DAOIST IDENTIT Y
Histor y, Lineage, and Ritual
Edited by Livia Kohn and Harold D. Roth

DAOIST
IDENTITY
Histor y, Lineage, and Ritual
Edited by Livia Kohn and Harold D. Roth
University of Hawai‘i Press
Honolulu

© 2002 University of Hawai‘i Press
All rights reser ved
Printed in the United States of America
02 03 04 05 06 07 6 5 4 3 2 1
Librar y of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Daoist identity : histor y, lineage, and ritual / edited by
Livia Kohn and Harold D. Roth.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 – 8248 –2429 – 6 (cloth : alk. paper)—
ISBN 0 – 8248 –2504 –7 (pbk : alk. paper)
1. Tao. I. Kohn, Livia II. Roth, Harold David.
B127.T3 D36 2002

181'.114 — dc21 2001053064
University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free
paper and meet the guidelines for per manence and durability
of the Council on Librar y Resources
Designed by Kenneth Miyamoto
Printed by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Livia Kohn and Harold D. Roth
Introduction 1
Par t I Early For mations
1.
Terry F. Kleeman
Ethnic Identity and Daoist
Identity in Traditional China 23
2.
Tsuchiya Masaaki
Confession of Sins and Awareness
of Self in the
T
aiping jing
39
3.
Peter Nickerson
“Opening the Way”: Exorcism,

T
ravel, and Soteriolog y in Early
Daoist Mor tuar y Practice and Its

Antecedents 58
Par t II Texts and Symbols
4.
Mark Csikszentmihàlyi
T
raditional Taxonomies
and Revealed Texts in the Han 81
5.
Suzanne Cahill
Material Culture and the Dao:
T
extiles, Boats, and Zithers in the
Poetr y of Y u Xuanji (844 – 868) 102
6.
Mabuchi Masaya
A Mid-Ming Reappraisal of the
Laozi:
The Case of Wang Dao 127
vii

Par t III Lineages and Local Culture
7.
Edward L. Davis
Ar ms and the Dao, 2: The Xu
Brothers in Tea Countr y 149
8.
Mori Yuria
Identity and Lineage: The
T
aiyi
jinhua zongzhi
and the Spirit-Writing
Cult to Patriarch Lü in Qing China 165
9.
Shiga Ichiko
Manifestations of Lüzu in Moder n

Guangdong and Hong Kong: The

Rise and Growth of Spirit-Writing

Cults 185
Par t IV Ritual Boundaries
10.
Charles D. Orzech
Fang Yankou
and
Pudu:
T
ranslation,
Metaphor, and Religious Identity 213
11.
Mitamura Keiko
Daoist Hand Signs and Buddhist

Mudras 235
12.
Maruyama Hiroshi
Documents Used in Rituals of Merit

in Taiwanese Daoism 256
13.
Asano Haruji
Of ferings in Daoist Ritual 274
Glossar y 295
Names of Authors Cited 309
List of Contributors 311
Index 315
viii Contents

Acknowledgments
This volume is the result of a three-day conference, held at the Breck-
inridge Conference Center of Bowdoin College in York, Maine, May

29 –June 1, 1998. Twenty scholars from Japan and the United States —

all specialists of various aspects of Daoism— met to discuss the difﬁcult

and heretofore unexplored question of Daoist identity. The Japanese

scholars who attended the conference were par t of a study group from

the Tokyo area known as the D
o
ky
o
bunka kenky
u
kai, or Society for
the Study of Daoist Culture. The group had also sponsored a ﬁrst in-

ter national meeting in 1995, which resulted in the publication of the

conference volume,
D
o
ky
o
no rekishi to bunka
(The Histor y and Culture
of Religious Taoism), edited by Yamada Toshiaki and Tanaka Fumio

(Tokyo: Hirakawa, 1998). While the ﬁrst meeting discussed various is-

sues in the histor y and worldview of Daoism, the Breckinridge meet-

ing looked speciﬁcally at the question of Daoist identity from a num-

ber of perspectives.
Both the book and the conference would not have been possible
without the active and cheer ful cooperation of many people. First,

there are the par ticipants, both paper presenters and discussants,

whose research, engagement, and ef for ts are at the ver y root of the

work. We would like to extend our hear felt gratitude to them all, and

especially to our Japanese or ganizers, Yamada Toshiaki and Tanaka

Fumio, as well as our American discussants, Stephen R. Bokenkamp,

Russell Kirkland, and Benjamin Penny, for being such wonder ful col-

leagues and creating such an engaging discussion.
As for or ganizing the meeting, we owe a great debt of gratitude to
American Council of Lear ned Societies, whose generous ﬁnancial sup-

por t made this most memorable experience possible. The unbureau-
ix

cratic and friendly cooperation of Jason Parker was, especially, a pleas-
ure to experience, and we are most happy to thank him. Also of great

help was the Ofﬁce of Sponsored Programs at Boston University, es-

pecially David Ber ndt and Phyllis Cohen. Their work made adminis-

tering the grant easy and allowed timely payments to all concer ned

par ties. Moreover, Gail Ber neike made our stay at the Breckinridge

Center comfor table and delightful, going to no end of trouble to keep

us all pleasantly housed, fed, and enter tained. Our only problem was

the shor tness of the stay, but we all have taken wonder ful memories

home with us.
During the conference, we greatly relied on the help of two grad-
uate students, James Miller (Boston University) and Zhonghu Yan

(Brown University), who set up the conference room, ran the tape

r
ecorders, and kept us all well watered during the discussions. They
also contributed valiantly to the publication ef for t, Zhonghu by trans-

lating the chapter by Asano, and James by creating a set of typed tran-

scripts of the discussions —more intelligent and, cer tainly, more in-

telligible than they seemed at the time. Another graduate student,

Louis Komjathy (Boston University), moreover, helped greatly with the

editing process, conver ting ﬁles, entering changes and characters into

the computer, and pointing out er rors and technical problems. The

ef for ts of these three on our behalf were invaluable, and we are most

pleased to thank them now.
x
Acknowledgments

Introduction
Livia Kohn and Harold D. Roth
Identity
The concept of identity is vague and dif fuse. The word, originally re-
lated to the Latin
idem,
indicates sameness and lack of change or de-
viation and is, indeed, still used in this sense, most commonly in its

adjectival for m, “identical.” The Latin word
identitas,
on the other
hand, comes closer to our general sense of the ter m, indicating “the

way in which the
substantia
of an entity remains the same despite all
the changes under gone by its
accidentes
” (Van der Ven 1994, 28). In
other words, at the most elementar y level, identity is the continuity of

an inherent substance or solidity, however perceived, that lasts through

all the various transfor mations its car rier might under go.
In Wester n thought, the concept of identity has developed through
three major phases of deﬁnition and usage. It was ﬁrst used by rational

thinkers from the Enlightenment to the nineteenth centur y, then de-

veloped in great intricacy by psychologists in the twentieth centur y. In

the last few decades, it has become the focus of scholars of theolog y

and religion. Rational thinkers such as Locke, Leibniz, K ant, and

Kierkegaard saw identity as mainly a function of consciousness, a per-

sonal sense of reﬂection and self-awareness created actively by the

thinking, rational ego. “Only that of which we were conscious belonged

to our identical self ” (Mol 1976, 56); the ter m refer red to a taken-for-

granted continuity in the way people think of and evaluate themselves.
Psychologists such as W illiam James, Sigmund Freud, and Erik Erik-
son took on the concept next and expanded its application to the emo-

tional dimension of humanity, deﬁning identity as a personal sense of

sameness that “arises from the resemblance and continuity of our feel-
1

ings” ( James 1890, 1:459) and that is intricately tied up with our in-
ter nal drives and sexuality. Erikson, in par ticular, made identity the

cor nerstone of his psychological theor y, deﬁning it as “a persistent

sameness within oneself ” while also sharing one’s “essential charac-

ter” with others (Mol 1976, 57). This represents a ﬁrst foray into deﬁn-

ing identity not merely on the basis of the individual but also as a func-

tion of social groups and lar ger communities. Erikson enhanced this

view in studies of the Sioux, through which he found that identity

among what he ter med primitive societies was less the “unconscious striv-

ing for continuity of personal character” (Erikson 1960, 51) than a reser-

voir of collective integrity that placed and protected the individual.

He then came to distinguish tr ue identity from synthetic identity—a

per vasive sense of wholeness based on a sound mutuality between in-

dividual and group versus an over whelming feeling of totality created

by an arbitrar y delineation of self and others (Erikson 1964, 92; Mol

1976, 57). He focused strongly on the concept of boundaries in iden-

tity for mation, insisting that ever y sense of identity is closely tied up

with both its inner delimitations and its sur rounding str uctures, and

pointing out that despite the desired sense of sameness and continu-

ity, boundaries of identity must remain ﬂexible and open to change.

Whereas tr ue identity has this ﬂexibility, synthetic identity is rigid and

unmovable, leading to tensions and personality disorders. While one

major danger to identity, then, is this inner rigidity, which he calls

“identity-foreclosure,” the opposite is also problematic: identity dif-

fusion, where boundaries are kept too open and ﬂuid and the sense

of sameness is lost (Mol 1976, 58). One can also describe the two prob-

lem areas as an overemphasis on the ego, on the one hand, and an

excessive other-directedness, on the other. Identity, as it evolves from

the work of Erikson, is, therefore, seen as the continuous balancing

of a sense of self between the demands of the individual versus those

of society, between an attitude of inner openness and self- centered

rigidity.
Developing the work of Erikson, the theologian and anthropolo-
gist Hans Mol has created an even more complex understanding of

identity, relating it actively to systems of belief and religious practice.

He begins by deﬁning identity generally as a “stable niche in the whole

complex of physiolog y, psycholog y, and social patter ns of interaction”

that is characterized by a continuous regularity of worldview, emotional

r
eactions, and patter ns of behavior (Mol 1976, 8). It evolved histori-
cally even among early humanity as a means of sur vival, of “man’s evo-

lutionar y necessity to cope successfully with his environment” (Mol
2
L. Kohn and H. D. Roth

1976, 31), and can be described as a balancing of two opposite forces
or tendencies:
dif ferentiation
and
integration
. Dif ferentiation means the
development of new, increasingly complex, and forever changing con-

ditions; left unchecked or not properly adapted to, it leads to het-

erogeneity, incoherence, and an overall sense of meaninglessness in

the person or group (Mol 1976, 28). Integration means the estab-

lishment of a stable, strong, or ganized system with clear boundaries

and a ﬁr m set of responses; it leads to a sense of belonging and whole-

ness (Mol 1976, 32, 35); but if left without challenge, integration can

r
esult in personal or social rigidity and become an obstacle to suc-
cessful adaptation.
The key point of identity for Mol, therefore, is the creation of a sta-
ble system both within the self, as a sense of wholeness, and in society,

as a mode of fr uitful interaction. Identity is not so much a given,

whether rational or emotional, but a process —it has moved far away

from its original Latin deﬁnition as
substantia
and grown into an on-
going activity that we all engage in all the time. Outlining this iden-

tity as process in more detail, Mol describes it with the ter m
sacraliza-
tion
. Sacralization is “a process by means of which on the level of
symbol-systems cer tain patter ns acquire the same taken-for-granted,

stable, eter nal quality which on the level of instinctive behavior was

acquired by the consolidation and stabilization of new genetic mate-

rials” (1976, 5). In other words, to create a sense of identity, people

make the choice to elevate cer tain patter ns to sacred status, that is,

place them in the position of being unchanging and eter nally valid.

Developing thereby “a system of meaning, or a deﬁnition of reality that

modiﬁes, obstr ucts or (if necessar y) legitimates change” (1976, 6), they

ﬁnd feelings of belonging, of rightness, and of wholeness in their

world.
The patter ns, moreover, that are being selected to ser ve as the main-
stays of the identity process tend to involve rational, emotional, and

behavioral components and can be divided into several distinct groups.

Mol distinguishes four: a conscious creation of order in a set of be-

liefs, which he describes as “objectivation”; an emotional attachment

to ideas, people, or groups that creates a sense of belonging, which

he calls “commitment”; a concrete and practical choice of cer tain key

sets of for mal behavior, described as “ritual”; and the reinforcement

of the overall worldview and people’s actions through tales and sto-

ries, which he calls “myths.”
1
Objectivation,
to begin, is the “tendency to sum up the variegated el-
ements of mundane experience in a transcendent frame of reference
Introduction 3

where they can appear in a more orderly, more consistent, and more
timeless way” (1976, 206). It is the creation of meaning and order

through a set of beliefs and in a speciﬁc interpretation of reality. Mean-

ing, in this context, indicates a set of taken-for-granted interpretations

and a choice of ultimate reference points that answer the “why” of ex-

istence and drive out feelings of meaninglessness and loss (1976, 69).

To
create meaning, symbol systems are developed that help people ma-
nipulate their environment and ﬁnd a sense of security and compe-

tence in it. The systems involve values, criteria of validity, patter ns of

logic, and a distinct perspective on the world in addition to a set of

substantive beliefs, r ules, and prohibitions and a speciﬁc under-

standing of technolog y (Hardin and Kehrer 1978, 84 – 85). The notion

of objectivation, moreover, follows Ber ger and Luckmann and their

understanding of the sociolog y of knowledge (1967), which postulates

that human beings, in order to sur vive, need to create meaning in

themselves and their environment and that “there is no such thing as

uninterpreted reality” (Mol 1976, 68). Choosing speciﬁc concepts and

beliefs to create meaning and wholeness, people also develop a pre-

disposition toward new social for ms. For example, by placing them-

selves in a religious community that focuses predominantly on a tran-

scendent world or deity, they see themselves as outside the established

society and become able to overcome this society’s restrictions and lim-

itations. The creation of new social for ms, in which women are equal

or people from dif ferent ethnic backgrounds are actively integrated,

can often be related to the choice of cer tain new and transcendent

beliefs over traditional patter ns (Mol 1983, 29).
Commitment
, next, is deﬁned as the “focused emotion or emotional
attachment to a speciﬁc focus of identity. It is an anchoring of the emo-

tions in a salient system of meaning—social, group, or personal,

whether abstract or concrete” (Mol 1976, 216). By channeling major

feelings, even passions, toward a speciﬁc idea, deity, or person, com-

mitment af fords the individual a higher level of integration and cre-

ates a sense of emotional consistency and predictability. It enhances

the deﬁniteness of who one is and dictates one’s choices of behavior

and role in the world, and these, in tur n, provide a yet greater sense

of continuity and stability. Commitment becomes most obvious in cases

of conversion, when people leave one set of emotional suppor t behind

and tur n to something new. Moving from meaninglessness to mean-

ing, from alienation to integration, from anomie to order (Mol 1976,

67), they become devout and dedicated followers of their new focus —
4
L. Kohn and H. D. Roth

often a charismatic leader—and change their identity in the process.
Commitment is often characterized by feelings of awe and reverence,

commonly called “faith,” and is ver y evident in the willingness to

sacriﬁce objects of value or even oneself for the cause, group, or be-

lief (Mol 1976, 227). Commitment, while necessar y to create a sense

of personal stability, can also become extreme and lead to the com-

plete sur render of the person and to the establishment of cults. The

example Mol cites is the People’s Temple in Jonestown (1983, 32).
Here, as in other cases of intense commitment, the focus was a per-

son who represented an ideal rather than an abstract sense of belief
or value; intentional segregation of members was used to enhance and

empower group identity.
2
Ritual
, the sacralization of behavior, is the third method by which
identity is created. It is described as repetitive, emotion-evoking action,

a systematic and patter ned focus of behavior that reinforces social co-

hesion and personal integration (Mol 1976, 13). Rites, more speciﬁc-

ally, are a “means of ar ticulating and reiterating a system of meaning.

They act out and sacralize sameness. They restore, reinforce, or redi-

r
ect identity. They maximize order by strengthening the place of the
individual in the group or society, and vice versa by strengthening the

bond of a society vis -à-vis the individual. They unify, integrate, and

sacralize” (Mol 1976, 233). The repetitive action of the rites reinforce

and validate both personal identity and the social str ucture, also af-

fording a “recommitment to memor y of a system of meaning” and thus

strengthening commitment and belief (Sinha 1978, 141). Anxieties on

various levels are mitigated, whether created by social restraints, col-

lective guilt, or personal conscience. The sameness and predictability

of the rites, then, ser ve to integrate the identity of the par ticipants and

suppor t the customs and habits of the group. Yet rites also allow the

ar ticulation of aggressive and destr uctive actions, thereby controlling

and curbing them; they reinforce the boundaries of group and per-

sonal identity. Special rites, moreover, enhance the community while

providing dif ferent focal points of identity, so that rites of passage

bridge major changes in the status of community members (e.g., ini-

tiations, weddings) and restore community and personal identity af-

ter a major disr uption (e.g., funerals) (Mol 1976, 238).
Myths
, ﬁnally, and their cor relates, theological stories and symbolic
tales, provide a “shor thand for basic personal and social experiences”

and thereby sacralize experience, “holding arbitrariness at bay and re-

inforcing identity” (Mol 1976, 246). They interpret reality, often de-
Introduction 5

picting it in ter ms of dramatic conﬂict, showing the interlocking and
continuously interacting patter n of contrasting elements and oppo-

sites. They do not present just one mode of action or attitude but point

out the mutual interaction and simultaneous presence in the world

of diversity and integration, conﬂict and union (Mol 1983, 65). Often

using sexual imager y, they show how opposites attract, interact, cre-

ate har mony, and divide again—coming together yet remaining always

inherently apar t. Myths represent an “emotion-laden asser tion of

man’s place in the world” (Mol 1976, 14), which they sacralize through

r
ecur rent nar ration. Telling stories and providing relevant symbols,
they reinforce the reality created through other for ms of sacralization

and help people ﬁnd their way in day-to -day living.
Mol makes it clear that while his analysis of the four major patter ns
of the creation and maintenance of identity is based on and can best

be seen in a religious context, it is by no means limited to it. Rather,

sacralization is an ongoing process that places concepts, attachments,

and behavior patter ns in a position of taken-for-granted–ness —and

by no means do they have to be religiously sponsored or transcendent

to fulﬁll their function as mainstays of identity. Focusing more on the

speciﬁc problem of religious identity, on the other hand, some recent

studies have concentrated on the comparative roles of
ethnicity
and
cul-
ture
. The consensus is that religious identity is, by necessity, shaped
through culture and ethnic background, shown in the facts that dif-

ferent groups following the same religion per for m rites and interpret

beliefs dif ferently depending on their cultural and ethnic background

(e.g., Roman Catholics in dif ferent countries; see Lewins 1978) and

that as cultures change so do the ideals and practices of their rele-

vant religions (e.g., Roman Catholicism in moder n societies; see

Greinacher 1994; King 1994). Roman Catholic leaders af ford a yet com-

pletely dif ferent perspective on religious identity, ﬁrst deﬁning an ab-

stract sense of the Church (as the only and unfailing means to sal-

vation), then shaping believers’ personal and social identities in

accordance with it, and, ﬁnally, dealing with the inevitable conﬂicts

either by ignoring them or by judging and punishing them in a strict

scheme of hierarchy and authority (see Bor ras 1994). The problem

that is raised in this context, however, which is of wider interest, is the

notion of a
plurality
of identities within the same overall or ganization,
which necessitates the ranking of beliefs, convictions, commitments,

and for mal sets of behavior. It illustrates the dynamics of a living reli-

gious community and the ongoing process of identity for mation in the

shaping of both ideals and realities (see Van der Ven 1994, 30 –32).
6
L. Kohn and H. D. Roth

Daoism
This plurality of identity is a point most obviously valid in Daoism,
which during the more than two thousand years of its existence has

evolved in close interaction with the other major traditions of China,

notably Confucianism, Buddhism, ethnic creeds, and popular religion.

To
the present day, the religion thus consists of a multiplicity of be-
liefs and practices, a fact that has presented a major challenge to schol-
ars attempting to grapple with what exactly Daoism is. This challenge,

as well as the development of the religion itself, can well be under-

stood as the continuous interaction of the two forces of dif ferentia-

tion and integration, the move to change in accordance with political

and economic developments and to adopt ever new for ms and pat-

ter ns from a variety of dif ferent souces versus the ur ge to create sta-

bility and continuity through the establishment of belief systems, lin-

eage lines, rituals, and valid myths.
Over the centuries, dif ferent aspects and schools of Daoism have
favored dif ferent modes of sacralization and identity for mation, each
placing its key emphasis on one patter n and paying less attention to

the others. Thinkers or literati Daoists, often working in the wake of

Laozi and Zhuangzi, thus have opted to for mulate belief systems, yet

they were also committed to their inspiring models and their myths

and followed regimens of ritually for malized self- cultivation to enhance

the philosophers’ concepts in their lives. The members of the early

movements, Great Peace and Celestial Masters, focused on ritual pat-

ter ns and behavioral models, but they also had a clear belief system—

including a new level of transcendence that allowed them to experi-

ment with new social for ms and ethnic integration—and required a

strong commitment of members to the group, as expressed in sexual

rites and the use of confession rather than medicine to heal diseases.
The major medieval schools of Shangqing and Lingbao, as well as
the integrated or ganization of Daoism in the Tang dynasty, developed

most strongly through the adaptation of Buddhist elements: beliefs,

lineage str uctures, or ganizations, rituals, and symbols. These schools

contributed to the development of several completely dif ferent for ms

of Daoism. The same patter n holds tr ue again for the many schools

and trends of moder n Daoism since the Song dynasty, in which the area

of adaptation and mer ging has been popular religion and regional cults

(and, most recently, health practices) rather than Buddhism. Through

it all, Daoism has grown and ﬂourished and changed—ever y time a

new level of dif ferentiation has occur red, new for ms of integration
Introduction 7

have emer ged (and are still emer ging), leaving both believers and
scholars at a loss when tr ying to pinpoint a continuous line, the one

ﬁr m inner
soliditas
of Daoism.
Any fr uitful discussion of Daoist identity, in light of these obser va-
tions, must ﬁrst of all do away with the futile endeavor to ﬁnd per-

manence and solidity in the tradition and begin by looking at identity

as process. Rather than focusing on one, single static item, it must study

the dynamics of identity in various areas of sacralization and speciﬁc

situations —historical periods, schools, and local communities. Ap-

proaching the problem from this perspective, the conference on

Daoist identity came to concentrate on four distinct areas of Daoist

identity for mation, three of which match the sacralization patter ns de-

scribed by Mol. We found that identity developed through the creation

of belief systems focusing on the Dao, commonly expressed in and

transmitted through texts (= objectivation). Daoist identity also grew

from the establishment of lineages that often combined local and pop-

ular or ethnic bonds with cer tain religious ideas and practices (= com-

mitment). Then again, the religion shaped its self-understanding

through ritual practices, and here especially through the establish-

ment of ﬁr m boundaries vis -à-vis Buddhism in the middle ages and

popular religion in moder n Daoism (= ritual). In addition, the early

movements (Great Peace and Celestial Masters) were found to rep-

r
esent thoroughly fascinating case studies of Daoist identity, since they
were such close-knit communities that set themselves up to be in-

tentionally dif ferent through beliefs, group cohesion, and rituals yet

could not help absorbing and using common cultural and ethnic pat-

ter ns and the practices of popular religion. A case study of the early

movements is presented ﬁrst in this volume, followed by more topic-

centered presentations that span various periods of histor y.
To
summarize the volume’s conclusions: there are cer tain general
or typical patter ns in Daoist identity for mation. To begin, objectiva-

tion occurs in a Daoist context through speciﬁc key ideas or concepts

that tend to lie at the root of sustaining belief systems. These concepts

are the Dao as the underlying force of the world, the pure world of

the spirits and gods, and the notion of a self harbored and suppor ted

by the all-per vasive Dao that is also present in ever y individual’s body,

mind, and spirit. These beliefs tend to be expressed and transmitted

in writing, so that the written word, and by extension the sacred text,

emer ges as the major concrete focus of this for m of identity. Whether

the texts are the works of Laozi and Zhuangzi that have continued to

inspire literati Daoists, religious texts that were handed down in strict
8
L. Kohn and H. D. Roth

lines of masters and disciples (thus creating commitment), or poetic
stanzas and metaphors that expressed the writer’s inner most feelings,

objectivation in Daoism appears as a predominantly literati enterprise,

in which words and concepts take precedence over personal or group

cohesion and the practice and cultivation of rituals.
This impression, of course, may well reﬂect the lopsided view of the
moder n scholar who only has access to the texts that for mulate the

concepts and cannot see the accompanying interpersonal relation-

ships, annual rites, and daily regimens. Still, one may suspect that ever y

for mulation of a Daoist belief system car ried a cer tain degree of com-

mitment and social interaction and came with sets of for malized be-

haviors, if only the repeated recitation and honoring of the sacred

text.
3
These literati Daoists, therefore, even though they do not be-
long to or ganized groups or engage in obvious rituals, must not be ig-

nored. After all, they call themselves Daoist and create their identity

with the help of Daoist concepts while also helping to for m an iden-

tity for the religion. For scholars, the most impor tant lesson to be

lear ned from these cases is to treat all representatives of a tradition

with respect and not bring in their own prejudices. As emer ged clearly

from the discussions at the conference, one should not, as one par-

ticipant of fered, “hesitate to see Y u Xuanji as a Daoist poetess, because

she is too violent,” nor should one categorically claim that all “Dao-

ism is about gods and sin.” The religion has many facets, and we need

to listen closely and carefully to all those who claim afﬁliation with it

to see just how they shape it and are shaped by it.
Commitment in Daoism, next, was found most clearly expressed in
a sense of lineage, the major means by which the religious content

(ideas and rites) were transmitted from master to disciples, continu-

ing an original revelation from the deity, or immor tal, to the founder,

or patriarch, of the school. Identity through lineage is thus of both

this world, through the link with the living master, and the other world,

through the active connection with the deity. Then again, identity

through commitment can be created ex post facto through the active

and conscious establishment of a lineage consisting lar gely of histor-

ical, legendar y, and divine personages. Inspiring saints, for mer seek-

ers, and immor tals who went their own way and were often eccentric

wanderers with a distinct dislike for all for ms of or ganization and str uc-

ture would then be tur ned into masters of the ideas and practices of

speciﬁc schools and venerated as patriarchs.
4
The constr uction of lin-
eages in this way shows most clearly the patter ns of dif ferentiation and

integration at work in the religion. That lineage is central in Daoism
Introduction 9

is no accident, since lineages for m the backbone of Chinese social or-
ganization in general. The primar y among them is, of course, the fam-

ily, honored and worshiped in the ancestral cult. But there are also lo-

cal elites that or ganize themselves in lineages; the political aristocracy

has a clear sense of ranks and hierarchy; and the intellectual aristoc-

racy tends to or ganize itself in schools of thinkers, poets, and painters.

Religious lineages share the characteristics of all these lines, follow-

ing similar str uctures and imitating the family model.
Identity created through lineage, next, car ries over into the ritual
sector when speciﬁc groups set up r ules for moral purity, rites for ini-

tiation and ordination, and other unique ways of life (through special

clothing, facial marks, diets, and so for th). Speciﬁcally religious ritu-

als among Daoist groups, however, had to contend most vigorously with

the fact that many of their for ms were adapted from either Buddhism

or popular religion. Clear boundaries had to be established to keep

Daoist rites functional for Daoist identity. Throughout histor y, Daoist

communities have been open to others and have welcomed outsiders

and non-Daoist ways. Daoist temples, therefore, often were and are

community temples; Daoist of ferings have included blood sacriﬁces

in adaptation of popular practices; Daoist hand gestures and incan-

tations have integrated Buddhist mudras and mantras; Daoist rituals

of salvation of the dead have been similar to Buddhist and popular

practices; and even the uniquely Daoist practice of sending announce-

ments, petitions, and memorials to the celestial administration has in-

volved addressing popular and foreign gods.
To
 delineate a Daoist identity through ritual, scholars must exam-
ine the rites for their uniquely Daoist aspects. Thus, for example, Daoist

ritual gestures can be described as unique in that the dif ferent par ts

of the hand are cor related with dif ferent aspects of the cosmos, and
even though the gesture may have an Indian name and imitate Bud-
dhism, its cosmic meaning and impact on the universe are strictly

Daoist. Similarly, there may be of ferings of pigs and other animals dur-

ing a Daoist
jiao,
but they are placed far away from the most holy ac-
tivity. The ritual banquet, moreover, in Buddhism enacts the welcome

that a host extends to his or her guest; in Daoism it is an audience with

the celestials. And, most impor tantly, the Daoist priest becomes, for

the duration of the ritual, a celestial ofﬁcer, his or her task the con-

veyance of for mal orders to the heavenly administration. He or she is

not a supplicant, a mediator, or a meditator but an ofﬁcer with rank

and regalia. His or her interaction with the divine is almost exclusively

through written documents that are often lengthy, convoluted, and
10 L. Kohn and H. D. Roth

penned in for mal classical Chinese. Although speciﬁc acts, symbolic
objects, or chanted for mulas may have been adopted from other tra-

ditions, they were yet translated succesfully into a Daoist context and

have come to ser ve the world of the Dao, reinforcing both the iden-

tity of the individual and the group as Daoist.
In all these ways of for ming Daoist identity, speciﬁc concepts, im-
ages, metaphors, and symbols play a per vasive role, constr ucting a valid

network of ideas and a ﬂow of nar rative to show how to be Daoist in

this world. Although myths per se were not singled out as a categor y

in the contributions or discussions at the conference, their presence

through images and symbols is ubiquitous, appearing in all the vari-

ous venues of Daoist identity.
The Contributions
The ﬁrst par t of this volume discusses the speciﬁc ways of for ming iden-

tity in the early Daoist movements, the Way of Great Peace and Ce-

lestial Masters. In chapter 1, “Ethnic Identity and Daoist Identity in

T
raditional China,” Ter r y Kleeman raises a number of questions from
both early and moder n sources per taining to the issue of how Daoist

r
eligious movements dealt with peoples of dif ferent ethnic back-
grounds. He ar gues that from its ver y inception as an institutionalized

r
eligion, Daoism has been signiﬁcantly shaped by non-Chinese ethnic
groups, and he demonstrates that even today, archaic for ms of Dao-

ism sur vive among non-Chinese peoples long after they have died out

among the Chinese.
T
aking the case of the Ba minority in second-centur y
c.e.
, Sichuan,
Kleeman explores the reasons for their initial attraction to the reli-

gions of the Celestial Masters, how the early Daoist movement assim-

ilated elements of Ba popular religious beliefs, and how the Ba were

able to retain various aspects of these beliefs as well as their unique

ethnic identity while still embracing and being embraced by this new

r
eligious and political movement. Kleeman concludes that the earli-
est Celestial Masters community in Sichuan was multiethnic, and he

fur ther traces a liberal Daoist approach to ethnic minorities into later

centuries, touching upon an ethos that emer ged from the Daoist self-

conception as a universal religion, which ﬁnally changed with the in-

tense nationalism of the Song period. He also touches upon the fas-

cinating case of the moder n Yao peoples of Southeast Asia who

maintain a Daoist priesthood and religious institutions long since aban-

doned among ethnic Chinese. In the end, Kleeman raises a number
Introduction 11

of issues about the interpenetration of Daoist identity and ethnic iden-
tity that can ser ve as the basis for future research.
T
suchiya Masaaki, in his chapter, “Confessions of Sins and Aware-
ness of Self in the
T
aiping jing,
” presents a careful analysis of the ritu-
als of confession under taken by members of the Way of Great Peace

in order to cure ailments and diseases, adumbrating how they were

conducted and why they were believed to be efﬁcacious. The penitent

frequently entered into a private chamber in order to ritually purify

herself or himself through physical and mental fasting, concentrating

on various gods that resided in the inner or gans of the body, and self-

r
eﬂecting to deter mine which of her or his deeds were evil. This was
followed by a public confession of sins, possibly self-punishment, and

the eventual curing of the afﬂiction.
A singularly fascinating aspect of Tsuchiya’s presentation is his ex-
planation of the underlying mechanism of this expiation of guilt. While

it may have been the case that in earlier times, sin was for given or pun-

ished directly by an anthropomorphic god, the explanation provided

in the
T
aiping jing
details how this takes place. According to the text,
Heaven, Ear th, and Humanity for m an intricately related triad, inter-

acting through the medium of
qi
(vital ener g y). Evil deeds alter the
qi
and the entire being of the sinner, creating a dishar mony with Heaven,

causing the spirit to ﬂee the body, and bringing on disease. Ritual

puriﬁcation in the meditation chamber and public confession cause

cer tain signiﬁcant alterations in the mind and
qi
of the supplicant,
which are then communicated directly to Heaven through
qi
. Heaven
r
ecognizes the renewal of a sincere will and the restoring of har mony
by mercifully removing the ailment.
While presenting the confession ritual as a unique contribution of
Daoism to Chinese culture, Tsuchiya shows that the penitents’ iden-
tities as persons are transfor med into ones as Daoists as they come to
see themselves ﬁrst as sinners, then as entities inhabited by gods and

demons. By gaining Daoist identities, their ver y bodies are transfor med

from physical mechanisms and networks of vital ener g y into power-

houses of the Dao. They are healed because they become more one

with the Dao, believing the Dao to per vade them and reside in them

in the for m of body divinities. The key to identity is their individual

acceptance of a distinctive set of beliefs about the divine order of the

Dao, activated fur ther through commitment and ritual.
Also focusing on the early movements, and speciﬁcally on their mor-
tuar y rituals, is Peter Nickerson’s chapter, “Opening the Way: Exor-

cism, Travel, and Soteriolog y in Early Daoist Mor tuar y Practice and
12 L. Kohn and H. D. Roth

Its Antecedents.” The rites were established at the end of the Han dy-
nasty on the basis of an already existing mor tuar y practice used in folk

r
eligious culture, while adding a Daoist soteriological dimension.
Later-Han tomb contracts and “grave-securing writs” ser ved to secure

the release of the dead from the under world r uled by the Yellow

Monarch to eter nal repose in the tomb. Nickerson demonstrates that

Daoists grafted their own soteriolog y onto this burial practice and

adapted the writs to a new use: aiding the spirits of the deceased on

a jour ney (with origins in early Chinese shamanism) from the tomb

into a better life in Heaven. As Mark Csikszentmihàlyi also argues in

the following chapter, this provides clear evidence that the or ganized

Daoist movements of the late Han dynasty did not emer ge ex nihilo

but had their origins in pre-existing social institutions and practices.

Also, the belief in a heavenly source of retribution for sin evident in

the
daotan
communities studied by Shiga and in the
T
aiping jing,
as
analyzed by Tsuchiya, can be seen again in the for m of a heavenly

judgment of the spirit of the deceased. Activating the belief in an all-

power ful cosmic r ule of the Dao, mor tuar y practices in the early move-

ments reconﬁr med the Daoists’ sense of order and belonging and re-

inforced their commitment to the religion.
Moving away from the early movements and to the discussion of
speciﬁc modes of identity for mation, three contributors discuss the

process of objectivation or the establishment of identity through be-

lief systems, cosmolog y, and sacred texts. Csikszentmihà lyi’s chapter,

“T
raditional Taxonomies and Revealed Texts in the Han,” addresses
the issue of Han antecedents of Daoism and its various religious in-

stitutions. Ar guing that it is not reasonable to assume, as many schol-

ars have, that Daoist institutions arose ex nihilo, he demonstrates the

existence of earlier Han-dynasty social institutions that showed close

parallels with those of the early Daoist communities.
Of par ticular interest to him is the transmission of esoteric texts —
associated with mantic practices, medicine, and self-cultivation, rea-

sonably labeled as “Huang-Lao”—and their associated techniques in

lines of masters and disciples that were outside ofﬁcially sanctioned

circles. Such committed master– disciple communities often centered

on speciﬁc locations, “salons,” and there is considerable evidence that

their social for ms and the texts they transmitted played impor tant roles

in the origins of later Han Daoism. That these may have been over-

looked, he ar gues, is due to a lack of clarity about earlier for ms of tex-

tual taxonomies, such as the classiﬁcations of philosophers in several

pre-Han sources and those provided by the Han historians in the
Shiji
Introduction 13

and
Hanshu
. Csikszentmihà lyi shows how each had a speciﬁc ideo-
logical purpose that often obscured the sociological bases of these
thinkers and caused scholars to assume there were none. This, in tur n,

has prevented scholars from seeing the sociological and ideological

background of the late-Han Daoist movements that he points out here.
Next, Suzanne Cahill’s chapter, “Material Culture and the Dao,” de-
scribes a similar search for personal yet Daoist identity in the case of

the Tang poetess Y u Xuanji (844 – 868), intellectual, cour tesan, and

Daoist nun. For her, the religion of fered a haven of security after she

suf fered in the world of mar riage and politics. She was ordained and

for mally established in the or ganization, yet her self-understanding

came from her embracing of a key set of Daoist beliefs and a sense of

divine order rather than from her ofﬁcial status or per for mance of

rituals. Once removed from the society that had wounded her, she

could vent her anger against it in an aggressive poetr y, ﬁnding her-

self and her own tr ue voice, while at the same time emphasizing the

value of Daoist ideas as a venue for self-expression. This self-expres-

sion appeared in many symbolic images that revolved around three

areas: textiles, which often symbolized her limitations as a woman;

the boat, which often symbolized her freedom in wandering with the

Dao; and the zither, which often symbolized her longing to ﬁnd a tr ue

friend who could really understand her, “one who recognizes my

sound.”
Cahill ﬁnds in Y u Xuanji an extremely intelligent, well-read, and
passionate woman who was unable to realize her deepest nature in con-

ventional society because of the limiting roles it inﬂicted on women.

Only through Daoist literature and practice was she able to put aside

her bitter feelings over her lot and discover her freedom, expressed

through imaginative wanderings and passionate poetr y and in the tran-
quility of remote mountain her mitages.
A dif ferent case of Daoist identity created through the objectiva-
tion of cosmological beliefs is that of the philosopher Wang Dao
(1487–1547), a student of both Wang Yangming and Zhan Ruoshui,

who for ged his own unique synthesis of the har mony of the three teach-

ings. As presented by Mabuchi Masaya in his chapter, “A Mid-Ming

Reappraisal of the
Laozi,
” Wang Dao took from the
Laozi
the message
that to be tr uly moral beings, humans must look to the ultimate source

of benevolence and rightness. It was not to be found in Wang Yang-

ming’s “innate knowledge of the good,” which he felt was contami-

nated by selﬁsh thought, but rather in the pure and tranquil substance

of the mind, the Dao. Mabuchi ﬁnds that Wang Dao was more a literati,
14 L. Kohn and H. D. Roth

or intellectual, than a practicing, or ordained, Daoist, who was not
committed to a speciﬁc group following a set of ritual practices. Still,

he found a Daoist identity for himself as a Ming-dynasty thinker, me-

diated entirely through the written word of the
Laozi
. The text pro-
vided him with a tr uth and a sense of order, more so than the more

commonly prefer red Confucian classics. The key to his thinking was

the concept of the Dao and its expression in the ancient scripture, the

way it was activated in the context of his par ticular lifetime and per-

sonal experience. Was he a Daoist? By his own deﬁnition, most cer-

tainly. And he did, in his own way, contribute to the later development

and expansion of the Daoist tradition.
Moving away from the more intellectual pursuit of divine order and
toward emotional commitment in the for mation of Daoist identity,

three studies look at moder n Daoist lineages in relation to local and

popular cults. First, Edward Davis, in his “Ar ms and the Dao, 2: The

Xu Brothers in Tea Countr y,” deals with the local temple cult of the

Xu brothers that began in south China in the tenth centur y and later

grew into a widely popular sect, investigating its historical origins, so-

ciological role, and religious activities. The Xu brothers were wor-

shiped in life as local heroes and in death as Daoist transcendents,

and their ancestral cult was given imperial recognition by the Ming

Y
ongle emperor, resulting in the inclusion of its text in the Daoist
canon of 1445.
Despite these obvious links with Daoism, Davis demonstrates that
ver y few of the cult’s religious beliefs and cultural activities, centered

in its main temple, Lingji gong, can be labeled “Daoist.” While cultic

practices included spirit-writing and mediumism, they also involved a

variety of local seasonal ceremonies, Buddhist-inspired rituals, and the

promotion of a major local teaching academy. Taken together, these
seem as much expressions of the social and political aims of local
literati families as for ms of religious aspirations. Commitment to lo-

cality and lineage, as it were, was expressed through objectiﬁed beliefs

and for mal rituals, showing the close interconnection between reli-

gion and local culture.
Mori Y uria, in his chapter on the
Jinhua zongzhi
(known in the West
as
The Secret of the Golden Flower
),
discusses problems of identity and lin-
eage, showing how dif ferent redactions of the text were used for lin-

eage constr uction and membership identiﬁcation in the early and mid-

dle Qing dynasty. Identifying six distinct redactions of the text printed

between 1775 and 1921, he concentrates his analysis on three of them,

those by Shao Zhilin (1775), Jiang Y upu (1803), and Min Y ide (1835).
Introduction 15

He shows how each redactor, by textual editing and through the ad-
dition or deletion of prefaces, claims the text as an authentication of

his or her lineage and his or her own membership in it.
The principal reason for this lies in the putative origins of the text
at a Daoist altar in Jiangsu province, where it was produced through

spirit-writing that communicated the ideas of “Patriarch Lü.” It was

originally produced in the Jingming (Pure Brightness) lineage of the

Quanzhen (Complete Per fection) school, and its later redactors were

able to remove it from its lineal origins and claim it as proof of their

own by reworking the connection from Patriarch Lü directly to them-

selves and their lineage. Thus, though a Jingming text for Shao, the

Jinhua zongzhi
was used as a Tianxian (Heavenly Immor tal) lineage text
by Jiang and a Longmen (Dragon Gate) lineage text by Min. The case

presents an illuminating example of commitment to a deity linked cre-

atively with commitment to speciﬁc masters and lineages and the con-

tinuous overlap between the two.
Shiga Ichiko, next, in her “Manifestations of Lüzu in Moder n
Guangdong and Hong Kong,” takes up the same issue in the context

of the origins and development of
daotan,
or Daoist temple societies,
in nineteenth- and twentieth-centur y south China. She shows that con-

trar y to accepted scholarly opinion,
daotan
are genuinely lay move-
ments that originated with the gentr y but over the course of time

spread to include people from all walks of life. Many maintain close

ties with the ofﬁcial Quanzhen school, but they are not sanctioned or

sponsored by it. They have been involved in a wide variety of social ac-

tivities, from providing retreat facilities through charitable relief to the

promulgation of morality books. Their focus of commitment is based

on locality and the social and cultural ties already present, yet rein-

forced through the manifestation and communication of the deity. Yet

again, Daoist identity appears in close interaction with cultural, local,

and ethnic patter ns.
The last par t of this volume concentrates on identity for mation and
r
einforcement through ritual, focusing on the delimitation of bound-
aries vis -à-vis Buddhist and popular practices. First, Charles Or zech
compares two similar rituals in his chapter, “
Fang Yankou
and
Pudu
.”
The esoteric Buddhist
fang yankou,
or “release of the ﬂaming souls,”
is a for m of saving the dead from the punishments of hell. It has, at
ﬁrst glance, many striking parallels with the Daoist
pudu,
or “rite of
universal salvation,” in ter ms of material details, technical ter minol-

og y, the use of “Brahma-language,” mantras, and mudras, and also in

ter ms of the overall ritual str ucture and conception.
16 L. Kohn and H. D. Roth

However, questioning the ver y notion of “syncretism,” and replac-
ing it with the analytical tools of translation theor y, Or zech demon-
strates not that the two rituals are a combination of elements that

should be separated as par ts of two distinct systems, but rather that

the Daoist rite can properly be understood as a “translation,” in which

the multilayered South Asian metaphoric complex of the
fang yankou
is mapped onto a dif ferent multilayered East Asian metaphoric com-

plex. As such, it represents, in Tony K. Stewar t’s ter ms, an example of

“metaphorical equivalence” rather than one of “syncretism.” In other

words, the
pudu
does not represent an appropriation of the
fang yankou
but rather a translation of its ritual program into a distinctly Daoist

per for mance based on its own cosmolog y and metaphors. Though

boundaries are clearly established, the ritual, however Buddhist in ap-

pearance, emer ges as ultimately Daoist.
Mitamura Keiko reaches similar conclusions in her chapter, “Daoist
Hand Signs and Buddhist Mudras,” in which she provides an inven-
tor y of Daoist hand signs and shows how they developed between the
T
ang and Ming dynasties. She then compares them to esoteric Bud-
dhist mudras and examines their indigenous origins. She ar gues that

there are two general types of signs, those developed in apparent im-

itation of Buddhist mudras and those that are uniquely Daoist, both

used in rituals for protection from disasters, exorcising demons, and

healing diseases.
Mitamura traces the origins of Daoist hand signs to early shaman-
istic rituals continued in the practices of the
fangshi
and transmitted
through them into Daoism. She shows evidence of their use in con-

junction with incantations and talismans to ward of f evil inﬂuences

(recorded by Ge Hong) and shows possible evidence of their use in

Lingbao texts and Tang works. Under the inﬂuence of esoteric Zhen-

yan Buddhism in the eighth centur y, Daoists combined the symbols

and styles of Buddhist mudras with their own ﬁnger techniques. At ﬁrst

thoroughly imitating Buddhist ter minolog y, they gradually translated

it into their own distinctive cosmolog y and metaphors, yielding a more

dynamic system of hand signs. Again, the ritual reinforces the speciﬁc

Daoist sense of order and commitment, however apparently Buddhist

it may appear.
Another dimension of Daoist ritual uniqueness is the extensive use
of written documents, discussed by Mar uyama Hiroshi in his “Docu-

ments Used in Rituals of Merit in Taiwanese Daoism.” Concentrating

on the “ritual of merit” of a moder n successor of the
pudu,
as prac-
ticed in souther n Taiwan, he analyzes three complementar y sets of
Introduction 17

texts collected locally. They present ﬁve sets of ritual documents, in-
cluding, among others, the Announcement, the Writ of Pardon, and

the Precious Litany to the Rulers of Darkness. Comparing these con-

temporar y ritual presentations with Song-dynasty sources, Mar uyama

demonstrates a lineage continuity among some of them and points

out cer tain patter ns of historical development. He documents the re-

markable continuity of rituals while also showing the impact of cul-

tural and historical changes on their expression.
The last chapter, Asano Har uji’s “Of ferings in Daoist Ritual,” pre-
sents a comprehensive list of of ferings used in both
zhai
(puriﬁcation
ceremonies) and
jiao
(sacriﬁcal of ferings). They include incense,
ﬂowers, candles, tea, wine, fr uit, grain products, baked goods, writing

utensils, and meat. Most are common to all Chinese traditions. The

notable exception is writing utensils, which are not of fered elsewhere

but in Daoism symbolize the strong emphasis placed on written com-

munication with the other world. The other unusual feature is the pres-

ence of meat of ferings at Daoist rituals, which were proscribed in the

early Daoist religion, par tly because the pure Dao does not feed on

blood, par tly to distinguish Daoist rites from those of popular religion.

T
oday, to accommodate folk religious beliefs and maintain a clientele
among popular practitioners, meat is of fered in rites directed to the

Jade Emperor, to appease recently deceased souls and hungr y ghosts,

and at the speciﬁc request of the family that sponsors the ritual.

Nonetheless, it is never placed in a central position in the ritual space

but always set up on a side table. Although compromising with cur-

r
ent popular culture and the practical demands of the people, Tai-
wanese Daoists yet maintain their boundaries and conser ve the in-

tegrity and unique identity of their rituals.
Notes
1. Mol describes these elements variously in his writings. For objectivation,
see Mol 1976, 202–215, and Mol 1983, 18 –31; for commitment, see Mol 1976,
216 –232, and Mol 1983, 32– 47; for ritual, see Mol 1976, 233 –245, and Mol

1983, 48 – 60; for myths, see Mol 1976, 246 –261, and Mol 1983, 61–73. The el-

ements also appear in case studies and theoretical evaluations by various schol-

ars convened at a conference on the subject and published in Mol 1978.
2. For a study of another segregated group in this context, see Shafﬁr 1978.

3. For a documentation of the for malized cultivation practices of the early
Daoists that are most commonly regarded as mere “thinkers,” see Roth 1999.
4. A study of these patter ns in the case of speciﬁc Daoists and lineages of
the Y uan and Ming dynasties is found in Reiter 1988.
18 L. Kohn and H. D. Roth

Bibliography
Ber ger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. 1967.
The Social Constr uction of Re-
ality
. London: Penguin Press.
Bor ras, Alphonse. 1994. “ The Canonical Limits of Catholic Identity: Some
Problematical Situations.” In
Catholic Identity,
ed. by James Provost and Knut
W
alf, 47–59. London: SMC Press.
Erikson, Erik. 1960. “ The Problem of Ego Identity.” In
Identity and Anxiety,
ed.
by Maurice R. Stein, Ar thur J. V idich, and David M. White, 37– 87. Glen-
coe, Ill.: Free Press.
———. 1964.
Insight and Responsibility
. New York: Nor ton.
Greinacher, Norber t. 1994. “Catholic Identity in the Third Epoch of Church
Histor y.” In
Catholic Identity,
ed. by James Provost and Knut Walf, 3 –14. Lon-
don: SMC Press.
Hardin, Ber t L., and Guenter Kehrer. 1978. “Identity and Commitment.” In
Identity and Religion,
ed. by Hans Mol, 83 –96. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Pub-
lications.
James, W illiam, 1890.
Principles of Psycholog y
. New York: Holt.
King, Geof frey. 1994. “Identity, Law, and Culture.” In
Catholic Identity,
ed. by
James Provost and Knut Walf, 38 – 46. London: SMC Press.
Lewins, Frank W. 1978. “Religion and Ethnic Identity.” In
Identity and Religion,
ed. by Hans Mol, 19 –38. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications.
Mol, Hans. 1976.
Identity and the Sacred
. New York: The Free Press.
———, ed. 1978.
Identity and Religion
. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications.
———. 1983.
Meaning and Place: An Introduction to the Social Scientiﬁc Study of
Religion
. New York: Pilgrim Press.
Reiter, Florian C. 1988.
Gr undelemente des religiösen Taoismus: Das Spannungs-
verhältnis von Integration und Individualität in seiner Geschichte zur Chin-, Yüan-

und frühen Ming-Zeit
. Stuttgar t: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Roth, Harold D. 1999.
Original Tao: Inward Training and the Foundations of Taoist
Mysticism
. New York: Columbia University Press.
Shafﬁr, W illiam. 1978. “W itnessing As Identity Consolidation: The Case of the
Lubavitcher Chassidim.” In
Identity and Religion,
ed. by Hans Mol, 39 –58.
Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications.
Sinha, Manju, and Braj Sinha. 1978. “Ways of Yoga and the Mechanisms of
Sacralization.” In
Identity and Religion,
ed. by Hans Mol, 133 –150. Beverly
Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications.
V
an der Ven, Johannes A. 1994. “ The Communicative Identity of the Local
Church.” In
Catholic Identity,
ed. by James Provost and Knut Walf, 26 –37.
London: SMC Press.
Introduction 19

1
Ethnic Identity and Daoist
Identity in Traditional China
Terry F. Kleeman
The ancient Chinese por trayed themselves as an island of civilization
in an ocean of barbarism, as a beacon of light sur rounded by in-

signiﬁcant others who, if intelligent, were fascinated by Chinese cul-

ture and actively sought to assimilate into it and, if not, were recalci-

trant recidivists who deser ved to be subjugated militarily or driven from

the region by force. The reality was much more complex. Recent ar-

chaeological discoveries make evident that the Neolithic period saw a

variety of advanced regional cultures stretching from Hangzhou Bay

to Liaoning, and that the culture of the traditional hear tland was by

no means the most advanced among them. During the Shang and

W
ester n Zhou dynasties, non-Chinese inter mar ried with Chinese
kings and joined them in militar y expeditions. In the Easter n Zhou,

“barbarians” attended interstate conferences and, judging from the

r
esplendent remains of the Zhongshan state, enjoyed a lifestyle com-
parable in most respects to that of the Chinese. The barbarians are

usually thought of as geographically beyond the borders of Chinese

civilization, but in fact, there were non- Chinese tribes in the hills and

wilds across China (Pr usek 1971). As late as the ﬁfth and sixth cen-

turies
c.e.
, peoples identiﬁed as Man-barbarians were a constant threat
to public safety in Central China.
1
T
oday, China shares its ter ritor y with
ﬁfty-ﬁve ofﬁcially recognized non-Chinese peoples speaking over 150

distinct languages and worshiping a wide variety of gods and ghosts.
Daoism is properly dubbed China’s indigenous higher religion. It
is the culmination of an ar ray of distinctively Chinese beliefs, practices,

and movements, including popular deity worship and ancestor vener-

ation, traditional ritual practices of the state and home, self-cultivation

practices and medicine, cosmological speculation, the political phi-
23

losophy of the Huang-Lao school, the cult of immor tality, Han Con-
fucianism, and the apocr yphal writings (
chenwei
).
Daoism is not the
national religion of China in the way that Shint
o
ser ves that function
in Japan by encompassing all indigenous cults and beliefs. On the

contrar y, Daoism is a militantly refor ming faith that consciously re-

jects signiﬁcant par ts of traditional practice as heretical, even evil.

Still, it has come over time to enjoy pride of place in the Chinese re-

ligious world. Moreover, it has eventually incorporated into its pan-

theon a select group of the most inﬂuential popular gods, and

Daoist priests regularly ofﬁciate at ceremonies honoring gods of the

lar ger popular pantheon. In this sense, Daoism is quintessentially Chi-

nese, an expression of the Chinese spirit and the Chinese historical

experience.
It is surprising, therefore, that a cursor y examination of the histor y
of Daoism shows that non-Chinese ethnic groups have played a

signiﬁcant role in Daoism from the beginning, that Daoism remains

an inﬂuential religion among ethnic minorities within and outside

China even today, and that archaic for ms of Daoism sur vive among

non-Chinese peoples that are no longer to be found among the Chi-

nese. The topic of this chapter is the role of non-Chinese peoples and

their beliefs in Daoism, the inﬂuence Daoism has exer ted and con-

tinues to exer t on these peoples, and the signiﬁcance of a multieth-

nic Daoism for our study of the religion. Since this is a vast topic, I will

focus on some of the more signiﬁcant evidence and point out where

I believe fur ther research would prove fr uitful.
Early Sichuan and the Foundation of Daoism
The earliest and most prominent encounter with non-Chinese ethnic

groups occur red at the time of Daoism’s founding. The stor y of

Zhang Ling’s immigration from Jiangsu to Sichuan and his subsequent

r
evelation from the divinized Laozi in 142
c.e.
is well known and gen-
erally accepted, despite the lack of cor roborating evidence in con-

temporar y documents. Less attention has been paid to what he found

upon his ar rival in wester n China. The Sichuan region possesses a long

histor y of settlement, and the recent discoveries at Sanxingdui, dat-

ing to the Shang and Wester n Zhou periods, have conﬁr med the so-

phistication of its indigenous culture. The Qin conquest in the late

four th centur y
b.c.e.
initiated a period of intensive colonization, in-
cluding forced resettlement on a lar ge scale that per manently changed

the face of the region (Sage 1992, 107–142). Thanks, in par t, to the
24 Ter r y F. Kleeman

ef for ts of the legendar y educator Wen Weng, Sichuan soon became a
center of lear ning. By the Wester n Han period, the area was already

contributing ofﬁcials of the rank of the Three Dukes and Nine Min-

isters (
sangong jiuqing;
Chen 1980, 176 –177) as well as the period’s most
prominent poet, Sima Xiangr u. During the Wang Mang inter regnum,

Sichuan was an impor tant center for the development of the apoc-

r
yphal literature.
One might expect that by the end of the Han dynasty, the area would
have been thoroughly sinicized and integrated into Chinese culture.

Such was not the case. Instead, we ﬁnd in Sichuan a congeries of eth-

nic groups living inter mixed with the ethnic Chinese (
zaju
) and in seg-
r
egated communities, reﬂecting a range of assimilation from near
mer ger in the lar ge urban centers to preser vation of the original tribal

society in the mountains and remote areas. This was par ticularly tr ue

in the areas of easter n Sichuan that had once been par t of the Zhou-

period kingdom of Ba. The Ba were an ancient people, ﬁrst entering

Chinese histor y around 700
b.c.e.
They were war riors who gloried in
their militar y prowess, celebrating it in mar tial songs and dances so

full of vibrant ener g y that they enthralled the ﬁrst emperor of the Han

dynasty and were adopted into the reper toire of cour t per for mances.

They also maintained an unusually high standard of living for a group

comprised essentially of hunter-gatherers with limited agriculture,

though not so high as the settled agriculturalists of the Chengdu plain.

The secret to this high culture was, no doubt, their ser vice as merce-

naries to their neighbors to the east (Chu) and west (Shu) but may

also have been founded in their role as salt producers and traders. In

any case, the Ba were unique among China’s neighbors in developing

a distinctive script of their own (actually two scripts, though one may

have been of limited function). This limited literacy may have been

one factor in their ability to resist assimilation, as may have their dif-

ferent lifestyle.
For whatever reason, there were lar ge numbers of identiﬁably Ba
peoples living in Sichuan during the second centur y
c.e.
, when Dao-
ism was taking for m.
2
They were locked in an adversarial relationship
with local representatives of the Chinese state, who sought to integrate

the wealth and power of unassimilated Ba tribes into the Chinese ad-

ministrative framework and thereby provoked repeated rebellions.

When the Daoist message of deliverance spread through the region,

the Ba ﬂocked to its banner, with Ba kings, marquises, and other lo-

cal elites leading groups numbering in the thousands to adopt the new

faith and join the apocalyptic kingdom in Hanzhong.
3
We
do not of-
Ethnic Identity and Daoist Identity in Traditional China 25

ten think about the early Celestial Masters as a multiethnic commu-
nity, but non-Chinese peoples must have comprised a signiﬁcant por-

tion of their population.
This situation raises a number of questions concer ning how Dao-
ism related to the native beliefs of the Ba. First, what can we say about

Ba religion? Since the lifestyle of the Ba seems to have focused on hunt-

ing, ﬁshing, and war fare, we might expect religious beliefs related to

these activities to loom lar ge. Representations of hunting and war-

fare, no doubt understood to include potent magic that would lead

to success at these endeavors, seem to have made up the famous Ba

Yu
dances.
4
Stories of tigers being hunted by Ba tribesmen, of people
tur ning into tigers, and of tiger worship predominate in the histori-

cal record for this region. Material objects conﬁr m this emphasis, with

numerous representations of tigers on weapons, musical instr uments,

and the like. Snakes and birds, especially the cor morant, are impor-

tant secondar y motifs. Finally, we ﬁnd among people of Ba descent

names refer ring to tigers, such as Li Hu who led his followers to join

the Celestial Masters at the time of the Hanzhong community

(
Huayangguo zhi
9.119, 5). Clearly, a tiger spirit and other zoomorphic
spirits played a role in Ba religion. The were-tiger theme may reﬂect

the presence of shamans who were thought to transfor m themselves

into tigers or to use these mighty beasts as their familiars. In other re-

spects, we can probably assume that Ba religion resembled that of the

indigenous peoples of southwest China today, that is, the worship of

nature, hero, and ancestral spirits by tribal shamans who play a

signiﬁcant role in the direction of the group. Given the long histor y

of Han domination by the second centur y
c.e.
, it is likely that there
was some inter mixture of Chinese popular beliefs and deities; the de-
gree of this inﬂuence, no doubt, varied with the degree of contact with

and assimilation into Chinese culture. In fact, although indigenous

beliefs would have included distinctive autochthonous spirits, the over-

all tenor of Ba religion, with its presumed emphasis on the shamanic

control of demonic spirits, does not seem all that dif ferent from the

contemporar y popular Chinese religion, as revealed in recent years

by scholars such as Harada Masami (1963; 1967), Donald Harper

(1985), and the late Anna Seidel (1987).
One is str uck by accounts of mass conversions among the Ba to
Celestial Masters Daoism. Local leaders conver ted with their entire
communities; Li Hu’s group alone comprised more than 500 fami-

lies, perhaps some 2,500 individuals. Some migrated to Hanzhong to

par ticipate directly in Zhang Lu’s millennial kingdom, but others
26 Ter r y F. Kleeman

maintained a base of suppor t in nor theaster n Sichuan to which he
could retreat when Cao Cao pressed him.
The most detailed comment in historical sources concer ning why
the Ba were attracted to the new religion is the following:
Their race (
zhongdang
) was strong and brave; by custom they were fond
of necromancer shamans (
guiwu
).
At the end of the Han, Zhang Lu oc-
cupied Hanzhong, teaching the common people the way of the ghosts
(
guidao
).
The Zong people revered and believed in him. (
Huayangguo
zhi
9.119, 4 –5)
The exact sense of this “way of the ghosts” is uncer tain. One source
tells us that initiates to the movement were refer red to as “ghost troop-
ers” (
guizu
),
and an inscription from 173 records a Daoist initiating
god with the title “ghost soldier” (
guibing
).
5
We
also know that mem-
bers of the church possessed cer tiﬁcates of ordination called regis-

ters, which speciﬁed the number of spirit generals they had at their

command; these generals and their troops, once freed from the civi-

lizing control of the Dao, would rever t to demonic status, as detailed

in one of the early scriptures of the movement, the
Nüqing guilü
(Ghostly Ordinances of Nüqing, HY 563). But the Celestial Masters

also condemned popular cults in no uncer tain ter ms and rejected the

blood sacriﬁce that was at their root. It is also interesting to note that

among the moder n Gelao, descendents of the Lao who invaded

Sichuan in the four th centur y, the primar y religious ofﬁciant is some-

times refer red to as
daoshi,
or Daoist priest, but the most common ti-
tle is
guishi,
or “master of the ghosts.”
6
Another intriguing parallel is
the Lord of Ghosts, the priest of the Black Man-barbarians, a ﬁgure

directly ancestral to the Zimo of the Y i peoples (Nuosu) of south-

wester n Sichuan and Y unnan province today.
7
The words of the
Xin
T
angshu
(New Book of the Tang) in describing this ﬁgure recall ear-
lier descriptions of the Ba:
The tribesmen have great reverence for ghosts. The ofﬁciant at sacri-
ﬁces is called the Lord of Ghosts. Each year ever y household must con-
tribute an ox or sheep, which is brought to the home of the Lord of
Ghosts and sacriﬁced. In sending of f or welcoming demons there is al-
ways a great ﬂourish of weapons, inevitably resulting in conﬂict and
blood feuds. (222c.6315)
8
Thus we may conclude that the control of demonic forces was an
impor tant aspect of the Daoist priest or libationer’s social role and that
this master y was inﬂuential in gaining adherents for the new faith.
Ethnic Identity and Daoist Identity in Traditional China 27

What else in the Celestial Masters’ message would have appealed
to the Ba? We know that a central element of the new faith was a fo-
cus on sin, on the super natural bureaucracy that obser ved, recorded,

and punished sin, and on a method to erase sin through the sub-

mission of documents to the Three Ofﬁces (
sanguan
) confessing to
the sin, through repentance, and through works of penance. Judging

from moder n, anthropological parallels, it is unlikely that the Ba

shared this concer n, but it is possible that the doctrine was ef fective

in proselytization, much as Christian tales of hellﬁre and brimstone

have scared countless indigenous peoples across the world into

conver ting.
9
More likely, it was the social content of the new faith that drew the
Ba. We know that they had repeatedly rebelled in protest against ex-

orbitant taxes and other unfair treatment. The Celestial Masters re-

placed the local representatives of the central gover nment with liba-

tioners (
jijiu
) who demanded only a modest, ﬁxed contribution of rice
from each family. The onerous demands of cor vée labor were re-

placed with more modest requirements for par ticipation in commu-

nal projects like repairing roads, which also ser ved as penance for sins

and as a merit-making activity. We do not know exactly how the famous

“lodges of righteousness” (
yishe
) functioned, but there was at least
some provision for the indigent and star ving. All of these features were

par t of a lar ger message of social justice that was founded in the ideal

of Great Peace, or Great Equity (Taiping). One can well imagine the

appeal egalitarianism would have had for an oppressed minority like

the Ba. The millenarian ideal that was the culmination of this doc-

trine would have held a similar attraction. Instead of facing the un-

savor y choice of abandoning their culture in order to assimilate or

maintaining their culture at the cost of continued oppression, the

world to come held out a new possibility, a new and per fect world

where Chinese and Ba would share a common identity as “seed

people.”
10
We
must conclude, I believe, that the earliest Celestial Masters
community was tr uly multiethnic, accepting people from a variety of

ethnic backgrounds as equal members of the new faith. This was an

unprecedented event in Chinese histor y and deser ves far more recog-

nition than it has received. It had always been the case that barbarians

were free to absorb the transfor ming inﬂuence of Chinese civilization

and mer ge into the Chinese populace. Here we ﬁnd culturally and eth-

nically distinct peoples for ming a new union with the Chinese while

maintaining their own identity as Ba.
28 Ter r y F. Kleeman

The Ba Create a Daoist Kingdom
When Cao Cao conquered the Hanzhong state, huge numbers of
Daoists were forcibly transfer red to other par ts of the countr y, pri-

marily to the area around the capital of Ye and to the nor thwest (mod-

er n Shaanxi and Gansu). It would seem that most of the Ba were

moved to the nor thwest. Reliable records for the third centur y are

rare, but the Celestial Masters faith maintained some semblance of

or ganization at the same time that the movement was spreading across

Nor th China. We cannot know to what degree the Daoists of Shaanxi

and Gansu remained under the administrative control of some cen-

tral successor to Zhang Lu, but they did retain their Daoist identity

and practices.
At the end of the third centur y, a lar ge body of refugees, predom-
inately non-Chinese and Daoist, were driven south by civil unrest, nat-

ural disasters, and famine.
11
Members of the Li family, descendents of
Li Hu who originally hailed from Dangqu in easter n Sichuan, but more

r
ecently from Tianshui in Gansu, were pushed for ward as leaders of
this stream of immigrants, hundreds of thousands strong. They moved

south into Hanzhong, then through the passes into Sichuan, retur n-

ing after a centur y to the land of their origin. There the immigrants

took up the menial jobs nor mally open to refugees, but when local

ofﬁcials sought to drive them back nor th, they arose in rebellion, with

Li Te and then his son Li Xiong at their head, and established a state

called Great Per fection (Dacheng). The name, taken from a prophetic

passage in the
Shujing
(Book of Documents), denoted a land of Great
Peace, and the state was built in par t upon the expectations of a sav-

ior ﬁgure sur named Li who would appear as an avatar of the divine

Laozi and establish a utopian kingdom in this world. When Li Xiong

assumed the imperial throne, he was installed in his ofﬁce by Long-

lived Fan, a Daoist sage, possibly of Ba ethnicity himself, who conﬁr med

that Xiong was indeed the one destined to r ule. Fan was made Chan-

cellor and State Preceptor (
guoshi
),
and his son succeeded him in that
position. Although they do not seem to have been especially active po-

litically, the Fans continued to guide the state and its r ulers, and when

the state was ﬁnally conquered by the Jin, it was the son, Fan Ben, to

whom sur viving ofﬁcials tur ned in one last, desperate attempt to re-

store Great Per fection.
For the brief half centur y of its existence, Great Per fection was in
some sense a realization of the Daoist utopian ideal. Here, as in the

lost Hanzhong community, Chinese and non-Chinese lived in har mony
Ethnic Identity and Daoist Identity in Traditional China 29

and equality, enjoying the limited gover nment and lenient punish-
ments associated with Daoist r ule.
12
But it is impor tant to note that
the Ba did not lose their own ethnic identity in the process of adopt-

ing their new Daoist one. Instead, Daoism seems to have functioned

ef fectively to create a new community, establishing interpersonal ties

and patter ns of cooperation that spanned the divide of ethnicity.
Daoist V iews of Non-Chinese Ethnic Groups
Looking outside that original community at the way non-Chinese were

por trayed in Daoist scriptures and essays, we ﬁnd a cer tain ambiva-

lence. From the
Dadao jia lingjie
(Family Commands and Precepts of
the Great Dao),
13
we know that Zhang Lu continued to keep watch
over his ﬂock from the other world and communicated through spirit

possession, as did the Dao (i.e., the Supreme Lord Lao himself ). The

ofﬁcial in char ge of these divine communications was the Deter miner

of Pneumas ( Jueqi) or Controller of Deter minations (Lingjue). A

T
ang encyclopedia of Daoism, the
Sandong zhunang
(Bag of Pearls of
the Three Caver ns
,
HY 788) records this ofﬁcial’s duties as follows:
He is in char ge of ghostly pneumas. When a man or woman is possessed
by this pneuma and transmits words, the Controller of Deter minations

is instr ucted to distinguish whether [the revealing spirit] is Chinese,
Y
i, Hu, Rong, Di, Di
a
, or Qiang, and whether the message is authentic
or not. (7.19a)
14
Here we see that communications from non-Chinese peoples were
not rare. Moreover, while the source of such communications had to
be deter mined, there is no blanket statement that messages from non-

Chinese were to be excluded from consideration. This reﬂects a con-

tinuing openness toward non-Chinese peoples during the mid-third

centur y.
There is also evidence that the Daoists did not believe their mes-
sage was disseminated only to the Chinese. The great cultural hero
Shun is said in a Daoist scripture to have received an esoteric work on

alchemy from an enigmatic wester n barbarian (
r
onghu
).
15
Fur ther, in
describing the entire corpus of sacred scriptures revealed from the
beginning of time up until its end, the
Zheng yi fawen jingtu kejie pin
(Chapter on Codes and Precepts of Scriptures and Diagrams from the
Zheng yi Canon), quoted in the
Daojiao yishu
(Nexus of Meaning for
the Teachings of the Dao, HY 1121; ca. 700
c.e.
),
lists 123,000 chap-
30 Ter r y F. Kleeman

ters of scriptures revealed to the Chinese and 84,000 chapters revealed
to the barbarians of each of the four directions (2.11b). These scrip-

tures entr usted to the non-Chinese are described as being composed

of “overlapping principles, the same words expressed dif ferently.” This

same viewpoint is expressed in the early literature on the conversion

of the barbarians (
huahu
) and in the polemical debates of the ﬁfth
and sixth centuries. There Buddhism is often viewed as a deviant and

inferior for m of Daoism. Laozi, having proceeded into the Wester n

Regions, found it necessar y to modify his teachings in view of the lust-

ful, avaricious character of the native peoples, resulting in the strict

discipline of the Buddhist path, with its stress on celibacy, vegetarian-

ism, and asceticism. While this position is a rejection of cer tain aspects

of the foreign faith, it afﬁr ms the basic value of Buddhism much as

Zhiyi’s “discrimination of the teaching” (
banjiao
) afﬁr med while si-
multaneously denigrating all the other types of Buddhism abroad in

his day. The passage from the
Zheng yi fawen
would seem to take a fur-
ther step, ar guing that all barbarians in ever y direction have been

vouchsafed holy scriptures with the same basic message as the sacred

tomes of the Daoist canon.
Whatever the utopian dreams of Great Peace, we should not imag-
ine that the early Daoist church itself was a wonderland where tradi-

tional views of class and race were wholly for gotten. A good cor rec-

tive is to be found in the instr uctions for ordaining menials and

non-Chinese in the
Zheng yi fawen taishang wailu yi
(Ceremony for Ex-
ter nal Registers of the Most High, from the Zheng yi Canon, HY 1233),

in
which Daoist openness is tempered by traditional Chinese ideas of
the relationship of barbarians to non-Chinese culture (4a–5a).
16
In
addition to expressly linking non-Chinese with slaves, maidser vants,

and retainers, this document advises the supplicant to admit plainly

his or her origin among the Man, Mo, Di, or Lao and to proclaim

that although sins in previous lives led to this mean bir th, he or she

bears no resentment. Note the explicit acknowledgment that the non-

Chinese involved may be from outside the borders of the state or from

the wild, uncivilized regions within a Chinese county. It was the indi-

vidual’s ugly, evil nature that caused him or her to be bor n in the bor-

der wastes, where the rites and morality are unknown, yet even in this

muck and mire their “good roots,”
17
sown through meritorious actions
in a previous life, still sur vive and have led them to live among the Chi-

nese, where they will be nur tured by the Daoist codes (
daoke
).
Beyond
adopting a Chinese sur name and personal name, the aspiring Daoist
Ethnic Identity and Daoist Identity in Traditional China 31

had to lear n to write proper ritual petitions.
18
Thus although mem-
bership was open to all, there were yet some elements of Chinese cul-
ture that non-Chinese had to be prepared to master in order to join

the Daoist community.
Is there a patter n in these early relations with non-Chinese peoples?
One might expect that attitudes and policies that were appropriate in

second-centur y Sichuan, where there was comparative peace between

settled indigenous ethnic groups and Chinese inhabitants of long

standing, would be abandoned or transfor med in the volatile atmo-

sphere of post-317 China, when the nor ther n half of China had been

lost to a variety of non-Chinese forces that periodically menaced the

re
mnant souther n ter ritories. Kristofer Schipper discer ns a patter n of
interaction whereby Daoism initially conceived of itself as a universal

r
eligion that saw Buddhism as a sibling faith but gradually moved to
a position that saw all foreign religions as antithetical to its message

while fostering a rapprochement with Confucianism (Schipper 1994,

63). He sees the culmination of this trend in the mid-Tang dynasty, at

the time of the composition of the
Y
uqing jing
(Scripture of Jade Pu-
rity, HY 1300)
19
during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712–755),
and notes that by late imperial times, relations between Daoism and

Confucianism had again worsened to the point that ar guments origi-

nally directed toward Buddhism were then tar geted at the Daoists. This

at least provides a working hypothesis to test and reﬁne. Future re-

search should focus on conﬁr ming and specifying more accurately

these transition points, then delving more deeply into the reasons be-

hind this transfor mation.
There are, of course, many more points wor thy of study with regard
to the ethnographic histor y of Daoism. The period of the Song, when

Neo -Confucianism assimilated elements of Buddhist and Daoist doc-

trine to produce an intensely nationalistic, antiforeign philosophy, and

the Y uan, when the Complete Per fection Daoists were actively cour t-

ing the Mongols while many ofﬁcials retired rather than ser ve a for-

eign conqueror, would be par ticularly interesting objects of study in

this regard.
Daoism and Moder n East Asian Ethnicities
The ﬁnal topic I would like to broach involves the role Daoism plays

among the non-Chinese peoples of moder n China. The most dramatic

example is the Yao people, who once lived in south China but now are

also found in the hilly regions of Southeast Asian countries like Thai-
32 Ter r y F. Kleeman

land, Laos, and V ietnam.
20
The Yao people maintain a universal
Daoist priesthood; ever y member of the community passes through
successive ordinations conﬁr med by an ever more exalted register, just

as the Celestial Masters Daoists once did. Social position within Yao

society is based on one’s position within the church. Although there

is not a complete identity of secular and ecclesiastical authority, the

highest-ranking secular and religious ﬁgures within a village are pretty

much on a par in ter ms of power and inﬂuence. The Yao incorporate

cer tain indigenous gods, notably the founder Panhu, within their pan-

theon, so there has been a cer tain amount of adaptation over the cen-

turies to speciﬁcally Yao cultural patter ns. However, it is still remark-

able that they have maintained a non-Chinese society over an extended

period based upon the strictures and beliefs of a distinctively Chinese

r
eligion.
The Yao case raises an impor tant question for the histor y of Dao-
ism as a whole: when did the uniquely Daoist type of social or gani-

zation, typical of the earliest Daoists and now found among the Yao,

disappear among the Chinese? Today, Daoist priests in Chinese com-

munities are priests without a congregation, hired on an ad hoc basis

by members of the community to per for m periodic and occasional

rites. The Yao must have lear ned their Daoism when the old system

was still intact. The scriptures and god images used by the Yao point

to a date no earlier than the Song; rituals of the
T
ianxin zhengfa
(Cor-
r
ect Rites of the Heavenly Hear t) heritage seem to loom lar ge among
their practice. The Song and Y uan periods also saw the establishment

of numerous lar ge Daoist abbeys (
daoguan
) in Sichuan, Y unnan, and
Guizhou (Duan 1992, 71). If this dating is cor rect, we can assume that

the original Daoist social order must have sur vived in recognizable

for m until the eleventh or twelfth centur y in par ts of South China. Be-

cause of the paucity of records concer ning Daoism in standard sources,

we have heretofore lar gely relied on the dating of scriptures and other

r
eligious documents to trace the development of Daoism through the
ages. If our tentative conclusions concer ning the Yao are cor rect, this

suggests that we may be able to date developments in Daoist practice

by looking at Daoism’s dif fusion into new regions and its acceptance

by non-Chinese peoples.
21
A similar study might be conducted by look-
ing at elements of Daoist culture that were transmitted to neighbor-

ing cultures like those of Korea and Japan.
Although the details are not nearly so well known as in the case of
the Yao, Daoism is found among many of the ethnic minorities who

cur rently live or once lived within the borders of moder n China. One
Ethnic Identity and Daoist Identity in Traditional China 33

of the more prominent examples is the group meetings in Y unnan cen-
tering on the recitation of Daoist scriptures, sometimes refer red to in

the literature as Grotto Scripture Congregations (Dongjing hui) or Au-

gust Scripture Congregations (Huangjing hui), depending on whether

their primar y scripture is the
Dadong zhenjing
(Per fected Scripture of
the Great Grotto) or the
Y
uhuang benxing jing
(Scripture of the Orig-
inal Actions of the Jade August One; see Song 1985; Yang 1990). At

present there are no Daoist priests associated with these groups, but

their histor y remains unclear, and it seems unlikely that they chose

such key Daoist scriptures by chance.
The status of Daoism, including the presence of ordained Daoist
priests and Daoist scriptures, among the ethnic minorities of China

and mainland Southeast Asia is perhaps the most exciting aspect of

this problem. We are still at the beginning stages of this study, and so

far most of our infor mation comes from anthropologists with limited

exper tise in Daoism. Hence, what infor mation we have is not always

r
eliable. Still, sur veys of the religions of ethnic minorities seem to ﬁnd
some Daoist inﬂuence among most of the peoples of Southwest China.

There are major sur veys of the region under way that bring together

ethnographers and exper ts in Chinese religion, including one led by

John McRae at Indiana University and another based in Japan in which

Mar uyama Hiroshi is par ticipating. We can look for ward to better, more

sophisticated data in the near future. We should star t honing our ques-

tions. We would proﬁt by knowing in each case: How long have the

members of the ethnic group been in contact with Daoism? What el-

ements of Daoist belief and practice have they adopted? What accom-

modation has been made to indigenous gods and beliefs? Is knowledge

of spoken or written Chinese necessar y to par ticipate in Daoist-derived

activities? How do living practitioners understand their role as non-

Chinese vis -à-vis this originally Chinese religion? Is Daoist inﬂuence

among their people growing or waning? Have Daoist beliefs and prac-

tices in any sense facilitated their interactions with the Chinese?
Conclusion
For most of human histor y, the nature of ethnic identity has gone un-

examined. Bor n into a given milieu, one adopted the prevailing

deﬁnitions of one’s region, one’s social class, and one’s family in sor t-

ing out the complex questions of who belonged with whom. In recent

years, we have come to question most of these assumptions. We now
34 Ter r y F. Kleeman

assume that ethnic identity is culturally constr ucted, that it bears only
a tenuous relationship to genetics, language, and histor y. Still, China

challenges the limits of our understanding of ethnic identity. The de-

velopment of a Chinese identity based primarily on cultural assump-

tions, the variety and diversity of non-Chinese peoples who came into

contact with the Chinese over time, the complex interaction of cul-

tural bor rowing in both directions that took place among these

peoples, all give pause to even the most limited deﬁnitions of ethnic

identity. And yet, to understand the Chinese cultural experience, we

must tr y to make some sense out of the rich record of interaction

among the peoples of East Asia.
Religion is no less problematic a ter m when applied to this region.
Although as an analytic categor y, its existence cannot be denied, there

is no single emic categor y that is coter minous with what we mean by

“religion” in the Wester n academy. Even foreign religions such as Bud-

dhism transfor med in a variety of ways when they entered China, and

we are coming to talk about Chinese Buddhisms that var y inter nally

to a surprising degree over time and space. Daoism is no simpler a

concept, even in the nar row deﬁnition advocated in this chapter. The

early Daoists drew upon a number of diverse intellectual traditions and

incorporated elements from the religious practices of a number of dis-

parate groups.
In this chapter, I have focused on how Daoism as a Chinese religious
tradition interacted with the indigenous beliefs of the non-Chinese eth-

nic groups who have since its inception constituted a signiﬁcant por-

tion of its followers. I believe that fur ther progress in this respect will

r
equire careful attention to all of these questions: What did it mean
to be Chinese, and how was this cultural identity deﬁned against that

of non-Chinese peoples? What elements of individual and communal

worldview, moral values, and practice were religious in nature, and did

they, in fact, as a whole, constitute a religion or religions? Finally, what

did it mean to be Daoist? What por tions of the totality of religious ex-

perience were subsumed under this r ubric, what beliefs or practices

obser ved by those who were at least nominally Daoist should be ex-

cluded from their Daoist identity, and what beliefs or practices followed

by other members of the community were eschewed by those claim-

ing to be Daoists? I have of fered here, and in my other published work,

some suggestions concer ning each of these questions. I hope that this

will provide a star ting point for fur ther discussion of this impor tant

topic.
Ethnic Identity and Daoist Identity in Traditional China 35

Notes
1. This was one of the themes of the presentation by Andrew Chittick,
“Xiang yang Local Society under the Liu-Song Regime,” at the Association for
Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., March 1998.
2. The two ethnonyms most closely associated with them at this time were
Banshun Man or Board-shield Man-barbarians, refer ring to a distinctive feature

of their traditional ar mament, and Zong, refer ring to their special tax status.
3. Stein points out the militar y signiﬁcance of these people to the ﬂedg-
ling state (1963, 21–23). He also provides an able refutation of claims that

these people were in any sense Tibetans, though I think he still gives too much

credence to the consistency in usage of some more general ethnonyms.
4. On the Ba Y u dances, see
Jinshu
12.693 – 694; Dong 1987, 167–177.
5. The original text of this inscription can be found in
Lixu
3.8a–b. See
the discussion of its interpretation in Kleeman 1998, 69
n
28.
6.
Zhongguo ge minzu zongjiao yu shenhua dacidian
“Gelaozu bufen.” Schafer
notes that during the Tang, the leaders of the Cuan people of Y unnan were

“Great Ghost Masters” (1967, 49). On the Gelao and their relationship to the

Lao, see Rueh 1957; Pulleyblank 1983.
7. The Y i are a par ticularly apt comparison because they, like the Ba, were
famed primarily as war riors and practiced only limited agriculture, yet main-

tained a relatively robust culture, which included their own written language,

and a distinct ethnic identity that resisted assimilation for many centuries. The
Ba did not, so far as we know, become wealthy by subjugating another ethnic
group and using them as agricultural slaves or ser fs, as the Black Tribes Y i did

with the White Bones, a group composed primarily of Lao and other con-

quered Y i tribes. See Von Glahn 1987, 24 –26, 33 –38.
8. This translation is adapted from Von Glahn 1987, 26. If the Ba followed
a similar system, the annual tithe of ﬁve bushels of rice must have seemed a

good equivalent to the contribution of meat to the sacriﬁce. There was also

a distinction among the Black Man between the Great Lord of Ghosts who

ministers to a lar ge settlement and the nor mal Lord of Ghosts for smaller

groups; this parallels the Celestial Masters hierarchy of Great Libationers and

Libationers.
9. A good example of the difﬁculties in transmitting this sor t of message
is found in the documentar y
Between Two Worlds: The Hmong Shaman in Amer-
ica
(Taggar t Siegel and Dwight Conquer good, producers 1986). When a Chris-
tian missionar y lectures a Hmong shaman on humankind’s sinful nature and

the need for Christ’s redemption, the shaman tur ns to one of his family mem-

bers and says in Hmong, “I have committed no sin.” That the message even-

tually penetrates is shown by the high rate of conversion to Christianity by the

Hmong in America.
10. On the seed people (
zhongmin
),
see the classic ar ticle by Yoshioka Yoshi-
toyo (1976).
11. The following account is based primarily upon Kleeman 1998.

