16 results in Religion and Poetry in Medieval China
Epilogue: Traversing the Golden Porte—The Problem with Daoist Studies
- Edited by Gil Raz, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Anna Shields, Princeton University, New Jersey
-
- Book:
- Religion and Poetry in Medieval China
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 241-258
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Abstract
As a response to the essays collected in the volume, Bokenkamp’s epilogue is both a reflection on the intersection of poetry and Daoism and a consideration of the state of Daoist Studies. Focusing on the Daoist term, “Golden Gatetowers,” (金闕), the chapter tracks its changing meanings across a variety of primary sources as well as various translations of the term by modern scholars. These (mis)translations reveal a lack of understanding of the shifting meanings of the term in its various contexts, which in turn reflects the current state of (mis)understanding of Daoism.
Keywords: Daoism, translation, Daoist Studies, poetry
I am profoundly moved and concomitantly humbled by the care my students and colleagues—friends all—have devoted to producing this volume. It ranges from consideration of large historical and philosophical questions (the Way) to careful analyses of how we can know so much of the Chinese past (the Words) whether passed down on bamboo, silk, paper, or stone. But how to properly respond in a way that would both honor the contributors and (perhaps) interest the readers who will come to consult their contributions? At first, I contemplated composing what J. Z. Smith called “that awkwardly entitled genre,” the bio-bibliographical essay. But, after reading the lively and informative essays assembled here, I realized that I wanted to play as well. That is, I wanted to contribute something from my recent scholarship.
At the same time, I wanted to take this opportunity to share a bit of my long experience studying and writing about the organized Chinese religion we call Daoism. After all, it seems to me, we who are engaged in this study have not been doing a very effective job of communicating our findings. This is understandable, I think. It is an impossible job. Trying to comprehend Daoism is like being the blind persons who were set the task of describing the elephant—not just because the Daoist elephant is huge and formed quite differently from other, more familiar, quadrupeds, but because it keeps morphing. Sometimes it’s a Kirin, sometimes an Indian elephant, sometimes a Chinese dragon, and sometimes a more practical water buffalo.
1 - Brushing Past Rainbows: Religion and Poetry in the Xu Mi Stele
- Edited by Gil Raz, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Anna Shields, Princeton University, New Jersey
-
- Book:
- Religion and Poetry in Medieval China
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 19-40
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Abstract
Pettit’s essay examines an inscription composed in 519 by early medieval literatus Tao Hongjing upon completion of the Scarlet Solarity Lodge on Mount Mao. While providing careful analysis of the poetic and prose sections of the inscription, and discussing Tao’s combined Buddhist and Daoist practices, Pettit emphasizes the materiality of the stele on which this text was inscribed, the esoteric topography that pervades the medieval imaginary, and the ritual contexts alluded to in the poem.
Keywords: stele inscriptions, Tao Hongjing, Mount Mao, medieval poetry
The “Stele Inscription for the Altar at the Old Lodge of Senior Administrator Xu” (Xu changshi jiuguan tan bei 許長史舊館壇碑, hereafter “Xu Mi Stele”) is a record of Tao Hongjing’s 陶弘景 (456–536) largest construction project, the Scarlet Solarity Lodge (Zhuyang guan 朱陽館). Written in 519 CE, the “Xu Mi Stele” contains a short passage describing a reliquary stupa Tao built. This short passage is known to historians as the only extant text in which Tao mentions his Buddhist program at Mount Mao. The rest of the inscription, which includes a history of this sacred site and a long ritual hymn, remains largely unstudied and unknown.
One key theme of the inscription is the idea that the sacred mountains can be a locus for profound spiritual transformation. More specifically, the Scarlet Solarity Lodge, built at a site where Mount Mao’s earlier patriarchs once practiced, made liberation from the human world not only possible, but seemingly effortless. The poet describes an individual whose mind had become “cleansed” (qing 清) and underwent a “true awakening” (zhengjue 正覺). This, in turn, produced a supernatural state of consciousness whereby the subject of the hymn flew throughout the cosmos and brushed past rainbows:
飛行欻恍 To take a flying course so sudden and swift,
捫景帶虹 Brushing past phosphors and around rainbows.
