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PT. II. SECT. XII. THE WRITINGS OF KWANG-8ZE.
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Kung, he said to him, 'Do you see anything, Father Kung?' 'Your servant sees nothing,' was the reply. The duke then returned, talking incoherently and becoming ill, so that for several days he did not go out. Among the officers of Kht there was a Hwangze Kâo-âo 1, who said to the duke, 'Your Grace is injuring yourself; how could a ghost injure you? When a paroxysm of irritation is dispersed, and the breath does not return (to the body), what remains in the body is not sufficient for its wants. When it ascends and does not descend, the patient becomes accessible to gusts of anger. When it descends and does not ascend, he loses his memory of things. When it neither ascends nor descends, but remains about the heart in the centre of the body, it makes him ill.' The duke said, 'Yes, but are there ghostly sprites 2?' The officer replied, 'There are. About mountain tarns there is the Li; about furnaces, the Khieh; about the dust-heaps inside the door, the Lei-thing. In low-lying places in the north-east, the Pei-a and Wa-lung leap about, and in similar places in the north-west there dwells the Yi-yang. About rivers there is the Wang-hsiang; about mounds, the Hsin; about hills, the Khwei; about wilds, the Fang-hwang; about marshes, the Weitho.' 'Let me ask what is the Wei-tho like?' asked the duke. Hwang-ze said, 'It is the size of the
1 An officer introduced here for the occasion, by surname Hwang, and designation Kâo-âo. The 3ze simply=Mr.
The commentators have a deal to say about the folklore of the various sprites mentioned. 'The whole shows that ghostly sprites
are the fruit of a disordered mind.' It is a touch of nature that the prince recovers as soon as he knows that the ghost he had seen was of good presage.
C 2
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