12. On this topic of early Daoist utopias, see Stein 1963.

13. Contained in
Zheng yi fawen Tianshi jiaojie kejing
(HY 788); see Boken-
kamp 1997, 149 –185. This text dates to 255 or shor tly thereafter.
14. This passage, though from a Tang compilation, seems early, par ticu-
36 Ter r y F. Kleeman

larly in its use of “Qin” to stand for Chinese. This usage is found in the
Dadao
jia lingjie
and would seem to tie both sources to the early church when it was
still centered in the nor thwest.
15. See
Y
unji qiqian
(HY 1026), 85.1b–2b, quoting the
T
aiji zhenren feixian
baojian shangjing xu
.
16.
Zheng yi fawen taishang wailu yi
4a–5a. Schipper tentatively dates this scrip-
ture to the ﬁfth or sixth centur y (see Schipper 1994, 74). The translated pas-
sages, later, were made with reference to Schipper’s translation of this section.
17. This ter m
“shan’gen,”
r
epresenting the originally Buddhist ter m
“kusala-
m
u
la,”
re
fers to merit won through vir tuous action that results in an auspi-
cious encounter with the tr ue teaching or a wor thy teacher in a later lifetime.
18. This is made clear in the following section of the
W
ailu yi
(HY 1233),
which details the petition of thanksgiving to be submitted three days after or-

dination (5ab). There, we are told, if the new Daoist is as yet unable to com-

plete the petition, someone can “lend a hand” (
jiashou
),
presumably mean-
ing that they would take hold of and direct the writer’s hand, and if even that

proved impossible, a teacher or friend could write the petition on behalf of

the newly ordained priest.
19. The full title is
T
aishang dadao yuqing jing,
which Schipper translates as
“Book of the Precious Purity of the Exalted Great Dao.”
20. On the Yao and Daoism, see Shiratori 1975, 1981; Strickmann 1982;
Skar 1992. In an ar ticle studying the Yao char ter myths, ter Haar (1998) points
out that the physical membership of the Yao community has been rather ﬂuid,
with Chinese and members of other ethnic groups redeﬁning themselves as

Y
ao, and Yao becoming Chinese. This has interesting implications for the
process by which the Yao adopted Daoism.
21. Admittedly, such an approach would face many obstacles. One would
ﬁrst, for example, have to deter mine what premoder n ethnic group can be

re
liably identiﬁed with the moder n one and when and where they lived, then
look for proof that they were conver ted to Daoism directly by the Chinese

rather than hearing of it from some other minority group. On his website

(http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/bth/yao.htm), ter Haar has ar gued that the

Y
aos’ adoption of Daoism is later than the Song. If tr ue, this would push the
sur vival of tr ue Daoist communities in China even later.
Bibliography
Bokenkamp, Stephen R. 1997.
Early Daoist Scriptures
. Berkeley: University of
Califor nia Press.
Chen Cheng-siang. 1980.
A Geographical Atlas of China
. Hong Kong: Cosmos
Books.
Dong Qixiang. 1987. “Ba Y u wu yuanliu kao.” In
Ba Shu kaogu lunwen ji,
ed.
by Xu Zhongshu, 167–177. Beijing: Wenwu.
Duan Y uming. 1992.
Xi’nan simiao wenhua
. Kunming: Y unnan jiaoyu.
Harada Masami. 1963. “Minzoku shir y
o
to shite noboken.”
Philosophia
45:1–26.
———. 1967. “Bokenbun ni mirarer u meikai no kami to sono saishi.”
T
o
h
o
sh
u
ky
o
29:17–35.
Ethnic Identity and Daoist Identity in Traditional China 37

Harper, Donald. 1985. “A Chinese Demonography of the Third Centur y
b.c.
”
Har vard Jour nal of Asiatic Studies
45:459 – 498.
Kleeman, Ter r y F. 1998.
Great Per fection: Religion and Ethnicity in a Chinese Mil-
lennial Kingdom
. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
Pr usek, Jaroslav. 1971.
Chinese Statelets and the Nor ther n Barbarians, 1400 –300
b.c.
Dordrecht, Netherlands: Riedel.
Pulleyblank, E. G. 1983. “ The Chinese and Their Neighbors in Prehistoric and
Early Historic Times.” In
The Origins of Chinese Civilization
, ed. by David N.
Keightley, 411– 466. Berkeley: University of Califor nia Press.
Rueh Y ih- fu. 1957. “Laoren kao.”
Bulletin of the Institute of Histor y and Philol-
og y,
Academia Sinica 28:727–771.
Sage, Stephen. 1992.
Ancient Sichuan and the Uniﬁcation of China
. Albany: State
University of New York Press.
Schafer, Edward H. 1967.
The Ver milion Bird: T’ang Images of the South
. Berke-
ley: University of Califor nia Press.
Schipper, Kristofer M. 1994. “Purity and Strangers: Shifting Boundaries in Me-
dieval Taoism.”
T’oung Pao
80:61– 81.
Seidel, Anna. 1987. “ Traces of Han Religion in Funeral Texts Found in
T
ombs.” In
D
o
ky
o
to sh
u
ky
o
bunka
, ed. by Akizuki K an’ei , 714 –733. Tokyo:
Hirakawa.
Shiratori Yoshir
o
. 1975.
Y
o
jin monjo
. Tokyo: K
o
dansha.
———. 1981. “ The Yao Documents and Their Religious Ceremonies.” In
Pro-
ceedings of the Inter national Conference on Sinolog y: Section on Folklore and Cul-
ture
, Academia Sinica 311–318.
Skar, Lowell. 1992. “Preliminar y Remarks on Yao Religion and Society.” Un-
published typescript.
Song Enchang. 1985. “Dali he Lijiang daojiao gaikuang” In
Y
unnan minzu
minsu he zongjiao diaocha,
ed. by Y unnan sheng bianjizu, 119 –124. Kunming:
Y
unnan minzu.
Stein, R. A. 1963. “Remarques sur les mouvements du taoïsme politico -
re
ligieux au IIe siècle ap. J.-C.”
T’oung Pao
50:1–73.
Strickmann, Michel. 1982. “ The Tao among the Yao.” In
Rekishi ni oker u min-
sh
u
to bunka,
ed. by Sakai Tadao sensei koki shukuga kinen no kai, 23 –30.
T
okyo: Kokusho kank
o
kai.
T
er Haar, Barend. 1998. “A New Interpretation of the Yao Char ters.” In
New
Developments in Asian Studies
, ed. by Paul van der Velde and Alex McK ay,
3
–19. London: Kegan Paul Inter national.
V
on Glahn, Richard. 1987.
The Countr y of Streams and Grottoes: Expansion, Settle-
ment, and the Civilizing of the Sichuan Frontier in Song Times
. Cambridge, Mass.:
Council on East Asian Studies, Har vard University Press.
Xueyuan, ed. 1990.
Zhongguo ge minzu zongjiao yu shenhua dacidian
. Beijing:
Xueyuan.
Y
ang Cenglie. 1990. “Lijiang Dongjing yinyue diaocha.” In
Lijiang wenshi zi-
liao
9:114 –138.
Y
oshioka Yoshitoyo. 1976. “Rikuch
o
D
o
ky
o
no shumin shis
o
.” In
D
o
ky
o
to bukky
o
3:223 –283. Tokyo: Kokusho kank
o
kai.
38 Ter r y F. Kleeman

2
Confession of Sins and Awareness
of Self in the
T
aiping jing
Tsuchiya Masaaki
In the Way of Great Peace (Taiping dao) under the leadership of
Zhang Jue in the later Han, the for mal confession of sins was prac-

ticed. As the
Dianlue
(Scriptural Abstracts) says, as cited by Pei Songzhi
in his commentar y to Zhang Lu’s biography in the
Sanguo zhi
(Record
of the Three Kingdoms):
In the Way of Great Peace, the leader wrote talismans and wove spells,
holding on to a bamboo staf f of nine sections. He told the sick people

to knock their heads to the ground and remember their sins, then gave

them a talisman, bur ned and dissolved in water, to drink. Those who

got gradually better and were healed by this treatment were called good
believers in the Dao. Those who showed no improvement were con-
sidered faithless.
The methods of Zhang Xiu were by and lar ge the same as those of
Zhang Jue. In addition, he established a so -called chamber of tran-

quility or orator y, where the sick would retreat to reﬂect on their
wrong-doings. . . . Also, he appointed so -called demon soldiers who
were in char ge of the prayers for the sick.
To
 per for m these prayers, they would write down the sick person’s
name while for mally reciting his intention to expiate all sins. This would

be done three times: the ﬁrst version was of fered to Heaven by being
exposed on a mountain; the second was of fered to Ear th by being
buried in the ear th; and the third was of fered to Water by being thrown
into a stream. Together they were known as “petitions to the Three Bu-
r
eaus.” (
Sanguo zhi
8.264; Kobayashi 1991, 21)
The text here uses the expression
siguo,
“to remember one’s sins” or
“to meditate on one’s trespasses.” This compares to the ter m used in
the contemporaneous
Hou Hanshu
(Histor y of the Later Han),
shouguo,
39

“to face one’s sins” (71.2299). What both texts refer to by these words
is a for mal ceremony of confession, used as a method of inner cleans-

ing and easing sickness. The same notion is also apparent in the bi-

ography of Zhang Daoling in Ge Hong’s
Shenxian zhuan
(Biographies
of Spirit Immor tals):
Zhang Daoling made it a r ule that sick people should write down all
the sins they had committed since they were bor n and cast these writ-
ten confessions into a stream of water, vowing to the gods that they

would sin no more, on penalty of death. (
Ta
iping guangji
8.56; Giles
1948, 61)
This matches the description of the rite found in the
Sanguo zhi,
in
each case the emphasis being clearly placed on the remembrance and
written documentation of past sins.
1
The sources thus shed some light
on the practices under taken in Zhang Jue’s Way of Great Peace as well

as in the Celestial Masters led by Zhang Daoling and Zhang Lu.
2
Similar for malities of confession were also under taken in medieval
Daoism. As Lu Xiujing’s (406 – 477)
Daomen kelue
(Abridged Codes for
the Daoist Community, HY 1119) says,
The ill were not to take medicines or use the acupuncture needle or
moxa. They were only to ingest talismans, drink water [into which the
ashes of the talisman had been mixed], and confess all their sins from
their ﬁrst year of life. Even all those who had committed capital crimes

were pardoned, and of those whose symptoms had accumulated and
who were distressed by major illnesses, none were not healed. (Nick-

erson 1996, 352–353)
Again, we have in the
Santian neijie jing
(Scripture of the Inner
Explanations of the Three Heavens, HY 1196), also of the early ﬁfth
centur y:
Those afﬂicted with illness who are above the age of seven—that is, the
age of cognition—are to personally seek for giveness for their trans-
gressions and to employ all proper of ferings, protocols, petitions, and
talismans. For even long-standing diseases or difﬁcult maladies that

physicians cannot cure, one need only to take refuge in the divine law
and confess in order to be immediately cured (1.6b; Bokenkamp 1997,
216 –217)
These ideas of healing were found not only among the souther n Ce-
lestial Masters, for even in the nor th we ﬁnd highly similar notions. Kou
Qianzhi’s (365 – 448) so -called “New Code,” the
Laojun yinsong jiejing
(
Scripture of Recited Precepts of Lord Lao, HY 783), has a relevant r ule:
40 Tsuchiya Masaaki

If among the people of the Way there is sickness or illness, let it be an-
nounced to ever y home. The Master shall ﬁrst command the people

to light the incense ﬁre. Then the Master from inside the chamber of

tranquility, and the people on the outside, facing toward the west with

their hair unbound, striking their heads to the ground, shall confess

and unburden their sins and transgressions. (16a; Mather 1979, 117)
After the ﬁfth centur y, the texts begin to change as they increasingly
r
eﬂect the inﬂuence of the Buddhist practice of
chanhui,
or “penitence
and regret” (see Kuo 1994), one example being the sixth-centur y
Zheng yi weiyi jing
(Scripture of Digniﬁed Obser vances of Or thodox
Unity, HY 790), which contains two entries using the ter m in the de-

scription of for mal confessions.
O
fuchi Ninji, in his recent analysis of the early Daoist practice of
confession, has come to characterize it by six points:
(1) Confession was directly related to sickness, which was thought
to be caused by sins.
(2) This view in tur n was based on the notion that human behavior
was super vised and evaluated according to its good and bad
qualities by a super natural administration of gods and spirits;
this concept was signiﬁcantly dif ferent from that held commonly
in pre-Qin times and documented in texts like the
Mozi
.
(3) Confessions also contained a traditional Confucian element
in that penitents had to kowtow to the gods and beg for the

for giveness of their sins.
(4) The for malities took place in a separate meditation hut or other
isolated place, like the chamber of tranquility, or orator y.
(5) Confessing sins in order to heal diseases had the ef fect of
lightening the penitents’ burdens and making them feel lighter;

this was completed by the religious puriﬁcation of “talisman
water” (
fushui
),
 which enhanced the psychological ef fect of
the confession.
(6)Other religions, especially Christianity and Buddhism, have sim-
ilar practices of for mal confession. Compared with these, the
Daoist ones appear less based on a deep inner feeling of guilt;
they are, it seems, a more utilitarian and this -worldly measure
of concrete, practical relief (
O
fuchi 1991, 87, 92–93, 163).
Unlike
O
fuchi Ninji, who denies any Buddhist inﬂuence on the early
Daoist practice, Fukui K
o
jun has ar gued that it reﬂected a great de-
gree of similarity (1987a, 44; 1987b, 91). Then again, Yamada Toshi-
aki, in his discussion of Daoist
zhai
rituals, ar gues that in their devel-
opment from Han-dynasty puriﬁcation rites to the full-blown Rites of
Confession of Sins and Awareness of Self in the
T
aiping jing
41

Mud and Soot (
tutan zhai
) in the ﬁfth centur y, for mal confessions
and the breast-beating of the Way of Great Peace were integrated. As
the rite was expanded to include the puriﬁcation of both body and

mind, the possibility to express one’s shouldering of sins through self-

punishing acts came to be of increasing impor tance (Yamada 1994).

Most recently, Yoshikawa Tadao has studied the orator y, or chamber

of tranquility (
jingshi
),
 as the concrete setting of for mal confessions,
describing its origins and development under both Daoist and Bud-

dhist aspects in some detail. He has also successfully elucidated the

consciousness of sin that prevailed among the medieval Chinese (see

Y
oshikawa 1998; also 1987; 1992; 1994).
Following in the footsteps of these eminent scholars and their re-
search, in this chapter I would like to discuss the setting and special

characteristics of early Daoist confessions, examining them par ticularly

in regard to the ﬁfth and sixth points made by
O
fuchi and focusing
on their practice as under taken in the Way of Great Peace and as doc-

umented in the
T
aiping jing
(Scripture of Great Peace).
The
T
aiping jing
has come down to us in only one edition, that con-
tained in the Ming-dynasty Daoist canon, which consists of ﬁfty-seven

scrolls. As mentioned in the Buddhist text
Mouzi lihuolun
(Mouzi’s Ex-
amination of Doubts) of the second or third centuries
c.e.
, the origi-
nal
T
aiping jing
of the Way of Great Peace had 170 scrolls, which means
that a good two -thirds of the text is lost. As a result, there are many

doubts regarding the integrity of the transmitted text, which scholars

have tried to resolve in various ways.
Among Japanese scholars, the ﬁrst to take up the issue was Fukui
K
o
jun. He suggests that the transmitted
T
aiping jing
was ﬁrst compiled
in the Y uan dynasty on the basis of a text called
T
aiping dongji jing
(Scripture the Per vasive Ultimate of Great Peace) in 170 scrolls, which

in tur n was put together in the Six Dynasties and sur vived throughout

the Tang and Song (see Fukui 1936; 1937). In contrast, Yoshioka Yoshi-

toyo, who focused his examination on the Dunhuang fragments of the

text (found in S. 4226), concludes that our
T
aiping jing
is the remnant
of a version created under the Chen emperor Xuandi (r. 658 – 682),

which conﬂated the
T
aiping dong ji jing
and the sur viving fragments of
the ancient text (1970, 150). Yamada Toshiaki, next, follows Yoshioka

and elucidates the dif ferent versions more clearly in a study of the med-

itation technique of “guarding the One” (1999, 27– 48). In addition,

O
fuchi Ninji has shown convincingly that our
T
aiping jing
contains
some content that could not have been written by men of the late Six

Dynasties (1957); the same point is also made by the Chinese scholar
42 Tsuchiya Masaaki

W
ang Ming, who fur ther more provides evidence that the text’s lan-
guage in many instances reﬂects Han-dynasty rather than later usage
(1984, 183 –200).
3
To
conclude, we may say that the transmitted
Ta i -
ping jing,
which for ms the basis of my study, contains infor mation and
material that go back to the ancient movement and show the early

Daoists’ ideas of self and world.
The following study, then, is based on an interest not only in the
early histor y of Daoism, but more generally in the phenomenon of

traditional Chinese autobiography. The latter was characterized by

K
awai Koz
o
as follows:
Autobiography in traditional Europe developed from the regret of per-
sonal misdeeds and the confession of sins, from for mulating the wrongs
one had done and thus from the reﬂection of the dif ference between
one’s for mer (good) self and one’s recent (sinful) self. This kind of el-

ementar y examination of the self lies at the root ﬁrst of “spiritual self-
advancement,” then of European autobiography. In China, in contrast,
there was in general no comparable regret of one’s deeds and confes-

sion of sins, nor was there the for mal pronouncement of one’s wrongs.
(K awai 1996, 5)
In a highly similar ar gument explaining the absence of self-
searching autobiography in China, Wu Peiyi says:
The two major groups of Chinese self-literature we have dwelt upon,
spiritual and ﬁctional autobiographies, have one thing in common: an
afﬁr mation of the self. The tor tuous quest in the ﬁrst and the exuber-
ant display in the second were both predicated on a fundamental op-

timism. If the autobiographer ﬁnds fault with his life at this or that point,
he is usually sustained by hope. There may be occasions for despair,
but never harsh self-stricture. (Wu 1990, 207)
4
Not entirely convinced by these ar guments, I would like to suggest
that there exists a deeper dimension of Chinese autobiography that
goes back to in-depth self-examinations ﬁrst practiced among the

Daoists of the Way of Great Peace. To appreciate this deeper dimen-

sion more fully, it is necessar y to understand the ancient texts and their

views on their own ter ms rather than through moder n concepts. The

following is an attempt in this direction.
Confessions in the Way of Great Peace
In early Daoism, confessions were practiced with the aim of healing

illness and disease. How were these two thought to be connected? Why
Confession of Sins and Awareness of Self in the
T
aiping jing
43

should enumerating one’s sins have an impact on one’s physical well-
being?
O
fuchi explains the connection in his ﬁfth point by suggesting that
confessions ser ved to alleviate feelings of sinfulness and badness, thus

r
elieving the psychological stress that may have caused somatic symp-
toms and therefore aiding in the healing of illness. I would agree that

cer tainly a psychosomatic element plays a role in the procedure; how-

ever, in the ancient sources the understanding of the ef fect of con-

fessions has nothing to do with stress relief. Rather, they insist that the

sins of the past are the immediate cause of illness and disease. How,

then, do the sins come to cause illness? What are the ways in which

moral behavior af fects physical health in traditional Daoist thought?
The
T
aiping jing
explains the interaction of sins and diseases by ﬁrst
pointing out that there are three key factors in the universe: Heaven,
Ear th, and humanity. They are the three for ms into which primordial

ener g y (
yuanqi
) divided at the time of creation (66.236). This pri-
mordial ener g y is the root of all, the spirit root (
shen’gen
) of all exis-
tence. The spirit root divides into the three factors, then also mani-
fests in three psychosomatic factors: spirit (
shen
) associated with
Heaven; essence (
jing
) associated with Ear th; and the vital ener g y (
qi
)
of har mony associated with humanity (154.728).
W
ithin this cosmic system, human beings contain the powers of
Heaven and Ear th and represent a microcosm of the lar ger universe.

The roundness of the human head resembles Heaven; the square

shape of the feet imitates Ear th; the four limbs match the four sea-

sons; and so on (35.36).
5
According to the
Ta
iping jing,
Heaven, Ear th,
and humanity are, therefore, equally made from primordial ener g y;

they are not only connected intimately but also stand in direct anal-

og y to one another. The intimate connection between Heaven, Ear th,

and humanity, then, leads to the phenomenon that when the r uler

follows the Dao, the proper way of the cosmos, Heaven and Ear th re-

joice; when he or she loses the Dao, disasters and strange occur rences

appear (18.17). In an analogous way, when the r uler in the human

body—the microcosmic replica of Heaven and Ear th—loses the Dao

and commits evil, the body suf fers disasters, that is, it falls ill.
Just as disasters visit the planet as direct ef fects from Heaven, so the
human body is subject to immediate reverberations of its evil deeds.

Just as Heaven loves good and loathes evil, so whenever a human be-

ing commits a bad deed, Heaven manifests its displeasure by visiting

sickness upon his or her body. According to the
T
aiping jing,
sickness
44 Tsuchiya Masaaki

is, therefore, the expression of displeasure at human misdeeds on the
side of the spirit(s) of Heaven (
tianshen
) and not the automatic ef fect
of an imbalance or dishar mony of ener g y. Whenever someone com-

mits an evil act, the ﬂow of the ener g y of Heaven and Ear th is cut of f,

and the person can no longer recognize his or her destiny (
ming
),
that
is, the moral duty in life, and will accordingly lead a life akin to that

of beasts. Heaven and Ear th hate this state of af fairs and, as a result,

cause the person to fall ill (96.425). Also, when the ener g y in the body

is no longer in har mony, its spirit and essence will take of f. The rea-

son for this is that spirit and essence love to be in a pure place, and

when the body becomes deﬁled, they dislike it so much that they leave

(18.27). The reason, in tur n, why the body is deﬁled is that the per-

son has committed a sin. This shows clearly that in this early thinking

the concepts of sin and deﬁlement were intimately connected.
To
 make the spirit retur n to the body, which will also ef fect a cure
for the illness, the deﬁled body must be puriﬁed. To this end, Daoist

followers practiced
zhaijie
as well as sitting in an “incense chamber”
and meditating on the images of the gods who resided in the body’s

inner or gans.
Zhaijie
at this time indicated for mal measures of puriﬁ-
cation that involved fasting and living only on pure ener g y, keeping

one’s eyes aver ted from all evil and nastiness, practicing bodily reﬁne-

ments, and abstaining from sexual activities and passions (42.90). Med-

itation (
jingsi
) was especially emphasized as a remedial method in the
T
aiping jing
and had to do with the belief that the good spirits would
come into the body if and when they were visualized within—as would

the bad. The “incense chamber” (
xiangshi
) indicates the orator y, or
jingshi
(73.306, 110.534, 35.46; see Yoshikawa 1998). Prepared by
zhai-
jie
and meditation and placing themselves in the incense chamber,
Daoists would then under go for mal confessions. The act of confes-

sion, then, was a key measure in the puriﬁcation process, as it was

thought to aid the expulsion of the deﬁlement of sin that had

inﬁltrated the body.
The actual confession ritual, moreover, consisted of the verbal for-
mulation of one’s sins and of fered an oppor tunity to identify the ones

r
esponsible. A per tinent example is not found in the
T
aiping jing
it-
self but in the
Jinshu
(Histor y of the Jin Dynasty):
Wa
ng Xianzhi once fell ill, and his family decided to have a ritual of
petitioning on his behalf. The invited Daoist master had him confess
his sins and to this end asked him a number of relevant questions. He

answered: “ There is nothing sinful I can think of in par ticular, except
Confession of Sins and Awareness of Self in the
T
aiping jing
45

maybe the fact that I divorced my wife, Chi Daomao.” This lady was the
daughter of Chi Tan. Wang Xianzhi died soon thereafter. (80.2106; see
also Bokenkamp 1997, 253
n
20)
So Wang’s illness and death in this account were related to his sin
of divorcing his wife, Chi Tan’s daughter. Since he was a member of
the souther n aristocracy several hundred years after the Way of Great

Peace, it is hard to tell whether his experience reﬂects earlier prac-

tices. On the other hand, it is one of the few incidents described in

the texts. Let us, therefore, take a closer look. The Daoist master be-

gins to prepare the ceremony by asking the sick person to examine

his or her behavior from the early stages of life to the time of the ill-

ness. Once a foundation is established in the for m of a list of the pa-

tient’s good and bad deeds, it is possible to judge which one or ones

might have been the immediate cause for the illness at hand. To do a

proper evaluation, this implies, the sick person should be conscious

of a number of r ules and precepts, the breaking of which might con-

stitute a sin; he or she would need a measurement against which to as-

sess the deeds.
Should the sick person be unable to think of any sins or bad deeds,
the master might prompt him or her by listing the r ules and precepts.

The imagination-based reﬂection of one’s for mer deeds to ﬁnd out

one’s sins and the pointing- out of possible misdeeds by others in this

system aid the patient in the recognition of cer tain sins as the possi-

ble cause of the condition. This, in tur n, ser ves to develop a cer tain

level of interior moral self-awareness, which ﬁnds dif ferent for ms of

expression. As the
T
aiping jing
says:
People today behave in a stupid and superﬁcial way, then get sick and
die, never once taking proper refuge in Heaven. If only they confessed
their sins before their entire family, beat their breasts, and kowtowed
deeply to Heaven, seeking help and begging for mercy, Heaven would

cer tainly—at least after a few days —grant them for givenness. (114.621)
The activity of confession and breast-beating, it seems, went on for
several days, allowing the expression of the patient’s self. Not taking
r
efuge in Heaven alone, according to this, however, did not make a
person a sinner. Rather, the for mal status of sinner came only with the

act of confession and the ofﬁcial begging of Heaven’s mercy. As pen-

itents for mally confessed their sins (
shouguo
) and beat their breasts
(
zibo
),
they would repeatedly throw themselves to the ground and
knock their heads (
koutou
),
r
epenting their sins and accusing them-
selves of various misdeeds (114.591). The
T
aiping jing
also uses the ex-
46 Tsuchiya Masaaki

pression
zize,
or “self-blame,” indicating that people would “meditate
on their sins and think of the burden thus accumulated” (107.555).
The for mal confession of sins, therefore, also included the oppor tu-

nity for self-blame, which in tur n was a way of developing shame within

the person for the sins committed. The ceremony then of fered a

chance to show this inner shame to the entire community and thus

be exonerated (154.719).
6
The ef fect was the same as that described
in Zhang Daoling’s biography cited earlier, that is, penitents would rec-

ognize their sins, feel ashamed of them, and then vow “to the gods

that they would sin no more, on penalty of death.”
In addition, it seems that, at least in the middle ages, penitents
would also under go harsh self-punishments, or aggressions against

themselves (
zinue
).
Why would they do that? The
T
aiping jing
does not
give a coherent answer to this question, but it does speak about ag-

gression and hur t exer ted toward others and visited upon sinners by

Heaven:
Even if Heaven has indicated that it will kill the sinners, they yet pray
for long life and put their faith in Heaven, as if nothing was wrong. Even
if Heaven has begun to punish them, they yet cr y out to Heaven and
Ear th and loudly wish for for giveness. This is because they do not un-

derstand the impor tance of their own sins.
Then Heaven tests them, leads them of f, and even throws them into
a far- of f, deser ted wilder ness, so that they may come to know themselves.

If you want to know what this kind of judgment feels like, just think of
the examination of a criminal by an enlightened r uler. If he confesses
his crimes and accepts the blame for them, the r uler will not have him
killed. It is just the same with Heaven.
Depending on the greatness of the misdeeds, the culprit will be given
a prison sentence —a harsh one for major sins, a light one for lesser

ones. This way he can expiate his crime. And if he has come to know
himself properly, then even should he have to die, he will not feel ha-
tred and not cr y out against the judgment. (117.663)
According to this, the suf fering inﬂicted upon sinners matches the
weight and seriousness of their sins. Accordingly, if sinners understand
the causes and reasons for their suf ferings and recognize the impact of

their own behavior, then they achieve a cer tain level of self-awareness

and self-consciousness. When under going a for mal rite of penitence,

it is, therefore, adequate that the sinners subject themselves to pun-

ishments matching their trespasses. The self-punishing acts during such

a rite are, therefore, under taken in anticipation of the punishments

Heaven would eventually mete out, sinners putting them on themselves
Confession of Sins and Awareness of Self in the
T
aiping jing
47

to avoid later inﬂictions. The for mal rite of confession, in tur n, be-
comes par t of the self-punishment under gone in fear of Heaven.
Self-Blame and Confession
If for mal confession is par t of self-punishment, how then are the sins

for mulated, and what exactly is the ef fect of this action? There are no

per tinent examples in the
T
aiping jing,
but the expression “self-blame”
occurs variously in sources of the Later Han period. One case is the

exposure of King Tang of the Shang in a rainmaking ceremony after

the countr y had suf fered from a prolonged drought. The stor y ﬁrst

appears in pre-Han literature (see Zheng 1957), where it is mentioned

twice, in the
Lüshi chunqiu
(Spring and Autumn Annals of Mr. Lü) and
in the
Xunzi
(Works of Master Xun). The ﬁrst version r uns:
T
ang himself entered the mulber r y forest to pray. He said: “If I, the
r
uler, have sinned, then let the people not be blamed; but if the people
have sinned, then let me, the r uler, take the blame! Let not the high-
est god and other worldly spirits har m the destiny of the people for the

personal incompetence of my single person!”
Having said this, he cut of f his hair and had his hands tied, making
himself into a sacriﬁcial victim. Thus he prayed to the highest god. The
people greatly rejoiced at his actions, and a great rain fell. (
Lüshi chun-
qiu
CH.479; see W ilhelm 1971, 106 –107; Schafer 1951)
Then again, the
Xunzi
has:
On the occasion of the drought, Tang prayed: “Is my gover nment not
properly regulated? Does it cause the people grief? Why has the rain
not come for so long a time? Are the palaces and chambers too glori-
ous? Are the women of the harem too numerous? Why has the rain not

come for so long a time? Are reed mats and sackcloth being of fered in
bribe? Do slanderers ﬂourish? Why has the rain not come for so long
a time? (
Xunzi
24.504; Knobloch 1994, 323 –324)
The king’s prayer in the ﬁrst version begins with the assumption that
the continued drought is to be blamed on a speciﬁc sin. If the sin is the
emperor’s, then he is a major sinner who deser ves to die. If it is the

people’s, then the emperor will take it upon himself. In either case,

he shoulders the responsibility for the well-being of the realm and is

considered a sinner. As he recognizes himself as such, he under goes

the appropriate punishment of exposure and of fers himself as a

sacriﬁce. Heaven accepts this and promptly sends down rain. The sec-

ond version, too, begins with the assumption that sin causes the
48 Tsuchiya Masaaki

drought. It acknowledges the possibility that the sin is the emperor’s
by mentioning his self-examination, but ultimately in this reading he

does not commit any wrong. As a result, the emperor is not a sinner,

and the drought is an unwar ranted oppression on the side of Heaven.

As the emperor exposes himself, Heaven recognizes its wrong and

sends down rain.
Looked at from the perspective of self-blame, the two versions are
signiﬁcantly dif ferent. In the ﬁrst, the emperor sees himself as a sin-

ner and becomes an appropriate sacriﬁcial victim, thus accepting

blame upon himself. In the second, he is free from sin and, therefore,

does not take any blame.
The stor y developed fur ther under the Han and appears in Wang
Chong’s
Lunheng
(Balanced Discussions):
According to legend, after seven years of drought King Tang exposed
himself in prayer in the mulber r y forest, blaming himself for six faults.
Then Heaven sent down rain. The king said:
...
[as in
Lüshi chunqiu
].
[This is like] one person sitting on a dais and another kowtowing
to him below, begging him for something. As the one on top hears the

lower person’s words, he feels compassion and concedes to the request.
However, if the top man could not hear the lesser one’s words, then

even if the latter implored him most movingly, he would not get any-
thing. Now, the distance between Heaven and humanity is not only that
between above and below a dais. How then could Heaven, however
much King Tang blames himself, hear his pleas and send rain in re-
sponse? (
Lunheng
16.245; see Forke 1972)
W
ang Chong, although overall critical of the basic idea that Heaven
can hear anything, in his retelling of the stor y mixes the perspective
of the two pre-Han versions and interprets the king’s list of sins as an

indication of self-blame. He does so because he places the incident in

the wider cultural context of self-examinations and for mal confessions,

already practiced in his time.
As his words also conﬁr m, confession begins by examining the sins
committed, then moves on to an or ganized list of them. As the sins

are made public, shame is felt and blame is for mally accepted by the

self—marking self-blame as an essential par t of confession and, there-

fore, also of the development of a critical, moral self-awareness.
7
Heaven and Human Consciousness
Confessions and acts of self-blame are, therefore, self-inﬂicted pun-

ishments that anticipate the suf fering Heaven is expected to mete out
Confession of Sins and Awareness of Self in the
T
aiping jing
49

in recompense for the sins committed. Their purpose is to get Heaven
to grant for giveness for those sins —an idea common to both the Daoist

text and the King Tang stor y.
To
be more speciﬁc, a
T
aiping jing
passage cited earlier states that
confession, beating the breasts, kowtowing, and begging for mercy cer-

tainly would cause Heaven to for give the penitent’s sins (114.621). This

mercy is the compassion and pity felt by Heaven on behalf of the sin-

ner. Similarly, in the stor y of King Tang, Heaven is moved by the suf-

fering to which the r uler subjects himself, communicating his sincere

intention to the powers above. Both the
T
aiping jing
and the stor y of
King Tang, therefore, hold that if one acknowledges oneself as a sin-

ful person and communicates one’s sincere intention to Heaven, the

latter will cer tainly grant for giveness. However, how is Heaven thought

to recognize and understand this human ef for t at sincerity and self-

blame?
Heaven and humanity might, as in the illustration used by Wang
Chong, be seen as two interacting agents, of equal sensor y power but

dif ferent position in the scale of things, so that the human being

needs only to voice his or her faults loudly in order to be understood

and recognized. In this model, Heaven is a personiﬁed celestial

power, which has an auditor y sense to hear human pleas and recog-

nize human sincerity. Equally anthropomorphic is Heaven’s reaction

of pity and compassion, the basis for the for giveness of fered to the

sinner.
While this model may be at the root of the King Tang stor y, it is not
dominant in the
T
aiping jing
. Here, Heaven and Ear th, on the one
hand, and humanity, on the other, are linked primarily through their
common bond of
qi
-ener g y. As consciousness arises in the human be-
ing, so his or her
qi
is activated; this, in tur n, has the ability to move
and respond to Heaven and Ear th. Utmost sincerity (
zhicheng
),
 then,
is the state within human beings that most closely matches the vir tue
of Heaven and Ear th as they create and nur ture the myriad beings.

Human beings receive life from their father and mother only because

Heaven and Ear th, in their sincere vir tue, cause this to happen. As a

r
esult, Heaven and Ear th expect human beings to tur n toward the
good and develop a similar sincerity in their actions. Ideally, therefore,

a human being should always ﬁrst reﬂect on the will and tendencies

of Heaven and Ear th before doing anything.
W
ithin human beings, moreover, the hear t/mind is the highest
among the ﬁve inner or gans, the seat of spirit and sagacity, and the

r
esidence of pure yang
qi
within the body. In the system of the ﬁve
50 Tsuchiya Masaaki

phases, it is associated with ﬁre, a ﬁre that bur ns within people to match
the glor y and brightness of Heaven. Similarly, the sun, the concen-

trated yang ener g y of the sky, is the r uler of ﬁre and the most honored

among all celestial entities. It, too, is a source of great light and bright

radiance. In people, similarly, a mind of utmost sincerity bur ns with

war m ﬁre and shines for th with great brightness, matching the power

of the sun. The spirit of the hear t/mind, moreover, rises up to com-

municate the mind’s sagacity to the sun, which, in tur n, transmits this

pure intention to Heaven. This is the pathway by which utmost sin-

cerity in humans can move the spirit powers of the universe and spread

purity all around, including also throughout the body (
T
aiping jing
96.426).
The way human consciousness impacts Ear th is understood along
similar lines. Most purely, when people are in a state of utmost sin-

cerity, they are free from thoughts and radiate pure yang ener g y. Now,

if they have thoughts while in deep sincerity, the hear t/mind feels bur-

dened and in pain, both hear t and stomach are upset, and the person

cannot eat or drink. The force that causes the mind to be ﬁlled with

thoughts and enter this painful state is the intention (
yi
).
The nature
of the intention is benevolence, and among inner or gans it is associ-

ated with the liver. The liver being fur ther connected with the eyes,

when humans are in a state of sincerity with thoughts, they often shed

tears.
In addition, thinking (
si
) is associated with the spleen. Just as the
hear t is the seat of pure yang, so the spleen is associated with pure yin.

It is thus related to Ear th. As thoughts arise in a state of sincerity of

pure yang, the hear t is pained, tears come to the eyes, and the spleen

is activated. As this sincerity is fur ther spread into the four directions,

the intention is car ried far of f and communicates with outside forces.
Its nature being yin, it expresses itself in melancholy and sadness,
which, in tur n, car ried by the yang force of the mind, comes to com-

municate with Ear th. Ear th, in tur n, repor ts the person’s mental state

to the spirits of Heaven. This is the way in which human conscious-

ness moves Heaven and Ear th (
T
aiping jing
96.426).
The interaction of humanity with Heaven and Ear th in this model
is, therefore, explained through the actions of
qi
in its various for ms
and associations with the ﬁve inner or gans and the ﬁve phases. This,

however, does not yet explain how Heaven can have the human char-

acteristics of hearing, feeling compassion, and granting for giveness.

Even in the
T
aiping jing,
it appears, Heaven is personiﬁed enough to
allow for cer tain human characteristics and for mercy felt in response
Confession of Sins and Awareness of Self in the
T
aiping jing
51

to human sincerity. Sins, then, are dissolved through the feeling of
merciful compassion on the side of Heaven. And the under going of

for mal confessions, especially in their extreme for m, including self-

blame and punishment, is the key means of gaining a reaction of com-

passion from Heaven. It is analogous to the feelings evoked in a hu-

man judge when confronted with a penitent criminal. This analog y

can be substantiated in three dif ferent points.
First, according to the
T
aiping jing,
Heaven and humanity are not
only related through their mutual cor respondence but also through

the fact that the human body is a microcosmic replica of the greater

universe and thus parallel to Heaven in str ucture. Similarly, human

society and celestial society are str uctured alike. In both, there is a hi-

erarchical administration, and Heaven in this is personiﬁed as the Lord

of Heaven (
tianjun
),
the senior executive ofﬁcer who evaluates and
judges human behavior. As the
T
aiping jing
says:
If one dares to come for ward and beg life from the Lord of Heaven,
one must not have any egotistic desires. . . . One should rather speak
in plain and straightfor ward words and clearly state one’s rights and
wrongs to the various depar tment heads. On this basis, the Lord of

Heaven will judge the merits of one’s case.
...
Even if one has com-
mitted a major evil and is facing death, one should desire to straighten

out and repent one’s wrongdoing, resolve to do only good and abstain
from all evil, reﬂect on one’s deeds day and night. Then one’s sin can

be for given. . . .
Common people don’t usually realize it, but Heaven sends out its
emissaries to obser ve and record their sins, and whether big or small,
Heaven knows them all. Heaven keeps detailed ledgers of good and
evil, recording all deeds by month and day, and using them to decide
the length of people’s lives. If they don’t abstain from committing evil,

upon death they will enter the realm of demons, where they will be ex-
amined by the spirits of Ear th and their answers measured against the
r
ecorded behavior. Then they are made to reﬂect on their sins and have
to under go punishment, ﬁnally lear ning to be submissive and obedi-

ent. (110.524 –526)
According to this, the Lord of Heaven has the assembled underlings
and lesser spirits keep detailed records of people’s good and bad deeds,
which the Lord of Heaven then uses as the basis for moral judgments.

The world of the spirits is or ganized hierarchically, like a human gov-

er nment, with the Lord of Heaven at the top. Confession is impor tant

even after death, when the spirits of Ear th examine the sinner and

make the accuracy of the repor t the basis for the punishment to fol-
52 Tsuchiya Masaaki

low. The deeds recorded in the ledgers have to match those enumer-
ated during confession; if they don’t, the spirits will inter rogate for as

long as it takes the sinner to recognize his or her own evil.
Second, according to the legal thinking of the time, if a criminal
would acknowledge guilt and confess, he or she would be pardoned.

The
Hou Hanshu
has the stor y of Wu You, a famous judge who was
confronted with the case of Sun Xing, a tax collector who had taken

some of the state’s money to buy his father new clothes. The father,

however, was not pleased to receive illicit presents, and as a result,

Sun Xing felt deeply ashamed. He entered the private chamber of

the judge, taking the of fending gar ment along, and confessed his

deed. Wu You, acknowledging the sincere intention of both father

and son and accepting the latter’s confession, granted him for giveness

(64.2101). This stor y documents that criminals who would voluntar-

ily confess their deeds could expect to be pardoned in the ancient le-

gal system. Analogous to this, Heaven as the supreme judge of all hu-

manity would tend to grant for giveness to all those repenting and

confessing their sins.
Third, as did Sun Xing in the above case, many protagonists of pop-
ular cour t cases enter the judge’s private chamber and engage in self-

blame. The ter m used for this chamber is
he,
which literally indicates
a small side door, and by extension refers to the door way that sepa-

rates the ofﬁcial from the private quar ters of an imperial administra-

tor (see Sahara 1989; Yoshikawa 1998, 74). The
Hanshu
presents the
case of Tian Yannian who let himself be bribed by an enemy agent,

then closed the private side door behind him and entered into a

zhaishe,
or puriﬁcation room, to reﬂect in loneliness (90.3666). The
private quar ters of senior ofﬁcials were, therefore, often also puri-

ﬁcation places, or rooms for solitar y reﬂection and study.
In addition, rooms used for confession in the
T
aiping jing
are also
called
zhaishi,
or puriﬁcation chambers. It says: “If you want to escape
from danger, follow instr uctions carefully, enter a puriﬁcation cham-

ber and make sure the door is closed ﬁr mly behind you, lest others

enter by mistake” (154.723). As both types of rooms have the word
zhai
in their names, it is likely that they were facilities for the practice of

zhaijie,
or puriﬁcation and abstention. The same kind of room was also
called a
jingshi,
or chamber of tranquility, as described earlier. In ad-
dition, according to Yoshikawa’s recent studies, the chamber of tran-

quility had a close connection with the Han ofﬁcial
qingshi,
or cham-
ber of inter rogation, and the ter m
jingshi
as likely as not derived from
qingshi
(1998, 66). In other words, the religious practice of confession
Confession of Sins and Awareness of Self in the
T
aiping jing
53

in the Way of Great Peace closely imitated the legal practice of inter-
r
ogating criminal suspects.
Conclusion
Several notions have become clear in the above discussion. To begin,

the confession of sins in the Way of Great Peace is based on an un-

derstanding of
qi
as the key connecting factor between the universe
and humanity. Heaven, Ear th, and humanity are connected and in har-

mony through the continuous ﬂow of
qi
, and just as Heaven sends
down disasters if the king lacks vir tue, so it visits disease upon the body

if the human being commits evil. Sickness is a state in which the har-

mony of the body’s
qi
with the forces of the universe is inter r upted.
In such a state, the spirit inherent in the person feels deﬁled and ﬂees

to avoid contamination. It can be brought back into the mind and body

only through proper puriﬁcation and self-reﬂection. The confession

of sins, then, fulﬁlls the function of providing a means of puriﬁcation

of body and mind. As the sick person under goes confession, he or

she inevitably reﬂects upon the self and reaches a state of increased

self-awareness.
While this self-awareness ﬁnds expression in the punishments sin-
ners inﬂict upon themselves, it is also responsible for the sense of per-

sonal guilt and shame that is experienced during confession and self-

punishment. The latter is especially designed to anticipate any fur ther

suf ferings Heaven might inﬂict, and confession in this respect ser ves

to convey the sinner’s sincere consciousness of fault to Heaven with

the aim of engaging the latter’s compassion and ﬁnding for giveness.

The way sins are exonerated in the religion, moreover, closely reﬂects

the way in which ofﬁcial judges have dealt with criminals, punishing

them if unrepenting or leaning toward pardon if they confess. Heaven

and humanity are one system, or ganized in a parallel fashion, from

their overall str ucture to the speciﬁc actions under taken.
Confession and self-blame on occasion are for mal ways of enacting
even the death penalty for a given sin. In this case, they ser ve to avoid

death, and the sinner, fully penitent, vows never to commit the same

act again. In some ways, the for mal confession can thus be described

as a per for mance, during which the old self—the sinner—is left be-

hind and a new self—the penitent—is found. The per for mance,

moreover, involves close reﬂection on the existence and nature of one’s

self, from its beginnings through its development to its present state

and possible renewal. The
T
aiping jing
says accordingly:
54 Tsuchiya Masaaki

Y
our destiny rests mainly with yourself—why would you kowtow and in-
voke Heaven? Your own self is what has to be puriﬁed—who else could
you possibly cleanse? Your own self is what should be loved—who else

could you possibly love? Your own self is what should be per fected—

who else could you possibly per fect? Your own self is what has to be

r
eﬂected on—who else could you possibly have memories of? Your own
self is what has to be blamed—who else could you possibly ﬁnd guilt

in? . . .
If you continue to commit evil without stopping, negative repor ts
to Heaven will also never cease and you will bring death upon your-
self. You must know the r ules and precepts! If you commit evil, it is
you alone who will shoulder the burden—nobody else will take it for

you! (110.527)
This establishes a close and severe connection between the indi-
vidual’s sins and punishments. Despite the fact that overall the Later
Han dynasty saw individuals as par ts of lar ger community or ganiza-

tions and tended toward communal responsibility and punishment,

the Way of Great Peace, operating at the same time, strongly proposed

an individualistic vision of guilt and sin, emphasizing personal respon-

sibility. Although a comparison with Wester n religions might seem

simplistic, the early Daoist understanding of sin and blame is highly

similar in its complexity and cannot be put aside merely as a utilitar-

ian measure used for the curing of diseases. The intensity and depth

of self-awareness exhibited in the ancient writings on confession

clearly show that Chinese culture did not lack in self-reﬂection and

critical self-evaluation, but document that it had its own highly de-

veloped visions of the functioning and str ucture of human self and

consciousness.
T
ranslated by Livia Kohn
Notes
1. As the
Shenxian zhuan
says, “If they would unexpectedly fall sick, they
would for thwith proclaim their misdeeds; thus on the one hand they obtained
healing, and on the other were moved to shame and remorse which deter red

them from sinning again” (
O
fuchi
1991, 152).
2. The latter is described in the
Hou Hanshu:
Zhang Lu,
zi
Gongqi
,...or
ganized his followers into several
groups. Initial practitioners were “demon soldiers” (
guizu
),
later
they would advance to “libationers” (
jijiu
).
Each libationer was in
char ge of a group of followers, and those who r uled a par ticularly
Confession of Sins and Awareness of Self in the
T
aiping jing
55

lar ge group were known as “village heads” (
litou
).
They demanded
highest sincerity and faith and would not tolerate any falseness or
cheating. When someone fell sick, they would make him or her

confess all sins. (72.2435)
3. Fur ther ar guments for the early date of cer tain ideas and ter ms of the
T
aiping jing,
including a detailed examination of relevant sources, are found
in Fukunaga 1987; Maeda 1994.
4. He documents this point by examining not only early confessions among
Daoist movements but also Shen Y ue’s
Chanhui wen
(On Confession); Wang
Ji’s (1498 –1583)
Zisong
(Self-Criticism); Zhu Hong’s (1535 –1615)
Zize
(Self-
Accusation); Liu Zongzhou’s (1578 –1645)
Renpu
(Life Chronolog y); and
other works, especially of the Ming and Qing dynasties. See Wu 1996. Other

studies of the subject include Tsuchiya 1994; and on the Wester n aspects, es-

pecially Foucault 1997.
5. This reﬂects mainstream Chinese cosmolog y. See
Huainanzi
7;
Chunqiu
fanlu
13.
6. The text has, “If a person has a sin within his belly, why would his face
be red?” For more on shame in the
T
aiping jing,
see Miyakawa 1983, 489.
7. A similar ar gument can be made from Shen Y ue’s
Chanhui wen;
see Wu
1990, 209.
Bibliography
Bokenkamp, Stephen R. 1997.
Early Daoist Scriptures
. W ith a contribution by
Peter Nickerson. Berkeley: University of Califor nia Press.
Forke, Alfred. 1972.
Lun-Heng: Wang Ch’ung’s Essays
. 2 vols. New York: Paragon.
Originally published 1907.
Foucault, Michel. 1997. “ Technologies of the Self.” In
Michel Foucault’s Ethics:
Subjectivity and Tr uth,
ed. by Paul Rabinow, 223 –252. New York: The New
Press.
Fukui K
o
jun. 1936 –1937. “ Taiheiky
o
no ichik
o
satsu.”
W
aseda daigaku T
o
y
o
shi
kai kiy
o
vols. 1 and 2.
———. 1987a. “D
o
ky
o
no kisoteki kenky
u
.” Tokyo: Ris
o
sha. Also reprinted
in
Fukui K
o
jun ch
o
saku sh
u
vol. 2. Kyoto: H
o
z
o
kan.
———. 1987b. “ Tenshid
o
to bukky
o
no k
o
sh
o
.” In
Fukui K
o
jun ch
o
saku sh
u
vol. 1. Kyoto: H
o
z
o
kan.
Fukunaga Mitsuji. 1987.
D
o
ky
o
shis
o
shi kenky
u
. Tokyo: Iwanami.
Giles, Lionel. 1948.
A Galler y of Chinese Immor tals
. London: John Mur ray.
K
awai Koz
o
. 1996.
Ch
u
goku no jiden bungaku
. Tokyo: S
o
bunsha.
Knobloch, John. 1994.
Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works.
Books 17–32 vol. 3. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Kobayashi Masayoshi. 1991. “ The Celestial Masters Under the Easter n Jin and
Liu-Song Dynasties.”
T
aoist Resources
3.2:17– 45.
Kuo, Li-ying. 1994.
Confession et contrition dans le bouddhisme chinois du Ve au Xe
siècle
. Paris: Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient.
Maeda Shigeki. 1994. “Zaishutsuhon ‘Taiheiky
o
’ ni tsuite.” In
D
o
ky
o
bunka e
no tenb
o
,
ed. by D
o
ky
o
bunka kenky
u
kai,153 –179. Tokyo: Hirakawa.
56 Tsuchiya Masaaki

Mather, Richard B. 1979. “K’ou Ch’ien-chih and the Taoist Theocracy at the
Nor ther n Wei Cour t, 425 – 451.” In
Facets of Taoism
, ed. by Holmes Welch
and Anna Seidel, 103 –122. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Miyakawa Hisayuki. 1983.
Ch
u
goku sh
u
ky
o
shi kenky
u
. Kyoto: D
o
h
o
sha.
Nickerson, Peter. 1996a. “
Abridged Codes of Master Lu for the Daoist Community
.”
In
Religions of China in Practice,
ed. by Donald S. Lopez Jr., 347–359. Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press.
O
fuchi Ninji. 1957. “ Taiheiky
o
no raireiki ni tsuite.”
T
o
y
o
gaku
27.2: 252–276.
———. 1991.
Shoki no d
o
ky
o
. Tokyo: S
o
bunsha.
———. 1997.
D
o
ky
o
to sono ky
o
ten
. Tokyo: S
o
bunsha.
Pei, Y iwu. 1990.
The Confucian’s Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional
China
. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Sahara Yasuo. 1989. “K andai no kangi to zokuri ni tsuite.”
T
o
h
o
gakuh
o
61:95 –163.
Schafer, Edward H. 1951. “Ritual Exposure in Ancient China.”
Har vard Jour-
nal of Asiatic Studies
14:130 –184.
T
suchiya Masaaki. 1994. “Gokan ni oker u shika to shuka ni tsuite.” In
D
o
ky
o
bunka e no tenb
o
,
ed. by D
o
ky
o
bunka kenky
u
kai, 271–293. Tokyo: Hirakawa.
W
ang Ming. 1960.
Ta
iping jing hejiao
. Beijing: Zhonghua.
———. 1984.
Daojia he daojiao sixiang yanjiu
. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue
chubanshe.
W
ilhelm, Hellmut. 1971.
Frühling und Herbst des Lü Bu-wei
. Düsseldor f:
Diederichs.
Y
amada Toshiaki. 1994. “D
o
ky
o
ni oker u saih
o
no seiritsu.” In
Ajia ni oker u
sh
u
ky
o
to bunka,
ed. by T
o
y
o
daigaku kenky
u
han, 309 –338. Tokyo: T
o
y
o
University.
———. 1999.
Rikuch
o
d
o
ky
o
girei no kenky
u
.
T
okyo: T
o
h
o
shoten.
Y
oshikawa Tadao. 1987. “Seishitsu k
o
.”
T
o
h
o
gakuh
o
59:125 –162.
———. 1992. “Rikuch
o
Zui-T
o
jidai ni oker u shuky
o
no f
u
kei.”
Chugoku shi-
gaku
2:151–174.
———. 1994. “Ch
u
goku rikuch
o
jidai ni oker u shuky
o
no mondai.”
Shis
o
1994/4:99 –118.
———. 1998.
Ch
u
gokujin no sh
u
ky
o
ishiki
. Tokyo: S
o
bunsha.
Y
oshioka Yoshitoyo. 1970.
D
o
ky
o
to bukky
o
vol. 2. Tokyo: Kokusho kank
o
kai.
———. 1976.
D
o
ky
o
to bukky
o
vol. 3. Tokyo: Kokusho kank
o
kai.
Zheng Zhenduo. 1957.
T
angdao pian.
Beijing: Gudian.
Confession of Sins and Awareness of Self in the
T
aiping jing
57

3
“Opening the Way”
Exorcism, Travel, and Soteriolog y
in Early Daoist Mor tuar y Practice
and Its Antecedents
Peter Nickerson
The Celestial Masters in Chinese Religious Histor y
Zhang Daoling and his followers clearly ef fected a religious revolution.
They inaugurated a new dispensation that deﬁned itself, then as now,

not in relation to Buddhism or “Confucianism,” but rather in antithe-
sis to the false gods whom the benighted populace worshipped with

blood of ferings. Though the early Daoists spoke of high antiquity, of

the Yellow Emperor, Y u the Great and the famous immor tals of the
Zhou dynasty
,...
the social histor y of Daoism begins with the found-
ing of the Way of the Celestial Master in the second centur y
a.d.
Thus, I am proposing to use the word
Daoist
only in refer ring to those
who recognize the historical position of Zhang Daoling, who worship

the pure emanations of the Dao rather than the vulgar gods of the

people at lar ge, and—I may add—who safeguard and perpetuate their

own lore and practices through esoteric rites of transmission (Strick-
mann 1979, 165 –166).
A working deﬁnition of Daoism more elegant and practical than
Michel Strickmann’s has yet to be proposed. In one stroke —by high-
lighting the essential distinction between Daoism and the popular re-

ligion of sacriﬁcial god-cults and related practices —it freed Daoist stud-

ies from that tired sinological notion according to which “all that which

is neither Buddhism nor Confucianism is Daoism.” In another respect,

however, the view that Daoism appeared as an entirely unprecedented

(“revolutionar y”) alter native to a debased popular religion of blood

sacriﬁce has been shown to be in need of revision. Lar gely owing to a

great expansion in the excavated archaeological record and resultant

work on Han and pre-Han magico -religious traditions (see, e.g.,
58

Harper 1978; 1982; 1985; 1987; 1998), a new appreciation of the pre-
histor y of Daoism has emer ged.
Of special signiﬁcance for our purposes is Anna Seidel’s work on
the “tomb ordinances” or “tomb contracts” (
muquan
and related ar ti-
facts) of the Han, especially the genre of “grave-securing writs” (
zhenmu
wen
):
texts from the Latter Han (ﬁrst–second centuries
c.e.
) written
on ear thenware jars and buried together with the dead (see Seidel

1982; 1987a; 1987b). Written as edicts emanating from a Celestial

Monarch (Tiandi) and delivered by his Envoy (Tiandi shizhe), the

grave-securing ordinances command a minor spirit-bureaucracy of the

tomb to conduct the deceased to the under world (which also has its

own magistrates, prisons, and systems of taxation and cor vée) and

place him or her securely in the char ge of the under world adminis-

tration. According to Seidel, the people of the Han who used the writs

expected that the dead would be treated like criminals: because of mis-

deeds committed when alive, they would be imprisoned by the au-
thorities. The grave-securing writs, therefore, also sought the “libera-
tion” (
jie
) of the dead—that is, their release from the prisons of the
ear th to the secure dwellings of their tombs (Seidel 1987a; 1987b).
1
The religion of the grave-securing writs was both bureaucratic and eth-

ical, in Seidel’s analysis. The motif of judicial trial for past sins, fol-

lowed by imprisonment and release, has remained central to Chinese

death ritual until today.
Though it does not possess all the features Seidel identiﬁed with
the “religion of the Celestial Monarch,” a rather typical grave-securing

writ, from the late second centur y, reads, in par t, as follows:
In the second year of Xiping, in the twelfth month [early 174], whose
ﬁrst day is
yisi,
on the sixteenth day which is
gengshen,
the Envoy of the
Celestial Monarch declares to—the r ulers of the left, the right, and the
center of the Zhang family’s three mounds and ﬁve tombs, the Assis-
tant of the Sepulcher, the Director of the Sepulcher
,...
the Hostel
Chief of the Gate of the
hun
-soul, . . . and the others, [and also] dares
to announce to the Assistant of the Mound, the Sire of the Tomb, the
Subter restrial Two Thousand Bushel Ofﬁcials, . . . the Squad Chiefs of

Haoli, and the others:
T
oday is auspicious and good, and for no other reason [is this an-
nouncement being made], but only because the deceased, Zhang Shu-

jing, had a bar ren fate, died young, and is due to retur n below and [en-

ter] the mound and tomb.
The Yellow Monarch [Huangdi] gave bir th to the Five March-
“Opening the Way” 59

mounts, and he r ules over the registers of the living. He summons the
hun
- and
po
-souls, and r ules over the records of the dead. . . .
2
For this reason are of fered: medicine for exemption from forced la-
bor, with the desire that there will be no dead among those of later gen-

erations; nine roots of ginseng from Shangdang, with the desire that
they be taken in replacement of the living; lead men, to be taken in re-
placement of the dead; and yellow beans and melon seeds, for the dead
to take to pay the subter restrial levies.
...
Let the odium of the soil be
driven of f, with the desire that evil be kept from propagating.
Once these orders have been transmitted, the civil ser vants of the
ear th shall be bound, and are not to trouble the Zhang household
again. Quickly, quickly, in accordance with the statutes and ordinances.
(Ikeda 1981, 273, no. 6)
Seidel cor rectly categorizes the “religion of the Celestial Monarch”
(
tiandi jiao
) that underlay the grave-securing writs as a type of “proto -
Daoism.” While it is not clear in the above document whether the
“odium of the soil” is the result of the deceased’s misdeeds or simply

the ir ritation of the ear th spirits as a result of the introduction of the

polluting corpse into their realm—the line between pollution and

moral malfeasance in early Chinese religion is often a ﬁne one —the

notion of a bureaucratic administration of the under world (the “civil

ser vants of the ear th”) overseen by a celestial deity and his underlings

clearly anticipates Daoist cosmolog y. In a later description, Seidel even

more boldly ascribes “many beliefs and practices of the early Daoist

church (e.g., the bureaucratized heavenly and nether worldly hier-

archies)” to “the religion of a literate class outside of ofﬁcialdom—

village elders, exorcists and specialists in funerar y rites —since at least

the ﬁrst centur y
c.e.
” (Seidel 1990, 237). The Daoist religion was less
of a novelty than accounts that contrast it only with spirit-mediumism

and sacriﬁcial cults would imply.
Nonetheless, Seidel concludes that Daoism involved an entirely “new
soteriological paradigm.” Daoism introduced into the bureaucratic

framework of the proto -Daoist religion of the Han grave-securing writs

the goals and lore of the elite immor tality cult, with its graceful tran-

scendents and fantastically ador ned celestial landscapes. Ordinar y

people could aspire to more than a drear y existence under the ear th

as resentful subjects of the administration of the shades. The Daoist

r
eligion promised, instead, “liberation” from death and promotion to
celestial transcendence (Seidel 1987a, 47– 48).
Angelika Cedzich has fur ther expanded this line of thought through
her ground-breaking analysis of the early Celestial Masters’ ritual of
60 Peter Nickerson

petitioning the celestial authorities (
shangzhang
) and the use of the
petitioning ritual in handling the spirits of the unquiet dead (1987).
In her analysis, the paradigmatic break between the beliefs about the

afterlife implied by the grave-securing writs and Daoist ideas of salva-

tion was even sharper than Seidel’s work might imply. The purpose of

the grave-securing writs was at its root exorcistic: their chief goal was

to get the potentially malevolent spirits of the dead away from the liv-

ing and keep them away. Only with the advent of the Way of the Ce-

lestial Master was an attempt made instead to save the dead, to
inte-
grate
them into a greater “social” body together with the living—the
bureaucracy of the Daoist church and the Daoist cosmos. In Daoism

the use of ritual to install the deceased in a secure and pleasant post

in the after world ensured the salvation of the dead. But the Daoists

thus did not simply propose a new kind of soteriolog y: by insisting on

salvation rather than mere exorcism, Daoists
created
the ﬁrst indige-
nous soteriolog y (see Cedzich 1987, 42– 60; 1993; Seidel 1988).
Implicit in the views of Strickmann, Seidel, and Cedzich is the idea
that the advent of Daoism, as represented by the Way of the Celestial

Master, involved a signiﬁcant r upture in Chinese religious histor y. The

early Daoists’ treatment of the dead, in which a soteriological ritual

and ideological paradigm was adopted in place of an exorcistic one,

meant a complete reconﬁguration of the Chinese religious universe.

Daoism promised salvation in heaven for the wor thy—in contrast with

the pre-Daoist and proto -Daoist notion of an afterlife for all in the Yel-

low Springs and/or the tomb. It thereby advocated, in Joseph Need-

ham’s ter ms, a conception of the afterlife that was other worldly and

ethically polarized—rather than this -worldly and nonethical (Need-

ham 1974, 77–113). Hence, one infers from these scholars’ analyses,

although the proto -Daoist religion of the grave-securing writs might,
like Daoism proper, have involved the idea of an after world bureau-
cracy that could hold the dead accountable for their misdeeds, the Ce-

lestial Masters and their heirs placed those beliefs within cosmologi-

cal and moral contexts that dif fered radically from what had gone

before.
The vocabular y with which the “Daoist revolution” is described—
New Dispensation, New Testament, refor mation, revolution—testiﬁes

amply to the roots of such periodizing schemes. Behind this period-

ization is an evolutionar y typolog y of religions that opposes “higher”

r
eligion—which is other worldly in its cosmolog y and has an after-
life that is ethically polarized, and an approach to the dead that is

so
teriological—to a more primitive antecedent that is this -worldly,
“Opening the Way” 61

does not apply ethical criteria to the deter mination of afterlife desti-
nations, and is sacriﬁcial or exorcistic in its dealings with the spirits of

the dead. Thus the issue of the place of Daoism in the histor y of Chi-

nese religion has come to be discussed in ter ms of questions about

death: the cosmolog y of the afterlife, the means of deter mining who

goes where, and the rites conducted in the attempt to secure good des-

tinations for the depar ted. This chapter suppor ts a claim that dif fers

signiﬁcantly from the views of the scholars discussed above: Daoist so-

teriolog y involved no revolution, no fundamental paradigmatic shift,

from the religious treatments of death that had preceded it.
Precursors of Daoism: Archaic Death Ritual
In ancient times, the hazards posed by death often were handled by

ﬁgures who might, with var ying degrees of speciﬁcity, be ter med

shamans. One of the earliest literar y traces of archaic, nonclassical

mor tuar y rites centers on the description of the
fangxiang shi
or “ex-
orcist.” According to the
Zhouli
(Rites of Zhou) of the War ring States
Period,
The duty of the
fangxiang shi
is to cover himself with a bearskin, [a mask
having] four eyes of gold, a black upper gar ment, and a ver milion lower
gar ment. Grasping his halberd and brandishing his shield, he leads the
hundred functionaries in the seasonal No [the “Great Exorcism” held

on the eve of the La, or New Year] in order to search through the rooms
and drive out pestilences. (3.475; see Granet 1926, 1:298; Kobayashi
1946; Bodde 1975, ch. 4; Boltz 1979)
In the Great Exorcism the
fangxiang
was assisted by 120 (or 240, 60,
or 24) youths and twelve dancers in animal masks and costumes, and
he invoked in an incantation twelve demon-animal ser vants to devour

the specters due to be exorcised. But what is of greatest impor tance

here is that the
fangxiang
was also said to have had duties during royal
funerals. The
Zhouli
continues,
In great funerals he goes before the cofﬁn. When the grave has been
r
eached he enters the pit and with his halberd strikes the four sides in
order to drive out the
fangliang
[demon]. (31.12a–b [3:475])
Other early shamanic ﬁgures involved with the dead included the
cour t shamans who exorcised corpses before r ulers might approach
them—and, of course, Shaman Yang (Wu Yang), who summoned the

soul in the
Chuci
(Songs of the South). It might fur ther be claimed that,
whether one ter ms all of them shamans or not, at the least these ﬁgures
62 Peter Nickerson

r
epresented a common type of archaic religious practitioner, one
whose activities involved exorcism, soul-summoning, and masked
dancing.
3
Y
ing Shao (c. 140 –206) comments concer ning the function
of masks in popular death ritual in a way that establishes a ver y close

link between masked per for mances and the summoning of the soul:
The
hun
-soul vapor of the deceased ﬂoats about. Therefore one makes
a grif fon head [mask] (
qitou
) to preser ve (
cun
) it. [The ter m
qitou
] in-
dicates that the head is monstrously huge. Sometimes the grif fon head
is called striking-the-pit (
chukuang
).
This is a special local ter m. (
Fengsu
tong yi
1.88;
Ta
iping yulan
552.10a [3.2501])
Y
ing Shao’s remark echoes the statement in the
Liji
(Book of Rites)
that after death the
hun
-soul vapor has “nowhere it does not go,
nowhere it does not go” (10.19b [5.194A]). However, for those who
practiced the rites described by Y ing Shao, this clearly was not regarded

as a good thing. Instead,
qitou,
“grif fon heads” (Schafer 1987, 78) or
spirit masks, were employed to keep the soul from wandering away (see

Lewis 1990, 312
n
106).
Given its role in the protection of the deceased—here the soul
rather than the body —together with what might be an allusion to the

exorcist’s striking of the sides of the grave-pit, the grif fon head mask

would appear to be linked, at least functionally, to the
fangxiang
. This
identiﬁcation is made explicitly in Duan Chengshi’s
Y
ouyang zazu
(Mis-
cellanea from Youyang), where the nature of the per for mances in-

volving the masks is also clariﬁed:
When a person dies nowadays, there is someone who acts and plays mu-
sic that is called “funeral music.” The grif fon head is that by which the

hun
-soul vapor of the deceased is secured. One name for [the per-
for mer] is Fright, because his clothing and coverings are frightening.

Others call him Crazed Suspicion (
kuangzu
).

If he has four eyes he is
called a
fangxiang;
if he has two eyes he is called a der vish. (13.69 –70;
see Kiang 1937, 92–93)
The grif fon head thus refers both to the mask and to the ritualist
who wore it. As shown by the numerous regional names provided by
Y
ing Shao and Duan Chengshi, there must have been many local vari-
eties of such funeral per for mances, involving masked players who

danced, perhaps in a state of ecstatic trance —the monster masks and

frenzied dancing cer tainly suggest shamanism.
4
Their work was proba-
bly intended to drive away the demons that would eat the corpse (a goal

attributed to the work of the
fangxiang
) and (at least by the time of the
Latter Han, when Y ing Shao wrote) also to prevent the soul from wan-
“Opening the Way” 63

dering or dispersing. The soul so protected was in all likelihood then
provided with per manent lodgings in the tomb.
These funeral rites must have been much like the Nuo, or Great
Exorcism, itself. While the Nuo was a seasonal rite aimed at specters

of age, dir t, and decay, the death rite sought to neutralize all the haz-

ards death created: for the deceased, attacks by demons of putrefac-

tion or by the ﬁerce demonic creatures the soul would encounter were

it to wander too far; for the sur vivors, the pollution of the corpse and

the potential hostility on the par t of the spirit of the deceased. The

central feature in both cases was the exorcistic masked dance by the

fangxiang
(or the related
qitou
) accompanied, Marcel Granet suggests,
by dr umming and “cris provoquaient des états d’extase et de posses-

sion” (Granet 1926, 333). Analysis has revealed a continuous tradition

of exorcism and shamanism that during funeral rites employed masked

dancing, music, and chanting.
The Post-Mor tem Jour ney in Daoist Mor tuar y Ritual
Many parallels in medieval Daoist texts can be found for the archaic

and proto -Daoist rites. Here I will examine just one, from the
Y
aoxiu
keyi jielü chao
(Breviar y of Rules, Rituals, Precepts, and Statutes Essential
to Practice; HY 463; see Cedzich 1987, 14 –15). The last two
juan
of
this work (15 and 16) contain precise instr uctions for the funerals of

Daoist priests, based on a tradition the ritual master Zhu Faman traces

to “the greater Master Meng,” Meng Jing yi (ﬂ. 480), as well as to three

other individuals: “the Lesser Master Meng,” identiﬁed by Isabelle

Robinet as Meng Zhizhou of the Liang (502–550; Robinet, 1977, 99);

and Shijing gong (Sir Stonewell) and Zhang Xu, whom I have not been

able to locate in other sources. Zhu presents his version as a “synthe-

sis” (
huihe
) of the work of his four predecessors, and he is so scr upu-
lous in his attribution of various sections of the ritual or dif ferent vari-

ations to his four sources that there is little reason to distr ust his claim

that he represents a tradition whose development over two centuries

or more was well documented.
The text is quite detailed and represents, to my knowledge, a rela-
tively untapped source for the study of medieval funerals. Par ticularly

notewor thy is the way in which the classical for m is retained—the rite

is divided into the standard categories found in the
Y
ili
(Protocols and
Rites) and other early ritual texts, such as the “lesser dressing” (
xiao-
lian
) of the corpse, the “greater dressing” (
dalian
),
or cofﬁning, and
so for th, and the same general sequence is followed. At the same time,
64 Peter Nickerson

new Daoist procedures are inter woven into that str ucture. This sug-
gests that there was little inherent conﬂict between Daoist (and quite

likely Buddhist) mor tuar y ritual and “Confucian” ritual for ms until

that conﬂict was created by the Neo -Confucians of the Song (see Davis

2001).
The
Y
aoxiu keyi’
s funeral for priests shows how the Daoist synthesis
of the late Six Dynasties and the Tang incorporated both of the key

tributaries of the lar ger stream of the Daoist ritual tradition, not only

the Lingbao scriptures, but also the Way of the Celestial Master. This

is also bor ne out by the
Zheng yi lun
(Discourse on Upright Unity) at-
tributed to Meng Jing yi.
5
It ar gues precisely for the unity of the Way
of the Celestial Master and the revelations of Lingbao: “ The teachings

of Zhang [Daoling] and Ge [Xuan, ﬂ. 200; traditionally the ﬁrst re-

cipient of the Lingbao scriptures] are entirely the same and share a

single function” (HY 1218, 3b2).
Continuities among archaic, proto -Daoist, and medieval Daoist
mor tuar y rites are evinced by two ritual documents whose use is pre-

scribed by the
Y
aoxiu keyi
. The ﬁrst of these, called an “Announcement”
(
yiwen
),
is, like the proto -Daoist grave-securing writs of the Han, in fact
a for m of tomb ordinance. (One dif ference between this document

and other tomb ordinances is the identity of the issuer of the An-

nouncement, the Celestial Elder [Tianlao], but this dif ference may

not be so great as initially appears.)
6
It is to be written either on plain
silk or paper, recited during the ceremony, and then placed in the

cofﬁn for burial together with the corpse.
The “Announcement” in the
Y
aoxiu keyi
ﬁrst provides a for m for
listing the scriptures, registers, and talismans received by the depar ted

during his lifetime (which may or may not be placed together with

the corpse in the tomb), together with the other grave goods: cloth-

ing and the ar ticles appropriate to the priestly profession, such as ink

stone, paper, br ushes, petition-table, and incense bur ner. The text

continues:
The Celestial Elder announces to—the Heavenly One and the Ear thly
T
wo; . . . the Elders of Haoli; the Two Thousand Bushel Ofﬁcials be-
neath the soil;
...
the Inspector of the Gate of the
Hun
-soul;
...and
the Envoys in Char ge of Talismans:
7
Now (so -and-so), a disciple of the Three Caver ns, from (such and
such a) village, township, district, commander y, and region, a male bor n

in (such and such a) year, who lived (so many) years, died this month

on (such and such a) day at (such and such a) time. Having declared

his lifespan exhausted, suddenly he gave up [his life] in order to be
“Opening the Way” 65

transfor med anew
.
His
hun
-soul will ascend to heaven, and his for m
will enter the ear th to dwell. Now he is going to retur n to a brick tomb
established on a mountain in (such and such a) township and village.
(So -and-so) when he was alive abandoned the profane and followed
a Master, requesting that the Way allow him to leave the world to seek
lear ning and to wear at the waist the great scriptures, talismans, char ts,
and declarations of the Three Caver ns of Shangqing. He is car r ying all

of these back to the Grand Y in (Taiyin), along with winter and summer
clothes, or naments, and implements, altogether including (such and
such) varieties, his pine cofﬁn and the gear used for the funeral and
the burial and the preparations therefor.
When this talisman ar rives, attentively lay to rest and conceal his
for m and bones; vigilantly guard the scriptures and treasures; guide,

cap, and gird him. Order your subordinates to greet and escor t him,

and not to impede him. Let him go directly and without obstr uction

to his place of concealment. Do not allow the demons of other sur names
dwelling [in graves] nearby, to left or right, or to east, west, south, or

nor th, to appropriate his name or assume his sur name, thus falsely giv-
ing rise to theft. Clearly receive these talismanic orders; do not disobey

them. Let all be in accordance with the statutes and ordinances of the

Nüqing Edicts of the Demon Laws of the Grand Mysterious Capital.
(
Y
aoxiu keyi
15.14ab; see Nickerson 1996)
The text attributes this for m of Announcement to (the greater) Mas-
ter Meng (16.4b); it should, therefore, date from about the year 480.
Despite the passage of time and the emer gence of the mature Daoist

tradition, the “Announcement” here still resembles ver y closely the

Han grave-securing writs: besides the overall similarity of for m—the

identical roles of the Celestial Elder and the Celestial Monarch’s En-

voy, the members in common of the under world pantheon, and the

“talismanic orders” that must be obeyed “in accordance with the

statutes and ordinances”—the “Announcement,” like the writs, seems

primarily to be concer ned with securely placing the deceased, to-

gether with his grave goods, in the tomb, the “place of concealment”

(
zangsuo
).
The post-mor tem jour ney’s ﬁnal destination seems less than
inviting.
Soteriolog y in the Medieval Daoist Synthesis
But as the second key ritual document in the funeral directions of the

Y
aoxiu keyi
shows, the overall intent of the mor tuar y rite remains so-
teriological, in a manner that is highly consistent with the jour ney par-

adigm, which I will tr y to show is characteristic of the Daoist tradition
66 Peter Nickerson

as a whole. The text prescribes the sending up of a petition (
zhang
)
in conjunction with the burial of the document in the tomb—as does
the early Lingbao work
Miedu wulian shengshi miaojing
(Miraculous
Scripture of Salvation through Extinction by Reviviﬁcation of Corpses

through Fivefold Reﬁnement, HY 369; see Bokenkamp 1989). The

for m of petition set out in the
Y
aoxiu keyi
r
eads, in par t, as follows:
[Since the deceased had become] bound by his sins and his [allotment]
of trespasses had been ﬁlled, his body became exhausted and his spirit
depar ted. In this month on (such and such a) day at (such and such
a) time he took his leave of heaven and ear th and sank forever down

to [the realm of ] the ofﬁcials of the soil. Having [prepared] the pre-
cious scriptures, talismans, char ts, ritual implements, clothing, and
other ar ticles he possessed in life, we then today at (such and such a)

time sealed [them together with] his enshrouded and encofﬁned
corpse in the mound and sepulcher.
We
fear that in life [the depar ted] may have committed a capital
crime, or that the demons of stale vapors [that enforce] prohibitions

and taboos or the wicked and false sprites of mountains and rivers will

block the deceased and not open the way. Also we fear that the sub-

ter restrial r ulers of the four seasons, the Elders of Haoli, the Assistant

of the Mound and the Sire of the Tomb, and the Subter restrial Two

Thousand Bushel Ofﬁcials will not lay him to rest and conceal him.
Respectfully we list the scriptures and funerar y objects and trans-
fer each item as per the document. And respectfully we prostrate our-

selves on the ear th and of fer up a petition, inviting our superiors —
the Envoy who Descends to the Corpse, and the Lord and Clerks in
Char ge of Funerals —to descend together and super vise the funeral
and lay to rest [the deceased’s] skeleton and spirit, giving him ever-

lasting peace in Haoli and reincar nation in accordance with his kar ma.
(16.3b– 4a)
Here, ver y similar to the late-Han grave-securing writs, the princi-
pal fear sur rounding death and burial is that the deceased will be held
r
esponsible for sins, the “capital crimes” he committed during his
life, or for the breaking of the r ules gover ning burial—the “prohi-

bitions and taboos”—and that this will cause the chthonian spirits to

harass him.
The body/spirit dualism that dif ferentiates the Daoist from the
proto -Daoist handling of death is expressed strongly, if not without

some ambiguity. The death is ﬁrst described in ter ms of the exhaus-

tion of the body and the depar ture of the spirit (
shenjin shenshi
).

How-
ever, the deceased is treated as a unitar y being: we are told simply that
“Opening the Way” 67

“he”—the text fails to introduce a new subject, which therefore remains
the “disciple of the Three Caver ns, (so -and-so)” of the ver y ﬁrst line —

“sank forever down to [the realm of ] the ofﬁcials of the soil.” The pe-

tition next addresses only the burial of the grave goods and the corpse.
The initial body/spirit (
shen
/
shen
) bifurcation resur faces, however—
and even more explicitly—as the petition goes on to detail the fears

felt by the sur vivors on behalf of the deceased. The spirit, for which

the way to the beyond must be opened, is treated separately from the

body, which must be laid to rest in the tomb. Regarding the spirit, the

text wor ries that the demons of “stale vapors [that enforce] prohibi-

tions and taboos” might hold the deceased accountable for his sins

and thus “block [him] and not open the way.” But while the spirit is

to be sent on its way to heaven, the body is to be “laid to rest and con-

cealed” (
an yin
),
provided that the cooperation of those ubiquitous
spirits of the tomb—the Elders of Haoli, the Assistant of the Mound,

the Sire of the Tomb, and so on—can be secured. Corpse and spirit

must be brought to their appropriate, and separate, resting places so

that eventually the deceased may be “reincar nated in accordance with

his kar ma.” Or as the “Announcement” had stated: “His
hun
-soul will
ascend to heaven, and his for m will enter the ear th to dwell.”
The
Y
aoxiu keyi’
s funeral rite, in fact, demonstrates how Daoism’s
soteriological concer ns —and the related separation of spirit and

body—were handled within the pre-existing framework of mor tuar y

thought, according to which death was a jour ney requiring exorcistic

protection. The apparent ambiguities just pointed to—where the de-

ceased is alter nately treated as a single entity and as a compound of

body and spirit—point to a kind of historical accretion. As in the Han

grave-securing writs, the whole person of the deceased, including both

the material and the more ethereal components, is ﬁrst installed in
the tomb: he is to “go directly and without obstr uction to his place of
concealment,” “forever down to [the realm of ] the ofﬁcials of the soil.”

At that point, however, the destinies of body and spirit diver ge. Though

both might initially enter the tomb, it is the body alone that will re-

main in its dwelling place in the ear th, while the spirit will continue

on and ascend to heaven (or be reincar nated—this, of course, is an-

other ambiguity that per vades Chinese notions of post-mor tem fates).

