Zhou Goushi was a village shaman of Chongyang county in Yuezhou. He could work small arts of prohibition and prayer, and he was very fond of eating dog meat, which is how he came by his name. What he was best at was bringing rain.
His method was this: a dozen or so bundles of paper money, with offerings of a pig’s head, a chicken and a duck; and then at nightfall he would go to some pool or cavern where there was a source of water, and drive the paper money down into the water on the end of a great bamboo. This is called stabbing the spring.
Whenever men came to him on account of a drought, he had them set out their surnames and their fields — in mu and in paces — complete within the petition. Before the day was out, rain would certainly fall. But it rained only on those whose names stood in the petition. A field on the other side of one raised bank, or across one ditch, stayed yellow with drought as before — even the very place where the spring rose.
When the villagers first made their request they brought cash and grain as an offering. Those who could not put it together would bring an ox as a pledge, and when the answer came they would bring the money and redeem it. What Zhou took in was not little. But he spent all of it on wine and meat to eat and drink, and where he lived was one thatched hut and nothing more.
The spring-hollows he stabbed, or the water at the source, would dry up then and there; and fearing he would be set upon by the people of those parts, he always went by night.
The county magistrate was often tormented by drought. He had made the round of every shrine and got no answer at all, so he sent for Zhou and had him pray.
Zhou said: “I must ask that you, sir, and all your deputy officers, come out to the place. And you should carry rain gear with you. I am afraid you may be drenched in an instant, with nothing to shelter under.”
The magistrate forced himself to agree. The rite was no sooner finished than the great rain arrived.
Zheng Zongshuo, the eye-doctor of Linchuan, once travelled as far as Yue and knew the man, and afterwards regretted that he had not emptied his purse to have the art handed on to him.
The method of stabbing the spring is recorded in no book, and is to be found nowhere else.
