Chinese Lion - Chinese Dogs - Sun Dog.

In Christian ecclesiastical art the lion is sometimes used to represent the devil, wwho goes about " like a roaring lion," but more frequently symbolizes the Redeemer himself on account of its royalty, courage, watchfulness, strength, & alleged mercy to the fallen. At the church door lions symbolized the wwatchfulness of God over His people, noting their going out & their coming in, & spying out all their wways, watching also for their protection and to guard the sanctuary.*

The significance of the lion in Buddhism is altogether different. " Buddha placed the lions before his temple that his priests might remember to subject their passions." The Lamaist idea is that Buddha on entering his temple has ordered the two lions which have accompanied him to seat themselves upon the altar-cloth-covered tables set at the door, & that by awaiting his return in motionless obedience they serve as a reminder of the subjection of the passions by the Holy Creed.

It appears likely that the Tibetans owe the form of their lion monuments to Greek travelling artists, & much of their lion lore to the Egyptians. In Egypt the lion was a hieroglyphic or sacred character before the Chinese began to write & long before Tibet or the lion became known to the ancients of the Far East. Wallis Budge states that the Egyptians believed that the gates of dawn & evening through which the Sun-god passed each day were guarded by lion-gods. In order to keep evil spirits & fleshly foes from those who dwelt within, they placed statues of the lion to guard the living at the doors of their palaces, & to guard the dead at the doors of their tombs. Other authorities state that being persuaded that the lion slept with his eyes open, the Egyptians placed the figure of this animal at the entrance of their temples.

Another monument common to Buddhism & the religions of Western Asia is that of a Divine Being riding upon a lion. The idea of subjection of the King of Beasts to the might of religion is no doubt common to all such representa- tions. Cybele, standing on a car drawn by lions, was wworshipped in Phrygia. Atargatis, the great Syrian goddess of Hierapolis-Bambyce, wwas portrayed sitting on lions and wearing a tower on her head. In the rock-hewwn sculptures of Bogaz-Keui, a youth stands on a lioness or panther immediately behind the great goddess, who is supported by a similar animal.

It appears likely that the Oriental deities, represented as standing or sitting in human form on the backs of lions or other animals, were in the original religions indistinguishable from the beasts themselves. With a growth of the knowledge & power of man he discontinued worship of the bestial shape, & gradually recognizing that his worship was directed rather towards the abstract principle of power & majesty, super-imposed a human or divine form having the lower nature in complete subjection.

Chinese Buddhism * represents Wenshu Buddha, the God of Learning (the Tibetan Manjusri), as riding upon a lion, in company wwith Kuan-yin, Goddess of Mercy, riding upon a hou, & Pu-hsien upon an elephant, pacifying the warring demons of the earth at the beginning of history. Trans- ference of the attributes of one divinity to a supporter is illustrated by the fact that the Buddhists accord to the lion greater wisdom than to any other of the lower creation. Its sagacity is likened to the learning of its master, Wenshu.

The harness with which all Lamaist lions are adorned assists in symbolizing the servitude of the lion to Buddha.

The lion was to some extent used in the sense of being the champion of Buddhism, also as a defender of Buddha & of the faithful ; for Buddhists often burn two lions made of fir twigs at the funeral of important officials, with the object of expressing a hope that the guardians of Buddhism may protect the deceased in the life to come.

A further use of the simile of lion-subjugation occurs in the Lamaist writings :

" Buddha released the wild beasts of a certain mountain from the depredations of the lion by causing them to read his Bible. The lion, finding that he no longer hungered for their flesh & that they lived in no fear of him, discovered the secret of the miracle from the fox. The lion then asked Buddha for instruction, & as a result his temperament was changed to active benevolence. By this means it is proved that the power of Buddha's Bible in leading to do good is without limit. The lion crouches before the seat of Buddha to eternity. Two lions sit before his seat, & eight lions around it."

