Chapter 102: A Taoist Devotee

Chü Yao-ju was a Ch‘ing-chou man, who, when his wife died, left his home and became a priest. Some years afterwards he returned, dressed in the Taoist garb, and carrying his praying-mat over his shoulder; and after staying one night he wanted to go away again. His friends, however, would not give him back his cassock and staff; so at length he pretended to take a stroll outside the village, and when there, his clothes and other belongings came flying out of the house after him, and he got safely away.

FOOTNOTES:

It would be more usual to “renew the guitar string,” as the Chinese idiom runs. In the paraphrase of the first maxim of the Sacred Edict we are told that “The closest of all ties is that of husband and wife; but suppose your wife dies, why, you can marry another. But if your brother were to die,” &c., &c.

This, as well as the staff mentioned below, belongs to Buddhism. See No. IV., note 46.