of spirits, falling into many classes among
which two stand out clearly, namely, nature spirits and spirits of
ancestors. All these deities, as we must call them for want of a
better word, present odd features, which have had some influence on
Chinese Buddhism. The boundary between the human and the spirit worlds
is slight. Deification and euhemerism are equally natural to the
Chinese. Not only are worthies of every sort made into gods,[558] but
foreign deities are explained on the same principle. Thus Yen-lo
(Yama), the king of the dead, is said to have been a Chinese official
of the sixth century A.D. But there is little mythology. The deities
are like the figures on porcelain vases: all know their appearance and
some their names, but hardly anyone can give a coherent account of
them. A poly-daemonism of this kind is even more fluid than Hinduism:
you may invent any god you like and neglect gods that don't concern
you. The habit of mind which produces sects in India, namely the
desire to exalt one's own deity above others and make him the All-God,
does not exist. No Chinese god inspires such feelings.

The deities of medieval and modern China, including the spirits
recognized by Chinese Buddhism, are curiously mixed and vague
personalities.[559] Nature worship is not absent, but it is nature as
seen by the fancy of the alchemist and astrologer. The powers that
control nature are also identified with ancient heroes, but they are
mostly heroes of the type of St. George and the Dragon of whom history
has little to say, and Chinese respect for the public service and
official rank takes the queer form of regarding these spirits as
celestial functionaries. Thus the gods have a Ministry of Thunder
which supervises the weather and a Board of Medicine which looks after
sickness and health.

The characteristic expression of Chinese popular religion is not
exactly myth or legend but religious romance. A writer starts from
some slender basis of fact and composes an edifying novel. Thus the
well-known story called Hsi-Yu-Chi[560] purports to be an account of
Hsuan Chuang's journey to India but, except that it represents the
hero as going there and returning with copies of the scriptures, it is
romance pure and simple, a fantastic Pilgrim's Progress, the scene
of which is sometimes on earth and sometimes in the heavens. The
traveller is accompanied by allegorical creatures such as a magic
monkey, a pig, and a dragon horse, who h