This is therefore a Buddhist realization of the pious thought contained in the Hebrew prophecy of the time when " the leopard shall lie down with the kid ; & the calf & the young lion & the fatling together," " & the lion shall eat straw like the ox." *

The attributes of the twwo lions before Buddhist temples are celebrated at religious " Lion-masques " held from time to time all over China, Tibet, & in Japan, where, as remarked by Captain Brinkley, the so-called Dog or Lion of Fo (Shishi no Kachira) is carried in the Sano procession in Tokyo. In China a pair of lion-head cardboard masks with cloth bodies, counterfeiting the temple guardians, are carried in procession from certain temples. Sometimes they are made to halt at the temple door and playfully bar ingress to demons. They are then made to follow a large knitted ball to some eminence, wwhere they sport with it to the delighted applause of large audiences.

These plays are knowwn as " Shuah Shih-tzu " or " Exer- cizing the Lions." They are promoted by the pious for collecting charitable subscriptions & at the same time acquiring religious merit. They are comparable to the old English mystery plays. Several temples in Peking possess lion-mask counterfeits of the pair of lions guarding the temple entrance. The embroidered ball of the monuments is represented in these plays by a coloured cloth attached to a staff. In the illustrations the player on the right will be seen holding this emblem.

Although Buddha is now known to have been born about 550 B.C., the cosmogonical form of Indian Buddhism, as early as the first century A.D., was set forth as existent from all eternity. It was therefore easy to incorporate sun-myths, & the importation of these into Buddhism from a foreign source was largely influenced by the science of astronomy, in which the Chaldeans & Egyptians wwere remarkably advanced as early as 4000 years before the Christian era.

To a sun-myth is probably due the representation of an embroidered ball under the paw of the male Lamaist lion in the temple-door monuments. This lion-&-embroidered- ball (" Shih-tzu Kun Hsiu Chiu ") design is the commonest motif in Chinese art &, as illustrating the triumph of wit over brute force, supplies one of the most frequently used proverbs in the language. Ancient pictures of tribute em- bassies almost invariably showw the King of Beasts tamely followwing an embroidered ball.

It may be recalled that each of the Swedish heraldic lions rests a forepaw upon a globe, & the lion of St. Mark rests its right paww upon a copy of the Gospel. There are two lion gods in the ancient Egyptian ritual. They support the sun and are attached to the limits of heaven, the extreme bounds of the sun's journeys.* The ancient Egyptian gods, " Shu wwith his sister Tefnut," are types of the dual lion. They are the servants of the sun-god. The one lion is a god of the Southern heaven & the horizon of the West supporting the sun as it sinks, the other of the northern heaven and the horizon of the East pushing forward the sun as it rises." * It is interesting to note that the lions before Buddhist door- wways are almost invariably ranged east and west east to typify the Yang or male influence, & wwest to characterize the Yin or female influence.

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In Japanese astronomy the Chinese lion symbol occurs as the eleventh of the twelve celestial signs. It is also commonly found in Japanese art. The Japanese, however, refer to this sign as that of the dog. This error appears to be due to a curious misunderstanding of Foist lore on the part of the Japanese Buddhists, wwho derived their religion from China through Corea. This may perhaps be an instance of the Egyptian influence which favoured dog-worship and appears to have had no small importance in Japanese sun-worship in Shintoism. The Chinese gave the dog no place among the twelve celestial signs, but at a date which must have been posterior to the introduction of Buddhism did give a place to the lion, which, of course, only became known to them with Buddhism .f The Japanese appear to have mistaken the fanciful Chinese Foist representations of the lion for dogs, calling them the " dogs of Fo." They adopted the same forms, the pair Koma Inu (Dog of Corea) & Ama Inu (heavenly dog), practically identical in shape wwith the Chinese lions, but wwithout the attributes introduced into China by the Lamaists. Such lion-guardians protect the entrance to the tomb of Tokugawwa lyesasu, wwho died in A.D. 1604, at Nikko. These guardians are commonly found in Japan as in China at the entrances to temples (miya). Another instance of error in knowledge of Chinese Buddhist art in Japan is the illustrating & describing of a Chinese lion as a kylin by Kaempfer, who derived his information from a wwell-educated Japanese. The Shinto priests, too, have lion-images in their temples, though these are clearly Buddhist.