Hence the
Y
aoxiu keyi’
s funerar y petition addresses two distinct groups
of spirits: one to settle the body in the tomb, and one to open the de-

ceased’s way to heaven.
The process of historical accretion that resulted in the constr uc-
tion of Daoist soteriolog y on the foundation of pre- and proto -Daoist
68 Peter Nickerson

traditions of mor tuar y exorcism was expressed in Daoist ritual through
a homologous temporal dualism. The ﬁrst jour ney of the deceased was

to the tomb and the under world; the soul alone subsequently under-

took the second jour ney—to the heavens or other pleasant after world

r
ealms. This appears to have been a common notion concer ning death
during the Six Dynasties. An example is Huangfu Mi, whose religious

world seems primarily to have been molded by New Text Confucian-

ism. In his writings, he expresses a similar view: while the corpse will

r
emain in the grave, the
hun
-soul will ascend after burial from the grave
to the heavens (see Knapp 1998).
The jour ney paradigm remained as the model used to represent
the transfor mations of death: the visible jour ney of the deceased to

the tomb was simply duplicated on the invisible plane as the ascent of

the spirit. Like the corpse, it too had to be bathed, clothed, and girded

(cf.
Miedu wulian jing
7b– 8a). Just as the
fangxiang
led the funeral pro-
cession, “opened the way” to the tomb, and then entered the grave

and drove of f the demons that might devour the deceased, and just

as proto -Daoist ritualists placed grave-securing writs in the tomb to

ﬁnalize the transfer of the deceased to the under world regime and

protect deceased and sur vivors from the “civil ser vants of the ear th,”

so medieval Daoists used their apotropaic documents to control the

spirits of the ear th and the tomb in order to secure both legs of the

jour ney of death. In fact, not only the funeral ritual of the
Y
aoxiu keyi,
whose beginnings go back to the late ﬁfth centur y, but also the c. 400

Lingbao scriptures and cer tain excavated Celestial Master tomb ordi-

nances, which span the period from 433 to 520, testify to the existence

of a common medieval Daoist conception of death and its dangers,

and of the ritual means to be employed in order to combat those dan-

gers (see Nickerson 1996, ch. 3).
Passage and Paradigm in Daoist Mor tuar y Rites
In her essay on the Han grave-securing writs, Anna Seidel has stated

that, by grafting notions of celestial transcendence that had developed

as par t of the immor tality cult of the Han elite onto the popular reli-

gion of the grave-securing writs, Daoism created a “new soteriological

paradigm” that “infused beauty, myster y and hope into the gray and

legalistic spirit hierarchy of the Celestial [Mon]arch” (Seidel 1987a,

47– 48). Whether one ﬁnds this to have been the case depends lar gely

on how one deﬁnes the ter m “paradigm.” Cer tainly, the notion that

there was somewhere beyond the grave for ordinar y souls to go (other
“Opening the Way” 69

than unhappily wandering the ear th) was new, and Seidel’s work shows
brilliantly how Daoists were able to incorporate the goal of celestial

transcendence into their bureaucratized (if not “gray and legalistic”)

rites for the dead.
8
However, if one understands “paradigm” in ac-
cordance with its basic meaning of “an accepted model or patter n”—

as Thomas Kuhn has deﬁned it in his application of the ter m to the

histor y of science (1970, 23)—what is interesting is that Daoism was

able to incorporate these new ideas
without developing a new patter n
for
r
epresenting the process of death and afterlife. From the standpoint
of the Kuhnian understanding of scientiﬁc revolutions, the duplica-

tion of the jour ney to the grave on a spiritual level would seem to have

been precisely the application of an old patter n—the exorcistically pro-

tected jour ney—to new “data”: the peregrinations of the soul of the

deceased in an expanded invisible world. Thus, to that extent, there

was no paradigmatic break, no revolution in soteriolog y.
More detailed morphological analysis of Daoist death ritual and
its predecessors will help substantiate this view. Here I employ the

(by now well-wor n) framework for the study of the str ucture of mor-

tuar y rites proposed by Ar nold van Gennep in his seminal
Rites of Pas-
sage
(1960, ch. 8, esp.163 –164). As a rite of passage, a funeral can be
considered in ter ms of three stages: (1) separation—whereby the ties

between the deceased and the sur vivors are severed; (2) an inter-

mediate, liminal phase of transition; and (3) incorporation, which

ef fects the entr y of the deceased into the land of the dead or other

new place or state. These divisions are by no means clear-cut: burial,

for instance, may be considered as separation, the removal of the

dead from the presence of the living, but also as a rite of incorpora-

tion, as in the case of societies in which the dead are considered to

dwell in the grave.
In early China, the most visible and tangible funerar y rite of pas-
sage was the funeral procession itself, whereby the depar ted was re-

moved from the dwellings of the living (separation), conveyed to the

burial site (transition), and lodged in the tomb, which at least from

Wa
r
ring States times onward was conceived as a home for the dead
(incorporation).
9
The centrality of the jour ney as a metaphor for the
transition from life, through death, to afterlife is thus per fectly un-

derstandable: the most impor tant rite of passage was, in fact, a plainly

visible jour ney. Moreover, while van Gennep has noted that “the jour-

ney to the other world and the entrance to it comprise a series of rites

of passage whose details depend on the distance and topography of

that world” (1960, 153), the reverse is also tr ue: when death is con-
70 Peter Nickerson

ceived as a jour ney, a culture’s notion of travel molds the conception
of death.
The mor tuar y passage was not the only kind of jour ney in early
China that necessitated exorcistic rites. Kiang Shao yuan, in his clas-

sic study of ancient Chinese beliefs associated with travel, and par-

ticularly their relationship to demonolog y, reached the following

conclusion:
The ancients, when they left their homes or their native states, believed
themselves to be continually exposed to the attacks of super natural be-
ings.
...
It was because of these immaterial beings that travelers needed
to fear so many difﬁculties, privations, and perils. In order to prevent
them, cope with them, or remedy them, the ancients made use of a great

number of recipes. (Kiang 1937, 127, 129)
Later Daoists and magico -religious practitioners of similar ilk con-
tinued such traditions. Best known is Ge Hong’s discussion in his
Bao-
puzi
([Book of ] The Master Who Embraces Simplicity) of “ascending
mountains” (
dengshan;
ch. 17), a dangerous under taking that required
the prior knowledge of all manner of esoteric techniques.
Closer to our immediate topic, when the
fangxiang shi
opened the
way for the funeral procession and drove the demons of putrefaction
from the grave —and the
fangliang
and its ilk were also among the most
common nemeses of travelers (Kiang 1937, 169 –216)—this constituted

in an impor tant sense simply another type of travel exorcism: the pro-

vision of apotropaic protection for a procession. In that role, the
fang-
xiang
followed in the footsteps of his patron deity, Chiyou, also a
guardian of processions.
10
A similar conver gence of travel and mor tuar y ritual is evident in
the case of the ancient travel sacriﬁces, the
zu
and the
ba
. The
zu
could
ser ve as a farewell ceremony for a living wayfarer but could also be

per for med before the setting out of the funeral cor tège, or as a sea-

sonal ritual to send of f (and hence exorcise) wandering souls. Chiyou

was also a tutelar y god of the
zu.
The
ba
was str ucturally homologous
with the patter n of sacriﬁce and exorcism outlined by Wang Chong

(27–91) with reference to the appeasement of ear th spirits of fended

by the constr uction of houses (or graves) and was car ried out (in con-

junction with the
zu
) to drive of f the malevolent spirits of the moun-
tain paths and make the traveler’s way secure. Rituals for travel, death,

and exorcism were thus inextricably linked (Nickerson 1996, 208 –

220).
Nor was this ritual inter relationship disturbed by the incorporation
“Opening the Way” 71

within the Daoist religion of new concepts centered around judgment
in the afterlife and the possibility that souls could enjoy either tran-

scendent bliss in the heavens or imprisonment and tor ture in the

“ear th prisons.” No radically new model for the post-mor tem jour ney

had to be developed. Instead, the pre-existing patter n was replicated

on an additional level: the endpoint of the initial jour ney—the tomb—

simply became the star ting point for a new peregrination. Burial placed

the deceased in the char ge of the spirits of ear th and tomb, after which

the second jour ney commenced. It was the function of the death rit-

ual to ensure that those spirits acted as dutiful escor ts for the soul’s

trip to the beyond, rather than as malevolent demons that could de-

tain the soul or attack it on the road.
11
The parallelism between the
physical jour ney of the funeral procession and the invisible jour ney

of the soul should not be surprising: that the treatment of the corpse

tends to be str ucturally parallel to beliefs about the fate of the soul

was the essential principle established in Rober t Her tz’s pathbreaking

study of mor tuar y rites (see Her tz 1960).
“Among the reasons for [the Daoists’] success,” Seidel writes, “was
no doubt the fact that they proposed a way out of the dilemma of phys-

ical death . . . [and] eventually came to devise means to save even those

who had already become wretched demonic shades” (1982, 225, 230).

The appeal of early Daoist soteriolog y must have been that much

stronger because of what it could provide, not only for those among

the living who were concer ned about their own fates, but especially

for all (nearly ever yone, if one follows Seidel’s reading) who were anx-

ious about their ancestors. Daoism allowed a means of redressing the

balance between unﬁlial, self-interested ter ror of the dead and ﬁlial

fear on their behalf.
Early Daoist mor tuar y ritual gained the salvation of the dead by
means of the transfor mation of the initially unﬁlial rites of exorcism

themselves. Ancient travel sacriﬁces and funeral rituals exorcised the

enemies of the traveler/deceased and, simultaneously, sent of f—and

thus, in ef fect, exorcised—the traveler/deceased him- or herself.

Daoist rites of salvation, by consigning the well-fed and properly

clothed soul securely to some pleasant region of the afterlife, similarly

made cer tain that the dead would not come back and har m the liv-

ing. On the other hand, the successful transfer of the dead to higher

r
ealms, while satisfying the ubiquitous imperative of the Han grave-
securing writs —“let living and dead take separate paths”—also satisﬁed

moral and emotional demands that one’s forebears be well treated.

Filial concer ns for the welfare of an ancestor were addressed through
72 Peter Nickerson

precisely the same means as were necessar y to exorcise the enemies
of the deceased—and the deceased her- or himself.
Indeed, one way in which Kuhn’s work may be more relevant to the
histor y of Daoism concer ns his idea that “paradigms gain their status

because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a

few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize

as acute,” and, therefore, “those unwilling or unable to accommodate

their work to [a prevailing paradigm] must proceed in isolation or at-

tach themselves to some other group” (1970, 19, 23). The early Daoists,

by proposing a bureaucratized version of the exorcistic ritual model

that could be embraced as a means of providing for the welfare of one’s

ancestors, might be understood as having developed such a new, more

successful paradigm of practice. Daoists designed their rituals in par t,

perhaps, with a view toward supplanting those who were the Daoists’

ritual competitors on the local scene, in par ticular spirit-mediums and

diviners, who were apt to have provided the primar y ritual recourse

for common people troubled by the consequences of death. The chief

factor af fected by the Daoist bureaucratization of popular ritual may

have been not ritual str ucture, in the broadest sense, but ritual per-

sonnel: bureaucratized religion is best handled by priestly bureaucrats,

not by illiterate shamans or spirit-mediums.
Early Daoist ritualists appropriated the paradigm of the jour ney—
as guided by apotropaic escor ts like the
fangxiang,
the mythic Chiyou,
or the Celestial Monarch’s Envoy—and adapted it to the framework of

the Daoist religion. That jour ney was then extended by replication: the

old model of the funeral procession (and the preparations for it, like

the bathing and clothing of the corpse) was duplicated in the for m of

the soul’s invisible jour ney from the tomb to transcendence. In insist-

ing upon bureaucratic means to handle the problem of salvation, which
previously had been dealt with (if at all) through sacriﬁce, as in the clas-
sical ancestral cult (in theor y denied to commoners), Daoism simply

emphasized the most bureaucratic aspects of an already bureaucratized

mor tuar y tradition (one that had begun during the mid-Easter n Zhou
12
and culminated with the grave-securing writs). The paradigm was old,

but exorcism and bureaucracy had been made newly soteriological.
Notes
1. Concer ning my use of “tomb ordinance” and related ter minolog y for
these ar tifacts, see Nickerson 1996, 134 –141. As to the philological deter mi-
nations that motivated text-critical and translation choices for the texts ad-
“Opening the Way” 73

duced in this study, the interested reader is again refer red to Nickerson 1996,
especially chs. 2–3.
2. The Yellow Monarch (Huangdi), according to Sarah Allan’s speculation,
was the r uler of the Yellow Springs (Huangquan), the earliest recorded un-

der world destination for the dead in Shang mytholog y. See Allan 1991.
3. The notion of shamanism has inspired much debate in comparative re-
ligious and anthropological literature and in the study of early Chinese his-

tor y. The present study lar gely circumvents this debate, resolution of which

is not essential to its purposes. Considering the centrality—in depictions of

Siberian shamans, in discussions of shamanism worldwide, and in por trayals

of the ancient Chinese
fangxiang, qitou,
and their ilk—of animal masks and
animal familiars, music, chanting, and dancing, and the recover y of wander-

ing souls, it seems appropriate to ter m those Chinese ﬁgures shamans as well.
4. The
Shuowen jiezi
(9A.446B– 47A) and its commentar y by Duan Y ucai
(1735 –1815) also conﬁr m the identiﬁcation of the grif fon head and the

fangxiang
.
5. The attribution of the
Zheng yi lun
to Meng Jing yi is made in the
Nanshi
(6.75.1879). However, the content of the essay as represented by the
Nanshi
does not cor respond with the text as preser ved in the Daoist canon. It seems

possible that the text as it appears in the
Daozang
was put together by a redac-
tor with a par ticular object in mind, namely the demonstration of the con-

sistency of the Celestial Master practice and the rituals of Lingbao.
6. The Celestial Elder is mentioned in several early sources of indeter mi-
nate date, and in the
Shuoyuan
of Liu Xiang (c. 79 – 6
b.c.e.
),
as a subordinate
of and adviser to the Yellow Monarch (18.11a). The Celestial Elder was also

r
eputed to have been par ticularly well versed in militar y af fairs. Thus, as a
subordinate of the Yellow Monarch, he ﬁts the same patter n as the Envoy vis -

à-vis the Celestial Monarch of the grave-securing texts and, therefore, would

seem quite an appropriate ﬁgure to proclaim tomb ordinances. Moreover,

since he is the instr uctor of the Yellow Monarch, he bears an additional re-

semblance to Laozi, who was the Monarch’s preceptor according to the Huang-

Lao school (see Seidel 1969)—and Laozi also issued commands to the ear th

spirits in excavated Daoist tomb ordinances (see Nickerson 1996, ch. 3).
7. In Daoism, these spirits become messengers “attached to talismans”:
zhifu
.
They play this role repeatedly in the moder n Zheng yi rituals described by John

Lager wey (1987, 88, 127, 131, 226 –227). However, these same
zhifu
also ap-
pear much earlier in the context of demonolog y and divination. See, for ex-

ample,
Qianfu lun
6.25.348, 358;
Lunheng
3.24.1014 –1015.
8. The origin of these novel soteriological concepts is a distinct and
difﬁcult question. The belief in “other worldly immor tality,” that is, “tran-

scendence” or
xian
-hood—as opposed to a state of “no death” (
busi
) that was
merely the prolongation of worldly longevity—may have ﬁrst appeared in the

late four th centur y
b.c.e.
(see Yü 1965, 91). The notion of a celestial tran-
scendence —of
tianxian,
such as those who “ascended to heaven in broad day-
light,” versus
dixian,
immor tals who remained on ear th—also emer ged early,
perhaps in the second centur y
b.c.e.
It was, however, only explicitly enunci-
ated later, in the Easter n Han or early in the Six Dynasties period (Needham

1974, 104 –111). Whether it was under the inﬂuence of Buddhism or simply
74 Peter Nickerson

as a result of inter nal development that the concept of “other worldly im-
mor tality,” which had become increasingly seen as dependent on moral be-

havior, fused with the juridical morality of the grave-securing writs is a ques-

tion that cannot be fully resolved here, although a fur ther possible motivation

will be suggested later.
9. The tomb may always have been the only dwelling place for the dead
in the case of commoners, to whom ancestral worship and its temples and

shrines were in theor y denied. Moreover, the same may have been the case

for members of the educated Han elite, even those who embraced dualistic

notions of the
hun
and
po
souls. See Seidel 1982, 107; Wu 1988, 96 –100. This
interpretation is, of course, consistent as well with my reading (following Bo-

kenkamp 1989) of the “Summons of the Soul” and other sources concer ning

the rite of soul recalling, which views that ritual lar gely as a post-mor tem pro-

cedure intended to guide the soul into the tomb.
10. Chiyou is best known as the enemy of the Yellow Monarch who met the
monarch’s accession with ar med opposition. However, the relationship be-

tween the two is more complex than simply that of vanquished and victor:

Chiyou is elsewhere named as a ser vant or escor t of the Yellow Monarch (
Han-
feizi
3.44.). More signiﬁcantly, Chiyou was associated closely with the
fangxiang
(
W
enxuan
2.19a [46A]; see Knechtges 1982, 217). Finally, Anna Seidel has
linked Chiyou to the Envoy of the Celestial Monarch (Seidel 1987a, 34 –37).
11. The links with travel ritual are also strengthened by the fact that cer-
tain of the spirits addressed in Daoist tomb ordinances were as much spirits

of roads as of tombs. For example, one passage in the
W
ushang biyao
of 574
(25.6a8 –10), quoting a Sanhuang text, mentions “Hostel Chiefs and Bound-

ar y Patrollers of the Crisscrossing Paths.” Hostel Chiefs appear numerous

times in tomb ordinance texts, and Boundar y Patrollers on the Paths are in-

voked in a Han grave-securing writ (Ikeda 1981, 271, no. 3).
12. For traditions of mor tuar y bureaucratization prior to the grave-securing
writs, see Falkenhausen 1994; Harper 1994; and Nickerson 1996, ch. 2.
Bibliography
Allan, Sarah. 1991.
The Shape of the Tur tle: Myth, Ar t, and Cosmos in Early China.
Albany: State University of New York Press.
Bodde, Derk. 1975.
Festivals in Classical China
. Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press.
Bokenkamp, Stephen R. 1989. “Death and Ascent in Ling-pao Taoism.”
T
aoist
Resources
1.2:1–20.
Boltz, W illiam G. 1979. “Philological Footnotes to the Han New Year Rites.”
Jour nal of the American Oriental Society
99:423 – 439.
Cedzich, Ursula-Angelika. 1987. “Das Ritual der Himmelsmeister im Spiegel
früher Quellen: Übersetzung und Untersuchung des liturgischen Materi-

als im dritten chüan des
T
eng-chen yin-chüeh
.” Ph.D. diss., Julius -Maximilians -
Universität, Wür zbur g, Ger many.
———. 1993. “Ghosts and Demons, Law and Order: Grave Quelling Texts
and Early Daoist Litur g y.”
T
aoist Resources
4.2:23 –35.
“Opening the Way” 75

Davis, Edward. 2001.
Society and the Super natural in Song China
. Honolulu: Uni-
versity of Hawai‘i Press.
Falkenhausen, Lothar von. 1994. “Sources of Taoism: Reﬂections on Ar-
chaeological Indicators of Religious Change in Easter n Zhou China.”
T
aoist
Resources
5.2:1–12.
Granet, Marcel. 1926.
Danses et légendes de la Chine ancienne
2 vols. Paris:
F.
Alcan.
Harper, Donald. 1978. “ The Han Cosmic Board (
Shih
). ”
Early China
4:1–10.
———. 1982. “ The
Wu
Shih Erh Ping Fang:
T
ranslation and Prolegomena.”
Ph.D. diss., University of Califor nia, Berkeley.
———. 1985. “A Chinese Demonography of the Third Centur y
b.c.
”
Har vard
Jour nal of Asiatic Studies
45:459 – 498.
———. 1987. “Wang Yen-shou’s Nightmare Poem.”
Har vard Jour nal of Asiatic
Studies
47:239 –283.
———. 1994. “Resur rection in War ring States Popular Religion.”
T
aoist Re-
sources
5.2:13 –28.
———. 1998.
Early Chinese Medical Literature: The Mawangdui Medical Manu-
scripts
. London: Kegan Paul.
Her tz, Rober t. 1960. “A Contribution to the Study of the Collective Repre-
sentation of Death.” In
Death and the Right Hand
. Trans. by Rodney and
Claudia Needham. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.
Ikeda On. 1981. “Ch
u
goku rekidai boken r yakk
o
.”
T
o
y
o
bunka kenky
u
jo kiy
o
86:193 –278.
Kiang Chao -yuan. 1937.
Le voyage dans la Chine ancienne, considéré principale-
ment sous son aspect magique et religieux
. Trans. by Fan Jen. Shanghai: Kelly
& Walsh.
Knapp, Keith. 1998. “ The Religious V ision of the Third Centur y Writer and
Recluse Huangfu Mi.” Paper presented at the conference “Society, Cul-
ture, and Religion in Medieval and Early Moder n China: In Celebration

of David Johnson’s Sixtieth Bir thday.” University of Califor nia, Berkeley.
Knechtges, David R., trans. 1982.
W
enxuan or Selections of Reﬁned Literature
vol.
1. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kobayashi Taichir
o
. 1946. “Hos
o
kueki k
o
.”
Shinagaku
11:401– 447.
Kuhn, Thomas. 1970.
The Str ucture of Scientiﬁc Revolutions
. Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press.
Lager wey, John. 1987.
T
aoist Ritual in Chinese Society and Histor y
. New York:
Macmillan.
Lewis, Mark. 1990.
Sanctioned V iolence in Early China
. Albany: State University
of New York Press.
Needham, Joseph. 1974.
Science and Civilisation in China
vol 5.2. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Nickerson, Peter. 1996. “ Taoism, Death, and Bureaucracy in Early Medieval
China.” Ph.D. diss., University of Califor nia, Berkeley.
Robinet, Isabelle.
Les commentaires du Tao tö king jusqu’au VIIe siècle
. Paris: Mé-
moires de l’Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises.
Schafer, Edward. 1987. “Consolidated Supplements to
Matthews
.” Berkeley:
private distribution.
76 Peter Nickerson

Seidel, Anna. 1969.
La divinisation de Lao tseu dans le taoïsme des Han
. Paris:
Publications de l’Ecole Francaise d’ Extrême Orient.
———. 1982. “ Tokens of Immor tality in Han Graves.”
Numen
29:79 –114.
———. 1987a. “ Traces of Han Religion.” In
D
o
ky
o
to sh
u
ky
o
bunka
, 21–57.
Festschrift for Akizuki K an’ei. Tokyo: Hirakawa.
———. 1987b. “Post-Mor tem Immor tality, or: The Taoist Resur rection of the
Body.” In
Gilgul: Essays on Transfor mation, Revolution and Per manence in the
Histor y of Religions
, ed. by S. Shaked, D. Shulman, G. G. Stroumsa, 223 –237.
Leiden: E. J. Brill.
———. 1988. “Early Taoist Ritual.”
Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie
4:199 –204.
———. 1990. “Chronicle of Taoist Studies in the West, 1950 –1990.”
Cahiers
d’Extrême-Asie
5:223 –347.
Strickmann, Michel. 1979. “On the Alchemy of T’ao Hung-ching.” In
Facets
of Taoism: Essays in Chinese Religion
, ed. by Holmes Welch and Anna Seidel,
123 –192. New Haven: Yale University Press.
V
an Gennep, Ar nold. 1960.
The Rites of Passage
. Trans. by Monika B. V izedom
and Garbrielle L. Caf fee. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wu
 Hung. 1988. “From Temple to Tomb: Ancient Chinese Ar t and Religion
in Transition.”
Early China
13:78 –115.
Yü, Y ing-shih. 1965. “Life and Immor tality in the Mind of Han China.”
Har-
vard Jour nal of Asiatic Studies
25:91.
“Opening the Way” 77

4
T
raditional Taxonomies and
Revealed Texts in the Han
Mark Csikszentmihàlyi
The subject of this chapter is the limitation imposed by the use of tra-
ditional taxonomies on the writing of the early histor y of Daoism. As

a preface to this discussion, it is wor th brieﬂy exploring another area

in which the restrictiveness of these taxonomies has clearly been

demonstrated. Recent archaeological discoveries in China, in par tic-

ular the ﬁnds at Mawangdui and Guodian, have catalyzed the reeval-

uation of traditional categories used to describe late War ring States

and Qin-Han thought. The discover y of the texts originally identiﬁed

as the
Huangdi sijing
(Four Classics of the Yellow Emperor) has led to
widespread speculation about the nature of the categor y Huang-Lao,

a ter m usually rendered in English as the “Yellow Emperor and Laozi,”

ﬁrst used around 100
b.c.e.
by Sima Qian in the
Shiji
(Historical
Records; see Kond
o
1997). The discover y of versions of the
W
uxing
pian
(Essay on the Five Kinds of Action) at both sites provides an op-
por tunity to reﬁne our understanding of the Zi Si and Mengzi strain

of the early Ru tradition, ﬁrst mentioned as a distinct categor y in the

third centur y
b.c.e.
text
Xunzi
(Writings of Master Xun; see Pang
1980). These are only two of the many texts that have given intellec-

tual historians an oppor tunity to put old wine back into old bottles —

that is, to pour textual content that had long been missing into con-

tainers bearing labels that have been preser ved. At times, these labels

have been applied without analyzing how such newly excavated texts

are related to received categories. Speciﬁcally, the practice of reading

a text labeled “Huang-Lao” as the product of a tradition that is dif-

ferent from the Ru tradition assumes these labels had distinct socio-

logical meanings when the texts were composed and that these mean-

ings were mutually exclusive.
1
81

I will question this assumption in the ﬁrst par t of this chapter by
adopting a skeptical approach to the received taxonomies and by at-
tempting to draw a set of analytical distinctions that the use of these

taxonomies obscures. Based on these distinctions, I will propose a new

map of War ring States and Qin-Han textual production, one that is

based on dif fering sociological conditions of production rather than

on received taxonomies. Finally, I will use this map to locate conti-

nuities between self-cultivation practices used by divination and med-

ical specialists in the Han and some of the practices of early Daoist

communities.
One of the criteria that will be central to this examination is the
means by which authority is ascribed to a text. In par ticular, attention

will focus on a categor y of text characterized not by its link to a wor-

thy minister or famous sage of the past, but by its revealed nature or

its quality of incipience in natural patter ns. There has been a long-

standing controversy over the degree to which War ring States texts like

the
Laozi
are connected with the foundational Daoist movements of
the late Han, what is still sometimes misleadingly refer red to as the re-

lation between “philosophical” and “religious” Daoism. This chapter

ar gues that the latter movements must not be studied in isolation from

their antecedents but suggests that the
Laozi
is not the right place to
star t. By attempting to establish a continuity between second-centur y

Daoist communities and their precursors in the semi- ofﬁcial and pri-

vate academies of the Han, I will outline a genealog y connecting late

Wa
r
ring States self-cultivation practices, Han medical and divination
traditions, and early Daoist communities.
The Sociolog y of Early Chinese Traditions
Any sociological approach to religious traditions must begin by ac-

knowledging the impor tant pioneering ef for t of Max Weber to develop

a typolog y of such traditions in general and to describe Chinese tra-

ditions in par ticular. Weber’s treatment of Confucianism and Daoism

in
The Religions of China
(1951) has been justly criticized for its ahis-
torical approach to China. Authors such as Br yan S. Tur ner have

rightly pointed out the problems inherent in Weber’s assumption of

the timeless and continuous qualities of the “East” (1981, 277–278).
2
W
eber’s sociolog y posits the existence of several types of religious
founder, but these ideal types are for the most par t based on Indo -

European models. The application of this typolog y, in
The Sociolog y of
Religion
(1963), was the occasion for Weber’s pronouncement that Con-
82 Mark Csikszentmihàlyi

fucius was an “academic teaching philosopher” and not a “prophet”
(1963, 53).
3
Since Weber saw early Confucianism not as the routiniza-
tion of the charisma of a sage leader but, instead, as a dif fusion of other

aspects of Chinese society, he did not see it as the same kind of phe-

nomenon as some Wester n religious movements. An example of a ver y

dif ferent picture is Asano Y
u
ichi’s recent por trait of Confucius as a
charismatic founder ﬁgure in the Weberian sense, one who had the

implicit goal of setting up a new social order to succeed the Zhou

(1997, 17).
As this example demonstrates, the fact that the same labels are ap-
plied over time to ver y dif ferent social entities complicates the task of

historicizing early Chinese religious traditions. Therefore, the ﬁrst step

in reﬁning the sociological understanding of religious traditions in

early China must be to examine historical descriptions of these tradi-

tions and the circumstances of the composition of these descriptions.
What were the traditions in early China? The simplicity of this ques-
tion is deceptive, because descriptions of the early Chinese intellec-

tual landscape do not employ unifor m ter ms and criteria. As men-

tioned above, many taxonomies of these traditions imposed labels on

earlier periods in a post-facto manner. Some writers divided the land-

scape based on the content of a set of texts (e.g.,
zongheng
),
others on
a “motto” or basic philosophical position (e.g.,
ming
),
and others on
the putative authorship of, or central ﬁgure in, a set of texts (e.g., Mo).

T
exts themselves may be grouped by their primar y referents (i.e., what
other text is quoted as canonical, e.g., the categor y of the “six attain-

ments” [
liuyi
], generic [e.g., “militar y,”
bing
] or for mal qualities [e.g.,
“poetr y,”
shi
]), the basic questions posed or the answers supplied to
these questions (e.g., “law,”
fa)
, or even the primar y metaphors used
to illustrate these questions and answers (e.g.,
dao
).
Finally, as in the
case of the “classicists” (Ru), a social or ofﬁcial group might also be

the basis of a categor y. In other words, there is nothing approaching

a standard rationale for grouping individuals or texts. In the absence

of such a rationale, scholars resor t to the use of the widely varied types

of categor y mentioned above for the simple reason that such categories

hold historical precedence.
As a result, these varied categories are used as units of a common
cur rency, and the dif ferences between their par ticular natures are di-

minished or ignored. For example, when the sufﬁx
jia
is afﬁxed—as
it routinely is to all but a couple of the cited examples —these groups

are often used as if they were of the same sociological type. The use

of such traditional categories has the potential to obscure the socio-
T
raditional Taxonomies and Revealed Texts in the Han 83

logical dif ferences among early traditions because the categories
themselves are treated as similar in kind. Indeed, the early Chinese

conception of what constituted a “tradition” was, to a lar ge extent, con-

tingent on when the judgment was being made.
This chapter will distinguish three stages in the constr uction of
taxonomies that led to the or thodox bibliographical categories in-

corporated into the standard histories during the Han dynasty. The

ﬁrst was the existence of socially distinct institutions predicated on

the transmission of practice during the Spring and Autumn period.

The second was the isolation of master– disciple transmission from its

broader social context as par t of a late War ring States ef for t to make

an ideological point about inconsistencies inherent in that type of

transmission. The third was the emer gence of conventional identi-

ﬁcations of social categories, in which projections of divisions that ex-

isted in gover nment and society deﬁned taxonomies.
These three progressive stages may be distinguished based on the
nature of the criteria singled out to divide the intellectual landscape:

institutional, interpretive, and generic. The sense in which these

ter ms are used will become clear as each stage is treated speciﬁcally;

they are never completely descriptive of each individual stage of tax-

onomy. However, they do reﬂect the reality that taxonomies were

compiled for radically dif ferent reasons in dif ferent periods and also

emphasize the need to examine the motives for their compilation crit-

ically. At the same time, it is impor tant to acknowledge that new cate-

gories are suited to the nature of this par ticular inquir y in the same

way that the labels cur rently used for early Chinese traditions were

suited to the interests of those who developed them.
The Communities of Confucius and Mozi
The prototypes for War ring States models of transmission were the

master– disciple groupings of the Spring and Autumn period, spe-

ciﬁcally those of Confucius and Mozi. While there is considerable ev-

idence that the groups around these two ﬁgures functioned as au-

tonomous communities that distanced themselves from society, this

seems not to have been the case for later social groups asociated with

them. While the evidence indicates that one facet of the communities

sur rounding Confucius and Mozi was the master– disciple transmission

of teachings, it was only one facet of what appear to have been com-

plex and independent social or ganizations.
According to the infor mation about Confucius in the
Lunyu
(Ana-
84 Mark Csikszentmihàlyi

lects) and later sources that describe the composition of the
Mozi
(Writ-
ings of Master Mo) or the dynamics of the “Mohist” community, both
Confucius and Mozi constr ucted institutions that operated inde-

pendently of the social str ucture. Confucius established a number of

measures designed to separate his community of disciples from the

customs and values of the broader society. One type of regulation that

Confucius instr ucted his disciples to obser ve was economic. Just as We-

ber’s “prophet” eschews a regular salar y, since “charismatic domina-

tion is the ver y opposite of bureaucratic domination,” and “rejects as

undigniﬁed any pecuniar y gain that is methodical and rational” (We-

ber 1946, 247), so too Confucius taught his disciples that value derived

from ritual context. Thus Confucius accepted meat from the nobility

that he ser ved (
Lunyu
7.7) and cherished those who sought his coun-
sel. “Even if it was a car riage and horses, if it was not sacriﬁcial meat,

he did not make a ritual bow” (10.23). In this way, the earliest Confu-

cians sought to set themselves apar t from ordinar y society by sus-

pending accepted economic criteria of value and replacing them with

criteria derived from a ritual system of exchange (see also Csikszent-

mihàlyi 2001, 265 –273).
The followers of Mozi for med what was possibly an even more dis-
tinct community. While his ﬁrst- and second-generation followers were

not so geographically centralized as those of Confucius in Lu, there

are indications that the dif ferent groupings were strictly hierarchical.

A later chapter of the
Zhuangzi
(Writings of Master Zhuang) says that
the dif ferent divisions of the Mo lineage “took the ‘Great Master’ [
juzi
]
as their sage” (ch. 33, 10b.1079); it then describes several dif ferent

groups of followers. The Great Master was able, in the words of Jiang

Boqian, to inspire other Mohists to “go through ﬁre and water” and

even sacriﬁce their lives.
4
One anecdote from the
Lüshi chunqiu
(Spring and Autumn Annals of Mr. Lü) reveals that these communi-

ties maintained a separate legal code from the state within which they

dwelt, executing a patricide despite the contrar y r uling of the leader

of the state of Qin (55 –56).
5
According to the
Zhuangzi,
among the
other singular customs obser ved by the Mohists was the lack of cere-

monies at bir th and death (10b.1079). These dif ferent laws and prac-

tices cer tainly functioned to separate the followers of Mozi from their

contemporaries.
These two models indicate that the early followers of Confucius and
Mozi lived in communities founded on the maintenance of values dif-

ferent from those of the society at lar ge, values that qualiﬁed them to

ﬁll a par ticular social role. Members of the Confucian community were
T
raditional Taxonomies and Revealed Texts in the Han 85

often asked to ser ve as stewards (
zai
) of the estates of wealthy landown-
ers (e.g.,
Lunyu
6.5, 6.9, 6.14), but they were expected to continue to
adhere to the alter native system of value, and in some instances this
meant not following their employer’s wishes. So, for example, when

a disciple ser ving as a steward helped the clan that employed him to

collect taxes and added to their already exceptional wealth, Confucius

expelled him from the Ru community (
Lunyu
11.17). Similarly, the
values of Mohist communities were ideally suited to their par ticular

r
ole, that of militar y defensive specialists, in that absolute allegiance
to a leader and a commitment to the equal distribution of resources

were impor tant in a city under siege. The emphasis on praxis was so

strong in these communities that both groups in some way substituted

a dif ferent set of relationships for the biological ties of family.
Wa
r
ring States Taxonomies
Late War ring States writers looked back to the Spring and Autumn

Period as foundational, yet their accounts make it clear that social con-

ditions had changed radically since then. While these later writers dis-

cussed the latter-day followers of Confucius and Mozi, they reduced

the social equation to one variable: the transmission of teachings from

one individual to another. This aspect was isolated and made the model

for complex lines of crossgenerational transmissions of teachings as

par t of an attempt to diminish the authority of master– disciple trans-

mission itself. Taxonomies of the intellectual landscape in three im-

por tant late War ring States texts all use the names of individuals and

dif ferentiate these individuals by their teachings or their interpre-

tation of earlier teachings. This may be seen from an examination

of three taxonomies in late War ring States texts. The
“Xianxue”
(Renowned Lear ning) chapter of the
Hanfeizi
(Writings of Master Han
Fei) divides Ru and Mo lear ning into eight and three groups of de-

scent, respectively, each associated with a par ticular War ring States

ﬁgure.
6
The
“T
ianxia”
(The World) chapter of the
Zhuangzi
constr ucts
ﬁve (or six) rather dif ferent divisions of non-Ru thinkers, each rep-

re
sented by one to three ﬁgures, based on criteria that var y from in-
ter nal practices to philosophical positions.
7
The
“Fei shier zi”
(Against
the Twelve Masters) chapter of the
Xunzi
condemns six pairs of
ﬁgures, which are dif ferentiated according to their behavior, the con-

tent of their teachings, and their methods of misleading others.
8
In
each of these cases, little mention is made of the Spring and Autumn

period communities sur rounding Confucius and Mozi or of latter-day
86 Mark Csikszentmihàlyi

sur vivals of their customs or str uctures. Instead, the emphasis is on
the names of individuals and on the fragmentation of the transmis-

sion over generations.
The reason for their emphasis on fragmentation has to do with the
explicit rhetorical function that these three taxonomies per for m. The

Hanfeizi
taxonomy is the ﬁrst par t of a rhetorical strateg y to under mine
tr uth claims based on appeals to the authority of the ancient sage kings.

After outlining the descent groups from Confucius and Mozi, the

writer continues by obser ving that “what each (group) adopted and

ignored (from their founder) was dif ferent and contradictor y.” Thus

the
Hanfeizi
taxonomy is in itself a stage in an ar gument about the in-
applicability of past models to the present.
A similar assumption about the fragmentation of knowledge is ba-
sic to the
Zhuangzi
and is also the basis of the taxonomy in the
“T
ianxia”
chapter. There, the ﬁrst ﬁve descriptions begin with a sum-
mar y of a par ticular subgroup of the “ancient methods and tech-

niques” (Guo 10b.1069). Yet the understanding of moder ns, as con-

trasted with the complete understanding of the ancients, is at best

par tial:
The people of the world each act on their preferences, and on this ba-
sis for m their own method (
fang
).
It pains me that the hundred schools
move along without looking back, and in this manner will cer tainly

never unite. (Guo 10b.1069)
Because humanity has tur ned a collective back on the unity of knowl-
edge, the best that may be hoped for is the use of a method that pre-

ser ves one par ticular aspect of the methods of the ancients.
9
The per-
spective of the
Zhuangzi,
like that of the
Hanfeizi,
is that fragmentation
is an ir reversible historical process that is linked to the inability of con-

temporar y humans to nullify their desires. In tur n, these desires lead

individuals to focus on one par ticular aspect of the teachings of pre-

vious generations.
The taxonomy of the
Xunzi
is exceptional in that while it also em-
phasized the inevitability of interpretive variation, it alone posited the

possibility of the cor rect transmission sur viving across generations.

Xunzi
believed that the “footprints of the ancient sages” could be dis-
covered by attending to the gover nance of the sage-emperors Yao and

Shun and to the righteous acts of Confucius and his disciple Zi Gong.

Never theless,
Xunzi
did accept the basic thesis of the degradation of
infor mation that is the basis of the critique of
Hanfeizi
and
Zhuangzi
.
Each of the three examples of late War ring States taxonomy is
T
raditional Taxonomies and Revealed Texts in the Han 87

presented as proof of the inevitability of the misinterpretation of
classical teachings and, as such, is an ar gument for either the superi-

ority of a novel system of gover nment (
Han Fei
),
a natural innateness
(
Zhuangzi
),
or a par ticular strain of Confucian fundamentalism
(
Xunzi
).
As a result, their “interpretation” of a par ticular ancient teach-
ing essentially dif ferentiates the groupings that are central to these

taxonomies.
T
axonomies in the Han Dynasty
During the Han, the criteria according to which previous writers were

categorized shifted once more, and again the reason for the shift had

to do with changes in the social situation. During the Spring and Au-

tumn period, the ter ms Ru and Mo refer red to communities bound

by distinct social relations; during the War ring States period, dif fer-

ent taxonomies were lar gely or ganized to illustrate dif ferences in in-

terpretation of teachings. For the Han, neither of these two explana-

tions sufﬁces to describe the complex situation. This is par tly the result

of centralization and the capacity for distribution of texts that the new

empire created and par tly the result of increased bureaucratization of

earlier modes of transmission. The resulting taxonomies were prima-

rily based on conventions sur rounding both ofﬁcial and private lear n-

ing and may be described as “generic,” even though they car ried over

elements of the earlier institutional and interpretive modes.
The most inﬂuential taxonomies of the Han period appeared in
this atmosphere, as par t of the standard histories
Shiji
and
Hanshu
(His-
tor y of the Han Dynasty). Sima Qian’s record of his father Tan’s dis-

cussion of the “Essentials of the Six Schools” (
liujia zhi yaozhi
) divides
those who “work on behalf of gover nment” into the following six

groups: yin-yang, Ru, Mo,
ming, fa,
and
daode
(130.3288). Each of these
groups is later discussed as a
jia
(with the
daode
group becoming the
daojia
) and are dif ferentiated from each primarily by the methods
(
shu
) that might be used to gover n, a use to which Sima Qian laments
that his father was never able to put them (130.3293).
10
The Sima taxonomy is similar to those of the War ring States period
in that the groups are ar ranged primarily by maxims and methods. In

no case is a group identiﬁed by its isolation from the social str ucture.

There are impor tant dif ferences, however, that mark this taxonomy

as being substantially dif ferent from both types of predecessors. First,

with the exception of the sur name Mo, proper names are not used to

describe the groupings, but instead, key methods are employed. That
88 Mark Csikszentmihàlyi

is, instead of refer ring to a founder ﬁgure, even when such a ﬁgure
existed, the groups are described according to methods tied to r uler-

ship. A second dif ference is that group membership is not constituted

by master– disciple transmission, but in the case of the Ru, at least, by

allegiance to a common project: “Now, the Ru take the ‘six attainments’

as their models (
fa
)” (
Shiji
130.3290). The Sima taxonomy is, there-
fore, tied to the bureaucracy, inasmuch as each group supplies a

method for a speciﬁc aspect of gover ning.
11
This relationship is also characteristic of the thir tieth chapter of Ban
Gu’s (32–92
c.e.
)
Hanshu,
the culmination of an earlier cataloging ef-
for t that began in 26
b.c.e.
There, Ban divides the written materials
that were the product of a sur vey into six categories, the texts of the

“six attainments,” the “various masters” (
zhuzi
),
“poetr y and rhyme
prose” (
shifu
),
“militar y texts” (
bingshu
),
“algorithms and techniques”
(
shushu
),
and “recipes and ar ts” (
fangji
).
These categories conﬁr m the
trends present in Sima Qian’s taxonomy. Most evidently, the treatise

is devoted not to a typolog y of names, or even methods of r ulership,

but to written materials. Ofﬁcials collected these materials according

to the nature of their position. The classics and “various masters” texts

were collected and catalogued by the ofﬁcials who would use these

texts: for example, the “recipes and ar ts” texts were the responsibility

of the physician Li Zhuguo (
Hanshu
30.1701). In this way, Ban’s bib-
liography was tied even more closely to the workings of the gover n-

ment than the Sima taxonomy.
The dominant rationale for taxonomies in the Wester n Han was
the product of a dif ferent project than that of the late War ring States

writers. As several recent examinations of the Han have emphasized,

the three-way homolog y between the body, the state, and the cosmos

was a dominant feature of Wester n Han intellectual life (see Sivin

1995). The taxonomies of Sima Qian and Ban Gu seek to or ganize the

existing types of exper tise in the image of the gover nment itself. Like

their War ring States predecessors, the Han writers assumed that orig-

inal knowledge degraded but still held out the possibility that the par ts

could be reassembled to reach that original knowledge again. This

stance may be seen from their use of the ter ms
dao
and
shu
“methods.”
For Sima Tan, the
daojia
was best able to select methods from each of
the other groups and “cause human essence and spirit to be uniﬁed”

(
Shiji
130.3289).
12
As such, the Sima taxonomy may be seen as ser ving
the same function as that of the
Xunzi,
to privilege one group as “com-
plete” among a number of groups that are par tially cor rect. Ban uses

the same metaphor in his discussion of the “various masters”:
T
raditional Taxonomies and Revealed Texts in the Han 89

The nine lineages [of the various masters] all arose when the kingly
dao
had already diminished, the feudal lords use strength to conquer.
The r ulers of this period each r uled for a generation, their likes and
dislikes leading them each in dif ferent directions. This is the reason
the
shu
of the nine lineages swar med for th and were created at the same
time. Each [lineage] drew on a dif ferent basis, promoting what they

were good at and taking it on the road. W ith these they united the feu-
dal lords. (
Hanshu
30.1746)
13
Ban Gu’s understanding is that the War ring States period was a time
when “methods” arose as expedient because the more complete
dao
had disappeared. Ban Gu uses the same metaphor of “methods” as the

constituent par ts of the
dao
—just as the variegated par ts of the bu-
r
eaucracy ﬁt together to create a functioning state, so too were the dif-
ferent genres of writing seen to cumulatively amount to the
dao
of the
ancients. This underlying metaphor provides insight into the reason

why the specialized bureaucracy of the new empire developed the type

of taxonomy that is seen in the writings of Sima Qian and Ban Gu.
The consecutive types of taxonomy outlined above are, of course,
painted with a broad br ush and, therefore, contain many generaliza-

tions. However, they do demonstrate real dif ferences in the motives

behind the composition of the taxonomies used to talk about early

China and suggest that, as a result, some of the categories used in dif-

ferent taxonomies may also be dif ferent in kind. If this is the case, then

it is quite possible that categories of dif ferent taxonomies might over-

lap or that a par ticular taxonomy might not be comprehensive. This

preliminar y conclusion lays the groundwork for the consideration of

a special subclass of sacred texts that emer ge unnoticed among the

categories of traditional taxonomies.
The Emer gence of the Categor y of Revealed Text
Because the categories of the Han dynasty reﬂect various earlier in-

stitutional and interpretive categories ﬁltered through a generic

framework deter mined by Han or ganizational for ms, they are clearly

not a reliable guide to the sociolog y of Han thought. While the ofﬁcial

Han taxonomies reﬂected the or ganization of the state, a telling al-

ter native is reﬂected in the second-centur y
b.c.e.
Huainanzi
(Writings
of the Prince of Huainan):
The average moder n person holds the ancient in high esteem, but looks
askance at the new. Those who work out ways must attribute them to
90 Mark Csikszentmihàlyi

Shennong [Divine Far mer] and Huangdi [Yellow Emperor], and only
then will they be admitted into the debate.
...T
oday, if the writings of
new sages were to be taken and labelled “Kongzi” [Confucius] or
“Mozi,” then there would cer tainly be many disciples who would mo-
tion with their ﬁngers and accept them. (ch. 19; 242, 244)
The two tiers of attribution the author complains about are wor th not-
ing. The ﬁrst claims the pedigree of the ancient sage-emperors, while

the second claims the pedigree of more recent sages. The types of writ-

ings that constituted the War ring States taxonomies, metonymically

r
epresented by Confucius and Mozi, are contrasted to writings on
methods that are attributed to ﬁgures fur ther in the past, like Shen-

nong and Huangdi.
The afﬁliation of texts with mythical sage-r ulers of antiquity such
as Shennong and Huangdi became increasingly common during the

Han. This practice may be seen as a version of the strateg y of “inventing

traditions” via the constr uction of ﬁctive lineages designed to privi-

lege a par ticular individual or text by providing it with a historical pedi-

gree.
14
As Eric Hobsbawm has shown for Britain, the creation of a
venerable past that grounds present institutions in a false cloak of time-

lessness is something done by many social groups, past and present

(Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983, 101–164). Similarly, as the
Huainanzi
points out, in the case of the Han, a par ticular type of text was valorized

by association with extraordinar y beings.
T
exts related to Shennong and Huangdi or their disciples consti-
tute a signiﬁcant percentage of some categories of Ban Gu’s biblio-

graphic treatise. In par ticular, these texts constitute 14 percent of the

“militar y,” 6 percent of the “algorithms and techniques,” and 28 per-

cent of the “recipes and ar ts” sections of the text (see Csikszentmihà-

lyi 1994, 145 –155, 216 –226, 256 –266). As such, had Sima Qian decided

to group methods by their putative originators, Huangdi and Shennong

might have constituted a categor y unto themselves. But Sima Qian did

not see the attribution of the text to an author as the ger mane crite-

rion for describing it in a taxonomy. So instead of incorporating

Huangdi into his generic taxonomy, Sima Qian grouped Huangdi with

Laozi and labeled par ticular individuals as followers of Huang-Lao

methods. This may have happened because Sima Qian was attempting

to confer authority by implicitly comparing the methods associated with

Huangdi and Laozi to texts associated with the Spring and Autumn

ﬁgures Confucius and Mozi, traditionally grouped as Kong-Mo.
This comparison provides insight into Sima Qian’s conceptualiza-
T
raditional Taxonomies and Revealed Texts in the Han 91

tion of the Huang-Lao tradition. Huang-Lao was a categor y created
by Sima Qian and retrospectively imposed on a handful of his con-

temporaries and ﬁgures in previous generations. Under this inter-

pretation, attempts at deﬁning Huang-Lao must begin by examining

Sima Qian’s characterization of Huang-Lao and the realities of his

time, and not necessarily the realities of those upon whom he imposed

the label Huang-Lao. This explains the lack of a “motto,” or general

principle, of the type used in War ring States taxonomies that may be

used to summarize Huang-Lao thought. Instead of a coherent “phi-

losophy,” Huang-Lao is most closely associated with a set of methods

deriving from a par ticular cosmological view during a par ticular his-

torical moment. This historical conclusion is consonant with Yates’s

r
ecent obser vation that texts associated with Huang-Lao are generally
based on the knowledge of natural categories and the manipulation

of yin-yang cor relations (1997, 10 –16). This type of categor y arose only

in the Han, and for this reason comparison with categories of earlier

pedigree is inherently problematic.
The methods associated with mythical sage-emperors like Huangdi
did not claim them as authors but often as recipients of revelation.

Han texts por tray Huangdi receiving advice on sexual hygiene from

Sunü (Pure Woman) and ascending to immor tality on the back of a

wattle-bearded dragon.
15
Nar ratives concer ning the apotheosis of
Huangdi found in the
Zhuangzi
and the
Shiji
share the motif that
Huangdi’s achievements were predicated on his ability to understand

Heaven and the spirit world.
16
Huangdi both symbolized and gave
historical grounding to a relationship between Heaven and hu-

mankind that was the basis of many self-cultivation methods.
As Anna Seidel has pointed out, the apocr yphal
chenwei
tradition
draws on a second type of revelation, texts not based on the testimony

of deities per se but rather incipient in the patter ns of the natural

world (1983, 336 –342). The representative work in this second cate-

gor y of revelation is the
Y
ijing
(Book of Changes), a set of patter ns
that might be accessed by divination because they are incipient in

the natural world. This is the message of the
“Xici”
appendix to the
Y
ijing:
Heaven suspends images that manifest good and bad for tune. The sage
images himself on them. The [Yellow] River produces its Char t and the

Luo [River] produces its Writing. The sage takes them as his standard.
17
The idea of texts that were in some sense incipient in the natural
world was the naturalistic counterpar t to the revelation of texts by an-
92 Mark Csikszentmihàlyi

thropomorphic deities. Since the simultaneous existence of both
views of the cosmos characterized the Han dynasty, the coexistence of

these two categories of revelation should not be surprising. Huangdi’s

use of “spirit stalks” (
shence
) associates him with this kind of natural
r
evelation, too. According to a stor y recounted in the
Shiji,
Huangdi
found a precious tripod (
ding
) containing “spirit stalks” that he used
to calculate the calendar, and only then did he ascend to Heaven

(12.467). The association of Fu Xi with the revelation of the
Y
ijing
and
of Huangdi with that of methods of transcendence are just two of many

instances of revelation texts that became popular in the Han.
As products of revelation, these books were incapable of becoming
obsolete in the same way that the War ring States authors felt was in-

evitable over time. A prose poem written circa 50
c.e.
by Feng Yan
demonstrates the linkage between natural sources of knowledge and

the writings of the ancient sages. Feng links the obser vation of the nat-

ural world, the empirical knowledge of the ef fects of plants and herbs,

and the work already done by Huangdi and Shennong:
To
 accord with the alter nations of the four seasons and distinguish
the beniﬁcence of the ﬁve types of ter rain,
To
 judge what is produced on the forested plains and hillsides and
discriminate what grows in the rivers and springs,
To
 cultivate the essential tasks of Shennong and select the extraordi-
nar y memorials of [Huangdi],
To
 pursue the transmitted teachings of Zhou Qi and surpass the lost
traces of Fan Li. (
Hou Hanshu
28b.90)
The idea of revelation is thereby grounded in precedent, and the suc-

cesses of the sage-kings demonstrate the authority of methods based

on the reciprocity between Heaven and human beings.
Revealed texts may be distinguished from the majority of texts in
circulation in the Han not only by their nonhuman origins but also

by the fact that they were transmitted in distinct ways. Li Ling notes

that texts associated with mantic practices circulated dif ferently from

“ofﬁcial” texts, and their divine or semidivine origins imbued them

with a value not necessarily associated with other works (1993, 9 –10).

Michel Strickmann, in his discussion of the revealed nature of the

Shangqing corpus, says that one of the more impor tant characteris-

tics of the revealed text is the value associated with the natural limi-

tation on its production (1979, 27). This limitation is consistent with

an esoteric mode of transmission. In the second centur y
b.c.e.
, “se-
cret” recipes were passed down in the salon of Chunyu Y i, who stud-
T
raditional Taxonomies and Revealed Texts in the Han 93

ied yin-yang medical theor y and from 181 to 179
b.c.e.
apprenticed
with Yang Qing. According to the
Shiji:
[Y
ang Qing] had [Chunyu Y i] discard his old recipes and replaced
them with his secret recipes. [Yang] passed on the books on [reading]
pulse of Huangdi and Bian Que; the method of diagnosing illnesses by

the ﬁve colors in order to understand whether a person will live or die;
and the method of choosing among various dif ferential diagnoses in

order to decide whether an illness was ter minal. (105.2794 –2795)
This master– disciple transmission of texts depends on the limita-
tion of supply to assure its value.
The authority of such texts derives from such a transmission, a value
r
eﬂected in the example of the
Zhenzhong hongbao yuan bishu
(Pillow
Book of Secret Writings from the Garden of Vast Treasures). This text
contained a recipe for tur ning metal into gold that Liu Xiang (d. 6

b.c.e.
) claimed to have memorized when his father, a Huang-Lao devo-
tee, attained the book while overseeing the prison in Huainan (
Han-
shu
36.1928 –1929). Another tale associated with “pillow books” is the
stor y of Meng Xi, a student of Tian Wangsun:
Because Meng Xi wanted to be famous he took the
Y
ijing
as well as other
texts on omen-lore and yin-yang based interpretations of disasters and
events, and falsely claimed his teacher Tian had been lying on his
deathbed with his head pillowed on his roll of inked slips, and that he

passed them on to Meng alone. (
Hanshu
88.3599)
As Seidel has obser ved, there is a connection between such texts and
later Daoist texts whose value is expressed by their nature as “pillow

books” (1983, 301).
18
A more direct link to the tradition of revealed texts in the Han is
the account of the
Baoyuan taiping jing
(Scripture of Great Peace and
Embracing the Prime) in the
Hanshu
. There, that text is the subject
of the same style of claim to revelation by the per fected emissar y of

Heaven, Chijingzi, or the “Master of Red Essence” (75.3192). This text,

the ﬁrst of several bearing the title
T
aiping jing,
bridges the gap be-
tween revealed texts that treat mantic practices and revealed texts as-

sociated with early Daoist movements.
Modes of Transmission of Revealed Texts
While not much is known about the sociological dimension of the cir-

culation of texts in the later Han, there is evidence of a revival of the

type of master– disciple transmission that was earlier identiﬁed with the
94 Mark Csikszentmihàlyi

institutional typologies of the Spring and Autumn period. The false
claim of direct transmission from an
Y
ijing
master to the student Meng
Xi notwithstanding, the increasingly popular private salons of the Han

were a place where revealed esoteric texts were passed on from mas-

ter to student. Two examples of salons (
suo
) will provide evidence of
this emphasis on direct master– disciple transmission: an early-Han ex-

ample from the
Shiji
and a later one from the
Hou Hanshu
.
A key to understanding the
Shiji
description of Huang-Lao is the
account of Y ue Chengong who, Sima Qian notes, “excelled at culti-

vating the doctrines of Huangdi and Laozi, became famous in Qi, and

was named ‘Wor thy Teacher’ [
xianshi
]” (80.2436). Y ue is identiﬁed
in the
Shiji
as the teacher of Tian Shu and Gai Gong, who later went
on to teach Chancellor Cao—all ﬁgures elsewhere identiﬁed with

Huang-Lao (54.2025, 104.2725). At his salon, located in the state most

closely identiﬁed with Huangdi, Y ue may have been identiﬁed as “Ju-

gong,”
19
a title with Mohist over tones (Takigawa 1986, 104). Sima Qian
likens the early-Han institution r un by Y ue to the master– disciple trans-

missions of the earlier Spring and Autumn period.
In the Easter n Han, transmission of methods in salons grew even
more popular, as shown by the example of Yang Hou (ﬂ. 109 –149
c.e.
),
a native of southwester n China. Yang Hou’s techniques include
tuchen,
r
efer ring to the char ts and apocr yphal texts that ser ved as the basis of
cor respondence theor y used to interpret por tents. After retiring from

his ofﬁcial position (a common patter n among such teachers), Yang

presided over the lar gest institution of Huang-Lao lear ning. Between

141 and 146
c.e.
[Y
ang Hou] specialized in Huang-Lao and [or ganized] the teaching
of students. Over 3,000 students had their names written into the reg-
ister
....
[When Yang died] his disciples set up a shrine where the Com-
mander y’s literar y ofﬁcials and scribes per for med a yearly feasting and
archer y ceremonial, as well as regular sacriﬁce. (
Hou Hanshu
30a.1050)
One of the students at Yang’s academy was Ren An (124 –202
c.e.
),
who lear ned Yang Hou’s methods so well that his contemporaries said
of him: “If you want to understand [Yang Hou], just ask Ren An”

(79a.2551). After studying with Yang, Ren An founded his own teach-

ing institution.
The continuities between these institutions and later ones associ-
ated with or ganized for ms of Daoism are suggestive but await fur ther

study. Another similarity between early Han institutions and early

Daoist communities is the title taken by the leaders of these groups.
20
T
raditional Taxonomies and Revealed Texts in the Han 95

Such conclusions about the social continuities among modes of
transmission of lear ning in the Han and in Daoist communities are

in one sense consistent with the general approach of some scholars

who have ar gued that the ter m
Daoism
had too often been applied
on the basis of ideolog y rather than social str ucture and had, there-

fore, been applied inappropriately. Strickmann inﬂuentially sum-

marized this position:
Whatever its ideological prehistor y, this religion came into social be-
ing with the Way of the Celestial Master [Tianshi dao] in the second
half of the second centur y
c.e.
, and continues under the aegis of its
successors and derivatives at the present day. (1978, 2)
Strickmann’s for mulation suggests that although previous pseudo -
Daoist movements shared ideological elements, the second centur y
c.e.
was the ﬁrst time that Daoism became rooted in the social back-
ground that infor ms it today. Taking Strickmann’s dictum seriously re-

quires that we subject the categories we use to critical scr utiny and pay

attention to the sociological context of the use and production of texts.

As this chapter has shown, the rise of the categor y of revealed texts

and the resulting social dynamics in the Han are sociological conti-

nuities between early-Han social groups and early Daoist communi-

ties. Given the historical evolution of Han-dynasty taxonomies in early

China, it should not be surprising that these taxonomies do not

r
eﬂect such social dynamics. This indicates that whatever the “ideo-
logical prehistor y” asser ted by traditional taxonomies, the “sociologi-

cal prehistor y” of early Daoist communities may be meaningfully

traced prior to the second centur y
c.e.
Whether this par ticular conti-
nuity may be pushed fur ther back is unclear, but recent work holds

out this possibility.
21
Though consonant with Strickmann’s method-
olog y, the above conclusions disagree with his speciﬁc result in regard

to the origin of the social for ms of Daoism.
While cer tain War ring States texts are cited as the “ideological” pre-
cursors of Daoism, it is often assumed that there were no signiﬁcant

forer unners to the social for ms that characterized the Celestial Mas-

ters and later traditions. In ter ms of the histor y of religions, the no-

tion that novel social and religious str uctures can spring up in this way

has a clear and inﬂuential predecessor, and that is the idea that divine

r
evelation set Christianity apar t from earlier religions. The inﬂuence
of this idea is such that ver y few histories of Christianity bother to re-

late it to other apocalyptic movements seeking independence from the

Roman Empire in the second and ﬁrst centuries
b.c.e.
(see Daniélou
96 Mark Csikszentmihàlyi

1964). The idea that Daoist social relations arose ex nihilo similarly
gives Daoism a uniqueness and impor tance that may have been nec-

essar y at a time when it was not taken seriously in Wester n religious

studies. The assumption that the social aspects of the Celestial Mas-

ters movement was created ex nihilo implies the same underlying val-

uation of that tradition and privileges the study of those social features

in a way that is typical of insider accounts of early Christianity.
22
These
preliminar y conclusions about continuities between cer tain Han tra-

ditions and early Daoism, then, might indicate a way to extend Strick-

mann’s concer ns with social relations in a direction he might not have

anticipated.
Notes
The author would ﬁnally like to acknowledge the suppor t of the Jesse Ball
duPont Religious, Charitable, and Educational Fund during the writing of
this chapter at the National Humanities Center, and the helpful comments

of Stephen R. Bokenkamp.
1. Recent writings by Qiu Xigui in China (1993, 249 –255) and Ikeda To-
mohisa in Japan (1993, 36 – 47) have ar gued that in the cases of the two texts

introduced earlier, the labels being applied to them do not quite match the

texts. For some primar y sources, the following conventions are used: (1) ref-

erences to the Standard Histories are to the Zhonghua punctuated edition

published in Beijing, e.g.,
Shiji
(1959) or
Hanshu
(1962); (2) references to
the Thir teen Classics refer to the Zhonghua reprint (1979) of the Qing dy-

nasty blockprint edition of Ruan Y uan’s (1764 –1849)
Shisanjing zhushu;
(3)
other collections cited frequently are the 1983 Beijing Zhonghua edition of

Zhuzi jicheng.
The exceptions are
Zhuangzi
and
Lüshi chunqiu,
which are ref-
erenced using Guo Qingfan’s
Zhuangzi jijie
and Chen Qiyou’s
Lüshi chunqiu
jiaoshi
(see below). The numbering of the passages in the
Analects
follows
D. C. Lau (1979).
2. What some have objected to as cultural essentialism was also, in ter ms
of its assumption that str uctural dif ferences between cultures may be ex-

pressed in religious for ms, a valuable counter weight to the universalist ap-

proaches to religions inherited from evolutionar y models popular in the late

nineteenth centur y. For example, it was Weber, along with C. K. Yang, who

ﬁrst emphasized the dif fuse nature of indigenous East Asian religions and con-

trasted them with the dominant European traditions possessing an or gani-
zation separate from the social str ucture. See Weber 1951, 143.
3. This problem illustrates a limitation of the application of the Weberian
conception of religion to early China. Because Weber’s discussions are for the
most par t restricted to independent and self-conscious movements, his per-

ception of the “dif fused” nature of early Confucianism leads him to view Con-

fucius as primarily a “philosopher.” For a more detailed critique of Weber’s

r
eading, see Csikszentmihàlyi 2001.
T
raditional Taxonomies and Revealed Texts in the Han 97

4. Jiang summarizes the Mohist hierarchy: “Mozi cer tainly was the ultimate
leader in his lifetime, but after his death the
juzi
became the leaders. Those
who subsequently became
juzi
derived their authority from the previous ones”
(1985, 224). Jiang probably bases this statement about self-sacriﬁce on the stor y
of Great Master Meng Sheng, who inspired his disciples to face death (Chen,

Lüshi chunqiu
, 1257–1258).
5. Note that the Mohists would be par ticularly deaf to giving a murderer
special consideration based on a family relationship because of their doctrine

of caring for all people equally regardless of kinship.
6. The Ru groups are named after masters Zi Zhang, Zi Si, Yanshi, Meng-
shi, Qidiao shi, Zhongliang shi, Sunshi, and Y ueshi. The Mo groups are called

Xiangli shi, Xiangfu shi, and Dengling shi. See
Hanfeizi jijie
49, in
Zhuzi jicheng
19.351.
7. Two groups are distinguished by practical as well as philosophical de-
scriptions: (1) Mozi and his disciple Qin Guli; (2) Song Bing and Y in Wen.

Three groups are dif ferentiated by doctrinal considerations: (3) Peng Meng

and his student Tian Pian, and Shen Dao; (4) Guan Y in and Lao Dan; (5)

Zhuang Zhou. A sixth ﬁgure is Hui Shi, but since the style of his description

dif fers greatly from that of the others, it is not clear that he is really par t of

the taxonomy (
Zhuangzi
10b. 1065 –1115).
8. These six groups are: (1) Tuo Xiao and Wei Mou; (2) Chen Zhong
and Shi Qiu; (3) Mozi and Song Bing; (4) Shen Dao and Tian Pian; (5) Hui

Shi and Deng Xi; (6) Zi Si and Meng Ke. Lu Wenchao notes that the last

pair does not appear in the parallel text of the
Hanshi waizhuan
(Han’s Sep-
arate Transmission of the
Poetr y
) and concludes that the passage condemn-
ing them was added by Hanfeizi and Li Si (
Xunzi jijie
6, in
Zhuzi jicheng
3.57).
9. This view is similar to the one expressed in the
“Jiebi”
(Explaining Un-
wor thiness) chapter of the
Xunzi:
“
Those of par tial lear ning obser ve a cor ner
of the Dao, but cannot understand its totality” (
Xunzi jijie
21, in
Zhuzi jicheng
15.262). According to the
Xunzi,
Confucius was the only one who was not par-
tial in this sense.
10. The implication is that to the degree Sima’s father Tan had a grasp of
the whole spectr um of methods that confer red authority, he was qualiﬁed to

do so.
11. That his disapproval over the bureaucratization of the Ru was one of
the primar y reasons that Sima Qian invented the categor y Huang-Lao and

tried to lend prestige to its members is the contention of Mark Csikszentmi-

hàlyi and Michael Nylan, “Constr ucting Lineages and Inventing Traditions

in the
Shiji
” (unpublished manuscript).
12. The relationship between
dao
and
shu
is similar to the way in which, in
Jia Y i’s (200 –168
b.c.e.
)
Xinshu
(New Writings), the
dao
is made up of a vari-
ety of speciﬁc
shu
. See Csikszentmihàlyi 1997.
13. Ban Gu also highlights the calculation involved in these techniques:
“Demolishing the great to make it into the small, paring down the distant to

make it into the near, this is how techniques of the
dao
do their breaking and
splitting, and are difﬁcult to see” (
Hanshu
30.1767).
14. During the Han, perceived age increased the authority and value of a
98 Mark Csikszentmihàlyi

text. The fact is lamented by Liu Jia (ﬂ. 157
b.c.e.
) in the second chapter of
the
Xinyu
(New Sayings). Lu ar gues that there is something that the present
and the past have in common: “[The common people] mistakenly value those
things that have been transmitted from ancient times and take lightly those

made in the present” (
Xinyu jiaozhu
in
Zhuzi jicheng
, 39).
15. Texts include
Lunheng
(6.12) and
Shiji
(12.468). See Yü 1964; Seidel
1969.
16.
Zhuangzi
6.467;
Shiji
12.467– 468. See Csikszentmihàlyi 1994, 87–94.
17.
Zhouyi zheng yi
(Proper Interpretation of the Book of Changes), ed.
Shisan jing zhushu
, 7.70. This text is probably a product of the third through
ﬁrst centuries
b.c.e.
See Petersen 1982.
18. Examples of such works in the bibliographic catalog of the
Jiu Tangshu
(Old Histor y of the Tang Dynasty) are the
Zhenzhong sushu
(Pure Pillowbook)
and the
Bian Que zhenzhong bijue
(Secret Pillowbook For mula of Bian Que).
See
Jiu Tangshu
205.5198, 207.5306.
19. The earliest link with the state of Qi is the reference to Huangdi in-
scribed in the mid-four th centur y bronze vessel called the
Chenhou Y inzi dui.
For a discussion, see Csikszentmihàlyi 1994, 70 –74. The
Jijie
commentar y to
the
Shiji
(80.2436) notes that some editions also read Y ue Jugong for Y ue
Chengong, and
Hanshu
37.1981 has Jugong for the same individual.
20. In 145
c.e.
a person taking the title “Yellow Emperor” (Huangdi) led
an insur rection in east-central China. It was suppressed, but three years later

the “Son of the Yellow Emperor” and the “Per fected” led two nearby insur-

r
ections. The more-involved but not completely successful Yellow Turbans
movement was an academy before it tur ned into a rebellion in 184. Its leader,

Zhang Jue, according to the
Hou Hanshu,
“took the title ‘Great Wor thy and
Exellent Teacher’ and attended to matters with the Dao of Huang-Lao.” Even

the ter m “Celestial Masters” is seen in the context of the Mawangdui materi-

als from the late four th or third centur y
b.c.e.
, when a ﬁgure named such
answers one of Huangdi’s questions. See
Mawangdui Hanmu boshu
3.145.
21. Harold Roth has convincingly demonstrated, through a comparison of
passages using meditative vocabular y in a variety of early texts, that common

for ms of meditation existed in the War ring States period (1991). These in-

digenous meditation practices were in some ways forer unners to later Daoist

practice.
22. This episode in the histor y of Daoism also diver ges in some impor tant
ways from the implicit precedent in the histor y of Christianity. First, Chris-

tianity is rarely conceived as being deﬁned by its continuous for m of social

or ganization; rather, it is seen in ter ms of the recognition of the authority of

a founder ﬁgure. This is not the case for later
daojiao,
especially in the light
of Kobayashi’s point that the ter m
jiao
was used only in the late Six Dynas-
ties and then in the context of the comparison with Buddhism (1990,

512–521). Second, Strickmann’s claim that Daoism “continues under the aegis

of its successors and derivatives to the present day” begs the question of what

degree of variation in social or ganization is per missible in such a compari-

son. Not only was the transmission of Huang-Lao during the Han accom-

plished through passing on revealed texts, but it ﬁt the patter n of “nuclear,

not hierarchical” dissemination that Strickmann proposes. The early Celes-
T
raditional Taxonomies and Revealed Texts in the Han 99

tial Masters tradition that grew out of the Five Pecks of Rice movement, then,
should not necessarily be looked upon as an original social for m that appeared

out of the blue as “Daoism” in the second centur y
c.e.
Rather, it could just as
well be examined as the most successful variation on a theme that star ted at

least three centuries earlier.
Speciﬁcally, the deep reﬂection demanded of the sage resembles the type
of meditation that scholars since Marcel Granet have theorized was the ex-

periential base of texts like the
Laozi, Zhuangzi,
and
Liezi
. While the conno-
tations of the expression “to attend to one’s solitude” are not well established,

Shimamori Tetsuo’s examination of six texts that use the phrase highlights

the solitar y nature of this approach to self-cultivation in the
W
uxing pian
(1979). On the sur face at least, this is not incompatible with the practice of

“concealing oneself in a remote place to model the for m within oneself [
nei-
xing
],” as recommended to the Yellow Emperor. According to the Mawang-
dui nar rative, prior to his decisive militar y victor y, Huangdi withdrew for

three years to a scenic mountaintop to car r y out the practice (
Mawangdui
hanmu boshu
1.65). These methods are at least par tially echoed in the
Wu -
xing pian
.
Bibliography
Asano Y
u
ichi. 1997.
K
o
shi shinwa.
T
okyo: Iwanami.
Chen Qiyou. 1984.
Lüshi chunqiu jiaoshi.
Shanghai: Xinhua.
Csikszentmihàlyi, Mark. 1994. “Emulating the Yellow Emperor: The Theor y
and Practice of Huang-Lao, 180 –141
b.c.e.”
Ph.D. diss., Stanford Uni-
versity.
———. 1997. “Jia Y i’s ‘Techniques of the
Dao
’ and the Han Confucian Ap-
propriation of Technical Discourse.”
Asia Major
10.1–2:49 – 67.
———. 2001. “Confucius.” In
The Rivers of Paradise
, ed. by D. N. Freedman and
M. McClymond. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W illiam B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Daniélou, Jean. 1964.
The Theolog y of Jewish Christianity
. Chicago: H. Regner y,
233 –308.
Elman, Benjamin. 1984.
From Philosophy to Philolog y: Intellectual and Social As-
pects of Change in Late Imperial China
. Cambridge, Mass.: Har vard Univer-
sity Press.
Guo Qingfan. 1961.
Zhuangzi jijie.
Beijing: Zhonghua.
Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. 1983.
The Invention of Tradition
.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ikeda Tomohisa. 1993.
Ba
o
tai kanbo hakusho gog y
o
hen kenky
u
. Tokyo: K
u
k
o
shoin.
Jiang Boqian. 1985.
Zhuzi tongkao.
Zhejiang: Guji.
Kobayashi Masayoshi. 1990.
Rikuch
o
doky
o
shi kenky
u
. Tokyo: S
o
bunsha.
Kond
o
Hiroyuki. 1997. “Ma
o
tai kanbo kankei ronsha mokuroku.”
Ch
u
goku
shutsodo shir y
o
kenky
u
1:251–258.
Li Ling. 1993.
Zhongguo fangshu kao.
Beijing: Renmin zhongguo.
Pang Pu. 1980.
Boshu wuxing pian yanjiu.
Shandong: Zilu shushe.
Peterson, W illard J. 1982. “Making Connections: ‘Commentar y on the At-
100 Mark Csikszentmihàlyi

tached Verbalizations
’
of the Book of Change.”
Har vard Jour nal of Asiatic
Studies
42:67–116.
Roth, Harold D. 1991. “Psycholog y and Self-Cultivation in Early Taoistic
Thought.”
Har vard Jour nal of Asiatic Studies
51:599 – 650.
Seidel, Anna K. 1969.
La divinisation de Lao Tseu dans le taoïsme des Han.
Paris:
Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient.
———. 1983. “Imperial Treasures and Taoist Sacraments: Taoist Roots in the
Apocr ypha.” In
Ta
ntric and Taoist Studies
, ed. by Michel Strickmann, 2:
291–371. Br ussels: Institut Belge des Hautes Etudes Chinoises.
Shimamori Tetsuo. 1979. “Shindoku no shis
o
.”
Bunka
42.3 – 4:1–14.
Sivin, Nathan. 1995. “State, Cosmos, and Body in the Last Three Centuries
b.c.”
Har vard Jour nal of Asiatic Studies
55:5 –37.
Strickmann, Michel. 1978. “ The Mao Shan Revelations: Taoism and the Aris-
tocracy.”
T’oung Pao
63:1– 64.
Tu
r
ner, Br yan S. 1981.
For Weber: Essays on the Sociolog y of Fate
. Boston: Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul.
W
eber, Max. 1946.
From Max Weber: Essays in Sociolog y
. Trans. by H. H. Ger th
and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press.
———. 1951.
The Religion of China
. Trans. by H. H. Ger th. Glencoe, Ill.: Free
Press.
———. 1963.
The Sociolog y of Religion
. Trans. by E. Fischof f. Boston: Beacon
Press.
Y
ates, Robin. 1997.
Five Lost Classics
. New York: Ballantine Books.
Yü, Y ing-shih. 1964. “Life and Immor tality in the Mind of Han-China.”
Har-
vard Jour nal of Asiatic Studies
25:80 –112.
T
raditional Taxonomies and Revealed Texts in the Han 101

5
Material Culture and the Dao
T
extiles, Boats, and Zithers
in the Poetr y of Y u Xuanji (844 – 868)
Suzanne Cahill
Yu
Xuanji, a poet, cour tesan, and Daoist nun, lived a shor t and vio-
lent life near the end of the Tang dynasty (618 –907
c.e.
).
Executed in
868 for murdering her maid, she gained a reputation in later histor y
and literature as a disr uptive woman who deﬁed social convention, sex-

ual and intellectual nor ms, and, ultimately, the law. Fifty of her po-

ems, probably less than a quar ter of her total output, sur vive today in

the
Quan Tangshi
(Complete Tang Poetr y), abbreviated
QTS
. Bio-
graphical accounts of her life ﬁrst appeared within a few decades of

her death. The sources agree on the bare outlines of her life.
1
Bor n to common people in the capital city of Chang’an, she was
mar ried as a secondar y wife to a student named Li Y i (
zi:
Zi’an). He
passed the imperial examination after about two years’ residence in

the capital. Y u Xuanji accompanied him when he retur ned home to

take up an ofﬁcial position. Li’s primar y wife, waiting at home all this

time, was unable to tolerate Y u Xuanji, so Y u moved out. Eventually,

she retur ned to the capital, where she lived in reduced circumstances,

working as a cour tesan. Soon she took holy orders as a Daoist nun

and moved to a convent known as the Belvedere of Universal Propriety

(Xianyi guan). Her convent was located close to the cour tesans’ quar-

ter in town, southwest of the imperial palace. All her adult life she wrote

poetr y and cor responded with other authors. In 868, accused of stran-

gling her maid, Luqiao, in a jealous rage, Y u was jailed, tried, and ex-

ecuted by decapitation.
2
Yu
Xuanji has always been a controversial ﬁgure: admired for her
talents and damned for her choices. Her stor y, linking sex, violence,

r
eligion, and talent, has fascinated writers and readers from the late
T
ang to the present. She appears in literature as the model of evil wom-
102

anhood that proper young ladies must avoid and reject. Tradition
teaches us that because she chose what to do with her own intellect

and sexuality, Y u Xuanji came to a ter rible end. The 1984 movie
T
ang-
chao haofang nü
(A W ild Woman of the Tang Dynasty), made by the
Shaw Brothers’ Studio in Hong Kong, agrees with her major ninth-

centur y biographer Huangfu Mei in taking this message from her life.

Critics have assumed that her Daoist vocation was insincere, disguis-

ing at best a broken hear t and at worst a promiscuous life. Even Rober t

van Gulik, who por trays the poet sympathetically in his 1968 Judge Dee

myster y,
Poets and Murder,
does not take her career as a Daoist nun se-
riously. Most editors of her works ar ranged the poems to tell the stor y

of a poor but gifted young girl, hur t by her lover’s rejection, who tur ns

for escape ﬁrst to religion and then to debaucher y. Her notorious rep-

utation as an executed criminal makes it difﬁcult to assess her contri-

butions to literature, Daoism, or women’s histor y in China.
If we want to know something about Y u Xuanji, her thought, and
her accomplishments, we cannot do better than to study her actual

writings in the context of her time. Many people consider the Tang

dynasty to be the golden age of Chinese poetr y because of the quality

and ubiquity of poetic expression during that era. Tang people from

all walks of life expressed themselves in verse on any occasion, private

or public. The many sur viving Tang poems provide a wonder ful re-

source for exploring medieval Chinese life, but they also have limita-

tions as primar y sources. Sometimes the exact circumstances that

prompted a poem can no longer be discovered; in such cases, our in-

terpretations rely par tly on inference. Conventions of language and

topic fur ther restricted poems. Finally, they alluded to a long tradi-

tion of past literature, not all of which is recoverable today. Y u Xuanji’s

poems in par ticular have often been preser ved with no infor mation

or with misleading infor mation about the events that elicited them.

She adheres, although often ironically, to Tang codes of subject and

style. She also draws, in a sophisticated and purposeful manner, upon

the writings of the past. Despite limitations that force us to speculate

about speciﬁc facts and situations, and despite constraints created by

convention and allusion, her poems disclose a wealth of infor mation

about the world of her thought. Her works reveal a star tling intellect,

an original voice, and a hear t longing for the Dao. She expresses her

intellect, voice, and feelings within the conventions of Tang poetr y.
3
This chapter investigates three images from Tang material culture
that recur in Y u Xuanji’s poetr y: textiles, boats, and zithers. I link her

use of these images with ideas about herself, female roles, the Dao,
Material Culture and the Dao 103

communication, and companionship. In exploring her use of images
from material culture, I hope to bypass Y u Xuanji’s seductive notori-

ety and move right to the hear t of her world of thought.
It is a commonplace of Tang poetr y that the description of a
woman’s clothing reveals the state of the woman; that a small boat rep-

r
esents the wandering soul; and that the zither refers to attempts to
express oneself. However, Y u Xuanji uses these conventions in many

unconventional ways. In her poetr y, images of textiles, boats, and

zithers express new and personal meanings, connected to her expe-

riences as a poet and as a Daoist nun. This paper examines her im-

ages to open a window into her world. When her poems are ar ranged

according to her use of these images, they tell a new tale: the stor y of

a poor but gifted young woman, disappointed in mar riage, who tur ns

to the consolations of poetr y, Daoist contemplation, same-sex eroti-

cism, and friendship. The multiple meanings of clothes, boats, and

music in the poetr y of Y u Xuanji can also illuminate medieval Chi-

nese Daoism, material culture, and women’s culture. Let us tur n now

to the poems, looking ﬁrst at textile images.
Images of Material Culture in the Poems
of Y u Xuanji: Images of Textiles
I begin with a shor t poem on a conventional subject that is star tling in

its power and rage. The congratulator y title is “Wandering to the South

T
ower of the Belvedere for Venerating the Per fected (Chongsheng
guan), Then V iewing the Place Where Names of New Exam Graduates

Are Inscribed.” Here Y u Xuanji commemorates an occasion upon

which she accompanies a group of new graduates of the imperial ex-

amination, an exam in which she could never par ticipate, leading to

jobs she could never obtain. On their outing, the group, like count-

less for tunate graduates before them, climbs the tower at a Daoist tem-

ple in Chang’an. Later on, in celebration of their accomplishment, the

members inscribe their names in order on a plaque at the Ci’en si

(Temple of Mercy and Compassion), a Buddhist temple not far away.

The poem conﬂates the two events. Y u Xuanji begins, conventionally

enough, with the distant view, then moves to the closer scene.
Cloudy peaks ﬁll the eye, releasing spring’s brightness;
One after another, silver hooks arise beneath their ﬁngers.

Involuntarily I resent the silk netted-gauze robes that hide my lines
of poetr y;
Lifting my head, I vainly envy the names on the plank. (
QTS
9050)
4
104 Suzanne Cahill

“Silver hooks” refer to her companions’ calligraphy. The ﬁnal couplet
expresses the speaker’s thoughts. Her silk netted-gauze robes become

the tar get for anger at being excluded from the man’s world of writ-

ing, examination, and public ofﬁce. Y u Xuanji equates having to per-

for m the role of woman, by dressing the par t, with having to choke

back her talents and ambitions. She feels equal to any of her com-

panions. As a poetic conceit, she blames her clothes for the limitations

imposed upon her as a woman in Tang China. This attitude is going

to get her killed.
Next I tur n to her most famous poem, featured in most accounts
of her life, including the Shaw Brothers’ movie. Traditionally set on

the mor ning of her execution (perhaps a later embellishment of ro-

mantic literati), she calls it “Given to a Neighbor Girl.” It may be ad-

dressed to a for mer neighbor in the convent or the streets of Chang’an,

or to a nearby inmate:
Shamed before the sun, I shade myself with my netted-gauze silk
sleeve,
Depressed by the spring, reluctant to rise and put on make-up.
It’s easy to ﬁnd a priceless treasure,
Much harder to get a man with a hear t!
On my pillow, secretly ﬂow my tears;
Amidst the ﬂowers, silently my guts are sliced.
Since I will soon personally be able to peek at Song Y u,
Why regret Wang Chang? (
QTS
9047)
(The “man with a hear t” [
youxin lang
] is a colloquial ter m for a com-
patible lover.) Here the speaker’s silken sleeve proves inadequate to
hide her when she raises it as a shield against the world. Since it is

transparent, it cannot block the sun or the gaze of others. Beautiful

gar ments cannot protect her. Again she berates her clothes, this time

for being inef fective. Depressed and ashamed of her situation,

cynical about her relationships with men, she laments her broken

hear t and fractured tr ust. The last couplet looks ahead to paradise.

