Religion in China

A Brief Account of the Three Religions of the Chinese

Joseph Edkins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136380846
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

First Published in 2000. This is Volume IV of five of a series on China. Written in 1893, a brief account if the three religions of the Chinese: Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism with the observations on the prospects of Christian conversion amongst those people.

RELIGION IN CHINA.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

No richer field for examination is presented to inquiring men at the present time than China. The barriers of that exclusiveness that have so long hindered the investigations of travellers, and checked the progress of Christian missions and of lawful commerce, are now broken down. The Chinese national spirit deliberately placed itself in direct hostility to the introduction of foreign customs and ideas, The great wall that forms the northern boundary of the Empire is the emphatic emblem of this national exclusiveness. It is so as much in its failure to attain its object as in the idea of its original construction. Several times has a Tartar race broken through that ineffectual barrier, and conquered the country it was intended to defend. The law against the entrance of foreigners and freedom of trade has proved equally useless; and China is now, through its whole extent, with its vast outlying dependencies, open to Europeans. Theoretically it is so, but practically the city of Lhasa and its vicinity are still hermetically closed to the foreigner.

The richness of the Chinese field for inquiry is increased by the centuries of isolation in which the sons of Han have preferred to live. It is this circumstance that renders its contributions to the history of philosophy,literature, politics, and religion likely to prove full of freshness and instruotion. If, since the opening of Japan, the eyes of Europe have been attracted to that island-empire because of the in intelligence and the advance in art and civilisation of its inhabitants. that of China ought to be considered even more worthy of careful study, because the civilisation or Japan is based upon that of China, There is something that fascinates the foreign eye in the more cleanly habitations of the Japanese, and their more efficient police. They please by the quickness with which they learn to speak foreign languages, and the desire they have to acquire Western knowledge. But it should always be remembered that they can boast of no remarkable inventions and discoveries, such as printing, papermaking, the properties of the loadstone, and its use in navigation. They study the books and reverence the sages and great authors of China as we do those of Greece and Rome, They derived their politics, religion, and educational system from the countrymen of Confucius, as they are now obtaining from us a knowledge of mathematics and mechanics. They mush not be then regarded as equal with the Chinese for those things that constitute a great nation, In Eastern Asia it is only the race that spoke the Sanscrit language that can compete with China in the extent and depth of its influence.

If the Chinese are not so profound in philosophy or so acute in philology as the ancient Hindoos, and have never had a Kapila or a Panini among them, they have far excelled that people in the practical part of a nation's development. In history and politics, in social economics, in practical applications of science, and in useful inventions, they are incontrovertibly superior. The Hindoos have not yet learned to write history or to record facts; they have never been able to construct a political system for their country capable of becoming universal and permanent; and after long neglecting to imitate from the Chinese the art of printing, they are only now beginning to adopt it from Europeans. In the practical qualities that constitute the greatness of a nation the Chinese are superior.

There is everything, then, to ensure to inquiries into the literature and social condition of China interesting results. But it is necessary to limit the field of inquiry. There have been many books written on that country, with a chapter on everything. It is this circumstance that renders them unsatisfactory to those who seek information on some particular subject. For example, on the character of their religions there still remains much to be said. Those who have described China have spoken with some fulness of detail on the Confucian system, but they have given too little attention to the religions of Buddha and Taou. There ia room, then, for a work like the present, which sketches the religious condition of the people at the present time from actual observation. Space is wanting in a volume like this to enter adequately into the subject.To do this there is need of a book larger in dimensions, that should do a little more justice to many of the questions that here occur to be considered, and also attempt the narrative of the birth, progress, and existing state of the religions of China.

We Europeans do Dot yet know China. It assumes to our Imaginations a certain quaint and ludicrous aspect, which interferes with a correct opinion of its condition. The first who visited it were travellers of the Middle Ages, who, even if they had not found in it a country resembling in its civilisation Europe as it then was, would have given to their descriptions of it a mediaeval colouring, because they were themselves medieeval men, The picturesque pages of Sir John Mandeville, and the more detailed accounts of Marco Polo, told such wonderful things of China, that their readers did not feel sure whether they were dealing in fact or fiction, Ever since that time the Western world has agreed to look at China through a coloured glass as, indeed, the inhabitants of that country look at us. We see in them much that is singular and provocative of laughter, and they imagine that we exhibit characteristies just as adapted to excite the sense of risibility.

