117
Ch'uanchou immigrants overseas, and in particular those from Yangchun. There are more than seventy-three temples in Taiwan dedicated to the deity, mostly in the Yunlin area, and as would be expected, he is very popular in Southeast Asian Fukienese communities where his images are to be seen in a great number of temples. However, his image has not been noted in either Hong Kong or Macau, nor had the local carvers in the two colonies heard of the deity.
In Taiwan and Fukienese communities in Southeast Asia, many small images are grouped in comparatively large numbers on the main altar tables of Ch'ing-shui temples. These are borrowed by the sick or by close relatives who beat them home, where they are venerated, often to diagnose sickness before prescribing a remedy. This is done through a medium, though occasionally a villager who has never been in a trance before may suddenly voice the advice of Ch'ing-shui. Some families purchase their own image of Ch'ing-shui for their family shrine, usually after the deity has approached a member of the family in a dream and suggested the idea to him or her. Very rarely do laymen approach the god directly; he is consulted through a medium who recites incantations and receives instructions at a séance during which the deity determines the cause of the problem and prescribes the remedy.
In Penang, Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih is the main deity in the famous snake temple, where a great number of vipers hang from beams and branches and are known as the lieutenants of Ch'ing-shui or 'blue dragons', being referred to by devotees simply as 'dragons'. In another Penang temple, four images of soldiers in armour flank the image of the main deity, Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih, with all four having surnames and together being known as the Four Great Marshals (of Ch'ing-shui) [Ssu Ta Yuan-shuai].
Legends about Ch'ing-shui are numerous and varied. One or two temple custodians have tried to place him amongst the mythological heroes of the Feng-shen Yen-i, including Purcell, but nowhere in the legends of the early dynastic era is there any reference to Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih. In general, he appears to have been a Buddhist monk, born in Yangchun during the Sung dynasty, in AD 1044, and to have died in ca. 1124. Amongst the various claims, one custodian suggested that he was a Sung military adviser, Ch'en Ming-chao, who fought a losing battle against foreign invaders and then fled south with the defeated dynasty and settled.