Directory_and_Chronicle_1842 — Page 447

1812

Account of the Mantchous at Chapn

129

ing either smoke or excessive heat. From these furnaces, a chimney runs in one side of the frontispiece before mentioned, and is raised three or four feet above the roof of the dwelling. In this frontispiece there are uniformly four niches, one with a slit behind to allow the smoke to escape that ascends around the tea kettle, two for the recep- tion of pots and pans of small dimensions, and a fourth in the upper part for offerings to the genius, who presides over the affairs of the cooking stove. In one side of this niche there is a small shrine, in which the picture of the, Tsáu kiun¤ or as he is called the tsáu shin, is set up by means of a pair of incense sticks. He is represented in robes of office surrounded by ministers who execute his commands. Before this shrine a veil is hung, as indicative of the sacredness of the recess. It is worthy of our notice, that in the system of religion commended to us by divine appointment, and in some of those conveyed down from age to age by the doubtful hands of tradition, a veil is interposed between the worshiper and the object worshiped. In the Christian religion the veil is taken away, and man is specially invited to contemplate the Deity, with the hope that by frequent gazing he may ultimately be himself transformed into the same image.

In the houses, which by their furniture indicated that they belong- ed to persons above the rank of common soldiers, books were general- ly found; some in Chinese, some in Mantchou, but the more part in a mixture of both languages. It was evident that men, whose profes- sion was only that of arms, spent some of their time in poring over the venerated classics of China, for the works of Confucius and his admirers were generally punctuated and exhibited other marks of being well handled. Some of the classics were in manuscript, with the Mantchou and Chinese in collateral columns. This might seem to be with the view of teaching the Mantchou Tartars the value of the national lore, but I am inclined to think that as the language, habits, and feelings of the Chinese flow around every stranger with almost irresistible force, that the main object of such manuscript efforts is to keep alive the Mantchon language in its native purity. I am strength- ened in this opinion by the fact that all the printed books were of a didactic sort, and expressly meant to teach the Mantchou Tartar language. In these books the writers show great skill in attempting to give an analysis, orthœpical and etymological, through the me- dium of such an unwieldy tongue a the Chinese, where each sound is encumbered by a complex character, and with every half of truth there is an extraneous half of falsehood