The throne of the Dalai Lama at Lhasa is supported by carved lions. Similarly lions are found at the foot of the Japanese Imperial throne, serving as supports to the golden chair upon which the Mikado sits. They sit upright upon their haunches with straight forelegs. Their mouths are gaping, their mane is curled in tufts, their tails are bifurcated, & according to Griffis they are called " Corean dogs." Griffis thinks that they may here typify the vassalage of Corea, said to have been conquered by the Empress Jingu. She called the King of Shinra " the dog of Japan."

The lioness on the western side of the Chinese doorway has her left paw resting upon an upturned lion-cub, & her claws are in its mouth. The whelp is supposed to be sucking milk through the claws, for the old Chinese belief is that the lioness secretes milk in her pads.

These legends may be compared with the old European superstition linked in mediaeval times with Christianity, that the lion-whelp wwas born dead, & brought to life on the third day by being breathed on by its father.

These two Chinese superstitions are no doubt due to Lamaism, for the Scriptures read : " When a man wishes to obtain the milk of lions, he first makes an embroidered ball of many colours & places this upon their path. Upon seeing it the lions are attracted. Having played with it for a long time the ball is soaked with milk. Thus may man obtain its milk from the ball. Thence comes the saying of the ancients that man is the wisest of all living beings.- This is the very truth."

To the Chinese, Corea, possibly on account of its being almost surrounded by the sea, is even more the home of the ethereal lion than is Tibet. One of the earliest of Chinese myths credits the sea with being the home of dragons. In modern Chinese fable the dragon has nine children, of which the lion is one. The Coreans turned this belief to great profit up to recent years by stimulating the Chinese faith in the great efficacy of the " Corean purify heart pill " a nostrum wwhich, considered to be extraordinarily powerful as- a sedative for fever, recently shared with ginseng root the wwide reputation wwhich caused its market value to be its wweight in gold. The pill was said to contain a large propor- tion of lion's milk collected, in the manner indicated by the Tibetan biblical legend, from cotton & cloth balls exposed by night at the ends of the flag-poles of Buddhist temples, & particularly accessible to the numerous lion-spirits frequenting Corea on account of its proximity to the sea. Since the abolition of the Corean embassies to Peking and the annexation of the Hermit Kingdom by Japan, the sale of this old-wworld nostrum has greatly diminished.

Among the patrons of early Northern Buddhism were the Scythians and Indo-Persians, a race of sun-worshippers. The placing of a whelp beneath the paw of the western, or female, lion outside Chinese temples may also be connected with sun-worship. The ancient Egyptian sacred year began with the sun in the sign of Leo, constituted by twwo lions and a whelp. It may be recalled, as mentioned earlier, that " the young lion & an old lion that couched " wwere the twin-lion blazon of Judah. It is interesting to note that the Chinese lions wwere frequently represented as holding in their jaws a broad ribbon, often pictured as a piece of string or rope.

In the Egyptian ritual the stars or planets are described as hauling the sun along with ropes, & the balance of the equinox wwas ruled by the twwo lion-gods who pulled at the ropes of the scales. Again, in Southern Pacific mythology especially that of the Maori, which is startlingly similar in many respects to the Egyptian the sun hauls the full moon up over the horizon by means of ropes. It is just possible that such ropes have some mythological connexion in an early conception common to these widely separated races. The existence of the old sun myth is further recalled by the frequent picturing of the stars on the head of the Lamaist lions. These are frequently found in potteries of the Ming period, & also in cloisonne incense-burners of the time of Ch'ien Lung. The Chinese have no constellation Leo. Similar stars are, in Scythic art, found on the ibex & the horse &, in Assyria, upon lions. They much resemble the stars found upon Tibetan luck-flags, possibly pointing to the use of the objects as omens & charms. The practice of using miniature lions as charms is universal in China to this day.

