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during which he acquired extraordinary powers having been provided with a set of secret prescriptions, exorcists and talismans by the major goddess, Hsi-wang Mu'. He was a Taoist Master, a vegetarian who never married and a philanthropic doctor who died at the early age of 58 having worn himself out in the service of his fellow men. A tale told by a Taiwanese related how Wu T'ao's father, Wu T'ung and his mother, née Huang, fled from their home in northern China, during the troubled times of the Sung, to a village near T'ung-an on the Fukien coast where they settled and built a thatched cottage. His mother realised after a dream that she had become pregnant by a famous deity and eventually bore a child naming him T'ao. In another version his mother conceived after she had dreamt that she had swallowed a white tortoise.
Wu T'ao, or as he is known in a number of temples, Wu Chen-jen [Wu the Perfected Man] is often claimed to have come from Ch'uan-chou in Fukien, although in SE Asia there have been several other cities and areas claimed by devotees to have been his birthplace, including T'ung-an, Swatow and Chang-chou [in practice, as we have seen, he came from a small village in the centre of a triangle between T'ung-an, Amoy and Chang-chou]. As Wu T'ao grew up he travelled far and wide studying Taoist disciplines and grew strong and healthy but remained celibate and vegetarian. A temple keeper in Singapore understood that by vegetarian it was meant that he could eat buffalo and goat meat but not dog.
Images of Pao-sheng Ta-ti in general represent him as a black-bearded middle-aged man dressed in court robes and an imperial crown consisting of a flat mortar board with a bead screen hanging down before his face, and sitting on a dragon throne. There are a number of variations such as the scholar's gauze cap instead of the crown. His images are generally identifiable by the convention of the cuff of his left sleeve being clutched by the thumb of his right hand, with only this thumb visible. In Singapore where all carvers were aware of this convention such images are universal. However, the carvers all added that they were unsure whether such a convention was known elsewhere. It is, and in a number of temples in Taiwan the images of Pao-sheng Ta-ti have the right thumb just poking out of the right sleeve, although in Chia I the convention has added one finger to the thumb. In the majority of temples he is portrayed with small animals under his feet, said to be lions, whilst in two temples, both in Taiwan, he has two tiny tigers protruding from his clasped hands within the long sleeves of his robes.
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during which he acquired extraordinary powers having been provided with a set of secret prescriptions, exorcists and talismans by the major goddess, Hsi-wang Mu'. He was a Taoist Master, a vegetarian who never married and a philanthropic doctor who died at the early age of 58 having worn himself out in the service of his fellow men. A tale told by a Taiwanese related how Wu T'ao's father, Wu T'ung and his mother, née Huang, fled from their home in northern China, during the troubled umes of the Sung, to a village near T'ung-an on the Fukien coast where they settled and built a thatched cottage. His mother realised after a dream that she had become pregnant by a famous deity and eventually bore a child naming him T'ao. In another version his mother conceived after she had dreamt that she had swallowed a white tortoise.
Wu T'ao, or as he is known in a number of temples. Wu Chen-jen
[Wu the Perfected Man] is often claimed to have come from Ch'uanchou in Fukien, although in SE Asia there have been several other cities and areas claimed by devotees to have been his birthplace, including T'ung-an, Swatow and Changchou [in practice, as we have seen, he came from a small village in the centre of a triangle between T`ung-an, Amoy and Changchou]. As Wu T'ao grew up he travelled far and wide studying Taoist disciplines and grew strong and healthy but remained celibate and vegetarian. A temple keeper in Singapore understood that by vegetarian it was meant that he could eat buffalo and goat meat but not dog.
Images of Pao-sheng Ta-ti in general represent him as a black-bearded middle aged man dressed in court robes and an imperial crown consisting of a flat mortar board with a bead screen hanging down before his face, and sitting on a dragon throne. There are a number of variations such as the scholar's gauze cap instead of the crown. His images are generally identifiable by the convention of the cuff of his left sleeve being clutched by the thumb of his right hand, with only this thumb visible. In Singapore where all carvers were aware of this convention such images are universal. However, the carvers all added that they were unsure whether such a convention was known elsewhere. It is, and in a number of temples in Taiwan the images of Pao-sheng Ta-ti have the right thumb just poking out of the right sleeve, although in Chia I the convention has added one finger to the thumb. In the majority of temples he is portrayed with small animals under his feet, said to be lions, whilst in two temples, both in Taiwan, he has two tiny tigers protruding from his clasped hands within the long sleeves of his robes.
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