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So likewise the number of the wedding-gifts: even the cost of the presents, of rice-wine and dried fish was prescribed, and the quality of the single fan which it was permissible to offer the bride. At no time was a farmer allowed to make any valuable presents to his friends.
With the money thus received they bought rice and radishes, their daily food. Only once or twice a year, at New Year's and on the mikado's birthday, could they afford to treat themselves to a mess of bean-curd or fresh fish. Yet the old man was very fond of rice-wine, and every week bought a gourd full to keep his old blood warm.
Only the old men were permitted to gather around the pigs and the rice-wine and the other appurtenances of the feast. The feast began by a prayer to the ancestors, followed by an invocation to the various deities. The people cried: Who-oo-oo! Mánaháut, look down! Come down and drink the rice-wine and take the pig! Don't deceive us! Deceive our enemies!
These being successfully overcome, he was invested with supernatural power and magic weapons, with which he traversed the Empire, slaying dragons and ridding the earth of divers kinds of evils, during a period of upward of four hundred years. Another version says that Han Chung-li was in an inn, heating a jug of rice-wine.
At a funeral he might serve the guests with certain kinds of plain food; but if rice-wine were served it was not to be served in wine-cups, only in soup-cups!
The cause of this is, that being near the sea, there are many lakes or salines of sea water, which dry up and coagulate into salt in summer, and five other provinces in Mangi are supplied from the coast of Quinsai. This province produces plenty of sugar, which pays, like all other spices, three and a third in the hundred, which is likewise paid for rice-wine.
Then he won't feel his self any more, then he won't feel the pains of life any more, then he finds a short numbing of the senses. When he falls asleep over his bowl of rice-wine, he'll find the same what Siddhartha and Govinda find when they escape their bodies through long exercises, staying in the non-self. This is how it is, oh Govinda."
I come down Mánaháut; I drink the rice-wine; I will deceive your enemies, but I will not deceive you, The old man, possessed, jumps up and, with characteristic Ifugao dance step, dances about the rice-wine jar and about the pig. Quickly follows him a feaster who has called Umalgo, the Spirit of the Sun, and was possessed by him. Mánaháut dances ahead of Umalgo to show him the pig.
All had taken place in so short a space of time that Han Chung-li's wine was not yet hot. This is the incident referred to in Chinese literature in the phrase 'rice-wine dream. Convinced of the hollowness of worldly dignities, he followed Han Chung-li to the Ho Ling Mountains at Chung-nan in Shensi, where he was initiated into the divine mysteries, and became an Immortal.
It hurts very much, but he does not mind it. The tengus have one great fault. They love liquor too much. They often get drunk. They buy great casks of rice-wine, sling them round their necks, and drink out of long cups shaped like their faces, using the nose for a handle.
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