振苦排鄣 And shakes off suffering and dispenses with obstructions,
還明返聰 To bring back illumination and restoring sapience.
Since this poem lacks pronouns and other grammatical markers, the identity of the individual experiencing this transformation is not clear.
Introduction
- Edited by Gil Raz, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Anna Shields, Princeton University, New Jersey
-
- Book:
- Religion and Poetry in Medieval China
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 9-18
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Studies of the ancient Chinese classics, medieval Chinese history, Buddhism, Daoism, poetry, and prose have all too often been constrained within traditional disciplinary silos, such as literature, politics, philosophy, art, and religion. As a consequence, historians have infrequently read religious texts, scholars of Tang poetry have rarely engaged with archeological and epigraphic materials, while scholars of Buddhism have not often explored Daoist materials. Authors and readers in medieval China were of course not constrained by such boundaries. On the contrary, government and military officials, historians, poets, Buddhists, Daoists, and authors of tomb epitaphs and of imperial inscriptions shared cultural interests, and medieval authors read and found inspiration in each other’s diverse works. Our contemporary disciplinary labels tend to simplify the identities of medieval Chinese people—as adherents to a particular religion, or writers of a specific literary form—and thereby occlude the reality of their intertwined, multiple cultural practices. Indeed, people were rarely restricted to a single social identity or narrow set of cultural interests. But the blind spots in our understanding of medieval Chinese culture are not merely a result of contemporary disciplinary views: they are also shaped by the contours and gaps in the textual archive as it was transmitted and refashioned by centuries of readers. The surviving textual record from early and medieval China represents only a minute portion of the cultural productions of this era. In order to create a richer understanding of lived medieval culture, including the intersections of religious and literary practices, we need to not only read across the grain of modern disciplinary categories but also to expand our source base to include epigraphic and artistic materials, among others that have survived outside orthodox compilations of literary and scriptural traditions.
The subtitle of this volume, “The Way and the Words,” points to a fundamental critique of our very project. The Dao, the Way, is formless and nameless; it is the “teaching without words.” However, as humans we are forced to use words to communicate, and we are constrained within specific language and script communities. People in medieval China sought to attain the Way, and they realized that their words were mere traces of the ineffable. And yet, as the poems, inscriptions, scriptures, and commentaries explored in this volume demonstrate, medieval people continually sought to use words to trace the ineffable, and their ceaseless efforts to do so require our careful, attentive reading.
Conventions for Frequently Cited Works
- Edited by Gil Raz, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Anna Shields, Princeton University, New Jersey
-
- Book:
- Religion and Poetry in Medieval China
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 7-8
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
8 - Shangqing Scriptures as Performative Texts
- Edited by Gil Raz, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Anna Shields, Princeton University, New Jersey
-
- Book:
- Religion and Poetry in Medieval China
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 175-196
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Abstract
Using the Upper Scripture of Purple Texts Inscribed by the Spirits (Huangtian shangqing jingque dijun lingshu ziwen 皇天上清金闕帝君靈書紫文上經) as an example, Campany presents a rhetorical analysis of Shangqing Daoist scriptures. This analysis suggests a new way to see these texts as vehicles or scripts for the performance of an alternative identity as a divinely rejuvenated being or cosmic recluse in the here and now, rather than as promises for future salvation. The chapter fleshes out what that means and what difference it might make in our reading and understanding of these scriptures.
