STONE ENGRAVING AT FU-T'ANG
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her temporary temple. Since then other sailors passing by went ashore to worship her, who, they believed, gave them every protection at sea. Later, they collected a sum of money to build a permanent temple there. Sung-chien, the first beneficiary, had become wealthy by then and contributed the principal share of the construction fund. Still later, in the second year of the reign of Hsien-hsun (1266) the local people, because of superstition, thought that another temple should be built on the shore of North Fu-t'ang. Tao-yi, the only son of Sung-chien, responded and constructed a much more elaborate temple there. Besides, he composed a poem commemorating the event and had it inscribed on a stone tablet which was erected by the side of the new temple. This monument has long been lost, but the temple remains there till the present day, of course having been repaired from time to time during the past 700 years.
Its name has also been changed since the Goddess has been bestowed by Emperors of successive dynasties with different honorable titles from the plain Lin Ta-ku to Tien-hou (Heavenly Queen) which was given her by the Emperor K'ang-hsi (Hong Hei) of early Ch'ing. According to the Gazetteer of Kwangtung this is the oldest temple of T'ien-hou along the coast of the Province. Eight years after its construction, Lin Tao-yi, having made another effort to renew the whole vicinity and repair the Temple, requested the Administrator of the Kuan-fu salt field to prepare the inscription which he had engraved on the rock.*
The stone-engraving has distinct cultural value. In the first place, for students of the history of the Southern Sung Dynasty, the reference to the construction of the Stone Pagoda at South Fu-t'ang in the fifth year of the reign of Emperor Chen Chung of the Northern Sung (A.D. 1012) is particularly of historical interest and significance. This is because when the two young sons of Tu Chung, who would become the last emperors of Sung
* The Goddess was the sixth daughter of Lin Yuan (Lum Yun), an official in Fukien (892-946). It was alleged that she had an innate supernatural power and could perform miracles in saving people from drowning at sea. She died at the age of twenty and henceforth was worshipped by sailors as their patron goddess. See the author's study of her story in Sung Wong Toi, A Commemorative Volume (1960), Chüan 5, p. 279ff (in Chinese).
For the author's detailed studies of the engraved rock, see the same volume, pp. 151-154, 268-280, 284-290.