are considered in China to be far more revengeful than men.

[755] See Author’s Own Record (in Introduction), note 28.

[756] While in Purgatory.

[757] It was mentioned above that the rewards for virtue would be continued to a man’s sons and grandsons.

[758] That is, go to heaven.

[759] Of meat, wine, &c.