An edict of the Emperor Shi-tsung, of the reigning dynasty, addressed in 1724-1725 to the Eight Banners of Mongolia, warns them against this rain-conjuring:  “If I,” indignantly observes the Emperor, “offering prayer in sincerity have yet room to fear that it may please Heaven to leave MY prayer unanswered, it is truly intolerable that mere common people wishing for rain should at their own caprice set up altars of earth, and bring together a rabble of Hoshang (Buddhist Bonzes) and Taosse to conjure the spirits to gratify their wishes.”

["Lamas were of various extraction; at the time of the great assemblies, and of the Khan’s festivities in Shangtu, they erected an altar near the Khan’s tent and prayed for fine weather; the whistling of shells rose up to heaven.”  These are the words in which Marco Polo’s narrative is corroborated by an eye-witness who has celebrated the remarkable objects of Shangtu (Loan king tsa yung).  These Lamas, in spite of the prohibition by the Buddhist creed of bloody sacrifices, used to sacrifice sheep’s hearts to Mahakala.  It happened, as it seems, that the heart of an executed criminal was also considered an agreeable offering; and as the offerings could be, after the ceremony, eaten by the sacrificing priests, Marco Polo had some reason to accuse the Lamas of cannibalism. (Palladius, 28.)—­H.  C.]

The practice of weather-conjuring is not yet obsolete in Tartary, Tibet, and the adjoining countries.[6]

Weather-conjuring stories were also rife in Europe during the Middle Ages.  One such is conspicuously introduced in connection with a magical fountain in the romance of the Chevalier au Lyon: 

  “Et s’i pant uns bacins d’or fin
   A une si longue chaainne
   Qui dure jusqu’a la fontainne,
   Lez la fontainne troveras
   Un perron tel con tu verras
        * * * *
   S’au bacin viaus de l’iaue prandre
   Et dessor le perron espandre,
   La verras une tel tanpeste
   Qu’an cest bois ne remandra beste,”
      etc. etc.[7]

The effect foretold in these lines is the subject of a woodcut illustrating a Welsh version of the same tale in the first volume of the Mabinogion.  And the existence of such a fountain is alluded to by Alexander Neckam. (De Naturis Rerum, Bk.  II. ch. vii.)

In the Cento Novelle Antiche also certain necromancers exhibit their craft before the Emperor Frederic (Barbarossa apparently):  “The weather began to be overcast, and lo of a sudden rain began to fall with continued thunders and lightnings, as if the world were come to an end, and hailstones that looked like steel-caps,” etc.  Various other European legends of like character will be found in Liebrecht’s Gervasius von Tilbury, pp. 147-148.

Rain-makers there are in many parts of the world; but it is remarkable that those also of Samoa in the Pacific operate by means of a rain-stone.