THREE CHINESE DEITIES
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In Chinese communities in Malaya and Cambodia, T'ai Sui is prayed to for rain, good crops, fine weather and for all the usual hopes of farmers. Also in South East Asia he is presented with offerings 30 days after the safe birth of a child, to ensure that its full life span had been pre-ordained.
Alternative names and titles
a. Yin Yuan Shuai (陰元帥) Generalissimo Yin
b. Yin Tien Chün (陰天君) Heavenly Master Yin
c.
d.
Yin Ing No (characters unknown) (Ch'ao Chow speakers) T'ai Sui Ye (太歲爺)
e. Tai Sui Ti Chün (太歲帝君) Emperor Tai Sui
す。
Ta Sheng (大聖) The “Great Life,” a nickname in Malacca.
g. Chin Ting Nu (真定奴) His name whilst living with the
h.
hermits
Marshal Yin T'ai Sui (陰太歲) One of the 36 escorting heavenly masters.*
Feast Days
The only identifiable feast date was one given on four separate occasions, three in present day Malaya and one in Shanghai in 1871, the nineteenth of the seventh lunar month. He was officially sacrificed to on the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month in the Temple of Heaven in Peking.
Descriptions of characteristics of T'ai Sui and Yin Ch'iao
There are eight basic forms of this deity:
a. as a shaven headed youth with a tonsure, in Buddhist monk's robes and sandals, holding either:
b.
(1) a scroll or split-bamboo plaque in both hands
(2) a bell in his right hand
(3) his empty right hand above his head, as though holding a raised sword.
(4) seated with his hands on his knees
as an elderly man in Mandarin's robes:
(1) seated with both hands on his knees or (2) holding a bell in his right hand
5 Doré, Father Henri, Recherches sur les superstitions en Chine, (Shanghai 1914-1929, 15 vols.)
6 Grootaers, W. A. Chahar, Peking, Catholic University, Monumenta Serica, 1948).