There she intends to meet Song Y u, a handsome third-centur y
b.c.e.
poet, minister of Chu, and disciple of Qu Y uan (340?–278
b.c.e.
);
both Song Y u and Qu Y uan inﬂuenced her writing. Wang Chang

appears in Six Dynasties and Tang literature as the ﬁne, mar riage-

able young man next-door. In poetr y, he is usually the one who

got away. Since the speaker will soon meet her ideal, why mour n her

failure to mar r y a suitable young man such as the ﬁctional Wang

Chang?
Material Culture and the Dao 105

The next example of Y u Xuanji’s poetr y, addressed to a Mr. Li, re-
jects ﬁne textiles as useless luxuries. Several poets sent Y u Xuanji work
to read and criticize. Li Y ing, who passed the
jinshi
exam in 856 and
became Censor in Attendance, was a neighbor, scholar, and for mer

suitor. He wrote Y u Xuanji a now-lost poem “Retur n from Fishing on

a Summer’s Day,” inviting her comments and also inviting her over

for a drink. She replied in a satirical vein, entitling her response “ Toast-

ing Li Y ing’s ‘Retur n from Fishing on a Summer’s Day,’ Which He Sub-

mitted for a Look.”
Although our dwelling places follow along the same lane,
For years I haven’t passed you even once.
W
ith clear lyrics you ur ge drinks on the old girl,
While you break of f new branches of fragrant cinnamon.
Y
our “Daoist nature” is more ridiculous than my icy, snowy ﬂesh;
Y
our “meditating hear t” more laughable than my white patter ned
tabby-weave and netted-gauze silks.
Although your footsteps may climb to the top of the Empyrean Han
(Milky Way),
Y
ou have no road to reach (heaven’s) misty waves. (
QTS
9050)
The title and topic are as polite and conventional as a thank-you
note. While Y u at ﬁrst appears to ﬂatter Li, her tone is sarcastic. She
tur ns down his invitation, complaining he has neglected her, his “old,”

or for mer, companion, to pursue new girlfriends (“branches of fra-

grant cinnamon”). Quoting lines from his poem that include the

phrases “Daoist nature” and “meditating (or
chan
) hear t,” she scof fs
at his pretending to be an ascetic while pursuing pleasure and claims

that her own white ﬂesh and silken gar ments are more genuine than

his pompous show of austerity. An alter native translation to the third

couplet r uns:
My Daoist nature mocks ice and snow;
My meditating hear t laughs at white patter ned tabby-weave and
netted-gauze silks.
In this case, the author again compares herself favorably to the re-
cipient. As a Daoist nun, she does, in fact, know something about med-
itating. Here, “white patter ned tabby-weave and netted-gauze silks”

mean clothes made of expensive and luxurious fabrics. Despite his

claims of religious discipline, Li Y ing is more caught up in the world

than she. Although Li may be successful and famous, climbing to the

stars of social acclaim, success in the examinations, and a ﬁne job in
106 Suzanne Cahill

the imperial bureaucracy, he still has no way to reach Daoist per fec-
tion, including immor tality and heaven.
In contrast, Y u Xuanji sends a hymn of praise, opening with a textile
image, to a Daoist nun who bears the elevated title of
lianshi,
or “Reﬁned
Master” in “I Send the Reﬁned Master a Poem I Wrote About Her.”
Auroral clouds of many colors, cut to make your robes,
Bur geoning incense emer ges from embroidered bed cur tains.
White lotus ﬂowers and leaves (
...).
Mountains and water ways spread out (
...)
and disperse.
Stopping in your steps to listen as bushwarblers talk,
Y
ou open cages and release cranes to ﬂy away.
In the High Audience Hall, you awaken from a spring sleep,
In evening rain, just now full and driving. (
QTS
9047–9048)
(Each set of parentheses represents one missing paragraph.)
“Reﬁned Master” was an honoriﬁc title granted to a nun who lived
in a convent but had no administrative responsibilities. All she had to
do was meditate and practice austerities; her stature as an ascetic

brought glor y to her establishment. The Reﬁned Master’s robes

equate her with a Daoist goddess dressed in swatches of the heavens.

The clothes are the woman: their qualities stand for her qualities. Her

auroral gar ments provide evidence of her spiritual attainment: her de-

scription matches that of Shangqing (“Supreme Clear Realm”) di-

vinities found in related scriptures in the Daoist canon. These beau-

tiful goddesses descend from the Daoist heavens, or “clear realms,” to

instr uct mor tal men in the ar ts of eter nal life. Y u also compares the

Reﬁned Master to the ancient shamanistic goddess who appears in the

Han dynasty
Gaotang fu
(“Rhapsody on the High Altar”) by Song Y u,
preser ved in the
W
enxuan.
That elusive deity spent a passionate night
with the King of Chu, then abandoned him, to his eter nal sor row. The

same language appears in the Shangqing text known as the
Zhen’gao
(Declarations of the Per fected, HY 1011), which describes the meet-
ing of the adept and his seductive goddess -instr uctress. Y u Xuanji pro-

foundly admires her subject’s accomplishments and envies her life of

freedom, choice, and ease. The priestess sleeps where she likes and

does what she wants with no limitations, restrictions, or penalties. Sex-

ual images of rain and spring sleep suggest her meetings with gods.
This poem and the next respond to the Reﬁned Master’s accom-

plishments, sexuality, and charisma. They recommend the author as

a companion.
Material Culture and the Dao 107

Yu
Xuanji addressed another poem to Reﬁned Master Zhao, per-
haps the same person. Here Y u takes on the conventional subject of
visiting a recluse without ﬁnding him (or, in this case, her) available.

There are poems on this subject by Wang Wei (701– 761), Li Bo (701–

762), and Du Fu (712–770). Even the title follows a Tang for mula: “I

Pay a V isit on Reﬁned Master Zhao W ithout Meeting Her.”
Where are you and your transcendent companions?
Y
our green-clothed ser vant rests alone in the household.
On the war m stove: remains of your steeped herbs,

In the adjoining cour tyard: boiling tea.

Painted walls, dim in the lamps’ radiance;
Shadows from banners’ poles slant.

Anxiously I tur n my head back again and again,
At numerous branches of blossoms outside your walls. (
QTS
9052)
Yu
Xuanji takes a conventional subject and gives it her own mean-
ing. Entering a mysterious, deser ted household, she discovers that the
Reﬁned Master of the title has just left; her tea and herbs, both still

cooking, reveal her recent presence. Y u Xuanji, searching for a like-

minded friend, longs for Zhao’s companionship. She also admires the

nun’s lifestyle: the simplicity, security, and aesthetic pleasure appeal

to her. In contrast to the divine clothing wor n by the Reﬁned Master

in the previous poem, the ser vant’s clothes here are anonymous and

humble. Her green cotton outﬁt identiﬁes Master Zhao’s ser vant: she

too is what she wears. “Green-clothed” indicates her class and func-

tion but tells us nothing about her as an individual. She is little more

than fur niture in the nun’s retreat. Finally, the poet depar ts, with many

a backward glance. Her wishful gaze mistakes climbing ﬂowers on the

wall lit by the setting sun for the rosy gar ments of the master and her

r
etinue.
Meanwhile, back in the capital, Y u Xuanji describes her own life at
the end of a neglected alley in the middle of the busy city. Her lover

is long gone, and ever yone else seems to have a life. She writes “Late

Spring Sketch”:
In a deep lane, the last gate, few companions or mates,
Esquire Ruan only here in remnants of my dreams,

Incense drifting through my netted-gauze silk and white patter ned
tabby-weave clothing from some other household’s dining mats,
W
ind sending the sound of songs from a storied building someplace.
The street closed, dr umbeats rouse me from dawn sleep;

The cour tyard secluded, magpies’ chatter mixes with my spring
depression.
108 Suzanne Cahill

How could I have kept pursuing af fairs among humans?
My ten thousand
li
body is just like an untied boat. (
QTS
9053)
The ﬁrst line describes living alone, without friends or resources, in
poor quar ters (the “last gate”) in the capital. This Esquire Ruan is Ruan
Zhao, the Easter n Han scholar who met a transcendent one day when

he was wandering in the mountains looking for medicinal herbs. Af-

ter sharing a feast with her for what seemed like a shor t time, he re-

tur ned home to discover seven generations had passed. Here the writer

equates herself with his transcendent lover, missing her mor tal visitor

after his depar ture. The second couplet adds a sad and envious

voyeurism: other people have banquets while she sits alone. She feels

invaded and excluded as expensive incense from a neighboring house-

hold’s feast per meates her silken gar ments and music from a gather-

ing in some ﬁne tall building inter r upts her dreams. Clothing here,

as always in her poetr y, represents the person. She is also acutely sen-

sitive to sound: songs, dr ums, and magpies depress her.
This poem suggests how the speaker came to be a Daoist nun. Af-
ter her bitter experiences living alone in the capital, she wonders how

she could have been ensnared so long in the world of human af fairs

and seeks refuge in the convent. The poem closes with a power ful and

evocative image of herself. She compares her body, strong enough to

go ten thousand
li
without stopping (like a heavenly horse), to an un-
tied boat, cut of f from worldly attachments, free at last to follow the

Dao. We will consider the image of the boat drifting toward the Dao

in detail later. One of Y u Xuanji’s central poetic self-representations

is the wandering sojour ner: an untied boat here, a banished immor-

tal in the next poem.
Alone again in autumn, Y u Xuanji again por trays herself as a way-
faring stranger. Her nar rator sings Daoist ritual verses or
qingge
(lit-
erally, pure songs), practices Daoist self-cultivation or
yangxing
(liter-
ally, nourishing [her] nature), reads Daoist scriptures, and enjoys her

melancholy solitude. The title is “Sad Thoughts” (one source has “Au-

tumn Thoughts”).
Falling leaves ﬂutter and swirl, joining evening rain;
Alone str umming ver milion strings, I naturally break into pure song.
Releasing my feelings, I stop resenting hear tless friends;
Nourishing my nature, I toss of f as empty the waves of the bitter sea.

While sounds of leaders’ chariots are outside my gate,

Daoist documents and scrolls pile up beside my pillow.

This cotton-clad commoner in the end tur ns out to be a sojour ner
from the cloudy empyrean,
Material Culture and the Dao 109

From time to time passing the green rivers and blue mountains
(of this world). (
QTS
9050 –9051)
This is a poem of self-consolation. Daoism is a great comfor t, al-
lowing her to for get loneliness and betrayal. The nar rator por trays her-
self as a wandering sojour ner and banished immor tal. Alone on a rainy

evening, she plays her zither to express herself. Expressing emotions

frees her from their grip. Practicing self-cultivation of the type known

as
yangqi,
or “nur turing the breaths,” designed to increase health and
longevity, brings her peace of mind despite the suf fering that is the

nor mal condition of life in this world (the “bitter sea”). Indif ferent

to the bustle of leaders outside her door, she reads scriptures. The

commoner nobody appreciates (herself ) tur ns out to be that well-

known ﬁgure of legend, the immor tal in disguise. In her poetr y Y u

Xuanji tries on dif ferent roles; here, she resembles a banished im-

mor tal, temporarily cast down to this world for punishment, soon to

r
etur n to the glories of the heavens. The simple cotton clothes that
give away her class origins are, for the space of a poem, the disguise

of a transcendent. As a “cotton-clad commoner,” she passes through

the moving and transitor y beauty of the Chinese landscape, but her

tr ue home lies elsewhere. She may be unappreciated, but she knows

she is a goddess.
The last poem in this section, “Dwelling in the Mountains on a
Summer’s Day,” depicts the free and easy life of a Daoist recluse in her

mountain retreat. But before translating that poem, consider another,

a quatrain that probably por trays the same place in spring, called “On

a Pavilion Hidden in the Mist”:
Its spring ﬂowers and autumn moons enter the verses of my poems;
Its white days and clear nights would suit even far-ﬂung
transcendents.
Raising my beaded cur tains to empty space, I don’t lower them
again;
I’ve moved a couch so I can sleep facing the mountains. (
QTS
9051)
Location is impor tant to the poet. In her comfor table and con-
venient dwelling, suitable for the pickiest transcendent, naturally sup-
plied with ﬂowers, a clothes hanger, and fresh spring water, she drinks

wine, reads, chants, and sails. Here is “Dwelling in the Mountains on

a Summer’s Day,” a song celebrating her mountain home:
Moving to obtain a transcendent dwelling, I came to this place;
Its ﬂower thickets are naturally profuse; I haven’t pr uned.
110 Suzanne Cahill

In front of the cour tyard, a forked tree spreads out as my clothes
rack;
Beneath my seat a new spring ﬂoats my wine cup.
The fence railing obscurely winds away into a deep bamboo path;

My long cloak of white patter ned tabby-weave and netted-gauze
silk mixes into my book pile.
In leisure riding my painted boat, I chant to the bright moon;

Tr
usting the light wind to blow me home again. (
QTS
9053)
This poem has a power ful sense of place. Enjoying seclusion, she
contemplates, free from care. She has ﬁnally attained the freedom and
ease she sought. Not bothering to dress for mally, she wears her luxu-

rious cloak of white patter ned tabby-weave and netted-gauze silk

loosely, so that it tumbles down and plays havoc with her books, knock-

ing the scrolls about. Her clothing expresses an independence, intel-

lectual and ﬁnancial, she longs for in other poems. Here she acts the

par t of absent-minded her mit, absorbed in reading and chanting. She

imitates her ideals: the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove of the past,

or Reﬁned Masters like Master Zhao of the present. The author has

ﬁnally found a “room of her own,” a place to write and think.
“Dwelling in the Mountains on a Summer’s Day” ends with the im-
age of a little boat. Riding along, she chants to the moon, like Li Bo,

another Daoist poet and solitar y wine drinker. Engaged in free and

easy wandering, allowing her painted boat to follow the wind, she trav-

els like a transcendent.
Images of Boats
Boats small enough to be controlled by one person appear frequently

in Y u Xuanji’s writing. The boat provides a means of transpor tation

for the ﬁsher person or sojour ner. The boat can represent the trav-

eler, the process of moving from one place to another, or a more gen-

eral transition or transfor mation. In a mocking poem addressed to

Censor-in Attendance Li (
QTS
9051), his boat refers to the ﬁsher man,
home from his wanderings. Usually Y u Xuanji is r unning the boat. In

a traditional genre of poetic travelogue, practiced with originality and

passion by the well-known Tang poet Du Fu, Y u Xuanji chronicles her

own jour neys on the water. One such poem has her “Passing Ezhou”

in a decorated boat propelled by both sails and oars:
W
illows br ush my orchid oars, ﬂowers ﬁll their branches;
Beneath the city walls at Stone City (Shicheng), at sunset our sails
slow down.
Material Culture and the Dao 111

On top of Broken Stele Peak (Zhanbei feng): the tomb of the
Minister of the Three Lü clans (San Lüshi);
At the Head of Distant Fire Mountain: a ﬁve-horse prefect’s
ﬂag.
“White Snow” tunes are lofty, composed about old temples;
“Sunny Spring” songs remain, changed to new lyrics.
Mo Chou’s cloud-soul has depar ted, following the clear Yangzi
River,
Emptily causing travelers to write a myriad poems. (
QTS
9053)
Ezhou includes moder n Wuchang in Hubei. Stone City is up the
Han River from Ezhou. The “ Three Lü clans” are the three royal clans
of the Chu kingdom (Zhao, Chu, and Jing) during the War ring States

period. The minister of the Three Lü clans is Qu Y uan, the great Chu

poet, statesman, and suicide. His poetr y had a great inﬂuence on Y u

Xuanji, as is evident here with the image of orchid oars. This is one

of several sites associated with his tomb. As in the cases of the Han

lady Wang Zhaojun and Y u the Great, many places claim the honor

of being Qu Y uan’s ﬁnal resting place. (Since Qu Y uan drowned him-

self, the actual disposition of his body may never be known.) The

mountains named must be visible from the Han River. A prefect who

merits ﬁve horses resides at Distant Fire Mountain, his presence in-

dicated by his ﬂags. “White Snow” tunes are traditional old songs,

known for being too high for most people to manage. (An alter na-

tive reading of
lou
for
diao
would make this line begin “ The White
Snow Storied Building is lofty.” The White Snow Storied Building, west

of Stone City, was poised above the Han River.) “Sunny Springs” songs,

in contrast, were moder n. Mo Chou was a singer from Stone City, ac-

cording to the Music Bureau (Y uefu) ballads. Although Mo Chou is

long depar ted, Y u Xuanji blames her lingering spirit for infecting trav-

elers with the ur ge to write occasional verse, most of which is drivel.

Now she has added one more herself. The poet uses a conventional

type of writing master fully and ir reverently, poking fun at the genre

while enjoying her ability to per for m it. Here the boat seems to be

merely a pleasant vehicle fer r ying the traveler from one place to an-

other.
However, her boat signiﬁes more than just a means of transpor t. It
r
epresents the poet herself. Hers is a “stranger’s boat” (
kechuan)
that
belongs nowhere. For example, in “Composition Capturing W illows

by the Riverside,” Y u Xuanji inser ts the stranger’s boat in a riddling

poem on willows. W illows by the riverside are conventional signs of

par ting and of fragile female beauty:
112 Suzanne Cahill

Kingﬁsher blue for ms joining on uncultivated riverbanks,
Their misty shapes entering distant buildings,

Reﬂections spreading out across the autumn river’s sur face,

Flowers falling on the ﬁsher man’s head,

Roots aged, hiding ﬁsh caves,

Branches reaching down to fasten the stranger’s boat,

Sighing and soughing on a windy, rainy night,

They star tle my dreams and increase my depression. (
QTS
9047)
Here the willows, ghostly in the autumn mist, their almost undif-
ferentiated shapes the iridescent blue-green of kingﬁsher feathers,
catch the stranger’s boat and add to her melancholy. This poem on a

conventional subject has a personal and poignant meaning at its hear t.

The wayfaring stranger’s boat appears again, in a poem addressed to

Li Zi’an entitled simply “Sent to Zi’an”:
At our dr unken par ting feast, a thousand goblets could not dispel
my sor row;
Pain at separating: a hundred knots with no place to star t untying
them.
T
ender orchids dispersed and done, you retur n home to your spring
orchard;
W
illows to the east and west moor the stranger’s boat.
In our gathering and scattering, I lament that we, like clouds,
do not settle;
In my compassion and passions, I must imitate the water which
constantly ﬂows.
At the season of ﬂowers, I know it’s hard to meet,
But I cannot bear to get dr unk quietly and calmly in my jade storied
building. (
QTS
9054)
Yu
Xuanji and Zi’an have separated; pain (literally, [pain from sev-
ered] intestines caused by separating [
li chang
]) ties her in knots. “ Ten-
der Orchid,” Huilan, is one of her names; he leaves her to retur n to
his ﬁrst wife, his home orchard. The speaker is a wayfaring stranger,

a wandering boat moored insecurely by willows (signs themselves of

par ting). If he is inconstant as a cloud, she will study the water that

always moves and changes. Water is also a metaphor for the Dao. Al-

though she cannot meet him in the spring, she refuses to follow the

passive example of the deser ted woman in conventional literature and

weep demurely in her secluded women’s quar ters.
This stranger’s boat is often untied. In poems to Li Zi’an, the un-
tied boat seems lost and at loose ends. In poems with Daoist themes,
Material Culture and the Dao 113

the untied boat is unfettered and free to follow the Dao. Y u Xuanji’s
“Late Spring Sketch” (see page 108) closes with the line “My ten thou-

sand
li
body is like an untied boat.”
T
wo poems entitled “Going Along the Yangzi River” depict an aim-
lessly drifting little boat, with implications both erotic and Daoist. The

ﬁrst one r uns:
The great river slants across to embrace Wuchang;
Before Par rot Island (Y ingwu zhou): doors of a myriad households.
Sleeping in spring in my painted boat; at dawn I haven’t had
enough,
Dreaming I was a butterﬂy seeking ﬂowers. (
QTS
9051)
W
uchang is a city in Hubei at the meeting of the Han and Yangzi
Rivers. Par rot Island is located in the Yangzi River across from
W
uchang. Y u Xuanji lived around there for a time. Her “painted boat”
could be a cour tesan’s tr ysting place, common in Song-dynasty liter-

ature, or simply a decorated vehicle. Spring sleep, as in her poem to

the Reﬁned Master, has sexual over tones. The last line contains a dou-

ble meaning. “Dreaming of a butterﬂy” recalls the famous stor y of

Zhuangzi’s dreaming he was a butterﬂy (chapter 2), which asks us to

question the nature of perceived reality. The butterﬂy seeking ﬂow-

ers, on the other hand, is an erotic image of a man pursuing a woman

(see
Chuci
and the works of Song Y u). Here Y u Xuanji uses a man’s
voice, adopting a conventional expression usually used by males. The

object of her desire might be male or female. Several of her poems

are ambiguous about the gender of the erotic object. The boat, wend-

ing its way between sites along the river, between the Dao and sexual

desire, represents the rider, Y u Xuanji.
She again compares herself to a small painted boat in the second
poem:
When misty ﬂowers entered Cor morant Harbor (Luci gang),
In my painted boat I was still making up poems about Par rot Island.
I went to bed dr unk and woke up chanting poetr y, not feeling a
thing;
This mor ning I am star tled to ﬁnd myself at the head of the Han
River. (
QTS
9051)
Cor morant Harbor is in Hubei near Hanyang, up the Han River from
Par rot Island and Wuchang. (The
Quan Tangshi,
for the second line,
prefers
yan
to
ti,
producing the alter nate reading: “My painted boat
was still skir ting Par rot Island.”) Y u Xuanji presents herself again as a
114 Suzanne Cahill

drifting boat. She ﬂoats along in a dr unken reverie, unaware of her
sur roundings as she composes poems. Dr unkenness in poetr y provides

a way of talking about altered states of consciousness associated with

Daoism and Daoist eccentrics. The speaker wakes up to ﬁnd herself

in an unexpected but familiar place, surprised she has gone so far. In

a negative sense, the image of the dr unken boat implies she has no

control over her life; in a positive sense, it implies she attaches herself

to the Dao and goes with the ﬂow.
Another of her poems joins boats and drinking with two of the au-
thor’s great themes: solitude and communication. Entitled “Handing

Over My Feelings,” this work idealizes seclusion while it records an at-

tempt to express herself:
At leisure and retired, with nothing to do,
I wander alone through the passing scene:
The moon seen through severed clouds over the Yangzi River,
A boat with loosened ropes in the middle of the sea.
My zither I play at Xiaoliang Temple;
My poems I chant from Y u Liang’s tower.

Thickets of bamboo make do for comrades;
And pieces of stone are ﬁne for mates.
Swallows and spar rows I simply treat as nobles;
Gold and silver I willingly forsake.
The spring wine ﬁlling my cup is green;

At night the window facing the moon is dark.

I circle stepping stones around the clean, clear pool,

Pluck out my hairpin to shine in slender cur rents.
I lie in bed, texts and fascicles all around me,
Then half dr unk, get up to comb my hair. (
QTS
9052)
At ease and unemployed, the speaker compares herself to the moon
in a cloudy sky and to a boat drifting freely. She visits sites along the
Y
angzi River, playing music at an unidentiﬁed Buddhist temple. Many
temples were named Xiaoliang after the devout Buddhist emperor

Liang Wudi (464 –549), whose name was Xiao Yan. She chants poems

from a tower named after its builder who died around 340
c.e.
Her
only companions are bamboo and stones; she honors swallows and

spar rows as noble guests. Material wealth is not her aim: she ﬁnds

riches enough in wine, her setting, and her books. Removing her

golden hairpin, she sticks it into the stream and combs the cur rent,

enjoying the moon’s reﬂection shining of f the or nament into the

water. The hair in Tang poetr y is the woman: letting her hair down,
Material Culture and the Dao 115

she lets down her own for mality and reser ve. She does as she pleases,
lying in bed sur rounded by disorderly books. She romanticizes dr unk-

enness as did Tao Qian (365 – 427) and Li Bo before her. She is free

and easy as a Daoist immor tal or “a boat with loosened ropes.” This

accords with her use of the painted boat in “Dwelling in the Moun-

tains on a Summer’s Day” (see pages 110 –111), which closes with the

speaker riding home on her boat:
In leisure riding my painted boat, I chant to the bright moon;
Tr
usting the light wind to blow me home again. (
QTS
9053)
She is that unmoored boat drifting along with the Dao, going home
to the Dao.
Yu
Xuanji’s small boats express transition, passage, metamorphoses,
and changes of state in the life of an individual. In the poems trans-

lated above she gets dr unk, sleeps, dreams, and wakes. Boats and water

take her from one place to another, one state of consciousness to an-

other, and one condition of existence to another. She moves from city

to countr y, public to private, cour tesan to recluse. She ﬂoats along

through life and change, entr usting herself to the Dao.
Images of Zithers
The table zither (
qin)
is a traditional Chinese stringed instr ument fa-
vored by Tang literati and cour tesans. Many could play it; few could

play it well. The zither in Y u Xuanji’s poetr y represents her attempts

to communicate her deepest feelings and ﬁnd a real companion. She

alludes repeatedly to four stories about the zither that stress genuine

communication and love. Two concer n same-sex friendships; two con-

cer n heterosexual love af fairs. A poignant tale involves the famous

Wa
r
ring States musician Bo Ya and his friend Zhong Ziqi. Whenever
Bo Ya played his zither, his friend instantly knew what Bo Ya was tr y-

ing to express, whether it was lofty mountains or clear r unning water.

When Zhong Ziqi died, Bo Ya smashed his zither, since there was no

longer anyone alive who could really understand him. Then there

are the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, eccentric literati of the

Three Kingdoms period, intimate friends who drank together and

conversed in the languages of music and poetr y. Another stor y con-

cer ns the famous Han dynasty poets and lovers Sima Xiangr u and

Zhuo Wenjun. They were supposed to have met when the recently

widowed Zhuo heard Sima playing the zither and singing at a ban-

quet. Y u Xuanji also alludes to the mythical emperor Shun, a paragon
116 Suzanne Cahill

of Confucian vir tue and the legendar y inventor of the zither, and his
two loving wives, goddesses of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers. A song ad-

dressed to her neighbor mentions Shun’s consor ts and his zither. Re-

sponding to his poem, Y u Xuanji wrote “Following the Rhymes of My

W
ester n Neighbor Who Newly Settled In, and Begging for Barley
W
ine”:
One poem comes and I chant it a hundred times;
Renewing my passions: Each word resonates like gold.
Looking west, I already had plans to climb your fence;
Gazing far of f, how can my hear t not tur n to stone?

Appointments by the River Han fade into empty space at the end
of my view;
Dreams of Xiao and Xiang Rivers severed, I lay of f str umming my
zither.
More intense when we encounter the Cold Food Festival: my home-
sick thoughts;
As for Shuye’s good wine: don’t ladle it out alone! (
QTS
9050)
This is a drinking song, of the type made famous by Tao Qian and
Li Bo. It also responds to Y u Xuanji’s neighbor’s poem, using the same
r
hymes in the same order. Y u Xuanji praises the man, his poem, their
old hometown, and his wine. The poem abounds in allusions to

lovers. Our speaker casts herself in the role of the easter n neighbor

girl, the subject of many earlier male writers (among them Mencius,

Song Y u, Sima Xiangr u, and Y uan Zhen). While the male writers look

east at a beautiful young neighbor girl, Y u Xuanji looks west at a hand-

some young neighbor man and imagines climbing his fence. Her

hear t’s tur ning to stone as she gazes into the distance recalls the stor y

of a mountain in Hubei called
W
angfu shi
(Gazing Far- of f at Husband
Rock); it seems a woman longing for her absent husband climbed a

high mountain and looked for him for so long that she tur ned to stone.

Appointments by the Han River refer to the night of Double Seven,

the festival of lovers when the Herd Boy and Weaver Girl Stars (Vega

and Altair) meet once a year on a bridge of magpies over the Milky

Wa
y.
The Milky Way, called the Silver, or Star r y, Han, is imagined to
continue the ear thly Han River up into the sky. Such meetings have

faded in her memor y. Dreams of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers are dreams

of water goddesses, patronesses of those souther n rivers and subjects

of shamanistic hymns attributed to Qu Y uan and collected in the
Chuci.
Consor ts of Emperor Shun, inventor of the zither, they wept tears that

per manently spotted the bamboo by the riverside when he died. They

sometimes appeared to wor thy scholars in later periods. The Cold Food
Material Culture and the Dao 117

Festival was a late-winter festival of renewal; absent natives of the cap-
ital city remembered its celebration in Chang’an with special fondness.

(See the exile poetr y of Shen Quanqi, ca. 650 –713.) Shuye is Xi K ang

(223 –262), a poet, drinker, zither player, and member of the Seven

Sages of the Bamboo Grove. Here she lays of f str umming her zither,

giving up hope of a spiritual encounter, but not, perhaps, of an

evening spent drinking in pleasant company.
In “Early Autumn,” the season evokes feelings that translate into
pure songs that possess the speaker’s zither:
When tender chr ysanthemums hold in their new colors,
Distant mountains cor ral evening mist,

And cool winds star tle green trees,

Then pure rhymes enter my ver milion threads.

The pensive wife, polychrome tabby-weave silk in her loom,
Her man on campaign in the heavens outside the passes.
W
ild geese ﬂy, ﬁsh stay in the river,
As if only they would transmit his letters and news! (
QTS
9052)
Chr ysanthemums suggest autumn and the poet Tao Qian, who
wrote of seclusion, drinking, and transcendence. As the evenings grow
cool, the speaker plays pure songs on her zither. A stor y enters her in-

str ument and demands expression. She sings about a woman waiting.

As Double Seven, the festival celebrating the meeting of the Herd Boy

and Weaver Girl, approaches, the weaving wife wishes for news of her

wandering man. Textile work is the ultimate woman’s work; here is a

dutiful and productive wife sticking vir tuously to her domestic duties

in the absence of her husband. The wife waiting at her loom for an

absent husband, an image as old as the
Gushi shijiu shou
(Nineteen Old
Songs) of the Han dynasty, is a cliché in the Tang that still has the power

to move. He may already be dead—as in a poem by Chen Tao (c. 841)

that closes with the poignant image of bones by the riverside that are

still living lovers in the dreams of their wives back home. W ild geese

and ﬁsh, car riers of messages in folk tales, bring her no news. The

zither tells a folk tale that har monizes with the speaker’s longing and

loneliness.
In “Sad Thoughts” (see page 109), the zither provides a conduit for
communication with sources of divine inspiration: “Alone str umming

my ver milion strings, I naturally break into pure song.” The instr ument

also allows her to release negative emotions that might other wise ob-

str uct her spiritual progress:
Releasing my feelings, I stop resenting hear tless friends;
118 Suzanne Cahill

Nourishing my nature, I toss of f as empty the waves of the bitter sea.
(
QTS
9050 –9051)
Yu
Xuanji sends her sor rows by means of her zither in another
poem, this one addressed to her friend and traveling companion Wen
T
ing yun (c. 812– 887). He is the only person aside from Li Y i whom
she addresses by his cognomen (
zi
).
In “Sent to Wen Feiqing,” she be-
rates him for not writing:
Beside the stepping stones of my staircase, disorderly crickets cr y out;
On the branches in the cour tyard, mist and dew are clear.
In the moonlight, my neighbors’ music echoes;
Atop the storied building, distant mountains brighten.

Over my jeweled mat, a cool breeze touches me;
From my turquoise zither, the sor rows I send you arise.
If Lord Xi is too lazy for letters and tablets,
Then what can release my autumn passions? (
QTS
9053)
This is one of two poems to Wen Ting yun. Here she restlessly de-
scribes sensations of the scene all around her on an autumn night. She
hears crickets and her neighbors’ music, sees dew on nearby trees and

starlight on distant mountains, and feels a chilly wind. She translates

all these physical sensations into sad music on her zither. The turquoise

zither refers to a famous instr ument (Sima Xiangr u’s?) in a poem by

Li Shang yin (813?– 858). Playing the zither is an attempt to reach a

like-minded friend. She then translates the language of music into this

poem. Individual elements of this poem belong to the conventional

lonely, lovelor n autumn poem, but the chaotic pile of images creates

an unbalanced mood that is unconventional. Lord Xi is Xi K ang, the

Six Dynasties Souther n poet, eccentric, and member of the Seven Sages

of the Bamboo Grove. He was a handsome fellow, a wild drinker, and

a great companion. In a famous letter to his friend Shan Tao, Xi K ang

claims that he is too lazy and untalented to hold a position at cour t.

Yu
Xuanji ﬂatters Wen Ting yun with the comparison. Her last line goes
beyond the customar y request for a reply, sounding desperate for tr ue

communication.
Yu
Xuanji describes someone else playing the zither in what is per-
haps her clearest expression of lesbian eroticism: a love song addressed

to three orphaned sisters, young cour tesans of reﬁned musical and lit-

erar y ability, who were for a time her neighbors in a guest house. The

title of the poem as it stands is quite long; probably some introduc-

tor y remarks of the editors are mixed up with a shor ter title like “Poem
Material Culture and the Dao 119

Composed Following the Rhyme Words of Three Sisters.” The title in
the
Quan Tangshi
r
eads: “Guang, Wei, and Pou are three sisters, or-
phaned when young and accomplished from the beginning. Now they

have written these poems, so essential and pure that they are hard to

match. How could even the linked verses from the Xie household [i.e.,

by Xie Daoyun] add to them? There was a stranger coming from the

capital city who showed them to me. Consequently, I put these rhymes

in order.” The poem itself is also rather long:
For merly I heard that in the souther n nations ﬂower y faces were few,
But today my easter n neighbors are three sisters.
In their dressing room, gazing upon one another: the “Rhapsody
on the Par rot”;
At their cyan window they must be embroidering phoenix slips.

Pink fragrant plants ﬁll the cour tyard, ragged and jaggedly broken
of f;
Green strained wine ﬁlls our cups; one after another we put them
to our mouths.
I suspect they once ser ved as girl attendants at the Turquoise Pond
(Yaochi);
Coming in exile to this dusty world, they did not become males.

I ﬁnally venture to compare them to the appearance of Lady Wenji;
Little Xi (Shi) would be speechless before them; I am still more
mor tiﬁed.
A single tune of ravishing song—the zither seems far away and
indistinct;
While the four-strings are lightly str ummed, they talk, mur muring
unclearly.
Facing the mir ror stand, they compete equally with their blue-
glinting silk-thread hair.
Opposite the moon, they vie in showing of f their white jade hairpins.
In the midst of the Lesser Existence Grotto (Xiaoyou dong), pine
dew drops;
Above the Great Veil Heaven (Daluo tian), willow mist is contained.

If only they were able to tar r y on account of the rain,
They need not fear that matters of “blowing the syrinx” are not yet
understood.
How many times has the Amah scolded them for talking beneath
the ﬂowers?
Lord Pan [Pan Y ue ]consulted them once in a meeting in a dream.
When I temporarily grasp their pure sentences, it’s as if my cloud-
soul were cut of f;
If I were looking at their pink faces, even dying would be sweet.
120 Suzanne Cahill

Despondently I look from afar for those delightful people: where are
they?
Tr
aversing the clouds, I retur n home to the nor th while they retur n
to the south. (
QTS
9055 –9056)
This is clearly a same-sex erotic poem. Chinese male poets regularly
used male voices to declare their passions for beautiful women, and
women’s voices to express their conceptions about women’s responses

to men. Poems by men speaking in women’s voices, often describing

the suf fering of a grieving victim at the hands of her faithless lover, have

been read as political commentar y. The powerless, abandoned woman

makes criticisms that the abused ofﬁcial does not dare to utter. In a de-

par ture that seems as shocking today as it must have seemed in the Tang

dynasty, Y u Xuanji tur ns these conventions upside down. She uses her

own woman’s voice to express her romantic responses to other women.

She may also be adver tising their beauty and talent to male literati.
The introduction identiﬁes the orphaned sisters with Xie Daoyun,
a four th-centur y aristocratic poet, who as a child showed her preco-

cious literacy by besting her father’s guests in a poetr y competition on

the subject of snow. As the poem begins, Y u Xuanji compares the three

souther n girls to luxurious pet birds described in the “Rhapsody on

the Par rot” by Ni Heng of the second centur y
c.e.
They remind her
of famous beauties of old. Lady Cai Wenji was a Han dynasty noble-

woman and poet mar ried to a Xiongnu chieftain as a result of a war

treaty. She grew to admire her husband and is traditionally considered

the author of “Nineteen Songs from a Nomad Flute,” a Tang poetic

cycle. Little Xi Shi, whom Y u claims is no match for the three sisters,

was herself a notorious “state-toppling beauty,” the tempting center of

a plot by one War ring States’ r uler to over throw a rival, and the sub-

ject of another poem by Y u Xuanji (“At the Temple of Washing Silk

Gauze,”
QTS
9048). Y u identiﬁes Xi Shi, to whom she compares her-
self, with sexuality and power.
The breathtaking loveliness and apparently super natural talent of
the three sisters make the poet exclaim that they must for merly have

been attendants of the Queen Mother of the West (Xiwangmu) at the

Tu
rquoise Pond in her paradise on Mount Kunlun. Xiwangmu’s en-
tourage of goddesses was known for their beauty and musicianship.

Yu
Xuanji also places the sisters in a spot associated with the Queen
Mother’s cult: the Lesser Existence Grotto on Mount Wangwu, where

the poet had also traveled. The actual guest house that was the setting

for the poem may be nearby. The sisters’ comfor table familiarity with
Material Culture and the Dao 121

the goddess is expressed in the intimate for m of address, “Amah,” that
they use for her. She is their teacher who scolds them for chattering

idly in the garden when they are supposed to be studying their les-

sons. The poet may wish the Queen Mother would ser ve as match-

maker for herself and the girls, a role the goddess often fulﬁlled in

heterosexual unions between a divine teacher and a human student.
For Y u is power fully attracted to the sisters: she says their words
make her feel “as if my cloud-soul were cut of f.” That is: they take her

breath away. She wishes they could tar r y to make love: rain and blow-

ing the syrinx are regular metaphors for sexual expressions of love.

“Blowing the syrinx” also refers to techniques of ascending to tran-

scendence by means of music, as did the pre-Qin immor tals Xiao Shi

and his wife, Long Y u. The mixture of divine and worldly love is a com-

monplace in Shangqing Daoist literature. The four women enjoy an

evening of wine, music, and poetr y together, and then must par t. Y u

Xuanji heads nor th, while the three sisters head back south.
The zither is one of several musical ter ms in this poem (four-strings,
syrinx, tune, song), which also mentions divine musicians (jade girls

in the Queen Mother’s entourage, Xiao Shi) and musical heroines

(Lady Wenji). But the zither is outstanding among them, for it con-

tains three essential meanings for our author: it is a means of self-

disclosure, communication, and seduction. Although it is indistinct,

the sisters’ song tells the speaker who they are and ravishes her. Mu-

sic parallels the self-expression the sisters and Y u Xuanji share in the

words of their exchanged poems. According to Y u Xuanji’s response,

they are compatible in erotic and literar y gifts.
One of Y u Xuanji’s most evocative uses of the zither to express her
longing to communicate appears in “Sending Someone My Inner most

Feelings”:
My sor row is sent on ver milion strings;
Holding in passions, my thoughts have become unbearable.

Early on, I knew meetings of cloud and rain,
Before arousing my orchid mind.
Gleaming and shining, peach and plum trees
Do not obstr uct a statesman’s pursuits.
Gray-green pines and cinnamon trees

Still long for the praise of worldly people.

In the moon’s color, my moss -covered staircase seems clean;

In my song’s resonance, the bamboo close deepens.

Before my gates, the ground is covered with red leaves;

I don’t sweep, waiting for one who recognizes my sound. (
QTS
9052)
122 Suzanne Cahill

From beginning to end, this poem concer ns the search for a friend
who will understand her. In the opening line she plays her zither to
express her feelings, hoping to reach someone who will, as she says

in the last line, “recognize my sound.” She refers to Bo Ya, the great

Wa
r
ring States’ musician who played his zither for his friend, Zhong
Ziqi.
Here Y u Xuanji also uses images that go back to the shamanistic
hymns of the
Chuci
and to the
Luoshen fu
and
Shennü fu
in the
W
enx-
uan
. The orchid, a wor thy and vir tuous plant, recalls her name: “ Ten-
der Orchid.” “Clouds and rain” refer to sexual intercourse, originally

the union of a goddess and a king. The author was notorious for sex-

ual as well as literar y precocity: here she suggests her mind was

aroused only after her body’s awakening. Peach and plum blossoms,

standing in for the transient beauty of young girls, shine for a day and

bring pleasure to men. But serious men only toy with young women;

they will not risk careers or swer ve from the path to their goals for the

sake of love. Even elder statesmen, those eminent old pines, care about

their reputations and need the approval of their peers. The poet waits

and sings in her room in the shady bamboo grove at the end of a mossy

staircase, hoping for a real friend who will hear her tune and know ex-

actly what it means.
Conclusion
The language of material culture in her poetr y opens a window into

Yu
Xuanji’s thought, helping us move beyond sensationalist versions
of her life. Simple language describing textiles, boats, and zithers car-

ries a complex ar ray of meanings in Y u Xuanji’s writing. A small num-

ber of images from material culture occupy a surprisingly lar ge place

in the world of meaning in her poems. Nineteen of her ﬁfty sur viving

poems mention clothing or woven goods, eleven poems mention boats,

and at least nine poems mention the zither.
Some images, such as white patter ned tabby-weave and netted-gauze
silk, have more than one meaning, depending on the context. Cloth-

ing identiﬁes the social class of the wearer. A man’s per fumed clothes

may arouse her scor n or admiration. A sheer silk sleeve can be the tar-

get of her rage and fr ustration over intellectual oppor tunities lost or

ser ve as an inef fective shield against public humiliation. Y u Xuanji’s

language of clothing reveals a self-conscious, often lonely, and isolated

person, living for much of her life on the mar gins of Tang society, with

few economic or social resources. She expresses her envy of a recluse’s
Material Culture and the Dao 123

prestige and power in the vision of gar ments cut from auroral clouds,
like those of the great goddesses. That divine gar ment embodies her

longing for the contemplative life. Y u Xuanji’s textile images show her

desire for the gifts, powers, and unfettered lives of divine women. She

enacts the self-discipline and asceticism of the Daoist adept when she

r
ejects robes of the ﬁnest woven silk. Her own white silk duster, tan-
gled up in her books and papers, expresses the freedom and ease she

attains as a Daoist nun.
Yu
Xuanji’s poetic image of the untied boat also allows several in-
terpretations. The little boat is clearly herself. A drift in mid- ocean, it

can seem disoriented and at a loss, lonely and isolated like the poet

in her life and times. In other poems that express a more resigned and

positive attitude toward her fate, her boat drifts peacefully along the

river. Like a boat ﬂowing with the cur rent, she naturally and easily re-

lies on the Dao to bring her back home where she belongs. The boat

r
epresents life changes and transfor mations as well as alterations of
place.
The zither, the ﬁnal image of material culture from Y u Xuanji’s po-
etr y, represents her desire to communicate and ﬁnd a tr ue compan-

ion. The zither is an instr ument of self-expression. Y u Xuanji uses it
to convey her feelings to both men and women friends. Her messages

are sometimes both religious and erotic at once. Some readers believe

a Chinese poem may express either sexual or spiritual feelings, but

not both together. There is also an old tradition of interpreting erotic

images in Chinese literature, such as those found in the ﬁrst section

of the
Shijing
(Book of Songs), as political or ethical in intent. In the
poetr y of Y u Xuanji, however, just as in par ts of the
Chuci
and Shang-
qing Daoist mystical corpus, there is no meaningful distinction; sen-
sual and divine love mingle. The language is both erotic and religious.

Images of sensual attraction and sexual union provide a way to tr y to

describe the inef fable Dao.
Expressing herself, using her talents, following the Dao, and ﬁnd-
ing companions may all have motivated Y u Xuanji to enter the con-

vent. We may never be able to interpret her religious vocation fully

or deter mine her guilt in the murder of her maid. Although many

speciﬁc facts of her life may never be recovered, Y u Xuanji’s poetr y,

using the language of material culture, speaks in a power ful indi-

vidual voice that, despite her conﬂicts and limitations, praises

the Dao and the life of the recluse. Her poetr y reveals her Daoist

identity.
124 Suzanne Cahill

Notes
1. This chapter is par t of a longer study of Daoist holy women of the Tang.
I thank Stephen Bokenkamp, V ictoria Cass, Michael Chang, Susan Fer nseb-
ner, Mar ta Hansen, Donald Holzman, Ter r y Kleeman, Dorothy Ko, Livia

Kohn, Paul Kroll, Liu Lu, Susan Mann, Mabuichi Masaya, Mitamura Keiko,

Sher r y Mou, Charles Or zech, Hal Roth, Audrey Spiro, Stephen West, V ictor

Xiong, Yao Ping, and Ye Wa for their suggestions.
2. Accounts of Y u Xuanji’s life began to appear a few decades after her death
and continue to be produced up to now. Dieter Kuhn (1985) discusses the

sources with unusual thoroughness. The earliest account was written around

910 by Huangfu Mei in his
Sanshui xiaodu
(see Kelly 1978). His sensational-
ized and critical account is the source of nearly all subsequent versions. These

include the
Beimeng suoyan
of Sun Guangxian, written around 940 –960 (Sun
1939), the
T
angshi jishi
(Recorded Anecdotes Concer ning Tang Poetr y) of Ji
Y
ugong ( Ji 1962), the
T
ang caizi zhuan
(Transmissions Concer ning Talented
Masters of the Tang Dynasty) by the Y uan writer Xin Wenfang, and the Qing

antholog y known as the “Complete Tang Poetr y.” In the twentieth centur y,

Mori Ogai (1862–1922) wrote a novel on Y u Xuanji’s life (Mori 1951), and

Rober t van Gulik imagined an episode between her ar rest and execution in

Poets and Murder
(van Gulik 1968). Most recently, the Shaw Brothers’ studio
in Hong Kong made an unusually strong movie on her life,
T
angchao haofang
nu
(A W ild Woman of the Tang Dynasty), which combines elements of mar-
tial ar ts, soft por n, and tragedy (1984).
3. Maureen Rober tson discusses how poetic convention limits what we can
discover about female authors as well as the pitfalls involved in interpreting

conventional and occasional poetr y (Rober tson 1992). My approach to read-

ing poetic texts by women authors is indebted to Professor Rober tson, but

my conclusions about how much we can discover are more optimistic.
4. Poems by Y u Xuanji are cited by the abbreviation
QTS
followed by the
page number in the edition of the
Quan Tangshi
published by Zhonghua shuju
(Beijing, 1960).
Bibliography
Bray, Francesca. 1997.
T
echnolog y and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial
China
. Berkeley: University of Califor nia Press.
Cahill, Suzanne E. 1993.
Tr
anscendence and Divine Passion: The Queen Mother of
the West in Medieval China
. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Dowland, John. 1968 [1604]. “Flow My Tears.” Song Recorded on
Dances of
Dowland
by Julian Bream. New York: RCA.
K
arashima Takeshi. 1964.
Go Genki-Setsu T
o
. Tokyo: Sh
u
eisha.
Kelly, Jeanne. 1978. “ The Poetess Yü Hsüan-chi.” In
Tr
aditional Chinese Stories:
Themes and Variations
ed. by Y. W. Ma and Joseph S. M. Lau, 305 –306. New
Y
ork: Columbia University Press.
Kuhn, Dieter. 1985. “Yü Hsüan-chi: Die Biographie der T’ang Dichterin, Kur-
Material Culture and the Dao 125

tisane und taoistischen Nonne.” Inaugural Lecture, University of Heidel-
ber g: Private publication.
Mather, Richard B. 1976.
A New Account of Tales of the World.
Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press.
McGar rigle, Anna. 1973. “Hear t Like a Wheel.” Song Recorded on
Hear t Like
a Wheel
by Linda Ronstadt. Hollywood: Capitol Records.
Mori Ogai. 1951.
Go Genki.
In
Ogai zensh
u
. Tokyo: Iwanami.
Peng Zhixian and Zhang Yan. 1994.
Yu
Xuanji shi bian’nian yizhu
. Ur umqi:
Xinjiang University Press.
Rexroth, Kenneth. 1972.
The Orchid Boat: Woman Poets of China
. New York:
Seabur y Press.
Rober tson, Maureen. 1992. “Voicing the Feminine: Constr uctions of the Gen-
dered Subject in L yric Poetr y by Women of Medieval and Late Imperial

China.”
Late Imperial China
13 1:63 –110.
Rotours, Rober t de. 1968.
Cour tisanes chinoises à la ﬁn des T’ang entre 789 et le
8 janvier 881. Pei-li tche (Anecdotes du quar tier du Nord)
. Paris: Presses Uni-
versitaires de France.
Schafer, Edward. 1973.
The Divine Woman: Dragon Ladies and Rain Maidens in
T’ang Literature
. Berkeley: University of Califor nia Press.
Shaw Brothers’ Filmstudio. 1984.
T
angchao haofang nü.
Hong Kong: Shaw
Brothers’.
V
an Gulik, Rober t. 1961.
Sexual Life in Ancient China
. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
———. 1968.
Poets and Murder
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
W
alls, Jan W. 1972. “ The Poetr y of Yü Hsüan-chi: A Translation, Annotation,
Commentar y, and Critique.” Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, Bloomington,

Ind.
W
imsatt, Genevieve B. 1936.
Selling W ilted Peonies
. New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press.
Y
okoyama Eisan. 1968. “Go Genki ni tsuite.”
Ch
u
goku ronsetsu shir y
o
10:218 –
225.
126 Suzanne Cahill

6
A Mid-Ming Reappraisal of the
Laozi
The Case of Wang Dao
Mabuchi Masaya
In cur rent scholarship on Chinese thought, the early Ming is seen as
a time when Neo -Confucianism predominated, especially the study of

principle (
lixue
) in the wake of the teachings of Zhu Xi (1130 –1200).
Hardly anyone proposes dif ferently (Sano 1972). When it comes to

the mid-Ming, a new line of Neo -Confucianism began with Wang

Shouren (Yangming, 1472–1528), and dif ferent strands of the teach-

ing arose, leading to a multiplicity of views and various debates in the

late Ming (Araki 1972). Among scholars, the consensus is that the ten-

dency to unify the three teachings dominated the latter half of the

Ming dynasty (Sakai 1960, ch. 3), and within this framework, scholar-

ofﬁcials variously paid attention to ancient Daoist texts, notably the

Laozi
.
1
To
understand the reception and interpretation of
Laozi
better and
pay more attention to alter native and new trends in Ming thought, in

the following pages I present the life and work of Wang Dao (1487–

1547), a disciple of Wang Yangming who developed his own take on

both Daoist and Confucian thought. A proponent of the unity of the

three teachings, Wang Dao placed par ticularly high value on the
Laozi
and wrote a commentar y on it, the
Laozi yi
(Meaning of the
Laozi
).  T o
understand his thought and its role in Ming thinking better, I would

like to ask three questions: What was the motivation underlying Wang’s

high esteem of the
Laozi?
What new philosophical ideas did he express
through his interpretation of the text? And how is his thought related

to the dominant philosophical tendencies in the later Ming? I begin

with an introduction of Wang and his life.
127

W
ang Dao’s Life and Work
W
ang Dao came from Wucheng in Shandong province. His agnomen
was Chunfu, his sobriquet Shunqu. As described in his biography in
Y
an Song’s
W
anggong shendao bei
(Stele on the Spiritual Path of Lord
W
ang), he passed the advanced scholar (
jinshi
) examination in 1511
and began a career as an ofﬁcial, becoming one of the elite scholar-

ofﬁcials of his time. He began at the Hanlin Academy, then moved to

the prefectural school at Y ingtian. He later became an administrative

aide and ser ved in a variety of ofﬁcial positions before retiring on

grounds of illness. After spending thir teen years in semi-seclusion, he

took another post, becoming an assistant to the Nanjing Chamberlain

for Ceremonies in 1546 and advancing as far as the Ministr y of Rites,

which he joined shor tly before his death.
As for his person, the biography relates that he was “elegant and
pure,” “of rotund looks and a war m disposition, lear ned and of great

foresight,” a man who “never acted for personal proﬁt.” Despite

spending a long time in ofﬁce, he remained “simple and pure in

lifestyle” and, in his orator y, “did not bend to confor m to that of his

contemporaries.” Huang Zongxi in his
Mingr u xue’an
(Records of Ming
Scholars; Ching 1987) says:
When [Wang] ar gued about how to evaluate people of today and people
of antiquity, he did not follow what previous Confucians had already
developed. His high degree of understanding is illustrated by this fact.

(42.1038)
The text also praises his extensive lear ning, explaining that he deeply
involved himself in all areas of study, including yin-yang and calen-

drical science, medicine and divination, agriculture and sericulture,

law, geography, and many others. He also tried to write poetr y at the

outset of his career but found it a “rather useless” exercise and so

moved on to the study of principle, or philosophy, of standard Neo -

Confucianism in the wake of Zhu Xi’s teachings. He read the
Lunyu
(Analects) with enjoyment and found himself awakened to the “beauty

and simplicity of the way of the sages.” After this, he faulted contem-

porar y proponents of the study of principle for their promotion of ex-

clusive schools, contending that there had also been excellent people

in the Han and pre-Han periods. In addition, he developed an inter-

est in Buddhism and Daoism, not remaining ignorant of any of China’s

major traditions.
W
ang Dao’s name has been the focus of ver y few studies in Ming
intellectual histor y (e.g., Mizuno 1979; 1980). But exper ts on Wang
128 Mabuchi Masaya

Y
angming know his name because he was Wang Dao’s teacher in his
youth, and several letters have sur vived, dating from 1511 to 1514. Even
as early as 1512, however, a split between the two became apparent,

leading to Wang Dao’s separation from his ﬁrst teacher. Wang Yang-

ming says:
In your earlier letter, you say: “ To study to awaken to goodness and be-
come sincere is sound. But I am not sure what is meant by goodness,
where it originally comes from, where it is now, how to perceive it, how

to encounter it, whether it should be put before sincerity or after, and
when sincerity is tr ue sincerity. All these may be points of detail and
seem minute, but I really wish to delve into them, gradually resolving
my doubts. I hope you can help me do so.” . . .
Now, your tendencies seem to show that you have not yet examined
the original teachings of the sages and are still confused by the expla-

nations of later generations. In ever y single object and ever y single be-
ing, there is utmost goodness, and it must be from ever y single object
and ever y single being that one must begin to seek utmost goodness.
Only then may one reach the stage of “clear understanding” and that
is why earlier I spoke of “where it originally comes from, and where it

is now.” (
W
ang Wencheng gong quanshu
4, Second letter to Wang Chunfu)
W
ang Dao thus harbored doubts about Wang Yangming’s notion that
goodness could be found by searching for it in one’s mind. These were
points to which he would retur n again and again in his later works

(see also
Mingr u xue’an
42.1038).
After separating from Wang Yangming, Wang Dao tur ned to Zhan
Ruoshui (1466 –1560). Wang Dao describes Zhan, in a 1525 letter to

We
i Xiao, as having a strong inﬂuence on his thought, but eventually
Wa
ng developed a position of his own that went beyond the teachings
of all his masters. Still, he is classiﬁed as a member of the school of

Zhan Ruoshui (
Mingr u xue’an
42.1039).
W
ang Dao wrote many and varied works, including a number of
commentaries and historical studies, the most impor tant of which was

the
Laozi yi.
2
His essays are contained in his collected works, the anony-
mously edited
Shunqu xiansheng wenlu
(Record of Works of Master
Shunqu, 12 juan, abbr.
W
enlu
, ed. 1932).
W
ang Dao’s Adoption of the
Laozi
Replying to Wei Xiao, Wang Dao writes, “From middle age on, I have

been especially fond of reading the writings of Laozi” (
W
enlu
4), show-
ing when his liking for the
Laozi
began. In a letter to Hua Zhushi, he
A Mid-Ming Reappraisal of the
Laozi
129

also expresses the high value he places on the thought of the text and
of its author, the ancient sage Laozi, by speaking of “Laozi, the great

sage of old” (
We n l
u
4), while in an essay on Han Fei he notes, “ The
way of Laozi, above joining [the mythical sage-emperors] Fu Xi, Yao,

and Shun, below linked with the [historical sages] Y u and Confucius,

is unparalled in its brightness” (
We n l
u
4). In these instances, he puts
Laozi and his work on a par with the Confucian tradition.
Never theless, on closer inspection, there is a gulf between the way
he speaks of Confucius and the way he speaks of Laozi. This can be

seen in the following passages:
The words of Laozi are the ultimate in simulaneously grasping the an-
cient while controlling the moder n. The lear ning of the disciples of
Confucius is the constant warp of nur turing and adjusting the age. Al-

though they are dif ferent, these two approaches tr uly emer ged together.
Later Confucians did not grasp the full scope of the ancients, and rashly
drew distinctions. Their division of the Dao is a late phenomenon. . . .
Laozi concentrated on clarifying the Dao, and so depended on the
ultimate, while Confucius from time to time used a lower level of doc-

trine, gearing his teachings to each individual. This may be compared
to the notion that S
a
kyamuni and Laozi specialized entirely in pursu-
ing the highest vehicle, while Confucius was not shy to speak with the

simple and basic. (
W
enlu
3,
Laozi yi
, ch. 38)
Thus as opposed to Confucius, who was willing to bring the vocabu-
lar y of his teachings down a notch in the interest of education, Laozi

used only the highest language to speak of the Dao. In the end, their

dif ference lay merely in the way they spoke about the ver y same Dao.

At the time of the ancient sages, Wang says, people of the world had

for gotten the root of the Dao and its vir tue, instead engaging in the

minor points of benevolence and righteousness, ritual and music,

thereby falling into a false sense of goodness. He criticizes this and

calls for a retur n to the root of morality, at the level of the Way and its

vir tue. Thus individual and personal goodness, the concrete goodness

of ordinar y life, to him was the same as the benevolence and right-

eousness of the Confucians. But deeper than this was yet another level,

at the deepest roots of morality, the tr ue source of goodness in the

Dao. As a result, Wang Dao actively valued the ideas of the
Laozi
—to
him, they advocated the retur n from individual and concrete good-

ness to original morality, to the Way and its vir tue at the source of ever y-

thing (
W
enlu
3, “On Robber Zhi”). This is the prime reason why Wang
values the
Laozi,
and his commentar y in the
Laozi yi
explicates the text
from this point of view.
130 Mabuchi Masaya

W
ang’s emphasis on the Dao as a source of a deeper goodness is
clear in his exposition of chapter two of the
Laozi
in the
Laozi yi:
Among all the beings that come for th from the Dao, there is none that
is not beautiful, yet their beauty was present in the Dao even before

they began—this is the sense in which it is eter nally beautiful. Among

all the things that proceed from the Dao, there is none that is not good,

yet their goodness was present in the Dao even before they began—
this is the sense in which it is eter nally good. It is only when the names
“beauty” and “goodness” appear that the human mind grows more con-
tentious ever y day. Then style defeats substance, and falsehood cor r upts

tr uth. It is in this way that “the beautiful is ugly and the good is no good.”
(
Laozi yi
2)
In such passages from the
Laozi yi,
besides the high value obviously
placed on the
Laozi
and the
Zhuangzi,
there is also a great esteem for
Buddhism.
3
This is expressed in Wang Dao’s statement that
$a
kyamuni,
just as Laozi, was striving for the attainment of the highest vehicle to
salvation. Wang saw both as pursuing the absolute and explicitly states

that all the major thinkers, including Zhuangzi and Confucius, were

describing dif ferent paths that, never theless, ultimately led to the same

goal (
W
enlu
3, “Zhuangzi”). He says:
Life after life is an ongoing transfor mation. Whether one lives long or
is beyond all life, the main characteristic of both states is still the on-
going transfor mation of ever ything. Thus, if one can attain a state be-
yond life, one will live long; and if one can attain a state of long life,

one can attain master y of life after life. In this, the teachings of the sages
of all three traditions conver ge, even if the explanations they of fer to

the world dif fer. Superﬁcial students will never quite grasp this. (
W
enlu
5, “A Hundred Streams Meet at the Sea of Lear ning”)
4
What he means by “superﬁcial students” are people attached to an
individual and concrete notion of goodness, which he sees as similar
to benevolence and righteousness in being nothing but counter feit

goodness. As he says:
When people do not see the Dao, even if they choose to walk in good-
ness, they will end up going in some direction, and once there a di-
r
ection, attachments will follow. This is why their movements cannot
escape others’ traces, and their theories cannot escape others’ fabri-
cations. (
Laozi yi
27)
Here the basic str ucture of Wang Dao’s thinking becomes clear. He
inherits the major philosophy of his time, the standard Neo -Confu-
A Mid-Ming Reappraisal of the
Laozi
131

cianism of
Zhu Xi, then goes of f in a dif ferent direction and uses the
Laozi’
s
criticism of the goodness of ordinar y people to criticize it.
He is also critical of its practice, and here follows Wang Yangming,
who says in his
Chuanxi lu
(Instr uctions for Practical Living):
The Master [Mencius, 7A26] said: The center is nothing but Heaven’s
principle, nothing but change. Changing along with the times, how can
one hold on to anything? When tr ying to make the best response to
changing times, it is difﬁcult to set up a set of r ules ahead of time. Later

Confucian thinkers established the notion of the principle of the Dao,

moving along in change yet in unity. Once they set this up as a rigid

model, they were doing exactly this “holding to one extreme.” (1,
sect. 52)
Here Wang Yangming criticizes the standard Confucian notion that
one should examine things one by one to reach their speciﬁc princi-
ple and then act in accordance with it. The kind of goodness thus

achieved is characterized as a false goodness, a for malism that posits

a danger to tr ue inner nature. His criticism, however, seems to be lim-

ited to Zhu Xi’s followers’ self-cultivation practices rather than their

ideas.
W
ang Dao is more radical than that. For him, once Neo -Confucians
under take the speciﬁc examination of phenomena and follow a set of

r
ules and patter ns, they become enmeshed in par ticularism and lose
their philosophical strength: they embrace a counter feit goodness in-

stead of the real thing. Wang Dao recognizes this as a fallacy and over-

comes it by retur ning to the deepest roots of morality in the Dao. Here

his positive reading of the
Laozi
enters his thought.
5
He begins by stating that the Dao, the nameless, is the unchanging
substance of the universe and also the Eter nal Nonbeing or the

Nonultimate. It is, fur ther more, the source of vir tue, the named, which

is also called the Great One or the Great Ultimate (
Laozi yi
42). From
this level, heaven and ear th, yin and yang, and the world of myriad

beings arise. V ir tue, therefore, stands between the eter nally unvar y-

ing substantial level of the Dao, the Eter nal Nonbeing, and the ever-

changing phenomenal world of myriad beings —maintaining a creative

and productive relationship among them. Therefore, Wang Dao’s cos-

mogonic theor y says: “Dao [through vir tue] is in the human mind just

as it is in heaven and ear th” (
Laozi yi
1). In this way, he shifts the en-
tire patter n of the discussion toward the nature of the mind. His prem-

ise here becomes the str ucture: Dao—vir tue —myriad beings, the lat-
132 Mabuchi Masaya

ter with their counter feit vir tues of benevolence and righteousness.
He says:
Dao and vir tue were originally one thing, but the Dao was nameless,
while vir tue was named. The Dao could not be spoken of [
dao
], but
vir tue could be attained [
de
]. Thus, by descending one level from the
Dao, then one enters into vir tue. Benevolence and righteousness are
the answering traces of vir tue. Righteousness is a means to repair that

which benevolence does not fully reach. Thus, by descending one level
from vir tue, then one enters into benevolence. By descending one level
from benevolence, then one enters into righteousness. (
Laozi yi
38)
Dao and vir tue are the fundamental substance of the human mind,
and the myriad things are its function. The goal of cultivation prac-
tice, then, has to be the attainment of this level of ﬁnding “the won-

ders of Dao and vir tue as represented by the sages” (
Laozi yi
1). Again,
W
ang Dao says:
Dao is in the human mind just as it is in heaven and ear th. If one is
without desires, then one will be tr ue and pure, with mental states ab-
solutely serene, as clear as the bright sky without a single cloud, as bril-

liant as a bright mir ror without a single speck of dust. This state is the

basic substance of the mind. If, on the other hand, once there is a de-

sire, one just follows impulses and moves along in per fect response to
other beings, then one will be as radiant as a clearly patter ned star r y
constellation, as clear as a river ﬂowing along without pause. This state

is the great function of the mind. (
Laozi yi
1)
Here the activity of the mind is described as the background for a
Dao -based cosmogony in which vir tue creates the myriad beings.
6
Key
points are the equation of individual and concrete goodness with
benevolence and righteousness at the level of the subtle traces of the

mind in its function, and the equation of the Dao and vir tue with the

mind in its substance. This indicates the basic direction of his think-

ing, modiﬁed fur ther by several other notions. In one respect, he fol-

lows Zhu Xi and promotes the idea that one should overcome the level

of concrete action, of benevolence and righteousness as the mere

traces of a higher purity. He, too, wishes to go beyond the dimension

of concrete things and af fairs and immerse himself in the for mless

world of the Dao, which at the same time he must deny. He says:
As people of the world hold on to being, they see only outer things and
do not immerse themselves in the Dao, follow other beings but are un-

able to under go proper transfor mations. Cultivating themselves in this
A Mid-Ming Reappraisal of the
Laozi
133

way, they become lascivious and greedy and by their wasteful desires
squander their life. Pursuing outer rewards, they do things that will
bring them fame and lose their tr ue self. . . .
Even if one wishes to transfor m oneself and the world using the ideas
of Laozi, one has yet [to confront the fact that] people wallow in
vanity and persist in shallowness, are immersed in phenomena and

destroyed by them. They are devastated by rites and r ules, submer ged

in darkness by benevolence and righteousness. They lose themselves

and bring destr uction upon the state. W ith ordinar y people like this,

how could they ever be helped with the teachings of Laozi? (
Laozi
yi
11)
W
ang Dao, therefore, wishes to go beyond the level of concrete
goodness and operate on the profound depth of the mind, with the
goal of grasping the root of the Dao and suf fusing the mind with it.

At the same time, he acknowledges that he cannot just create a dif-

ferent universe for himself, in which to live in peace and quiet, but

has to remain in the real world of people, r ulers, and states. Finding

a way to maintain tr ue, inner goodness even in the real world, then,

must be understood as the prime motivation of his thought. He ex-

presses this in the words “Retur n from phenomena to nonbeing, then

use nonbeing to act upon phenomena” (
Laozi yi
40). He explains fur-
ther with an allusion to the concepts of the “mind of the Dao” and
“the mind of humanity” from the
Shangshu
(Book of Histor y):
In the midst of phenomena, there is still nonbeing; there is nothing
called nonbeing outside of phenomena. The wonder of nonbeing is
active throughout phenomena; there is no way one can dispense with

nonbeing and be able to function among phenomena. The unity of
nonbeing and phenomena is ver y wondrous —big, it is heaven and
ear th; minute, it is ever y individual being; condensed, it is par t of ever y
human mind—it per vades them all. (
Laozi yi
11)
This, in tur n, lays the foundation for Wang’s basic understanding
of existence. He states:
The Dao cannot but bring for th the One, the One cannot but bring

for th the Two, and similarly the Two bringing for th the Three, the
Three bringing for th the myriad beings —all these circumstances exist

on their own without any input. Similarly heaven and ear th cannot but
be regular—how much more should this apply to human beings? Thus

uncar ved material cannot but be broken up and made into vessels, just

as the sages cannot just keep the Dao to themselves and never apply it.

And as they apply it, they use nonbeing to control phenomena; hold-

ing on to the old, they manage the present. (
Laozi yi
28)
134 Mabuchi Masaya

As Wang, therefore, thinks about going beyond ordinar y, concrete phe-
nomena to reach the Dao at the depth of the mind, he yet ﬁnds that

he cannot entirely let go of concrete objects. To ﬁnd a bridge between

the two, he again tur ns to the
Laozi
.
7
The Aims of the
Laozi yi
and Wang’s Overall Thinking
Throughout his
Laozi yi,
as well as in cer tain other works and essays,
W
ang Dao tries to capture both the moment of transcendence when
one leaps from concrete phenomena to the Dao within the mind, and

the moment of attachment when one is involved with concrete phe-

nomena. His main foci are the pursuit of transcending the mind’s in-

dividual and concrete morality and the search for the underlying, un-

changing mental substance at its base. He grapples with this issue by

r
eﬂecting on and criticizing theories of mind that had gone before him.
For example, about Mencius’s thesis that human nature is good, he says:
Mencius says that human nature is good, and places it on a higher level
than do Xunzi and Yang Xiong. But Mencius never approaches an ex-
planation of why human nature is good, and when he says that it is, he
merely points to inherent human feelings. Now, human nature may be

basically good and without evil, yet one’s inherent feelings are a com-
bination of both good and evil. Here, then, is the reason why the two
masters [Xunzi and Yang Zhu] dared to voice a contrar y position and

disagree with Mencius.
...(
W
enlu
4, “Zisi”)
Mencius’s er ror is in generalizing about nature when he is really
talking about feelings. Along the same lines, he also criticizes the con-
cept of the “pure knowledge of the good” (
liangzhi
) of Wang Yang-
ming. He states:
Using the idea of “pure knowledge of the good” and applying it to Con-
fucius would be as er roneous as looking at the sun when it is par tly ob-
str ucted by clouds. [For Wang Yangming,] “Pure knowledge of the
good” is no more than the activation of one’s personal feelings, but

its existence at the moment before that activation remains doubtful.
For Mencius, the “pure knowledge of the good” was his concept of the
Four Sprouts [of vir tue], which he located in the place where the feel-
ings were ﬁrst activated.
...[W
ang] Yangming similarly suggests this
is the basic substance of the sage, entirely missing the point. (
W
enlu
6,
“Yangming”)
Here, the feelings that arise from Mencius’s “Four Sprouts” and the
power of moral judgment deriving from Wang Yangming’s concept of
A Mid-Ming Reappraisal of the
Laozi
135

the pure knowledge of the good are both criticized for operating at
the level of a mind already developed. The level of nature’s response

to exter nal objects is not that of the deepest substance of the mind.

The most fundamental basis of human nature, on the other hand, is

the pre-active, quiescent, soundless, and for mless substance, which

W
ang sees as the quality of “utmost good” (
zhishan
) on which all hu-
mans must depend.
Attaining this quality is a matter of practice, and accordingly, Wang
Dao’s cultivation begins with immersion in the depth of a tranquil and

r
estful mind. This approach stands in stark opposition to the standard
Neo -Confucianism of Zhu Xi with its emphasis on the “investigation

of things” (
gewu
),
a more outside focused inquir y that involved an ac-
tive mind. Yet Wang Dao’s cultivation is also dif ferent from the notion

of the utter mental immersion associated with Wang Yangming (see

W
enlu
6, “Response to Zhu”). He ﬁnds both outside inquir y and sole
re
liance on the inner mind insufﬁcient.
8
Instead, practitioners of self-
cultivation should give up their grasp on principle as it resides in con-

crete, individual things and af fairs and instead depend on their qual-

ity of utmost good as the basic substance of the mind. At the same time,

without separating from concrete af fairs, they should accord with the

Dao in the mind and ﬁnd principle there. They should not “from their

minds proceed to af fairs, from principle proceed to the mind.” Rather,

they should “use the basic substance of the mind to echo outside

things, and use af fairs to penetrate principle” (
W
enlu
7, “Preface pre-
sented to Zhou Daotong”).
Just as principle follows the “pathways of vital ener g y” (
qi
),
and as
the Dao is linked to the “never ending movement of vital ener g y,” so

too human nature is explained through the concept of vital ener g y.

In this way, Wang Dao’s thought is intimately linked with the tradition

of “vital ener g y centered thinking.” This also explains his strong fo-

cus, again and again, on outside things and af fairs. However, the same

patter n as it applies to principle, Dao, and human nature is not re-

lated with complete consistency to his overall cosmolog y, which pro-

poses the unity of humanity’s basic substance with that of the universe

and demands that people transcend exter nal things to attain this ba-

sic substance.
Wa
ng Dao himself was conscious of this inconsistency and tried to
r
esolve it by resor ting to two notions: the oneness of Dao and vital en-
er g y as found in the commentaries to the
Y
ijing
(Book of Changes),
and the transcendence through the Dao as proposed in the
Laozi
. He
tries to clarify his position in this way:
136 Mabuchi Masaya

The theories of the sages and wor thies are not identical; they may be
direct or remote, shallow or profound. “One yin, one yang—that is the
Dao” is a way [for the
Y
ijing
] to speak about the ﬂow of the Dao.
Laozi,
on the other hand, says: “ The Dao brought for th the One, the One
brought for th the Two.” Master Zhou [Dunyi] states: “ There was the
Non-Ultimate, and then there was the Great Ultimate. The Great Ulti-
mate moved and created yang.”
...Yet
all these dif ferent for mulations
point to the moment of origin of the Dao. . . .
Laozi says one thing, and Master Zhou says another. When the “Great
Commentar y” [to the
Y
ijing
] says how the Dao relates to yin and yang
this is the same as [when Laozi speaks of ] the two coming from the One.

When the [
Y
ijing
says] that “goodness comes from these,” this is the
same as [when Laozi speaks of ] the two bringing for th the three. When
the [
Y
ijing
says] that “nature comes from their completion,” this is the
same as [when Laozi speaks of ] the three bringing for th the myriad be-

ings. Putting them all together like this, their various levels of direct

and remote, shallow and profound can be clariﬁed in one system.
(
W
enlu
4, “Xun Qing”)
This means that Wang Dao took the notion of the Dao as presented
in the
Y
ijing
and linked it with the idea of vir tue in the
Laozi
to ex-
plain the str ucture of things on the lower level of ordinar y af fairs, but
maintains that this Dao is on a lower level than the deep and remote

Dao in the
Laozi
. The problem of the inconsistency in his thought is
r
esolved by his proposal of two dif ferent levels and understandings of
the Dao. Presenting the ter m in these two ways, he tries to preser ve

the unity and integrity of his philosophical system, but is not ultimately

successful. In the end, to resolve the tension between the two ten-

dencies of either transcending through the Dao or working with out-

side things and af fairs, he does not give up on either, but rather em-

phasizes one or the other in dif ferent par ts of his writings.
W
ang Dao’s Thought Relative to Confucianism and Daoism
In what categor y, then, should Wang Dao be placed? As with Xue Hui,

W
ang Dao’s social position was such that he passed the civil ser vice ex-
amination, and while ser ving as a high ofﬁcal he advocated the har-

mony of the three teachings. Should he be called a Confucian, a Daoist,

or a Buddhist? Or, alter natively, simply an advocate of the integration

of the three teachings?
There are several classical perspectives from which one may ap-
proach questions of categorization or identiﬁcation of thought or re-
A Mid-Ming Reappraisal of the
Laozi
137

ligion. First, we may categorize people according to the ter ms they
themselves use to describe their thought or religion. Another per-

spective relies on the standard way in which those around them, in

their society or countr y, categorize or identify their thought. A third

perspective is that of outside obser vers, who may establish standard

categories based on the content of their thought. These three per-

spectives are sometimes used in tandem but, ideally, should be kept

separate.
W
ang Dao was not exclusively dedicated to any one of the three
teachings, so it is not possible to categorize his thought on such

grounds. On the other hand, we do have the evaluations of his con-

temporaries and heirs. For example, Lin Wenjun said that he was “one

who talked about the Sage’s [i.e., Confucius’s] lear ning” (
Fangzhai cun-
gao
3, “Preface presented to Mr. Wang”); Yan Song said he “deeply im-
mersed himself in the Study of Principle”; and You Qi called him “the

Confucian founder of the generation.” To be sure, these are evalua-

tions of people whose basic research was into Confucian thought.
At the same time, the epilogue to the
Ronghui sanjiao
(Mer ging the
Three Teachings) describes Wang Dao as a theorist who tried to unify

the three teachings. From the perspective of content, it is indeed pos-

sible to see his establishment of Buddhism and Daoism at a level as

high as Confucianism as an ef for t to integrate the three teachings.

However, standard Neo -Confucian concepts such as principle, vital en-

er g y, mind, and nature framed his thought. Thus it seems most ap-

propriate to approach Wang Dao’s ideas as if they were a development

and transfor mation of Confucian thought.
Pursuing the question in this manner, it is not easy to reconcile the
various perspectives on Wang Dao into one coherent identiﬁcation,

mainly because the labels of the contemporaneous schools are prob-

lematic in themselves. Conventional wisdom has it that the standard

Neo -Confucianism of Zhu Xi, the Wang Yangming school, and the

School of Evidentiar y Scholarship (
kaozheng xue
) are all par t of Con-
fucianism, and they cer tainly all identify themselves as such. When

thinkers like Wang Dao enter the picture, however, the lines blur, and

demarcation becomes complicated. Therefore, if the question of what

is Confucianism—or, for that matter, Daoism—is to be answered his-

torically, then self-identiﬁcations, identiﬁcations made by those sur-

r
ounding them, and identiﬁcations made according to their essential
doctrinal elements all need to be taken into account. It will then be

possible to car r y out new investigations, with new perspectives and cri-

teria, into the question of categories.
138 Mabuchi Masaya

Similarly, one can ﬁnd suggestions here regarding the difﬁculties
inherent in deciding what it is that we call Daoism. In shor t, deciding
what is and is not Daoism necessitates straightening out the com-

plexities and contradictions inherent in the various perspectives from

which identiﬁcation is approached. The ter m “Daoism,” once such an

approach is used, tur ns out to capture a number of vaguely for med

entities. This holds especially tr ue in the case of the two categories of

daojia
and
daojiao
. Regarding the perspectives of self-identiﬁcation and
identiﬁcation by state and society, there was no way to identify what

was and was not called Daoism in the Song and later periods because

no sect or school became the exclusive basis for a deﬁnition. Daoists

were additionally subject to the pressure of Confucian ofﬁcials, and it

was the latter who generally wielded the power to recognize divisions

of thinking. So even for the Daoists’ own statements with regard to

the question of what is Daoism, the gaze of the high ofﬁcials and the

state was decisively inﬂuential. That was the case for the majority of

people who identiﬁed themselves as Daoists in traditional Chinese so-

ciety. Thus, based on the contradictions inherent in such a self-

identiﬁcation, especially in ter ms of how the high ofﬁcials and state

deﬁned “Daoism,” pursuing this issue in order to decide on the real-

ity of the “Daoism” that existed in Chinese society at the time may be

said to be impor tant work. However, it seems that few people have con-

centrated on the impor tance of the perspectives of the “non-Daoists”

in questions of Daoist identity. Therefore, I think the issue of what
dao-
jia
and
daojiao
are, once three-dimensional work on it begins to
progress fur ther, is a question that should be answered inductively.
W
ang Dao’s Thought among His Contemporaries
The dual nature of Wang Dao’s thought is a characteristic that sets him

apar t from his Ming-dynasty contemporaries. Unlike him, early Ming

thinkers and scholar- ofﬁcials were entirely focused on the study of prin-

ciple in the wake of Zhu Xi, following him in dif ferent for mulations

yet without any real modiﬁcation in ideas. Among mid-Ming philoso-

phers there were more thinkers opposed to Zhu Xi, and in the early

sixteenth centur y the study of the mind of Wang Yangming began.

W
ang Dao has points in common with both these cur rents. To begin,
he does not follow Zhu Xi’s emphasis on reverence and pursuit of prin-

ciple but criticizes his methods as a fossilization of personal activity

and sees in them an invitation to the development of counter feit good-

ness. In contrast, he proposes a focus on the mind within and a search
A Mid-Ming Reappraisal of the
Laozi
139

for the tr ue nature that links human beings with the single vital en-
er g y, the basic substance of the cosmos.
9
His main method here is tran-
scendence through the Dao, by which one’s unwavering concrete na-

ture can be found. From this position, then, people are able to suitably

go along with all manner of circumstances and outer af fairs. In the

latter perspective, Wang Dao shares a perspective begun by Chen Xian-

zhang and Wang Yangming,
10
maintaining a strong focus on outside
things while at the same time emphasizing their ultimate oneness with

the underlying Dao. The latter’s concept of the unity of knowledge

and action, Zhan Ruoshui’s categorization of the investigation of things

as a for m of action, and the various proposals of the study of vital en-

er g y as represented by Wang Tingxiang and Luo Qinshun all exer ted

a cer tain inﬂuence on Wang Dao’s thought.
Rather than listing all the dif ferent perspectives of Ming thinkers
r
eﬂected by Wang, I would like to focus on the speciﬁc notions that
he has in common with the philosophy of Wang Yangming and Zhan

Ruoshui, his two main teachers. We begin with the points shared by

all three. Star ting with Wang Yangming’s doctrines of pure knowledge

of the good, I ﬁnd that his ideas are clearly present in the two ten-

dencies of Wang Dao’s thought discussed above. In
Mingr u xue’an
42,
Huang Zongxi has shown how Wang Dao’s concept of transcendence

through the Dao is linked directly with that of Wang Yangming. While

little is known of the intellectual inﬂuences on Wang Dao prior to his

studies with Wang Yangming, it is clear that the latter was the major

inﬂuence on the for mer in the early par t of the development of his

ideas.
Another major inﬂuence on Wang Dao was his later teacher Zhan
Ruoshui, a thinker with signiﬁcantly dif ferent ideas from those of Wang

Y
angming (see Qiao 1993). A student of Chen Xianzhang, Zhan was
critical of his teacher’s practice of quiet-sitting and of the notion that

one could ﬁnd the basic substance of the mind in it, but was also

strongly inﬂuenced by him. Par t of that inﬂuence was a strong rejec-

tion of Zhu Xi’s idea of the universality of principle to be discovered

in all things, as well as the understanding that upright principle man-

ifested itself in the mind when it cor responded with af fairs. Zhan Ruo-

shui developed a theor y of self-cultivation he described as “pursuing

suitable embodiment to recognize heaven’s principle” (see
Mingr u
xue’an
37). Zhan here ﬁnds a solution to the basic questions concer ning
self-cultivation by refer ring to the experience of the basic substance

of the mind within oneself, but he also links this introspective approach

with Zhu Xi’s investigation of things, stating that “investigation means
140 Mabuchi Masaya

attainment” and that it “points to reaching creation,
...pr
oceeding
together in study and reﬂection.” Thus knowing and acting (in Zhan’s
thought, inseparable yet distinct) are being cultivated together as two

sides of the same Dao, and it is by being “in good accordance with the

times and the circumstances” that one attains heaven’s principle. In

other words, when af fairs and beings are dealt with at their proper

time, then heavenly principle is attained in the mind, and one is able

to follow the right path. This is how, through the investigation of things,

one can attain heaven’s principle.
This reading follows Zhu Xi and also encompasses the idea of the
unity of knowledge and action; it includes the intellectual penetration

of principle as proposed in Zhu Xi’s investigation of things, and at the

same time includes a guide to active practice as proposed in Wang

Y
angming. Goodness here is reached by constantly maintaining close
contact with outside things yet never getting too involved in or attached

to them. Zhan also states that “the ancients did not set up a contrast

between human nature and principle or ener g y”—which is cor rect be-

cause “the nature of Heaven and Ear th is never outside of vital ener g y

or matter” (
Mingr u xue’an
37). Here he makes clear that principle and
inner nature are seen through the concept of vital ener g y, which makes

Zhan Ruoshui a follower of the school of the study of vital ener g y within

the Neo -Confucian tradition. Like Wang Dao and Wang Yangming,

he ﬁnds the thought of Zhu Xi insufﬁcient and wishes to add to it a

sense of transcendence through the Dao, a way for the mind to grasp

the basic substance of ever ything, and the intuitive practice that will

lead there.
At the same time, all three also wish to maintain the close contact
to outside things proposed by Zhu Xi, hoping to establish models for

people to relate to the concrete, real phenomena of the world. In this

r
espect they have much in common. Wang Dao’s thought is more con-
sistent with Zhan Ruoshui’s when it comes to issues like the relation-

ship between the ordinar y mind and the transcendent mind, and the

r
eliability of people’s innate powers of judgment. For Wang Yangming,
as pointed out before, the innate knowledge of the good meant that

the human power of judgment was inherent and complete from the

beginning and could be fully relied upon. It manifested clearly in a

moral conscience that all people shared and would only be minimally

diminished by their attachment to outside things. As soon as one en-

gaged in self-reﬂection, the clear radiance of one’s pure knowledge

would come shining for th, bringing with it a pure power of judgment.