Keywords: Shangqing, Daoist religion, performance, religious role-playing, Actualization
Introduction
Between 364 and 370 CE, deities known as Perfected Ones 真 人 were said to have appeared in visions to the medium Yang Xi 楊羲 and others in what is now southeastern China to give instruction on a wide range of topics. Deigning to descend from a hitherto unknown zone of the heavens called Supreme Purity or Shangqing 上清, they dictated to the recipient, who wrote down their words, or else they arrived bearing written scrolls, some of which they allowed to be copied. The resulting texts were shared with patrons, notably members of the southeastern clan Xu 許. Within a few generations the texts circulated more widely, sometimes imitated and forged by aristocrats seeking the religious and social cachet that simply owning the scriptures could convey. This scriptural profusion prompted the Daoist master Tao Hongjing 陶弘景 around 499 (and another figure named Gu Huan 顧歡 a bit earlier) to cull what he considered the apocryphal from the thirty-odd authentic scriptures that had survived and to compile other documents, including diary-like records of the Perfected Ones’ appearances in visions and dreams. The larger of these compilations that survives was titled Zhen’gao 真誥 or Declarations of the Perfected. All this is of course well known to scholars of Daoist religion, but few of these writings have been carefully studied or translated in non-Asian-language publications. Yet they constitute one of the most fascinating textual dossiers of world religious history.
Here I want to pose the following question: What were Shangqing scriptures for? These texts prescribe a great many practices. The prescriptions certainly do not skimp on detail.
Frontmatter
- Edited by Gil Raz, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Anna Shields, Princeton University, New Jersey
-
- Book:
- Religion and Poetry in Medieval China
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 1-4
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
5 - A Re-examination of the Second Juan of the Array of the Five Talismans of the Numinous Treasure 太上靈寶五符序
- Edited by Gil Raz, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Anna Shields, Princeton University, New Jersey
-
- Book:
- Religion and Poetry in Medieval China
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 109-132
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Abstract
Wang Zongyu’s chapter is a philological analysis of different recensions of medical recipes in the seminal Daoist text Array of the Five Talismans, found in Daoist and medical collectanea. Beyond reminding us of the common discourse and practice among Daoists and physicians, Wang’s essay alerts us to the materiality of manuscripts that is occluded not only by modern print editions but by traditional woodblock prints as well.
Keywords: medieval medicine, medical recipe collections, manuscript history, Array of the Five Talismans
The second juan of the Array of the Five Talismans (Taishang lingbao wufuxu 太上靈寶五符序 DZ 388; hereafter Array), consisting of dozens of medicinal recipes, presents us with numerous textual problems. This chapter will only be able to touch upon a few issues. In her 2011 study of the second juan of the Array, Ikehira Noriko 池平紀子 primarily used Dunhuang manuscript S.2438, the Yunji qiqian 雲笈七籤 DZ 1032 (hereafter YJQQ), and Methods for Abstaining from Grains from the Scripture of Great Purity (Taiqingjing duangu fa 太清經斷穀法 DZ 846) to compare textual variants of recipes. While she examines multiple sources and variants, Ikehira’s stimulating discussion centers on Buddho-Daoist interaction. This essay builds upon her work.
The discussion of textual variants is not merely a philological exercise to determine the correct, or best, reading of a text. The very existence of different textual recensions forces us to recognize the materiality of texts in medieval China as hand copied manuscripts circulated among initiates and within lineages of practitioners, and only sometimes available to more public view. Single recipes, or collections of recipes, circulated independently of the texts in which we find them today, and were often copied and reformulated within different compilations.
A. The Basic Textual Sources
I begin my examination with textual criticism in order to obtain a definitive version of the Array. The first step in this process is to ascertain the correct words of the text. These two tasks are very difficult. While the Zhonghua daozang edition has only one instance of emended textual criticism of the Array, I believe there are several tens of instances where textual criticism is needed, but I am currently unable to fully emend the entire text. While I still have doubts about certain passages, I have no evidentiary basis for emending them.
10 - Taking Stock
- Edited by Gil Raz, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Anna Shields, Princeton University, New Jersey
-
- Book:
- Religion and Poetry in Medieval China
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 221-240
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Abstract
Lagerwey’s essay reflects on the author’s journey as a scholar of Chinese religion, and especially his realization of the centrality of Daoism to Chinese religious life. Having completed his Ph.D. at Harvard (1975), Lagerwey encountered the study of living Daoism and realized that the dominant Euro-centric definition of religion and Confucian-centric vision of Chinese history, which were, and remain, the dominant paradigm of Chinese studies, occlude the historical social reality of Chinese religion, in which Daoism played a crucial role. This realization entailed moving away from the mainstream literary and historical canons, delving into the Daoist textual and, especially, the ritual tradition.
