File:THE TEMPLE OF THE FIVE HUNDRED GODS.jpg

English: John Thomson: THIS celebrated shrine, which the Chinese call " Hua-lin-szu," " Magnificent Forest Temple," is situated in the western suburbs of Canton, and was erected by Bodhidharama, a Buddhist missionary from India, who landed in Canton about the year 520 A. D. and who is frequently pictured on Chinese tea-cups ascending the Yangtsze on his bamboo raft. The temple was rebuilt in 1755, under the auspices of the Emperor Kien-lung, and with its courts, halls, and dwellings for the priests, covers a very large space of ground. It is the Lo-Han-T'ang, or Hall of Saints, partly shown in the photograph, that forms the chief attraction of the place. This Hall contains 500 gilded effigies of saints out of the Buddhist calendar, representing men of different Eastern nationalities. Colonel Yule, in his new edition of " Marco Polo," says that one of these is an image of the Venetian traveller ; but careful inquiry proves this statement incorrect, as there is no statue presenting the European type of face, and all the records connected with them are of prior antiquity. The aged figure shown in the next picture is that of