JF Ptak Science Books: Sacred Mountains Series: Tai Shan, China.

JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 659

The Chou dynasty Shu-ching (“the History Classic”, “the Book of History”, “the Book of Documents”) is one of the world’s oldest historical documents, relating vernacular, religious and legendary drama of China. According to this sixth century BCE history, the the legendary Chinese third milenium BCE ruler, Shun (2255-2206 BCE), would pilgrimage* every five years to the points marking the extent of is realm, stopping and extolling virtue and leaving gifts at the peaks of five mountains at these five points. The one mountain of these five that was named was Tai Shan, which remains the principal of what is called “the five sacred mountains**”, and which is still after thousands of years a point of veneration and pilgrimage.

The map of the pilgrim’s paths in this mountain was published in The Illustrated London News for 20 October 1945. It is a nicely designed skeleton map of the mountain, scaled down to reveal temples and principal interests, and done in such as way as to look a bit naïve.

There’s too much not-known history here for me to make much of a comment on this map. One item that did catch my interest though is found near the peak, the “tablet without Inscription”. It is evidently a massive monolith put in place around 110 AC. It has but one work incised in it: the ideogram for “Lord”.

*pilgrimage - ch' ao-shan chin-hsiang - means 'paying one's respect to a mountain'

**The five sacred mountains include:

Tai Shan, Taoist mountain of the east, Shandong province, 1545 meters.
Heng Shan Bei, Taoist mountain of the north, Shanxi province, 2017 meters.
Hua Shan, Taoist mountain of the west, Shanxi province, 1997 meters.
Heng Shan Nan, Taoist mountain of the south, Hunan province, 1290 meters.
Song Shan, Taoist mountain of the center, Henan province, 1494 meters.

This interesting image was made by none other than Gilbert Grosvenor (1945), the chair of the National Geographic. These stairs--1000 of them--lead to the South Heavenly Gate near the summit. At the time, these were still one of the world's longest stairways.