Keywords: Daoism, Confucianism, Religion, Chinese studies, ritual
Over forty years have passed since I first encountered Daoism. That encounter radically changed me, as it has changed us all. Indeed, what the encounter with Daoism has changed most radically is the field of Sinology and, thereby, the nature and conditions of a China–West dialogue. A volume like this one is a perfect opportunity for reflecting together on these changes. It is therefore my hope that, in addition to any discussion about my own remarks, there will be further statements—parallel or contradictory—to my own, that we can publish as a single piece: our letter to the world that never wrote to us.
Let me begin with several of what were for me the most radical transformations in my view of China and, therefore, of my own cultural heritage. The first changes had to do with the text I read with Kristofer Schipper in my first year (1976) in Paris, the Laozi zhong jing 老子中經. Every Wednesday night I would cross Paris from the 18th to the 14th arrondissement and translate orally this extraordinary text into French. I can fairly say that this text “blew my mind,” because it made me realize that: (1) the distinction I had assumed between inner and outer—subjective and objective—was so rigid as to be fundamentally wrong; (2) the process of interiorization lay at the heart of historical change; (3) the spiritual depth of Chinese culture encountered in this text made of the religionless China I had studied at Harvard a sick joke, that is, a modernizing “secularist” joke that had little or nothing to do with Chinese reality. Nothing I have learned since has overturned these basic changes.
Index
- Edited by Gil Raz, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Anna Shields, Princeton University, New Jersey
-
- Book:
- Religion and Poetry in Medieval China
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 259-267
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Contents
- Edited by Gil Raz, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Anna Shields, Princeton University, New Jersey
-
- Book:
- Religion and Poetry in Medieval China
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 5-6
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
2 - Li Bo and Hu Ziyang: Companions of the Way
- Edited by Gil Raz, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Anna Shields, Princeton University, New Jersey
-
- Book:
- Religion and Poetry in Medieval China
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 41-62
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Abstract
Kroll’s essay explores a series of poetic and prose compositions by High Tang poet Li Bo dedicated to Hu Ziyang, a Daoist master who transmitted to Li Bo the esoteric technique of absorbing solar essence and conferred Daoist registers on other of Li Bo’s companions. Li Bo’s most extensive composition on Hu Ziyang is an inscribed stele erected at his tomb site, again alerting us to the significance of materiality in discussing the effect and efficacy of texts. As Kroll reminds us, Li Bo was asked to eulogize Master Hu by the Buddhist monk Zhenqian, revealing the close personal links among Buddhist monks, Daoist priests, and poets.
Keywords: Li Bo, Tang poetry, Tang Daoism, stele inscriptions, Buddhist monks, Daoist priests
The most often and most warmly mentioned person in Li Bo’s collected works is Yuan Danqiu 元丹丘, a friend from his youthful days in Shu with whom he maintained close relations for over three decades, seeing each other in various places throughout China, and with whom he shared an abiding interest in Daoist matters. We do not know Yuan’s personal name; Li Bo invariably refers to him as Danqiu (Cinnabar Hill), which was likely his Daoist religious sobriquet. He is addressed or mentioned in at least a dozen different works, always with affection. The scholar Yu Xianhao 郁賢皓 has made a detailed study of Li’s and Yuan’s relationship as documented in the former’s poems and prose, so there is no need to go farther into this here.
We shall turn instead to another figure with Daoist credentials, prominently mentioned in several works of both prose and verse of Li Bo, a certain Hu Ziyang 胡紫陽, “Hu, of Purple Yang.” At some time (we do not know exactly when) he bestowed Daoist registers (we do not know exactly which) on Yuan Danqiu. He was also known to Danqiu’s cousin, Yuan Yan 元演, about whom more of which anon. And he also transmitted to Li Bo himself, so the poet says, the esoteric technique of absorbing solar essence. Master Hu, like Yuan Danqiu, is referred to only by his religious name, one that also has resonance in the history of Daoism. He is associated particularly with Suizhou 隨州, in north-central Hubei (present-day Suixian 隨縣).
