Page 213 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

PORCELAIN DECORATED

told in support of this identification is thus translated

in Anderson's British Museum catalogue : "In the

period Yuan-Yu (10861094 A.D.) there lived an old

man in the capital of China. He was only three

feet high, and of this measure his head formed the

moity. Every day he went into the city and foretold

the future to the people. With the proceeds of his

prophetic trade he bought sake, and when he had

drunk freely he would strike his head and say, ' I am
Aa sage, and can bestow the gift of long life.'
cer-

tain man having seen him, painted his portrait, and

presented it to the Emperor, who summoned the

strange being to the palace, and after regaling him

with sake, asked how many were the years he num-

bered. He made no reply, but told many stories of

past ages, and suddenly vanished, no one knew

whither. On the following morning it was an-

nounced that the light of the South Pole Star had,

on the previous evening, touched the Imperial palace.

The Emperor then comprehended that the old man

was an incarnation of the Star of Longevity, and pre-

served his portrait with the deepest veneration. The

pictures drawn at the present day are derived from

this, but in late years representations of the deer,

crane, and tortoise, animals emblematic of long life,

have been placed by the side of the sage." Chinese

modern literature identifies the old man as Tung

Wang-kung, one of the first beings evolved from

chaos by the spontaneous volition of the primordial

principle, and as the husband of the fairy Si Wang-

mu (Japanese Sei-6-bo), who usually appears in the

form of a richly dressed female with a royal tiara,

standing on a cloud and accompanied by two girl at-

tendants, one of whom holds a dish of peaches, the

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