Following its guidance, people would inevitably come to do good and
A Mid-Ming Reappraisal of the
Laozi
141

r
efrain from evil, and through this in tur n the latent knowledge of the
good would come for th even more brightly. This, for Wang Yangming,
was the transcendence of the mind’s original substance. It manifested

in the moral conscience of ordinar y people and was a par t ever ybody

had to hold on to ﬁr mly and rely upon solidly.
Zhan Ruoshui approaches the issue of innate power of judgment
rather dif ferently. In his idea of “pursuing suitable embodiment to rec-

ognize heaven’s principle,” he emphasizes the notion of “cultivating

r
everence for things” originally taken from the
Lunyu
. This is the no-
tion of a conscious ef for t at mental collectedness, a necessar y aware-

ness in dealing with all things. To reach mental collectedness, a con-

scious practice is necessar y—and here Zhan is closer to Zhu Xi than

to Wang Yangming, who was rather critical of Zhan’s notion of the pur-

suit of suitable embodiment, since he saw in it a pursuit of principle

on the outside.
The issue of innate judgment is impor tant for Wang Dao. As the
Mingr u xue’an
points out, he doubts people’s power of judgment and
believes that it can go wrong quite often, ﬁnding a strong reliance on

personal intuition dangerous rather than uplifting. It is here that his

position dif fers most fundamentally from that of Wang Yangming. For

W
ang Dao, it is insufﬁcient to rely on one’s innate knowledge of the
good, because it is already activated and reaches out to the concrete

situations and things of the world. He thinks that there must be a level

beyond and beneath this innate knowledge, on which the human mind

is founded and which is its proper substance.
In many ways, this position is close to that of Zhan Ruoshui. Both
share the notion that the original matter of the human mind is its orig-

inal substance, and that this is the most basic goodness of human na-

ture, where alone principle can be found and held on to. This origi-

nal substance of the mind, however, does not manifest naturally

among all human beings, whose mental power of judgment or inher-

ent knowledge can easily go wrong. In a letter to Wang Yangming, Zhan

Ruoshui insists that the pure knowledge and pure abilities spoken of

by Mencius and then Wang Yangming require ef for t to access. For him,

the mind of people in this world is “hidden by matter and habits”; they

are covered by things, ignorant of the tr ue principle within. If they tr y

to rely on this covered-up mind in their judgments, they think them-

selves right and proper but have in fact fallen into falsehood and er-

ro
r.
Here study and investigation are to be pursued assiduously, and
r
eﬂection on the proper principles of exter nal things has it place. To
judge the idea of the pure knowledge of the good, then, Zhan sug-
142 Mabuchi Masaya

gests that it lies in the raw material of the mind deep within. He con-
trasts the
Zhong yong’
s notion of the preemer gent with that of the pure
knowledge of the good. The for mer, he says, is what cannot be seen

nor heard, while the latter has already unfolded its secrets (
Ganquan
wenji
23). The pre-emer gent is used as a metaphor for the level of the
mind prior to the pure knowledge of the good.
Seen from this perspective, Wang Dao’s thought is indeed closer to
Zhan Ruoshui’s than Wang Yangming’s. First, the notion of the basic

substance of the mind, which is also the underlying nature of the world,

is common to all, but the presence and activity of this mind in people

of the world is evaluated dif ferently. Instead of having people rely on

their intuitions, as Wang Yangming would have it, Wang Dao and Zhan

Ruoshui see a necessity to uncover and explore the inner mind before

these intuitions can shine for th in ever yday af fairs. Zhan Ruoshui’s

inﬂuence on Wang Dao is most obvious here. Also, both distance them-

selves equally from the thinking of Zhu Xi, who sees the most impor-

tant method of understanding principle as being the study and in-

vestigation of outside things.
In contrast, Wang and Zhan’s focus is on the inner mind and its
deeper workings, which may be activated but not found in outside af-

fairs. Still, the inner mind must relate to exter nal things, and its tr ue

workings can be best experienced by interacting and cor responding

with exter nal things. Thus Wang says that one should search the tr ue

way of being “not in the mind but in af fairs, not in principle but in

the mind,” that one should use “the original mind to go along with af-

fairs, and so reach the point where one can use things to obser ve af-

fairs.” This aspect of Wang Dao’s thought resembles Zhan’s goal of

“pursuing suitable embodiment to recognize heaven’s principle.” In

this respect Zhan’s thought had an enor mous inﬂuence on that of

W
ang Dao.
11
He and Zhan dif fer in their attitude to the
Laozi
. Wang
pays par ticular attention to Laozi and Buddhism and ﬁnds ways to

integrate their teachings into his basically Confucian outlook, thus

creating his own version of the har mony of the three teachings.

Inﬂuenced by the religious thinkers, he places a much stronger em-

phasis than Zhan on the need to transcend all in favor of the original

substance of the world and the mind. Zhan Ruoshui, in contrast, has

a section in which he criticizes Laozi (
Ganquan wenji
25), ﬁnding his
philosophy lacking in benevolence and righteousness and causing

har m as a result. This is signiﬁcantly dif ferent from Wang Dao’s posi-

tion and suggests the latter was the more integrative and religious

thinker.
A Mid-Ming Reappraisal of the
Laozi
143

Conclusion
The mid-Ming thinker Wang Dao, although trained in a thoroughly
Confucian environment, held Laozi’s thought ver y dear and followed

it substantially in his own conceptions. While basing some of his ideas

strongly on the standard Neo -Confucian thought in the wake of Zhu

Xi, and though inﬂuenced signiﬁcantly by the Confucian thinkers

Zhan Ruoshui and Wang Yangming, Wang Dao went directly back to

the
Laozi
—the demand that people transcend their ordinar y con-
sciousness and attain the Dao, deﬁned as the basic substance of the

mind, without rejecting or ignoring the impor tance of concrete af fairs

and worldly phenomena. His position, developed under the inﬂuence

of the
Laozi
, moreover, played an increasingly impor tant role in later
Ming thought. This can be seen, for example, in the thought of the

late-Ming philosopher Liu Zongzhou, who similarly polarizes outward

involvement and inner transcendence. To understand Wang Dao’s

thought properly, one must, therefore, also evaluate and appreciate

the thinkers that follow and not focus only on his masters and per-

sonal ideas.
Similarly, while Wang Dao is properly and ofﬁcially a member of
the Confucian tradition and his thought plays a most impor tant role

therein, his understanding and interpretation of the
Laozi
in his
Laozi
yi
also makes him a relevant voice in the histor y of Daoist thought.
The text has received intepretations from all sor ts of traditions, espe-

cially in the Song-Ming period, and the complexities of Wang Dao’s

understanding cannot be overlooked when one tries to understand

them properly (see Li 1997). This impact of Wang Dao on later

thinkers and the appreciation of his problematizing of the
Laozi
is an
impor tant issue that will require fur ther study.
T
ranslated and edited by Mark Csikszentmihàlyi and Livia Kohn
Notes
1. Daoism in this context indicates what the Ming thinkers themselves un-
derstood by the ter m. For example, for the early Ming philosopher Liang
Qian, it was the tradition of “emptiness, nonbeing, serenity, and ease,” the

basic substance of the “reﬁnement of ener g y and the transfor mation of spirit,”

and a way to “summon the wind and the rain, order demons and spirits about,

and pray for heat and cold” (
Po’anji
3, “Donghui guanji”). That is, to him,
Daoism encompassed three distinct areas, which can be described in mod-

er n ter ms as the thought of Laozi and Zhuangzi, the practice of alchemy and
144 Mabuchi Masaya

longevity techniques, and various for ms of interaction with the spirit world.
For more on the Ming thinkers’ understanding of Daoism, see Mabuchi 1998.
2. Among commentaries were notably the
Daxue yi
(Meaning of the Great
Lear ning),
Zhouyi yi
(Meaning of the Book of Changes),
Shuyi
(Meaning of
the Book of Histor y),
Shiyi
(Meaning of the Book of Songs), and
Chunqiu yi
(Meaning of the Spring and Autumn Annals). Historical studies include the

Dushi lunduan
(Readings and Evaluations of Histor y),
Daxue yanyi lunduan
(Readings and Evaluations Expanding on the Meaning of the Great Lear n-

ing),
Pidian liuzi shu
(Critical Issues in the Writings of the Six Masters), as well
as a cer tain number of shor ter essays on the writings of Han Y u, Liu Zong yuan,

Ouyang Xiu, and Su Shi.
3. In the passage here, Wang Dao refers to Laozi and Zhuangzi in the same
breath, placing an equally high value on both. About the
Liezi,
on the other
hand, he says that is was rather confused and not a good representative of

the Dao, quite unlike the works of the other two early Daoist thinkers. See
W
enlu
3, “Liezi.”
4. One key passage on Buddhism is the letter to Zhou Daotong in
We n l u
7.
In addition, he also criticizes the behavior and teaching methods of Mazu, as
r
ecorded in the “ Transmission of the Lamp,” calling him a “sinner of a per-
fected” (
W
enlu
6, “K anlin”). In contrast to this, he lauds Daoist immor tality
as a for m of sagehood, and immor tality methods as the way of the sages (3,

“Yangzi”) yet remains critical toward inner alchemical techniques, which he

ﬁnds “full of delusion” (3, “Qiansui”). He also sees breathing exercises as a

“lesser method” (4, “Yanzhou”) and criticizes the obscure ways of using tri-

grams and alchemical ingredients to describe meditative processes as “no dif-

ferent from the magical ways of the world” (5, “Wuzhen”). Similar statements

are also found in the commentar y to chapter 10 in his
Laozi yi
.
5. Nonetheless, even the fallacy of the traditional Neo -Confucians, when
seen from the perspective of the realized mind of the Dao, becomes but one

“limb on the body of the sage.” Ultimately, all ideas and methods “have their

place, and none should be discarded” (
W
enlu
3, “Chuanxi lu”).
6. On the mind as the basic substance of the Dao in human beings, he also
says: “ The trigrams
qian
and
kun
may tumble, the world may end, but the deep-
est foundation of my pure, radiant enlightenment is bright forever and will

alone sur vive” (
W
enlu
5, “Daxue”). Again, he says: “Buddhists also have a doc-
trine of the end of the kalpa, yet even they claim that one’s wonder ful origi-

nal enlightenment is there from the beginnings of all and will not end” (
W
enlu
3, “Liezi”). Saying this, Wang develops a vision of eter nal life beyond time and

space.
7. A similar position, expounded in relation to ofﬁcial duty, is also found
in the works of the late-Ming thinker Li Zhi, who criticized ofﬁcials for im-

posing their personal notions of right and wrong on the populace (see Mi-

zokuchi 1981, ch. 2), as well as in those of the Qing scholar Dai Zhen, who

thought Confucian thinkers should pay closer attention to the beneﬁts of oth-

ers instead of only looking at their own personal feelings (Mizokuchi 1981,

chs. 3 – 4).
8. In this and similar passages (e.g.,
We n l u
6), Wang Dao contrasts the meth-
A Mid-Ming Reappraisal of the
Laozi
145

ods of Wang Yangming with the necessity to pursue the tr uth both within and
without. However, as Mizuno (1980) has shown, Wang does not maintain this

position ﬁr mly throughout his works.
9. In contrast to Zhu Xi’s position, which claims that humans and other
beings all share the same inner nature, Wang ﬁnds them completely dif fer-

ent and claims that only humans have inner natures similar to those of other

humans (see
W
enlu
1, “Xingshuo”; 4, “Xingli”). See also Mabuchi 1990.
10. He also follows Xue Hui, author of the
Laozi jie
(Interpretation of the
Laozi
).
Not a direct student of Wang Yangming and Chen Xianzhang, he is a
thinker like Wang Dao who pursued a similar direction. Wang says about him:

“Lord Xue’s explanation of the
Laozi
is excellent, there is nothing quite as
clear as his” (
W
enlu
6, “Da Wei Zhuangqu”). See also Mabuchi 1998.
11. A dif ferent perspective is presented in
W
enlu
6 (“Yangming”), where he
criticizes Lu Jiuyuan, saying: “His teaching encourages empty, prideful, con-
fused, and vain for ms of lear ning; it does not have the beauty of leading back
to what is central, proper, and peaceful.” The expression “central and proper”

also appears in the same chapter, section “Lun Xiangshan,” where it describes

the traces of Zhan Ruoshui’s ideas.
Bibliography
Araki Kengo. 1972.
Mindai shis
o
kenky
u
.
T
okyo: S
o
bunsha.
Ching, Julia, ed. 1987.
The Records of Ming Scholars
. Honolulu: University of
Hawai‘i Press.
Li Qing. 1997.
“Mingdai de Laozi yanjiu.” Gongo bunka rons
o
1:279 –306.
Mabuchi Masaya. 1990.
“Min-Shin jidai ni oker u jinseiron no tentaku to kyok
o
.”
Ch
u
goku tetsugaku kenkyu
1:34 –57.
———. 1994.
“Mindai k
o
ki jugaku no d
o
ky
o
sesshu no ichi y
o
s
o
.”
In
D
o
ky
o
bunka
e no tenb
o
,
ed. by Yamada Toshiaki, 99 –128. Tokyo: Hirakawa.
———. 1998.
“Mindai goki juky
o
shidaifu no d
o
ky
o
shoy
u
.”
In
D
o
ky
o
no rekishi
to bunka,
ed. by Yamada Toshiaki and Tanaka Fumio, 275 –296. Tokyo:
Hirakawa.
Mizokuchi Y
u
s
o
. 1981.
Ch
u
goku zenkindai shis
o
no kussetsu to tenkai.
T
okyo:
Y
u
zankaku.
Mizuno Minor u. 1979.
“
O
Junkyo no Daigaku oku ni tsuite.” Firosoﬁa
67:93 –121.
———. 1980.
“
O
Junkyo no kuf
u
setsu.” Ch
u
goku koten kenky
u
25:149 –169.
Qiao Qingquan. 1993.
Zhan Ruoshui zhexue sixian yanjiu
. Beijing: Wenjin.
Sakai Tadao. 1980.
Ch
u
goku zensho no kenky
u
.
T
okyo: K
o
bund
o
.
Sano K
o
ji. 1972.
“Mindai zenhan ni oker u shis
o
d
o
k
o
.” Nihon Ch
u
goku gakkai h
o
26:112–126.
146 Mabuchi Masaya

7
Ar ms and the Dao, 2
The Xu Brothers in Tea Countr y
Edward L. Davis
Since the mid-1980s, many American and Japanese scholars of Dao-
ism have begun to shift their attention from the period of Daoism’s

for mative development in the late Han, Three Kingdoms, and Six Dy-

nasties to the period when it became the religion of the cour t in the

T
ang, Song, and Ming dynasties. This shift in focus has brought with
it another change. The pioneers in the systematic study of the early

Daoist scriptural traditions were burdened by a legacy of prejudice and

ignorance about the religion itself, which for decades, if not centuries,

had been viewed as either a degenerate for m of what is misleadingly

called “philosophical Daoism” or a jumble of magic and popular su-

perstition. It was, therefore, both necessar y and understandable that

these pioneers would focus, sometimes obsessively, on questions of

Daoist identity and self-deﬁnition—what, exactly, was the Daoist reli-

gion, and how did it distinguish itself from the
Laozi
and
Zhuangzi,
on
the one hand, and from village cults and popular religion, on the

other? Thanks to these pioneers and many of their students, now lead-

ers in the ﬁeld, these questions have lar gely been answered, and a

younger generation of scholars is able to revisit the relation of the

Daoist religion to classical texts and popular cults without fear of re-

viving old prejudices.
For historians of middle-period China, when Daoism became some-
thing of an imperial religion that was made to ser ve, on occasion, dy-

nastic ambitions or nativist projects, understanding its complex rela-

tionship with local temple-cults is of central impor tance. The old

problem of the identity and self-deﬁnition of the Daoist religion, mean-

while, has been subsumed by a new set of questions. These concer n

the variety of identities and self-deﬁnitions of Daoist priests; their mul-
149

tiple functions in local and metropolitan society; their interaction with
other religious practitioners, such as spirit-mediums, Buddhist monks,

and Confucian literati; and the precise relation of their rituals to the

festivals, processions, and theatrical per for mances of village and ur-

ban temple-cults.
This chapter examines some of these questions as par t of my on-
going work on one such temple-cult that is often seen as existing within
a Daoist framework. This is the cult to the Xu brothers in what we call
150 Edward L. Davis
Figure 7.1. The Lingji gong in Qingpu today: its location near the local market,
its gate, and its main altar, dedicated to the Xu brothers.

Minbei (Nor ther n Fujian), but what the more localized consciousness
of their contemporaries refer red to as Minnan or Henan, that is, the

souther n por tion of Min County across the river from the capital

Fuzhou. The Xu brothers were two princes of the tenth-centur y king-

dom of the Souther n Tang who found themselves at the time of their

deaths defending the r ural population around Qingbu (moder n

Qingpu), a market-town twenty-three miles south of Fuzhou, where

they are still actively venerated in their main temple, the Lingji gong

(Palace of Spiritual Succor), today (see ﬁgure 7.1). For their ef for ts,

Xu Zhizheng and Xu Zhi’e were worshiped in life as local heroes and

in death as Daoist transcendents —the “Per fected Lords of Abundant

Mercy and Spiritual Succor” (Hong’en lingji zhenjun). Temples were

built for them on Aofeng (Tur tle Peak), three miles to the east of

Qingbu, and their cult ﬂourished, especially in the Souther n Song,

Y
uan, and early Ming dynasties, when the Yongle emperor had a
r
eplica of the Lingji gong built in the nor thwester n cor ner of the For-
bidden City in his new capital of Beijing. Because of ofﬁcial and im-

perial patronage, thousands of pages of scripture, litur gies, and his-

torical documents related to the cult received a prominent position

in the Ming-dynasty Daoist canon. Among major historical compila-

tions are the
Xuxian hanzao
(Elegant Writings of the Xu Immor tals,
HY 1456), the
Xuxian zhenlu
(Tr ue Record of the Xu Immor tals, HY
1458), and the
Zanling ji
(Collection of Praise for the Numinous, HY
1457).
1
The Per fected Lords: Between Region and Empire
In my earlier work on the Xu brothers (1985), I devoted my ef for ts to

the explanation of the origin of their cult in Fujian and of the Yongle

emperor’s unprecedented attention to these obscure local gods. The

ﬁrst of these explanations seemed par ticularly demanding, since there

is no evidence that the Xu brothers ever went to Fujian. Retur ning to

my research after more than a decade, I am more convinced than ever

of their absence from Fujian, as well as of my earlier explanation for

their divinization in Min County. Disinherited by their family and dis-

enfranchised from political power, these two Souther n Tang princes

became the cynosure for the aspirations of the landowners of r ural

Min County precisely at the time when Fuzhou and its environs were

being ravaged by civil war and invasion and were absorbed within the

Souther n Tang state. Among these landowners’ aspirations was the

preser vation of their hard work, because many of them had migrated
Ar ms and the Dao, 2 151

to the region from the middle and lower Yangzi during the ninth and
tenth centuries. Another was to har vest the fr uits of their labor on a

r
egional and ultimately national scale. One of the ways this was ex-
pressed was in the hagiographical revision of Souther n Tang histor y,

placing these mar ginalized princes at the ver y center of a state, the

Souther n Tang, that self-consciously viewed itself as the inheritor of

the Tang ecumene and the guardians of a literar y-aesthetic culture that

would pass on to the Song. And one of the ways in which their aspi-

rations were acted upon was by placing the cult to the Xu brothers at

the center of the social order and examination success of r ural Min

County and by extending their fame through the combined ef for ts of

local and bureaucratic co -regionalists from the Souther n Song through

the early Ming (see Davis 1985).
2
Like the relation between
dao
and
fa
, or substance and function
(
ti/yong
),
the aspirations of these ninth- and tenth-centur y pioneers
in Fujian remained latent until they congealed in the literar y con-

sciousness of several Souther n Song lineages. This was a point I have

made earlier with respect to the Xu brothers, almost as an after thought

(1985). Since then, Rober t Hymes and others have driven this point

home. In contrast to their Nor ther n Song predecessors, members of

the Souther n Song elite derived status from their identity as local gen-

tlemen based on strategies of local mar riage, defense, and the patron-

age of local institutions (Hymes 1986, 210 –214). The compelling con-

clusions of Hymes’s study of the elite of southeaster n Jiangxi are still

being debated, and their implications for other regions of Souther n-

Song China have yet to be assessed (for a contrasting view, see Bossler

1998).
I prefer—and it is only a preference —to paint with a broader br ush
and would merely suggest that the land- and ofﬁce-holding elite of the

twelfth centur y ﬁnally had to come to ter ms with a br ute fact whose

possibility they had already anticipated with dread—a dynasty without

an empire. While the provincial elite of the eleventh centur y could

count on their links to the cour t to maintain their local status, those

bor n at the end of the centur y could no longer be so conﬁdent. This

does not mean, however, that the provincial elites of the Souther n Song

merely substituted horizontal ties for ver tical ones. Rather, it means

that in a world of shrinking horizons, new links to the transcendent

had to be for ged out of local institutions —shrines, abbeys, monaster-

ies, and academies. This is tr ue also of the beleaguered cour t, which

to reconstitute itself had now to pay tribute to these same local sources

of transcendence. Such, anyway, is one way to read the sharp incline
152 Edward L. Davis

of titles granted to local gods and religious institutions by the cour t
(see Hansen 1990, ch. 4).
There is cer tainly evidence that the literar y and institutional im-
presarios of the cult to the Xu brothers were members of the local elite

in souther n Min County from the twelfth centur y on. The constr uc-

tion of the ﬁrst “Patriarchal Temple” (
zumiao
) in the late tenth centur y
is identiﬁed with a landlord named Fang Jue, and succeeding gener-

ations of his descendants or ganized the institutional and ideological

expansion of the cult (
Xuxian zhenlu
1.6;
Xuxian hanzao
1.2a, 1.6b).
Nine individual Fangs are named, and their activities center on the

late twelfth, the ﬁrst and second halves of the four teenth, and the early

ﬁfteenth centuries.
3
T
wo members of another lineage, Zhou Y ue and
Zhou Sui, whose ancestors and descendants were also linked to the

cult, picked up the slack in the thir teenth centur y.
4
The Zhou and
the Fang are not the only landed families involved by any means, but

they are the ones whose prominence is consistently revealed over the

centuries.
While the identity and role of the Zhou lineage will be, as we shall
see, easier to account for, the Fangs appear nowhere else but in the

literar y legacy of the cult to the Xu brothers. W ith a little ar mchair

legwork, I have come up with one hypothesis as to their provenance.
The Fangs of Putian
In Putian, Xinghua Commandar y, a couple days’ jour ney south of

Fuzhou, a lar ge lineage named Fang was ﬂourishing in the Souther n

Song. We know about it—or rather, about the most impor tant of its

three branches, the “Purple-Robed Fangs” (Zhuzi Fang)—from the ge-

nealogical essays of one of its members, Fang Dacong (1183 –1247),

an early-thir teenth-centur y “presented scholar,” one of three in his

generation alone (
T
ie’an ji
31, 32). These essays were the literar y ac-
companiment to Fang Dacong’s reconstr uction of the ancestral

“Sacriﬁcial Hall” (
citang
)—or what is now called a “Sacriﬁcial Hall”—
near the suburban residences of the Fang lineage on Wushi shan

(Blackstone Mountain).
5
This temple, which was actually a Buddhist
merit cloister, was dedicated to the six tenth-centur y sons of the

founding ancestor of the Purple-Robed Fangs and appears to have

fallen into disuse and disrepair. The reconstr ucted Sacriﬁcial Hall

now became the focus of the ancestral rites of all branches of the Fang

lineage, placing as it did a ﬁrst-centur y Fang named Fang Hong at

the apex of an ancestral tree in which the Purple-Robed Fangs con-
Ar ms and the Dao, 2 153

stituted the tr unk (
T
ie’an ji
32). By 1269, it is said, several thousand
Fangs were annually attending the ancestral rites here (
Houcun xian-
sheng quanji
161).
We
can cer tainly ﬁnd in the activities of the Purple-Robed Fangs
some of the localist strategies Rober t Hymes has identiﬁed among the
elite of southeaster n Jiangxi, especially the preference for mar riages

within a circumscribed region and social circle. But even here, as the

historian Kobayashi Yoshihiro has discovered, the Purple-Robed Fangs

showed a marked preference for those families that had as much lit-

erar y and bureaucratic success as they had (Kobayashi 1995, 508 –511).

By the time of Fang Dacong, the three descendant groups of his line-

age could boast more than 120 ofﬁcials since the late Tang dynasty

and approximately 60 living degree-holders, no doubt nur tured in the

schools, the lecture halls, and the librar y of 40,000 volumes that the

lineage maintained throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries

(Kobayashi 1995, 517). Along with their charitable lands, the thir teenth-

centur y Fangs of Putian more closely resembled the Nor ther n-Song

Fangs of suburban Suzhou. The Sacriﬁcial Hall was meant to top of f

two centuries of examination success, bureaucratic ofﬁce, and liter-

ar y accomplishment, goals quite explicitly celebrated in the sources

as
the
strateg y of the Fang lineage. The Sacriﬁcial Hall, in fact, was pre-
cisely one of those local religious institutions through which a lar ger

vision was maintained. It celebrated not merely the Fangs’ role in an

imperial system but also quite explicitly a family tradition of seeking

and occupying high positions in the censorate, of steadfastly oppos-

ing the appeasement policies of the eleventh and twelfth centuries,

and, throughout, of speaking the “plain tr uth,” as they put it, to the

power ful (Kobayashi 1995, 507–508).
In one of Fang Dacong’s genealogical essays, he mentions ver y
brieﬂy the other two branches of his lineage —the Baidu pai and the

Fangshan pai. I am interested in the latter, the Fangs of Fang Moun-

tain. According to Dacong’s brief notice, these Fangs, before they

took up literar y pursuits, moved from the city of Putian to the vil-

lages around Wushi shan and from there —still, perhaps, in the tenth

centur y—“away in other directions” (
T
ie’an ji
32.3.ll3 – 6). Fangshan was
in Min County, sixty-four miles nor th of Putian. This range, which be-

came known as Wuhu shan (Five Tiger Mountain) in the Qing and is

so designated on maps today, sits on an east–west axis parallel to the

river that separates Fuzhou from souther n Min County (
Mindu ji
14.14 –15). In the hagiography of the Xus it is identiﬁed as one of the

Sanshan Three Mountains —the famous appellation by which the re-
154 Edward L. Davis

gion around Fuzhou was known. More impor tantly, the Xu brothers
r
efer to themselves as the tutelar y spirits of Fangshan, the easter n por-
tion of which includes Aofeng, the exact site of their Patriarchal Tem-

ple and of the Lingji gong (
Xuxian hanzao
2.11a, 3.1a). Now, if the im-
presarios of this temple-cult, the “South- of-the-River Fangs” (Henan

Fangshi), were descendants of the Fangshan Fangs, as some believe

they were (see Clar t 1998),
6
some interesting conclusions can be drawn.
The Per fected Lords: Between Elites and Commoners
The Xu brothers of the Lingji gong were the patrons, among other

things, of a tradition of primar y school education established south

of the river since the end of the Tang dynasty, a tradition that had al-

lowed even peasants and ar tisans to aspire to scholarship and culture.

This tradition culminated in the “Hall of Puriﬁcation” (
zhaitang
),  a
Confucian lecture hall within Lingji gong (
Xuxian hanzao
1.16b–19a).
While peasants and ar tisans were cer tainly free to come here and be

puriﬁed by philosophy, it is clear that the local elite made greater use

of it. And none beneﬁted more from its use than the Fangs. In 1198

and again a few years later, the South- of-the-River Fangs produced

their ﬁrst and second “presented scholars”—Fang Jie and Fang Ce,

r
espectively—and their success is directly attributed to the patronage
of the Xu brothers following a session of “dream divination” (
mengbu
)
(
Xuxian hanzao
1.3a–b).
Now, what appears to be a common example of the elite practice
of “temple incubation” from the twelfth centur y would become, and

perhaps already was, something else entirely. The relationship be-

tween the super natural patrons of the Lingji gong and their clients,

the residents of the twenty- odd villages around Aofeng and not just

the Fangs, was one of unabashed mediumism. It was not exactly the

spirit-possession of the “divination youths” (
tongji
) of village Fujian, nor
was it exactly the visionar y transmission of texts of the lower gentr y

around four th-centur y Maoshan, but something in between, sharing

characteristics of both. Its primar y mechanism was the “phoenix bas-

ket” (
luanji
),
the planchette, or sand table, on which the invoked spir-
its spell out a message (
Zanling ji
1a). The ﬁrst account dates from 955:
“
The Per fected Lords lowered the br ush (
jiangbi
),
marking talismanic
r
emedies to help people, and news of this spread far and wide” (
Xu-
xuan zhenlu
1.30a). This is only ten years after the death of the Xu broth-
ers, purpor tedly at Aofeng, and twenty-eight years before Fang Jue

sponsored what would become known as the “Ancestral Temple of Spir-
Ar ms and the Dao, 2 155

itual Succor” (Lingji zongmiao), suggesting that the composers of one
of these texts’ prefaces were cor rect in identifying the origin of tem-

ple worship in a village spirit-medium cult (
congci
) (
Zanling ji
1.4a).
Subsequent descriptions of it waver between divination (
bu
) and pos-
session (
pingfu
),
depending on the passage, but it was this mechanism
that produced ever ything from the graded dogger rel based on the

sixty-four hexagrams (
qianshi
) through linked verse and prose poems
to the encomia, exorcistic writs, litur gical documents, stelae, and all

the historical records of the temple complex itself. The four teen vol-

umes and ﬁve hundred printed pages of the
Xuxian hanzao
is nothing
but the literar y residue of these mediumistic sessions, at various de-

grees of remove and reﬁnement to be sure, but always self- consciously

spoken in, and inter r upted by, the ﬁrst-person pronoun of the gods.
I will not trouble with the niceties of this process, which would re-
quire a difﬁcult and tedious analysis of the textual language. The su-

per natural and ter restrial producers of this discourse, some of it in-

scribed in stone before printed on paper, do not seem troubled by it,

though they do feel the need for a justiﬁcation. What they want to jus-

tify, however, is not the process itself, but rather its suitability for pub-

lic consumption. To do so they must search for a literar y precedent,

and they ﬁnd it in an epigraphic genre ﬁrst introduced to the literati

world by the spirit of Liu Zong yuan (773 – 819): inscriptions on the re-

verse side of funerar y tablets (
beiyin
).
The textual reproduction of the
Xu brothers’ own “reverse tablet” is preceded by a discussion of the

practice, which the editors of the
Xuxian hanzao
distinguish from those
tablets that record such things as music, moral lear ning, histor y,

mour ning, and biography (1.9a–10a). The contrast drawn is between

tablets by living descendants to commemorate the dead and reverse

tablets that were intended, quite literally, to embody and prolong a

personal relationship after death. The subtext of this difﬁcult passage

is, ﬁrst, Liu Zong yuan’s own composition of a reverse tablet for a reclu-

sive monk and, second, the reverse tablet marking Liu’s own tomb, in

which he or his spirit identiﬁed the names of his disciples and clients

(his “fellows”) (
Liu Zong yuan quanji
, chs. 6, 7, and supplement).
The problem that is being addressed by both text and subtext is the
persistence of nonafﬁnal, hierarchical relationships such as those be-

tween a master and disciple or patron and client. Having identiﬁed a

precedent, the editors of the
Xuxian hanzao
feel no need to elaborate:
“Since Liu [Zi-]hou,” they say, “there have been reverse tablets; since

the Xu [Immor tals], Princes of the Yangzi, have begun [to do the

same], who dares ar gue with this?” (1.10a). In the reverse tablet of the
156 Edward L. Davis

Xu brothers, the gods only hope that they will be blessed with disci-
ples who have half the talent of Liu Zong yuan and of the chronicler

of Liu’s temple-cult, none other than HanY u (768 – 830) (
Xuxian han-
zao
1.10a–b). Who dares to ar gue, indeed!
The vast literar y output of the Xu brothers was a product of the
thir teenth, four teenth, and early ﬁfteenth centuries, a period that

broadly coincides with the ver y public patronage of the Zhou and Fang

lineages. The members of these lineages, who are speciﬁcally identiﬁed

as the benefactors and press agents of the cult, were not, however, the

ones responsible for this literar y output. This was the work of a wider

ar ray of residents of Jishan li, the administrative unit that comprised

several villages on or around Aofeng. Amazingly, we have all the names

of these villagers and r ural gentlemen (
cunren, liren, xiangren
),
though
a few may have belonged to the Zhou lineage in par ticular. From a

maze of cross -references I can identify at least two groups, deﬁned by

their activities. One group of seven individuals, representing seven sur-

names, was responsible for those mediumistic sessions that resulted

in the historical records of the gods and their temple complex (
Xu-
xian hanzao
1.19ab, 8.1a–3a). Another group of ﬁve individuals repre-
sents four sur names, three of which overlap with sur names of the ﬁrst

group. This second group of ﬁve for med a kind of club or society—

what in secular sources might be called a
rushe
. Their sessions produced
a lot of poetr y. They were given ﬂoral titles: “Fellow Plum,” “Fellow

Bamboo,” “Fellow Orchid, “Fellow Pine,” and “Fellow Chr ysanthe-

mum” (
Xuxian hanzao
5.4ab).
7
This group was also in char ge of the
“kitchens” (
chu
) of the gods, village feasts that have an ancient histor y
(
Xuxian hanzao
5.3a– 4b, 6.1a–b; see Stein 1971; also Feuchtwang
1992, 85 – 87).
The temple also appears to have been the center of other literati
activities, including painting,
Y
ijing
studies, Buddhism, and geomancy
(
Xuxian hanzao
6.1b– 4b, 6.5b–7a), but the Lingji gong was what we
would identify as a “community temple” and not a temple-cult that ap-

pealed exclusively to the local elite. The gods responded to the needs

and requests of the commoner households of Jishan (
Xuxian hanzao
5.5a). These are recorded in loving detail and were often the occasion

for lengthy memorials. Moving beyond personal requests, we see that

the peasants, ar tisans, and petty merchants of Jishan par ticipated to-

gether with the elite in confessional and votive ceremonies that

deﬁned and reinforced a rigid social and occupational hierarchy, even

as they envisioned a r ural order of benign pater nalism and har mony.

We
have the texts of these communal rites (
Xuxian zhenlu
2.16 – 43;
Hou-
Ar ms and the Dao, 2 157

cun xiansheng daquan ji
),
which need to be compared with what we
know about the r ural order and ideolog y that was evolving in the Y uan
and early Ming dynasties. Looking ahead, these texts embody the world

into which the ﬁrst Ming r uler Zhu Y uanzhang ver y much wanted to

tap with his system of tax captains. Looking back, they are exemplar y

of the vision condensed in the great Neo -Confucian Zhu Xi’s feeble

blueprint for r ural compacts (Hymes and Shirokauer 1993, 22–25).
Moving beyond these rites, we can also see that the Lingji gong
ser ved as the str ucturing center for the religious and litur gical tra-

ditions of the entire region south of the river. Lar ge-scale multivil-

lage “of ferings” (
jiao
) were per for med here (Luotian jiao, Huanglu
jiao, and Y ulanpen hui/Ullambana) for the legions of hungr y ghosts

(
Xux
ian hanzao
11.1a– 8a, 11.8a–16b, 11.26a–34b). Exorcistic rituals di-
r
ectedagainst the many infectious diseases of this subtropical region
have roots deep in the past of Chinese and non-Han Fujian, as do the

special rituals for women, the Xuepen hui (Bloodpool Gatherings),

which reveal themselves here in a lar gely Buddhist framework (
Xu-
xian hanzao
4.7b–14b, 11.16b–19b; see Seaman 1981). The relation,
in fact, between the Lingji gong and the Buddhist institutions of the

r
egion is profound and complex. W ithin its pur view was drawn a Bud-
dhist Y uqing tang (Hall of Blessings), presided over by Dingguang fo

(Skt.: D
i
pimkara; Ch.: Randeng), the most impor tant Buddha among
commoners in Fujian and a signiﬁcant object of worship in Jiangxi

and Zhejiang as well. Here he is called “ The Holy Lord in White Cloth-

ing, Dingguang of Mount Pangu” (Baiyi shenggong Pangu Ding-

guang) (
Xuxian hanzao
1.20a–22b).
8
The Xu brothers, in fact, claimed
a special relationship with this Buddha, as clients to patron, just as

the literati and literate clients of the Xu brothers maintained an on-

going intellectual and social relationship with the Chan monks of the

r
egion.
9
In all this I have barely touched on the diverse ways in which the
many temple-cults of the region were drawn into the religious orbit

of the Lingji gong and Patriarchal Temple.
10
For the moment let me
underscore the fact that the complex religious str ucture I have ad-

umbrated for med the base from which the Zhou and Fang launched

their campaign to bring their super natural patrons to the attention

of provincial and metropolitan ofﬁcials. This campaign was wildly suc-

cessful, in par t, I believe, because the law of avoidance did not apply

to Fujian. What this meant, of course, was that if one sought the ear

of a prefect, that ear often belonged to a relative. This was par ticularly

the case with respect to the Zhou, who counted many ofﬁcials and “pre-
158 Edward L. Davis

sented scholars” among their numbers. However, even the lesser
Fangs could be assured that their well-placed connection hailed from

Min County. In Fujian, the bureaucratic and the personal were not in

opposition (Hymes 1997, 130).
The Fangs of Min County
When we examine the role that the Lingji gong played in the lineage

consciousness of the Fang and the Zhou, we might say that it func-

tioned much like the Sacriﬁcial Hall did for the Purple-Robed Fangs

of Putian. This analog y is intended to suggest that the for mer were

seeking an alter native way to distinguish themselves from their in-

creasingly hegemonic cousins in Putian, who, by the way, had insti-

tuted a series of tomb sacriﬁces from which the throngs attending the

Sacriﬁcial Hall were excluded. In this scenario the Fangs of Min County

were acting like the second, Baidu branch of the Putian Fangs, who

devoted their ritual ef for ts to the patronage of the gods of the Xiang-

ying miao (Auspicious Response Temple) in Putian, despite the in-

clusive claims of the Sacriﬁcial Hall (Dean 1993, 35 –37; 1998b, 27–

28).
11
However, even if the Fangs of Min County were quite conscious
of the ritual activities of their relatives far ther south, they also had com-

petitors much closer to home. At the end of the Song and beginning

of the Y uan dynasties, a second-generation disciple of Zhu Xi named

Xiong Qufei had built the Aofeng shutang (Tur tle Peak Study Hall),

in which he taught and worshiped before images of the “Five Wor thies

of the Or thodox Transmission of the Dao,” whose names I need not

enumerate (
Minzhong lixue yuanyuan kao
37.4a–9a). No one in Xiong’s
circle had anything to do with the Xu brothers, and vice versa. The

Fangs of Min County, as we have seen, had their own or thodox trans-

mission, so to speak, which derived from Liu Zong yuan and Han Y u.
At the ver y least, then, we can conclude that the three descent
groups of the Fang lineage in Minbei constr ucted their identity along

ver y dif ferent lines. And where the Purple-Robed Fangs supplemented

their annual celebrations at the Sacriﬁcial Hall with a tomb-cult to the

pioneer ancestors of their descent group, which seemed only to em-

phasize their hegemony over the for mer, the Fangs of Fang Mountain

tur ned to the “death site” of two other immigrants to Fujian to ser ve

as stand-ins for their own pioneering ancestors and as foci for the ac-

complishments and aspirations of their own descent group. The anal-

og y between the temple-cult to the Xu brothers and a cult to ances-

tors is strengthened by the fact that in the thir teenth centur y the cult
Ar ms and the Dao, 2 159

to the Xu brothers absorbed the nearby temple-cult to an actual pio-
neering ancestor, Weng Chengzan, a man who had come to Aofeng

in the late ninth centur y and was recognized as the one responsible

for conver ting the area to productive use (
Xuxian hanzao
1.30 –31; see
Davis 1985, 48).
12
Now, if the patronage of the Xu brothers was analogous to an an-
cestor cult, we might enter tain the notion that it also represented an

alter native way of constr ucting such a cult, and a way that was more

in tune with the popular tradition of Fujian. Too much is often made

of the categorical distinctions between gods, ghosts, and ancestors. In

Fujian, at least, whose histor y can be traced in the single and multi-

sur name settlements of Chinese immigrants since the Han dynasty, the

cult to gods and the cult to ancestors were often conﬂated. This com-

bination of temple (
simiao
) and ancestral hall (
jiaci
)—a persistent
characteristic of many areas of Fujian from the Song through the Late

Imperial and even Republican periods —was designated in genealo-

gies as “household temples” (
jiamiao
).
They were dedicated either to
one of the several salviﬁc deities characteristic of Fujian (Mazu,

Guanyin, Baosheng dadi, Qingshui zushi, etc.) or to an ancestor

identiﬁed as a celestial emperor or lord (e.g., Wu[xing] dadi), but in

both cases the temple might also include altars to other ancestors.

Other, more complex for ms of combining ter ritorial and ancestral

cults were to be found in multisur name settlements (Lin and Peng

1993, 38 – 46). In Fujian, moreover, commoners regarded the most

signiﬁcant pre-Song temple-cults —to the three divinities of Mount

Wu
yi, for example, or to the four r ulers of the early Han kingdom of
Min-Y ue —as both protectors and founding ancestors (Xu 1993,

141–160). These gods had secured the peace and prosperity of Nor th-

er n Fujian while guaranteeing its independence, such that the people

of Fujian could absorb and enjoy the beneﬁts of the civilization of

the Central Plain on their own ter ms. The Fangs, too, were express-

ing their own lineage consciousness through two gods that had pro-

tected Min County from inter nal tyrants and invading states, that had

made the region safe for landownership and study, and that had al-

lowed these landlords and their studious descendants to make a se-

rious mark on the larger world without having to give up their own.

As such, the cult to the Xu brothers allowed this descent goup and

others like them to negotiate, on the one hand, between the local

and the global and, on the other, between the perspective of the com-

moners who worked for them and the perspective of their elite

cousins who excluded them.
160 Edward L. Davis

This said, we must nonetheless insist that the temple-cult to the Xu
brothers was not a “household temple,” nor for that matter should it
be refer red to as a Daoist temple or abbey. It was a community tem-

ple that ser ved the illiterate peasants and petty merchants of the re-

gion as much as the literate commoners and self-conscious descent

groups such as the Fang and Zhou. All strata, moreover, par ticipated

in the lar ge-scale rituals per for med at the temples by Daoist priests

and Buddhist monks. And if it were the literati of the area who “com-

posed” the commemorations of these rituals or even gathered in ex-

clusive groups to per for m their own, they did so in ways that were noth-

ing but more-reﬁned versions of the mediumism of their less -educated

co -regionalists. That such commemorations achieved such a promi-

nent place in the Daoist canon, along with a vast ar ray of historical

and Daoist litur gical texts, should not distract us from the lar gely ec-

umenical identity of the temple-cult.
Notes
1. Litur gical texts include HY 468 – 475, while divination texts include HY
1291–1292. The Lingji gong on Aofeng has been under reconstr uction since
1976, while the Lingji xinggong (Auxiliar y Palace of Spiritual Succor) in the

Forbidden City no longer sur vives. For evidence that the cult to the Xu broth-

ers persists in some fashion on Taiwan as well, see Banck 1985, 191–192. The

cult to the Xu brothers is discussed brieﬂy in Boltz 1987, 91–93, 195 –197;

Lager wey 1987, 260 –264. See also Xu 1993; Liu and Peng 1993 on Fujianese

r
eligion.
Other original sources include:
Houcun xiansheng daquan ji
by Liu Kezhuang
(1187–1269), ed.
Sibu congkan
69 –70 (HY 474);
Liu Zong yuan quanji,
ed.
Guangzhi shuju in Guangzhou;
Mindu ji,
compiled by Wang Y ingshan in 1612;
Minzhong lixue yuanyuan kao
by Li Qingfu, dat. 18
th
c., ed.
Siku quanshu zhen-
ben erji
131–136; and
T
ie’an ji
by Fang Dacong (1183 –1247), ed.
Siku quanshu
zhenben erji
305 –306.
2. Xu tentatively suggests that the cult to the Xu brothers derived from, or
was modeled on, a cult in nor thwester n Fujian to two other generals of the

souther n Tang named Zhang and Chen (1993, 193 –194). I would ar gue,

rather, that the contemporaneity of the two cults and the similarities pointed

out by Xu suggest that the cult to Zhang and Chen, like the cult to the Xu

brothers, should be understood as a creative response to the Souther n Tang’s

absorption of nor ther n Fujian.
3. Fang Xun, Fang Xian, and Fang Zhong for the late twelfth; Fang
Zhuang you, Fang Fengwu, and Fang Ciweng for the early four teenth; Fang

Huan and Fang Wen for the late four teenth; and Fang Wenzhao for the early

ﬁfteenth centuries.
4. Zhou Ruli for the eleventh; Zhou Y i, Zhou Shixiu, and Zhou Chong for
Ar ms and the Dao, 2 161

the late twelfth; and Zhou Dinglai, Zhou Y ue, and Zhou Sui for the thir teenth
centuries.
5. See
Houcun xiansheng quanji
93. Liu Kezhuang’s son was mar ried to a
daughter of Fang Dacong’s brother, just as Liu himself was mar ried to women

of two lineages, the Chen and the Lin, who customarily provided wives for

the Fangs. The Purple-Robed Fangs are a good example of the Souther n

Song’s “national elite” as described by Bossler 1998, 204.
6. Hugh Clark, who is working on the Fangs of Putian among other de-
scent groups, assures me that they were, though I have yet to see the docu-

ment that conﬁr ms this. In the meantime, see Clark 1998.
7. See also
Xuxian hanzao
6.1ab for a shor t meditation on the meaning of
“fellowship” and on the Confucian symbolism of their ﬂoral titles. Helen Siu

(1990) describes one such elite social club from late-imperial Guangdong.

The Chr ysanthemum Festival in Xiaolan in the Pearl River Delta involved

ﬂoral displays, drinking, and poetr y competitions. It was held in front of an

ancestral hall and for med an elite supplement and counterpoint to the
jiao
-
of ferings per for med at the community temples, in which the elite also par-

ticipated, but which were open to all. The ﬂoral displays and poetr y com-

petitions were closely related: “ These poetr y couplets centered on Tao

Y
uanming, a four th-centur y ofﬁcial who retired to the life of a her mit in his
chr ysanthemum gardens because he refused to ser ve another master at a time

of rapid dynastic transition” (Siu 1990, 777). This might war rant an inter-

pretation of the festival as a conﬁr mation of the identity of the par ticipants

as “local gentlemen.” As Helen Siu points out:
The chr ysanthemum, together with the plum, orchid, and bam-

boo, was a popular topic of ar tistic representation among scholars

in Xiaolan and elsewhere. Since the Song period, the ﬂower was

seen as expressing the ideals of the her mit, the elevated distance

of the scholar from mundane political af fairs. However, retreat con-

tinued to afﬁr m attachment to the imperial order. Par ticipation in

literati culture, even at a distance from the cour t, was an impor-

tant asset in local politics, where the authority of the imperial bu-

r
eaucracy was often brought to bear. (1990, 777–778)
In other words, the symbolic capital of the ﬂoral symbol, its linking of the

user to a literati culture that extended far in time and space, tr umped the

content of the symbol and could bring its users inﬂuence with the magistrate

and other ofﬁcials, as Siu demonstrates, because these also recognized the

value of such symbols. The same might be said for elite patronage of cults to

immor tals, which had come to for m an integral par t of high literati culture

since the Six Dynasties. For a well-ar gued alter native viewpoint, see Hymes

1997.
8. These titles refer to facts in the life of Zheng Zichan, who was thought
to be the last incar nation of the Buddha Dingguang fo. Zheng was bor n in

T
ong’an County in 934. In 1004 he moved to Mount Pangu in Nankang,
Jiangxi, where he became the abbot of a Chan cloister. While there he was

also thought to have fulﬁlled a prophecy concer ning the appearance of a

“white-clothed bodhisattva.” See Lin and Peng 1993, 281–293. The authors
162 Edward L. Davis

also present a shor t, but quite commendable, introduction to the Xu broth-
ers (1993, 204 –216). For the most recent, in-depth study of the cult to Ding-

guang fo, see Lager wey 1998.
9. Dingguang fo, along with another prominent god of the region, the
Great Emperor of the Easter n Peak, memorialized the Jade Emperor in the

early months of 995, bringing to the latter’s attention the meritorious deeds

of the Xu brothers. As a result, the Jade Emperor granted the Xu brothers

the titles “Per fected Lord of the Jade Por tal” and “Per fected Lord of the

Golden Por tal,” titles that were actually confer red on them during the per-

for mance of a Yellow Register Retreat later that same year, i.e., 995 (
Xuxian
zhenlu
1). The prominent role of Dingguang fo is subsequently reﬂected in
the
Hong’en lingji zhenjun miaojing
(HY 317), a ﬁfteenth-centur y text.
10. See
Xuxian zhenlu
1.8a for an indication of the geographical extent of
this orbit. These temple-cults, the result of a “division” or “bor rowing” of in-

cense, are discussed at length in Davis 1985, 17–21, citing
Xuxian zhenlu
1.7:
“Each year the elders would escor t the gods [of these temples] to have an au-

dience in the Ancestral Temple [of Spiritual Succor]. They would sacriﬁce

and hold
zhai
to demonstrate that they had not for gotten their origin.” This
clearly refers to the processions on the anniversaries of the Per fected Lords

when the lar ge-scale
jiao,
mentioned above, would be per for med by Daoist
priests and Buddhist monks.
11. A
Xiang ying miaoji
(Record of the Temple of Auspicious Response) was
composed in 1138, after the completion of a major restoration, by two

ofﬁcials of the Baidu line, Fang Lue and Fang Zhao. The Xiang ying miao was

also known as the “ Temple to the Great Ofﬁcial,” whom Dean, following Hugh

Clark, has tentatively identiﬁed with Fang Jun, an eleventh-centur y “presented

scholar” of the Baidu Fangs (Dean 1998b, 27–28
n
23).
12. Aofeng was also the site, in 1600 and 1637, of two successive Three-in-
One temples, for which see Dean 1998a, 131, 134 –135.
Bibliography
Banck, Wer ner. 1985.
Das Chinesische Tempelorakel, II
. W iesbaden, Ger many:
Har rassowitz.
Boltz, Judith M. 1987.
A Sur vey of Taoist Literature: Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries
.
Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, China Research Monograph 32.
Bossler, Beverly. 1998.
Power ful Relations: Kinship, Status, and the State in Sung
China
. Cambridge: Har vard University Press.
Clark, Hugh. 1998. “ The Development of the Ancestral Of fering Hall in the
Kinship Tradition of Minnan (Souther n Fujian) in the 10
th
–13
th
Centuries,
and the Family Rituals of Zhu Xi.” Paper Presented at the Annual Meet-

ing of the Association of Asian Studies, Washington, D.C.
Davis, Edward L. 1985. “Ar ms and the Tao, 1: Hero Cult and Empire in Tra-
ditional China.” In
Sd
o
dai no shakai to sh
u
ky
o
, ed. by S
o
dai kenky
u
kai, 1–56.
T
okyo: Ky
u
ko shoin.
Dean, Kenneth. 1993.
T
aoist Ritual and Popular Cults of Southeast China
. Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press.
Ar ms and the Dao, 2 163

———. 1998a.
The Lord of the Three-in-One: The Spread of a Cult in Southeast China
.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
———. 1998b. “ Transfor mations of the
She
(Altars of the Soil) in Fujian.”
Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie
10:19 –75.
Feuchtwang, Stephan. 1992.
The Imperial Metaphor: Popular Religion in China
.
London: Routledge.
Hansen, Valerie. 1990.
Changing Gods in Medieval China, 1127–1276
. Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press.
Hymes, Rober t. 1986.
Statesmen and Gentlemen: The Elite of Fu-Chou, Chiang-Hsi,
in Nor ther n and Souther n Sung
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1997. “A
Jiao
Is a
Jiao
Is a ? Thoughts on the Meaning of Ritual.” In
Culture & State in Chinese Histor y: Conventions, Accomodations, and Critiques
,
ed. by Theodore Huters, R. Bin Wong, and Pauline Yü. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
Hymes, Rober t, and Conrad Shirokauer, eds. 1993.
Ordering the World: Ap-
proaches to State and Society in Sung Dynasty China
. Berkeley: University of
Califor nia Press.
Kobayashi Yoshihiro. 1995. “S
o
dai Fukken P
u
ten no H
o
shi ichizoku ni tsuite.”
In
Ch
u
goku ch
u
seishi kenky
u
zokuhen
, ed. by Ch
u
goku ch
u
seishi kenky
u
kai,
503 –526. Kyoto: Ky
o
to daigaku gakushu shuppankai.
Lager wey, John. 1987.
T
aoist Ritual in Chinese Society and Histor y
. New York:
Macmillan.
———. 1998. “
Dingguang gufo:
Oral and Written Sources in the Study of a
Saint.”
Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie
10:77–129.
Lin Guoping and Peng Wenyu. 1993.
Fujian minjian xinyang
. Fuzhou: Fujian
r
enmin.
Seaman, Gar y. 1981. “ The Sexual Politics of K ar mic Retribution.” In
The An-
thropolog y of Taiwanese Society
, ed. by Emily Aher n and Hill Gates, 381–396.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Siu, Helen. 1990. “Recycling Tradition: Culture, Histor y, and Political Econ-
omy in the Chr ysanthemum Festivals in South China.” In
Comparative Stud-
ies in Society and Histor y
32.4:765 –794.
Stein, Rolf A. 1971. “Les f êtes du cuisine du taoïsme religieux.”
Annuaire du
Collège de France
71:431– 440.
Xu Xiaowang. 1993.
Fujian minjian xinyang yuanliu
. Fuzhou: Fujian jiaoyu.
164 Edward L. Davis

8
Identity and Lineage
The
T
aiyi jinhua zongzhi
and the Spirit-Writing Cult
to Patriarch Lü in Qing China
Mori Yuria
The
T
aiyi jinhua zongzhi
(Great Unity’s Instr uctions on [Developing]
Golden Florescence), ever since its translation by Richard W ilhelm
and C. G. Jung under the title
The Secret of the Golden Flower
(1929), has
been one of the best-known Chinese religious classics in the West.

However, as Daoist historical studies grew, it received less attention

from scholars, because they tended to concentrate more on the for m-

ative period of the religion in the middle ages. Also, the text was

thought spurious. As the late Dr. Anna Seidel remarked, “ The text of

this movement [of inner alchemy] translated by Richard W ilhelm is

unfor tunately of a rather recent date and of doubtful transmission”

(1995, 26 –27).
However, this is not entirely tr ue if one takes the trouble to look at
the editions and transmission of the text within the activities of pop-

ular religious cults in Qing China. The fact that the text is of com-

paratively recent date makes it interesting for an entirely dif ferent area

of Daoist studies, and its religious role can be better understood, es-

pecially in the light of Monica Esposito’s recent analysis of extant ver-

sions and their lines of transmission (1998). She explored the follow-

ing six texts:
1.
Xiantian xuwu taiyi jinhua zongzhi
(Instr uctions on [Developing]
Golden Florescence by the Great Unity of For mer Heaven,
Emptiness and Nonbeing). In
Lüzu quanshu
(Complete Collec-
tion of Patriarch Lü), edited by Shao Zhilin, 1775.
2.
Fuyou shangdi tianxian jinhua zongzhi
(Instr uctions on [Develop-
ing] Golden Florescence by the Celestial Immor tal, the Highest

Lord Fuyou). In
Quanshu zhengzong
(Complete Collection of the
Or thodox Lineage), edited by Jiang Y upu, 1803.
165

3.
Xiantian xuwu taiyi jinhua zongzhi.
In
Lüzu quanshu zongzheng
(Complete Collection of the Or thodox Lineage of Patriarch Lü),
edited by Chen Mou, 1852.
4.
Jinhua zongzhi.
In
Daozang jiyao
(Repositor y of the Daoist Canon),
edited by Jiang Y upu, ca. 1796 –1819.
5.
Lüzu shi xiantian xuwu taiyi jinhua zongzhi.
In
Daozang xubian
(Supplement to the Daoist Canon), edited by Min Y ide (1758 –

1836), 1834.
6.
Changsheng shu (
Book of Long Life), originally entitled
T
aiyi
jinhua zongzhi
. In
Changsheng shu xuming fang hekan
(Integrated
Edition of the Book of Long Life and Its Longevity Techniques),

edited by Dan Ranhui, 1921.
Through comparison of these texts, Esposito has shown that the
Jin-
hua zongzhi
was ﬁrst for med as a spirit-writing scripture in the Jingming
(Pure Brightness) tradition and was subsequently accepted by several
dif ferent sects (see Esposito 1996; 1998a; 1998b). The lines of trans-

mission of the text can be clearly asser ted by tracing various factors

that were eliminated—or added—at the various stages of acceptance.

As a result, it becomes evident that the text was appropriated in a rather

disrespectful manner from one sect to another. They each tried to

make use of the text as proof for their own legitimacy, showing that it

had come down in none other but their tradition or lineage. This ap-

propriation of the text implies not only the presence of a common

need for a unifying and legitimating document among these sects, but

also the existence of common str ucture to their faith. Interestingly,

the sects involved in the appropriation of the
Jinhua zongzhi
were also
deeply engaged in spirit-writing, and especially spirit-writing linked

with Lüzu, Patriarch Lü, the poet and immor tal Lü Dongbin (see

Baldrian-Hussein 1986).
The following discussion of the text will present the process of
for mation of several of its versions, concentrating on the way each

sect represented the relationship between Lüzu and themselves

through spirit-writing. This then, it is hoped, will shed a little light

on the ways in which spirit-writing functioned, or at least was ex-

pected to function, in each sect that used it to asser t its legitimacy. I

will begin by focusing on the for mation of Shao Zhilin’s version, then

examine the development of Jiang Y upu’s text, and ﬁnally look at

Min Y ide’s edition as contained in his
Gu shuyinlou cangshu
(Collected
Books from the Ancient Pavilion) and in the
Daozang xubian
listed
earlier.
1
166 Mori Y uria

The For mation of Shao Zhilin’s Version
The oldest extant version of the
Jinhua zongzhi
is the text included in
juan
49 of the sixty-four-
juan
version of the
Lüzu quanshu
, edited by
Shao Zhilin in 1775, a revised and enlar ged edition of the thir ty-two -
juan
version, prefaced by Liu Tishu in 1742. The
Jinhua zongzhi
is not
included in the latter, but Shao Zhilin’s version contains ﬁfteen pref-

aces, two appendices, and one postface (see Mori 1998a, note 5; Es-

posito 1998, 93 –94).
Through these prefaces, we can trace the for mation of the text. As
half of them were eliminated from most later versions, they un-

doubtedly give the most impor tant extant account of the for mation

of the
Jinhua zongzhi
. According to them, around 1666 there was a
group of at least seven par ticipants who came together at the spirit-

writing altar of Zhou Yehe in Piling (Changzhou, Jiangsu). There, Lüzu

descended, together with the ancient patriarchs of the Quanzhen

(Complete Per fection) school, Tan Changzhen and Qiu Changchun,

and two years later the revelation of the
Jinhua zongzhi
began. At this
time the altar was said to be located in the Bailong jingshe (White

Dragon Chapel) in Piling. This is probably the same place as Zhou’s

altar, but there are no records that explicitly make the identiﬁcation.

At ﬁrst, the revealed characters could not be decoded, so the seven

members requested fur ther explanations from Lüzu, to which the im-

mor tal responded. Pan Y i’an describes how the members gathering

at Zhou’s altar developed Lüzu’s spirit-writing:
As I remember, it was in the
wushen
year [1668] that our holy patri-
arch Chunyang [i.e., Lüzu] began to transmit the “Instr uctions.” The
seven people who made a commitment [to Lü] bowed deeply and ob-
tained [his teachings]. None but these seven were given this trans-
mission. The most profound teaching was [expressed in] no more than
one or two words. It could not be put into words and letters. After wards,

the seven questioned [Lü] in detail. As our holy patriarch spared no
mercy in giving clariﬁcations, [his teachings were] compiled for days
and months. Eventually they composed a volume. (
Lüzu quanshu
49,
pref. 9a)
Through such communication between the members and the deity,
the text was gradually compiled over a period of months (see Mori

1998a, 45 – 47). According to Shiga (1999), who studies spirit-writing

cults in contemporar y Hong Kong, the founders of the Xinshan tang,

an altar community also centered on the spirit-writing of Lüzu, had a
Identity and Lineage 167

similar experience in 1935. They, too, initially could not understand
the characters the immor tal drew and had to ask him for an inter-

pretation. Thus they were gradually trained to understand his teach-

ings (Shiga 1999, 214).
Although all questions from disciples have been omitted in the ex-
tant versions of the
Jinhua zongzhi,
we can still ﬁnd some passages that
bear the marks of a question-and-answer situation, especially when the

immor tal patiently explains teachings he has already transmitted (for

example,
Lüzu quanshu
49.9a, 17b). The
Jinhua zongzhi,
therefore, be-
gan as a compilation of the dialogues between Lüzu and the spirit-

writing disciples, for whom the most impor tant fact, I think, was their

belief that the teachings had come to them directly from the immor-

tal himself.
However, according to a preface by Zhang Shuang’an (1692), it was
little more than twenty years later that the next revelation star ted at

the altar of Tu Y u’an, in a place known as the Old Red Plum Hall (Gu

hongmei ge). Here, another group had been for med, which comprised

seven members initiated under Tu’s instr uction. After the
Jinhua
zongzhi
was transmitted to them, Tu and Zhuang Xing’an chose the
proper words of the immor tal and asked Zhang Shuang’an to edit

them into a scripture (
Lüzu quanshu
49, pref. 18a–19b).
While a prototype version of the text probably came into existence
in this way, it is not extant today. According to the preface by Shao

Zhilin (1775), the version he received from a cer tain Mr. Wu of Sumen

consisted of twenty chapters, including the words of the immor tals Tan

Changzhen and Qiu Changchun. But Shao, ﬁnding them redundant,

r
emoved the other immor tals’ words and included them as appendices
to Lü’s teachings. As a result, the
Jinhua zongzhi
was reduced to thir-
teen chapters. This is the version included in Shao Zhilin’s
Lüzu quan-
shu
of 1775. Although it is impossible today to reconstr uct the con-
tents of the prototype version, it is safe to say that it was less or ganized

than the extant version.
2
The Dual Sense of Lineage
Seen in Shao Zhilin’s Version
On the face of it, Shao Zhilin’s version appears to be a scripture of the

Jingming school, but the situation is not that simple because this ver-

sion contains cer tain facets of the text that cannot be explained in

these sectarian ter ms. The Jingming school was a tradition from

Y
uzhang (Nanchang, Jiangxi) and its environs, which claimed to come
168 Mori Y uria

from the immor tal Xu Xun (also known as Xu Jing yang, Xu Zhenjun,
or Xuzu). It emer ged in the late Tang dynasty as a popular cult and

ﬂourished in the twelfth to four teenth centuries as the Jingming

zhongxiao dao, or the Way of Pure Brightness, Loyalty, and Filial Piety

(see Akizuki 1978; Schipper 1985). In the
Jinhua zongzhi,
the teaching
of Jingming is claimed as a revelation from the three immor tals Lü,

T
an, and Qiu, granted in order to recover the transmission of Jing-
ming. According to the
Jingming yuanliu
(Sources and Cur rents of Pure
Brightness), contained in an appendix attributed to the immor tal Tan

(
Lüzu quanshu
49.25b–26b), the transmission had been lost after Liu
Y
uzhen (1257–1308), the school’s Y uan-dynasty founder, and his suc-
cessor, Huang Zhonghuang (1271–1328), had led the school to its

apogee.
The par tiarch [Tan] said: The source [of this line] is the Shangqing
[Highest Clarity] lineage. Lord Mao is regarded as the ﬁrst generation.

After ten generations of transmission, it gradually began to lose its tr uth.

At the beginning of the Jin dynasty, Lan’gong transmitted it to Chenmu;

Chenmu transmitted it to Xuzu; Xuzu transmitted it to the ten great
disciples.
After seven more generations, Masters Y uzhen and Zhonghuang suc-
ceeded to the lineage. Today, the transmission has been lost. That is
why we have brought it, that is, the instr uctions [of Golden Flores-

cence]. (
Lüzu quanshu
49.25b)
The preface of Tu Y u’an (1692) shows how he came to respect Jing-
ming teachings. At the time when Tu was ﬁrst shown a scripture en-
titled
Jingming zhongxiao lu
(Record of Pure Brightness, Loyalty, and
Filial Piety) by his master Pan Y i’an, he was inspired by the school’s

teachings. Later, he asked Pan whether it were possible to enjoy the

direct instr uction of Xu Xun, a thousand and more years after the

immor tal had ascended to heaven. Pan replied, “It is not difﬁcult”

and explained to him that Xu Xun, who now dwelt in heaven, a few

years previously had asked Shangdi, the Highest Lord, to order Lüzu

and Tan Changzhen to administer the great teaching of Jingming and

to bring it down to Zhou Yehe’s altar. Tu, in great surprise and joy,

went to this altar with Pan to be a disciple of Lüzu (
Lüzu quanshu
49.15b–17b).
According to this description, Lüzu and the Quanzhen patriarchs
held celestial ranks lower than that of Xu Xun, ser ving as messengers

who mediated betweeen Xu Xun and Lü’s disciples. Although they called

themselves disciples of Jingming, the members of the spirit-writing cult
Identity and Lineage 169

who assembled at the altar of Lüzu do not seem to have had as much
direct communication with Xu Xun as they had with Lüzu.
This indirect relationship between the disciples and Xu Xun seems
to cor respond to their dual sense of lineage. According to the “In-

str uctions from the Immor tal Tan Changsheng” (an appendix of Shao

Zhilin’s version), the original seven members of the Bailong jingshe

also claimed that they belonged to the Taiyi lineage, which traces di-

r
ectly back to Lüzu. As the
Jingming yuanliu
says:
The Patriarch Tan said: In the transmission of Jinhua Taiyi [Lord of
the Great Unity of Golden Florescence], there is another lineage. Chun-
yang shengzu [i.e., Lüzu] is regarded as the great founding master of
the ﬁrst generation. This is the main doctrine included in the three

teachings, the genuine backbone of the teaching of the immor tals and
buddhas. Each disciple at the altar belongs to his own generation whose
name is deter mined in the order of [the names of eight trigrams,]
qian,
kan, gen, zhen, xun
,
li, kun,
and
dui.
[Those who belong to the ﬁrst generation are] Pan Y i’an named
Qiande, Tu Y u’an named Qianyuan, Zhuang Xing’an named Qianwei,

Cheng’an named Qianxin, Zhou Yehe named Qianlong, Liu Du’an

named Qianshan, and Xu Shen’an named Qianheng. Hencefor th, dis-
ciples initiated under those seven should star t with the generation of
the character
kan
. When you ﬁnish making a round of all the letters,
you will come back again to the ﬁrst. (
Lüzu quanshu
49.26b)
This shows clearly that those assembled at the Bailong jingshe came
to be listed as members of the Taiyi lineage. Taiyi, it is likely, was the

name given to this speciﬁc spirit-writing cult of Lüzu.
3
However, it is
difﬁcult to ascer tain the precise relationship between the lineage and

the Jingming school on the evidence of this statement. On the one

hand, the Taiyi lineage seems to be regarded as a suborder of Jing-

ming; on the other hand, it is interesting that the lineage is refer red

to as a line distinct from the mainstream of the school, a line with Lüzu

as its initiator. The Jingming tradition and Lüzu were not mer ged into

one, in the usage of this text.
The Negative Attitude Toward the Quanzhen School
In Shao Zhilin’s version, Lüzu and the Quanzhen patriarchs are given

slightly lower positions than Xu Xun. In the ver y beginning of the text,

the Quanzhen tradition is even refer red to rather critically:
The Quanzhen could ﬂourish in its ultimate bloom. It had a prosper-
ous time among its followers but declined in the mind-transmission un-
170 Mori Y uria

til it reached extreme disorder and confusion, reaching the replace-
ment and decline seen at present. (
Lüzu quanshu
49.1ab; see Miyuki
1967).
This attitude is not surprising if one looks upon this version as a
product of the Jingming school. However, the situation is not so sim-
ple. Given that Zhuang Xing’an was one of the coeditors of the pro-

totype version of the
Jinhua zongzhi
and had some connections with the
Longmen lineage, the major sect of Quanzhen in the Qing, it appears

ver y strange to ﬁnd expressions so of fensive to the Quanzhen school.
Interestingly, the name “Zhuang Xing’an” is found in the preface
of a text called
Qiuzu yulu
(Recorded Sayings of Patriarch Qiu). He is
cited here with the recommendation that the text—claimed to be

transmitted through the Longmen lineage —be handed down to the

Longmen Master Zhu Y unyang for publication to a wider audience.

It seems a natural assumption to identify this Zhuang with the Zhuang

Xing’an who appears as a member of the Bailong jingshe. Evidence

pointing into this direction is as follows:
1.Longmen Master Y unyang was Zhu Y unyang, known as an editor
of
W
uzhen pian chanyou
(Clarifying Unclear Points in the Tract
on Awakening to Per fection), who also lived in Piling around the
1660s (see Mori 1998, 260 –261).
2.One of the main topics dealt with in the
Qiuzu yulu
is “circulation
of the light” (
huiguang
),
 which is similar to a meditation method
mentioned in the
Jinghua zongshi
(Mori 1998, 268).
3.According to Pan Jingguan’s preface to the
Qiuzu yulu,
the text
was shown to disciples of Zhu in the
dingwei
year (1667), and soon
after ward Zhuang asked Zhu to publish it (Mori 1998, 258 –261).
4.In a note to chapter 8 of the
Jinhua zongzhi,
the words of Zhu Y un-
yang are quoted (see
Lüzu quanshu
49.18b).
On the basis of these factors, it seems safe to assume that the Zhuang
Xing’an who recommended the transmission of the
Qiuzu yulu
to Zhu
Y
unyang was the same person who engaged in editorial work on the
Jinhua zongzhi
. Accepting this supposition, one should also consider
the possibility that the method of “light circulation” was brought from
Zhu Y unyang’s school to the Bailong jingshe around 1667–1668.
Considering the degree of communication between Zhuang and
the Longmen lineage, why do we ﬁnd such a critical attitude to the

Quanzhen sect in the
Jinhua zongzhi?
One supposition is that there was
a disagreement within the sect among those who insisted on the im-

por tance of the Jingming lineage and those who did not. Interestingly,
Identity and Lineage 171

Zhuang Xing’an, unlike Tu Y u’an, does not refer to Jingming in his
preface (1693). Instead, he wrote that both he and his mother recov-

ered from a fatal illness with the help of Lüzu, who came down to Zhou

Y
ehe’s altar. It seems that Zhuang’s respect focused on Lüzu himself
rather than on the Jingming immor tals, while Tu and Pan strongly

identiﬁed themselves with the Jingming lineage. The assumption

then becomes possible that it was only after 1692, when the center of

the cult shifted to Tu’s altar, that the power of Jingming became over-

whelming. It appears that people eager for succession to the Jingming

lineage appropriated the Lüzu cult in Piling and the teachings at-

tributed to him, just around the time the text was compiled.
Jiang Y upu’s Version
More than one hundred years after the compilation of the ﬁrst ver-

sion, Jiang Y upu (1756 –1819), an elite ofﬁcial at the Qing cour t,

adopted the
Jinhua zongzhi
as a scripture of the Tianxian lineage. Ac-
cording to the
Guochao qixian leizheng chubian
(Initial Collection of Cat-
egorized Documents on Ser vers of the Dynasty, ch. 94) and its sup-

plement (see Li 1890), he ﬁlled the post of chief minister in the Ofﬁce

of the Imperial Stable in 1802, became vice director of the Ministr y of

W
orks in 1806, and ser ved in the Ministr y of Revenue in 1808. His in-
volvement in elite society is also attested by the fact that two celebrated

ex- ofﬁcials of the time, Zhu Gui (1731–1806) and Zai Quheng (1755 –

1811), wrote postscripts (dated 1803) to the
Quanshu zhengzong,
the
antholog y of Lüzu’s revelations compiled by Jiang. According to Zai

Quheng’s preface, Zhu Gui once instr ucted Zai in the Dao by means

of “Lüzu’s words of instr uction” (
Lüzu xunyu)
when both of them were
in Y uedong. Apparently, there was a network of believers in Lüzu

among high ofﬁcials around Jiang Y upu, and Jiang’s work provides

some concrete infor mation about one of its centers.
The process by which the
Jinhua zongzhi
changed from Shao
Zhilin’s version to Jiang Y upu’s is complicated. Monica Esposito sug-

gests that Shao Zhilin’s text was ﬁrst included in an antholog y called

Quanshu zhengzong,
possibly a for mer version of the text Cheng Mou
r
estored in 1852, and was then revised and appropriated into Jiang’s
edition (1998a, 104).
4
Jiang Y upu’s version is also found in the more
familiar antholog y
Daozang jiyao
. The editor of this antholog y can be
identiﬁed as Jiang Y upu himself on the basis of two prefaces attrib-

uted to the immor tals Zhongli Quan and Su Lang. They contain a

r
eference to Lüzu giving an order to publish the
Daozang jiyao,
ad-
172 Mori Y uria

dressed to the disciples of a cer tain Jueyuan tan (Altar of the Source
of Awakening) or Diyi kaihua tan (First Altar of Opening Transfor ma-

tions; see later), the names given to an altar of Jiang Y upu (Zhongli’s

Pref. 5a; Su’s Pref. 6b). The following discussion, however, is based

on his version as contained in the
Quanshu zhengzong
because it has
more prefaces to clearly reﬂect
Jiang’s religious background than the
Daozang jiyao
.
Jiang Y upu’s and Chen Mou’s versions of the text share remarkable
features that dif ferentiate them from Shao Zhilin’s. They no longer con-

tain the prefaces written in the names of Jingming disciples; they pre-

ser ve Tu Y u’an’s preface but omit or change impor tant references to

the Jingming lineage. For example, the passage cited earlier, which de-

scribes how Pan Y i’an infor ms Tu about Lüzu’s descents to Zhou Yehe’s

altar, is eliminated completely; Tu Y u’an’s “disciples of the successor

to the Jingming lineage” is changed to “disciples of the successor to the

Jinhua lineage.” Similarly, the prefaces written in spirit-writing by var-

ious immor tals are preser ved in both of Chen’s and Jiang’s versions,

but all references to the Bailong jingshe, Piling, and all indications of

a connection with the Jingming lineage are no longer present.
If one assumes that the text used in Chen Mou’s version originally
preceded Jiang’s, one can claim that Jiang followed his predecessor

in rejecting the traces of the Jingming lineage. However, as Esposito

has pointed out (1998b, 10), Chen’s and Jiang’s versions dif fer in that

the for mer still follows the Jingming lineage, preser ving an appendix

ver y similar to the
Jingming yuanliu
found in Shao Zhilin’s version. On
the other hand, Jiang’s version clearly denies the exclusive relation-

ship between the Jingming lineage and the
Jinhua zongzhi
. In his in-
troductor y remarks to the
Quanshu zhengzong,
he asser ts:
The
Jinhua zongzhi
is an independent transmission from a direct suc-
cessor to the Tianxian [celestial immor tals]; it is not a scripture only
of the Jingming school like the
Zongjiao lu
and others. (
Quanshu zheng-
zong,
“Fanli” 2a)
Here, he emphasizes the close relationship between the text and
the celestial immor tals, that is, the Tianxian lineage. This is described
in more detail by Zhiqiu (= Fan Ao, a disciple of Jiang Y upu) in a post-

script of this version of the
Jinhua zongzhi:
I believe that when Lord Fuyou [Lüzu] named the Tianxian lineage, a
phrase of the verse must have been transmitted. When I asked Huijue

about this, he told me modestly, “Once I heard that there was [a verse

composed of ] twenty characters which goes:
Identity and Lineage 173

In complete silence without existence,
Y
ou and the For mer Heaven will be uniﬁed;
The original yang is back to its proper position,
When you walk alone into the Jade Castle of the Immor tal.”
He also told me: “Our Lord Fuyou is the founder of the Tianxian,
and Hongjiao enshi [Liu Shouyuan] is his second. You must remem-
ber this with respect.” (
Quanshu zhengzong
2.67b– 68a)
Huijue is one of Jiang Y upu’s pseudonyms found in the
Quanshu
zhengzong
and
Daozang jiyao
.
5
This shows that the Tianxian lineage wor-
shiped Lüzu as their ﬁrst master immor tal and Hongjiao enshi (or Liu
Shouyuan;
Quanshu zhengzong,
Pref. 40a) as the second, and that Jiang
held a responsible position in the lineage because he taught Zhiqiu

their secret verse. According to the same postscript, the teaching of

the
Jinhua zongzhi
could never be properly clariﬁed without transmis-
sion of the Tianxian lineage. He says:
The
Jinhua zongzhi
contains many expressions on the subtle teaching
of the Dao, but only a few people could acquire the central teaching
of the school. This will never be clariﬁed without the transmission of
the Tianxian. There is no one who can show this wonder ful text but

the founder of the Tianxian. This has been transmitted to this world
only by Lord Fuyou. (
Quanshu zhengzong
2.67a)
It is obvious here that the text was now appropriated by the Tian-
xian lineage.
6
However, despite their negative attitude toward its orig-
inal editors, the new line undeniably held highly similar beliefs in Lüzu
and was also a spirit-writing cult venerating the immor tal.
Jiang Y upu’s Altar
Jiang Y upu’s engagement in spirit-writing is more than obvious. In one

preface attributed to Liu Shouyuan, he was ordered by Lüzu and Liu

to compile this antholog y (
Quanshu zhengzong,
Pref. 38b). As a matter
of fact, the
Quanshu zhengzong
is an antholog y compiled at Jiang Y upu’s
altar, where they revered Lüzu and Liu Shouyang as their principal

deities. Regrettably, despite the numerous messages from the im-

mor tal, there is only little infor mation on the or ganization and his-

tor y of the cult. Still, a few glimpses can be gained. According to Jiang’s

preface, Lüzu says:
There are places inspired with my spirit-writing, and there are no
phrases that have not been transmitted [in those places.] Here, at the
174 Mori Y uria

Original Altar of the Source of Awakening, you [ Jiang et al.] have com-
piled the old characters as previously transmitted separately, put them

together with some additions, and recorded them. . . . This is the au-

thentic proof [of enlightenment] that has been transmitted from era

to era for thousands and hundreds of years at thousands and hundreds

of altars. Now I name it “the or thodox lineage” [
zhengzong
]. (
Quanshu
zhengzong,
Author’s Pref., 33b–34b)
Attributed to Lüzu, this preface was addressed to Jiang Y upu and
his cooperators.
7
It shows that the
Quanshu zhengzong
was thought to
contain the essence of Lüzu’s teachings transmitted to innumerable
altars in the past, and it was compiled at an altar called “Original

Altar of the Source of Awakening” ( Jueyuan bentan), also known by

various other, similar names,
8
which was considered the main and
central site of all of Lüzu’s transmissions anywhere. Also, according to

some documents in the
Quanshu zhengzong,
Lüzu had opened seven
“Awakening” altars, among which this one was regarded as the high-

est. This is why it is often called the “ﬁrst” altar.
9
The origin of the Altar of Awakening is as vague as that of the Tian-
xian lineage. A tantalizing, if detailed, description of its histor y is found

in Enwu’s postscript to the
Quanshu zhengzong
. The text says:
[Among the many altars in the world], the seven [altars of ] Awakening
are most prominent. At the capital, in the best location, the Altar has
widely opened up and provided instr uction to numerous followers.
There were six founders who all received a decree [from Lüzu] to en-

lighten the world and came to super vise the Altar. Previous super visers
included Guangji zhenjun and my master Huang, Xianyou zhenjun. In
the winter of the
wuwu
year [1798], the great altar was rebuilt, when,
by the decree [of Lüzu], Hongjiao zhenjun held the teaching and

opened the secret to the people. (
Quanshu zhengzong,
“Juanshou” 62a)
In spite of the vagueness caused by an utter lack of context, this de-
scription implies that Jiang’s Altar of Awakening was located in Bei-

jing. It also shows that it was after 1798, the year it was rebuilt, that Liu

Shouyuan began to exercise power over the cult. As we have seen, he,

in his role as the immor tal Liu, was believed to be the second founder

of the Tianxian lineage, which therefore should have begun around

1798.
Min Y ide’s Version
Min Y ide was a priest of the Longmen lineage, the lar gest branch of

the Quanzhen school under the Qing.
10
He criticizes Jiang Y upu’s ver-
Identity and Lineage 175

sion of the
Jinhua zongzhi
in the
Daozang jiyao
as spurious and contrasts
it with the originality of a version transmitted through the Longmen
lineage on Mount Jin’gai ever since 1688. He says:
The text appeared in the
wuchen
year of the K angxi era [1688] and was
transmitted in the her mitage of Longqiao on Mount Jin’gai. A wise man
of the past, Tao Shi’an, printed it. During the Jiaqing era [1796 –1820],

the vice director Jiang Y uanting [Y upu] obtained a false text by mis-
take and included it in his
Daozang jiyao
.
Later, he received our text in Zhejiang. He hoped to substitute it
for the false one, but the wood blocks were in Beijing. When [some-
one tried to] get them back [from there], the vice director also went

back to the capital, where he passed away. Thus, the project [of sub-
stitution] was inter r upted and left incomplete. In spite of that, how
could my hear t for get it even for one moment?
Recently, when I went to Moling [Nanjing], I found a popular copy
of the text which was a little dif ferent from Tao’s edition [Tao Shi’an’s

text]. It had one or two more sections than Jiang’s. The latter seems to
have derived from Tao’s version, but some par ts must have been added

and some removed. Words are dif ferent from person to person. Here,

I will emend and revise it [ Jiang’s edition] solely on the basis of that
by Tao. (
Gu shuyinlou cangshu
5;
Jinhua zongzhi
3a)
T
ao Shi’an (d. 1692) was a Longmen priest who lived on Mount
Jin’gai from 1645 onward. Min Y ide asser ts that the original
Jinhua
zongzhi
ﬁrst appeared on his mountain and was edited by Tao Shi’an.
In his commentar y to the text, he fur ther asser ts that it was created by
means of spirit-writing, giving a description that he attribtues to Tao

Shi’an. He says:
Having come to this par t, the phoenix pen stopped all of a sudden. Al-
though it was before the new moon, a great light that was neither the
sun nor the moon unexpectedly began to shine, and nothing could hide

beneath the light. The air was ﬁlled with an unusual fragrance; in the
sky you could hear the solemn sound of music of heaven. After a few
moments, the phoenix began to move at last to write: This was the com-
ment of the light by Amit
a
bha. . . . Now, in the mountain librar y on
Mount Jin’gai, Yan [Lüzu] has preached the essential doctrines of the
Golden Florescence of Great Unity in the emptiness of For mer Heaven.
I resolved that I should practice and attain the result in order to change
the easter n land into S
u
khavati.
How wonder ful! When my great wish was declared, the great for-
tune cor responded. When something begins, an omen comes before-

hand. The light of the essence [Amit
a
bha] reaches even from the fur-
176 Mori Y uria

thest place. Now I could move Amit
a
bha to bring down the radiant com-
mentar y of the primar y essence that gives me inﬁnite happiness and
protection. (
Gu shuyinlou cangshu
5;
Jinhua zongzhi
20a)
According to this, the Buddha Amit
a
bha suddenly inter r upted Lüzu’s
phoenix pen while it had descended to the mountain librar y on Mount
Jin’gai and gave his radiant commentar y. Following this revelation of

this light, or radiance, Lüzu explained that it was an auspicious re-

sponse from Amit
a
bha to his resolution to change the easter n land
into S
u
khavati, the Pure Land paradise (
jingtu)
. The same event is also
noted in Tao Shi’an’s commentar y, inser ted immediately after the pre-

vious passage. He comments:
On this occasion, many immor tals assembled and gave verses [to praise
Lüzu’s resolution.] Although it is impossible to describe the event in
more detail, here is the outline of this impor tant lesson. It was tr uly a
meeting only once in eighty thousands kalpas. Who would have ex-

pected to have this at Longqiao? Those who have an oppor tunity to
r
ead this text should never lose their conﬁdence. (
Gu shuyinlou cang-
shu
5;
Jinhua zongzhi
20b)
Following this inser tion, Min Y ide explains why he put it there:
This was what Shi’an wrote. Now, the text that Jiang [Y upu] has relied
on belongs to the line of the Central Lineage. They appropriated the
text [
Jinhua zongzhi
] and tried to oppress the Nor ther n Lineage. Thus
they eliminated this [Tao Shi’an’s commentar y]. The same things can
be said about the most popular copies. Here, I make this supplemen-
tal comment [to attract the reader’s attention]. (
Gu shuyinlou cangshu
5;
Jinhua zongshi
20b–21a)
Min Y ide, therefore, alleges that some of the original commentar y
by Tao Shi’an was deliberately removed from Jiang’s version because
the Central Lineage (of Jingming) tried to suppress the Nor ther n one

(of Longmen). His account, however, completely contradicts all evi-

dence on the for mation of the text in Piling. The problem, it appears,

is lar gely on the side of Min Y ide —a supposition suppor ted by his pref-

ace to the
Jinhua zongzhi
. It says:
The founder, the Heavenly Wor thy Lord Fuyou, resolute in his demand
for salvation of the people, has a great wish to save the world. Thus he
attained the profound teaching of the Great Unity of For mer Heaven,

Emptiness and Nonbeing, the Jinhua zongzhi, and expressed it in thir-

teen chapters as a basic teaching for saving the world. (
Gu shuyinlou
cangshu
5;
Jinhua zongshi
1ab)
Identity and Lineage 177

This account of Min Y ide describes the original text of the
Jinhua
zongzhi
as consisting of thir teen chapters, the same number as still found
in the extant texts. As shown above, however, the text had twenty chap-
ters before Shao Zhilin reduced it to thir teen in 1775. Following his re-

duction, all extant texts have had the same ar rangement. On the other

hand, it is quite possible that members of the Lüzu cult in Piling ex-

panded the thir teen chapters to twenty. Yet if this had happened, Shao

Zhilin would have known about the existence of a thir teen-chapter text

and would probably have mentioned it, but he never refers to it, in-

stead emphasizing that he reduced twenty chapters to thir teen. Then

again, it is ver y strange that Min Y ide himself did not use Tao Shi’an’s

text, which, as he asser ts, had been transmitted on Mount Jin’gai. In

spite of his ﬁerce criticism, what he included in his antholog y was a

r
evised version of Jiang Y upu’s text taken from the
Daozang jiyao
. It
seems, therefore, that a text attributed to Tao Shi’an existed on Mount

Jin’gai, which was in fact composed after the reduction of the
Jinhua
zongzhi
to the edition in thir teen chapters, and that the originality of
this text was ﬁctitious, its revelation on Mount Jin’gai in 1688 being

an imaginar y stor y.
Why, then, would the Daoists around Min Y ide fabricate such an
imaginar y transmission? Maybe they desired it, feeling the need for a

direct transmission of the text to their own mountain. As Min notes

in his commentar y, Tao Shi’an’s description of Lüzu’s descent was re-

moved from Jiang’s text in order to suppress the Longmen lineage —

which suggests that the descent of the immor tal had something to do

with this group. The same is also apparent in Min’s account of a meet-

ing between the Longmen leader Wang Kunyang (Chang yue) and Tao

Jing’an. He says, again in attribution to Tao Shi’an:
In the autumn of the
wuchen
year of emperor K angxi’s reign [1688],
the precept master [Wang Kunyang] came down to the south and rested
at the Zong yang gong. The her mit patriarch [Tao] Jing’an went to meet
him. When he of fered this text, the precept master treated him ver y

politely, and after reading it with a bow, he said, “ The hear t of the High-
est Lord’s transmission is fully expressed here.” (
Gu shuyinlou cangshu
5;
Jinhua zongzhi
23b)
That is to say, in the ver y same year when the
Jinhua zongzhi
was sup-
posedly revealed on Mount Jin’gai, Tao Jing’an met Wang Kunyang in
Hangzhou and showed him the text. Tao Jing’an (1618 –1673) was an

uncle of Tao Shi’an, known as one of the founders of the Longmen lin-

eage on Mount Jin’gai with the title “founding master of Mount Jin’gai”
178 Mori Y uria

(
Jin’gai xindeng
2.9a). On the other hand, Wang Kunyang was a lead-
ing Longmen patriarch at the Baiyun guan in Beijing, who, from 1656
onward, ordained thousands of people with the per mission of the Qing

cour t (see Chen 1988; 1990). He is considered the leading representa-

tive of the Quanzhen school in Qing times. His meeting with a master

of Mount Jin’gai was, therefore, of great impor tance, because Wang was

their master and a major leader of the great tradition of the Quanzhen.

