The Three Wise Monkeys.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 3070, 17 March 1914, Page 2

The Three Wise Monkeys.

Around tho neck ef Miss Bradley, a lady recently found tied up in a tack in Liverpool Docks, was a .somewhat extraordinary medallion which has moused a great deal of comment and some interest. On the one sid" of it were engraved the figures of three monkeys with their hands in different attitudes. Underneath were the words:—

"Speak no evil see no evil, hear no evil."

ihe other side had no picture, but bore only an inscription . " Three wise monkeys with tbeir eyes shut to evil, oars that hear only the right, lips that arc dumb to scandal. They sit in their silent might." A solution to the meaning of the above may be found in Murray's handbook h> Japan. In that country the monkey is called Koshin. moaning a deification of that day of the month which corresponds to the fifty-seventh teim of the Chinese sexagenary cycle, which is known to the Japanese as lva-no-esaru. The fifty-seventh day is known as tho day of the monkey, and is represented by three monkeys, called respectively "wi-zurawa," "kika-zaru," and "iwa-zapu," meaning the blind monkey, the deaf monkey, and the dumb monkey, and they point the moral that one should neither sec. speak, nor give ear to evil.

There is a very beautiful representation of this deity in the Temple nt >ikko, lying northward of Japan, right amongst the mountains. Many are the natives who pay homage to these strango the monkeys carved in stone slabs are cnt'ingst the most usual objects of devotion in the more rural districts of Ja:>an.

If the poor murdered woman lived up to the words carved on the medallion, she has indeed been ill-repaid for the beautv of her nature.