ing." Then the
monkey thought within himself, "What a fool this dragon is!"

Then Buddha said to his followers: "At this time I was the monkey."

The Ministry of Waters

In the spirit-world there is a Ministry which controls all things
connected with the waters on earth, salt or fresh. Its main
divisions are the Department of Salt Waters, presided over by four
Dragon-kings--those of the East, South, West, and North--and the
Department of Sweet Waters, presided over by the Four Kings (_Ssu
Tu_) of the four great rivers--the Blue (Chiang), Yellow (Ho), Huai,
and Ch'i--and the Dragon-spirits who control the Secondary Waters, the
rivers, springs, lakes, pools, rapids. Into the names and functions of
the very large number of officials connected with these departments
it is unnecessary to enter. It will be sufficient here to refer only
to those whose names are connected with myth or legend.

An Unauthorized Portrait

One of these legends relates to the visit of Ch'in Shih Huang-ti,
the First Emperor, to the Spirit of the Sea, Yang Hou, originally
a marquis (_bou_) of the State Yang, who became a god through being
drowned in the sea.

Po Shih, a Taoist priest, told the Emperor that an enormous oyster
vomited from the sea a mysterious substance which accumulated in the
form of a tower, and was known as 'the market of the sea' (Chinese for
'mirage'). Every year, at a certain period, the breath from his mouth
was like the rays of the sun. The Emperor expressed a wish to see
it, and Po Shih said he would write a letter to the God of the Sea,
and the next day the Emperor could behold the wonderful sight.

The Emperor then remembered a dream he had had the year before in
which he saw two men fighting for the sun. The one killed the other,
and carried it off. He therefore wished to visit the country where
the sun rose. Po Shih said that all that was necessary was to throw
rocks into the sea and build a bridge across them. Thereupon he
rang his magic bell, the earth shook, and rocks began to rise up;
but as they moved too slowly he struck them with his whip, and blood
came from them which left red marks in many places. The row of rocks
extended as far as the shore of the sun-country, but to build the
bridge across them was found to be beyond the reach of human skill.

So Po Shih sent another messenger to the God of the Sea, requesting
him to raise a pillar and place a beam across it which could be used
as a bridge. The s