The anecdote of Wang’s praising the
Jinhua zongzhi
as the per fect ex-
pression of the transmission of Lord Lao shows that the text was admitted

as proof for the legitimacy of the Longmen lineage on Mount Jin’gai.

Although ﬁctitious, the episode shows how impor tant the text was.
At the same time, the Daoists on Mount Jin’gai were also con-
cerend with losing proper contact with the great tradition. Accord-

ing to a note of Min Y ide in his
Huangji hepi xianjing
(Immor tals’
Scripture on the Creation of the Universe for Imperial Rulers), there

were many restrictions on the transmission of precepts, not only be-

c
aus
e
the gover nment had banned all personal ordinations of Bud-
dhists and Daoists, but also because of restraints in their own lineage.

To
transmit the precepts, one had to possess
lü
(statutes, a code of
transmission),
shu
(scriptures given with the precepts), and
juan
(a
scroll with a lineage tree and an imperial edict). Being afraid to di-

vulge the content to those not properly qualiﬁed, Daoists used to bur n

them when they could not ﬁnd anyone deser ving transmission. Con-

sequently, as Min says,
three generations after the master of the precepts [Wang Kunyang],
the way [of transmission] no longer existed. Today, during the Jiaqing

era [1796 –1820], when a precept transmission is held, Patriarch Qiu’s

text [of the transmission] of the precepts is lost. What is being trans-

mitted nowadays is what we lear n from the
Jingming zongjiao lu,
which
is not at all like the transmission of Patriarch Qiu. Earlier masters on

the mountain [Mount Jin’gai] had bur ned the text to follow the r ule.
For tunately, the scripture sur vives in copies, but both scroll and code
are lost. (
Gu shuyinlou cangshu
6;
Huangji hepi xianjing
28ab)
The direct transmission of the precepts from Wang Kunyang was of
the greatest impor tance to Min Y ide’s Longmen lineage. In spite of

that, they had already lost the way of transmission at that time. In such

a cor nered situation, it must have been a great relief for them to pos-

sess a text praised by Wang himself as the direct transmission of the

Highest Lord. The Longmen sect on Mount Jin’gai thus seems to have

gained a guarantee of legitimacy from the spirit-writing of Lüzu.
Identity and Lineage 179

The revelation of the
Jinhua zongzhi
was not an exceptional event
for Daoists living on Mount Jin’gai. According to Min Y ide, the place
had a long histor y as a holy site of Lüzu—spor ting a bronze statue of

the immor tal that had been placed in the Song and being claimed as

Lüzu’s fundamental altar, having seen the compilaton of his spirit-

writings (
Jin’gai xindeng
2a, 9b,
Shanlue fu
).
In addition, it is evident
that Min Y ide himself was deeply engaged in the spirit-writing activi-

ties of Lüzu. The
Gu shuyinlou cangshu
contains several texts provid-
ing direct instr uctions from Lüzu through spirit-writing, one entitled

Sanni yishi shuoshu
(Explaining the Cure of the World by the Three
Saints), another called
Du Lüzu sanni yishi shuoshu guankui
(
Nar row
Insights into Lüzu’s Revelation of the
Sanni yishi shuoshu
).
The for mer
is said to be Lüzu’s a commentar y on a celestial scripture that did not

sur vive; the latter is a record of Min’s own self-cultivation practiced on

the basis of Lüzu’s revelation. Here, Min directly asks Lüzu himself

how to meditate properly and in response receives a detailed inter-

pretation of the immor tal’s teachings (see
Gu shuyinlou cangshu
5;
Y
ishi
shuoshu guankui
25ab, 31a).
Ve
ry
likely it was this aspect of their religious tradition that allowed
the Daoists on Mount Jin’gai to accept the
Jinhua zongzhi
as a holy scrip-
ture. It might have been difﬁcult, or even impossible, for them to sep-

arate their sense of identity as Longmen Daoists from their belief in

Lüzu, because Lüzu was one of the ﬁve founding patriarchs of the

Quanzhen school. However, considering that the belief in Lüzu com-

bined with the activity of spirit-writing was widely shared among many

groups and cults, independent of the Quanzhen school, his venera-

tion and descents on Mount Jin’gai may also be seen as a religious ac-

tivity that cannot be entirely reduced to the Longmen tradition. The

Longmen tradition was a master– disciple lineage, developing as time
passed and generating, or at least imagined to generate, an ir reversible,
straight, and direct line. Spirit-writing, unlike this lineage, made it pos-

sible for believers to skip its mediation and communicate directly with

one of their founding patriarchs, reinforcing a feeling of belonging

and ultimately strengthening the sense of lineage.
11
Conclusion
The
Jinhua zongzhi
was ﬁrst completed as a text of the Jingming line-
age, but as it was transmitted to later editors, the exclusive relation-

ship between the text and the Jingming lineage was denied. As new

editors received the text, it was linked to dif ferent lineages through
180 Mori Y uria

the arbitrar y inser tion of personal commentaries that ser ved to es-
tablish a desirable relationship between the text and the various edi-

tors’ lineages. However, contrar y to the ﬁerce insistence of those com-

peting editors, the
Jinhua zongzhi
was not transmitted along each
lineage but was passed along a stratum r unning across them, the stra-

tum of the spirit-writing cults of Lüzu.
T
wo facets of the religious identity of those who transmitted the
Jin-
hua zongzhi
become clear. On the one hand, they were members of
one or the other spirit-writing cult of Lüzu, and thus each had a ver y

basic sense of identity as the immor tal’s disciple. On the other hand,

they acquired a sense of lineage by placing the text and its transmis-

sion into a desirable sectarian context. In other words, the various pref-

aces and notes attached to the words of Lüzu cor respond to the edi-

tors’ sense of lineage, while the words of Lüzu in the scripture match

their common identity as the immor tal’s disciples, an identity that un-

derlies their lineage identity. It is difﬁcult to explicitly point out this

dual str ucture in just one text, but by comparison of those dif ferent

versions, the distinction of the levels becomes perceptible.
Never theless, this does not necessarily mean that there is no sign
of the two levels and phases of for mation within each text. Especially

as and when each version is linked to the past, to historical lineages

such as Jingming or Longmen, it is easy to see indications of the two

facets of the editors’ religious identities. Thus in Shao Zhilin’s ver-

sion, the position of the cult to Lüzu is described as if it belonged to

a dif ferent lineage than the Jingming or, at least, to a sublineage of

it. In Min Y ide’s case, the situation is more complicated. However,

one can still extract an indication of both facets by pointing out that

the traditions of both spirit-writing and the veneration of Lüzu had

a base in the religious histor y of Mount Jin’gai and that it could not

be reduced to the Quanzhen tradition. In both cases, the spirit-writ-

ing cult ser ved to revitalize or reinforce its members’ sense of line-

age, even though the foundation of the lineage depended on the

members’ imaginative interpretation and pragmatic adoption of his-

torical events rather than on an institutional transmission solidly es-

tablished in histor y.
As Ter r y Kleeman has ar gued, from Song times onward, spirit-
writing provided “improved access to the sacred realm” with which

“men and women without the status of religious professionals came to

have a direct relationship with exalted levels of the sacred realm” (1993,

63). In the cases presented here, spirit-writing not only constituted a

method to relate people to Heaven but also provided them with a lin-
Identity and Lineage 181

eage on ear th, that is, a device that connected them with their prefer red
lineage context, where religion and histor y are not dif ferentiated.
Notes
This paper is based on my presentation at the T
o
y
o
tetsugakkai (Society
for the Study of Easter n Philosophy), June, 1997, where I compared the ver-
sions listed as numbers 1, 2, and 4 with Min Y ide’s edition contained in his

Gu shuyinlou cangshu
. Here I ﬁrst suggested that the text was originally edited
by the Jingming school and that it was then taken over by the Tianxian school

and the Longmen sect.
I have also touched upon similar issues in a recent ar ticle (Mori 1998). My
special thanks go to Dr. Monica Esposito, with whom I have exchanged notes

and opinions since December, 1997. She has given me most coherent advice,

especially on the existence of cer tain versions of the
Jinhua zongzhi
I did not
know previously.
1.
Lüzu shi xiantian xuwu taiyi Jinhua zongzhi,
in
Gu shuyinlou cangshu,
ch.
5
Zangwai daoshu
10, 327–343. The extant version of the
Gu shuyinlou cang-
shu
as included in the
Zangwai daoshu
does not contain any publication in-
for mation, but recent research suggests that the text was ﬁrst published in

1904 (Hu 1995, 232). However, the constitution of the text itself suggests an

earlier date. That is to say, most of the texts preser ved in the antholog y seem

to have been completed by the end of the Daoguang era (1821–1850). Of

its thir ty-eight titles, those that have datable prefaces are no later than 1839

or 1840 (that is, those by Xue Yanggui, a disciple of Min, and his friend Li

W
enyuan). In his 1834 appendix to the
T
ianxian xinzhuan
(Hear t Trans-
mission of the Celestial Immor tals), moreover, Min Y ide mentions that he

himself was the publisher of the basic edition of the
Gu shuyinlou cangshu
(8.35).
2. In fact, Shao Zhilin confesses that he was embar rassed by the appear-
ance of the for mer version that could be regarded as
Jinhua keyi
(Rules and
Obser vances of Golden Florescence) by future readers (Pref., 1.2a).
3. It was probably no coincidence that both this lineage and the scripture
shared the name “ Taiyi,” but it is not clear what exactly the connection was

to the deity.
4. I am deeply indebted to Monica Esposito for providing infor mation on
Chen Mou’s text.
5. We can identify them because he refer red to himself in several combi-
nations as follows: Guanghuazi Huijue, in in the commentar y to the
Jinhua
zongzhi
(see
Quanshu zhengzong, Jinhua zongzhi
63a); and Huijue dizi Jiang Y upu
shouzhong shi, in the postscript to the
Shiliu pinjing
(see
Quanshu zhengzong
1;
Shiliu pinjing,
108a).
6. It is not entirely clear why the members of the Tianxian lineage call them-
selves by this name. However, it seems that they regarded
tianxian
(celestial
immor tals) as the highest rank among the
xian
and found in Lüzu and his
teacher Zhongli Quan masters who would teach people the way to attain this

exalted level. Enhong (a member of Jiang’s altar group) in this context refers
182 Mori Y uria

to the signiﬁcance of the transmission of the “celestial immor tal” (
Zhong-Lü
chuandao ji,
after word;
Daozang jiyao,
W
eiji 2.58a). In the ﬁrst chapter of the
same work, moreover, the ﬁrst ﬁve ranks of the immor tals are discussed, with
tianxian
at the top.
7. At the end of this preface, the names of nine members of Jiang Y upu’s
cult are given: Huijue ( Jiang Y upu), Enhong, Dagu, Zhiqiu, Tongren, Dem-

ing, Daqi, Zhixi, and Zhizhuo. See
Quanshu zhengzong,
Pref. 35ab.
8. On the expression “Jueyuan tan,” see
Quanshu zhengzong
9.14a, 25ab.
Other variations are Jueyuan baotan (Precious Altar of the Source of Awak-

ening), Juetan (Altar of Awakening), and Jueyuan jingshe (Chapel of the

Source of Awakening). See
Quanshu zhengzong
9.2b, 13.18b.
9. As this type of variations there are Diyi tan (First Altar), Diyi juetan (First
Altar of Awakening), Diyi kaihua tan (First Altar of Opening Transfor mations).

See
Quanshu zhengzong
13.15b, 19b, 26a; Pref., 38a. On the superior position
of the Jueyuan bentan (Primar y Altar of the Source of Awakening), see
Quan-
shu zhengzong
13.23a.
10. On the development of the Longmen lineage, see Chen 1988 and 1990;
T
sui 1991; Esposito 1993; Mori 1994; and Wang 1995a and 1995b.
11. I have not been able to fully describe Min Y ide’s spirit-writing in this
section. For more details on his ideas and practices, see Mori 1999.
Bibliography
Akizuki K an’ei. 1978.
Ch
u
goku kinsei d
o
ky
o
no keisei
. Tokyo: S
o
bunsha.
Baldrian-Hussein, Far zeen. 1986. “Lü Tung-pin in Nor ther n Sung Literature.”
Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie
2:133 –170.
Chen Bing. 1988. “Qingdai Quanzhen dao Longmen pai de zhongxing.”
Shi-
jie zongjiao yanjiu
1988/2:84 –96.
———. 1990. “Ming Qing Daojiao liang da pai.” In
Zhongguo Daojiao shi,
ed.
by Ren Jiyu, 627– 682. Shanghai: Renmin.
Clear y, Thomas. 1991.
The Secret of the Golden Flower: The Classic Chinese Book of
Life
. San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers.
Esposito, Monica. 1993. “La Por te du Dragon—l’école Longmen du Mont
Jin’gai et ses pratiques alchimiques d’après le
Daozang xubian
(Suite au
canon taoïste).” Ph.D. diss., Université de Paris VII, Paris.
———. 1996. “Il Segreto del ﬁore d’oro e la tradizione Longmen del Monte
Jin’gai.” In
Conoscenza e interpretazione della civiltà cinese,
ed. by P. Cor radini,
151–169. Rome: Ubaldini Editore.
———. 1998a. “ The Dif ferent Versions of the
Secret of the Golden Flower
and
Their Relationship with the Longmen School.”
T
ransactions of the Inter na-
tional Conference of Easter n Studies
43:90 –110.
———. 1998b. “Longmen pai yu
Jinhua zongzhi
banben laiyuan.” Paper Pre-
sented at the Research Meeting on Daoist Culture, Waseda University,

T
okyo.
Hu Fuchen, ed. 1995.
Zhonghua daojiao da cidian.
Beijing: Zhonggou shehui
kexue chubanshen.
Kleeman, Ter r y. 1993. “ The Expansion of the Wen-ch’ang Cult.” In
Religion
Identity and Lineage 183

and Society in T’ang and Sung China
, ed. by Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Pe-
ter N. Gregor y, 45 –74. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
Miyuki, Mokusen. 1967. “ The Secret of the Golden Flower: Studies and Trans-
lation.” Diploma Thesis, Jung Institute, Zürich, Switzerland.
Mori Y uria. 1994. “Zenshinky
o
ry
u
monha keifu k
o
.” In
D
o
ky
o
bunka e no tenb
o
,
ed. by D
o
ky
o
bunka kenky
u
kai, 180 –211. Tokyo: Hirakawa.
———. 1998a. “ Taiitsu kinke sh
u
shi no seiritsu to hensen.”
T
o
y
o
no shis
o
to
sh
u
ky
o
15:43 – 64.
———. 1998b. “Ky
u
so goroku ni tsuite.” In
D
o
ky
o
no rekishi to bunka,
ed. by Ya-
mada Toshiaki and Tanaka Fumio, 257–273. Tokyo: Y
u
zankaku.
———. 1999. “R yo D
o
hin to Zenshin ky
o
: Shinch
o
kosh
u
kingai-san no jirei
o ch
u
shin ni.” In
Koza: D
o
ky
o
, vol. 1, ed. by Sunayama Minor u,
O
zaki Masa-
har u, and Kikuchi Noritaka. Tokyo: Y
u
zan kaku.
Needham, Joseph, and Lu Gwei-djen. 1983.
Science and Civilisation in China
vol. 5.5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schipper, Kristofer M. 1985. “ Taoist Ritual and Local Cults of the T’ang Dy-
nasty.” In
T
antric and Taoist Studies in Honour of Rolf A. Stein
, ed. by Michel
Strickmann 3:812– 834. Br ussels: Institut Belge des Hautes Etudes Chinoises.
Seidel, Anna. 1995.
T
aoïsme: religion non- ofﬁcielle de la Chine
. Trans. by Far zeen
Baldrian-Hussein.
Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie
8:26 –27.
Shiga Ichiko. 1999.
Kindai ch
u
goku no shamanizumu to d
o
ky
o
: Hongkong no d
o
dan
to f
u
ji shink
o
. Tokyo: Bensei shuppan.
W
ang Zhizhong. 1995a. “Lun Mingmo Qingchu Quanzhen jiao ‘zhongxing’
de cheng yin.”
Zongjiao xue yanjiu
28:32–38.
———. 1995b. “Quanzhen jiao Longmen pai qiyuan lunkao.”
Zongjiao xue yan-
jiu
29:9 –13.
W
ilhelm, Richard. 1984.
The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life
.
Har mondswor th: Penguin Books.
184 Mori Y uria

9
Manifestations
of Lüzu in Moder n
Guangdong and Hong Kong
The Rise and Growth
of Spirit-Writing Cults
Shiga Ichiko
Introduction
The mention of Daoism in Hong Kong usually brings to mind ter ri-
torial temples (
miaoyu
),
Daoist temples (
daoguan
),
or lar ge-scale
jiao
festivals and Daoist priests per for ming rituals in such festivals. The re-

ligious or ganizations called
daotan
or
daotang,
discussed in this ar ticle,
are also one for m of Daoism in Hong Kong, or they can be described

as occupying the most impor tant place in the Daoist community of

Hong Kong. However, only a few studies have so far been made of

them, perhaps because most of them are inconspicuously located in

buildings in urban areas.
A
daotan
or
daotang
(hereafter refer red to as
daotan
) is a religious
or ganization centered on spirit-writing and the worship of Daoist

deities. Its beliefs are primarily based on Daoism but also include var-

ious elements of other religious traditions such as Confucianism, Bud-

dhism, and folk religion. In this sense, a
daotan
is highly syncretistic.
Its main ritual activities include spirit-writing séances, annual festivals

to celebrate the bir thdays of gods, and lar ge-scale ritual celebrations

called
fahui
. The
daotan
also provides death-related ser vices, such as
merit rites (
gongde fashi
),
ser vices for worshiping spirit tablets (
lingwei
),
1
and the spaces to deposit ashes of the dead (
kanwei
).
In addition, sev-
eral
daotan
under take social-welfare activities, such as r unning schools,
nursing homes, and clinics and helping victims of natural disasters in

mainland China. Most
daotan
are registered as non-proﬁt, charitable
associations with the gover nment (Shiga 1995).
In Hong Kong, the ter m “
daotan
”
is usually used for a small Daoist
or ganization with only an altar and for spirit-writing in a cramped room
185

of a residential or commercial building. The ter m “
daoguan,
” on the
other hand, is commonly associated with Daoist or ganizations that
maintain great shrines in lar ge suburban sites. But such
daoguan
were
also originally small or ganizations called
daotan,
and they are sub-
stantially the same. I will use the folk ter m “
daotan
” to refer to the Daoist
or ganizations with these features regardless of their size. It is not clear

precisely how many or ganizations like these there are in Hong Kong

today, but according to my research, it can be conser vatively said that

there are more than ﬁfty.
From a historical point of view,
daotan
originated from spirit-writing
cults that arose in Guangdong, par ticularly in the Pearl River Delta,

since the mid-nineteenth centur y. Table 9.1 lists spirit-writing cults es-

tablished in Guangdong and Hong Kong before the 1950s.
2
As it in-
dicates, since the oldest group, the Y unquan xianguan, was established

in Nanhai County in 1848, many cult groups arose and spread from

Guangdong through Hong Kong in the beginning of the twentieth

centur y. Although the cults listed show some variation in scale, social

background of their members, and choice of emphasis in activities,

there is one common feature. As I shall examine in more detail, their

activities consisted lar gely of relief work, such as providing free med-

ical ser vices, funeral ser vices, and self-cultivation based on the moral

and religious ideas of the three teachings, par ticularly Daoism. It is

also clear that most of them worshiped Lüzu, that is, Lü Dongbin, as

their patriarch. Some of the associations in the list have grown and

adapted to the social changes in moder n Guangdong and Hong Kong

and are still active today. Others were more shor t-lived and have van-

ished again. In other words,
daotan
today are the successors of religious
movements that began in the latter half of the nineteenth centur y in

Guangdong. The purpose of this chapter is to consider how the

daotan
movement developed in moder n Guangdong and Hong Kong.
In the late nineteenth centur y, not limited to Guangdong and
Hong Kong, spirit-writing cults emer ged in various places on an al-

most countr y-wide scale, spreading to such a degree that scholars

studying the same phenomenon in Taiwan speak of “the nineteenth-

centur y spirit-writing movement” (Fan 1996, 116; Clar t 1996, 16). Various

movements, emer ging in dif ferent areas of China, provide fragmentar y

but signiﬁcant infor mation about nineteenth-centur y spirit-writing

movements. For example, the ﬁrst spirit-writing cult in Taiwan was the

Puquan she (later renamed Y ixin she), established in 1853 by the local

elite of Magong, the capital of the Penghu Islands. Their founding

medium had lear ned a spirit-writing technique in the Gongshan she,
186 Shiga Ichiko

a charitable society in Quanzhou (Fujian), and their main activities
were spirit-writing séances, public lecturing sessions (
xuanjiang
),
and
the publication of morality books (
shanshu
).
Following their found-
ing, other spirit-writing cults were or ganized in Magong, while simi-

lar or ganizations also sprang up in nor ther n Taiwan, soon leading to

their spread throughout the island (Wang 1996; Clar t 1997, 4 –5).
In Sichuan, in the
gengzi
year of the
Daoguang
r
eign (1840), divine
r
evelations were received in the Longnü si (Temple of the Dragon
Maiden), leading to the revelation of more than ten spirit-writing texts,

such as the
Guansheng dijun mingsheng jing zhujie
(Explanation of the
Holy Scripture of the Imperial Lord Guandi). This shows that spirit-

writing cults not only spread gradually through southwester n China,

but that they were also inﬂuential among sectarian groups (Wang

1996, 124 –127; Takeuchi 1990). It is fair to say that the Cantonese

spirit-writing movements of the nineteenth centur y for m par t of this

overall tendency.
To
understand these movements of the nineteenth centur y prop-
erly, one should know that they were inseparably linked with an escha-

tological sentiment, involving the idea of salvation from the “kalpa ca-

tastrophe” (
jie
) that had arisen especially among local elites in response
to the rapid social change of the time. Yamada Masar u, a specialist in

the settlement histor y of Sichuan, points out that in cer tain new set-

tlements, the local elites established social-welfare societies often asso-

ciated with spirit-writing. One example is the Shiquan hui (Society of

the Ten Per fections), which was established after a spirit-writing séance

r
evealed that goodness needed to be practiced in order to escape the
coming great catastrophe (Yamada 1995, 249 –251). Local elites wor-

ried about social and moral disorder in the time and not only actively

practiced goodness as a group but also encouraged the masses to do

so by establishing charitable societies or publishing morality books. As

Phillip Clar t points out in his study of Taiwanese spirit-writing move-

ments, local elites “shared a consciousness of belonging to a religious

movement that had as its aim the moral refor mation of a decadent

age by means of instr uctions and exhor tations handed down by the

gods” (Clar t 1996, 16). Such consciousness was shared not only by the

local elites in Sichuan and Taiwan but also by the majority of elites in

other par ts of China, including that of Guangdong.
However, each spirit-writing movement had its speciﬁc beliefs, or-
ganizations, and developments. For example, Taiwanese and Can-

tonese spirit-writing cults dif fer in their beliefs, litur gies, and activi-

ties, with the for mer being heavily Confucian in ﬂavor. Often beliefs
Manifestations of Lüzu in Moder n Guangdong 187

involve the worship of the Three Benevolent Masters (
san enzhu
),
that
is, Guansheng dijun (Guandi), Fuyou dijun (Lü Dongbin), and Si-
ming zhenjun (Ruler of Fates). Or again, they might venerate the Five

Benevolent Masters (
wu enzhu
),
the above three plus Y ue wumu wang
(King Mu) and Xuantian shangdi (Dark War rior). Among them,

Guandi is preeminent.
Another dif ference among the groups is that Taiwanese spirit-
writing cults are strongly inﬂuenced by sectarian traditions worship-
188 Shiga Ichiko

ing the Eter nal Mother, variably called Wusheng laomu (Unbor n Ven-
erable Mother) or Yaochi jinmu (Golden Mother of the Jasper Pond).

By contrast, Cantonese spirit-writing cults are more Daoist in charac-

ter: the word “
daotan
” literally means “Daoist shrine,” many cults wor-
ship Lüzu as the main deity, and some identify themselves as descen-

dants of the Quanzhen school. Unlike Taiwanese cults, they show little

inﬂuence of Mother worship, although in Guangdong and Hong Kong

there are some groups that engage in it, such as the Xiantian dao or

the Tongshan she, which both also have considerable power in the

Hong Kong Daoist community.
In addition, there is a subtle dif ference with respect to activity. On
the whole, Taiwanese spirit-writing cults tend to emphasize the publi-

cation of morality books and the holding of public lectures, while Can-

tonese spirit-writing cults have given priority to medical ser vices. It is

possible that these dif ferences arose from dif ferences in the cultural

and historical background of the two areas (Shiga 1998). This is why

I give special attention to the religious and socio -economic back-

ground in Guangdong, such as the condition of the Daoist commu-

nity and the spread of Lü Dongbin worship.
Fur ther more, I would like to present an ar gument against the the-
or y that
daotan
in Hong Kong are direct descendants of the Quanzhen
tradition. According to this theor y, the Longmen subsect of the

Quanzhen school had spread to Guangdong province by the end of

the seventeenth centur y, as is apparent in the fact that the Daoist tem-

ples established or rebuilt on Mount Luofu at that time all belonged

to the Longmen subsect. Daoists training on Mount Luofu spread to

Guangdong, especially to the Pearl River Delta, and established Daoist

temples there. During this process of expansion, some changes oc-

cur red in the original Quanzhen tradition, including the decline of

monasticism, the amalgamation of Quanzhen patriarchs and popular

r
eligious deities, a greater emphasis on rituals, and the introduction
of spirit-writing. These changes were a response to popular religious

demands. At the beginning of the twentieth centur y, the Quanzhen

sect was introduced into Hong Kong by Daoists trained at the ofﬁcial

Quanzhen monasteries, while in the Pearl River Delta, “Lüzu centers,”

spirit-writing cults devoted to Lüzu, arose one after another. Even

though these Lüzu centers did not belong to the Quanzhen school,

their founders had rich Daoist knowledge, lear ning from the activi-

ties of Quanzhen monks. The centers were, therefore, not directly par t

of the Quanzhen tradition but strongly inﬂuenced by it (see Tsui

1991).
Manifestations of Lüzu in Moder n Guangdong 189

Contrar y to this view, as I plan to show, the rise and development
of the
daotan
movement has many aspects left unexplained by this the-
or y. In fact, even the Daoist temples in Hong Kong that identiﬁed
themselves as par t of the Quanzhen school were originally the Lüzu

centers or spirit-writing cults in the guise of Quanzhen litur g y. In ad-

dition, the spirit-writing movement was not led by Daoist priests as pro-

fessional religious practitioners but by laymen with Daoist knowledge

and ﬁnancial ability.
To
clarify these points, the following describes the development
of the
daotan
movement, focusing on these questions. What was the
r
eligious and socio -economic background of the
daotan
movement ?
Which social strata and what occupational groups par ticipated actively

in it? What was the driving force behind it? How had they come to for m

a “Daoist identity”? The relevant time span is the period from the rise

of the movement in the latter half of the nineteenth centur y to 1949,

when most of the cults in Guangdong were forced to close and move

to Hong Kong because of the new religious policy enforced by the com-

munist gover nment.
Daoism in Pre-Moder n Guangdong
The condition of Daoist temples and practitioners in pre-moder n

Guangdong is not well documented, and the key source is the
Guang-
dong nianjian
(Guangdong Yearbook) of 1942. According to this,
there are four major Daoist temples on Mount Luofu: Chongxu guan,

Huanglong guan, Baihe guan, and Sulao guan, housing several hun-

dred Daoists. In the Qing dynasty, anyone belonging to one of them

had to pay twenty taels ever y year; after he had lived there for three

years, he was allowed to remain for the rest of his life, but he was still

r
equired to donate money for oil and incense (
xiang you qian
).
W
ealthy
men were allowed to build cottages and could live by themselves on

the mountain (
Guangdong nianjian
6.166 –167).
Another early source is the
Changchun daojiao yuanliu
(Origins and
Development of the Daoism Lineage of [Qiu] Changchun) by Chen

Minggui of the Qing. It states that under the Qing, most Daoist tem-

ples in Guangdong belonged to the Quanzhen school, as disciples trac-

ing their descent from the Quanzhen master Ceng Y iguan had spread

all over the area. Ceng Y iguan, a tenth-generation disciple of the Quan-

zhen master Li Qingqiu, came from Shandong to Mount Luofu in the

late seventeenth centur y. During the reign of K angxi, he became the
190 Shiga Ichiko

abbot of the Chongxu guan and other Daoist temples (
Changchun dao-
jiao yuanliu
7.38).
How were the Daoist temples on Mount Luofu managed? Was a
strict monastic system maintained, and were all members required to
r
enounce the world? No direct records remain today, but extraneous
evidence suggests that the system was rather loose and that the tem-

ples were like high-grade her mitages for the upper classes. The En-

glish traveler A. M. Henr y who went hiking on Mount Luofu in the late

nineteenth centur y, for example, notes that the Sulao guan was the

wealthiest temple there because it was “lar gely patronised by rich mer-

chants from Hong Kong and elsewhere, who come to spend a few

months or weeks in what they call religious retirement, living on veg-

etable diet” (Henr y 1886, 320 –322). Another Wester ner, the English

vice consul, made an excursion to Mount Luofu in 1892 and visited

the Sulao guan. He was welcomed by two men speaking English. Both

of them had stayed in the United States for many years as a cook and

a merchant. After they retired, they came to the Sulao guan to quietly

pass the remainder of their lives (Bour ne 1895). The Sulao guan as

an upper-class her mitage is succeeded by spirit-writing cults with the

name of
xianguan
,
which literally means “lodge of the immor tals,” such
as the Y unquan xianguan, which arose in the ﬁrst stage of the
daotan
movement.
Aside from Mount Luofu, the various local areas of each prefecture
also had Daoist temples, whose or ganization usually followed the model

of those on the mountain and which belonged to the same sect. Daoist

priests residing there were usually called
daoshi;
they lived on moun-
tains and practiced physical and spiritual cultivation, ear ning their

living by per for ming rituals for people (
Guangdong nianjian
6.167).
Daoists from Mount Luofu established or rebuilt most of the local tem-

ples in Guangdong. In these temples Lüzu was always worshiped, and

in some temples spirit-writing séances were also per for med.
Let us consider Daoist temples in the city of Guangzhou as an ex-
ample. Here we have several institutions, for example the Sanyuan

gong (Temple of the Three Primes), located at the foot of Mount

Y
uexiu, in the nor ther n par t of the city. Its long histor y can be traced
to the Y uegang yuan, established by Bao Jing in the four th centur y. At

the end of the Ming dynasty, it fell into r uin, but during the reign of

Shunzhi (1644 –1661), it was repaired. In 1706 it was restored fur ther

by the Daoist Du Yangdong, who had been an abbot of the Chongxu

guan (
Guangdong tongzhi
vol. 229;
Gujilue
14,
Siguan
1;
Luofu zhinan;
Manifestations of Lüzu in Moder n Guangdong 191

23). The Sanyuan gong was one of the ofﬁcial monasteries of the
Quanzhen school (Yoshioka 1989, 181).
At the foot of Mount Y uexiu was another Daoist temple called
Y
ing yuan gong (Temple of Accordance with the Primes), which was
also one of the ofﬁcial monasteries of the Quanzhen school (Yoshioka

1989, 181). It was established by Ke Yanggui, a disciple of Ceng Y iguan

(
Changchun daojiao yuanliu
7.38). John Henr y Gray, a missionar y who
lived in Canton in the late nineteenth centur y, visited it and found

dozens of priests in residence there. They worshiped at three major

shrines, one dedicated to the Three Pure Ones (Sanqing), one to the

Dipper Mother (Doumu), and one to Lü Chunyang, that is, Lü Dong-

bin. In the latter, Gray says, stood a bowl with holy water, used by the

faithful to cure ailments (1875, 382).
In addition, nineteenth-centur y Canton had at least four Daoist tem-
ples centered on the worship of Lüzu. There was ﬁrst the Chunyang

guan (Temple to Chunyang), located on Mount Shuzhu in the south-

er n suburb across the Pearl River. It was founded in 1824 by a Daoist

named Li Mingche. Then there was the Xiuyuan jingshe (Pure Lodge

for Cultivating the Prime), located in Huangsha in a wester n suburb.

It was originally a shrine of Lüzu built in 1854. Receiving income from

two ﬁsh ponds, it was managed by Daoists invited from the Chongxu

guan (
Nanhai xianzhi
[1872], vol. 5,
Jianzhi lue
2.51). A gover nor gen-
eral, Rui Lin, was one of the patrons because his defor med son recov-

ered after drinking a medical tea prescribed in a séance per for med

there (
Nanhai xianzhi
[1910], vol. 26,
Zalu
51). The wife of John Henr y
Gray obser ved one such séance in 1872 in a Lüzu temple. She writes:
We
saw the monk and the petitioner kneeling before the altar. The
monk was kneeling in front of the devotee. Our attention now became
absorbed in another monk, who had before him on a table a lar ge

wooden board covered with sand. He was standing by the altar. A sec-

ond monk was by his side, with pen and paper, to write down the mes-
sage supposed to be delivered by the god whose image stood on the al-
tar. A third monk joined the other two, whose duty, we lear ned, was to

explain the message when written.
...
The chief per for mer now took his instr ument, which was a piece
of stick about a foot in length, into his hand, or rather he balanced it
on his two foreﬁngers. It resembles a long pen-handle, and is made of
white wood. From the centre below projects a small piece of wood,

which writes on the sanded board. It altogether reminded me of the

planchettes so much in fashion a few years ago in England.
In a few minutes the wooden instr ument began to move, as was sup-
192 Shiga Ichiko

posed, without the help of the monk who held it. It moved up and down
on the board, tracing lar ge characters on it; and when the board was

marked all over, that par t of the message was transcribed on paper by

the monk, the sand was shaken, and the board placed again on the table

r
eady for the continuation of the writing. This happened three times,
the petitioner looking on all the while with rapt attention. The four th

time the lightly-balanced wooden instr ument refused to move, and the
monk said the god had retired. (I. Gray 1880, 109)
The above description makes it clear that the spirit-writing procedures
used in the Xiuyuan jingshe were ver y similar to those employed in

Daoist cults in Hong Kong today.
The third temple was the Chunyang guan located near the Bridge
of Huanzhu in the souther n suburb across the Pearl River. It also had

a spirit-writing séance for ordinar y believers, which was obser ved by

John Henr y Gray (H. Gray 1875, 85 – 86). The four th temple of Lü

Chunyang was located at the foot of Mount Baiyun in the nor ther n

suburb—close to this famous abode of immor tals (Ker r 1904). There

were, therefore, more than a few Daoist temples worshiping Lüzu in

nineteenth-centur y Guangzhou, and most of them had spirit-writing

séances or provided talisman water with medical ef fectiveness for or-

dinar y people. These Daoist temples were established prior to the
dao-
tan
movement, and it is likely that they supplied a model for the latter.
In addition to these major religious institutions, there were also
rather secularized temples called “Daoist lodges” (
daoguan
),
found
both in urban areas and in the countr yside. People called their priests

Nah mouh louh,
indicating a religious practitioner specialized in chant-
ing scriptures, exorcising ghosts, and aver ting disasters.
3
Such priests
were highly popular, and as a result the “lodges” spread widely among

the common people. Typically today, a
Nah mouh louh
handles rites of
mar riage, death, bir th, growth, transition, and constr uction, as well as

the selection of the appropriate days and the healing of diseases. Es-

tablished Daoists, such as those on Mount Luofu, however, consider

these priests deceitful and bothersome and reject their activities as het-

erodox (
Guangdong nianjian
6.167).
The
Guangdong nianjian
also describes other Daoist or ganizations,
so -called “charitable societies” (
shanshe
),
which have a looser connec-
tion with religion, encourage their members to practice goodness, and

work for the salvation of all. They worship Laozi, Lüzu, Guandi, and

the Monkey God and tend to be middle-class or rich merchants

(6.167). This description, though not detailed, shows that the popu-

lar discourse on the hierarchy and role division of Daoist temples, or-
Manifestations of Lüzu in Moder n Guangdong 193

ganizations, and practitioners was already shaped in the Republican
period. In fact, the dif ferences among them cannot have been so clear.

However, as spirit-writing cults claimed to be Daoist, they were neces-

sarily involved in this discourse. As a result,
daotan
had to take a stance
that tried to approach the lifestyle of Daoist literati on Mount Luofu

while also claiming dif ferences between themselves and the
Nah mouh
louh
to avoid being identiﬁed with the low-ranking priests.
Manifestations of Lüzu in Dif ferent Social Groups
Lüzu or Lü Dongbin is a ﬁgure of multiple characteristics and at-

tributes. As Baldrian-Hussein has pointed out, in tales of the Nor th-

er n Song, he appears as a Daoist, a calligrapher, a poet, an alchemist,

a healer, a soothsayer, a dr ug peddler, and an ink seller, relating to

all these diverse groups of people. Even in the early Song, Lü Dong-

bin was already an object of widespread cults among them (Baldrian-

Hussein 1986, 134, 139). The Pearl River Delta under the Qing reveals

a similar situation in that Lü Dongbin was worshiped among various

social groups, most notably medicine merchants and children.
Guangzhou and Foshan, the core cities of the Pearl River Delta,
were both famous for their phar maceuticals, being trading centers

where herbal medicine from all over the countr y were gathered and

distributed. Dr ug merchants and peddlers constantly came and went,

mainly by boat over the river ways and canals. The two cities were also

famous for phar maceutical manufacturing, and in Foshan medicine

production was a chief industr y, ranking equal with that of potter y,

iron, silk, and cotton (Luo 1994, 213 –214). According to the
Foshan
zhong yi xiangzhi
(Gazetteer of Foshan District) of the year 1923, there
were many phar macies, including about twenty shops that primarily

made pills, powders, and salves (6.13). In addition, there were about

for ty shops that provided boiled medical teas made from herbs as pre-

scribed by doctors often employed by the shop, and ten or more shops

that sold unprocessed medical materials. Some of the shops were

founded as early as the late Ming (6.24).
Phar macies often adver tised their products as being based on the
mystical prescriptions of immor tals. Similarly, medicine peddlers,

when they sold goods at marketplaces, often adver tised the efﬁcacy of

their medicines with mysterious tales of having met an immor tal or

Daoist, in the mountains or in a dream, and having received a book

of prescriptions from him. Medicine merchants, therefore, felt spe-

cial veneration for immor tals and Daoist priests, while consumers
194 Shiga Ichiko

viewed phar macies and dr ug peddlers with both awe and suspicion.
The close relationship between phar macies and immor tals or Daoists

appears all over China but seems to have been par ticularly strong in

the Pearl River Delta, where dr ug traders came and went, medicine

production ﬂourished, and sacred mountains with immor tals’ legends

were nearby.
One example is a shop called Chen-Li Ji, an old phar macy estab-
lished in the Ming dynasty. According to its founding legend, an un-

speciﬁed immor tal, who might be Lü Dongbin, helped create the orig-

inal shop and later acted variously to preser ve and suppor t it (see Y u

1929, 94 –96). A similar stor y, told in the morality book
Y
inzhiwen tushuo
(Illustrated Explanation of the Text of Secret Blessings; dated 1899),

notes that one day Chen Tiquan, the shop’s founder, climbed Mount

Xiqiao to pick herbs to make a medical tea for his sick mother. He

prayed on the mountain for for ty-nine nights. One mor ning he met

an old man picking herbs, who understood his situation and gave him

a dr ug and a book. Chen made his mother take the dr ug, and then

she recovered. The old man’s book contained prescriptions for pills

or powders, and Chen realized that the old man must have been an

immor tal. He followed the prescriptions for his dr ugs, all of which were

ver y ef fective, and opened a phar macy (
Y
inzhiwen tushuo
, 417– 418).
The same relationship between a phar macy and Lü Dongbin is also
found in the foundation legend of the phar macy Li Zhongsheng Tang,

which was famous for the Pill of Protecting and Curing (
baoji wan
).
According to the
Foshan yaoye zhi
(Record of Foshan Phar macies; dated
1992), its founder, Li Zhaoji, came from Xinhui County in Guangdong
Prefecture and in the early years of Guangxu moved to Foshan to do
business. He believed in Daoism so deeply that he practiced cultiva-

tion of mind and worshiped Lü Dongbin ever y day. According to the

legend, one day Li dreamed that he was given one copy of a pre-

scription by Lü Dongbin and told to make dr ugs to cure people. When

he awoke, he still remembered the prescription and made the dr ugs

accordingly (
Foshan yaoye zhi,
332).
The connection with Lü Dongbin is not limited to these two phar-
macies, and dr ug merchants may have played an impor tant role in pro-

moting the
daotan
movement. This is suggested by the fact that more
than a few founders and members of
daotan
had experience dealing
in herbal medicines both as dr ug merchants and doctors, or were bor n

in a family of dr ug merchants. For example, the founder of Puji tan,

the predecessor of Wong Tai Sin, was bor n into a dr ug-trading family

located in a village at the foot of Mount Xiqiu in Nanhai (see Lang
Manifestations of Lüzu in Moder n Guangdong 195

and Ragvald 1993). Similarly,
daotan
members often had highly de-
veloped medical knowledge and the technical exper tise to make med-
icines. They often made up their own prescriptions, and many moral-

ity books they published contain “prescriptions of immor tals” gained

through spirit-writing. Then again, several charitable associations, in-

cluding spirit-writing cults that provided free prescriptions, established

r
elationships with dr ug merchants in order to buy medicines at dis-
count rates. Sometimes dr ug merchants provided the capital to r un

charitable associations, often because the latter received special tax

beneﬁts (Li 1982, 202–210). Some spirit-writing cults, like Shenggong

caotang, also ran phar macies.
As well, dr ug merchants often donated money for publishing
morality books. It was not unusual to ﬁnd the names of dr ug shops in

a book’s list of sponsors, and sometimes books also printed ads for

dr ugs. Zhao Fenliang, one of the patrons of a Lüzu cult called Bao-

dao tang, is a good example. A phar macist with a lar ge business in

Guangdong and Hong Kong, he placed ads for his medicines in the

morality book
Fuyou dijun jueshi jing
(Scripture on Enlightening the
W
orld by the Imperial Lord Fuyou; 1922), which was published
through his donation. For phar macies, publishing morality books thus

was also one method of adver tising their products. All this suggests

that the dr ug merchants’ capital, technical exper tise, and networks

may have been among the driving forces that promoted the
daotan
movement. Another major group involved with Lü Dongbin worship

was children. In pre-moder n Guangdong, during the Mid-Autumn Fes-

tival, many places had a folk custom in which groups of boys and girls

would play shamanistic games by moonlight. Some girls’ games were

variants of the cult of Zigu, widespread in souther n China since about

the ﬁfth centur y and an antecedent of spirit-writing.
One game is par ticularly related to Lü Dongbin and spirit-writing:
the “Descent of the Eight Immor tals” (
jiang baxian
) or the “Invitation
of the Master” (
qing shifu
).
First, one boy lies on the ground under the
moon, while others hold incense and walk around him, chanting an

incantation. The prostrate boy then enters a trance and the others ask

him: “Master, are you a literar y immor tal or a militar y immor tal?” If

he answers “literar y,” that is, Lü Dongbin, he will stand up and write

with a spirit-writing pen (
jibi
) in a tray of sand. Getting tired, he is asked
whether he wants a disciple. If so, a boy of twelve or thir teen takes on

this role. Eventually, the medium is awakened by having water sprin-

kled on his face; he does not usually remember anything of the se-

quence (Chao 1944, 634 – 637; Liu 1993, 634 – 637).
196 Shiga Ichiko

While this is only a game, some
daotan
star ted just like this, the
Xinshan tang, for example.
4
Established in 1935 in Fang V illage, a
nor theaster n suburb of Guangzhou, it goes back to two young men
working in a lumber shop, one aged thir ty, the other sixteen or sev-

enteen. Both were from the countr y around Nanhai and had no for-

mal education. In the fall of 1935 they and their friends often played

mah-jongg together in the lumber shop. One day, because they got

tired of mah-jongg, they tried to play spirit-writing. They refer red to

a book called
W
anfa guizong
(Manual of Ten Thousand Methods), full
of incantations and talismans with which to invite the deities to de-

scend. They took a willow twig to use as a spirit-writing pen and cov-

ered the square mah-jongg table with incense ashes to use as a spirit-

writing board. The youngest shop boy became the medium. The events

are recounted in detail in the
W
eishan zuile
(Doing Good Is Utmost
Happiness), a compilation of spirit-written oracles from 1934 to 1939.

It says:
Since the fall of 1934, we had talked about spirit-writing, but we had
no infor mation about talismans [to call deities to descend]. After a while
we got a book called
W
anfa guizhong
. We read it enthusiastically and
tried to have a séance in several ways as prescribed in it. One day it
happened, and the great immor tal Lüzu was manifested himself. At
that time what had been drawn on a table was a picture of a sword. We
were ﬁlled with rapture and cried, “the immor tal has come!” (
W
eishan
zuile,
1)
They believed that the picture of the sword represented Lüzu, because
he was usually por trayed wearing a sword. After that, whenever they

played spirit-writing, Lüzu descended. In the beginning, they some-

times could not understand what the writing meant; some messages

were drawn in pictures like the sword, other messages were written in

characters. When they could not understand them, they asked Lüzu

to provide a redrawing. One day someone brought a book called
Lüzu
zhenjing
(Per fect Scripture of Patriarch Lü). After refer ring to it, the
writing gradually became clearer. In the twelfth moon, they asked Lüzu

to take them as his disciples and establish a spirit-writing cult. Lüzu

agreed, and they set up the Xinshan tang on the second ﬂoor of the

lumber shop.
The Xinshan tang thus originated with a spirit-writing experiment
by two young men who were neither literati nor professional Daoists

and who engaged in spirit-writing as a casual amusement—reminiscent

of the shamanistic game of the Mid-Autumn Festival. What began as
Manifestations of Lüzu in Moder n Guangdong 197

a playful enter tainment soon became a serious cult, and the barely lit-
erate men tur ned into students of Lü’s sacred writings. The cult is thus

also an example of how the written tradition and preliterate shaman-

ism were integrated in to the
daotan
movement.
The Early Stages of the
Daotan
Movement
The earliest detectable
daotan
cult was founded in 1848 at a scenic
place on Mount Xiqiao, Nanhai, known as the Baiyun dong (White

Cloud Caver n). Mount Xiqiao had been an academic center from Ming

times onward, the site of many Confucian academies, called “study

halls” (
shuyuan
) or “houses of reﬁnement” (
jingshe
),
established by
literati fond of scenic beauty (Luo 1994, 81– 88).
During the Qing dynasty, new Confucian academies and poetr y so-
cieties (
shishe
) were established here, and the popularity of the place
continued until the end of the eighteenth centur y, when it fell into

decline. As the introduction to the
Xiqiao Baiyundong zhi
(Gazetteer
of the White Cloud Cave in Xiqiao, dated 1838) explains, “Nowadays

most buildings and gardens have fallen into r uin and are covered with

growing thickets. It is quite a regrettable situation” (3). It proposes to

r
econstr uct some temples and have them maintained by a resident
Daoist priest. Following this proposition, on the site of the for mer

Gong yu Academy, a new temple dedicated to Lüzu was constr ucted

in 1840 and named Canhua gong. This was a precursor of the Y un-

quan xianguan (Guan 1985, 6).
Mount Xiqiao was not only a center of Confucian academies but
also a sacred mountain that attracted Daoists interested in alchemy

and drawn to the mountain’s abundant springs and herbal medicines.

Lü Dongbin appeared among them and came to occupy an impor tant

place in the local cult of immor tals even before the establishment of

the Y unquan xianguan, leaving a footprint on a rock in the Baiyun

dong and becoming venerated in a statue owned by He Baiyun

(
Baiyundong zhi
1.13, 2.13). Later, the ﬁrst abbot of the Y unquan xian-
guan, Li Zongjian, was a famous calligrapher. He passed the lower ex-

amination but did not hold a gover nment appointment, coming

rather to live in the Y unquan xianguan as a Daoist (
Nanhai xianzhi
[1872], 20). His attitude and background matched those of the Daoist

literati on Mount Luofu, and he too was focused on physical and spir-

itual cultivation in a place of scenic beauty.
As regards the or ganization of the Y unquan xianguan on Mount
Xiqiao, the
Xiqiao yunquan xianguan shiji
(Historical Record of the
198 Shiga Ichiko

Cloud Spring Her mitage in Xiqiao), a shor t memoir written by early
members, is one of the few available sources of infor mation. Ac-

cording to this, the Y unquan xianguan was a her mitage that housed

a voluntar y association for the practice of goodness, merit-making,

and self-cultivation. To obtain membership, one had only to pay a

membership fee of twenty (later sixty) taels and bring the recommen-

dation of two members. This ef fectively limited membership to the

afﬂuent classes and to acquaintances of previous members. Once a per-

son was admitted, he or she was given a Daoist name decided through

spirit-writing. There
was no monastic system; the members did not wear
their hair in Daoist fashion or dress in Daoist robes, nor did they ob-

ser ve a vegetarian diet, chant scriptures, or meditate. Three years af-

ter becoming members, they could stay for their entire lives. The Y un-

quan xianguan, therefore, was a kind of retreat for the wealthy.
Members held three lar ge-scale celebrations ever y year: the bir th-
day of Lüzu on the four teenth day of the four th moon; the Hungr y

Ghost Festival on the ﬁfteenth day of the seventh moon; and the bir th-

day of the Jade Emperor on the sixth day of the twelfth moon. Dur-

ing the Hungr y Ghost Festival, merit ser vices were held for deceased

members, dead relatives, and friends of members; at that time a vari-

ety of Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist scriptures were chanted for

seven days and nights. The cantors were sometimes members, but

mostly professional priests hired from outside.
Spirit-writing séances and public lecturing sessions were also im-
por tant activities. The morality book
Shanyu rentong lu
(Record of Be-
ing Good to the Human Community) was a collection of spirit-written
oracles received from 1879 to 1890. In addition, the Y unquan xian-
guan was famous for its efﬁcacious
Lüzu yaoqian
(Medical For tune Slips
Prescribed by Lüzu), which gave prescriptions for men, women, and

children (
Nanhai xianzhi
[1910] 26.49). The or ganization was com-
posed of a director, an accountant, an auditor, a receptionist, and a

general manager. The director was elected by the members once ever y

three years, and operational expenses came mainly from membership

fees, donations, and money of ferings made in the annual celebrations.

The association purchased a great deal of real estate, including houses

and shops, which in tur n provided a signiﬁcant income. In the early

years, members typically belonged to the local elite, that is, they were

local gentr y, literati, doctors, teachers, wealthy merchants, and so on.

Soon after the establishment of the group, the Gover nor General Qi

Y
ing sent a tablet in his own calligraphy, demonstrating the suppor t
of the Y unquan xianguan by the upper classes.
Manifestations of Lüzu in Moder n Guangdong 199

Another prominent institution of the early phase was the Chang-
chun xianguan in Guangzhou City, established around 1850 by the
Gover nor General Ye Mingchen, a spirit-writing fanatic who allegedly

commanded his troops during the Second Opium War (1856 –1860)

on the basis of orders received from the divine. The Changchun xian-

guan ser ved as a residence for Daoist literati without kin but fell into

decline after the Opium War. In the late 1860s the general Jiang Liyi

established the Jupo Academy on its site (Huang 1994, 81; Gray 1875,

413). In the meantime, Ye Mingchen and his father in 1855 established

another association, called Xiaopeng xianguan in the wester n suburb

of Guangzhou City. According to Gray, they worshiped Lüzu as their

main deity and provided efﬁcacious
medicine pre
scriptions that be-
came ver y popular among the people (Gray 1875, 662– 666).
Several associations named
xianguan
also arose in the Guangdong
countr yside, in Qing yuan County. In 1854 the Taihe Caver n was

opened on Mount Huajian in 1873, and the Taoyuan xianguan was

established here as a center for the worship of Lüzu and the immor-

tal Wei Ruyi. According to a local gazetteer, three provincial gover nors

sent tablets with their own calligraphy in celebration of its establish-

ment, lauding its provision of charitable ser vices, such as bur ying war

victims without kin. All these
xianguan
of the mid-nineteenth centur y
were in isolated locations with scenic beauty and relied heavily on the

suppor t of the upper classes. They of fered charitable ser vices and

morality books and were a venue for retired upper-class people to prac-

tice self-cultivation.
The
Daotan
Movement after the Reign of Guangxu
Around the tur n of the centur y, local elites were caught up in an es-

chatological sentiment and the hope of salvation from “the great

catastrophe” in response to the social disorder caused by frequent

disasters, epidemics, and wars. Responding to these conditions, the

daotan
movement began to lean more toward charitable activities and
spread fur ther into the lower classes. Traditionally,
xianguan
had been
her mitages for the upper classes, but now many began to shift their

concer n from esoteric Daoist knowledge and individual cultivation to

moral refor mation and the practice of goodness.
It was a general belief at the time that moral decline caused “great
catastrophes,” such as natural disasters and epidemics. There was no

way to escape these catastrophes other than to restore moral order

(Yamada 1995), an idea also expressed in the Lüzu oracles as recorded
200 Shiga Ichiko

in the
Shanyu rentong lu
(256, 274 –275). To escape the great catas-
trophes, the text advises its followers to confess sins, be without fault,
act with charity, and appeal to the Emperor of Heaven (286). As a re-

sult, the local elites at this time focused on helping others rather than

cultivating themselves; they thought that only good deeds could pre-

vent the great catastrophes that were beyond human knowledge.

They believed that while the goodness practiced by one person might

be small, the collective practice of goodness would be signiﬁcant. How-

ever, another passage states that “in the case of lar ge-scale disasters,

you cannot escape unless you do great good and ear n great merit”

(134). If the small goodness and merit of an individual cannot aver t

great catastrophes, what can people do? The oracles answer that es-

tablishing charitable societies is a ver y ef fective way to escape the great

catastrophes.
Heaven is not fair or humane, the
Shanyu rentong lu
points out,
and there is no way to be always prosperous and forever escape the

great catastrophes. Thus, ever y year people become victims of wars,

ﬂoods, droughts, epidemics, and famines. Seeing these things happen,

Heaven is grieved but cannot bring relief to people immediately. To

make up for this insufﬁciency, human beings must take action.
I propose to establish charitable societies in many places such as the
Aiyu Charitable Society in Guangzhou and the Tongwa Hospital in
Hong Kong. These are lar ge scale societies. But regardless of the size,
big or small, you should set up such societies. Next time a disaster hap-

pens, charitable societies can rescue more people. (218)
The rise of charitable societies in Guangdong province peaked dur-
ing the reign of Guangxu (Fuma 1982, 42). Members of the Y unquan
xianguan were deeply af fected by this trend and took an active par t in

it. Similarly, most spirit-writing cults arising during the Guangxu reign

tended to take on the character of charitable societies; their growth

was frequently triggered by epidemics, beginning with the plague of

1894 (Benedict 1996). Three cults ser ve as per tinent examples.
First, the Puji tan, the predecessor of the Wong Tai Sin group in
Hong Kong (see Lang and Ragvald 1993), arose in direct response to

the 1894 plague. The founder, Liang Ren’an, was bor n in a village near

the foot of Mount Xiqiao in 1861. His father was a merchant of herbal

medicines. When he was in his early twenties, he joined the Customs

Ser vice, but the plague changed his fate and he began to per for m

spirit-writing séances to ask for divine protection and prescriptions.

Receiving messages from Wong Tai Sin, he and his friends continued
Manifestations of Lüzu in Moder n Guangdong 201

to have spirit-writing sessions and eventually set up a for mal altar in
Guangzhou City in 1897. In 1899 they built a shrine called Puji tan in

a wester n suburb across the Pearl River, worshiping Wong Tai Sin as

their main deity together with Lüzu and Wei Zheng. In 1915 Liang

moved to Hong Kong, rented a ﬂat in Wanchai, and set up an altar

for Wong Tai Sin in his room. In the following year he opened a med-

icine shop near his apar tment. In 1921 he received a message from

W
ong Tai Sin that a new shrine should be built; he duly erected one
in the village of Zhuyuan at the foot of Lion Rock Mountain. This small

shrine developed into the most popular temple in Hong Kong after

W
orld War II (Lang and Ragvald 1993).
The second example is the Shenggong caotang. It, too, began dur-
ing the plague of 1894, as documented in their main morality book,

the
Shenggong lu
. A statue of Guangchengzi
5
had been set up in the
r
ear of a study hall near the gover nment seat of Fanyu County in the
easter n par t of Guangzhou City. This became renowned for its mirac-

ulous efﬁcacy, and many people came to worship. When the plague

broke out, people held a spirit-writing séance in front of the statue,

and Guangchengzi descended on the twenty-third day of the four th

moon, preaching that people should practice goodness to avoid the

plague and widely distribute talismans to cure people. After several

sessions, followers decided to establish a charitable society, sup-

por ted by the local gentr y and ofﬁcials of Fanyu County as well as by

a gover nment land grant. This was the beginning of the Shenggong

caotang. They worshiped Guangchengzi as their main god together

with other immor tals, including Lüzu (
Fanyu xianxu zhi
vol. 5.26;
Sheng-
gong lu
vol. 1 and vol. 2).
Their main activity was to provide medical ser vices, including pre-
scriptions through spirit-writing, free medicines, and consultations

with doctors of traditional Chinese medicine. Sometimes following

Guangchengzi’s instr uction, they produced their own pills. After the

establishment of the Republic, they ran a medicine shop to make

money and provided vaccinations, funeral ser vices, and aid for disas-

ter victims (
Shenggong caotang dashi jiyao,
ch. 7).
The third example is the Y u shantang, which began during the
cholera epidemic of 1902 with a series of spirit-writing sessions per-

for med at the Huixing Charitable Institute. The institute was one of

nine big charitable societies in Guangzhou; it had been established in

New Town in 1900 and contained an altar for Lüzu. During the cholera

outbreak, its member Zhao Zunsi per for med spirit-writing there to ask

for prescriptions. Zhao held a
juren
degree and ear ned his living by
202 Shiga Ichiko

teaching. He made pills to treat cholera according to Lüzu’s instr uc-
tion and distributed them widely. The pills were so efﬁcacious that fol-

lowers increased day by day. Eventually, he and his followers set up a

new shrine worshiping Lüzu called Y ihe lou; this was located in Huang-

sha, a wester n suburb of Guangzhou City. The following year, they es-

tablished a new charitable society called Y u shantang next to the Y ihe

lou, whose main activity was to provide free medicine and assistance to

the poor. They had twenty-four branches in Guangdong and, with the

suppor t of local merchants, also developed charitable activities in Hong

Kong, Macao, and Singapore. Baodao tang, the Hong Kong branch,

was established in 1921 (
Baosong baohe ji,
385 –387;
Fuxing
5:11–13).
All these three
daotan
had a number of things in common, aside
from the fact that they were all founded at times of plague. First, they

emphasized medical ser vices, such as receiving prescriptions through

spirit-writing, producing pills, consulting with doctors, and so on. Sec-

ond, they published morality books edited from spirit-writing oracles,

including prescriptions given by immor tals and talismans to cure dis-

eases. Third, they were located not in isolated places of scenic beauty

but in urban or suburban areas.
Daotan
as charitable societies and
helpers in distress became mainstream during the Republican period

and were succeeded by Hong Kong’s present-day groups.
The
Daotan
Movement in the Republican Period
The Republican period saw two major changes in the
daotan
move-
ment. First, the range of members’ social strata gradually expanded.

The Y unquan xianguan is a good example. According to an old mem-

ber’s memoir, in the early days most members belonged to the upper

classes, including local gentr y, literati, and wealthy merchants. How-

ever, in the Republican period, more members were businessmen en-

gaging in commerce and industr y
In the late 1920s the leaders were the director of the Chamber of
Commerce and Industr y, an overseas Chinese, and a politician. They

r
eplaced the traditional elites who had passed the imperial examina-
tions, reﬂecting the general power shift from the local gentr y to mer-

chants. In addition, common people —far mers, shop keepers, and re-

tail salesmen—gradually joined in greater numbers (
Xiqiao yunquan
xianguan shiji,
55). The same trend is also apparent in new founda-
tions, such as that of the Xinshan tang, which arose in 1935 and whose

members were ordinar y young men working in a lumber shop, nei-

ther wealthy merchants nor literati nor religious specialists.
Manifestations of Lüzu in Moder n Guangdong 203

A second major change was that the
daotan
movement extended
throughout Hong Kong and Macao. For example, the Y unquan xian-
guan established branches in all these places; the Y ushan tang set up

a branch in Hong Kong; some Shenggong caotang members star ted

businesses in Hong Kong and built a new temple there in 1934.

This change in location reﬂects the population expansion of Hong

Kong, which had an estimated 840,473 people in 1931 as opposed

to 456,739 in 1911 (Fan 1974, 2). Many Cantonese looking for busi-

ness oppor tunities and jobs were moving to Hong Kong; refugees

from disasters and civil wars found a new home there —bringing new

r
eligious impulses and encouraging the establishment of local
daotan
branches.
After the Japanese ar my invaded China in 1937 and occupied
Guangzhou and Hong Kong, most spirit-writing cults were forced to

stop their activities, retur ning to their customs only after 1945. Among

the most prominent groups then was the Zhibao tai (Establishment

of Utmost Treasure), founded by He Qizhong.
6
According to his bi-
ography written by a follower, he was bor n in 1916 as the illegitimate

child of a silk merchant in Shunde County. In 1930, when he was in

middle school, he visited a spirit-writing cult and received prophecies

that tur ned out to be tr ue. From then on he believed in spirit-writing

and began to lear n it, becoming a medium, while working in a silk

shop. Between 1937 and 1940 he went to the Chongxu guan on Mount

Luofu and studied under a Daoist master of the Longmen subsect. Af-

ter 1941 he retur ned to Guangzhou to suppor t his family, living in his

friend’s silk shop. The shop had been a phar macy before the fall of

Guangzhou, and on the second ﬂoor there was an altar for Lüzu. He

Qisheng star ted a spirit-writing cult there and named it Jishan xiantan;

later he moved it to Xiguan in the wester n par t of Guangzhou City.

This was the beginning of the Zhibao tai.
Like the shop clerks who star ted the Xinshan tang, He was young
and of a low social class, but unlike them he had great talent for spirit-

writing, a strong interest in Daoist knowledge, and ambition. The med-

icines prescribed by his spirit-writing séances were renowned for their

miraculous efﬁcacy, so the number of followers gradually increased.

After he retur ned to Guangzhou, he continued to study rituals under

the Quanzhen Daoist Ye Zongmao, an abbot of the Y ing yuan gong and

a resident of the Xiuyuan jingshe. Finally, he got an ordination

cer tiﬁcate from the Y ing yuan gong as a member of the twenty-four th

generation of the Quanzhen sect. He seems to have had a lar ge circle

of acquaintances. Besides Quanzhen Daoists, he kept company with
204 Shiga Ichiko

Buddhist priests, leaders of the Xiantian dao and the Tongshan she,
and traditional Chinese doctors. Through these exchanges, he ac-

quired a wide variety of religious knowledge. Later he encountered

Lu Y infang, a wealthy Hong Kong merchant, and greatly expanded

his activities, establishing in 1945 the ofﬁcially accredited Chinese

Daoist Charitable Society of Zhibao.
He Qizhong claimed that the Zhibao tai was a successor to the
Quanzhen school in two ways. First, he himself became a follower of

the school and received ordination. Second, he created a genealog y

that linked the Zhibao tai with the Quanzhen school. In the Zhibao

tai’s original cer tiﬁcate, there is the following passage:
It began with Donghua dijun.
...
The teaching was then transmitted
to Patriarch Qiu of the Longmen subsect. . . . Eventually the teaching
was transmitted to the patriarch of the four th generation of Longmen
subsect.
His family name was Huang and his Daoist name was Xuanxian. He
was a native of Chen County in Guangdong. He was bor n on the

eleventh hour of the 22
nd
day of the seventh moon. He descended on
the spirit-writing board and established teachings in the Zhibao tai in
Guangzhou after the model of Lüzu. He enlar ged the gate of salvation
and showed the right way. His teaching was called the Zhibao school.

(
Baosong baohe ji
159 –160)
Huang Xuanxian was a ﬁctional Daoist created by spirit-writing, who
allegedly founded the Zhibao tai as a new branch of the Longmen sub-
sect of the Quanzhen school, in ef fect becoming the pivot of a new

genealog y. He Qizhong thereby legitimized the Zhibao tai as an or-

thodox Daoist or ganization in the Quanzhen tradition, elevating it

above the status of a spirit-writing cult.
According to a repor t, the number of members of the Zhibao tai
was more than seven hundred in the beginning and increased to sev-

eral thousand after a while (Liu 1992). Most traditional
daotan
did not
admit women members, but the Zhibao tai clearly stated that women

could also join, possibly contributing to the popularization of female

spirit-writing mediums and scripture cantors. However, their prosperity

did not continue for long. In 1949, when the communist gover nment

was established, spirit-writing cults were regarded as a “feudalistic su-

perstition,” and like other spirit-writing cults, the Zhibao tai was forced

to cease its activities. He Qizhong and his company ﬂed to Hong Kong

and set up a new Lüzu altar and planchette in a downtown building,

which in due course developed into the Qingsong guan, one of the

most power ful Daoist or ganizations in Hong Kong today.
Manifestations of Lüzu in Moder n Guangdong 205

Conclusion
The rise and growth of
daotan,
as we have seen, is a complex and mul-
tilayered phenomenon that cannot be explained only by the traditional
view that sees them as a result of the transmission and spread of the

Quanzhen tradition. This is not to deny that the Quanzhen school had

some inﬂuence on the
daotan
movement. In nineteenth-centur y
Guangdong, many Daoist temples belonged to the Quanzhen school

and had close ties to the Daoists of Mount Luofu. Most worshiped Lüzu

and were renowned for some folk medicines, such as spirit-written pre-

scriptions and talisman water. It is likely that those temples supplied

a model for the later
daotan
movement.
However, Lüzu worship and spirit-writing, the most impor tant ele-
ments of the
daotan
movement, were not limited to the spread of
Quanzhen temples. The practice of communicating with Lüzu by

spirit-writing was popular among dif ferent social groups, from the up-

per to the lowest classes, and even to children—a phenomenon that

cannot be explained only by the popularization of elite culture. Can-

tonese folk customs, such as the shamanistic games played by children

at the Mid-Autumn Festival, show that ancient folk religious practices —

antecedents of spirit-writing—were continuously handed down and

for med a religious foundation underlying local culture.
Another impor tant aspect is the sociolog y of
daotan
members. They
were lay believers with Daoist knowledge and ﬁnancial ability, not pro-

fessional Daoist priests belonging to the Quanzhen sect. Especially in

the early stages of the
daotan
movement, it was bureaucrats, local gen-
tr y, and wealthy merchants who became active par ticipants. Their

power, wealth, and strong devotion to Daoism and spirit-writing be-

came driving forces in the movement. In the second stage, when the

daotan
began to take on the character of charitable societies, it was the
dr ug merchants’ capital, technical exper tise, and networks that for med

the primar y driving forces behind the movement’s development. Al-

though their movements developed outside ofﬁcial Daoist circles, they

identiﬁed themselves as “Daoist” on the basis of their own idea about

what Daoism was.
In the Republican period, the range of people involved in
daotan
expanded. The young founders of Xinshan tang, which originated

in the folk shamanistic game, volunteered to be Lüzu’s disciples, that

is, to be Daoist through communications with their master by spirit-

writing. The founder of the Zhibao tai, the most famous
daotan
in post-
war Guangzhou, was also originally only a young spirit-writing medium
206 Shiga Ichiko

but had the amibition to become well known and wealthy. He obtained
rich Daoist knowledge and funds through a Quanzhen priest’s guid-

ance and a lar ge circle of acquaintances, allowing his ambition and

imagination not only to make Zhibao tai popular and power ful in

Guangzhou but also to create a new genealog y linking it with the

Quanzhen school. One may see all this as par t of the popularization

of an originally pure Quanzhen tradition, but I do not share this view.

I would rather see the
daotan
phenomenon as the lay people’s move-
ment toward the or thodoxy of Daoism, as their way of working toward

their religious ideals and advancing their social prestige. The move-

ment indicates, to bor row Kristofer Schipper’s words, “the upgrading

and emancipation of local power str ucture, and not the downgrading

or popularization of Taoism” (1985, 834).
To
conclude, the
daotan
movement began and grew through the
integration of elements from various social groups, mer ging their ideas

and lifestyles. It gained momentum around the tur n of the centur y,

when social disorder and unrest led to strong eschatological senti-

ments, then settled down to become a strong and suppor tive par t of

Hong Kong society today.
Notes
This paper is a conﬂation, revision, and expansion of ideas and materials
discussed in Shiga 1999, chs. 4 – 6. The main ﬁeld research for this study was
done from May of 1992 to August of 1993 when I was a research student of

the OISP program of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, receiving sup-

por t from the Rotar y Foundation, and from Januar y to April of 1994, when

I was a visiting scholar at the Center of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong,

suppor ted by a grant from the Niwano Peace Foundation. I am deeply in-

debted to both suppor ters and to the academic programs that helped me in

my studies.
1.
Lingwei
literally means the space where a spirit tablet of the dead is placed.
Most
daotan
sell a
lingwei
including a spirit tablet made from white tile. On
the tile, the name, place of bir th, and photograph of the dead person are

printed.
2. Table 1 is based on data collected from local gazetteers, morality books,
and my inter views with senior members of
daotan
in Hong Kong and Macao.
3.
Nah mouh louh
is a Cantonese transliteration. The romanization is based
on the Huang-Kok Yale system.
4. The early histor y of the Xinshan tang is based on manuscripts written
by one of the founders, my inter views with the founders’ descendants, and a

spirit-written text entitled
W
eishan zuile
.
Manifestations of Lüzu in Moder n Guangdong 207

5. Guangchengzi is an immor tal who instr ucted Huangdi (Yellow Thearch)
on longevity.
6. The materials in this section are derived mainly from
Baosong baohe ji,
edited on the basis of records and ar ticles concer ning four
daotan,
which He
Qizhong had a par t in founding.
Bibliography
Baldrian-Hussein, Far zeen. 1986. “Lü Tung-pin in Nor ther n Sung Literature.”
Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie
2:133 –170.
Benedict, Carol. 1996.
Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-Centur y China
. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
Bour ne, F. S. A. 1895.
The Lo -Fou Mountains: An Excursion
. Hong Kong: Kelly
& Walsh.
Chao, Wei-pang. 1944. “Games at the Mid-Autumn Festival in Kuangtung.”
Folklore Studies
3:1–16.
Clar t, Phillip. 1996. “ The Ritual Context of Morality Books: A Case-Study of
a Taiwanese Spirit-Writing Cult.” Ph.D. diss., University of British Colum-
bia, Vancouver, Canada.
———. 1997. “ The Phoenix and the Mother: The Interaction of Spirit Writ-
ing Cults and Popular Sects in Taiwan.”
Jour nal of Chinese Religions
25:1–32.
Fan Chunwu. 1996. “Qingmo minjian cishan shiye yu luantang yundong.” M.A.
thesis, Zhongzheng University, Taipei.
Fan, Shuh Ching. 1974.
The Population of Hong Kong.
Hong Kong: Swindon
Book Co., Ltd.
Fuma Susumu. 1983. “Shindai engan rokush
o
ni oker u zend
o
no fuky
u
j
o
ky
o
.”
T
oyama daigaku jimbungakubu kiy
o
7:15 – 45.
Gray, Isabella. 1880.
Four teen Months in Canton
. London: Macmillan and Co.
Gray, John Henr y. 1875.
W
alks in the City of Canton
. Hong Kong: De Souza &
Co.
Guan Xiang. 1985.
Xiqiao lansheng
. Canton: Guangdong lüyou.
Henr y, B. C. 1886.
Ling Nam or Interior V iews of Souther n China
. London:
S. W. Par tridge.
Huang Shiqing. 1983. “Xiqiao yunquan xianguan huiyi.”
Nanhai wenshi ziliao
3:56 –59.
Ker r, John G. 1904.
A Guide to the City and Suburbs of Canton
. Hong Kong: Kelly
& Walsh.
Lang, Graeme, and Lars Ragvald, eds. 1993.
The Rise of a Refugee God: Hong
Kong’s Wong Tai Sin
. New York: Oxford University Press.
Li Huichuan. 1982. “Guangzhou gong yi shetuan gaikuang.”
Guangzhou wenshi
ziliao
12:195 –210.
Liu Xiangming. 1992. “Minguo shiqi guangzhoude daojiao.”
Y
angcheng jingu
5:44 – 45.
Liu Zhiwen, ed. 1993.
Guangdong minsu daguan.
Canton: Guangdong lüyou.
Luo Y ixing. 1994.
Ming-Qing foshan jingji fazhan yu shehui bianqian
. Guangzhou:
Guangdong renmin.
Schipper, Kristofer M. 1985. “ Taoist Ritual and Local Cults of the T’ang Dy-
208 Shiga Ichiko

nasty.” In
T
antric and Taoist Studies
3, ed. by Michel Strickmann, 3:812– 834.
Br ussels: Institut Belge des Hautes Etudes Chinoises.
Shiga Ichiko. 1995. “Hongkong no d
o
tan—kindai minsh
u
d
o
ky
o
no ichi keitai
toshite.”
T
o
h
o
sh
u
ky
o
85:1–23.
———. 1998. “Saikin no Taiwan rand
o
kenky
u
no d
o
k
o
to kongo no tenb
o
.”
T
o
h
o
sh
u
ky
o
92:31– 42.
———. 1999.
Kindai ch
u
goku no shamanizumu to d
o
ky
o
: Hongkong no d
o
tan to
f
u
ji shink
o
. Tokyo: Bensei shuppan.
T
akeuchi Fusashi. 1990. “Shinmatsu shisen no sh
u
ky
o
und
o
.”
Gakush
u
in dai-
gaku bungakubu kenky
u
nemp
o
37:59 –93.
T
sui, Bar tholomew. 1991.
T
aoist Tradition and Change: The Stor y of the Complete
Per fection Sect in Hong Kong
. Hong Kong: Christian Study Centre on Chi-
nese Religion and Culture.
W
ang Jianchuan. 1996.
T
aiwan de zhaijiao yu luantang
. Taipei: Nanten shuju.
———. 1997. “Zhuanbian zhongde shenqi: Taiwan guandi dang yuhuang
chuanshuo de youlai.” In
Xingbie shenge yu Taiwan zongjiao lunshu,
ed. by
Li Fengmao and Zhu Ronggui, 121–139. Taipei: Academia Sinica.
Y
amada Masar u. 1995.
Ij
u
min no chitsujo—Shindai shisen chiiki shakaishi kenky
u
.
Nagoya: Nagoya University Press.
Y
oshioka Yoshitoyo. 1952.
D
o
ky
o
no kenky
u
. Kyoto: H
o
z
o
kan.
Yu
 Min. 1929. “Lü Dongbin de gushi.”
Minsu
41/42.
Manifestations of Lüzu in Moder n Guangdong 209

10
Fang Yankou
and
Pudu
T
ranslation, Metaphor,
and Religious Identity
Charles D. Orzech
The Problem of Religious Identity
and the Pover ty of Syncretism
Over the years, students of Chinese religion have str uggled to under-
stand and ar ticulate the encounter between South Asian and Chinese

r
eligions, variously depicting this encounter as “conquest,” “siniﬁ-
cation,” and “transfor mation.” Recent work on the interaction between

indigenous Chinese traditions and the traditions originating to the

west and south of China (Zürcher 1980; Bokenkamp 1983 and 1990),

as well as work on so -called apocr ypha have begun to render such sim-

plistic characterizations of this encounter problematic. In the course

of my study of the
Renwang huguo bor uo bolomiduo jing
(Scripture for
Humane Kings, T. 245/246; Or zech 1998) I found myself str uggling

to ar ticulate the sophisticated her meneutical “play” between Confu-

cian and Buddhist religious concepts that signaled the emer gence of

a new Chinese Buddhist religious identity, and which later character-

ized the reception of Esoteric Buddhism during the Tang dynasty. My

problem was that the language of “mixture,” “hybrid,” or syncretism

was vague and imprecise and provided little help in understanding

what was going on, par ticularly with regard to new notions of religious

identity.
The Daoist
pudu,
or ritual of “universal salvation,” is often held up
as a case of syncretism, a Daoist imitation of the Esoteric Buddhist
fang
yankou,
or “release of the ﬂaming mouths,” in which the ritual elements
of both traditions have been blended. The ritual has received relatively

little and superﬁcial analysis.
1
Indeed, the scholarship on these ritu-
als can be seen as emblematic of the approach that many analyses of

Chinese religion have taken. Like the
pudu,
Chinese religion has of-
213

ten been and continues to be characterized as a mixture, a pragmatic
concoction, a melange, a hybrid, or a syncretic blend of religions.
Just what do we mean when we say that something is “syncretic”?
In its simplest for m, syncretism presupposes that two hither to distinct

re
ligions, rituals, or what have you become mixed together, and that
if circumstances were changed, the mixture would naturally separate.

