THE MANVANTARA OPENS


Laotse's Blue Pearl was already shining into poetry. Ch'u Yuan,
the first great poet, belongs to this same fourth century; it is
a long step from the little wistful ballads that Confucius
gathered to the "wild irregular meters," * splendid imagery, and
be it said, deep soul symbolism of his great poem the Li Sao
(Falling into Trouble). The theme of it is this: From earliest
childhood Ch'u Yuan had sought the Tao, but in vain. At last,
banished by the prince whose minister he had been, he retired
into the wilds, and was meditating at the tomb of Shun in Hupeh,
in what was then the far south. There the Phoenix and the Dragon
came to him, and bore him aloft, past the West Pole, past the
Milky Way, past even the Source of the Hoangho, to the Gates of
Heaven. Where, however, there was no admittance for him; and
full of sorrow he returned to earth.

------
* _Chinese Literature,_ by Dr. H. A. Giles. What is said about
the _Li Sao_ here comes from that work--except the suggestions as
to its inner meaning.
------

On the banks of the Mi-lo a fisherman met him, and asked him the
cause of his trouble.--"All the world is foul," answered Ch'u
Yuan, "and I alone am clean."--"If that is so," said the
fisherman, "why not plunge into the current, and make its
foulness clean with the infection of your purity? The Man of Tao
does not quarrel with his surroundings, but adjusts himself to
them." Ch'u Yuan took the hint: leaped into the Mi-lo;--and
yearly since then they have held the Dragon-boat Festival on the
waters of Middle China to commemorate the search for his body.--
Just how much of this is in the _Li Sao,_--where the poem ends,--
I do not clearly gather from Professor Giles's account; but the
whole story appears to me to be a magnificent Soul Symbol: of
that Path which leads you indeed on dragon flights to the borders
of the Infinite, but whose end, rightly considered, is in this
world, and to be as it were drowned in the waters of this world,
with your cleanness infecting them to be clean,--and lighting
them for all future ages with beauty, as with little dragon-boats
luminous with an inner flame. Ch'u Yuan had followers in that
and the next century; but perhaps his greatness was hardly to be
approached for a thousand years.

But we were still in Tiger-time, and with quite the worst of it
to come. Here lay the Blue Pearl scintillating rainbows up
through the heavy atmosphere; but despite its flashing and
up-fountaining those strange dying-dolphin hues and glories, you
could never have told, in Tiger-time, what it really was. The
Dragon was yet a long way off; though indeed it must be allowed
that flight, when Chwangtse wrote and Ch'u Yuan sung, was
surprised with the far churr of startling wings under the stars.
Ears intent to listen were surprised; but only for a moment;--
there was that angry howling again from the northern hills and
the southern forests: the two great Tigers of the world face to
face, tails lashing;--and between them and in their path, Chow
quite prone,--the helpless Black-haired People trembling or
chattering frivolously. Not for such an age as that Chwangtse
and Ch'u Yuan wrote, but indeed you may say for all time. What
light from the Blue Pearl could then shine forth and be seen,
would, in the thick fog and smoke-gloom, take on wild fantastic
guise; which, as we shall see, it did:--but what Chwangtse had
written remained, pure immortality, to kindle up better ages to
come. When China should be ready, Chwangtse and the Pearl would
be found waiting for her. The manvantara had not yet dawned;
but we may hurry on now to its dawning.

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