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CHINESE SUPERSTITIONS - University of Oregon

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— 262 —<br />

V. THE TEN COURTS OF HADES AND THEIR TEN PRESIDENTS.<br />

I. FIRST COURT.<br />

President: Ts'in-hwang-wang ^ Jf 3E 0)-<br />

The First Court is situated beneath the Great Sea,<br />

at the foot<br />

<strong>of</strong> the Wu-tsiao-shih-shan mountain %fc f$. ft LU , to the West. The<br />

President keeps the register <strong>of</strong> the living- and the dead, and measures<br />

the length<br />

<strong>of</strong> men's lives.<br />

When a good man dies, if he has not committed any sins, or<br />

at least if the number <strong>of</strong> his faults does not exceed that <strong>of</strong> his<br />

merits, he is led by a good demon before the judgment-seat <strong>of</strong> this<br />

President, and' his account being settled, he is immediately despat-<br />

ched to the Tenth Court, where transmigration takes place. Here,<br />

he is changed again into a human being; a man becoming a woman,<br />

and a woman a man, enjoying a state <strong>of</strong> wealth or poverty, a long<br />

or a short life, all in strict proportion<br />

<strong>of</strong> a previous existence (2).<br />

with the merits or demerits<br />

Should his evil deeds exceed his good works, he is placed upon<br />

arriving on the mirror-tower, Yen-king-t'ai l|| ^ where he sees<br />

-j^,<br />

in a large glass the guilt <strong>of</strong> his past life (3).<br />

allowing<br />

(1) Yama was once President <strong>of</strong> this Court, but he was so lenient in<br />

souls to return forthwith to life that he was transferred to the Fifth.<br />

China Review. Vol. I. p. 303. — Chinese Superstitions. Vol. VII. p. 255. note 3.<br />

(2) The new being, though wholly unconnected with the previous<br />

individual, is heir to the accumulated effects <strong>of</strong> all his actions. All is purely<br />

mechanical, and the result <strong>of</strong> self-acting laws, which neither require nor<br />

submit to interference from without. The whole process is fatalistic in the<br />

extreme. Ceden. Studies in the Religions <strong>of</strong> the East. p. 526 (Ruddhism). —<br />

China Review. Vol. I. p. 311.<br />

(3) The first act in Hades is for the soul to be taken to the steelyard<br />

and have its sins weighed. If its deeds <strong>of</strong> merit outweigh its sins, it is<br />

forthwith carried to the tenth department, to return to earth. If it happens<br />

the other way, the soul is taken before a mirror, and there beholds what it<br />

is to be in the next life for the sins <strong>of</strong> the past — a cow, an ass, a dog or a<br />

reptile. Du Rose. Dragon, Image and Demon, p. 309.

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