Page 63 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols 56
Bucket

tong

Buckets made of wood used to be common articles in every household, used for washing
the baby, feet, clothes, etc., and also as chamber-pots. A folk-print shows five men
standing round three buckets: this symbolises the three basic social relationships between
people (gang, which is phonetically identical with another word for a jar or crock –
gang): namely, between ruler and subject, father and son, and husband and wife. They are
also tasting wine: the word chang = to taste being close to gang = basic bonds.

Buddha

fo

Tradition has it that the Buddha was born in 621 BC and entered Nirvana in 543 BC.
Recent research goes to suggest, however, that he lived at a somewhat later date: 563–
483 BC. His teaching is supposed to have reached China in the first century AD, but there
are indications that, centuries before this, Buddhist ideas had come in via the Silk Road,
carried by traders from India and Central Asia. Indeed, from the 2nd century BC
onwards, Buddhist communities are attested in several regions of China. Scholars were
hostile to the new religion; in the first place because it seemed to them impious – after all,
Buddha had deserted his family, and all monks who followed him were expected to do

the same; and secondly Buddha himself appeared in the guise of a ‘barbarian’, i.e.
traditionally clad with one shoulder bare and with no form of decoration. There was a
theological difficulty into the bargain, not unlike the dispute that developed much later in
Christianity: was the Emperor to bow down before the image of Buddha? Or were
Buddhist disciples to kneel before the Emperor?
As time went on, non-Chinese missionaries translated, with Chinese assistance, the
main texts of the Pali canon into Chinese. Later, Chinese were allowed to become monks,
and began to translate Buddhist texts from Prakrit into Chinese. The result was the
emergence of several schools, which were described, not quite accurately, as ‘sects’.
The difference between these schools reduced essentially to individual preference on the
part of teachers for certain texts to the exclusion of others. Disciples had to learn their
master’s favourite texts off by heart, and pass them on to their own pupils. It was over the
first five centuries AD that these schools took shape.