Page 54 - Chinese Porcelain Vol I, Galland

22 CHINESE PORCELAIN.

time intercourse with favoured imperial votaries. Such is the
legend which has grown up in the course of ages from the
slender basis afforded by the occurrence of the name Si Wang
Mu in traditions. The or Books of
very early Apocryphal,
Chow, which probably date from some centuries before the
Christian era, contain an assertion that the Emperor Muh
Wang, in his famous journeyings (b.c. 985), was entertained
by Si Wang Mu at the Lake of Cems in the West, and a similar
statement occurs in the Annals of the Bamboo Books. An
'
obscure reference to Si Wang Mu is also to be found in the Shan
'
Hai King ; and upon these ancient notices the philosopher,
Lieh Tsze, based, in the fifth century B.C., a fanciful and
tale of the entertainment with which
perhaps allegorical King
Muh was honoured and enthralled by the supernatural being.
In later the of Hau Wu Ti gave
ages, superstitious vagaries
rise to innumerable fables the visits
respecting alleged paid
to that monarch by Si Wang Mu and her fairy troop ; and
the of the Taoist writers of the centuries
imagination ensuing
was exercised in of the of
glowing descriptions magnificence
her Here the borders of the Lake of Gems
mountain-palace. by
the tree of the whose fruit confers the
grows peach genii, gift
of immortality, which the goddess bestows upon the favoured
admitted to her ; and hence she the
beings presence despatches
azure- winged birds who serve (like the doves of Venus) as her
attendants and messengers. In process of time a consort was
found for her in the of the Eastern
person Tung Wang Kung,
King Lord (or Father), whose name is designed in obvious
imitation of her own, and who to owe of his
appears many
attributes to the Hindoo Indra. the
legends respecting By
time of the a
Sung dynasty (tenth century a.d.), highly
mystical doctrine respecting the pair, represented as the first
created and creative results of the powers of nature in their
primary process of development, was elaborated. The more
sober research of modern writers leads to the suggestion that
Wang Mu was the name either of a region or of a sovereign in
the ancient West."
"
221 In she
Anderson, p. : paintings is usually depicted
as a beautiful female in the attire of a Chinese at-
princess,
tended by two young girls, one of whom holds a large fan, the
other a basket of the of The
peaches longevity. assemblage