Abstract
As Dr. Geil's title-page indicates, he is the author of several books on China, of which “A Yankee on the Yangtzeæ is perhaps the best known. In explanation of his present title he says “5 is a number most remarkable to the man of the Central Kingdom.” Here he deals with five sacred mountains, the peaks of East, South, Centre, West, and North—Tai Shan, Nan Yo, Sung Shan, Hua Shan, and Heng Shan—associated with the five elements wood, fire, earth, metal, water, and the colours green, red, yellow, white and black. These mountains are all centres of pilgrimage. Of these sacred sites the importance for the student of Chinese culture lies in the fact that, like similar sites in other lands, they have been regarded as sacred from time immemorial. Like the holy wells of the British Isles, they represent a cult—and preserve survivals of it—which belongs to a stage of development infinitely more primitive than that of the official religion. So, says Dr. Geil, with the sacred mountains of China; beneath the thin rind of Buddhism, and far earlier than Confucianism, is the core with “an immemorial flavour of sanctity, the cult of the mountain spirit.”
The Sacred 5 of China is the 5th Book on China.
By Dr. William Edgar Geil. Pp. xix + 355 + 56 plates. (London: John Murray, 1926.) 24s. net.
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The Sacred 5 of China is the 5th Book on China . Nature 118, 223 (1926). https://doi.org/10.1038/118223a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/118223a0