4 - Traces of the Way : The Poetry of “Divine Transcendence” in the Northern Song Anthology Literature’s Finest (Wen cui 文粹)
- Edited by Gil Raz, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Anna Shields, Princeton University, New Jersey
-
- Book:
- Religion and Poetry in Medieval China
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 87-108
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Abstract
In her chapter, Shields questions the categories of religion and poetry as she explores the classification of poems in an important yet still understudied Song anthology, the Wen cui (Literature’s Finest). By tracing the shifting conceptualizations of Daoism, Buddhism, and “religion” in the poems of “divine transcendence” (shenxian) in the early tenth-century anthology, she reveals that we may be hampered in understanding Tang Daoist poetry not only by our own modern categorizations, but also by dynamic changes in cultural and literary contexts that shaped the reception of Tang literature during the Song.
Keywords: Tang poetry, Song anthologies, Daoist poetry, Du Fu
As several essays in this volume demonstrate, the intertwined relationship of medieval literary writing and religious practice can be perceived throughout the textual archive of the early medieval and Tang eras. But thanks largely to post-medieval habits of preservation, codification, and transmission that tended to separate writing deemed as “religious” from “literary” corpora, our view of that relationship has long been obscured. Scholars of medieval religion and literature have significantly expanded our understanding of Buddhism’s influence on elite belletristic writing (wenzhang 文章) in recent decades, spurred by evidence in the Dunhuang manuscript corpus as well as by new questions of transmitted texts, but much remains to be understood about the role of Daoist topics and themes in medieval literature that survived in individual literary collections (wenji 文集) and anthologies. Scholars such as Edward Schafer, Stephen Bokenkamp, Paul Kroll, and Franciscus Verellen have challenged traditional literary critical views and historical narratives that tend to ignore Daoism’s impact on Tang poetry and prose. Much of this scholarship has been recuperative, intended to reveal the footprint of Daoist concepts and practices in the corpora of specific writers such as Li Bai 李白, Cao Tang 曹唐, and Wu Yun 吳筠.
Beyond rediscovering Daoism in individual collections, however, we must also investigate the structural forces that necessitate this recuperative work: how did post-Tang literary collection and transmission practices occlude or marginalize writing concerned with Daoism? What kinds of formal or topical categories did Song and later readers use to define, contain, or otherwise explicate Tang writers’ interest in Daoism? Considering anthologies, for example, allows us to step away from the thorny—and often undecidable—question of Tang authors’ religious convictions and move towards more precise questions of representation and hermeneutics.
6 - “True Forms” and “True Faces”: Daoist and Buddhist Discourse on Images
-
- By Gil Raz
- Edited by Gil Raz, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Anna Shields, Princeton University, New Jersey
-
- Book:
- Religion and Poetry in Medieval China
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 133-160
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Abstract
During the late fifth century local communities composed of Buddhist and Daoist adherents installed dozens of stelae that combined Buddhist and Daoist iconographies, aspirations, and motivations. Engraved with the earliest anthropomorphic image of Lord Lao, the physical manifestation of the ineffable Dao, and inscribed with theological apologetic statements, these stelae indicate a shift in Daoism from a profound aniconic theology to an iconographic practice. Intriguingly, at the same time Buddhists began to inscribe statues with similar apologetic statements. Focusing on the terms “true forms” (zhenxing 真形) and “true faces” (zhenrong 真容), Raz examines the confluence of Buddhist and Daoist rhetoric, discourse, and practice in medieval China.
Keywords: Daoism, Buddhism, inscriptions, statues, stele.
