There Is
Hardly Any Huge Clay Statue In China A Hundred Or Two Hundred Years Old,
And All The Older Ones Are In A State Of Decay, Owing To The Brittleness
Of The Material And The Carelessness Of The Monks.
Besides, as stated by
Mayers and Dennys (l.c., p. 163), the Lo-han Hall of Canton, with its
glittering contents, is a purely modern structure, having been added to
the Fa-lum Temple in 1846, by means of a subscription mainly supported by
the Hong Merchants.
Although this statue is not old, yet it may have been
made after an ancient model. Archdeacon Gray, in his remarkable and
interesting book, Walks in the City of Canton (Hong Kong, 1875, p. 207),
justly criticized the Marco Polo theory, and simultaneously gave a correct
identification of the Lo-han in question. His statement is as follows: "Of
the idols of the five hundred disciples of Buddha, which, in this hall,
are contained, there is one, which, in dress and configuration of
countenance, is said to resemble a foreigner. With regard to this image,
one writer, if we mistake not, has stated that it is a statue of the
celebrated traveller Marco Polo, who, in the thirteenth century, visited,
and, for some time, resided in the flowery land of China. This statement,
on the part of the writer to whom we refer, is altogether untenable.
Moreover, it is an error so glaring as to cast, in the estimation of all
careful readers of his work, no ordinary degree of discredit upon many of
his most positive assertions.
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