Note 8 — IV.—PORTENTS OR OMENS, AUGURIES, LUCKY NUMBERS AND DREAMS.

A belief in what we term lucky numbers pervades the whole arcana of Chinese life and literature. Mr. Mayers, in the introduction to his admirable Chinese Reader’s Manual, says: “In obedience it would seem to an impulse the influence of which is distinctly marked in the literary traditions of the Chaldeans, the Hebrews, and the Hindoos, a doctrine of the hidden properties and harmonies of numbers imbues the earliest recorded expression of Chinese belief. So also, it may be remarked, in the teachings of Pythagoras an abstract theory of number was expounded as underlying the whole system of existence, whence the philosophy of the western would become tinged with conceptions strongly resembling those which still prevail on the same subject in the Chinese mind.” Mr. Mayers has here indicated the common source of many of those vulgar beliefs now known as mere folk-lore; and humble as that is in comparison with the more pretentious philosophy which he has so skilfully elucidated, it is not wholly without interest. It would seem that the popular saying “There is luck in odd numbers” meets with as much belief in China as in England. I have already noted the fact that the number 3 is, with an odd exception relating to marriage ceremonies, deemed auspicious. Thus they speak of the 3 decades of heat, the 3 powers united in nature (tʻien, yang and yin), the 3 systems of doctrine, the 3 forms of obedience, the 3 mental qualifications, the 3 powers of nature (heaven, earth and man), and so on, to say nothing of the phrases in which the same number is pressed into service to express real or assumed historical, geographical, and other facts, such as the “3 kingdoms,” the “3 armies,” the “3 rivers,” the “3 heroes,” &c.8 Mr. Mayers’s exhaustive “Numerical Categories,” give the following number of current phrases under the first ten numerals.