riters
regarded as the first progenitor or creator of the Chinese people,
are alternatives, so that Fu Hsi, Shen Nung, and Huang Ti may be said
to be a sort of ancestral triad of medicine-gods, superior to the
actual God or King of Medicine, Yao Wang. Of P'an Ku we have spoken
sufficiently in Chapter III, and with regard to Fu Hsi, also called
T'ien Huang Shih, 'the Celestial Emperor,' the mythical sovereign
and supposed inventor of cooking, musical instruments, the calendar,
hunting, fishing, etc., the chief interest for our present purpose
centres in his discovery of the _pa kua_, or Eight Trigrams. It is on
the strength of these trigrams that Fu Hsi is regarded as the chief
god of medicine, since it is by their mystical power that the Chinese
physicians influence the minds and maladies of their patients. He
is represented as holding in front of him a disk on which the signs
are painted.

The Ministry of Exorcism

The Ministry of Exorcism is a Taoist invention and is composed of seven
chief ministers, whose duty is to expel evil spirits from dwellings
and generally to counteract the annoyances of infernal demons. The
two gods usually referred to in the popular legends are P'an Kuan and
Chung K'uei. The first is really the Guardian of the Living and the
Dead in the Otherworld, Feng-tu P'an Kuan (Feng-tu or Feng-tu Ch'eng
being the region beyond the tomb). He was originally a scholar named
Ts'ui Chio, who became Magistrate of Tz'u Chou, and later Minister
of Ceremonies. After his death he was appointed to the spiritual post
above mentioned. His best-known achievement is his prolongation of the
life of the Emperor T'ai Tsung of the T'ang dynasty by twenty years by
changing _i_, 'one,' into _san_, 'three,' in the life-register kept
by the gods. The term P'an Kuan is, however, more generally used as
the designation of an officer or civil or military attendant upon
a god than of any special individual, and the original P'an Kuan,
'the Decider of Life in Hades,' has been gradually supplanted in
popular favour by Chung K'uei, 'the Protector against Evil Spirits.'

The Exorcism of 'Emptiness and Devastation'

The Emperor Ming Huang of the T'ang dynasty, also known as T'ang
Hsuean Tsung, in the reign-period K'ai Yuean (A.D. 712-742), after an
expedition to Mount Li in Shensi, was attacked by fever. During a
nightmare he saw a small demon fantastically dressed in red trousers,
with a shoe on one foot but none on the oth