The conglomeration is unnatural, a kind of miscegenation. Carston

Colpe has attempted to provide a more precise and, therefore, more

analytically useful deﬁnition in his ar ticle “Syncretism.” But Colpe con-

cludes, “All that can be done is to point out constellations in the gen-

eral histor y of religions that have made possible what historians may,

under cer tain conditions, call ‘syncretism’” (1987, 220a). To label a

r
eligion “syncretic” or “hybrid” (even with a hyphen, as in the ter m
Buddho -Daoist) implies that there are two sor ts of religions: the pure-

bred and the bastard. But since all culture and religion are constituted

in a continual process of encounter and mixture, to go on using such

ter ms seems to me counterproductive, and the politics of this are more

than a little problematic.
2
This is not to say that some Chinese did not
r
egard cer tain for ms of religious and cultural interaction as misce-
genation. Many, including the famous cleric Huiyuan, did.
3
But we
are not playing the same game as they are, and we should tr y to dis-

entangle their prejudices from our prejudices. At best, the language

of mixture, even when couched in the technical-sounding ter minol-

og y of syncretism, is sloppy and analytically useless. At worst, it is bi-

ased and per nicious. Recent work on metaphor and translation of fer

a more nuanced approach to the problem of religious identity. As I

see it, the
pudu
is a Daoist translation of the Esoteric Buddhist
fang
yankou
ritual, and Daoists who per for m it in no way confuse the two
traditions.
4
Ritual and Translation
T
ranslation theor y is not, of course, alien to the Chinese situation. The
theor y of “matching” or “extending” meanings (
geyi
) was ar ticulated
as a method of translating Buddhist technical vocabularies in the early

Six Dynasties.
5
Geyi
brought together indigenous Chinese ter ms and
notions from the
Daode jing,
the
Zhuangzi,
and the
Y
ijing
as analogues
in the ser vice of communicating South Asian Buddhist ideas. Although

geyi
supposedly ended as a technique of translating with the advent of
Kum
a
raj
i
va in the early ﬁfth centur y, the
her meneutic reality
of using
214 Charles D. Or zech

Chinese culture to communicate Buddhist notions did not abate;
rather, it became more sophisticated, and I have ar gued elsewhere that

it reached a ver y advanced state in the work of the Esoteric
a
c
a
rya
s
(masters) of the Tang cour t, especially Amoghavajra and his immedi-

ate Chinese disciples (Or zech 1998, 169 –174).
6
In contrast to the simplistic and misleading rhetoric of syncretism,
theories of translation not only ar ticulate that things come together

but also af ford a way to ar ticulate
how
things come together, following
the trail from initial encounter to for ms of mutual accommodation,
bor rowing, or transfor mative development.
7
In shor t, recent work on
translation and metaphor af ford us a more nuanced approach to the
complexities inherent in the constr uction of religious identity.
In a fascinating essay on the use of Hindu metaphors and ter mi-
nolog y in early Bengali Muslim literature, Tony K. Stewar t obser ves,
Religious encounter seen as translation . . . is not just an act of utter-
ance followed by the emotional, political, and ideological conﬂict of
conversion, but ultimately reveals a movement of
accommodation
by the
r
eceiving or tar get language and the culture it represents, which when
sufﬁciently pursued eventually becomes an act of
appropriation.
The tar-
get language incorporates fully the new ter ms and concepts that result
from this encounter, a process which is patently dif ferent from syn-
cretism. The act of incorporating what is alien ultimately changes its
host . . . (2001, 276)
8
Moreover, “when the ‘translation’ is successful, the new ter m becomes
a par t of the tar get culture’s extended religious vocabular y, and car-

ries with it, or at least points to, another conceptual world” (2001, 276).

Stewar t demonstrates that the Hindu ter minolog y and conceptions

present in early Bengali Muslim texts does not reﬂect an ad hoc mix-

ture. Rather, these texts are witness to a process of religious encounter

in which new
Muslim
identities were constr ucted by a careful appro-
priation of indigenous religious concepts and vocabular y. In laying out

his ar gument, Stewar t presents a typolog y of translation theories that,

for the sake of convenience, I will summarize here. He ter ms these

“for mal equivalence,” “refracted equivalence,” “dynamic equivalence,”

and “metaphoric equivalence.” “For mal equivalence” involves a one-

to - one match of ter ms and is, for all intents and purposes, an ideal.

Even when it occurs, immediate clariﬁcation is needed. Indeed, early

translation “committees” attempting to render Sanskrit and Pali in

Classical Chinese often produced a wooden or literal word-for-word
Fang Yankou
and
Pudu
215

re
ndition that then ser ved as the basis for a cleaned-up, more palat-
able end product. No one assumed the literal version was an end in
itself.
“Refracted equivalence” of fers us a more down-to -ear th picture of
what goes on in translation. André LeFevre conceptualizes translation

metaphorically as a “mir ror” reﬂection of the original, but the “glass”

of the “mir ror” not only reﬂects but also refracts or distor ts (LeFevre

1982, 3 –19; 1975). For instance, an author might equate such high-

level ter ms as “
bodhi
” and “Dao,” often knowing full well that while they
can play vaguely similar roles in Buddhism and Daoism (to attain
bodhi,
to attain the Dao), they are not the same. Having discovered the in-

evitable “refraction,” we are still af forded little analytic leverage with

r
egard to the distor tion in question. The “dynamic equivalence” the-
or y propounded by Eugene Nida (1964; 1969) and theories of “in-

tersemiotic” or “metaphoric equivalence,” as ar ticulated by Stewar t and

inspired by the work of Jakobson (1971) and Johnson and Lakof f

(1980; 1999) are more useful.
9
By emphasizing
how
a ter m functions in its new social and linguis-
tic universe, Nida shifts the focus away from equivalence to the con-

tours and deployment of the distor tion caused by translation. Nida sees

the translator’s choice of ter ms as par t of a wider strateg y that takes

into account parallel functions of the ter ms in their own social and

textual context. For example, when the Tang dynasty Esoteric master

Amoghavajra praised emperor Daizong as a
mingwang
(Skr.
vidy
a
r
a
ja
),
it is unlikely that he meant that Daizong was a
vidy
a
r
a
ja
in the same
sense that Acala (Budong) is, and he would not bother to invoke

Daizong in ritual as he did invoke Acala. Rather, in his capacity as “pro-

tector of the Law,” Daizong functions
like
a
vidy
a
r
a
ja
. Thus, in a letter
written by Amoghavajra to Daizong thanking him for a gift of incense,

we read,
Already you have showered me with gifts. When can I ever repay you?
It is proper that I reverently bathe the statues at the appointed times
and that I per for m the
homa
rites at the half moon in order that the
thir ty-seven wor thies [of the Vajradh
a
tu mandala] may protect the state
of the brilliant king and that the sixteen protectors might augment the
awesome spirit of the sage thearch, so that you may live as long as the

souther n mountain, eter nally, without limit. [827c24 – 828a24]
As is evident in his cor respondence with Daizong, Amoghavajra’s
use of the ter m “
mingwang
” expanded previous Chinese use of the
phrase “brilliant king” found in the Confucian classics like the
Great
216 Charles D. Or zech

Lear ning,
for now a “brilliant king” ﬁnds his proper role in protecting
the Dhar ma. Conversely, the equation
mingwang
=
vidy
a
r
a
ja
changes
the semantic scope of
mingwang
in its Buddhist setting by adding to it
connotations involving the Chinese ideolog y of the sage-king. In their
cor respondence, Amoghavajra and Daizong deployed the ter m “
ming-
wang
” dynamically to suit par ticular contexts (Or zech 1998, 191–198).
There is no need to assume that either man “conver ted.” Indeed, it is

impor tant to note that such a dynamic translation makes it possible —

even probable and strategically desirable —for two par ticipants to

understand the equivalence dif ferently, deliberately constr uing the

ter m to suit the immediate context (Sangren 1987, 185; Or zech 1998,

95, 99 –107).
10
When key ter ms of a religious ideolog y are brought into play, the
interaction often goes beyond the limited mapping of one ter m to an-

other. Each ter m car ries with it a broad range of metaphorical “en-

tailments” and coordinate ter ms that can also be mapped. In other

words, sophisticated translators may deliberately bring entire alien

metaphorical complexes into play and through careful choice en-

rich both worlds. Stewar t calls this “metaphoric equivalence.” One

extended and elaborate example of this strateg y involves the ﬁfth-

centur y
Renwang jing,
which I have explored elsewhere (Or zech 1989;
1998). In that scripture the translation of the Buddhist “kings of for-

bearance” (
r
enwang
a
) by the Confucian “humane kings” (
r
enwang
b
) be-
comes the star ting point for a comprehensive engagement of Confu-

cian and Buddhist religious worlds and the emer gence of a new

r
eligious identity: Chinese Buddhist (1989, 17–24; 1998, 99 –107).
Geor ge Lakof f and Mark Johnson’s work on metaphor throws con-
siderable light on such broader mapping. During the last quar ter of

a centur y, Johnson, Lakof f, and their students have car ried out a sys-

tematic exploration of how metaphoric mappings between a source

domain and a tar get domain are fundamental to our ability to think

complex thoughts (1980; 1999).
11
According to Johnson and Lakof f,
metaphor involves more than mere linguistic equivalence. Rather,

metaphor is the basis of thought itself. It begins in early childhood as

sensor y-motor development is mapped onto judgments to produce a

fund of lar gely unconscious “primar y” metaphors. Examples include

more is up, similarity is closeness, states are locations
, and
so on (Lakof f and Johnson 1999, 48 –56).
12
Later, this primar y act of
translation from one domain to another is extended in new ways. For

instance, in refer ring to the common contemporar y metaphor
love
is a journey
, Lakof f explains,
Fang Yankou
and
Pudu
217

The metaphor involves understanding one domain of experience, love,
in ter ms of another domain of experience, jour neys. More technically,
the metaphor can be understood as a mapping (in the mathematical

sense) from a source domain (in this case, jour neys) to a tar get domain
(in this case, love). The mapping is tightly str uctured. There are onto-
logical cor respondences, according to which entities in the domain of
love (e.g. the lovers, their common goals, their difﬁculties, the love re-
lationship) cor respond systematically to entities in the domain of a
jour ney (the travelers, the vehicle, destinations, etc.). (Lakof f 1993, 207)
Metaphor is, in ef fect, a for m of translation, and it gives us a way to
ar ticulate what takes place in cultural encounter. In such encounters
we can often see an entire source and tar get complex from one cul-

ture being mapped onto a source and tar get complex in another cul-

ture. For instance, in Buddhism, acts are “seeds,” and the consequences

of acts are refer red to as “fr uit” (
morality as agriculture
).  A n
agricultural metaphor has been mapped onto a moral domain. Thus,

through kar ma and reincar nation, one “reaps” reward in heaven or

suf fering in hell. Buddhism’s most far-reaching contribution to Chi-

nese religion may have been its notion of individual kar mic retribu-

tion that in some arenas displaced indigenous corporate theories of

r
etribution (such as
chengfu
).
But the translation of this South Asian
metaphoric complex was itself appropriated and transfor med by Chi-

nese metaphors involving morality and bureaucracy. Just as this world

is gover ned bureaucratically, so too are heaven and hell (
cosmos as
bureaucracy
).
Thus there are “magistrates” ar rayed in various “cour ts”
with “secretaries” who must handle the paper work. Just as in a
yamen,
protocol must be followed and justice must be meted out as punish-
ment. Indeed, the central role of documents in Daoism and the ver y

notion of “registers” (
lu
) attests to the per vasive str ucturing power of
this metaphor.
13
In this “metaphoric equivalence” we ﬁnd more than
mere bor rowing, the translation of one ter m by another, or even the
enrichment of one vocabular y by another. We have, instead, two com-

plex metaphoric worlds rendering, reﬂecting, and expanding one an-

other in an intersemiotic pas de deux. An entire metaphoric world (and

its subcomplexes and entailments) has been mapped onto another

metaphoric world, which is in tur n transfor med by this new mapping.
14
The
Fang Yankou
and the
Pudu
Ever since ethnographers and historians of religion began to describe

the ritual life of the Chinese, the complex of “ghost rituals” has been
218 Charles D. Or zech

a primar y exhibit for the syncretic character of Chinese religion. In-
deed, if we examine per for mances by Buddhists and Daoists during

the ghost festival, we ﬁnd striking similarities. A ﬁve-pointed crown is

wor n by the Daoist during the
pudu,
and a similarly patter ned ﬁve-
pointed crown is wor n by the Buddhists in per for ming the
fang yankou
.
Both Daoists and Buddhists use “vajra-handled” bells, both employ

“mudras” (
yin
),
and both chant “mantras” (
zhenyan; shenzhou
).
Schol-
ars of Daoism such as Duane Pang and Michael Saso point out the

“Buddhist-inspired” elements of the ritual while they note that the

“essence” of the per for mance is Daoist (Pang 1977, 98 –99). John

Lager wey also repeatedly notes the Buddhist inﬂuence on the hell-

busting rituals deriving from the Lingbao corpus. Yet little has been

done to ar ticulate just what role the Buddhist material plays in the

Daoist ritual. One is left with the distinct impression that we are wit-

nessing some sor t of ad hoc r use, a religious fraud perpetrated solely

in the interest of market share. As Lager wey obser ved,
T
aoists who do such ser vices have to compete with Buddhists for
clients, for Buddhists traditionally have done and still do both Rituals
of Merit and of Universal Salvation. Indeed, impor tant elements in
these Taoist rituals are clearly of Buddhist origin, the paintings of the

ten hells which line the side walls of the altar during these rituals, for

example, and the dates after death in which the Ritual of Merit should

be done. There is considerable overlap between Buddhist and Taoist
Rituals of Merit, more even, at least in Taiwan, than De Groot’s essay
on “Buddhist Masses for the Dead at Amoy” (1884) would suggest. The

only real dif ference, a Taoist priest once told me, is that the Buddhists
bring the soul to a paradise in the west, the Taoists to one in the east!
And even this distinction would seem to be contradicted by the soul-
banner inscription used by Master Ch’en which places paradise in the
west. (Lager wey 1987, 172)
But as the anthropologist A. M. Hocar t once cautioned, we would do
well to proceed with caution when evaluating statements by native in-

for mants (1973, 46). Perhaps something more than ad hoc attempts

to gar ner market share is going on here; perhaps the bor rowing

r
eﬂects a sophisticated encounter between two ritual systems, a trans-
lation that is dynamic, metaphoric, and intersemiotic. Maybe we are

missing something impor tant concer ning the constr uction of Daoist

r
eligious identity.
So let us look more closely at these apparently “identical” rituals.
For the purposes of this chapter, I will limit my examination of
pudu
ritual to the manual contained in fascicles 60 – 62 of the
Lingbao lingjiao
Fang Yankou
and
Pudu
219

jidu jinshu
titled
Xuandu daxian yushan jinggong yi
(HY 466), the de-
scription by Duane Pang of a
pudu
in Honolulu based on a related
manual, my own obser vations of
pudu
at the conclusion of a
jiao
in
Lam-tsuen Valley in the New Ter ritories of Hong Kong in 1981 and
one per for med during the “ghost festival” the same year, and the brief

manual
Lingbao dalian neizhi xingchi jiyao
(HY 407), translated by Ju-
dith Boltz (1983). I will also be drawing on my own previous work on

the
fang yankou
(par ticularly of T. 1320
Y
uqie jiyao yankou shishi yi
[Or zech 1989; 1994]). I will proceed by noting some general similar-

ities and then lay out the ritual programs in some detail.
Generally speaking, the similarities between the Daoist
pudu
and
the Buddhist
fang yankou
may be outlined as follows:
1. Material details, that is, Taoist use of “vajras,” ﬁve pointed
“crown,” etc.
15
2. Similarities involving ter minolog y and ideas (vajra, kar ma, sweet
dew, ghosts).
3. The use of “Brahm
a
-language.”
4. The use of “mantras” and “mudras.”
5. Complex metaphorical similarities in overall ritual str ucture
or conception.
These do not exhaust the similarities, but they will do for a star t. The
Daoist
Xuandu daxian yushan jinggong yi,
like other Lingbao texts, shows
considerable inﬂuence from Buddhism both in ter minolog y and in its

overall program. As I noted above, Erik Zürcher and Stephen Boken-

kamp have examined bor rowings of Buddhist vocabular y in the Ling-

bao corpus and the complex of ideas sur rounding Brahm
a
-language.
Each of these would take considerable time to unpack, so instead I

will focus here on the key ter ms on which the broader metaphoric map-

ping depends.
16
Any careful obser ver of these per for mances will note that the over-
all program of the
pudu
and the
fang yankou
are similar. Both follow
the same patter n of invocation/visualization of the ritual world,

transfor mation of the adept into a savior, hell-busting, feeding of the

beings, preaching of merit, and dismissal. Both employ mantra and

mudra, or “secret gesture” (
shoujue
).
Both rituals adapt individual
soteriological programs to communal salvation. In both, salvation takes

the for m of an initiation. Both are based in macrocosm–microcosm

homologies. Both can be linked to alchemical and sexual imager y.

Both rituals exhibit the same sor t of sequencing, concluding abbrevi-
220 Charles D. Or zech

ation, and so on of the sor t noted by Staal (1980) and Payne (1985;
1991). And the list could be lengthened.
Here we need to think about “metaphoric equivalence,” for at this
level of generality Buddhist and Daoist rituals have no distinguishing

characteristics and might be viewed as interchangeable if not wholly

identical. However, if we look closely at the metaphors central to each

ritual, a more nuanced picture emer ges. The Buddhist ritual involves

the feeding and salvation of hungr y ghosts (
egui
),
those
preta
who in
Buddhist lore are condemned to wander about star ving and whose
mouths bur n (and thus the ter m “
fang yankou
,” release of the “ﬂam-
ing mouths”). The Daoist ritual refers instead to wandering souls as
guhun
or orphaned
hun
souls. The dif ferent ter ms used to refer to the
“ghosts” is the key to understanding that the
pudu
is a sophisticated
T
aoist “translation” of the
fang yankou
.
The Buddhist
Fang Yankou
The Buddhist
fang yankou
involves a ritual peregrination to assemble
beings from all of the six
gati
. Its dramatic core involves an assault on
hell followed by a banquet for hungr y ghosts (
egui
, Skr.
preta
).
The rite
unfolds with the use of mantra to assemble the ghosts, to open the
hells and the ghosts’ constricted throats, to eliminate their kar mic ob-

str uctions, and to multiply the of ferings of “sweet dew” (
ganlu
, Skr.
am-
r
ta
) to slake their thirst. The ﬁve Tath
a
gatas are then invoked, and the
assembled beings are given consecration (
guanding
, Skr.
abhi
3
eka
) and
then escor ted of f to rebir th in the Pure Land. The ritual is str uctured
according to well-established templates stemming from the
Sar-
vatath
a
gatatattvasa
m
graha
(T. 865, 866, 882, etc.) and its related cycle
of texts. The earliest versions of the ritual are found in T. 1313 –1315

and 1319 and date from the eighth and ninth centuries. A later, more

elaborate manual (T. 1320), which probably dates from the Yüan dy-

nasty, incorporates the key mantras of the earlier Tang manuals and

ﬁlls out the ritual in the fashion of the Buddhist tantras, complete with

accompanying mudra and instr uctions for visualization. This manual

is the basis for all later known manuals.
17
This salviﬁc “banquet” exhibits a highly regular str ucture based on
the metaphor—harkening back to the Vedas —of inviting a guest for

dinner. “At the most fundamental and over t level, both Vedic and

T
antric rituals are banquets in honor of the gods” (Wheelock 1989,
111).
18
In Vedic ritual, the gods are ﬁrst invited to the banquet with
Fang Yankou
and
Pudu
221

an appropriate mantra; they are provided seats, water to wash with,
ﬂowers, and so on. They are praised and then fed, often with
soma,
an
ambrosia (
am
r
ta
) identiﬁed with the “seed” of the sacriﬁcer and the
intoxicating drink of the gods that confer red both immor tality and

fer tility. The of ferings are transmitted to the “guests” by pouring them

into the sacriﬁcial ﬁre. In tur n, the Vedic worshiper could expect a va-

riety of boons: health, wealth, fer tility and sons, and immor tality. The

entire per for mance hinged on the proper execution of the hymns and

mantras
.
This “banquet” metaphor and its entailments are present to
this day in
p
u
j
a
(“of fering”), which characterizes popular Hindu wor-
ship, and in the various rites of the tantras. Indeed, if we examine the

sixteen traditional
upac
a
ra
s, or “attendances,” of household and tem-
ple
p
u
j
a
,
we ﬁnd remarkable cor respondence with
homa
and other es-
oteric rites (Falk 1987, 12:83a– 85a). Not surprisingly, one mainstream

tradition in Japanese Shingon (Ch
u
inr y
u
of Koyasan) divides most rit-
uals into ﬁve modules based on the guest metaphor: puriﬁcation, con-

str uction, encounter, identiﬁcation, and dissociation (Payne 1985,

219 –222).
19
T
antric ritual continues this banquet metaphor and maps several
fur ther metaphoric complexes onto it. As exterior ritual, the process

of invoking and feeding the gods of the mandala and the use of the

sacriﬁcial
homa
ﬁre, all conducted with the proper mantra, remain in
place. Already in Vedic practice we see the metaphoric complex of the

soma/
seed of the sacriﬁcer that has been mapped onto the banquet
(
soma is amr
.
ta, is seed
).
In yogic and tantric practice a fur ther
metaphoric layer involving the inter nalizing of the Vedic ﬁre has been

added. Thus, the sacriﬁcial ﬁre is identiﬁed with yogic “heat,” or
tapas,
and in this interior “yogic” banquet the altar, mantras, of ferings, and

so on are mapped onto the body of the adept (
body as altar, the
ﬁre as tapas
).
 While the Vedic banquet with the gods transfor med
the sacriﬁcer into an immor tal (“We have dr unk
soma;
we have become
immor tal”) tantric ritual transfor ms the adept into a divinity, a bod-

hisattva, or a Buddha.
20
In shor t, tantric ritual is a palimpsest of many
metaphoric analogues. It is a rich complex of source domains and tar-

gets, and the evocation of one metaphoric layer can activate others.
Buddhism, and par ticularly the Buddhist tantras, extend these
metaphors yet fur ther. In typical practice the adept confesses trans-

gressions (a process often accompanied by
homa
),
arouses the “seed
of enlightenment” (
bodhicitta
) through exter nal and inter nal of ferings,
is consecrated (
guanding,
Skr.
abhi
3
eka
),
and, using the ver y seed syl-
lables (
b
i
ja, zhongzi
) of the divinities previously invoked and worshiped,
222 Charles D. Or zech

generates himself as a Buddha or bodhisattva. The tradition makes the
analog y between the interior banquet and the exterior banquet quite

explicit, with the exter nal consumption of fuel and of ferings for the

beneﬁt of a community paralleled by an inter nal incineration of the

adept’s kar mic obstr uctions or deﬁlements. Extending the metaphor,

it is said that the “exterior
homa
” is the ﬁre altar, the sapwood, and so
on, while in the “adamantine inner
homa
total enlightenment is the
ﬂame and my own mouth is the hear th” (T. 867; 18.266a).
Most tantric Buddhist rituals focus not only on the identiﬁcation
of the worshiper with a Buddha or bodhisattva, but also on the
ef fect
of such identiﬁcation in the world. Thus most rituals are apotropaic,

and the adept, acting as the divinity, secures various sor ts of bless-

ings for a community.
21
The
fang yankou
deploys this metaphoric
richness in the execution of a sequence in which the adept ﬁrst

arouses “the vast and great mind” (the mind of enlightenment, or

bodhicitta
),
visualizes and invites the Buddhas and other divinities of
the mandala/altar, repents transgressions, and then begins the ban-

quet with visualized of ferings of “sweet dew” (
bodhicitta, ganlu
).
Next
the adept generates him- or herself as the bodhisattva Avalokite
4
vara
(Guanyin) through the yogic transfor mation of the sonic and photic

“seed-syllables” (
b
i
ja, zhongzi
).
W
ith eyes closed, the adept visualizes a
clear and pure lunar disk in the hear t.
Shining brightly on the disk is a
Hr
ih
b
i
ja
which transfor ms into an eight-
petaled lotus. On this lotus throne is Guanzizai [Avalokite
4
vara]. . . .
The Bodhisattva thinks thus: “each being has this ﬂower of enlighten-
ment. The pure Dhar madh
a
tu is without stain. . . .” One then visual-
izes this eight-petaled lotus gradually expanding to ﬁll up limitless
space and thinks, “On behalf of the ocean-like assembly of Tath
a
gathas
illuminated by this ﬂower of enlightenment I vow to complete the great

of fering. If my mind is steadfast in this concentration then limitless
creatures will arouse compassion, and all those who are illuminated

by this enlightenment blossom’s light will be completely liberated from
all suf fering and have the same marks as Guanyin bodhisattva [Aval-
okite
4
vara].” (T. 1320; 21.476b)
The lotus vision now shrinks into the adept’s own body. The adept
makes the Guanzizai mudra “empowering” (
adhi
3t
h
a
na, jiazhi
) the four
places: the hear t, shoulders, throat, and top of the head. At each place

the mudra touches there appears a
Hr
ih
. Once the adept recites the
mantra
om vajra dha r ma hr i¯h
.
, the body of the adept becomes that
of Guanzizai (T. 1320; 21.476b–c).
Having assumed the guise of Guanyin and having donned the crown
Fang Yankou
and
Pudu
223

of the ﬁve
T
ath
a
gatas
indicative of his or her consecration (
abh
3
eka,
guanding
),
the adept recites the vow of Dizang (K
3
itigarbha) to save
all beings in the hells and thereupon makes the round of the six paths
(
gati
),
summoning beings to the banquet. On reaching the gates of
hell the adept looses an attack employing mudra and mantra. Making

the Vajra-ﬁst, the adept advances, visualizing the opening of hell while

chanting the hell-smashing spell (
po diyu yinzhou
).
A ﬁer y light streams
from the mudra, and from his mouth (pronouncing the mantra) there

comes a ﬁer y brilliance. The adept visualizes a red
hr
ih
syllable shin-
ing on the lunar disk in his hear t. The light of his mouth, that from

the mudra, and that of the syllable in his hear t together illuminate

the
Av
i
ci
hell. The chanting of the mantra thus three times unlatches
the locks on the gates of hell and opens the doors, and all of the suf-

fering beings come out. Recalling the vow of Dizang not to attain

Buddha-hood until all the hells are emptied, the adept moves on to

the next realm of rebir th (that of the hungr y ghosts) to summon them

to the Dhar ma assembly. Making the mudra of “opening the throats”

and chanting the mantra of the Tath
a
gata of Expansive Spirit, the
adept opens his hand like an opening Lotus blossom, and above the

white lunar disk one visualizes the syllable
A
pouring for th sweet dew,
which condensing into a vapor, falls like a gentle rain on the bodies

of the ghosts and spirits, extinguishing their ﬂames and purifying

and cooling them (summarizing T. 1320; 21.476c– 478a). Now sated,

the assembled beings are led in worship of the Three Jewels, arouse the

“essence of enlightenment” (
fa puti xin
),
and receive the “seal of the
discipline” and consecration, and they too make of ferings (T. 1320;

21.478b– 480b).
22
Thus the inter twining of inner and outer banquets based on
metaphors of inner and outer ﬁres and the oblations put into the ﬁres
are key to understanding the
fang yankou
ritual. First, in basic Bud-
dhist ter ms, “moving the mind to make of ferings” to others results
in the arousal of
bodhicitta
(the “seed” of enlightenment) in oneself
(
offering is seed, is enlightenment
).
This nourishing “seed”
quenches the ﬁre of the passions and releases one from the “hell” of

samsara (
passions are ﬁre; enlightenment is consecration
).
In Esoteric ritual these of ferings are the genesis of one’s own en-

lightenment. In the
fang yankou
(and in other apotropaic applications
of Esoteric ritual) the same metaphoric complex is then extended to

all beings. The sound and light of the
b
i
ja
/seed loose the gates of hell
and unbind all fetters (kar mic deﬁlements) so that the “ﬂaming
224 Charles D. Or zech

mouths” (
yankou,
mouths are hearths
) of the liberated ghosts can
be watered with the sweet dew (ganlu,
am
r
ta
,
sweet dew is bodhi-
citta, is consecration
) of the teaching! Thus the
fang yankou
is a
symbolic abrogation of kar ma and the banquet a “sweet rain” of
Dhar ma. Both are based on the Buddhist metaphoric complex of in-

ter nal yogic practice and exter nal
homa,
or ﬁre sacriﬁce. The emblems
of this metaphoric complex are the ter ms “
yankou
” and “
egui
”—the
ﬂaming mouth of the hungr y ghost that must be fed with the sweet

dew of the teaching.
The Daoist
Pudu
Tu
r
ning now to the Daoist
pudu,
we at ﬁrst see the obvious similarities,
then some striking dif ferences. As in the
fang yankou,
the adept sum-
mons and assembles the “Heavenly Wor thies of the Ten Directions” and

along with his assistants he intones the “Great Talisman for Mobilizing

the Brahm
a
-
qi
” (
daxing fanqi fu,
HY 466; 60.5ab). Then through a med-
itative program that mer ges the Three Pure Ones into the One, the

adept is transfor med into a “savior.” He directly invokes the Three Pure

Heavenly Wor thies and an additional four Heavenly Wor thies (the

Heavenly Wor thy of the center, completing the eight, is not mentioned

in the manual, 5b–12a), and he dons the ﬁve-pointed
wulao
crown and
assumes the identity of Taiyi jiuku Tianzun, the Heavenly Wor thy Who

Saves the Suf fering. His descent to the world is followed by deploy-

ment of the hell-busting talisman (
poyu fu
) and the removal of fetters
(14a–16b). This is followed by a circumambulation of the cosmos, dur-

ing which a variety of
guhun,
or orphaned
hun
souls, are rounded up
and shepherded to the feast, led now by Bamen kaidu Tianzun, the

Heavenly Wor thy Who Opens the Way to Salvation Through the Eight

Gates (17b–23a).
23
These cosmic peregrinations parallel the visit to the
six paths in the Buddhist ritual and even include the “six paths” as one

of the ten locales on the itinerar y. Clearly, the basic str ucture of the rit-

ual mir rors that of the
fang yankou!
Nonetheless, the metaphoric complexes and entailments of this
banquet for
guhun
are over whelmingly Daoist. While mantra-like
spells (
zhou
) are chanted, it is not the oral mantra but the written word
that takes center stage as each event in the ritual drama involves the

deployment of a
fu
—a written talisman. While Buddhist ritual manu-
als can be (and often are) pared down to a series of mantras, the scaf-

folding of the
Xuandu daxian yushan jinggong yi
consists of a string of
Fang Yankou
and
Pudu
225

fu
whose core metaphors are unmistakably Daoist. Take, for example,
the “Enunciation of the Hell-smashing
Fu
” (
xuan poyu fu
):
In boundless Fengdu
with range on range of Vajra mountains

the illimitable brilliance of the Numinous Treasure

illuminates and cauterizes the pool of trouble
and lights up the bodies of the depar ted.
W
ith the rites of audience at the Altar of the Occult Origin
(
xuanyuan tan
)
the advancing spirits ascend the blue sky
as the acolyte guides them with the Numinous Banner. (16ab)
And again, in the “Enunciation of the
Fu
Which Bursts Open” (
kaipi fu
):
The light of the Numinous Treasure of Jade Clarity shines into the
three roads.
In ever y detail it lays open the kar mic road.

Penetrating ever ywhere,

it reaches to the ver y throne of the East Flower.
Suddenly without leaving a trace,

the spirits transcend heaven
and jour ney to the banquet with the three primordial ofﬁcers.
(
you yan san guan,
16b)
Beyond the obvious bor rowing of the outline of the Buddhist
fang
yankou
there are “Buddhist” details here (vajra mountains, kar mic
r
oad), but “Fengdu,” the “brilliance of the Numinous Treasure,” the
“audience at the Altar of the Occult Origin,” the “three primordial
ofﬁcers,” and the notion of the
fu,
or written talisman, themselves aler t
us to a decidedly Daoist root metaphor,
the body is a state
. The
“entailments” of this metaphor are those of the Chinese bureaucracy.

The countr y is administered by “ofﬁcials” whose salviﬁc knowledge is

deployed in the creation and use of written documents. This “ban-

quet,” for orphaned souls, is an ofﬁcial banquet, a banquet that takes

its for m from ofﬁcial audiences (
the banquet is an audience
).
Once the Daoist takes on the identity of Taiyi jiuku tianzun, he be-

comes an ofﬁcer (
the priest is an official
),
at each step using
fu
to “summon” the
guhun,
to open their throats, to feed, clothe, and
transfor m them. While we might ar gue that Buddhist Esoteric tradi-

tion homologizes the human body to the ﬁre altar, the cosmos, and

the divine body, the notion that the body is a state with its own ter rain

and its own gods and ofﬁcials is cer tainly
not
present.
The
fang yankou
lavishes considerable attention on the opening of
226 Charles D. Or zech

hell and the eradication of kar ma, and relatively little space to the
clothing and feeding of the spirits. Conversely, the
Xuandu daxian
yushan jinggong yi
hell-busting sequence is brief, while the enumera-
tion of the many types of
guhun
souls, their feeding and clothing, goes
on for more than eighteen double pages (61.4a–22b). In a series of

rites parallel to but more extensive than the Buddhist program, the

Heavenly Wor thy Who Nourishes (beings) uses a spell to produce

“sweet dew” (
ganlu,
again) that calls the
hun
souls, opens their
throats (another Buddhist detail), and feeds, unbinds, clothes, and

cleans them. Here the metaphors and their entailments point to a

Daoist symbolic universe of communal responsibility, miraculous

fountains, and sympathetic relationships between nature and physi-

olog y, once again based in the body of the Daoist. Thus, for exam-

ple, in “Enunciating the
Fu
for Opening the Throats” (
xuan kai yan-
hou fu
) we read:
Va
st and obscure, Heaven’s Numinous Fountain
moistens the withered and nourishes the beings.
It ﬂows in accord with nature,
and thus the saliva of the gods (
shenjin sheng ye
) ﬂows for th.
The clear [water] of the Great Occult
enlivens the
hun
and shrivels the
po
.
The Numinous [Treasure] provides continuous relief

and the Clear Numinous protects [them] from
the ﬁerce ﬂames and dense smoke [of Fengdu].

The ﬂower pool is boundless,
no one can fathom its source.

The withered infants blossom for th

and the three
qi
ﬂy to heaven. (61.11ab)
Both the assault and the banquet are cast in a Daoist key, based on
an occult interior world that resonates to the exter nal world and is
guided by divine ofﬁcials. Moreover, the constricted throats in the ti-

tle of the
fu
are not present in the text of the
fu,
which speaks instead
in ter ms of nourishing “withered” infants (
orphaned souls are in-
fants
).
The only throat found here involves that of the gods and of
the Daoist whose saliva is deployed to salviﬁc ef fect. The presence and

primacy of this interior bodily locale with its extensive pantheon is most

directly indicated in the
Xuandu daxian yushan jinggong yi
by the
“Enunciation of the
Fu
of the Food of the Teaching of the Secret
Brahm
a
Which Opens the Bowels” (
Xuan bifan kai zangfu fashi fu zhuan
61, 29). Judith Boltz has translated a related manual that gives us some

of the distinctive ﬂavor of this metaphor and its entailments:
Fang Yankou
and
Pudu
227

Visualize next the myriad savants and thousand per fected as they come
drifting through space and enter the pearl en masse . . . after the per-
fected have assembled the [supreme Monarch] of primordial com-

mencement releases the propitious rays of the white hairs between his
eyebrows, casting them down to illuminate all the pur gatories of the
Nine Abysses of Fengdu, that is, they shine down from Nir vana [
niwan,
the nine palace-grottos in the cranium] to beneath the navel. W ith each

ray . . . the Celestial Wor thies who Relieve Suf fering
...en
ter into all
the pur gatories . . . all the incriminated
hun
souls are pardoned and for-
given and they exit for thwith from the pur gatories . . . join in the

chanting and descend, pacing the phosphoresent clouds. They [the sav-
ior wor thies] sprinkle all the
hun
souls with sweet dew and ritual rains,
by which they are able to cool and clarify their minds and bodies and

open wide their throats. (Boltz 1983, 500 –503)
As the
Xuandu daxian yushan jinggong yi
continues, it is evident that
the cleansing and nourishing of the
guhun
is based not on the meta-
phoric complex of Vedic and yogic
homa
ﬁre found in the
fang yankou
(the presence of the ostensibly “Buddhist” ter m
niwan
notwithstand-
ing) but on the Daoist metaphor of the body as a state. This bureau-
cratic metaphor itself had long before been mapped with Daoist

metaphors of inter nal alchemy (
ne idan:
the body as cosmos; heaven
as cranium, hell as bowels
, etc.). The “sweet dew” of this banquet
indicates not the Vedic/yogic
am
r
ta
/
bodhicitta
but rather the divine
saliva or pearl of “jade yang” and the elixir of the immor tals of Dao-

ism that is synthesized in the ﬁer y cr ucible of the Daoist master’s body

(
lianhua fa,
the body as crucible
; 61.31b–32a). The orphaned
hun
souls are “criminals” who must “under go the procedure of reﬁnement”

(
shou lian fa;
61.8b) or under go “reﬁning and transfor mation” (
lian-
hua,
purification is rectification
; 61.20a), and so on. The
pudu
“banquet” is based on the bureaucratic, physiological, and alchemical

metaphors of Daoism and its salviﬁc program, and its “sweet dew” elic-

its the entailments of those metaphors.
It should be quite clear at this point that “syncretism” is totally in-
adequate as a framework for understanding what is going on in the

pudu
. We do not have here an ad hoc throwing together of elements
properly a par t of two separate systems. Rather, in the
fang yankou
we
see Buddhists utilizing ritual programs and metaphoric complexes (a

language of mantra,
dh
a
ra
ni
,
and
b
i
ja
—the potent sonic seeds of re-
ality in the
Y
ogatantra
s) of South Asian origin with many layers of
“source” and “tar get” domains to address a par ticularly Chinese need

(the annual mopping-up of the cosmos). The Daoist
pudu
rituals ap-
228 Charles D. Or zech

propriate the overall idea and plan of the Buddhist program and even
many of its details. But this is a “translation” in which the many-layered

South Asian metaphoric complex is mapped as a whole onto a simi-

larly many-layered East Asian metaphoric complex involving orphaned

hun
souls and the bureaucratically orchestrated process of their sal-
vation through alchemical transfor mation in the Daoist’s body. The

pudu
is properly a case of “metaphoric equivalence.”
Given the fact that both the Buddhists and the Daoists held com-
munal banquets on behalf of depar ted souls long before the advent

of Esoteric Buddhism, and given the fact that both religions deployed

banquet metaphors that entail “sweet dew” (albeit of ver y dif ferent

metaphoric provenance), it is no wonder that obser vers consider the

pudu
and the
fang yankou
“indistinguishable.” But there is a coherent
dif ference. The
pudu
does not copy the
fang yankou
. It translates its
ritual program—a descent to hell and a salviﬁc shepherding and nour-

ishing of the beings of the universe —in a coherent Daoist per for m-

ance based on distinctively Daoist metaphors.
There are, however, a few loose ends, and this takes us back to the
apparent identity between the
fang yankou
and the
pudu
propounded
by some native and scholarly obser vers. Have the two rituals interacted

for so long that they are interchangeable? Many laypeople who hire

the priests and monks care little about the matter. But they cer tainly

are not interchangeable for the Buddhists and Daoists who per for m

the rituals! Michel Strickmann has ar gued that the idea of a banquet

itself is of Buddhist origin. Yet Chinese culture seems to be or ganized

around food and banqueting, so conver gence on this matter is not sur-

prising. Perhaps Buddhist ritual inspired the notion of using the sym-

bolism and techniques of alchemy in a communal setting, but this is

probably tr ue of the Lingbao movement as a whole.
One dimension of Daoist
pudu
that may be “intersemiotic” is the
r
elationship between the Daoist’s own salviﬁc intitiation and his or her
ability to “save” or initiate others, for the alchemical sublimation of

the adept is played out as a sublimation/initiation of the suf fering souls

(Lager wey 1987, 210). As already noted, a similar str ucture occurs in

the
fang yankou,
and consecration/initiation of the
egui
is found in the
T
ang manuals. The association was played out at lar ge Buddhist ordi-
nation centers that held
fang yankou
at times of mass ordinations
(Strickmann 1996, 373 –378). The longstanding association between

wandering monks and wandering
preta
—both of whom must be fed—
is of decidedly Buddhist provenance.
There are a number of areas in which Daoist rituals may have
Fang Yankou
and
Pudu
229

inﬂuenced the Buddhist
fang yankou
and vice versa. The Buddhist
manual refers to the beings according to their appropriate
gati
and
uses the ter m “
egui.
” The addition of the “Writ on the Ten Types of
Lonely
Hun
” (
Shilei guhun wen,
T.
1320; 21.483b– 484a) would appear
to address decidedly Daoist expectations.
24
Also peculiar is the mantra
for ghosts who are obstr ucted from the distribution of food (
zhangshi
gui,
480a). Given the elaborate evocation and destr uction of kar ma
that follows the hell-busting sequence, this seems superﬂuous. Or
maybe here we have an echo of the “obstr ucted” souls (
zhihun
) of the
Daoist tradition? Perhaps more striking is the ﬁnal bonﬁre in which

Dizang Wang, along with of ferings of hell money, is consumed. Strick-

mann conjectured that this represented not a
homa
but a Daoist-styled
incineration of documents (Strickmann 1996, 407). He is, I think, cor-

r
ect. What he seems to have overlooked is that the
homa
ﬁre is present
in the Buddhist rite in the “ﬂaming mouth(s)” (
yankou
) that must be
fed “sweet dew.”
Notes
1. For an over view, see Or zech 1994, 51–72. Bemoaning the lack of stud-
ies, Michel Strickmann has recently considered this material (1996, 403 –
411). Actually, Yoshioka (1959, 369 – 432) has a substantial treatment of the

complex.
2. Syncretism remains a widely used categor y in religious studies and an-
thropolog y. For a look at the politics of its use in anthropolog y, see Stewar t

and Shaw (1994). See also T. K. Stewar t and C. W. Er nst (for thcoming).
3. Huiyuan inveighed against the mixing of Chinese and Buddhists in cer-
tain roles as “mutual inter ference of dif ferent species.” See Or zech 1998, 108.
4. I will be using “translation” in three senses. First, as actual translation
from one language to another. Second, as the representation of the sounds

of one language in another (more precisely, transliteration). Finally, as the

process of transfer ring ideas, complexes of ideas, and ritual str uctures between

one set of texts and per for mances and another, whether in the same language

or not.
5. On
geyi,
see Ch’en 1964, 68 – 69; Zürcher 1972, 1:184; T’ang 1951,
276 –286; Fung 1953, 2:241–242.
6. The task of interpretation in the context of “siniﬁcation” is perceptively
treated in Gimello 1978, 52– 89; Gregor y 1991, 93 –114.
7. Zürcher (1980) has distinguished between “strong” and “weak” for ms
of bor rowing, and between for mal and complex for ms of bor rowing of Bud-

dhist materials in early Daoist texts (up to the sixth centur y).
8. I am indebted to two ﬁne essays by Stewar t, which introduced me to re-
cent translation theor y (1999; 2001).
9. For a critique of Nida, see Gentzler 1993, 43 –73.
230 Charles D. Or zech

10. Sangren has ar gued that such dif ferential interpretation is at the hear t
of the concept
ling
(numinous, efﬁcacious), and the skillful manipulation of
social interaction through dif ferential interpretation constitutes
ling
.
11. I would like to thank Glen Hayes, whose paper “ The Necklace of Im-
mor tality” (1996) introduced me to the work of Lakof f and Johnson.
12. Here I follow the convention in metaphor studies of placing metaphors
in small caps.
13. Erik Zürcher advances an ar gument somewhat similar to this. Thus in
his sur vey of Buddhist elements in early Daoist scriptures, he distinguishes
“weak” bor rowings from “strong” bor rowings, with the for mer lar gely emp-

tied of their Buddhist meanings (
kong,
or “emptiness,” for example). He ar-
gues for three “complexes” that had profound impact in Daoism: kar ma and

r
etribution, morality (including the notion of precepts and vows), and Bud-
dhist cosmolog y (1980, 119 –122). Stephen R. Bokenkamp, in an analysis of

the Buddhist inﬂuence on the Lingbao corpus, has explored the impact of the

South Asian metaphor of creative language (“Brahm
a
-language”) on the de-
velopment of Daoist
dh
a
ra
ni
and Brahm
a
-script, as well as the impact of the
metaphor of the “pure-land” on the scriptures of Ge Chaofu. He has done

similar work on the impact of the bodhisattva stages (1983, 462– 464, 469 – 476;

1990).
14. Stewar t draws on Roman Jakobsen, who has given the label “inter-
semiotic” to translation from one medium, say speech, to another medium,

such as signs ( Jakobsen 1971, 261). In other words, an entire signiﬁcation

complex can be “mapped” onto another such complex.
15. We should note that the style of Daoist
vajra
s is unique.
16. For the record, the
Xuandu daxian yushan jingkong yi
contains a rather
humdr um list of “Buddhist” ter ms:
T
ianzun
(Heavenly Wor thy),
ganlu
(
am
r
ta,
sweet dew),
wu zhuoshi
(ﬁve turbulent epochs),
sanjie
(
triloka,
triple world),
san-
bao
(
triratna,
triple gem),
moluo
(
m
a
ra,
evil),
liudao
(
gati,
six destinies),
zhengfa
(
saddhar ma,
cor rect teaching),
fa
(
dhar ma,
divine law),
falun
(
dhar ma-cakra,
wheel of the law),
shifang
(ten directions),
shizuo
(lion throne), and Guanyin
(Avalokite
4
vara). Also present are various per mutations of the ter m “
fan,
” or
Brahm
a
.
17. For a treatment of the later manuals, see Or zech 1994.
18. For an introduction to and brief bibliography on the vast topic of Vedic
ritual, see Heester man 1987. For the metaphor of the guest in Vedic ritual,
see Heester man 1993, 36 –39 188 –189.
19. For my analysis of the modular str ucture of Esoteric ritual, see Or zech
1998, ch. 6; for the char t “Boiler-plate Sequences,” see 1998, 296.
20. This citation is from
Rig Veda
8:48. See O’Flaher ty 1981, 134.
21. The apotropaic dimension of Esoteric and Vajray
a
na ritual has not es-
caped scholarly attention. For a treatment, see Beyer 1973, 254 –258; Stablein

1976a, 165 –173; 1976b, 55 – 69.
22. For a more complete treatment, see Or zech 1989, 101–109; 1994, 56 – 61.
23. “Eight gates” refers to an eight-sided mandala with the eight trigrams,
the zenith, and the nadir representing the ten directions of the cosmos.
24. It is obviously an addition, as it follows the statement that “the
Y
uqie
jiyao yankou shishi yi
is complete” (483b3).
Fang Yankou
and
Pudu
231

Bibliography
Beyer, Stephan. 1973.
The Cult of T
a
r
a
: Magic and Ritual in Tibet.
Berkeley: Uni-
versity of Califor nia Press.
Bokenkamp, Stephen R. 1983. “Sources of the Ling-pao Scriptures.” In
T
antric
and Taoist Studies,
ed. by Michel Strickmann, 2:434 – 486. Br ussels: Institut
Belge des Hautes Etudes Chinoises.
———. 1990. “Stages of Transcendence: The
Bh
u
mi
Concept in Taoist Scrip-
ture.” In
Chinese Buddhist Apocr ypha,
ed. by Rober t E. Buswell, Jr., 119 –147.
Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
Boltz, Judith M. 1983. “Opening the Gates of Pur gator y.” In
T
antric and Taoist
Studies,
ed. by Michel Strickmann, 2:487–511. Br ussels: Institut Belge des
Hautes Etudes Chinoises.
Ch’en, Kenneth K. S. 1964.
Buddhism in China: A Historical Sur vey
. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Colpe, Carsten. 1987. “Syncretism.” In
Encyclopedia of Religion,
ed. by Mircea
Eliade, 14:218 –227. New York: Macmillan.
Falk, Nancy E. Auer. 1987. “P
u
j
a
.” In
Encyclopedia of Religion,
ed. by Mircea
Eliade, 12:83 – 85. New York: Macmillan.
Fung, Y u-lan. 1953.
A Histor y of Chinese Philosophy
2 vols. Trans. by Derk Bodde.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gentzler, Edwin. 1993.
Contemporar y Translation Theories
. London: Routledge.
Gregor y, Peter N. 1991.
T
sung-mi and the Signiﬁcation of Buddhism
. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Gimello, Rober t M. 1978. “Random Reﬂections on the ‘Siniﬁcation’ of Bud-
dhism.”
Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions
5:52– 89.
Hayes, Glen A. 1996. “ The Necklace of Immor tality.” Unpublished paper
presented to the Tantric Studies Seminar of the American Academy of
Religion.
Heester man, Jan C. 1987. “Vedism and Brahmanism.” In
Encyclopedia of Reli-
gion,
ed. by Mircea Eliade, 15:217–242. New York: Macmillan.
———. 1993.
The Broken World of Sacriﬁce: An Essay in Ancient Indian Ritual.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hocar t, A. M., ed. 1973 [1952].
The Life-Giving Myth and Other Essays
. London:
Butler and Tanner.
Jakobson, Roman. 1971. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” In
Selected Writ-
ings II: Word and Language,
ed. by Roman Jacobson, 260 –266. The Hague:
Mouton.
Johnson, Mark, and Geor ge Lakof f. 1980.
Metaphors We Live By
. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press.
———. 1999.
Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to West-
er n Thought
. New York: Basic Books.
Lager wey, John. 1987.
T
aoist Ritual in Chinese Society and Histor y
. New York:
Macmillan.
Lakof f, Geor ge. 1993. “ The Contemporar y Theor y of Metaphor.” In
Metaphor
and Thought,
ed. by Andrew Or tony, 202–251. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
LeFevre, André. 1975.
T
ranslating Poetr y: Seven Strategies and a Blueprint
. Am-
sterdam: Van Gorcum.
232 Charles D. Or zech

———. 1982. “Mother Courage’s Cucumbers: Texts, Systems, and Refraction
in a Theor y of Literature.”
Moder n Language Studies
12:3 –19.
Nida, Eugene. 1964.
T
owards a Science of Translating.
Leiden, The Netherlands:
E. J. Brill.
Nida, Eugene, and C. Taber. 1969.
The Theor y and Practice of Translation
. Lei-
den, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill.
O’Flaher ty, Wendy Doniger, trans. 1981.
The Rig Veda: An Antholog y
. Har monds-
wor th, England: Penguin Books.
Or zech, Charles D. 1989a. “Puns on the Humane King: Analog y and Appli-
cation in an East Asian Apocr yphon.”
Jour nal of the American Oriental Soci-
ety
109:17–24.
———. 1989b. “Seeing Chen-yen Buddhism: Traditional Scholarship and the
V
ajray
a
na in China.”
Histor y of Religions
29:87–114.
———. 1994. “Esoteric Buddhism and the
Shishi
in China.” In
The Esoteric Bud-
dhist Tradition,
ed. by Henrik H. Sørensen, 51–72. Copenhagen: Seminar
for Buddhist Studies Monograph.
———. 1998.
Politics and Transcendent W isdom: The Scripture for Humane Kings
in the Creation of Chinese Buddhism
. University Park: Pennsylvania State Uni-
versity Press.
Pang, Duane. 1977. “ The
P’u-tu
Ritual.” In
Buddhist and Taoist Studies,
ed. by
Michael Saso and David Chappell, 94 –122. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i
Press.
Payne, Richard K. 1985. “Feeding the Gods: The Shingon Fire Ritual.” Ph.D.
diss., Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley.
———. 1991.
The Tantric Ritual of Japan: Feeding the Gods: The Shingon Fire Rit-
ual
. New Delhi: Aditya.
Sangren, P. Steven. 1987.
Histor y and Magical Power in a Chinese Community
.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Staal, Fritz. 1980. “Ritual Syntax.” In
Sanskrit and Indian Studies,
ed. by M. Na-
gatomi et al., 119 –142. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel Publishing.
Stablein, W illiam. 1976a. “A Descriptive Analysis of the Content of Nepalese
Buddhist
P
u
j
a
s
as a Medical-Cultural System with References to Tibetan
Parallels.” In
In the Realm of the Extra-Human: Ideas and Actions,
ed. by Age-
hananda Bharati, 165 –173. The Hague: Mouton.
———. 1976b. “ Tantric Medicine and Ritual Blessings.”
The Tibetan Jour nal
1:55 – 69.
Stewar t, Charles, and Rosalind Shaw, eds. 1994.
Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The
Politics of Religious Synthesis.
London: Routledge.
Stewar t, Tony K. 1999. “ The Language of Equivalence: Interpreting Bengali
Muslim Literature from the Middle Period.” In
Essays in Memor y of Mom-
tazur Rahman Tarafdar,
ed. by Per ween Hasan and Mufakhar ul Islam.
Dacca, Bangla Desh: Dacca University Centre for Advanced Research in

the Humanities.
———. 2001. “In Search of Equivalence: Conceiving Muslim-Hindu Encounter
through Translation Theor y.”
Histor y of Religions
(Febr uar y) 40, no. 3.
Stewar t, Tony K., and Carl W. Er nst. for thcoming. “Syncretism.” In
Encyclopedia
of South Asian Folklore,
ed. by Mar garet Mills and Peter J. Claus. New York:
Garland.
Fang Yankou
and
Pudu
233

Strickmann, Michel. 1996.
Mantras et mandarins: Le bouddhisme tantrique en
Chine.
Paris: Gallimard.
T’ang, Y ung-t’ung. 1951. “On
Ko -yi,
the Earliest Method By Which Indian Bud-
dhism and Chinese Thought Were Synthesized.” In
Radhakrishnana: Com-
parative Studies in Philosophy,
ed. by W. R. Inge et al., 276 –286. London: Allen
and Unwin.
Wheelock, Wade T. 1989. “ The Mantra in Vedic and Tantric Ritual.” In
Mantra,
ed. by Har vey P. Alper, 96 –122. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Y
oshioka Yoshitoyo. 1959.
D
o
ky
o
to bukky
o
vol. I. Tokyo: Nihon gakujutsu
shink
o
kai.
Zürcher, Erik. 1972.
The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation
of Buddhism in Early Medieval China
2 vols. Leiden, The Netherlands:
E. J. Brill.
———. 1980. “Buddhist Inﬂuence on Early Taoism: A Sur vey of Scriptural
Evidence.”
T’oung Pao
66:84 –147.
234 Charles D. Or zech

11
Daoist Hand Signs
and Buddhist Mudras
Mitamura Keiko
Daoist hand signs (
shoujue
) have been used in personal and commu-
nal rites since the Six Dynasties for a variety of purposes, including the
exorcism of evil forces, control over spirits, and healing of diseases.

They developed for mally in the medieval period under the direct

inﬂuence of Buddhist mudras (literally, “hand seals,”
shouyin
) yet also
continued to unfold in their own distinct way. Since most of their prac-

tice was esoteric and their transmission predominantly oral, only few

early sources remain. In fact, it is only from their mention in the
Datang
liudian
(Six Classics of the Great Tang), in a section entitled “Palm
Signs” (
Zhangjue
),
that we can presume their existence and use in the
early middle ages. From less direct indications in Tang texts, more-

over, it appears that hand signs were actively used in Daoist rituals at

least toward the end of this dynasty.
Besides the standard
shoujue
(hand sign), words used for secret ges-
tures and ﬁnger signs in Daoism include
tao
(twist),
qia
(pinch),
jue
(sign),
zhangjue
(palm sign),
zhijue
(ﬁnger sign),
taozhi
(ﬁnger twist),
jieyin
(knot seal),
jiefa yin
(dhar ma knot seal), and
shouyin
(hand seal,
or mudra). Each of these might refer to signs made by both hands, by

one hand, or by some hand movement. The ter minolog y is vague and

multivalent, again mainly because the predominant for m of the signs’

transmission was oral rather than textual.
There are only few studies on Daoist hand signs to date. Some ex-
amine the relation between Buddhist mudras and Daoist hand signs,
1
others focus par ticularly on late sources of the Ming and Qing dynas-

ties.
2
Although relatively few in number, hand signs used in ritual to-
day have also received some scholarly attention.
3
The numbers of signs
have declined continuously through histor y, down from several hun-
235

dred in the Tang and at least several dozen in the Y uan and Ming, as
documented in the
Daofa huiyuan
(A Corpus of Daoist Ritual, HY
1210).
4
Among the latter, thunder styles (
leiju
) and sword signs (
jian-
jue
) were especially common, hand symbols that played a key role in
the then-popular thunder rites. Unlike their rather high ritual spe-

cialization, it seems that before the Song, hand signs ser ved a lar ge va-

riety of purposes and were thus a great deal more numerous.
In general, two main groups of Daoist hand signs can be distin-
guished: those that developed in direct imitation of Buddhist mudras,

and those that can be described as uniquely Daoist ﬁnger techniques.

Hand signs deriving from Buddhist mudras include signs signifying

“lotus,” “bridge,” “sword,” and so on.
5
They are the same in name and
execution, yet their speciﬁc description in Daoist texts makes it clear

that they were given an additional signiﬁcance. Here, unlike in Bud-

dhism, each ﬁnger segment was linked with the lar ger cosmos by be-

ing associated with the eight trigrams, seven stars of the Dipper, or

twelve zodiac positions.
Hand signs deriving directly from Buddhist mudras raise the ques-
tion of how and when cer tain patter ns were taken over and reinter-

preted to ﬁt the speciﬁcally Daoist worldview. By extension, this brings

up the lar ger issue of the interaction between the two religions. Schol-

ars have examined this issue variously, comparing scriptures and rit-

ual manuals, relating ethical and cosmological systems, and analyzing

dif ferent statements made by religious leaders. In all cases, key prob-

lems involve the identiﬁcation of signiﬁcant characteristics of Bud-

dhism and Daoism in the various periods of Chinese histor y; the ques-

tion of whether any of these characteristics were special enough to

belong uniquely to one or the other; and—for those characteristics

that were shared—the huge problem of religious interaction, that is,

which religion produced the characteristics ﬁrst and how were they

taken over and transfor med (or not transfor med) by the other. These

questions have often been related to the phenomenon of “syncretism,”

which implies the conscious mixture of two religious creeds or ritual

systems. The ter m, as Charles Or zech discusses at length in this vol-

ume, is highly problematic and does not suit the Daoist-Buddhist sit-

uation ver y well. Following his lead, I will, therefore, discuss Daoist

hand signs in ter ms of the adaptation, bor rowing, and translation of

Buddhist techniques.
Then again, there are uniquely Daoist ﬁnger techniques, best
found in the Ming-dynasty ritual compendium
Daofa huiyuan
as well
as in the Song-work
T
ianxin zhengfa
(Proper Methods of the Heav-
236 Mitamura Keiko

enly Hear t, HY 566) by Deng Yougong (1210 –1279; see Boltz 1987,
35; Andersen 1991, 81– 85). These uniquely Daoist signs emer ged his-

torically later than mudra-inspired patter ns, and again we have to ask

the question of the process of adaptation, change, and development

and tr y to identify where a uniquely Daoist technique begins and the

translation from Buddhism ends. Many problems remain open, as,

for example, dating and context: when exactly what kinds of sacred

gestures and ﬁnger signs were applied in which kinds of Daoist ritu-

als; or where the speciﬁc Daoist technique came from that involves

thumb pressure to be executed on either the tip or the central sec-

tion of a ﬁnger.
Daoist rituals, in themselves, present a huge area of unexplored ter-
ritor y, and many of them have grown and been for med through the

interaction with Buddhism—but Buddhist ritual, too, has done its

share of adapting Daoist for ms. From the perspective of the applica-

tion and for ms of sacred hand gestures, three types of Daoist ritual

emer ge, from the middle ages onward: the for mal practices of the
fang-
shi
and longevity seekers; the techniques of inner alchemy (with their
r
elated thunder rites); and the communal rituals of Daoist groups, both
lay and monastic. In all cases, the transfor mation of the body into a

locus of contact with, and mer ging into, the other worldly realm of the

Dao is a key element in the rites, and sacred hand gestures ser ve to

empower and enhance this transfor mation. They became especially

prominent in the early eleventh centur y with the rise of the school of

Divine Empyrean under Emperor Huizong of the Song and contin-

ued to ﬂourish in the manifold thunder rites of succeeding dynasties

until they were streamlined and began to decline in the Ming. The

following discussion presents their basic patter ns and historical un-

folding.
Hand Signs and Spells in the Middle Ages
A clear statement about the purpose of Daoist hand signs is found in

a classic on the subject, the
T
ianhuang zhidao taiqing yuce
(
Jade Vol-
ume of Great Clarity on the Utmost Way of the Heavenly Sovereign,

HY 1472), hencefor th abbreviated
T
ianhuang yuce
. This text is a three-
juan
compendium on how to attain political har mony and the ideal
r
ulership in the Dao, with a preface dated 1444 by the royal Ming
prince Zhu Quan, who was an eager suppor ter of Daoism and an im-

por tant editor of Daoist material in the early Ming (see Ren and Zhong

1991, 1172–1173). The text says:
Daoist Hand Signs and Buddhist Mudras 237

The Master said: Twist signs are used to communicate with the per-
fected, control malicious sprites, summon protective generals, and ef-

fect the healing of diseases. (3.1a)
A similar text is the
Zhuguo jiumin zongzhen biyao
(Secret Essentials of
the Assembled Per fected on How to Aid the State and Save the People,
HY 1217), hencefor th abbreviated
Zhuguo biyao
. It, too, is a basically po-
litical compendium, but of an earlier date, bearing a preface of 1116

by the compiler Y uan Miaozong. He was a renowned Daoist under the

Song emperor Huizong, who had studied with many masters and ded-

icated himself to proposing valuable Daoist rituals for the realization

of political stability (see Ren and Zhong 1991, 968 –969). The text says:
Y
ou must deploy a suitable twist sign whenever you under take ritual
perambulation, question a sick person, exorcise malicious sprites, en-
ter the sanctuar y, cross a river, enter a mountain, or draw a talisman.
(8.19a)
In other words, hand signs were associated with protection from
disasters, especially when engaging in sacred acts, with the exorcism
of demons or evil inﬂuences, and with the healing of diseases.
While these general statements, together with more detailed in-
for mation on the for mation and application of the signs, are found

in later texts, Daoist works of the middle ages have ver y little to of fer

on hand signs and their uses. The earliest mention of something pos-

sibly akin to the later hand signs occurs in the Lingbao texts
Qianzhen
ke
(Regulations for the Thousand Per fected, HY 1399) and
W
ulian jing
(Scripture of Fivefold Puriﬁcation, HY 369; see Bokenkamp 1983, 481,

483) of the Six Dynasties. They sporadically mention sacred hand

movements, such as the “sword hand” (
jianshou; Qianzhen ke
27ab) and
the “snapping ﬁngers” (
tanzhi; Wulian jing
2b). These hand movements,
in my estimation, are not yet like mudras but are merely fundamen-

tal gestures that accompany cer tain rituals. The fact that there is prac-

tically no infor mation about them shows the power of the oral tradi-

tion, which protected the secrecy of Daoist activities. At the same time,

magical gestures do appear in various other (shamanic) ar ts, thus sug-

gesting a gradual evolution of the Daoist sacred gesture, about which

written documents keep conspicuously silent.
It is only in the late Tang that a tr uly valuable source appears: the
Xuanpu shan lingkui bilu
(Secret Register of the Numinous Casket of
Mount Myster y Garden, HY 580), abbreviated
Xuanpu shan bilu
. Al-
though not entirely reliable in its dating, the text has a preface by

Huangfu Peng, which is dated to the year 860 and gives a long line-
238 Mitamura Keiko

age of masters that transmitted its contents, most impor tantly Lin
Ziyao, from whom Huangfu Peng claimed to have received it, and the

ﬁfteenth Celestial Master Zhang Gao, who allegedly presented some

of the rituals to the Tang emperor Xuanzong. Again, the work is mainly

concer ned with the establishment of political stability through Daoist

rituals (see Ren and Zhong 1991, 417– 418). The work, whose title in-

dicates that it was stored in the Hanging Gardens on Mount Kunlun

and is fundamentally of celestial origin, is an extensive and rather for-

malized list of Daoist hand signs, including the seals of the Dipper Bowl

(Tiangang yin), the Soaring Dragon (Tenglong yin), the Giant Scab-

bard ( Jutao yin), the Flying Matter (Feizhi yin), the Myster y (Xuanyin),

and the Brahma Knot (Pozhuan yin). The purpose of these signs, usu-

ally called by the Buddhist appellation
yin
(seal), was to enable prac-
titioners to move heaven and ear th, call down thunder, assemble

clouds, walk on water, become invisible, and transfor m things. Each

of them, moreover, went hand in hand with the application of a cer-

tain talisman (
fu
) and with the for mal chanting of an incantation or
spell (
zhou;
see table 11.1).
To
give one example, the ﬁrst hand sign, the Seal of the Dipper
Bowl, was for med with the left hand by straightening the index and
middle ﬁngers, with the other ﬁngers and the thumb curled into a ﬁst.

In conjunction with dif ferent talismans, the hand sign was used to ei-
ther dissolve or consolidate the shame of things (see ﬁgure 11.1). The

spell that went with it was
“cuanyu lieyu aotuo shenyu.
”
As Liu Zhong yu
has demonstrated (1993), this and similar spells were not Chinese but,

in imitation of Buddhist
dh
a
rani
or esoteric mantras, used Sanskrit or
Daoist Hand Signs and Buddhist Mudras 239
T
ABLE 11.1
PURPOSES AND PATTERNS OF HAND SIGNS
IN THE
XUANPU SHAN BILU
Sect. Sign Purpose Hand Spell
1.1 Dipper Bowl control things L
cuanyu lieyu aotuo
shenyu
1.8 Soaring Dragon assemble clouds L
yun luomo weimo
yuyu xuan
2.8 Flying Matter walk on water L
yumo yumo xuyu
3.2 Giant Scabbard become invisible L
yuan luohu
3.3 Myster y transfor m things R
ana xuanyu
Bie.1 no name remove obstr uctions R
xuanluo huiyu poli
Bie.2 Brahma Knot control spirits L
yulun sulu mo youli
Bie.13 Soaring Dragon entering gourd L
xuanyu xuanyu youli

pseudo -Sanskrit phrases as their base. The seals of the Divine Tiger
(Shenhu yin), the Heavenly Sovereign (Tianhuang yin), and the

Brahma Knot come with spells that are immediate replicas of mantras

used in Tantric or Zhenyan Buddhism. They entered Daoism in the

eighth or ninth centur y, after this school of Buddhism had been trans-

mitted to China (see Or zech 1989), and are clearly found on Buddhist

statues of the late Tang. Unlike Liu, I ﬁnd the source of Daoist spells

used with hand signs not entirely in Buddhist mantras, even though

in some cases they may be identical. Rather, I would propose a more

indigenous development of the signs used in both traditions and grow-

ing in an environment of intense Buddhist-Daoist interaction in the

mid- to late-Tang dynasty. The spells may have a Sanskrit origin in their

wording to begin with, but they were thoroughly indigenized by the

Daoist religion and do not ultimately represent a simple imitation of

Buddhist techniques.
More speciﬁcally, like Buddhist mantras, the spells in the
Xuanpu
shan bilu
were all basically phonetic in nature and did not attempt to
240 Mitamura Keiko
Figure 11.1. The hand sign of the Dipper Bowl and its talismans.
(Source:
Xuanpu shan bilu
1.20a.)

make any meaningful sense. They are, moreover, highly similar to those
found in the Buddhist
Y
ujia jiyao
(see note 1), and in general, one can
say that the relation of mantras to mudras in Esoteric Buddhism was

close to that of spells to hand signs in Daoism. The statement of a rit-

ual supplement to the
Y
ujia jiyao
(T. 1320, 21.473b– 484a) thus applies
to both: “Ef for t and wisdom are matched in the ﬁngers” (478a).
On the other hand, there were also mudras that made use of tech-
niques unique to China and not found in India. Some, for example,

involved exer ting thumb pressure on one or the other par t of the

ﬁngers; others, such as those described in the
Changqu lidu nü tuoluoni
zhoujing
(S
u
tra of Fear ful Dh
a
rani Spells for Beneﬁts and against Poi-
son, T. 1265, 21.294 –295), by an unknown monk named Quduo and

probably dating from the eighth or ninth centur y, have speciﬁc tech-

niques linked to each ﬁnger segment, such as “to expel and suppress

demons” with the tip of the index ﬁnger, “to heal diseases” with the

r
oot of the ring ﬁnger, and “to worship and gain merit” with the top
joint of the pinkie.
6
Both these characteristics can be described as dis-
tinctly Daoist, and their appearance in Buddhist sources suggests that

cer tain aspects in the practice of sacred gestures evolved from Dao-

ism into Buddhism, and not vice versa.
Overall, therefore, we see a close and intimate interaction between
the two religions in the practice of sacred gestures, mudras inspiring

hand signs to begin with, hand signs under going adaptations and de-

veloping next and inﬂuencing Buddhist patter ns again in cer tain ways.

A classic example here are mudras such as the one designated as

“sword”; these major secret gestures in Buddhism also played a key role

in Daoism from the Six Dynasties onward. They appear variously in

Daoist texts, such as the
Xuanpu shan bilu
. Their functions changed as
they were adapted into Daoism, then expanded again in Buddhism

under Daoist inspiration.
Classiﬁcations and Patter ns in the Song
The
T
ianxin zhengfa
of the thir teenth centur y lists thir ty-six dif ferent
hand signs, beginning with those for the three highest heavens and

deities: Jade Clarity and the Heavenly Wor thy of Primordial Beginning;

Highest Clarity and the Wor thy of Numinous Treasure; Great Clarity

and the Wor thy of the Dao and the V ir tue (see table 11.2). They com-

prise signs of a number of celestial and stellar gods together with those

used to establish command over the spirit world and gain easy access

to the realms of heaven. Destroying and exorcising demons also play
Daoist Hand Signs and Buddhist Mudras 241

a key role, as well as blocking of f their paths and closing the door ways
of ear th and the under world.
Another work of the same period is the
Zhuguo biyao
. It is the most
complete collection of Song-dynasty signs, both those involving thumb

pressure and those using hand movements, that are not speciﬁcally

linked with the thunder rites. Here a total of eighty hand signs are

listed, thir ty-nine to be executed with the left hand and ten with the

right hand, plus eight used for the seven stars of the Dipper and ﬁfteen

for master y over the ﬁve phases (see table 11.3). Among the left-hand

signs, eighteen are identical with those listed in the
T
ianxin zhengfa,
lar gely those associated with heavenly deities and constellations. Only

one, the Persecuting Demons Sign, is the same among the right-hand

signs, and none at all match the signs listed in the other categories.

While most signs here are speciﬁed according to execution with the

right or left hand, there are yet a number that can be done with ei-

ther or both hands.
In each case, the text speciﬁes the ﬁngers to be used and the posi-
tions they take. Typically, one for ms a sign by exer ting thumb pressure

on one or more joints of the other ﬁngers, as, for example, in the case

of the Seven Dippers, or again that of the seven stars of the Nor ther n
242 Mitamura Keiko
19. Moon Lord
20. Dipper Bowl

21. Opening Heaven’s Gate
22. Closing Ear th’s Door

23. Staying Humanity’s Gate
24. Blocking Demons’ Road
25. Piercing Demons’ Hear t

26. Destroying Demons’ Gall

27. Containing Demons
28. Five Thunders
29. Golden Knife

30. General Overseer

31. Persecuting Demons

32. Transfor ming Spirit
33. Six Ding Gods
34. Purple Tenuity

35. Heaven’s Gate and Ear th’s Pivot
36. Dipper
1. Jade Clarity

2. Highest Clarity

3. Great Clarity
4. Jade Emperor
5. Great Ruler

6. Nor ther n Emperor

7. Heavenly Ding Gods
8. Original Master
9. Dipper
10. Exorcising Evil

11. Per fected Lords
12. Sword
13. Sun Constellation

14. Opening Seal

15. Summoning Seal
16. Entering Seal
17. Three Treasures
18. Sun Lord
T
ABLE 11.2
THE THIRTY-SIX HAND SIGNS
OF THE
TIANXIN ZHENGFA
(6.19AB)

1. Left-Hand Signs
All Heavens
Dhar ma Master

*Jade Clarity
*Highest Clarity
*Great Clarity

*Nor ther n Emperor

Celestial Master

*Original Master
*Purple Tenuity
*Sun Lord

*Moon Lord

Hall of Light
*Dipper Bowl
*Heavenly Ding Gods

Heavenly Jia Gods

*Five Thunders
Ding and Jia Gods
*General Overseer

*Transfor ming Spirit

*Exorcising Evil
Meritorious Ofﬁcials
Containing Pestilence

*Dipper

Punishing Demons
Forestalling Demons
*Golden Knife

Raising Troops

Four Mountains
*Sun Constellation
Chasing Demons

Golden Ding Gods

*Opening Seal
*Entering Seal
Pushing Demons into the
Under world
Golden City
Expelling Strange Phenomena
Expelling Locusts

Riding on Clouds

Killing Demons
2. Right-Hand Signs
Entering Sanctuar y
Destroying Sanctuar y
Expelling Disease

Binding Demons

White Tiger

Green Dragon
Guiding Souls
*Persecuting Demons

Establishing the Sword

Liberating the Dragon
3. Signs for Flying to the Five Dippers
Souther n Dipper (L)
Nor ther n Dipper (L)

W
ester n Dipper (L)
Easter n Dipper (R)

Central Dipper, yang (L)

Central Dipper, yin (R)

Thunder Fire, yang day (L)

Thunder Fire, yin day (R)
4. Signs for the Seven Stars of the Dipper (L)
Gui Star, press second segment of index ﬁnger
Gou Star, press ﬁrst segment of index ﬁnger

Fan Star, press ﬁrst segment of middle ﬁnger
Shou Star, press third segment of middle ﬁnger
Bi Star, press second segment of ring ﬁnger

Pu Star, press second segment of little ﬁnger

Piao Star, press third segment of little ﬁnger
5. Signs for Contr
olling the Five Phases
W
ood (L)
Fire (L)
Ear th (L)
Metal (R)
W
ater (L)
Demon Knife (L)

T
wisting Dragon (L)
Ear th Center (L)
Central Ear th Knife (L)
Demon Killing Knife (L)

Destroying Knife (L)

Evil Killing Knife (L)
Destroying Five Bad Rebir ths Knife (L)
Killing Demons (L)

Summoning Star Gods (L)
T
ABLE 11.3
HAND SIGNS IN THE
ZHUGUO BIYAO
(CH. 8)
*same as in
T
ianxin zhengfa

Dipper (see table 11.3, section 3; also ﬁgure 11.2). Unlike the late-Tang
Xuanpu shan bilu,
in which hand signs were static and strictly symbol-
ized cer tain deities, concepts, or objects, the Song materials have a

wide variety of signs that are executed with thumb pressure or hand

movements and work more according to speciﬁc functions than sym-

bolism. A clear development can thus be discer ned between the Tang

and the Song, a movement away from mudra-inspired, static symbols

and toward more indigenously Daoist hand movements and cosmic

functions.
The Origins of Daoist Finger Techniques
Using hands and ﬁngers in a sacred or ritual context can ﬁrst be linked

with the ancient techniques of shamanism, which also involved dances,

chants, and other practices later adapted into the methods of the
fang-
shi,
or magical practitioners, and through them into Daoism. An early
text documenting the use of hand signs among the
fangshi
is Ge Hong’s
(283 –341)
Baopuzi
(Book of the Master Who Embraces Simplicity, HY
1177), a key work on the understanding and practice of alchemy and
early ritual methods. Here we have
244 Mitamura Keiko
Figure 11.2. The position
of the seven stars of the

Dipper in the ﬁngers.

(Source:
Zhuguo biyao
8.16a.)

[Upon entering the mountain] if you happen to see a poisonous snake,
face the sun and, taking three mouthfuls of breaths from the left,

conﬁne it. Press your tongue against the roof of your mouth and place

a hand upon your Central Bar rier point. Next, close the Gate of

Heaven and shut the Door of Ear th [nose and mouth] and press some-

thing against the snake’s head while making a circle about it with your

hand, drawing a prison on the ear th to conﬁne it. You may also take it

up and play with it. Even if you place it around your neck, it will not

dare bite you. As an automatically unremovable char m, blow upon the

snake with your exhalations, and it will never again leave the prison

you made.
When others have been bitten by a snake, take three mouthfuls of
breath from the left and blow upon the wound; it will immediately get
better and cause no more pain. If you and the patient are separated by

a dozen or so miles, you may do the breath procedure from a distance

and shout the name of the patient. For a male, the spell is to be said
over your left hand; for a female, over your right. (17.8a; Ware 1966,

290)
Clearly, in the early stages of Daoism, hand signs were used in con-
junction with spells, or incantations, and talismans to af ford protec-
tion and exorcise evil. What exactly practitioners did with their hands,

however, is not described in the text. Still, the protective and exorcis-

tic spells mentioned in the
Baopuzi
again appear in the early Tang,
when Sun Simiao (601– 693) cites a text called
Jinjing
(Scripture of Pro-
hibitions) in his
Qianjin yifang
(Additional Medicines Wor th a Thou-
sand Pieces of Gold, chs. 29, 30; see Liu 1984; Sakade 1989). Here, in

addition, more than twenty palm signs are given, among them sev-

eral that involve pressing the thumb against one or the other ﬁnger.

A dif ferent variation of the same idea is also described in the
Sandong
zhunang
(A Bag of Pearls from the Three Caver ns, HY 1131), an en-
cyclopedia of Daoist materials compiled by Wang Xuanhe in the mid-

seventh centur y (see Reiter 1990). It has
The
Ta
iyi dijun dongzhen xuanjing
(Mysterious Scripture of Per fection
Caver n of the Imperial Lord of Great Unity) says: Close your eyes, clap
your teeth ﬁve times, and take the middle ﬁnger of your left hand to
press seven times against the nostril. Then take your right index ﬁnger

and press nine times against the area between your eyebrows. This will

expel all malicious inﬂuences of the three, ﬁve, seven, and nine as well

as close the gates against the multitude of spirits. (3.18a)
Once done with the ﬁnger pointing, clap your teeth three times
again and, in a soft voice, recite the following spell:
Daoist Hand Signs and Buddhist Mudras 245

The luminants above ﬂy through the net,
May ver milion and yellow spread their haze,
May their ener g y sur round all the numinous and nasty
And let their corpses rot in depth and darkness.

Har monize my spirit souls, purify my material souls,
Let me join my body with the Great Spirit above!
Cause me to live forever and not die,

Remain whole for myriads of years!
May I be bright and perceptive, of penetrating vision,
Forever joyful, beneﬁcent and exuberant.
Having concluded the recitation, clap your teeth three times again,
then swallow the saliva three times and with your right index ﬁnger
press below the left eye seven times. This will allow all yin ener g y to be
completely at rest—at least while you don’t raise your hand too high.

(5.6ab)
Here exorcistic and life-preser ving ef fects are gained by applying
ﬁnger pressure to cer tain key points of Daoist anatomy, notably the
gate of ener g y at the entrance of the nostrils and the “Hall of Light”

(
mingtang
) point between the eyebrows. The idea is ver y similar to that
found in the later practice of hand signs in which, too, cer tain posi-

tions in the ﬁngers have cosmological signiﬁcance and the application

of pressure is used to activate protective or exorcistic powers.
Another relevant passage on the same issue is found in the
Daodian
lun
(On the Classics of the Dao, HY 1122), another early-Tang ency-
clopedia by an unknown author, which has also par tly sur vived in Dun-

huang manuscripts (see Ren and Zhong 1991, 879 – 880). It has
The
Ciyi jing
(Scripture of the Female One) says: The Per fect Lord of
Great Simplicity has an efﬁcient technique to avoid nightmares, espe-
cially useful to beginners. It goes as follows.
Whenever you have a series of nightmares, understand that they are
either caused by soul sprites, ser ve as tests for your hear t/mind, or are

attempts to snatch your corpse. In all cases, you need to apply the fol-
lowing technique for the dissolution of bad inﬂuences. As soon as you
wake up, take your left hand and press your nostril area twice times
seven, then clap your teeth twice times seven and chant the following

incantation. . . . (4.4b)
Again, the main purpose of the ﬁnger technique is exorcistic, and it
involves other ritual and puriﬁcator y activities, such as clapping the
teeth, swallowing the saliva, and reciting an incantation. Closely related

to other for ms of puriﬁcation, exorcism, and ritual acts of protection,
246 Mitamura Keiko

hand and ﬁnger methods like these ser ved to ensure safety for the
whole person and were later integrated into a more extensive ritual

context. Combined with spells and talismans, Daoist hand signs en-

gaged the good spirits of the other world and banished the bad. Orig-

inating in ﬁnger techniques that activated cer tain cosmic points in the

body, they are deeply rooted in ancient indigenous practice and only

secondarily evolved into their for mal patter ning under the inﬂuence

of Buddhist mudras. This development is evident ﬁrst in the
Xuanpu
shan bilu,
or about two hundred years after the
Sandong
zhunang
and
Daodian lun
. Here the ter m “hand seal,” or “mudra,” ﬁrst occurs in
a Daoist context; here also the techniques of thumb pressure against

cer tain ﬁngers are described for the ﬁrst time; and here we have the

ﬁrst mention of speciﬁc names of hand signs —all inspired by the Bud-

dhist model and adapted actively into an
already w
ell-prepared Daoist
environment.
Sacred Hand Movements
Besides hand positions that indicate cer tain symbolic patter ns and are

used in ritual contexts, there are also various sets of sometimes com-

plex hand movements, usually under taken while facing a speciﬁc di-

r
ection and accompanied by an incantation. For example, the
Shang-
qing lingbao dafa
(Great Rites of the Highest Clarity and Numinous
Tr
easure Traditions, HY 1211), by Wang Qizhen (Boltz 1987, 43 – 44)
of the late twelfth centur y, lists ﬁve sacred sounds to be uttered seven

times each in the dif ferent directions when entering a ritual chamber

and bur ning incense in preparation for ritual. They are
ling
—nor th-nor theast, press the
chou
patter n
mo
—
east-nor theast, press the
yin
patter n
lü
—e
ast, press the
mao
patter n
tao
—
east-southeast, press the
chen
patter n
ni
—south-southeast, press the
si
patter n (7.10b)
W
ith each utterance, the hand should move in the direction indi-
cated. More speciﬁcally, as described in the section “Hand Patter n of

the Golden Wheel to Control Demons,”
When moving from west to east, the hand needs to for m the patter n
shown below [see ﬁgure 11.3]. (
Shangqing lingbao dafa
7.11a)
Then again, the
Duren shangjing dafa
(Great Methods of the High-
est Scripture of Universal Salvation, HY 219) has this spell:
Daoist Hand Signs and Buddhist Mudras 247

“gold”—west, press the
you
patter n
“wheel”— east, press the
mao
patter n
“control”—west, press the
you
patter n
“demons”— east, press the
mao
patter n
“patter n”—west, press the
you
patter n (40.16b)
This links the efﬁcacious for mulation with the ritual position,
showing which direction the hand movements are supposed to follow.
The hand movements, moreover, are linked with the speciﬁc direc-

tional and zodiac positions marked on the ﬁngers (see ﬁgure 11.4).

