207
old and modern form, they can be found hanging on many walls, even to this day. See Ibid. pp.235-243. Again, as with the religious works, the tracts have Buddhist/Taoist and Confucian connections. The first two are stated in the compilers' Notes to be respectively "a Buddhist tract", and the "work of a literate adhering to Buddhism". The third was a collection of classical sentences, memorized by schoolboys and often quoted in proverbs, described as the work of a [Confucian] literatus. The last named was by another literatus, again stated to be a Confucianist. The similar work printed earlier in the same Section, the Ch'i Chia or "About Ruling the Family" is described as "the work of a Buddhist writer who is at the same time a Confucianist". Ibid, pp.208, 222, 234 and 185. The Ch'i Chia, again with Chinese text, translation and Notes, is between pp.158-193.
Refs. "Instruction" and cautionary tales could also be found here and there in the texts of opera plays performed all over the country, and were incorporated into the repertoire of traditional tales told by generations of storytellers in towns and villages in all the provinces.
15 From the inside text of the dust cover of Francis C.M. Wei, The Spirit of Chinese Culture (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1947).
Geomancy was probably the most compelling of these beliefs, because it concerned both the living and the dead. In its two main branches, geomancy catered for the tombs of the dead as well as the abodes of the living, with their combined effect upon human destinies,
17 Chiang Monlin, Tides from the West (Taipei, China Cultural Publishing Foundation, 1957 but originally Yale University Press, 1947), p.29. The second element in this credo is of particular interest. In it is made manifest the influence of the religious "Instruction" given in the works described above, and the whole thrust of the concern with moral teaching described by Hu Shih,
is Ibid. pp.6, 29. Also the biography in Howard L. Boorman and Richard C. Howard (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Republican China (New York, Columbia University Press, 1967), Vol.1, p.347.
19 This major aspect of Chinese religious belief is covered in the two final chapters of Mrs. J.G. Cormack's Everyday Customs in China (Edinburgh, The Moray Press, 1935), pp.229-256, entitled "The Influence of the Spirit World" and "Spectres and How to Deal with Them". See also Soothill, op.cit., pp.262-270