ht a few tapers and too often have recourse to some
form of divination before the images. Sometimes they defray the
cost of more elaborate ceremonies to expiate sins or ensure
prosperity. But the lay attendance in temples is specially large at
seasons of pilgrimage. For an account of this interesting side of
Chinese religious life I cannot do better than refer the reader to Mr.
Johnston's volume already cited.

Though the services of the priesthood may be invoked at every crisis
of life, they are most in requisition for funeral ceremonies. A
detailed description of these as practised at Amoy has been given by
De Groot[890] which is probably true in essentials for all parts of
China. These rites unite in incongruous confusion several orders of
ideas. Pre-Buddhist Chinese notions of the life after death seem not
to have included the idea of hell. The disembodied soul is honoured
and comforted but without any clear definition of its status. Some
representative--a person, figure, or tablet--is thought capable of
giving it a temporary residence and at funeral ceremonies offerings
are made to such a representative and plays performed before it.
Though Buddhist language may be introduced into this ritual, its
spirit is alien to even the most corrupt Buddhism.

Buddhism familiarized China with the idea that the average man stands
in danger of purgatory and this doctrine cannot be described as late
or Mahayanist.[891] Those epithets are, however, merited by the
subsidiary doctrine that such punishment can be abridged by vicarious
acts of worship which may take the form of simple prayer addressed to
benevolent beings who can release the tortured soul. More often the
idea underlying it is that the recitation of certain formulae acquires
merit for the reciter who can then divert this merit to any
purpose.[892] This is really a theological refinement of the ancient
and widespread notion that words have magic force. Equally ancient and
unBuddhist in origin is the theory of sympathetic magic. Just as by
sticking pins into a wax figure you may kill the person represented,
so by imitating physical operations of rescue, you may deliver a soul
from the furnaces and morasses of hell. Thus a paper model of
hades is made which is knocked to pieces and finally burnt: the spirit
is escorted with music and other precautions over a mock bridge, and,
most singular of all, the priests place over a receptacle of water a
special machine consisting