Welcoming this suggestion, the King sent for Chao Chen and ordered him to dispatch to the temple of Hua Shan the two Chief Ministers of Ceremonies, Hsi Heng-nan and Chih Tu, with instructions to request fifty Buddhist and Taoist priests to pray for seven days and seven nights in order that the King might obtain a son.  When that period was over, the King and Queen would go in person to offer sacrifices in the temple.

Prayers to the Gods

The envoys took with them many rare and valuable presents, and for seven days and seven nights the temple resounded with the sound of drums, bells, and all kinds of instruments, intermingled with the voices of the praying priests.  On their arrival the King and Queen offered sacrifices to the god of the sacred mountain.

But the God of Hua Shan knew that the King had been deprived of a male heir as a punishment for the bloody hecatombs during his three years’ war.  The priests, however, interceded for him, urging that the King had come in person to offer the sacrifices, wherefore the God could not altogether reject his prayer.  So he ordered Ch’ien-li Yen, ‘Thousand-li Eye,’ and Shun-feng Erh, ‘Favourable-wind Ear,’ [29] to go quickly and ascertain if there were not some worthy person who was on the point of being reincarnated into this world.

The two messengers shortly returned, and stated that in India, in the Chiu Ling Mountains, in the village of Chih-shu Yuean, there lived a good man named Shih Ch’in-ch’ang, whose ancestors for three generations had observed all the ascetic rules of the Buddhists.  This man was the father of three children, the eldest Shih Wen, the second Shih Chin, and the third Shih Shan, all worthy followers of the great Buddha.

The Murder of the Tais

Wang Che, a brigand chief, and thirty of his followers, finding themselves pursued and harassed by the Indian soldiers, without provisions or shelter, dying of hunger, went to Shih Wen and begged for something to eat.  Knowing that they were evildoers, Shih Wen and his two brothers refused to give them anything; if they starved, they said, the peasants would no longer suffer from their depredations.  Thereupon the brigands decided that it was a case of life for life, and broke into the house of a rich family of the name of Tai, burning their home, killing a hundred men, women, and children, and carrying off everything they possessed.

The local t’u-ti at once made a report to Yue Huang.

“This Shih family,” replied the god, “for three generations has given itself up to good works, and certainly the brigands were not deserving of any pity.  However, it is impossible to deny that the three brothers Shih, in refusing them food, morally compelled them to loot the Tai family’s house, putting all to the sword or flames.  Is not this the same as if they had committed the crime themselves?  Let them be arrested and put in chains in the celestial prison, and let them never see the light of the sun again.”