Page:A Chinese Biographical Dictionary.djvu/654

This page needs to be proofread.

A Chinese Biographical Dictionary 635


powers by tamiDg a herd of wild elephants. He introdaced a large number of magic formulas, and founded the Festival of Departed Spirits, held annually on the 15th of the 7th moon. Author of the ^C $4^ ffl ^f ^ translation of the Mahjusri Pariprichchhd Sutra. Pu Shang (> ^ (T. -^ J). Bom B.C. 507. A native of the 1667 Wei^ State and a diiciple of Confucius, who is said to have delivered into his charge the texts of the Odes and of the Spring and Autumn Annals. In life he was a Magistrate in the Lu State, and when he died he was appointed to be Literary Revisor in the nether world; — at least, so said ^^ |@ Su Shao of the Chin dynasty, who had died and come to life again, and declared that he had seen him thus employed in Purgatory. When the Master died, Pu Shang went into retirement in Shansi, and gave himself np to study and teaching, wearing nothing but the most ragged of clothes. He was posthumously ennobled as Duke, and in A.D. 647 his tablet was placed in the Confucian Temple. P'u Sung-ling M^M (T- U fllj- H. ^P^^). Born A.D. 1668 1622. A native of ^^^ Tzii-chou in Shantung, who graduated as hsiu ts*ai in A.D. 1641. Though an excellent scholar and a most polished writer, he failed, as many other good men have done, to take the higher degrees by which he had hoped to enter upon an o£Scial career. It is generally understood that this failure was due to neglect of the beaten track of academic study. At any rate his disappointment was overwhelming. ^*As for me,'* he wrote, **I cannot, with my poor autumn firefly's light, match myself agaiost the hobgoblins of the age." Meanwhile he was occupying himself with a work which has gained for him a deathless fame. '^I get people,*' he added, '^to commit to writing what they know of the supernatural,

and subsequently I dress it up in the form of a story

Midnight finds me with an expiring lamp, while the wind whistles mournfully without, as over my cheerless table I piece together my