A major revolution in Daoist ritual practice and discourse occurred near the ancient capital region of Chang’an between the late fifth (480’s) and late sixth century (580’s). It was during this time that local communities installed dozens of stelae that combined Buddhist and Daoist iconographies, aspirations, and motivations. Combining Buddhist and Daoist figural images, with votive inscriptions that reveal complex merging of Daoist and Buddhist cosmologies, hopes, aspirations, and by the donors who are identified as Buddhists or Daoists, these stelae reveal communities that were simultaneously devoted to Buddhism and Daoism.
These stelae display the earliest anthropomorphic representations of the ineffable Dao, personified and represented as the highest Daoist deities, Lord Lao (Laojun 老君) or the Celestial Worthy (天尊), thus marking a fundamental change in Daoist ritual practice. Prior to the sixth century Daoist canonic texts rarely advocate the production of statues, and there is little room for figural imagery in the ritual formulations produced by the Celestial Master community or in the Shangqing textual corpus. While here are hints for the use of statues in the Lingbao corpus, these are restricted to a section of textual transmission rites and not to the main ritual programs. Indeed, most Daoist references to statues prior to the sixth century are negative and stress the aniconic aspect of Daoist practice. It is only in the early seventh century that figural, anthropomorphic imagery was first included as central in Daoist ritual practice.
The Daoist figural representations were clearly influenced by Buddhist models.
7 - After the Apocalypse: The Evolving Ethos of the Celestial Master Daoists
- Edited by Gil Raz, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Anna Shields, Princeton University, New Jersey
-
- Book:
- Religion and Poetry in Medieval China
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 161-174
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Abstract
Celestial Master Daoism appeared in the mid-second century as a revealed religion with a pronounced millenarian worldview. Early members believed they faced cosmic disasters that would purge the world of evil and welcome in a utopian age of Great Peace. This early enthusiasm was softened by the fourth century as a more relaxed eschatology developed, which focused on living a meritorious life and adhering to the Daoist ethical precepts as the way to ensure happiness. Focusing on the “Code of Teachings and Precepts of the Celestial Master,” Kleeman reconstructs the lived religion of the Celestial Master community as it transitioned to a more routinized and established structure, less millennial fervor and more Buddhist impact.
Keywords: Celestial Master Daoism, eschatology, millenarianism, precepts
Celestial Master Daoism was founded in the second century CE in what is now Sichuan province. It began as a revolutionary faith, rejecting the traditional religious practices of the people around them, preaching that disasters were imminent that would usher in a utopian age of Great Peace for the worthy, but death and destruction for their profane neighbors. They formed a self-conscious religious entity, marked off by distinctive clothing, a family tithe of grain, and especially, ritual practice. The followers collected together briefly in a millennial kingdom centered in the Hanzhong region of southeast Shanxi province (ca. 191–215), then spread across the North China plain in an evangelical wave during the third century, and extended their faith to South China in the fourth.
The first few generations of believers were caught up in the eschatological dream on the world of Great Peace to come, but eventually it became clear that the return of the Supreme Lord Lao and the inauguration of Great Peace was not imminent. After that, a certain routinization set in, and the faith shifted to one centering on the welfare of their believers in this world rather than the next. What did it mean then to be a member of the Celestial Master church? How could Daoist citizens (daomin 道民) hope to fulfill their vows and earn a blessed life? Could they count on the help of their fellow Daoists in their spiritual cultivation and worldly endeavors? How did members of the Daoist community see the profane worshipers of popular cults all around them?
9 - My Back Pages: The Sūtra in Forty-Two Chapters Revisited
-
- By James Robson
- Edited by Gil Raz, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Anna Shields, Princeton University, New Jersey
-
- Book:
- Religion and Poetry in Medieval China
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 197-220
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
“I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now…”
—Bob DylanAbstract
The Sūtra in Forty-Two Chapters (Sishi’er zhang jing 四十二章經) has been celebrated as the first Indian Buddhist sūtra brought to China, where it was, supposedly, translated into Chinese in 67 CE. This sūtra has become a favorite for Western translators and is often used as an introduction to the transmission of Buddhism to China and to Chinese Buddhism in general. Robson traces the textual history of this text in a range of Chinese sources, focusing on the earliest exemplar of this sūtra in a Daoist text. This chapter also discusses how and why this short text came to play such a significant role in Western accounts of Chinese Buddhist history.
