to have been a Chinese official of the sixth century A.D.  But there is little mythology.  The deities are like the figures on porcelain vases:  all know their appearance and some their names, but hardly anyone can give a coherent account of them.  A poly-daemonism of this kind is even more fluid than Hinduism:  you may invent any god you like and neglect gods that don’t concern you.  The habit of mind which produces sects in India, namely the desire to exalt one’s own deity above others and make him the All-God, does not exist.  No Chinese god inspires such feelings.

The deities of medieval and modern China, including the spirits recognized by Chinese Buddhism, are curiously mixed and vague personalities.[559] Nature worship is not absent, but it is nature as seen by the fancy of the alchemist and astrologer.  The powers that control nature are also identified with ancient heroes, but they are mostly heroes of the type of St. George and the Dragon of whom history has little to say, and Chinese respect for the public service and official rank takes the queer form of regarding these spirits as celestial functionaries.  Thus the gods have a Ministry of Thunder which supervises the weather and a Board of Medicine which looks after sickness and health.

The characteristic expression of Chinese popular religion is not exactly myth or legend but religious romance.  A writer starts from some slender basis of fact and composes an edifying novel.  Thus the well-known story called Hsi-Yu-Chi[560] purports to be an account of Hsuan Chuang’s journey to India but, except that it represents the hero as going there and returning with copies of the scriptures, it is romance pure and simple, a fantastic Pilgrim’s Progress, the scene of which is sometimes on earth and sometimes in the heavens.  The traveller is accompanied by allegorical creatures such as a magic monkey, a pig, and a dragon horse, who have each their own significance and may be seen represented in Buddhist and Taoist temples even to-day.  So too another writer, starting from the tradition that Avalokita (or Kuan-Yin) was once a benevolent human being, set himself to write the life of Kuan-Yin, represented as a princess endued with every virtue who cheerfully bears cruel persecution for her devotion to Buddhism.  It would be a mistake to seek in this story any facts throwing light on the history of Avalokita and his worship.  It is a religious novel, important only because it still finds numerous readers.

It is commonly said that the Chinese belong to three religions, Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, and the saying is not altogether inaccurate.  Popular language speaks of the three creeds and an ordinary person in the course of his life may take part in rites which imply a belief in them all.[561] Indeed the fusion is so complete that one may justly talk of Chinese religion, meaning the jumble of ceremonies and beliefs accepted by the average man.  Yet at the same time it is possible to be an enthusiast for any one of the three without becoming unconventional.