[VOL IV] PROPTIATORY OFFERINGS FOR DEPARTED RELATIVES

PROPTIATORY OFFERINGS FOR DEPARTED RELATIVES

Cover Image: Propitiatory Offerings for departed Relatives / China / Drawn by T. Allom Engraved by E.Challis – ALAMY Image ID:2X55ND6

*Chinese people visit temples to express their respect for faith, ancestors, relatives, and cultural traditions. They seek blessings and wishes as well. They believe that deceased relatives can also benefit from these rituals. People often go to temples to pray for the well-being of their departed loved ones, hoping that they will find happiness in the afterlife. This practice plays a significant role in Chinese society and culture.

That so the shadows be not unappeased,
Nor we disturbed with prodigies on earth.                                          

TITUS ANDRONICUS.

IT is probable that the most accomplished Europeans who have hitherto travelled in China, made themselves but imperfectly masters of the rites and ceremonies of the people. The length of years during which idolatry has reigned here is alone an explanation of the multitude of absurdities that have successively supervened—absurdities so palpable, that foreigners, especially Christians, have treated them with contempt.(*Vide Vol. I. p. 65. Vol. III. p. 81.)Hence it is, that when access is permitted to the halls, and temples, and public places of China, we meet at every step with some new object of surprise. Yet in their customs and manners we uniformly trace some identity with other ancient kingdoms—some analogy so striking, that we are insensibly led into the conclusion, that all the inhabitants of this round world must inevitably be members of the great first family.

In the extraordinary confusion of ceremonies relative to the shades of the departed, we trace the sacrificial oblations which the Greeks deemed necessary, to open the gates of Orcus to a living adventurer; and there appears but little difference between the Chinese offerings for the repose of dead men’s souls, and the Latin rite of inhuming the material part, that the immaterial might be allowed to cross the river Styx. ’Twas for this boon the mariner supplicated Archytas:—

Nor thou, my friend, refuse with impious hand,
A little portion of this wandering sand.

His spirit could not pass to Elysium, and be at rest, until this last sad ceremony was performed. But in the Chinese practice, something more selfish is implied than obtaining a passport to the seats of the blessed for their departed friend. They dread his re-appearance in a spectral form, to terrify, if not to avenge, the injuries done to his memory. They hear him exclaiming: –

My curses shall pursue the guilty dead,
And all in vain thy richest victims bleed.

A connection between the Chinese propitiatory oblations and the mythology of the Greeks and Romans, is still more obvious than has been stated. The former are supposed to have originated in the descent of a Chinese prince to the regions of Yen-Wang, to rescue his mother, and bring her back again to the habitable globe. Having succeeded in his undertaking, he related to his countrymen the happiness of the virtuous, and the punishments of the vicious, in the other world, and enjoined propitiatory sacrifices to appease the shades of friends deceased. Here we trace the descent of Orpheus to rescue Eurydice, of Æneas to consult Anchises, of Ulysses to interrogate Tiresias—a plot as old as poesy itself, and not disdained in the age of Dante. The princely visitor of the lower regions returned to the upper world on the first day of the seventh moon, which falls some time in the month of August, and this event is commemorated by oblations and prayers, made before special altars, to avert the wrath of the angry shades, or influence the Chinese Pluto in the votaries’ favour.

A temporary temple being erected for the occasion, its walls are hung with ill-designed, and badly painted, representations of the tortures to which the wicked are incessantly exposed in Yen-Wang’s purgatory. Effigies of evil deities stand around, auxiliaries in establishing a reign of terror. Numerous altars are raised to the manes of the dead, adorned with every species of toy and ornament which the resources of the suppliant can congregate. Bonzes attend, to direct the attitude of prayer, as well as the peculiar request which may be preferred before the altar. The priest’s next duty is to chant a sort of requiem for the souls of the departed, accompanied by low murmurs of the “doubling drum.” Food, including substantial and delicate kinds, is also offered in profusion, along with quantities of coloured paper, representing vestments, all which it is imagined that spectres require in the Elysian plains. At the close, however, of the solemn ceremony, the garments are committed to the stove that stands in the temple—the food consigned to the stomachs of the bonzes—and the votaries depart to their homes with tumult.

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