In acquiring a true view of a nation, there is nothing more helpful than an acquaintance with its religious opinions, They are too intimately connected with the spiritual and intellectual life of a nation not to be excellent exponents of its true character, and too real not to demand very . grave consideration. The religions of India and China are invested with an interest high in proportion to the advancement in science and the arts of those who believe them. God has left these nations to the unassisted light of nature and reason far an unusually long period.They have had ample opportunities for doing what man by wisdom can do, to find out God as He is in Himself and in His relations to us, The history of all heathen religions is the history of the ineffectual efforts made by mankind to seek after God, to know the nature and certainty of our Immortality, and to devise means of salvation. There will always be, as there always has been, the intermixture of priestcraft and kingcraft with these religions; but their prime element is found in the natural longings and hopes of a religious kind that men have, It is these that give to priests and statesmen the opportunity to use popular superstitions for their own advantage as engines of power. All this comes very clearly to view in the religions of China.

Two results will be observed to follow from a careful study of the religion of the Chinese. The real life of the nation will he better understood, and questions connected with natural the ology will receive some fresh illustrations. It will be shown, by new examples, how men, who have not the light of Christianity, seek for something better than they possess, and how they try to satisfy themselves with a substitute, extremely unsatisfactory though it may be, for those truths which revelation teaches.

The most noteworthy name in all Chinese history is that of Confucius, He was one of those who, unaided, except by the light of calm reflection, read more clearly than most the lessons conveyed in the unwritten book. of God’s law, Atruesagewas Confucius,one who reasoned soberly and practically on humau duty; a man to attract towards himself high veneration on account of his personal character and the subjects and manner of his teaching. He lived in the sixth century before Christ, a. hundred years later than Buddha, and a hundred years earlier than Socrates. He found a religion already existing in China, with a very practical system of morals, which first and last has always given it its special character. No character in history is less mythological than Confucius. He is no demigod whose biography consists chiefly of fable, but a real person. The facts of his life, the personal aspect of the man, the places where helived, the petty kings under whom he served, are all known. He was a critic of the ancient books composed by earlier sages. He wrote a history of the times immediately preceding his own. He edited the national book of history the “Shoo-king”. He published a collection of national poetry, He attempted to give a philosophical character to the ancient divining book called the “ Yihking,” not surely because he had any predilection for divination, but because he revered the memory of the celebrated men who had transmitted it.So high was his respect for antiquity, that he could not think slightingly of the system of divination which had been practised by the best Chinese kings up to and beyond the boundary line between history and fable. He also edited a work upon the state religion which described the rites, popular and imperial, which are to be performed to the superior powers.

Confucius taught 3000 disciples, of whom the more eminent became influential authors. Like Plato and Xenophon, they recorded the sayings of their master, and his maxims and arguments, preserved in their works, were afterwards added to the national collection of the sacred books called the Nine Classics.

There was nothing ascetic, nothing spiritual, in the religion of Confucius, The questions to which it replied were, How shall I do my duty to my neighbour? How shall I best discharge the duty of a virtuous citizen? It attempted no reply to the higher questions, How am I connected with the spiritual world beyond what I see ? What is the destiny of my immaterial nature ? How can I rise above the dominion of the passions and of the senses ? Another religion attempted to reply to these inquiries, but it made poor work of the answers.

Contemporary with Confucius, there was an old man, afterwards known as Laou-tsoo, who meditated in a philosophic mood upon the more profound necessities and capacities of the human soul, He did so in a way that Confucius, the prophet of the practical, could not well comprehend, He conversed with him once, but never repeated his visit, for he could not understand him. Laou tsoo recommended quiet reflection. Water that is still is also clear, and you may see deeply into it. Noise and passion are fatal to spiritual progress. The stars are invisible through a clouded sky. Nourish the perceptive powers of the soul in purity and rest. A philosopher, called Chwangchow, who seconded him in these researches, was not only, very meditative and fond of soaring high in the region of pure ideas, but was also sarcastic.and controversial. He threw ridicule on the want of philosophical depth exhibited by Confucius, and extolled the doctrine of Taou, the name which the systerm of Laou-tsoo had aasnmed, Their followers were called Taouists ; but it was not said by the leaders of the new sect how their principles should be practically carried out, so that their disciples were left to choosewhat discipline and mode of operation they pleased to constitute the religious life and to effect its objects. They became alchemists, astrologers, and geomancers, or else they adopted the hermit life. It was not till many years after that they imitated, from the Buddhists, the monastic system and idol worship.

