[VOL I] TEMPLE OF BONZES IN THE QUANG-YEN ROCK

TEMPLE OF BONZES IN THE QUANG-YEN ROCK

Cover Image: Temple of the Bonzes in the Quang-Yen Rock ChangJiang River / NanJing JiangSu China / Drawn by T.Allom Engraved by C.T.Dixon – ALAMY Image ID:2X2MWFM

*The Yan Mountain is located on the south bank of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, possibly in the present-day Nanjing area, and it preserves numerous ancient Buddhist temples and statues.

Christian, look home! Thy heart’s recesses scan,
The chambers of thy spirit’s imag’ry;
Mark well its mazes subterranean,
Idol enthron’d, and troops that bow the knee.
Christian, look home! and ere to curse thou dare,
Be sure no Bonze’s cavern’d haunt is there.

C. J. C.

THE Pei-kiang-ho, which traverses the province of Quang-tung, rising in the Melin mountains, passes through a district remarkably picturesque, but by no means fertile. The river’s channel separates the sandstone from the limestone formation, except perhaps in one place, where an immense opening has been made by the waters right through the former species of rock, which rises in precipitous cliffs above them to a height of no less than eight hundred feet. Some leagues north of this remarkable strait, and of those pillars of a Chinese Hercules, is the city of Chao-chou-foo, enclosed with inhospitable walls of brick and stone, and near to it, the head of the available navigation. Here the flat-bottomed boat, lined with mats, is always exchanged for a junk of superior lightness and accommodation; and here also the river is crossed by a bridge of boats, the central portion of the pontoon being readily movable to permit free navigation. Gliding down the smoothflowing waters, attention is attracted, long before the navigator arrives at the spot, by an impending cliff, that rises seven hundred feet above the river, assuming at its summit a columnar form; the distant view consisting of the outspread waters enclosed by mural precipices, through which a single passage only is opened for their egress. The overhanging rock, named Quang-yen, is composed of greyish-black transition limestone, and remarkable in some places for its irregular vesicular surface. Its indentions appear to be the impressions of organic remains that have fallen from their beds, and the impending mass consists of forms resembling stalactitic compositions. A landing-place is formed at the foot of the rock by a broad level terrace, raised only a few feet above the highest mark of the water, and from this a long but easy flight of steps leads to the first of a suite of chapels or temples, dedicated to the worship of Fo, established in the excavations of the mountain, and where a number of Bonzes constantly dwell to discharge their idolatrous duties.

The following vivid description of the visit of Lord Macartney to the temple in the rock, cannot be discredited; but so much has either fanaticism faded or fashion in religion altered in fifty years, that his lordship’s narrative is wholly inapplicable to the present appearance of these shadowy halls. “An arm of the river bent and elbowed itself into a deep cove or basin, above which enormous masses of rock rose abruptly on every side, agglomerating to a stupendous height, and menacing collision. The included flood was silent, sullen, still, and black. The ledge where we landed was narrow, but we could not stand upon it without difficulty; we were hemmed round with danger. The mountains frowned on us from on high; the precipices startled us from beneath. Our own safety seemed even in the jaws of a cavern that yawned in our front. We plunged into it without hesitating, and, for a moment, felt the joys of a sudden escape; but our fears returned when we surveyed our asylum. We found ourselves at the bottom of a staircase hewn in the rock, long, narrow, steep, and rugged; at a distance a feeble taper glimmered from above, and faintly discovered to us the secrets of the vault; we however looked forward to it as our pole-star. We scrambled up the steps, and with much trouble and fatigue arrived at the landing-place. Here an ancient bald-headed Bonze issued from his den, and offered himself as our conductor through the subterranean labyrinth. The first place he led us to was the grand hall, a refectory of the convent. It is an excavation, forming nearly a cube of twenty-five feet, through one face of which is a considerable opening that looks over the water, and is barricaded with a rail. This apartment is well furnished, in the taste of the country, with tables and chairs highly varnished, and with many gauze and paper lanterns of various colours, in the middle of which was suspended a glass chandelier of prodigious size, made in London, the offering of an opulent Chinese bigot at Canton. From hence we mounted by an ascent of many difficult steps to the temple itself, which is directly over the hall, but of much greater extent. Here the god Poo-sa is displayed in all his glory—a gigantic image with a Saracen face, grinning horribly from a double row of gilded fangs, a crown upon his head, a naked scimitar in one hand, and a firebrand in the other. But how little, alas! is celestial or sublunary fame; I could learn very few particulars of this colossal divinity; even the Bonzes, who live by his worship, scarcely knew anything of his history. From the attributes he is armed with, I suppose he was some great Tartar prince or commander of antiquity; but if he bore any resemblance to his representative, he must have been a most formidable warrior, and probably not inferior in his day to the King of Prussia or Prince Ferdinand in our own. A magnificent altar was dressed out at his feet, with lamps, lanterns, candles and candlesticks, censers and perfumes, strongly resembling the decorations of a Romish chapel; and on the walls were hung numerous tablets, inscribed in large characters with moral sentences and exhortations to pious alms and religion.

