The nature of the case thus forbids us to expect to find the Chinese
myths exhibiting the advanced state and brilliant heterogeneity of
those which have become part of the world's permanent literature. We
must expect them to be true to type and conditions, as we expect the
other ideas of the Chinese to be, and looking for them in the light
of this knowledge we shall find them just where we should expect to
find them.

The great sagas and eddas exalted among the world's literary
masterpieces, and forming part of the very life of a large number of
its inhabitants, are absent in China. "The Chinese people," says one
well-known sinologist, "are not prone to mythological invention." "He
who expects to find in Tibet," says another writer, "the poetical
charm of Greek or Germanic mythology will be disappointed. There is
a striking poverty of imagination in all the myths and legends. A
great monotony pervades them all. Many of their stories, taken from
the sacred texts, are quite puerile and insipid. It may be noted
that the Chinese mythology labours under the same defect." And
then there comes the crushing judgment of an over-zealous Christian
missionary sinologist: "There is no hierarchy of gods brought in to
rule and inhabit the world they made, no conclave on Mount Olympus,
nor judgment of the mortal soul by Osiris, no transfer of human love
and hate, passions and hopes, to the powers above; all here is ascribed
to disembodied agencies or principles, and their works are represented
as moving on in quiet order. There is no religion [!], no imagination;
all is impassible, passionless, uninteresting.... It has not, as in
Greece and Egypt, been explained in sublime poetry, shadowed forth in
gorgeous ritual and magnificent festivals, represented in exquisite
sculptures, nor preserved in faultless, imposing fanes and temples,