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IL THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COt_FUCIUS. 2 5
must bring him forth in a hollow mulberry tree." Dt_ring
her pregnancy five old men, the spirits of the five planets,
led before her an animal, in appearance like a small cow,
covered with dragon-like scales, and with only 9he horn,
to which the mother attached a piece of embroidered
ribbon. This was the supernatural li_z _, which only
appears on the advent of a Sage. A creature, similar
or the same, with a piece of ribbon on its horn, is said
to have been caught two years before the Sage's death,
and on his going to see it he burst into tears, recognising
it as the 1_t_that had appeared to his mother, and whose
capture he now imagined to portend his own death.
On his mother informing the father of her vision, and
asking if there were such a thing as a hollow mulberry
in the neighbourhood, he informed her that a cave of
that name existed not far away, and there she is said to
have brought forth her son, a spring bubbling forth for
his bath and dying away immediately afterwards. "The
child was of an extraordinary appealance ; with a mouth
like the sea, ox lips, a dragon's back," and the top of
his head either unusually prominent, or affected with
some abnormal protuberance from which he derived his
name_of Ch'iu F[:., a character which when referring to
the Confucius the Chinese pronounce mou _ "a certain
person," and from which they generally omit the shorter
down-stroke.
Such.are some of the phenomena associated with the
birth of this remarkable man. The last item of his
personal appearance may be considered reasonably
authentic, for the ancient Chinese seem to have had