on repeated applications to the protefting faint, by way of
puniihing the gods, they literally pulldown the temple over
their heads, and leave them fitting in the open air. This grotefque
and barbarous manner o f reprefenting the manifold powers o f
nature, or the goddefs o f nature, by a plurality o f heads and
hands in one idol, is by no means favourable to the fuppolition
of a refined or fuperior underilanding.in the people who adopt
them into their religious worfhip. It can be confidered only as
a very fhort ftep beyond the conceptions o f favages, who have
no other idea than that o f fupplying by number, or a repetition
o f the fame thing, what may be wanting in power, fh e fame
figure, with numerous arms, appears in the Hindu temples
that are excavated out o f folid granite mountains, the moil an-
' cient and among the moll wonderful monuments o f art arid
perfevering labour that have hitherto been difcovered on the
face o f the globe, the fountain perhaps from whence the arts,
thefciences, and the religious myfteries o f the-Egyptians and
the Greeks derived their origin.
But the moil common o f all the> female deities in China
is the Shing-moo, or holy mother, or rather the mother of
perfeSl intelligence*. This lady is the exa£t counterpart o f the
Indian Ganga or goddefs o f the river, the IJis o f the Egyptians,
and the Ceres o f the Greeks. Nothing ihocked the miffionaries fo
much on their firil arrival in China as the image o f this lady,
in whom they difcovered, or thought they difcovered, the mod
ftriking refemblance to the Virgin Mary. T h e y found her ge*
The charafter Jhing 13 compounded o f ear, mouth, and ruler or ling, intending perhaps
to exprefs the faculty o f knowing all that ear has heard and mouth uttered.
* nerally
nerally ihut up with great care in a recefs at the back .part o f
the altar, and veiled with a filken fcreen to hide her from
pommon obfervation ; fometimes with a child in her hand, at
other times on her knee, and a glory round her head. On
hearing the [lory o f the Shing-moa they were confirmed in this
opinion. The y were told that ihe conceived and bdre a fon
while yet a virgin, by eating the flower o f the Lien-wha (the
Nelumbium) which Ihe found lying upon her clothes on the
bank o f a river where ihe was bathing: that, when the time
.of her geftation.was expired, ihe went to the place where ihe
had picked up the flower and was there delivered o f a boy;
that the infant was found and educated by a poor fiiherman; and,
in procefs o f time, became a great man and performed miracles.
Such is her ilory, as told by the Chinefe priefls. When
the image o f this goddefs is Handing, ihe generally holds a
flower o f the Nelumbium in her, hand ; and when fitting, ihe is
ufually placed upon the large-peltate leaf o f the fame plant.
The Egyptian Lotos, not that efculent plant from the ufe
of which the Lotophagi- had their name, but another o f a very
different genus confecfated to religious- pUrpofes,-' is faid * to
have been afcertained from a ilatue o f OJiris, preferved in the
Barberini palace at Rome, to be that fpecies o f water lilly which
grpws in abundance in moil parts o f the eaflern world, and
which was known to botanifts under the name o f Nympheea Ne-
lumbo; but I underiland it is now confidered as a new genus, tiiflin-
guiihed, under a modification o f its former fpecific name, by that
* , By Mr. Pauw.
3 p o f