Keywords: Buddhism, Western studies of religion, Translation, Daoism
The Sūtra in Forty-Two Chapters (Sishi’er zhang jing 四十二章經) has long been celebrated as the first Indian Buddhist sūtra brought to China where it was—according to tradition—translated into Chinese by two Yuezhi 月支國 (Tokharian) monks, Kāśyapa Mātaņga Jia Yemoteng 迦葉摩騰 or Shemoteng 攝摩騰) and Dharmaratna (Zhu Falan竺法蘭) in 67 CE, making it the first Buddhist text to appear in Chinese. Given the long-standing claim that the Sūtra in Forty-Two Chapters was the first Buddhist text translated into Chinese, since the late nineteenth century it has been a favorite for Western translators, is often referred to in general introductions to Chinese Buddhism—perhaps due to its rather simple doctrinal statements—and discussed in the context of the early transmission of Buddhism from India to China. Over the years, however, scholars began to adopt more critical perspectives in their analysis of the text, raising questions about the precise date and nature of the text. That scholarship is by now generally familiar, so in this essay I aim to bring together two story lines that have evolved somewhat separately in Buddhist and Daoist studies, in order to explore the curious—and rather complicated—lives the Sūtra in Forty-Two Chapters has lived within those two traditions.
3 - The Vicarious Angler: Gao Pian’s Daoist Poetry
- Edited by Gil Raz, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Anna Shields, Princeton University, New Jersey
-
- Book:
- Religion and Poetry in Medieval China
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 19 December 2023, pp 63-86
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Abstract
Verellen’s chapter examines the Daoist poems by late Tang dynasty general Gao Pian, who was also an alchemist, an engineer and architect of citadels, and a poet with a deep interest in Daoism, as well as in military cults and esoteric techniques. The ten poems analyzed in this essay were inspired by the Daoist rite of “Pacing the Void,” alchemical practice, and local cults. Several poems were dedicated to Daoist masters sought by the general. The Daoist poetry of Gao Pian reminds us of the complex and contested socio-cultural identities of Tang officials and military leaders.
Keywords: Gao Pian, Tang military history, Pacing the Void, inner alchemy
The trajectory of Gao Pian 高駢 (821–87) is a case history of the powerful and ambiguous role of military governors in late Tang politics. Its underexplored record also reveals one of the most intriguing personalities involved in shaping the turbulent events of ninth-century China. Gao began his military career on the northwestern frontier, where he recovered strategic territories for the Tang. From the gateway to Central Asia, he transferred to the empire’s southernmost border as protector general of Annan (North Vietnam), then successively governed Shandong, Sichuan, the middle and lower Yangzi regions, and finally Huainan, the Tang’s economic heartland centered on the financial and commercial hub of Yangzhou. Having won two wars against the kingdom of Nanzhao and scored major victories against the Tibetan Empire and the Tanguts, as commander-in-chief of the Joint Expeditionary Armies raised to suppress the Huang Chao 黃巢 rebellion (877–84), Gao Pian uncharacteristically allowed the insurgents to cross the Yangzi in 880, precipitating the fall of the capital, the emperor’s flight to Chengdu, and the government’s exile in 881–85.
The portrait that emerges from Gao’s writings and the testimony of contemporaries is no less fraught with complexity than the issue of his ultimate responsibility for the fall of the Tang. A man of many talents and wide-ranging curiosity, Gao was versed in alchemy and the esoteric arts of war, an accomplished engineer, architect of the medieval citadels of Hanoi and Chengdu, and, not least, a respected poet. Some twenty percent of his surviving poems can be labeled “Daoist.” Gao Pian’s Daoist poems project a self-image that is jarringly at odds with his public persona.
![](/core/cambridge-core/public/images/lazy-loader.gif)