This likeness explains also why the hierarchy of beings in the Otherworld concerns itself not only with the affairs of the Otherworld, but with those of this world as well.  So faithful is the likeness that we find the gods (the term is used in this chapter to include goddesses, who are, however, relatively few) subjected to many of the rules and conditions existing on this earth.  Not only do they, as already shown, differ in rank, but they hold levees and audiences and may be promoted for distinguished services, just as the Chinese officials are.  They “may rise from an humble position to one near the Pearly Emperor, who gives them the reward of merit for ruling well the affairs of men.  The correlative deities of the mandarins are only of equal rank, yet the fact that they have been apotheosized makes them their superiors and fit objects of worship.  Chinese mandarins rotate in office, generally every three years, and then there is a corresponding change in Hades.  The image in the temple remains the same, but the spirit which dwells in the clay tabernacle changes, so the idol has a different name, birthday, and tenant.  The priests are informed by the Great Wizard of the Dragon Tiger Mountain, but how can the people know gods which are not the same to-day as yesterday?” (Pp. 360-361.)

The gods also indulge in amusements, marry, sin, are punished, die, are resurrected, or die and are transformed, or die finally. [12]

The Three Religions

We have in China the universal worship of ancestors, which constitutes (or did until A.D. 1912) the State religion, usually known as Confucianism, and in addition we have the gods of the specific religions (which also originally took their rise in ancestor-worship), namely, Buddhism and Taoism. (Other religions, though tolerated, are not recognized as Chinese religions.) It is with a brief account of this great hierarchy and its mythology that we will now concern ourselves.

Besides the ordinary ancestor-worship (as distinct from the State worship) the people took to Buddhism and Taoism, which became the popular religions, and the literati also honoured the gods of these two sects.  Buddhist deities gradually became installed in Taoist temples, and the Taoist immortals were given seats beside the Buddhas in their sanctuaries.  Every one patronized the god who seemed to him the most popular and the most lucrative.  There even came to be united in the same temple and worshipped at the same altar the three religious founders or figure-heads, Confucius, Buddha, and Lao Tzu.  The three religions were even regarded as forming one whole, or at least, though different, as having one and the same object:  san erh i yeh, or han san wei i, “the three are one,” or “the three unite to form one” (a quotation from the phrase T’ai chi han san wei i of Fang Yue-lu:  “When they reach the extreme the three are seen to be one").  In the popular pictorial representations of the pantheon this impartiality is clearly shown.