“Opposite to the image is a wide breach in the wall, down from which the perpendicular view requires the firmest nerves and the steadiest head to resist its impression. The convulsed rocks above shooting their tottering shadows into the distant light, the slumbering abyss below — the superstitious gloom brooding upon the whole, — all conspired to strike the mind with accumulated horror and the most terrifying images. From the chapel we were led through several long and narrow galleries to the rest of the apartments, which have been all wrought in the rock, by invincible labour and perseverance, into kitchens, cells, cellars, and other recesses of various kinds. The Bonzes having now heard the quality of their visitors, had lighted an additional number of torches and flambeaux, by which we were enabled to see all the interior of the souterrain, and to examine into the nature of its inhabitants, and their manner of living in it. Here we beheld a number of our fellow-creatures, endowed with faculties like our own, –

” Some breasts once pregnant with celestial fire”

buried under a mountain, and chained to a rock, to be incessantly gnawed by the vultures of superstition and fanaticism. Their condition appeared to us to be the last stage of monastic misery, the lowest degradation of humanity. The aspiring thoughts, and elegant desires, the Promethean heat, the nobler energies of the soul, the native dignity of man, all sunk, rotting or extinguished in a hopeless dungeon of religious insanity. From such scenes the offended eye turns away with pity and disdain, and looks with impatience for a ray of relief from the light of reason and philosophy.”

Since the preceding graphic description was written, the number of Bonzes is diminished, the huge idol of Saracenic aspect must have been removed, unless he is identical with the god Poo-sa, who is still seated on an altar, a part of the rock hewn into the shape of the nelumbium, and the feelings of terror obviated by the construction of well-built walls, where there was formerly but a slight rail to secure from accident. The conduct of the resident priesthood, however, is of the same mendicant character; they watch anxiously to ascertain the rank, feelings, or objects of their visitors, and take advantage of every little circumstance in the least likely to afford a pretext for begging. They present mineralogical specimens, gathered from the great rocky mountain in whose bowels they are entombed, and wait with inquiring aspect the result of the worthless gift. But Bonzes, Shamans, or Hoshangs, are, strictly speaking, mendicants by profession, and analogous to a similar order of friars in the Roman Catholic church. A begging Bonze, with his head closely shaven and bare, a board tied on his back on which are painted, in legible characters, the names of the sect and temple to which he belongs, hair-padded cushions fastened on his knees, to save them from the otherwise injurious effects of endless genuflexions,—presents himself everlastingly at the door of the wealthy. In the most supplicating posture, he almost prostrates himself before the place or person of the rich man, and while he chants an appropriate hymn, accompanies it with continued, but very gentle taps, upon a hollow piece of wood in shape resembling a pear. The general costume of the Lama or Bonze, is a loose robe with a broad collar of silk or velvet; the colour of the toga depending on the particular order or monastery to which the wearer belongs. These priests, in Tartary and China, are the only classes of either nation who have the head shaved entirely. They are in general supplied with a broad-leafed hat, manufactured from straw and split bamboo, answering the twofold purpose of a defence against sun and rain, and always with an ornament resembling a cap, exquisitely wrought in wood or ivory, which they affix to the back of the head. Occasionally they are armed with a large umbrella, the handle and ribs being of bamboo, the covering of paper, beneath which the hat is always carried in the hand. The temples, and monasteries, and public places in China, literally swarm with Bonzes, who, ostensibly at least, practise all the austerities and mortifications of the numerous orders of monks in Europe, and inflict on themselves the same painful and disgusting punishments which the Faquirs of India undergo, for the feigned love of God, but for the real admiration of men. The odium thrown upon the moral character of the Bonzes of China by the learned Jesuits who travelled in that empire, should be received, with caution and qualifications, for it is well known that the similarity of monastic orders as well as of the ceremonies of Buddhism, to those of the Roman Catholic Church, created the most distressing feelings in the minds of the missionaries, although history everywhere plainly points to paganism as the common origin of the rites of both.

There are several Roman Catholic convents, or chapels, or cells, that much resemble the temple of Quang-Yen, in their seclusion, rocky character, and humiliating position of their priesthood. The most interesting in southern Europe is the Shrine of St. Rosalia, on Monte Pelegrino, near Palermo. This grotto is a natural formation, deep, damp, and dismal; a rude head of the saint peeps from a niche in the rock, and an exquisite image of the same holy personage lies beneath the gorgeous shrine which stands on the east side of the chapel. A convent has been erected above and around the sacred rock, and the resident priesthood derive a handsome income from pilgrims.（*Vide Wright’s “Shores and Islands of the Mediterranean.”） Near Cape Roxent, in Portugal, is another subterranean temple, called the Cork Convent. It is of considerable extent, includes a chapel, sacristy, refectory, and every apartment requisite for the accommodation of the miserable Franciscan monks who inhabit them. The walls, roof, and floors are lined with cork; the tables, chairs, couches, chapel furniture, crucifixes,—in short cork is employed in everything necessary for the convenience of the establishment, which could be made of that waterproof material. The Temple of Quang-Yen, the Shrine of St. Rosalia, and the Cork Convent, are all dismal and degrading retreats of intellectual beings, and those who incarcerate themselves in such dungeons of bigotry deserve universal contempt; yet they are still less disgusting in their internal arrangements than those of a Franciscan convent on the island of Madeira. Here is shown a large apartment, the walls of which are lined with human skulls, and the bones of arms and legs are placed alternately in horizontal rows. A solitary lamp, depending from the ceiling, throws a feeble light on these miserable memorials of mortality, and on the grim features of a bald-headed friar of the order, who exhibits them to visitors with an indescribable, and most unnatural species of triumph.

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