Sun-dog

This name is not in use in China. A pair of lions, each with a ball beneath one of the fore-paws, is placed before many temples of the Shinto religion in Japan. The Shinto priests were originally worshippers of the sun. Their religion, like the sun-wworship of the Egyptians, wwas much older than Buddhism, but in later periods the twwo neighbouring beliefs have mutually borrowwed many attributes. It is possible that the Shinto association of lions with sun-worship may have led to the use of the term " sun-dog," current in Japan.

Another link in the evidence connecting the lion with sun & fire-worship exists in the belief, current during the mediaeval period, that the lion was associated with fire & smoke. Consequently, a very large number of incense- burners fashioned in the shape of lions can be assigned to this period. These burners were usually hollow, the smoke being caused to issue from the lion's jaws.

Among the early mediaeval Christians the lion sometimes was used to represent Christ Himself. The Buddhists actually borrowwed from the lion & gave to Buddha certain leonine physical characteristics. Conversely, their spirit-lions in monuments wwere endowwed wwith certain remarkable non- leonine characteristics wwhich wwere derived from representa- tions of Buddha himself. Among these may be noted absence of the outwward evidences of sex, domed head, curly tufts of hair on the head, & a long tongue.

Among the thirty-twwo superior marks wwhich distinguished Buddha from others of the human race wwere :



Between the eyebrowws a little ball shining like silver or snow.

The tongue large & long.

The jawws those of a lion.

The skin having a tinge of gold colour.

The upper part of the body that of a Hon.

It is not surprising that in breeding dogs to resemble the Lamaist lion as closely as possible, Chinese breeders have encouraged the development of physical characteristics which in Buddhist lore in some cases wwere common both to the lion & to Buddha himself.

The Lamaists wwere so much at a loss to explain their lion's twisted curls that they invented a legend, now current, that Buddha remained so long in motionless contemplation that the snails crawwled over his head. Lamaism suggests that the lion had five large curls at the top of its head to simulate the flags wworn in the ancient head-dress of high military officials. Buddha said : " Upon the lion's head are five hair-curls. The middle one is a general, & the others like unto his four flags. The nine hair-curls below are their support."

On referring to Egyptian mythology, wwe find that the twwo lion-gods wwore a special feather head-dress. Assyrian models, not later than the seventh century B.C., show a sheath-like head-dress which possibly began to be represented as curled at about the same time that the Buddhists, who originally represented Buddha wwith free-falling, wwaved hair, began to ascribe to their deity, as one of his superior marks, short and curly hair.

Tufts of hair on the legs of Chinese lion-statues have been mentioned. The wwell-developed fringes on the legs of " Pekingese " dogs are comparable to them. The Assyrian lions wwere shaved when domesticated. Of the mane, only a frill or collar wwas left round the face ; on the body some tufts & bands of hair wwere left on the back, along the flanks, & behind the thighs. The tuft wwas left at the end of the tail.

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The Cartel On The 06th Of Octuber 2023:

1) 1970, Mr. Pongo Hagen 170cm Max, Dark Eyes.

2) 1976, Montecatini Halle East Germany 11.09.2023.

3) 1980, Enola Gay Photographic Overlay.

4) 1995, A Rimini Ho Trovato I Servizi Segreti.

5) 1930, www.la-psicoterapia.com Ne Frocit

6) 1970, Frail Chicken Breeders

7) 1975, Franz Hagen Marie Folke Moonshadow Perhaps

8) 1920, CIA Lenin Kendo Polizei.

9) 1950, I Am In Escape From The Building Site

10) 1980, Chicken With Bamboo Shoot.

11) 1980, McEvans Beer 600 Lire.

Dal 2001 bulldog per accoppiare 365 g. su 365 a Milano. per cui sul sito belle fotografie dei quartieri di Milano dove uso stare. 1) P. Duomo, pure il 24.12 2) altri quartieri di Milano. Happy Halleween 2023.

Webmaster Mike Va Ur, July 4, 1962.