Page 73 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols 66
Cauldron of Oil

you-guo

Among the things awaiting sinners in the Buddhist hells is the cauldron of oil.
In each of the ten main hells sits an infernal judge who passes sentence on the guilty.
They are then sawn up, soaked in boiling oil, ground in a mortar, etc. The cauldron of oil
is generally taken to be in the seventh hell. Sinners are boiled in it, then revived and
boiled again, and so on. This is the punishment visited on venal officials, on judges
who have wittingly given false judgment, on clerks who have altered documents for
bribes, and on ruffians who have murdered prisoners.

Cave

dong

The Chinese regard caves as places where good-natured supernatural beings dwell;
sometimes hermits live there too. As in West Asian legend they may also be the portals
leading to another, more beautiful world. Hence the room in which a bridegroom first
meets his betrothed is called the ‘Cave-room’.

Centipede

wu-gong

The centipede is the arch-enemy of the snake, and many a folk-tale tells how the
hero is saved by a centipede from a snake which is about to attack him. It used to be said
that when people living in South China went into the mountains they took with them a
sort of rattle. This was a bamboo cane with a centipede inside it. The centipede
reacted at once to the proximity of a snake by stirring, thus warning the walkers.
Big centipedes (yan-yu) are poisonous. If their dried seed falls into what you are eating,
you will die. In this sense, the centipede is one of the five noxious creatures;
attempts to expel these from human settlements are made mainly on the 5th day of the 5th
month. It is also believed that they can be destroyed by the cock.