It was in the first century of the Christian era that Buddhism entered China from India, In obedience to a dream, the Emperor Ming-te sent ambassadors to the West to bring back a god from thence. They returned with an image of Buddha; and soon after some monks from the banks of the Ganges came to the Chinese court to propagate their religion. During several centuries this new faith struggled for existence and influence in the country. The emperors treated it with alternate patronage and pesecution, The Buddhists from India came peaceably, teaching the Chinese to revere their pompous ritual and their placid, benevolent, and thoughtful divinities. They spread among them the doctrine of the separate existence of the soul, and its transmigration into the bodies of animals. They also pleased their imaginations with splendid pictorial scenes of far-away worlds, filled with light, inhabited by Buddhas, Bodhisattwas, and angelic beings, and richly adorned with precious stones, channing animals, and lovely flowers. In this way they enticed the Chinese into idolatry.

The difference between Buddhism and Brahmanism consists very much in this. The Buddhists place the popular Hindoo divinities in a very humble position. They allow them to exist, but they give them very little power they are made to act as listening pupils or as keepers of the door to Buddha and his disciples. The common Hindoos suppose these same divinities, Brahma, Seeva, Shakra, &c., to have very great influence, and to be constantly exercising a control over human affairs, They erect temples specially to them, deprecating their anger, and earnestly desiring their protection, The Buddhists pay them no such honours. There is no terror to them in the name of a god. They believe that higher power belongs to Buddha, the self-elevated Juan, In this there is one essential difference between the two religions.

There is a remarkable, though a Iess, distinction between the Buddhism of China and of Tibet. In regard to philosophy there is little or no difference; but in Tibet there is a hierarchy which exercises political power. In China this could not be. The Grand Lama and many other Lamas in Mongolia and Tibet assume the title of “Living Buddha,” In him most of all Buddha is incarnate, as the people are taught to think, He never dies. When the body in which Buddha is for the time incarnate ceases to perform its functions, some infant is chosen by the priests who are intrusted with the duty of selecting, to become the residence of Buddha, till, in turn, it grows up to manhood and dies, No Buddhist priest in China pretends to be, a “living Buddha,” or to have a right to the exercise of political power. In Tibet, on the other hand, the Grand Lama,as chief of the “living Buddhas,” not only holds the place of the historical Buddha, long since dead, acting as a sort of high-priest, he also exercises sovereignty over the country of Tibet, ruling the laity as well as the clergy, and being only subordinate to the lord paramount, the Emperor of China.

In the study of Buddhism, the distinction between the northern and southern form should be always kept in view, It is to Burnouf that we owe the first clear separation of these two chief patties into which the Buddhists are divided. The priests of Ceylon, Binnah, and Siam have their sacred books in the Pali language, which is Iater in age than the Sanacrit, The monks of Nepaul, Tibet, China, and the other northern countries where this religion is professed, either preserve the books of their religion in Sanscritt, or have translations made immediately from Sanscrit, Sanscrit is the mother of Pali, and was spoken quite late in some of the mountainous kingdoms of Northern India, Another great distinction is in the books themselvea The fundamental books of both the great Buddhist parties appear to be the same, but the northern Buddhists have added many important works professing to consist of the sayings of Buddha, yet in reality fictitions, They belong to the school called the Great Development School, which is so denominated to distinguish it from the Lesser Development School, common to the north and the south. In the additions made by the northern Buddhists are included the fiction of the Western Paradise and the fable of Amitabha and Kwan-yin, the Goddess of Mercy, These personages are exclusively northern, and are entirely unknown to the south of Nepaul. In the south the Hindoo traditions in respect to cosmogony and mythology are adhered to more rigidly; while in the north a completely new and far more extensive universe, with divinities to correspond, is represented to exist in the books, and is believed to exist by the people.

The Buddhism of Mongolia is derived-from Tibet, as that of Corea, Japan, and Cochin China is from China.There are no more devout adorers of the Grand Lama than the Mongols, and on account of the religious predilections of these rude tribes, the Tartar emperors have always paid great respect to the priests who follow the Tibetan form of Buddhism. Several large monasteries exist at Peking and at Woo-tae-shan, in the province of Shanse, where many thousand Tibetan and Mongolian lamas (the Tibetan name for monk) are supported at the expense of the Government. In the countries to the east of China, the translations made from Sanscrit into Chinese are employed. The names of divinities are also preserved, as are the schools into which the Chinese Buddhists have become divided on account of their differences in opinion on matters of philosophy.

