[377] I presume because God sits with his face to the south.
[378] Pious and wealthy people often give orders for an image of a certain P'u-sa to be made with an ounce or so of gold inside.
[379] Primarily, because no living thing should be killed for food. The ox and the dog are specified because of their kindly services to man in tilling the earth and guarding his home.
[380] The symbol of the Yin and the Yang, so ably and so poetically explained by Mr. Alabaster in his pamphlet on the Doctrine of the Ch'i.
[381] One being male and the other being female. This calls to mind the extreme modesty of a celebrated French lady, who would not put books by male and female authors on the same shelf.
[382] The symbol on Buddha's heart; more commonly known to the western world as Thor's Hammer.
[386] This is ingeniously expressed, as if _mothers_ were the prime movers in such unnatural acts.
[387] On fête days at temples it is not uncommon to see cages full of birds hawked about among the holiday-makers, that those who feel twinges of conscience may purchase a sparrow or two and relieve themselves from anxiety by the simple means of setting them at liberty.
[388] Bones are used in glazing porcelain, to give a higher finish.
[389] The seven periods of seven days each which occur immediately after a death and at which the departed shade is appeased with food and offerings of various kinds.
[392] Heart, lungs, spleen, liver, and kidneys.
[394] The following recipe for this deadly poison is given in the well-known Chinese work _Instructions to Coroners_:--"Take a quantity of insects of all kinds and throw them into a vessel of any kind; cover them up, and let a year pass away before you look at them again. The insects will have killed and eaten each other, until there is only one survivor, and this one is _Ku_."
[395] He who "turns the wheel;" a _chakravartti raja_.
[396] The capital city of the Infernal Regions.
[397] The ghosts of dead people are believed to be liable to death. The ghost of a ghost is called _chien_.
[398] On the "Three Systems." See note 347, _Appendix_.
[399] Women are considered in China to be far more revengeful than men.
[400] See _Author's Own Record_ (in _Introduction_), note 28.