Western Queen, and from his day onward the fabulists have vied with one
another in fantastic descriptions of the wonders of her fairyland. He
was the first to mention the islands of the immortals in the ocean,
the kingdoms of the dwarfs and giants, the fruit of immortality, the
repairing of the heavens by Nü Kua Shih with five-coloured stones,
and the great tortoise which supports the universe.


The T'ang and Sung Epochs

Religious romance began at this time. The T'ang epoch (A.B. 618-907)
was one of the resurrection of the arts of peace after a long period of
dissension. A purer and more enduring form of intellect was gradually
overcoming the grosser but less solid superstition. Nevertheless the
intellectual movement which now manifested itself was not strong
enough to prevail against the powers of mythological darkness. It
was reserved for the scholars of the Sung Period (A.D. 960-1280)
to carry through to victory a strong and sustained offensive against
the spiritualistic obsessions which had weighed upon the Chinese mind
more or less persistently from the Han Period (206 B.C.-A.D. 221)
onward. The dogma of materialism was specially cultivated at this
time. The struggle of sober reason against superstition or imaginative
invention was largely a struggle of Confucianism against Taoism. Though
many centuries had elapsed since the great Master walked the earth,
the anti-myth movement of the T'ang and Sung Periods was in reality the
long arm and heavy fist of Confucius emphasizing a truer rationalism
than that of his opponents and denouncing the danger of leaving the
firm earth to soar into the unknown hazy regions of fantasy. It was
Sung scholarship that gave the death-blow to Chinese mythology.