All these forms of Buddhism have come from a common origin. It was Shakyamuni, who, according to some authorities, lived in the seventh century before Christ, but really in the fifth, that instituted the monastic life of Buddhism and the practice of public preaching, The Buddhists of China very seldom now discharge the duty of public preaching, but the name is kept up, and a room in the monasteries is set apart for it. This great religious leader lived to a ripe old age, and taught many disciples.His doctrines spread rapidly during his life and after his death. His remains were universally revered as eminently sacred, and worthy of religious adoration. A hair, a tooth, a piece of bone, a particle of hair in a transformed state,were preserved in temples, or had costly tombs erected over them or near them, This was the origin of the pagodas of China. A pagoda is an ornamental tomb erected over the remains of a Buddhist priest, or intended for the safe keeping of holy relics. This original design has, however, often been departed from, and buildings of this sort are erected in many cases as ornaments to monasteries, and because the neighbours believe that in the presence of a pagoda they have security from certain calamities that might befall their agriculture, their trade, or their dwellings.1

After some time Buddhism became the favourite religion of the kings of India, Buddha himself, the historical person distinguished with that title, belonged to the Kshatrya, or royal caste, which predisposed the royal families of India in bis favour. But early in the Christian era the Brahmans exerted themselves to destroy the new religion that had sprung up in India. They succeeded at last in driving .it out of Hindostan. This persecution led to the wide propagation of Buddhism in the neighbouring countries. When the Chinese Heuen-tsang visited the sacred places of his religion, near Benares and Patna, in the seventh century, he found that Buddhism had very much declined. It was no long time afterwards that it almost entirely disappeared from India.

The chapters of this work are a series of sketches, illustrative of the religious condition of the Chinese as affected by the mutual relation of these three religions to each other. There are other religions in China, and something is also said of them; but these three are far the most influential in point of numbers and social position.

Researches into the religions of mankind have a high interest of their own; no subject out of the domain of pure truth can have more, But perhaps the most important circumstance in studies of this nature is the bearing that they have upon the future spread of Christianity. These systems take the place in the belief of mankind that ought to be held by the doctrines of the Bible. In subverting the ancient idolatries of Europe, learned arguments against them and apologies for Christianity were written, To overthrow the religions of the East, the Christian advocate there must make great use of the press. The careful study of the articles of a heathen’s faith, and of the superstitions to which his religious susceptibilities cling, becomes necessary. The work now in the reader's hands is a sort of introduction to these studies in the Chinese field.

England fifty years ago opened China to the Christian world, The attention of the statesman, the merchant, apcl the man of science, is drawn to it as a country that must hence forth be the scene of increased European enterprise Commerce must thrive there in a growing ratio. Travellers in pursuit of new information in geography, geology, and natural history must be attracted there. from all countries where these sciences are studied with zeal. Various foreign powers will struggle there for predominating influence. None of these different classes of men who visit China, or study it through books, can be expected to pass by its religious condition; but this subject is most important of all to those who desire to see the Christian faith becoming triumphant there over all opposing systems.

Christianity was said, by some of the early Romish mis-sionaries, to have been introduced into China by the Apostle Thomas. This statement, they said, there was evidence for in the traditions of the Chinese. The Buddhists speak of a celebrated ascetic named Tamo as having come from India by sea early in the sixth century. His full name in Sanscrit was Bodhidharma. There is no want of particular information respecting him as to his religious opinions and his biography. There were at the time 3000 Hindoos in China helping to propagate the Buddhist faith. The early Romish missionaries, having very insufficient information. on Chinese history and religions, caught at the name Tamo as a Chinese form of the word Thomas, and the description of his personal character, as a severe ascetic and worker of miracles, decided them in regarding him as identical with the Christian apostle.

Whether Christianit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contributions
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introductory.
• 2 Imperial worship.
• 3 Temples.
• 4 Conflict of religious parties in china.
• 5 How three religions based on different principles exist in china.
• 6 Influence of buddhism on chinese literature, philosophy, and national life.
• 7 Influence of buddhism on chinese literature and social life-Continued.
• 8 Confucian and buddhist notions of god.
• 9 Taouist notions of god.
• 10 Morality.
• 11 Notions on sin and redejmption.g
• 12 Notions on immortality and future judgment.
• 13 Chinese opinions of christianity.
• 14 State of roman catholic missions.
• 15 Mohammedans, jews, and woo-wel buddhists
• 16 The taiping insurrection.
• 17 Journey to woo-tal-shan in 1872 commencedpekjng to lung-tsiuen-kwan.
• 18 Journey to woo-tai~shan continued-from lun'g-tsiuen-icwan to woo-tal
• 19 Journey from woo-taL-shan to pek.ing by way of tsze-king-kwan.