Ch’ên Kuang-jui re-entered his boat with his wife and a servant. They were stopped by the chief waterman, Page 337Liu Hung, and his assistant. Struck with the great beauty of Ch’ên Kuang-jui’s wife, the former planned a crime which he carried out with the help of his assistant. At the dead of night he took the boat to a retired spot, killed Ch’ên and his servant, threw their bodies into the river, seized his official documents of title and the woman he coveted, passed himself off as the real chuang yüan, and took possession of the magistracy of Chiang Chou. The widow, who was with child, had two alternatives—silence or death.

Meantime she chose the former. Before she gave birth to her child, T’ai-po Chin-hsing, the Spirit of the South Pole Star, appeared to her, and said he had been sent by Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, to present her with a son whose fame would fill the Empire. “Above all,” he added, “take every precaution lest Liu Hung kill the child, for he will certainly do so if he can. ” When the child was born the mother, during the absence of Liu Hung, determined to expose it rather than see it slain. Accordingly she wrapped it up carefully in a shirt, and carried it to the bank of the Blue River.

She then bit her finger, and with the blood wrote a short note stating the child’s origin, and hid it in its breast. Moreover, she bit off the infant’s left little toe, as an indelible mark of identity. No sooner had this been done than a gust of wind blew a large plank to the river’s edge. The poor mother tied her infant firmly to this plank and abandoned it to the mercy of the waves. The waif was carried to the shore of the isle of Chin Shan, on which stands the famous monastery of Chin-shan Ssŭ, near Chinkiang.

The cries of the infant attracted the attention of an old monk named Chang Lao, who rescued it and gave it the name of Chiang Liu, ‘Waif of the River. ’ He reared it with Page 338much care, and treasured the note its mother had written with her blood. The child grew up, and Chang Lao made him a priest, naming him Hsüan Chuang on the day of his taking the vows. When he was eighteen years of age, having one day quarrelled with another priest, who had cursed him and reproached him with having neither father nor mother, he, much hurt, went to his protector Chang Lao. The latter said to him: “The time has come to reveal to you your origin.

” He then told him all, showed him the note, and made him promise to avenge his assassinated father. To this end he was made a roving priest, went to the official Court, and eventually got into touch with his mother, who was still living with the prefect Liu Hung. The letter placed in his bosom, and the shirt in which he had been wrapped, easily proved the truth of his statements. The mother, happy at having found her son, promised to go and see him at Chin Shan. In order to do this, she pretended to be sick, and told Liu Hung that formerly, when still young, she had taken a vow which she had not yet been able to fulfil.

Liu Hung himself helped her to do so by sending a large gift of money to the priests, and allowed her to go with her servants to perform her devotions at Chin-shan Ssŭ. On this second visit, during which she could speak more freely with her son, she wished to see for herself the wound she had made on his foot. This removed the last shadow of doubt.