The purpose of the integration of rituals, chanting, and ﬁnger posi-

tions is to purify the entire body in all its cosmic positions and direc-

tions and to make sure that the good ener g y stays within the body and

circulates cor rectly.
Another set of hand signs that involve movements is found in the
Zhuguo biyao,
especially in relation to methods of ﬂying to the ﬁve Dip-
pers. Many signs associated with these constellations are used to help
248 Mitamura Keiko
Figure 11.3. The “Golden Wheel
to Control Demons.” The char-

acter for “gold” is on the pinkie;

that for “wheel” is on the index

ﬁnger. (Source:
Shangqing
lingbao dafa
7.11a.)
Figure 11.4. Zodiac

positions as marked

in the ﬁngers. (Source:

Duren shangjing dafa

40.16b.)

in healing diseases and exorcise demons. They are activated by ﬁrst
mentally chanting the names of the Dipper gods, praying for their pro-

tection during the ecstatic ascent to their palaces, and then pressing

cer tain spots in the ﬁngers with the thumb. The text says:
Press your ﬁngers following the enclosed illustration, clap your teeth
three times, envision the Dipper, and hold your breath. Then silently
r
ecite the names of the stars and ﬂy of f to meet them. (8.13ab)
The text does not specify how exactly the combination of visuali-
zation, chanting, and hand movements is supposed to work. However,
it makes it clear that hand signs are ultimately connected to the pro-

tection of the body.
A similar description of the same method, with a list more atten-
tive to meditative details, is found in the
Daofa huiyuan
. Here, in the
section “Jade Master’s Precious Way to Catch Evil Spirits,” cer tain

points on the ﬁngers are identiﬁed with the eight trigrams and twelve

zodiac positions. Practitioners move their hands in a par ticular way

while chanting spells and practicing visualizations. For example, to ﬂy

to the Souther n Dipper, they activate each star in tur n:
For the Chi Star, visualize cinnabar ﬁre and execute the
si
[SSE]
patter n
For the Zhi Star, visualize yellow ﬁre and execute the
chen
[ESE]
patter n
For the Huo Star, visualize red ﬁre and execute the
li
[S] patter n
For the Fu Star, visualize purple ﬁre and execute the
wu
[S] patter n
For the Zun Star, visualize dark ﬁre and execute the
kun
[SW]
patter n
For the Sheng Star, visualize golden ﬁre and execute the
wei
[WSW]
patter n (198.16b–17a)
Again, the exact meditation is not completely spelled out, but the
hand patter ns are more speciﬁc than those mentioned in the
Zhuguo
biyao
. Another section, also of the
Daofa huiyuan,
entitled “Jade Mas-
ter’s Spreading the Net to Catch Malicious Inﬂuences,” has instr uc-

tions on how to activate the ﬁnger positions of the eight trigrams and

twelve zodiac constellations in order to summon the thir teen thunder

gods. They are as follows:
Heavenly Thunder:
T
ianlei yinyin,
press the
hai
patter n (NNW)
Spirit Thunder:
Shenlei honghong,
press the
wu
patter n (SSE)
Dragon Thunder:
Longlei juanshui,
press the
chen
patter n (ESE)
W
ater Thunder:
Shuilei pofan,
press the
zi
patter n (N)
Daoist Hand Signs and Buddhist Mudras 249

Fire Thunder:
Sheling leihuo,
press the
yin
patter n (ENE)
Clapping Thunder:
Pili
,
jiaoheng,
press the
xuan
patter n (SE)
Spirit Pivot:
Shenji yibian,
press the
yin
patter n (ENE)
Swift Destr uction:
Sumie xiejing,
press the
daji
patter n (center)
Great Thunder:
Leida,
press the
mao
patter n (E)
Second Thunder:
Lei’er,
press the
yin
patter n (ENE)
Third Thunder:
Leisan,
press the
chou
patter n (NNE)
Four th Thunder:
Leisi,
press the
zi
patter n (N)
Fifth Thunder:
Leiwu,
press the
hai
patter n (NNW)
(198.13b–14a; see ﬁgure 11.5)
250 Mitamura Keiko
Fig. 11.5. The position of the thir teen thunders on the ﬁngers
together with their names and description. (Source:
Daofa
huiyuan
198.13a.)

Another set of thunder-related hand signs, also found in the
Daofa
huiyuan,
is used speciﬁcally to expel demons, cure diseases, and pray
for rain. They are cited from the
Shenxiao zishu dafa
(Great Methods
of the Purple Book of Divine Empyrean, HY 1209). Here we have
The Five Thunder Signs:
Heavenly Thunder: in both hands, press
yin,
while the little ﬁnger
re
mains on
jia
Spirit Thunder: index and middle ﬁngers are bent, while the thumb
presses on
zi
and the ring and little ﬁngers press on the thumb
Dragon Thunder: index, middle, and ring ﬁngers are bent, while the
thumb is cur ved over them and holds the position
hai;
the little
ﬁngers pushes on the others, with the thumb in
jia
W
ater Thunder: the index ﬁnger is bent, while the thumb presses
on
chou
and the remaining ﬁngers press on the thumb
Magic Thunder: index, middle, and ring ﬁngers are bent, while the
thumb presses on them without yet locking on
jia
(11.10ab)
These ﬁve hand signs do not involve ﬁnger movements but repre-
sent a combination of mudras and ﬁnger-pressure techniques. This is
also evident from another passage on thunder rites found in the same

text. It says:
Daoist Hand Signs and Buddhist Mudras 251
Fig. 11.6. Hand signs to suppor t cosmic order on the levels of heaven, ear th, and
humanity. (Source:
Daofa huiyuan
106.17b –23a.)

Press the position
chen
with your left hand and take in the ener g y of
the trigram
xun
while facing its matching direction. . . . Then press the
position
zi,
again facing the direction of
xuan
and ingesting its ener g y.
(4.1a)
To
suppor t and maintain cosmic order, yet another set of talismans
and hand signs is applied, among them speciﬁcally those used to “or-
der the heavenly gover nment” (
zhi tianzheng
),
to “straighten the ear thly
mainstays” (
li diji
),
and to “rectify human af fairs” (
zheng renshi
).
Where
to press in each case is evident from the accompanying illustration (see

ﬁgure 11.6). Patter ns activated here are easily connected with those

hand signs that involve movements; they are variously described in rit-

ual Daoist texts found in the canon, ﬁrst the
Zhuguo biyao
and many
more in the Ming and Qing.
Conclusion
In the Ming dynasty, when the
T
ianhuang yuce
was compiled, leading
hand signs were those symbolizing jade, the sword, the nine palaces,

the seven stars, the Jade Clarity, the Nor ther n Emperor, the eight tri-

grams, and the three ter races. Using the three joints of the four ﬁngers,

they matched also the four mainstays and the eight directions (3.9a).

This group represents a much reduced reper tor y if compared to the

hand signs in earlier materials. The ritual use of hand signs typically

accompanied incantations or ecstatic excursions to the cosmic net. In

the context of this practice, it was acceptable to use one hand to make

ﬁnger signs or apply pressure to relevant spots, such as those symbol-

izing the eight trigrams, the seven stars of the Dipper, or the twelve

zodiac positions. In addition, cosmic patter ns laid out on the palm of

the hand played a role similar to that of the diviner’s compass and

could be used in a lar ge variety of contexts and functions. Only later

were ﬁnger patter ns linked with the bowl of the Dipper and applied

to lar ger cosmic control.
This discussion has focused on ritual texts contained in the Daoist
canon that present hand signs, describing their historical unfolding

and dif ferent typologies. It has become clear that Daoist hand signs

in their for mal presentation and ritual use developed under the

inﬂuence of Buddhist mudras but were by no means a simple imita-

tion of the latter. Rather, beginning with the Tang dynasty, Daoists com-

bined the for mal symbols and styles used in Buddhist mudras with their

own ﬁnger techniques and cosmological systems. As the ter minolog y
252 Mitamura Keiko

changed from the Buddhist-based
yin
(seal) to the Daoist
jue
(sign),
so the tradition adapted and integrated the Buddhist patter ns into its
own worldview, signifying a shift toward a uniquely Daoist practice that

had its roots in medieval techniques of pressing cer tain sacred spots

in the body for greater spiritual efﬁcacy.
Beginning with the Nor ther n Song and the ﬂourishing of thunder
rites, hand signs were no longer used only in meditative and exorcis-

tic practices but were reoriented to playing an active role in the sum-

moning of the Five Thunders, as documented in the
Daofa huiyuan
.
Here many varieties of thunder styles and sword signs appear, used in

the dif ferent thunder rites and becoming more intensely linked with

them over time. In the ritual texts, ﬁnger techniques recorded both

before and after the Song tend to be described as central for estab-

lishing the bodily integrity and har mony of the practitioner. They are

also essential in increasing and maintaining the Daoist’s cosmic pow-

ers and protection. They are intimately connected to methods of

guarding the body against baleful inﬂuences that were already im-

por tant in ancient times. The various ways of exer ting ﬁnger pressure

and/or pressing impor tant spots in the body underlie the Daoist tra-

dition of hand signs, assuring that, despite massive Buddhist inﬂuence,

the signs and their usages remain ﬁr mly embedded in the indigenous

r
eligion.
To
conclude, I would like to emphasize two points. In Buddhist mu-
dras, the right hand is seen as the pure and the left hand as the im-

pure one. This order of things is completely reversed in Daoism, in

which the left hand, being of yang nature, represents cosmic purity.
7
Above and beyond this basic cosmic distinction, Daoist ritual texts pay

close attention to the exact function and purpose of a given hand sign

and assign a speciﬁc hand in proper accordance with the talisman used

and the incantation chanted.
The other point I would like to make is that in cer tain extra-
canonical texts, such as the
Longhu shan bichuan shoujue
(Secretly Trans-
mitted Hand Signs from Mount Longhu; see Saso 1978), numerous

hand signs are immediately patter ned on Buddhist mudras.
8
In ma-
terials contained in the
Daozang,
and those discussed in this study
(which date from the Tang through the Ming dynasties) on the other

hand, signs dif ferent from Buddhist mudras tend to dominate. The

exact relationship between these two kinds of sources and/or tradi-

tions within Daoism is yet to be deter mined.
T
ranslated by Livia Kohn
Daoist Hand Signs and Buddhist Mudras 253

Notes
1. See Yoshioka 1952; Misaki 1991; Xiao 1991; 1992. The latter especially
examines the Buddhist inﬂuence on Daoist rites and signs, examining in par-
ticular the
Y
ujia jiyao jiu anan tuoluoni yankou guiyi jing
(S
u
tra of
A
nanda’s
Salviﬁc Dh
a
rani and Rites for Feeding Flaming Mouths, Contained in the Es-
sential Collection of Yogic Practices, T. 1318, 21.468 – 472) by Amoghavajra,

r
enowned Tantric master of the eighth centur y.
2. Yoshioka (1952) in this context studied especially the
Qiankun yizhang
tu
(Char ts of Palm Signs of the Trigrams of Heaven and Ear th), a text of the
mid-Ming; the
Fengxue jiaozi shu
(Book on Teachings of W ind and Snow) of
the late Ming; and the
Jilian keyi
(Rules and Obser vances for Sacriﬁces and
Puriﬁcations) of the Qing. He also considered the
Liujia feishen shu
(The Six
Jia Gods’ Ar t of Flying), the
Bamen yanqin shenshu
(Divine Book of the Beasts
of the Eight Gates), and the
W
anfa fanzong
(Tradition of the Myriad Meth-
ods) of late imperial origin. In addition, Michael Saso (1978) under took a

study of these and similar materials.
3. See
O
fuchi 1983, 1:11–19, 221–225; Liu 1984, 2:80 –98. Liu found that
in present-day Taiwan, redhead Daoists of the nor th have a reper toire of four-

teen hand signs, while blackhead Daoists of the south commonly use eleven.

Each sign symbolizes one par ticular deity, object, movement, or ritual action.

They apply the same ter m, independent of whether the sign is made by two

hands, one hand, or only cer tain ﬁngers.
4. On the text, see Boltz 1987, 30, 47; Loon 1979; Yoshioka 1961, 60.

5. On these, see Sauder n 1960; Kokusho 1987; Nan 1990; 1992.

6. Another text that has the same phenomenon is the
Gong yang yishi
(Rit-
ual Obser vances of Rites of Nur turing, T. 859, 18.177–181).
7. This is clearly spelled out in the
T
ianhuang yuce
(ch. 3) and in the
Zhuguo
biyao,
the latter linking the left hand with the sun (yang/purity) and the right
hand with the moon (yin/impurity). See Yoshioka 1952.
8. The text contains seventy-ﬁve hand signs, most of which are basically mu-
dras, executed either by one hand or two. Texts in the Daoist canon, on the

contrar y, have more signs involving ﬁnger pressure. Why this dif ference? Who

was using which? How did they evolve historically? How do they appear in
late-imperial materials? All these are unanswered questions that await fur ther
study, for which a good resource may be the recently published ritual collec-

tion by Wang Qiugui (1997).
Bibliography
Andersen, Poul. 1991. “ Taoist Ritual Texts and Traditions with Special Refer-
ence to
Bugang,
the Cosmic Dance.” Ph.D. diss., University of Copenhagen.
Bokenkamp, Stephen. 1983. “Sources of the Ling-pao Scriptures.” In
T
antric
and Taoist Studies,
ed. by Michel Strickmann, 2:434 – 486. Br ussels: Institut
Belge des Hautes Etudes Chinoises.
Boltz, Judith M. 1987.
A Sur vey of Taoist Literature: Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries
.
Berkeley: University of Califor nia, Center for Chinese Studies.
254 Mitamura Keiko

Kokusho K ank
o
kai, ed. 1987.
K
aitei zuin taikan.
T
okyo: Kokusho kank
o
kai.
Liu Zhiwan. 1984.
Ch
u
goku d
o
ky
o
no matsuri to shink
o
.
T
okyo:
O
f
u
sha.
Liu Zhong yu. 1993. “Qiajue chutan.”
Daojia xue tansuo
10:166 –185.
Loon, Piet van der. 1979. “A Taoist Collection of the Four teenth Centur y.” In
Studia Sino -Mongolica: Festschrift for Herber t Franke,
ed. by Wolfgang Bauer,
401– 405. W iesbaden: Franz Steiner: Münchener Ostasiatische Studien.
Misaki R y
o
sh
u
. 1991. “Ch
u
goku, Nihon no mikky
o
ni oker u d
o
ky
o
teki y
o
so.”
In
Nihon, Ch
u
goku no sh
u
ky
o
bunka no kenky
u
,
ed. by Sakai Tadao, Fukui Fu-
mimasa, and Yamada Toshiaki, 115 –154. Tokyo: Hirakawa.
Mitamura Keiko. 1998. “K agisho ni mier u shuketsu no heny
o
.”
T
o
h
o
sh
u
ky
o
92:15 –30.
Nan Huaijin, ed. 1990.
Mijiao tuyin ji
vol. 1. Taipei: Laogu wenhua.
———, ed. 1992.
Mijiao tuyin ji
vol. 2. Taipei: Laogu wenhua.
O
fuchi Ninji, ed. 1983.
Ch
u
gokujin no sh
u
ky
o
girei.
T
okyo: Fukutake.
Or zech, Charles D. 1989. “Seeing Chen-yen Buddhism.”
Histor y of Religions
29.2:87–114.
Reiter, Florian C. 1990.
Der Perlenbeutel aus den drei Höhlen: Arbeitsmaterialien
zum Taoismus der frühen T’ang-Zeit
. Asiatische Forschungen vol. 12. W ies-
baden, Ger many: Otto Har rassowitz.
Sakade Yoshinobu. 1989. “Son Shibaku ni oker u ir y
o
to D
o
ky
o
.” In
Senkinh
o
kenky
u
shir y
o
sh
u
,
ed. as
T
o
y
o
igaku zenpon s
o
sho
52– 65. Osaka: Orient Pub-
lishing.
———. 1992. “D
o
ky
o
no jyufu ni tsuite.”
K
ansai daigaku bungaku ronsh
u
42.3:59 –92.
Saso, Michael R. 1978.
D
o
ky
o
hiketsu sh
u
sei
. Tokyo: R y
u
kei shosha.
Saunders, E. Dale. 1960.
Mudra: A Study of Symbolic Gestures in Japanese Bud-
dhist Sculpture
. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
W
ang Qiugui. 1997.
Zhongguo chuantong keyi benhui pian Fujian sheng Long Yan
shi Dongxiao zhen Lüshan jiao Guangji tan keyi ben.
Ta
ipei: Xinwenfeng.
Wa
r
e, James R. 1966.
Alchemy, Medicine and Religion in the China of
a.d.
320
.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Xiao Dengfu. 1991.
Daojiao xingdou fuyin yu fojiao mizong.
Ta
ipei: Xinwenfeng.
———. 1992.
Daojiao shuyi yu mizong dianji.
Ta
ipei: Xinwenfeng.
Y
oshioka Yoshitoyo. 1952. “D
o
ky
o
no t
o
ketsu inkei ni tsuite.”
T
aish
o
daigaku
gakuh
o
.
Reprinted in
Y
oshioka Yoshitoyo ch
o
sakush
u
3:2–18. Tokyo: Satsuki
shob
o
.
———. 1961. “Bukky
o
jukai shis
o
no Ch
u
goku teki sh
u
y
o
.”
Sh
u
ky
o
kenky
u
35.1:51–72.
Daoist Hand Signs and Buddhist Mudras 255

12
Documents Used in Rituals
of Merit in Taiwanese Daoism
Maruyama Hiroshi
There are many dif ferent angles from which one can approach the
study of Daoist ritual, but my speciﬁc interest focuses on the contents

and str ucture of the written documents used in them, and I tr y to un-

derstand their meaning within the lar ger religious worldview and prac-

tice of Daoism. The use of written documents is unique to Daoist rit-

ual and is one feature that distinguishes it from Buddhist, Confucian,

and popular rites. It is essential in deﬁning Daoist ritual as Daoist and

thus car ries an impor tant weight in the for mation of Daoist identity.

Rites in general ser ve to restore and reinforce identity by allowing com-

mitment and belief to be strengthened through repetitive and securely

predictable actions. A clearly str uctured and systematic interaction with

the other world in this context ser ves to create a sense of belonging

and meaning for the Daoist follower. Written documents, both through

their high for mality and legal jar gon as well as through the various

rites, divine personages, and priestly empower ment associated with

them, function to establish a for malized system of universal order. The

predeﬁned ritual patter n of interacting with a hierarchically str uctured

and bureaucratically or ganized other world grants Daoists a sense of

control over their destiny and a ﬁr m position in the lar ger universe.

W
ritten documents are central to this self-deﬁnition of Daoists as mem-
bers of the celestial or ganization, ser ving as the main means by which

they communicate with the other worldly powers and as the key to un-

derstanding the role of the ritual Daoist master as acting celestial

ofﬁcial.
By presenting written documents in a ritual context, Daoists con-
vey their wishes, intentions, and even orders to the other world. As

there are multiple situations in which divine inter vention is desirable,
256

Daoists have developed a lar ge reper toire of dif ferent for ms and for-
mats of written documents. There are, for example, the announcement

(
biao
),
the memorial (
shu
),
the mandate (
die
),
the invitation (
tie
),
the
accusation (
zhuang
),
the talisman order (
fuming;
also “symbol order”),
the petition (
zhang
),
and the placard (
bang;
see Lager wey 1987). Each
of them is uniquely used in cer tain speciﬁc contexts to convey par tic-

ular content to deities of speciﬁc positions.
W
ritten ritual materials of these various types are summarily re-
fer red to as “ritual documents” (
wenjian
).
They are indispensible for
any successful ritual per for med by a Daoist of High Merit (Gaogong

daoshi) and are collected variously. For our purposes, I would like to

focus par ticularly on documents used in rituals of merit as they are

per for med by Daoists of souther n Taiwan, beginning ﬁrst with a de-

scription of the materials, then looking at their historical antecedents

in and/or relationship with ritual manuals of the Song and Y uan dy-

nasties that have come down to us in the Ming Daoist canon. Cer tain

key issues emer ge from the study of these dif ferent collections. They

include the problem of standardization, the questions of historical con-

tinuity, and the var ying views of the other world and dif fering rituals

among local lineages. Although the Daoist sense of identity and order

in all cases depends on the for mal, written interaction with the deities,

it is far from standardized and allows for variations both in location

and over time. Examining these variations gives us fur ther insight into

the developments and tendencies Daoist identity has under gone in

the past several centuries and where it is headed today.
Previous Research and Available Sources
The study of the use and function of memorials and other documents

in Daoist ritual is highly specialized; therefore, only few previous works

have been published on the subject. Most impor tant are Kristofer

Schipper’s studies of the Prayer for Peace Of fering (
qi’an jiao
) and the
presentation of the memorial and the role of the immor tals’ ledgers

in it (1974; 1977). They are, however, only indirectly concer ned with

rituals of merit, which are my main focus. More per tinent are chap-

ters 10 through 13 of John Lager wey’s work (1987), which discuss litur-

gies under taken on behalf of the dead and, therefore, also rituals of

merit. Beginning with the placard that is posted at the site of the rit-

ual, he explains the various documents involved in some detail.
Among Japanese studies, there is foremost the pioneering collec-
tion on Chinese ritual by
O
fuchi Ninji (1983). Here the various doc-
Documents Used in Rituals of Merit in Taiwanese Daoism 257

uments involved in rituals of merit are given detailed attention and
thorough presentation (1983, 650 – 677). The purpose is primarily to

make the documents accessible to the scholarly world, and thus the

collection has ample reprints of original sources. Tr ue to its purpose,

the work leaves the materials to speak for themselves or to be analyzed

in the future and does not delve into their historical provenance or

impor tance.
Beyond these specialist studies, there is the work of the Taiwanese
folklorist Liu Zhiwan, who deals mainly with the Prayer for Peace Of-

fering and the Wang ye Of fering (1983). However, Liu has, at least so

far, not published any study that par ticularly treats the rituals of merit

of souther n Taiwan. Then there is the collection of the sacred texts

used by the Xinzhu Daoist Master Zhuang, collected and edited by

Michael Saso (1974). But this does not contain complete materials per-

taining to rituals of merit. Most recently, there is the work by Lü

Chuikuan (1994), but it too has nothing much to say about our topic.

My main focus lies in the written documents used in rituals of merit

more so than in the Prayer for Peace Of fering, and within that frame-

work I am primarily concer ned with the relationship of presently used

materials to those transmitted in ritual manuals since the Song, no-

tably those that deal with the tradition of Yellow Register Rites (
huang-
lu zhai
).
I ﬁnd this study both relevant and highly accessible, given the
present state of the sources.
As regards the sources, my own ﬁeldwork has provided me with two
sets of ritual texts used by the Daoist priest Du Yongchang. A resident

of Yong’an village in Gaoxiong County, he is a representative of the

Zheng yi tradition and regularly uses the materials he kindly made ac-

cessible to me. The ﬁrst set of texts is a collection that the ofﬁciant

keeps by his side for reference when he writes out the for mal memo-

rial for the ceremony. Entitled
Gongde wenjian
(Ritual Documents for
Rites of Merit), this collection goes back to the ar rangement by the

T
ainan Daoist Zeng Chunshou and consists of two volumes of ﬁfty-nine
and ﬁfty-seven pages, respectively. W ithin the catalog published by

Kristofer Schipper (1966), manuscript number 180 should be used in

rituals of merit, especially in the context of under world rites, going

back to the same tradition as this collection. I will, in the following,

r
efer to it as the
Zeng Collection
.
The second set of texts I was for tunate to receive from Master Du
contains the materials he actually used in a ritual of merit, which was

held in December, 1992, at the Huang family residence in Zhongxiao

Street of the Hamlet of Yong’an. It involved the tenfold liberation of
258 Mar uyama Hiroshi

the souls of the dead, celebrated on the second day of the Of fering.
Giving in to my pleading, Master Du transcribed the documents he

used in a separate volume, which I will here call the
Du Collection
. The
two sets of materials for m the backbone of my research.
Beyond that, there are the various ritual texts assembled in the col-
lection by
O
fuchi (1983). His materials go back to the well-known
T
ainan Daoist Chen Rongsheng, who uses them in the rites he cele-
brates. They are comparable in str ucture and content to the two sets

I received from Master Du.
To
compare the three sets of materials, I would like to point out their
commonalities and dif ferences, using the actual per for mance of the

ritual as I obser ved it in Yong’an village as my basic standard of judg-

ment. First, the texts collected by
O
fuchi contain ﬁfty-four items that
are ar ranged according to the order of the ritual program, each of them

explained. They include items necessar y for all stages of the rite, such

as the opening of the road to the nether world, the presentation of the

memorial, the preparation of the writ of pardon, the writ of pardon

from the Pool of Blood, the setting up of the sacred altar, the deliver y

of the memorial, the ordering of the talisman lads, the provision of man-

dates at the audiences, the replenishing of the treasur y, the sublima-

tion of the souls, the recitation of the precious litanies, the of fering of

medicines, the announcement of the Ten Directions, the summoning

of the under world ofﬁcers, and many more. The materials are pre-

sented in an accessible manner and can be easily used as comparative

r
eferences. The announcement is named and described as consisting
of four kinds of mandates and six rectangular envelopes, but its con-

tents are not given; also, the talisman of the talisman order is not given

in its original for m; and the mandates used in the Division of Lamps

(
fendeng
) and Rite of Universal Salvation (
pudu
) are abbreviated be-
cause they are the same as used in the ritual of Of fering. In some cases,

texts that should be par tially dif ferent are entirely identical, such as the

mandate of money transfer for lost souls and to the treasur y ofﬁcers.
The
Zeng Collection
has a number of unique characteristics. First, it
is a tremendously practical and clearly ar ranged manual that allows
the priest of High Merit easy access to all the infor mation he needs.

It ﬁrst presents an over view of the various kinds of announcements

and mandates used in the preparator y Announcement ceremony and
in the for mal ritual itself, then details their str ucture and contents. In

the section on the Announcement, it has seven types of announce-

ments, eight kinds of mandates to ofﬁcials and generals, four for ms

of written announcements, and two kinds of talisman orders. Follow-
Documents Used in Rituals of Merit in Taiwanese Daoism 259

ing this, the text presents eight models for placards, both lar ge and
small, and ﬁve for mats of memorials. This text also contains cer tain

stylistic patter ns and speciﬁc infor mation, such as parallel verse, for-

mal titles and insignia, the name of the sponsoring group and family,

as well as slogans to be put on banners.
In the section on documents to be used in the for mal ritual itself,
the collection presents three kinds of memorials, ﬁve types of written

announcements, twelve kinds of mandates, seven kinds of talisman or-

ders, as well as songs on cherishing the womb. It is par ticularly note-

wor thy that the section on talisman orders divides clearly according

to the for m and style of the talisman involved. The only documents

missing here are the basic text of the writ of pardon and the mandate

for the replenishing of the treasur y. It is thus not entirely complete.

The missing sections can, however, be easily supplemented on the ba-

sis of
O
fuchi’s collection, so that a complete picture of Taiwanese
Daoist ritual documents can be gained.
The
Du Collection
dif fers from the other two sources described so
far in that it is clearly a revision of materials used and bur ned in real

rituals. It contains the sacred documents as they were actually used in

a recently celebrated rite and speciﬁes the details of the texts down

to the type of paper and color of ink employed. This, as well as the

unique for mat it gives for the talisman order, makes it a special and

precious collection. Never theless, it is not entirely handwritten; areas

other than the celebrants’ speciﬁc names are often typed or copied

from handwritten originals. Still, even these have handwritten notes

and talismans added by Master Du, which really make the collection

invaluable. Listing all the various documents in a table comparing the

three sources, it appears that the
Du Collection
has all the dif ferent types
employed—a grand total of for ty- one documents. The total table

would come to ninety-two sheets, listing Du’s materials as the standard

on the right and the comparable materials from Zeng and
O
fuchi on
the left.
All three of them, although not complete each in itself, match one
another ver y closely and taken together provide an excellent source

of basic materials on Daoist ritual documents in Taiwan.
The Documents and Their Contents
Using the
Du Collection
as the standard and most basic source, the fol-
lowing discussion examines the various documents used in rituals of
260 Mar uyama Hiroshi

merit in Taiwanese Daoism and studies some documents of impor tance
both in ter ms of content and volume. At the same time, I will also tr y

to ﬁnd matching materials in texts of the Song and Y uan dynasties, as

they are now contained in the Daoist canon of the Ming, in an attempt

to point out continuities and diver gences over the ages.
A standard for the volume used in the rituals, that is, the number
of documents dispatched at any given stage, the
Du Collection
includes
twenty-three documents used at announcement ceremonies, six doc-

uments sent as writs of pardon, thir ty used when chanting precious

litanies to the under world kings, and twelve orders to the talisman lads.

It also uses highly special materials in the ritual of untying the knots

and in the replenishing of the treasur y. W ith this in mind, let us now

look at the four main kinds of documents used.
Announcement.
During a two -day ritual of merit, an announcement is made ﬁrst to

the various deities. This begins by sending a message to the Palace of

the Three Pure Ones and Seven Treasures (Sanqing qibao gong), dis-

patching a for mal message to the various super vising ofﬁcials, gen-

erals, and deities of the soil who have their ofﬁces here. This is known

as the three rectangular envelopes (
sanfang han
).
In the ritual cele-
brated by Master Du, he also sent of f orders to a number of dif ferent

deities that ser ved to protect the purity of his altar platfor m. They in-

cluded the messengers and troops of the various celestial ofﬁces, the

city god of Gaoxiong County, the two soul-hunting generals Shenhu

(Spirit Tiger) and Heqiao (How Proud), as well as various lesser lo-

cal gods, including Tudi gong (Ear th God). They were all given or-

ders to save the soul of ancestress He Jinmei, who mar ried into the

Huang family. There were, then, ﬁve dif ferent kinds of mandates.

Once the three rectangular envelopes and ﬁve mandates had been

prepared for send- of f into the other world, a written announcement

of this pending deliver y was made to the under world ofﬁcer in char ge

of talismans (Xiajie zhifu li). This written announcement of deliver y

originally consisted of twelve documents, which in the ceremony were

joined in one mandate. In addition to this mandate, there were twelve

talismans, one for each depar tment of the under world. In a for mal

rite of ordering the talisman lads, these were entr usted to be taken

below and thus became secondar y talismans. We will come back to

this later.
The documents used in the preparator y Announcement are also
Documents Used in Rituals of Merit in Taiwanese Daoism 261

found in earlier materials. For example, Jin Y unzhong’s
Shangqing ling-
bao dafa
(Great Rites of the Highest Clarity and Numinous Treasure
T
raditions, HY 1213) and Wang Qizhen’s work of the same title ( HY
1211), both of the thir teenth centur y, contain representative ritual doc-
uments used in similar ceremonies and of a highly similar nature. To

distinguish the two texts, I will call them
Jin Dafa
and
W
ang Dafa,
re -
spectively. They match Master Du’s per for mance, except that they pre-

scribe for mal letters to the other world to be dispatched three times

and that the deities addressed are a great deal more numerous (see

also Lager wey 1987, 174 –175). For example, the
Jin Dafa
lists 118
deities (28.17b–20a), and the
W
ang Dafa
has even more (62.24a–26b,
63.58b– 61a, 64.59a– 63a). However, the two texts have in common with

Master Du’s practice that they begin their announcements with letters

addressed to the Three Pure Ones, then proceed to the local city god,

gods of the soil, and the various divine ofﬁcials in the Bureaus of

Heaven, Ear th, and Water. This shows that, at least in rituals of merit,

the or ganization, ranking, and str ucture of the Daoist pantheon has

re
mained constant.
As for the actual content of the announcement documents, the
Du
Collection
says:
Respectfully and sincerely, your ser vant prays for mercy and grace from
the Great Dao. I humbly beg that you grant my wish. From now on, day
and night, let us receive your radiance of grace and accept our testi-
mony of deliverance and salvation. To this end, I humbly present the
various talismans and writs I have here, properly sealed and executed

by me. (Line 13)
A comparable phrasing is found in the
Jin Dafa,
in the section that
contains the announcement to Jade Clarity, to be dispatched as par t
of the Yellow Register rite. It says:
Respectfully and sincerely, your ser vant prays for the mercy of the Dao.
I humbly beg that you let me, your humble ser vant, open salvation for
the deceased and make it known to all the per fected ofﬁcers in the var-
ious depar tments that we are preparing to per for m ceremonies in ac-
cordance with the divine order. Let your radiance of grace descend

upon us and accept our testimony of cultivation and worship. (28.21a)
These, then, are fundamentally the same and, as a more detailed ex-
amination of their contents reveals, present ver y much the same top-

ics. There are no major dif ferences in the moder n documents used

by Master Du and those recorded from the Song dynasty.
262 Mar uyama Hiroshi

W
rit of Pardon.
The ritual of the writ of pardon, according to the
Du Collection,
involves
three talismans: the Per fect Talisman of the Destr uction of Pur gator y
(
Po diyu zhenfu
),
the Per fect Talisman to Rescue the Benighted Souls
(
Ba youhun zhenfu
),
and the Talisman Order of the Nine Dragons of
the Easter n Ultimate (
Dongji jiulong fuming
).
It begins with requesting
their descent from the spirit world, and to this end a written an-

nouncement is dispatched, known as the Announcement of the De-

str uction of Pur gator y. This announcement for ms a set together with

the writ of pardon, written under the authority of the Three Heavens

and sent to the under world, and with the announcement sent to the

meritorious ofﬁcials of the Realm of Ear th.
The third of the talismans used here, the Talisman Order of the
Nine Dragons, can be traced to the Six Dynasties. Here we have the

Ziran zhaiyi
(Obser vances for the Rite of Spontaneity, HY 523), a rit-
ual manual of the Lingbao tradition. It says:
“Humbly bowing, I pray to the Highest Lord, lofty sages, and great spir-
its, as well as all the many per fected and numinous, wishing that they

pour down the richness of the great compassion upon me. May they
create numinosity in proper response [to this prayer] and deliver us
all to the blessed state of salvation. I pray: Please bring down your lim-
itless grace!”
W
ith this, summon the ﬂying celestials and spirit beings from above,
r
eceive the Talisman Order of the Nine Dragons from the Green Palace
of Easter n Florescence, and hand them down to the investigative de-
par tments of the Ten Directions. (5b– 6a)
This explains the celestial location and ritual use of the talisman but
does not describe its shape or contents. A somewhat clearer descrip-

tion is found in the
Jin Dafa,
which lists a total of twelve talismans to
be used in traditional Lingbao rites (
zhai)
. They include all three tal-
ismans still used today as well as the Numinous Talisman of Long Life

(
Changsheng lingfu
),
the Per fected Talisman of Salvation from Suf fer-
ing (
Jiuku zhenfu
),
the Talisman Order of Primordial Beginning (
Y
uan-
shi fuming
),
the Talisman Order of Ascension to Per fection (
Deng-
zhen du fuming
),
the Talisman of Teaching the Three Worlds (
Pugao
sanjie fu
),
the Talisman of Penetrating to All Heavens (
Liguan zhutian
fu
),
the Talisman of Controlling the Ear th Gods (
Chizhi dizhi fu
),
the
T
alisman of Joining the Four Protections (
Sizhen hetong fu
),
and the
T
riple Contract of Ascension to Heaven (
Shentian sanquan
).
The three
talismans used in Daoist ritual today, therefore, have a long histor y,
Documents Used in Rituals of Merit in Taiwanese Daoism 263

but their many companions have not sur vived in active ritual
application.
How about the writ of pardon itself, then? The
Jin Dafa
states that
on the evening before the rite proper, three talismans and one regis-

ter need to be called down. They are the Talisman of Salvation from

Suf fering, the Talisman to Rescue the Benighted Souls, the Talisman

Order of the Nine Dragons, and the Register of Rebir th in Heaven

(
Shengtian lu
).
The last is described more speciﬁcally as the Highest
Precious Register of Ordering the Pardon for Rebir th in Heaven (
Ta i -
shang chishe shengtian baolu
),
 but it does not play any role in the mod-
er n
Du Collection,
which in its stead has the writ of pardon. Still, both
are broadly similar in that they are orders issued to the under world

authorities with the aim of gaining the release of the dead from their

sins and suf fering.
In the
W
ang Dafa,
on the other hand, there is a speciﬁc document
entitled “Writ of Pardon” (44.12b), which contains materials that are

almost identical to those used in Daoist ritual today. For example, the

writ of pardon as contained in the
Du Collection
begins with a descrip-
tion of the world at the time of creation:
Then the kalpa Dragon Countr y (Longhan) commenced, and the per-
fect pivot of the origin took shape in symbolic writings. (Line 3)
To
 compare, the
W
ang Dafa
has
The Talisman Order of Primordial Beginnning, since the kalpa Dragon

Countr y, has been transmitted in sacred verse and hidden, symbolic
writings. (44.12b)
Highly similar is the description of the emer gence of human suf fer-
ing in the world. Here the
Du Collection
has
Then there was greed and attachment in the world, and people came
to be immersed in an ocean of suf fering. (Line 5)
The
W
ang Dafa
, in comparison, says:
Thereupon people were immersed in suf fering, and the fate of the

world was deter mined by greed and attachment. (44.12b)
Again, the latter section of the writ of pardon in the
Du Collection
r
eads:
Whatever they have done in past generations or in this life, to go against
Heaven or put a burden on Ear th, all disloyalty, disobedience, and in-

justice, whatever sins of the three kar mic factors and the six senses,

whether serious or light: pardon and remove them all! In accord with
264 Mar uyama Hiroshi

the documents of this ritual, deliver them from their suf fering and, ac-
cording to their fr uits, cause them to ascend on high.
As for all the other orphaned souls and obstr ucted souls of the six
modes of existence and the four modes of bir th, may they ascend in

accordance with their destiny and ﬁnd happiness in a new life.
Let all those in char ge of the infer nal ofﬁces of the Long Night in
the Nine Obscurities and the buf falo -headed clerks be promoted one

degree in rank. Let the generals and ofﬁcers who have watched over
the altar, their subordinates and assistants, the agents of the symbols
[talismans] and ofﬁcers of merit in char ge at the time of the ritual also

advance one grade. In future whenever there is a great ceremony of
salvation to rescue those in the under world, car r y out [the orders] ac-
cording to the r ules and regulations.
Oh! The Great Dao is for mless; it changes as the situation requires.
(Line 17; see Lager wey 1987, 208 –209)
A highly similar passage occurs in the
W
ang Dafa:
Whatever they have done in the past to go against Heaven or put a bur-

den on Ear th, all disobedience and disloyalty, all inhumanity and in-

justice, they have wrongly suf fered the punishment of death. Whatever
sins they have committed through their six senses and six desires,
whether serious or light: pardon and remove them all! In accord with
the proper talisman order of this ritual, deliver them from darkness
and suf fering and let them ascend to the realm of bliss. . . .
As for all the other orphaned souls and obstr ucted souls of the six
modes of existence and the four modes of bir th, may they ascend in

accordance with their destiny and ﬁnd happiness in a new life. . . .
Let all the numinous ofﬁcers that hover near the sacred altar, all
their subordinates and assistants, all the swift messengers car r ying the

talismans be promoted one degree in rank. Let the buf falo -headed
clerks in char ge of the Long Night of Fengdu, the great demon kings,
the administrators of the Nine Obscurities, the City God, the Ear thgod
of the village, and all the many ofﬁcials and generals who have aided
the ritual also be advanced one grade.
From now on and in future whenever there is a great Yellow Regis-
ter rite or a rite of Universal Salvation, any ceremony geared to save

those in the under world, car r y out [the orders] according to the r ules
and regulations.
Oh! The numinous power of the Great Dao resides in the manifes-
tation and transfor mation of the gods. (Line 17; see Lager wey 1987,
208 –209)
Comparing these various citations, it is easy to see that there is a close
match in wording and content between the moder n
Du Collection
and
Documents Used in Rituals of Merit in Taiwanese Daoism 265

the traditional
W
ang Dafa,
a match not found with materials contained
in the
Jin Dafa
. This allows the conclusion that the writ of pardon used
in Daoist rituals in Tainan today is not par t of the tradition of the
Jin
Dafa
but follows that of the
W
ang Dafa
.
There are some fur ther points of interest regarding the writ of par-
don. For example, the
W
ang Dafa
has both a writ of pardon and a writ
of summons and explains that ordinar y ritual manuals do not contain
any versions of these documents. According to him, in his day both

kinds of documents were often written infor mally by contemporar y

practitioners, using a style that did not confor m to that of the stan-

dard manuals and exer ting an increasingly power ful inﬂuence on the

tradition. He regrets the loss of the less common for ms and explains

that he has decided to preser ve all varieties in his collection, yet edits

them in the process.
To
understand this historical dimension and editing process some-
what better, cer tain passages are of par ticular relevance. There is ﬁrst,

as John Lager way has pointed out (1987, 209), a critical review of the

r
egister used in the talisman enunciation ceremony. Although there
is no such register in the moder n
Du Collection,
its writ of pardon closely
r
esembles it and, in fact, takes its place in the ritual. For this reason,
the criticism also applies to materials still in use today. It was composed

by Ning Quanzhen (1101–1181) and is cited in the
Jin Dafa
(32.14b–
16a), the
W
ang Dafa
(ch. 44), and also in Jiang Shuyu’s (1156 –1217)
W
ushang huanglu dazhai licheng yi
(Highest Obser vances for Setting Up
the Great Yellow Register Rite, HY 508, ch. 44). It can be summarized

in ﬁve points:
1.The descent of the register from Heaven is described in an
exaggerated fashion.
2.The end of the document does not have a proper order of
execution; instead, it ﬁrst needs an order from Heaven, and
only then can it be executed.
3.Examples of sins committed are too numerous and too extreme.

4.After the date, the names of the celestial executives are given,
which is too much like the order of pardon issued by the ear thly
authorities.
5. The phrasing and str ucture of the register is too much like
the order of pardon issued by the ear thly authorities; this is
not suitable for a writ of pardon addressed to the under world

r
ulers.
The points raised second, four th, and ﬁfth apply equally to the Song
materials and the moder n
Du Collection
. As raised in the second point,
266 Mar uyama Hiroshi

the
Du Collection
deﬁnitely concludes with cer tain phrases, such as
cunxin
(visualize in your mind) and
chenggao fengxing
(receive orders
and properly worship), which indicate that a direct order from Heaven
was required for the text’s execution. It also, matching the four th point

of the criticism, lists a number of celestial executives (
tianxiang
),
such
as Messenger Xu, Operator Jia, Super visor Lu, Celestial Master Zhang,

and Nonultimate Spirit Y in. Then again, in accordance with point ﬁve,

it contains mandates along the ver y same lines as found in the order

of pardon addressed to the r ulers of the under world, as it is included

in the
W
ang Dafa
(44.13b–16a). All these points, then, suggest strongly
that the writ of pardon used by Master Du follows the tradition of the

W
ang Dafa
.
The Precious Litany to the Rulers of Darkness.
The
Du Collection
contains ten talisman orders used in combination
with ten scrolls of litanies to be chanted to the under world kings. At

the end of the ﬁrst scroll, it prescribes the issuing of talisman orders

to the nonultimate worlds in the ten directions, beginning with the

east. These are then joined by announcements issued to the crane-

mounted immor tal ofﬁcials and by mandates given to the souls of the

dead. This combination greatly increases the numbers of the various

documents found in the
Du Collection
. Also, the ten talisman orders
each have a dif ferent for mat and shape. Their efﬁcacy, as already

pointed out in the ancient
Duren jing
(Scripture of Universal Salva-
tion, HY 1), power fully dispels all diseases of hearing, eyesight, speech,

and movement and does away with chronic ailments and repeated pat-

ter ns of suf fering. They also ser ve to grant successful growth and de-

velopment, the discover y of precious objects, and the revival of the

dead (ch. 5).
As the talisman litur g y is chanted in the rituals of merit, the power
of the talisman orders is activated to ef fect a kind of bodily resur rec-

tion of the dead, their sublimation into a more celestial for m. Similar

patter ns are also found in the traditional ritual manuals of the Song

to Ming dynasties. Here we have the
Duren shangjing dafa
(Great Rites
of the Supreme Scripture of Universal Salvation, HY 219), which con-

tains a section entitled “ Tenfold Rever ted Numen” (
Shi zhuanhui ling-
pin
, ch. 9), as well as Lin Lingzhen’s
Jidu jinshu
(Golden Book of Res-
cue and Salvation, HY 466), which describes a Rite of Tenfold Retur n

(
shihui zhai
) and the sacred space to be erected for the rites of uni-
versal salvation, which too involve the Tenfold Retur n (chs. 235 –236).

The same text, fur ther more, contains a number of talismans to be used
Documents Used in Rituals of Merit in Taiwanese Daoism 267

in these rites (270.29ab), but the latter are entirely dif ferent from any-
thing contained in the
Du Collection
. In the light of these earlier sources,
the idea of the Tenfold Rever ted Numen can be described as yet an-

other feature of moder n Daoist ritual that has been transmitted from

the Song and Ming.
The Talisman-Matching Lads.
According to the
Du Collection,
the ceremony addressed to the Talisman-
Matching Lads (Hefu tongzi) involves the issuing of twelve mandates

to the Lads, which are parallel to the written announcements that were

made on the previous day of the ritual and sent of f to the twelve r ulers

of the under world. Both ser ve to ef fect the release of the dead from

pur gator y, and both are written in the for mat of a talismanic half that

has to be matched with its proper counterpar t in the other world. The

task of the twelve Lads is to send of f the talismans and to see to the

proper matching of the talismanic mandates.
The Lads appear ﬁrst in Six Dynasties texts. The
Mingzhen ke
(Reg-
ulations of the Luminous Per fected, HY 1400) has a Lad of Highest

W
isdom (Shangzhi tongzi) who resides in the nor thwester n cor ner of
the universe and addresses questions about the under world, as he is

invited to see it by the Heavenly Wor thy of Primordial Beginning

(Y uanshi tianzun) (1a). Also, the idea of one or a group of divine Lads

assisting in salvation is already present in Lingbao rites of the same

period. However, the notion of a separate ceremony that focuses on

their role in matching the talismanic mandates appears only since the

Song. The expression “Lad Ceremony” (
tongzi ke
) is ﬁrst found in the
Jin Dafa
(44.19b), but even here it is not described in any detail. In
the
W
ang Dafa,
on the other hand, there is a brief mention—without
detailed explanation—of cer tain talismanic documents used in com-

parable ceremonies (64.42b– 43a). The ceremony involves twelve man-

dates entr usted to the Lads as well as twelve mandates directed to the

Nine Hells below. Their content lar gely matches that of the materials

found in the
Du Collection
today.
For example, the latter, in its written mandate to the under world
r
ulers, has:
The above listed talisman should be transmitted to the Under world
Ruler of W ind and Thunder who resides in the east. It is to be sent

through the host of Precious Radiance Lads. They, once ar rived in the

under world, will see to the proper matching of the talisman. Then the

sins [of the dead] can be pardoned in due accordance with the r ules

and regulations. May it be executed in proper order!
268 Mar uyama Hiroshi

A ver y similar statement occurs in its mandate to the Lads:
The above listed talisman should be transmitted to the Lads of Precious
Radiance who reside in the east. Holding the Talisman of the De-

str uction of Pur gator y, they will swiftly go to the Under world Ruler of
Wi
nd and Thunder, and for him see to the proper matching of the tal-
isman. Then the sins [of the dead] can be pardoned in due accordance
with the r ules and regulations. May it be executed in proper order!
The ﬁrst of these passages also appears in the
W
ang Dafa
in a mandate
to be transmitted to the Nine Hells (64.42b– 43a), while the second is
seen in the same text in the mandate to the Lads. Again, the conti-

nuities between the
W
ang Dafa
and the moder n ritual are striking.
Untying the Knots and Filling the Treasur y.
According to the
Du Collection,
at the time of the ceremony of untying
the knots (
jiejie
),
one mandate of liberation is read to the souls of the
dead, then transmitted to them so they can attach it to their bodies.

This document ser ves as for mal proof that the loan from the celestial

treasur y the now-dead person received when he or she was ﬁrst bor n

into the world has been repaid fully. It also testiﬁes to the sums of spirit-

money transmitted to the other world by the descendants of the de-

ceased. Later, at the ceremony for ﬁlling the treasur y (
dianku
),
simi-
lar mandates are issued to the ofﬁcials there. They order the ofﬁcials

to properly receive and administer the sums transfer red and, on their

basis, to remove the names of the dead from the list of debtors. To ac-

tivate both kinds of mandates, the ofﬁciating priest in this world at-

taches a power ful seal to them, the Seal of the Three Treasures (
San-
bao yin
).
Like the talisman orders used earlier, these mandates, too,
come in talismanic for m and have to be properly matched. It is in-

teresting, then, that they are fundamentally treated as talismans.
Comparable documents in historical sources are not found in ei-
ther the
Jin Dafa
or the
W
ang Dafa
. However, there are some ritual man-
uals, dated to the Y uan and Ming dynasties, that have similar materi-

als, notably in the context of the Yellow Register Rite celebrated on

behalf of the living. One of them is the
Jidu jinshu,
which has a man-
date to the under world treasur y that orders the matching of funds and

the release of the souls to the living (313.30ab; see Hou 1975, 152);

another is Zhou Side’s
Jidu dacheng jinshu
(Golden Book of the Great
Completion of Rescue and Salvation,
Zangwai daoshu
17), which has a
yang mandate of ritual merit to be issued to the disciples and a match-

ing yin mandate addressed to the super visors of the ritual (36.17b–
Documents Used in Rituals of Merit in Taiwanese Daoism 269

19a). The same text also contains a yang mandate to receive life, which
is addressed to the worshiping devotee, and a yin mandate of the same

nature, dispatched to the super visors of the treasur y who plan human

life (21.22b). The rite of ﬁlling the treasur y plays an impor tant role

in moder n rituals of merit. However, it is not ver y ancient and goes

back only to materials of the Y uan or Ming dynasties. Why this would

be the case is a question that requires fur ther study.
Conclusion
Let us, therefore, summarize our ﬁndings so far. First, it is a difﬁcult

task to obtain relevant materials on the various sacred documents that

are issued to the gods in the course of a Daoist ritual of merit. There

are dif ferent versions even today, beginning with the collection un-

der taken by
O
fuchi, moving on to the standard reference work used
by practicing Daoists (the
Zeng Collection
),
and ﬁnally coming to the
texts actually used and bur ned in a contemporar y ritual that were

kindly written down by Master Du in what we have called the
Du Col-
lection
. These three are all valid sources, but they dif fer signiﬁcantly
enough to preclude the establishment of a tr uly standardized canon

of moder n ritual documents. The same holds tr ue for the various rit-

ual manuals that have sur vived from the Song period onward; their

texts present the additional difﬁculty that we cannot know or even re-

constr uct the actual use the documents were put to at the time. On

the other hand, we are for tunate to have all these materials, both mod-

er n and traditional, which provide a valuable resource for our studies.
Next, placing the documents and rites contained in the
Du Collec-
tion
at the center of the inquir y and linking them with various histor-
ical predecessors, we can distinguish three levels of ritual development

and lineage. The ﬁrst of these is the level matching the
Jin Dafa,
the
earliest ritual manual that has relevant materials. Here we ﬁnd mainly

documents used in the ceremony of the preparator y announcement,

the three talismans employed in the Writ of Pardon ritual, and the for-

mat of of ferings used. They are impor tant in that they show that at

least some section of moder n Daoist ritual deﬁnitely goes back as far

as the Song dynasty.
A second level of ritual is revealed in the materials of the
W
ang Dafa,
which was compiled by Daoists of the Easter n Florescence lineage

(Donghua pai), which ﬂourished around Mount Tiantai in Zhejiang.

Its tradition is later than that represented in the
Jin Dafa
and stands at
270 Mar uyama Hiroshi

a cer tain critical distance to it. It shares the writ of pardon, the an-
nouncement to the Depar tment of Ear th, and the various mandates

issued to the Lads with the practices under taken today. In addition,

the Daoists of Taiwan still use the Talisman Order of the Nine Drag-

ons in their writ of pardon as it was composed by Ning Quanzhen of

the
W
ang Dafa
tradition; they are conscious of this fact, attributing the
talisman to Ning, the Per fected of Great W isdom Who Rescues from

Suf fering and Saves All in Great Pity and Great Compassion (Daci dabei

jiuku jiudu dahui zhenren Ning; see Lager wey 1987, 237). It is likely

that the tradition was transmitted from Zhejiang down to Fujian, and

from there to Taiwan, thus establishing a continuity of ritual practices

to the line of Ning Quanzhen. The level of ritual represented by him,

in tur n, is par t of the ritual reor ganization under the Souther n Song,

which transfor med and elaborated the ritual patter ns of earlier schools.
The third level of ritual found in moder n practice can be traced
back to the ritual manuals of the Y uan and Ming dynasties. It is ap-

parent most clearly in the mandates issued during the ceremonies of

untying the knots and ﬁlling the treasur y; they are used as par t of the

litanies sung to the under world r ulers. Just as was the case with the

T
alisman Order of the Nine Dragons, so some aspects of these docu-
ments, notably the Lad of Highest W isdom who is sent to the under-

world, appear in the Lingbao texts of the Six Dynasties period, but their

use in that time is not clearly known. The way the mandates are being

used today involves a great deal of direct contact with the souls of the

dead. In fact, the mandates sent out at the time of the preparator y an-

nouncement, those used when the road to the under world is opened,

the various for mulaic mandates used as par t of the precious litanies,

as well as those applied in the ceremony of untying the knots, are all

directly addressed to the dead themselves, giving their speciﬁc names

as the subjects of rescue and salvation. Not only that, the documents

are intended to be wor n by the dead on whatever spirit bodies they

may have in the under world. Such a concrete understanding of the

power of the physical documents themselves is not found so clearly in

either the
Jin Dafa
or the
W
ang Dafa
. The for mer, for example, has
only one mandate called
Zhengjian gongde die
that addresses the dead
(29.6a). This records numerous merits dedicated to the soul and sum-

marized in one single document, unlike Taiwanese mandates that ap-

pear in various documents.
Comparing the moder n and Y uan-Ming practices to those de-
scribed in Song-dynasty materials, it becomes evident that the kinds
Documents Used in Rituals of Merit in Taiwanese Daoism 271

of mandates used later and their par ticularly concrete application were
not yet present in the earlier period. They, therefore, can be said to

r
epresent a slightly later stage of Daoist ritual. The same stage already
goes beyond the set of nine precepts to be obser ved by the dead as

well as the use of talismans and registers to ef fect their successful trans-

fer into the heavens. In Taiwan today, rites of sublimation into heaven

tend to be rare, and similarly there are only ver y few documents in the

W
ang Dafa
that are pronounced for the dead at the time of sublima-
tion. Rather than using talismans and registers, this work resor ts to

mandates directly addressed to the souls of the dead. These mandates,

then, are increasingly numerous today, a feature that now character-

izes Daoism in Taiwan.
The purpose of rituals of merit is ultimately the transfer of the souls
of the dead into the heavens of eter nal life; they end with a ceremony

that signiﬁes their successful transfor mation. Rites to this same end

can be found both in primitive and or ganized religions, from ancient

shamanism to moder n religion. However, among this wealth of sim-

ilar rites, the Daoist practice stands out in that the ofﬁciating priest

himself takes on the role of an other worldly bureaucrat, and the rites

involve lar ge numbers of highly for malized written documents that

have to be issued, transpor ted, and executed with proper for mality

and great care. As this is a feature unique to the Daoist religion, it is

signiﬁcant in understanding its special nature and the par ticular iden-

tity Daoists express in their ritual practices. Yet this identity is by no

means static. Rather, it can best be understood as a continuous pro-

cess of adaptation, renewal, and change, through which speciﬁc rites

and their accompanying written documents are transfor med to ac-

commodate the var ying needs of dif ferent communities and dif fer-

ent times.
T
ranslated by Livia Kohn
Note
The present study is based on ﬁeldwork conducted in the souther n
par t of Taiwan, beginning in 1987. Districts studied include in par-

ticular the city and county of Tainan as well as the area around Gao-

xiong. The focus of the ﬁeldwork was the per for mance and under-

standing of Daoist rituals, as under taken in this area by Daoist

masters of the Zheng yi (Or thodox Unity) or Tianshi (Celestial Mas-

ters) tradition.
272 Mar uyama Hiroshi

Bibliography
Hou, Ching-lang. 1975.
Monnaies d’of frande et la notion de trésorérie dans la reli-
gion chinoise
. Paris: Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient.
Lager wey, John. 1987.
T
aoist Ritual in Chinese Society and Histor y
. New York:
Macmillan.
Liu Zhiwan. 1983.
T
aiwan minjian cinyang lunji
. Taipei: Lianjing.
Lü Chuikuan. 1994.
T
aiwan de daojiao yishi yu yinyue.
Ta
ipei: Xueyi.
O
fuchi Ninji. 1983.
Ch
u
gokujin no sh
u
ky
o
girei.
Okayama: Fukutake shoten.
Saso, Michael. 1974.
Zhuang-lin xu daozang
. Taipei: Chengwen.
Schipper, Kristofer M. [Shi Bo’er ]. 1966. “ Taiwan zhi daojiao wenxian.”
Ta i -
wan wenxian
17.3:173 –192.
———. 1974. “ The Memorial in Taoist Ceremonies.” In
Religion and Ritual in
Chinese Society
, ed. by Ar thur P. Wolf, 309 –324. Stanford: Stanford Univer-
sity Press.
———. 1977. “ Tok
o
no shikin
o
ni kansur u ni, san no k
o
satsu.” In
D
o
ky
o
no
s
o
goteki kenky
u
, ed. by Sakai Tadao, 252–290. Tokyo: Kokusho kank
o
kai.
Documents Used in Rituals of Merit in Taiwanese Daoism 273

13
Of ferings in Daoist Ritual
Asano Haruji
Of ferings, given to a deity for a ritual purpose, for m a major element
in the str ucture of ritual. They express the will and wishes of the devo-

tees while also ser ving to communicate with the deity. All objects pre-

sented in for mal of ferings have symbolic value, just as the act of of fering

itself should be understood from the perspective of symbolism. While

this is of great interest, this chapter is concer ned with another question.

During my ﬁeld work in Taiwan, I have obser ved that of ferings in Daoist

ritual are similar in kind to those used in popular and Buddhist rites. It

seems that objects of fered by Daoists do not distinguish this religion

from other religious traditions. Of ferings are such an impor tant ele-

ment in the ritual str ucture —why, then, do they not reveal something

unique about Daoism? There should be a unique Daoist identity to both

the rituals themselves and the of ferings made in them. Studying them

and their raison d’être, therefore, will shed light not only on the role

of
Dao
ism in Chinese society but also on how Daoism expresses itself.
In the following, I will ﬁrst introduce the of ferings presented in
Daoist rituals in Taiwan, then discuss and analyze them in a wider cul-

tural and historical context.
Of ferings Cur rently Used in Daoist Rituals
Daoist rituals in Taiwan are per for med by priests associated with the

Celestial Masters (Tianshi) or Or thodox Unity (Zheng yi) tradition,
1
while the str ucture and or ganization of the rituals themselves go back

to the Numinous Treasure (Lingbao) school, which distinguishes
zhai
(pur gation ceremonies) and
jiao
(sacriﬁcial of ferings). In Taiwan to-
day, z
hai
are generally rites geared to the salvation of the souls of the
274

dead, while
jiao
are used to elicit blessings for the living. Both involve
confession of sins and prayers for for givenness, originally par t of
zhai,
as well as the for mal of fering of wine, food, and other objects in an
act of blessing and thanksgiving, which was originally par t of
jiao
. Be-
ing close in their nature today, they can well be considered the same

ritual; for this reason, I refer to them as Daoist ritual in general.
Of ferings presented during Daoist rites are speciﬁed in the
Y
aoyong
wupin dan
(List of Essential Goods), given to a tr ustee (or client) by
the Daoist priest in char ge. It records the speciﬁc objects to be pre-

pared for for mal of fering on par ticular days and also provides their

classiﬁcation. In the following, I will present one such list, as obtained

from the Daoist master Chen Rongsheng of Tainan in souther n Tai-

wan in preparation for a three-day
jiao
for peace and blessings. It has
the following objects and categories (see also Asano 1994a; 1995; 1996).
1. Incense, ﬂowers, and candles
(to be present on ever y altar table).
(A) Incense includes the dif ferent types of Anba, Wushen, Guang-
dong, and Gongmo incense. The ﬁrst three kinds are in stick for m;
the last is powdered.
(B) Flowers have to be fresh. They are presented tied into bundles
and placed in vases. Usually they are set out in pairs.
(C) Candles come in a lar ger and a smaller type. The lar ger are
big, red candles that are both thick and tall; the smaller are red tea-

type candles placed on top of the candle stand. All candles tend to be

laid out in pairs.
2. Tea, wine, and other drinks.
(A) Tea and other hot-water brews include Wulong tea, four-fr uit
(
siguo
) tea, licorice soup (
gancao tang
),
 and the like. Wulong tea and
wine are placed on each table in the greater altar area, while four-fr uit

tea and licorice soup are of fered speciﬁcally to the high gods of the

Three Pure Ones when a ritual is per for med that requires the estab-

lishment of a special sacred area (
daochang
).
To
explain these objects,
four-fr uit tea is made from four dried fr uits:
long yan,
white gourd, ju-
jube, and orange. They are soaked, then boiled with rock suger. Lico-

rice soup is made from licorice-root soaked in boiling water.
(B) W ine includes mainly Shaoxing wine and rice wine, which are
both placed on the various tables in the altar area and used in other

ritual acts.
(C) Water refers to talisman water (
fushui
),
created when the ashes
Of ferings in Daoist Ritual 275

of a bur ned talisman are dissolved in water. It is frequently used to pu-
rify the altar and appears speciﬁcally in of ferings used during the noon

sacriﬁce (
wugong
).
3. Vegetarian foods (no meat
or strong-smelling vegetables [
wuxin
]).
(A) Fr uit and preser ved fr uit. Mostly when fr uit is listed, it means
the presentation of fresh fr uit. Because typically four kinds of fr uit are
laid out together, this type is also called the four fr uits. Preser ved fr uit

is produced by placing fresh fr uit into sugar, then letting it dr y, either

by cooking or setting in the sun. Several pieces of this fr uit, as well as

of dried
long yan
and white gourd, are then str ung together on a bam-
boo stick, and six to eight are placed on a table as an of fering. Often

the sticks are ar ranged to create the shape of a ter race.
(B) Whole grains. This includes fresh rice or millet, cooked rice,
rice balls (
zongzi
),
and other non-ground grain products. Fresh rice is
used in sacriﬁces to the demons of the ﬁve directions as well as in of-

ferings to inferior deities and uncared-for souls. Cooked rice, too, is

given to uncared-for souls and used in the noon sacriﬁce. Rice balls

are made from glutinous rice and soda; they are conical in shape and

often appear on altar tables together with the
qian
and
yuan
cakes. They
are of fered to gods and may, therefore, also be considered par t of the

next categor y.
(C) Ground grains. These include a number of cakes, buns, and
pastries, such as those typically found in a Chinese baker y. There are

ﬁrst ﬂat, round sweet cakes that are baked (
dabing
,
jiaobing
).
Then there
are baked buns that are hollow inside (
xiangbing
).
Other pastries are
made by steaming rather than baking. Here we have ﬁrst ﬂat steamed

cakes with a red-colored sur face, called “rice tur tles” (
migui
).
Then
there are also several kinds of steamed stuf fed buns. One kind has the

character “
jing
” written on it and is accordingly called
jingbao.
Another
is a steamed stuf fed bun with a red-colored sur face (
hong yuan
);
the
same type also appears in an oval shape (
honggui
).
Fur ther more, there
are high rice-ﬂour cakes wrapped in purple paper (
gaozi
),
as well as
buns shaped like pigs or goats, made either from rice or wheat ﬂour

(
mianzhu, mianyang
).
Others include white steamed cakes made from
rice ﬂour, sugar, and yeast (
faguo
),
steamed light-brown or tea-colored
buns made from rice ﬂour and sugar (
ganguo
),
slender, oval-shaped
r
ed cakes (
qian
),
small and round red dumplings (
yuan
),
buns shaped
like a buddha’s hands (
foshou guo
),
as well as ordinar y biscuits (
bingzi
).
(D) Sugar candies. Of ferings here include candies made from sugar
276 Asano Har uji

and called the “ﬁve animals” (
wushou
).
They do not have the shape of
actual animals, but their name has the same pronunciation as the
expression “ﬁve excellent ones” (
wuxiu
).
One in ﬁve of these is shaped
like a pagoda and is accordingly called “sugar pagoda” (
tangda
).
Four
are shaped like cock crowns and are called the “four cock crowns” (
si
jiguan
).
They are of fered to gods of high position. Besides them, there
are many kinds of smaller candies, typically used as of ferings to the

souls of the dead (see ﬁgure 13.1).
(E) Food in bowls (
caiwan
).
 This of fering consists of various kinds
of grains and vegetables cooked and of fered in a number of bowls.

Ty
pically, there are six such bowls placed on ever y table in the altar
area; sometimes they may also contain dried foods as well as traditional

cookies (
malao, milao, fengpian
).
(F) Delicacies from the sea and the mountains (
shanzhen haiwei
).
This group includes sugar, salt, ginger, and peas. Sometimes, especially

in Buddhism, ginger is counted among the ﬁve strong-smelling veg-

etables and is, therefore, considered unclean.
2
4. Meat.
(A) Cooked meat. This includes the meat of the so -called ﬁve
sacriﬁcial animals —chickens, ducks, pigs, ﬁsh, and shrimp—which may
Of ferings in Daoist Ritual 277
Figure 13.1. Fr uit, tea, wine, buns, and candies of fered at a Daoist altar in Tainan.
(Source: Author’s private collection.)

sometimes be replaced by replicas made from dried tofu. Then there
are the three sacriﬁcial animals, which are three kinds of meat and ﬁsh,

typically chosen from creatures of dif ferent gestations: mammals, birds,

and ﬁsh (or shellﬁsh). They, too, can be replaced with tofu replicas.
(B) Raw meat. This group includes meat from three kinds of ani-
mals, often ar ranged together and of fered as one set. The animals in-
cluded var y; their meat is commonly of fered to gods of lesser stand-

ing. For example, pork chops may be of fered to a paper tiger.
(C) Sacriﬁcial animals. Mainly pigs and goats, they are typically
paired as one set; they are of fered to deities of elevated positions, but

pigs —not paired with goats —are also presented to entire groups of

uncared-for souls (hungr y ghosts) during rites of salvation. Before be-

ing presented at the altar, they must be devoid of blood and viscera,

which are placed into proper containers, then of fered to superior

deities, such as the God of Heaven.
5. Money and jewelr y.
(A) Gold, silver, money, jewelr y, and watches. These are placed on
trays and of fered speciﬁcally during the noon of fering, after which they
are retur ned to their owners. Sometimes they are replaced by paper

money.
(B) Spirit money. This includes a number of dif ferent cur rencies
circulating in the spirit world. Here we have longevity money (
shou-
jin
),
Great Ultimate money (
taiji
),
conch shells (
caizi
),
ninefold money
(
jiujin
),
heavenly gold (
tianjin
),
gold bars (
chijin
),
heaven money (
tian-
qian
),
drafts on the Celestial Treasur y (
tianku
),
lofty money (
gaoqian
),
and others. All these are made from paper and are bur ned after the
sacriﬁce.
(C) Silver pieces (
yinjiao
).
These are coins thrown among the au-
dience during the rites of salvation
6. Writing utensils.
(A) Writing materials, such as paper, ink stones, black and red ink
sticks, and br ushes. All these are placed on wooden buckets and set
up in the ﬁve directions of the altar area, in all cases with dragon slips,

or dragon cards. Typically, the papers have inscriptions matching the

direction in which they are placed, so that the set in the east bears
the characters
anzhen dongfang zhenwen,
“Per fected Words for Pacify-
ing the East.”
(B) Dragon cards (
xiaolong zipai
).
 These are papers printed with a
278 Asano Har uji

dragon design and placed in the same containers as the writing uten-
sils (see ﬁgure 13.2).
Except for this ver y last categor y, all the items listed here are also
used in the rituals of Buddhism, Confucianism, and popular religion.

This is not to say that these of ferings are not characteristically Daoist

in nature. For even if the same of fering is used, the method and

signiﬁcance of the of fering may dif fer from one religious tradition to

another. In other words, if the of fering is signiﬁcant in Daoism, one

must not ignore its Daoist features simply because other traditions use

it too. Nor must one ignore the factor of commonality. W ith this un-

derstanding, let us now ﬁrst look at the question of meat.
Of ferings in Daoist Ritual 279
Figure 13.2. Writing utensils with appropriate signs
of fered at a Daoist altar in Tainan. (Source: Author’s

private collection.)

Meat in Daoism and Popular Religion
Meat in Daoist rituals generally also includes the ﬁve strong-smelling
vegetables (various types of onions and garlic). But in the “list of es-

sential goods” summarized above, the latter are excluded, so that in

this discussion I will focus mainly on meat. Historically speaking, the

use of meat in of ferings violates the Daoist principle of rejecting blood

sacriﬁces, and its use in Taiwan today, therefore, appears to be con-

trar y to the tradition. Why, then, is meat of fered? Does this mean that

Daoism has become vulgar and enmeshed with popular religion? Has

it lost its unique tradition?
To
begin, it is a nor m in Taiwan today to consider meat as unclean
food, an attitude found among all classes of Chinese society. For this

r
eason, in Daoist ritual proper, meat must still be excluded, and in
great
jiao
ceremonies, ever yone has to obser ve a meat taboo. Not only
the Daoist priests, but all par ticipants, and sometimes even all local

r
esidents, are required to eat vegetarian food for a cer tain period.
Meat-eaters are denied access to the altar, since their presence could

diminish or destroy the success of the ritual. This is because in order

to communicate with the divine, one must have a light and pure body,

attained—among other methods —by abstaining from meat. The prac-

tice of preparator y meat abstention in a ritual context has long been

par t of the Chinese tradition and is also documented in Daoism from

its early years.
Why, then, is meat included in the list of of ferings? It is tr ue that
there is some dif ference between the taboo against meat that par tici-

pants obser ve and that taboo applicable for of ferings. However, the

two often also coincide, and there is a belief that since the par ticipants

are forbidden to par take of all unclean food, none such should be al-

lowed on the altar. In other words, no real meat should be used, even

in sacriﬁces of the three or ﬁve animals, which are replaced by various

vegetarian ingredients such as dried tofu. This shows that any associa-

tion with uncleanliness should be removed from both the par ticipants

in and objects of the ritual. Pigs and goats made from wheat ﬂour, com-

monly used as of ferings, derive from this idea. It should be noted also

that even if vegetarian ingredients are used in the sacriﬁces of the three

or ﬁve animals, still at some point real meat will have to be of fered.

Thus sacriﬁcial pigs and goats are used in the presentation of the me-

morial, and real animals are used as sacriﬁces to uncared-for ghosts

(see ﬁgure 13.3). Although there is a dif ference between the taboo that

par ticipants obser ve and the taboo that is valid for of ferings, when tra-
280 Asano Har uji

ditionally proscribed foods are actually used in the of fering, we should
look behind the act to the speciﬁc motives and purposes.
How can we, therefore, account for the appearance of sacriﬁcial
pigs and goats in the presentation of the memorial? In the
jiao
ritual,
the memorial is presented to the Jade Emperor as par t of a rite called

“Worshiping the God of Heaven.” The Jade Emperor is considered the

supreme deity in popular religion. The god being like a traditional

emperor, the of fering to him must be for mal and highly ofﬁcial, us-

ing traditional Confucian for ms, which included the sacriﬁce of live

animals at the altar. Thus ancient Confucian and popular patter ns

r
esur face here in a Daoist context—actively contradicting Confucian
values, which state that the for mal sacriﬁce to Heaven exceeds the pow-

ers of ordinar y people and is thus not per missible. Never theless, the

ritual practices of the Confucian tradition are considered the nor m

for popular practices, and as in Confucian ceremonies so here too,

sometimes the meat of the sacriﬁced animals is given to the par tici-

pants after the rite. In one way or another, these long-established prac-

tices have also made their way into Daoist ritual space.
Of ferings in Daoist Ritual 281
Figure 13.3. A freshly slaughtered pig of fered at a Daoist altar in Tainan. (Source:
Author’s private collection.)

The use of the ﬁve sacriﬁcial animals in major Daoist rituals can be
explained in the same way as that of pigs and goats in the presenta-
tion of the memorial. The same belief patter n demands that animals

be sacriﬁced to deities who are for mally entitled to major meat of fer-

ings. However, sometimes substitutes are used because, as some schol-

ars believe, these rituals are not so impor tant as the presentation of

the memorial. Unlike those scholars, I think that the substitutes ap-

pear because the rituals dif fer. In other words, the presentation of the

memorial takes place outside the altar and is dif ferent from the rites

inside.
Another use of the three sacriﬁcial animals is in of ferings to vari-
ous demons and uncared-for ghosts, geared toward driving of f lesser

spirits that bring disasters to the people. Here animals are sacriﬁced

because these spirits are believed to like meat and other bloody food-

stuf fs; meat is of fered to satisfy their needs, which alone will make them

pliant and responsive to people’s wishes. Sacriﬁcial meat here ser ves

as a means of exchange. This contrasts sharply with the use of meat

in the presentation of the memorial, where it is considered a token of

the people’s sincerity rather than a kind of food of fering and stands

for their wish to sacriﬁce their own bodies to the high god, who is

treated to a banquet like a high ofﬁcial.
Sacriﬁcial pigs used in the salvation ritual have almost the same
signiﬁcance as the meat that appears in sacriﬁces to demons. The rite

is per for med for hungr y ghosts and orphaned souls who are not cared

for by any living relative; they are considered threatening and fear-

some. As ghosts and souls of the dead are closer to the living, sacriﬁces

to them should include food typically eaten by people. As a result,

cooked foods are often used. On the other hand, because the ghosts

are hungr y and belong to a dif ferent plane of existence, they eat both

cooked and raw food; therefore, lar ge quantities of rice and raw pork

are also presented. On the sur face, in both the salvation ritual and the

presentation of the memorial, sacriﬁcial pigs are of fered, but the mean-

ing of the two sacriﬁces is signiﬁcantly dif ferent.
To
sum up, both the motive and purpose of meat of ferings in Daoist
rituals go back to popular religion and mainstream Confucian prac-

tice. The meat of fered to the highest popular deities meets the de-

mands of the popular belief that animals should be sacriﬁced to them,

as rich meat dishes would be of fered to senior ofﬁcials. Meat is of fered

to lower-ranking gods because of the popular belief that they need to

be given the food they like in order to be responsive to people’s wishes.

Although motives and purposes dif fer, both for ms of meat of ferings
282 Asano Har uji

go back to popular religion. By allowing meat of ferings as and when
r
equested by cer tain clients, Daoists thus make a concession to popu-
lar beliefs. This, however, does not mean that they mix their tradition

with popular religion into one system or that they are deluded by the

latter.
Daoist rituals are per for med at the request of speciﬁc clients,
whose popular beliefs may inﬂuence the way the rites are conducted.

Never theless, Daoism maintains its own identity and sets itself apar t

from popular religion, exer ting its own power as a distinct tradition.

The clients, too, believe it necessar y to maintain distinctive Daoist rit-

uals that are considered to be on a higher level than those of the pop-

ular cults.
One indication of this is the fact that, although the Daoist tradition
proscribes meat, it may be allowed in the Daoist ritual space. Yet it will

never be placed in front of the Three Pure Ones. Instead, meat is gen-

erally placed on the altar of the Three Worlds, which is located directly

opposite that of the Three Pure Ones and honors the variety of be-

ings in the various levels of the cosmos. Meat of ferings are, therefore,

placed strictly on the peripher y of the
jiao
altar. Similarly, the presen-
tation of the memorial is conducted outside the
jiao
altar area, and
sacriﬁcial pigs and goats are never placed on the platfor m where the

key rituals are per for med. Instead, they are located far away from it,

near the table at which preliminar y rites are under taken, before

Daoists mount the holy platfor m proper. Although meat of ferings that

originate from popular religion, therefore, encroach upon the Daoist

ritual space, this encroachment is restricted to the peripheral region

and never allowed into its hear t.
Properly speaking, unclean food is excluded from the Daoist list of
of ferings, as it has always been, and Daoism maintains its unique tra-

dition through the exclusion of meat. Having distanced itself from pop-

ular religion in its inception and through the middle ages, Daoism now

moves closer to it while still maintaining a respectful distance. Al-

though other wise-taboo food is laid out along with other food of fer-

ings in the Daoist ritual space, the religion does not change its unique

ritual str ucture. The main of ferings remain tea, soup, and incense, as

well as (par ticularly in the noon of fering), ﬂowers, candles, fr uit, wine,

grains (whole and ground), water, and valuables.
Meat is not a proper Daoist of fering. Although it is brought into
the Daoist ritual space, it is not received without restriction and con-

trol but is subject to speciﬁc r ules guiding its reception and has been

included only to accommodate the needs of clients. In other words,
Of ferings in Daoist Ritual 283

when a client requests a ritual, he or she may wish to make some of-
ferings in traditional Confucian and popular ways in addition to the

Daoist ritual proper. Daoists will allow this, and in Taiwan, at least, this

has become a tradition.
The Magic of Blood
Meat, as a product that contains the life-giving ﬂuid of blood, has a

distinctly magical aspect. In the land-puriﬁcation rite, often under-

taken by Taiwanese Daoists, a for m of redhead magic is practiced, fol-

lowing traditional ways that have long been in existence on the pe-

ripher y of Daoism. They involve blood from either a chicken or duck

applied to the talisman that is used in the Daoist rite or the feeding

of a small slice of meat into the mouth of a paper tiger. The magical

function associated with meat and blood as used in this sor t of rite is

historically described both in the
Baopuzi
(Book of the Master Who
Embraces Simplicity, HY 1177) and the
Daofa huiyuan
(A Corpus of
Daoist ritual, HY 1210). It is impor tant to distinguish between the mag-

ical and ritual use of these substances, even though they may look the

same on the sur face.
When blood-containing food was proscribed in the rituals, blood
and meat were probably excluded in all circumstances. According to

the “pure covenant” (1b, 8a) described in Lu Xiujing’s (406 – 477)

Daomen kelue
(Abridged Codes for the Daoist Community, HY 1119;
see Nickerson 1996), there was no eating or of fering of meats and no

use of blood and meat in the magic per for mance. In addition, ac-

cording to the Tang-text
Fayuan zhulin
(Pearl Garden of the Dhar ma
Forest, T. 2122, 53.269 –1030), Buddhists criticized Daoists for chang-

ing the of fering of what should have been “dried deer meat and pure

wine” to “dried dates and fragrant water” (ch. 69). On the basis of this

r
ecord, it seemed that meat and wine were excluded for some time
during the middle ages. Also, the
Zheng yi jie’e jiaoyi
(Or thodox Unity
Rites for the Liberation from Peril, HY 793) says that no “dried meat

or impure food” should be allowed. Other wise, the heavenly ofﬁcials

will not provide protection (14b). Beyond this, the
Zheng yi jiazhai yi
(Or thodox Unity Obser vances for the Protection of Residences, HY

800) and the
Zheng yi jiaomu yi
(Or thodox Unity Obser vances for the
Protection of Graves, HY 801) have no meat listed among their vari-

ous of ferings.
However, blood and meat have dif ferent uses when it comes to the
food consumed by the par ticipants of the rite, the food used as an of-
284 Asano Har uji

fering to the gods, and the food applied in magical activities. Thus the
Baopuzi
states that the “ﬁve strong-smelling vegetables” and all blood-
containing food should not be taken when fasting in preparation for

immor tality practices (5.6b). In order to concoct an elixir, one must

fast and obey purity r ules for at least one hundred days, abstaining from

the ﬁve strong-smelling vegetables and avoiding contact with ordinar y

people (4.19a). Taking raw vegetables and heavy or fresh foods will

r
ender the vital ener g y in the body too strong, making it hard to con-
tain (8.4a). As a result, if one desires to ascend to heaven, one must

not eat meat or blood-containing foods, instead fasting and obeying

purity r ules for one entire year (15.13b).
The text also says that “wine and dried meat” could be used as of-
ferings, while blood-sealed covenants and the entrails of chickens were

used only in magical ar ts (16.12b). Along the same lines, the
Lingbao
wufu xu
(Explanation of the Five Lingbao Talismans, HY 388) states
that “all the ﬁve strong-smelling vegetables and all food containing

pork fat” are taboo as of ferings (2.5a); “fat birds” and wine, on the

other hand, could be used in of ferings (2.4b). Similar statements are

also found in other works.
3
In all cases, par ticipants in the ritual had to obser ve strict ab-
stentions. The ﬁve strong-smelling vegetables and all for ms of meat

were basically regarded as unclean and could thus be used only un-

der special circumstances. There were some rituals during which

dried meat and wine were used together as par t of the of ferings. Dried

meat, considered “cooked” and thus of a dif ferent quality than raw,

“blood-dripping” meat, was, therefore, not always included in the

blood-food list. Thus Tao Hongjing’s (456 –536)
Zhen’gao
(Declara-
tions of the Per fected, HY 1010), in its “Verse of the Lady Immor tal,

W
ife of Cheng Wei,” says: “When preparing to take an elixir of im-
mor tality, you must not eat blood food but you can eat dried meat”

(10.24a). Just as whole grains are distinguished from ground grains,

so it seems a distinction was made between fresh meat dripping with

blood and its dried variety.
The same is also obvious in Zhou Side’s
Jidu dacheng jinshu
(Golden
Book of the Great Completion of Salvation, ed.
Zangwai daoshu
17) of
the Ming dynasty, which notes that wheat ﬂour used in of ferings must

not be contaminated by any of fensive smell (like that of raw meat) and

should be handled only with a new bamboo steamer and clean cheese

cloth (40.52b). Sometimes, because milk had such a smell, it too was

considered unclean. Thus the
Jidu dacheng jinshu
states: “Because it
smells of fensive, milk in ritual must be treated like raw meat” (40.52b).
4
Of ferings in Daoist Ritual 285

It is an undeniable tr uth that under dif ferent circumstances there were
changes in the way in which meat was of fered or whether it was of-

fered. As recorded in the
Baopuzi
and
Daofa huiyuan,
bloody meat was
allowed for use in magical practices. From the point of view of the ma-

gicians, it was used because it symbolized the life force and was thus

not considered unclean.
Of ferings of Fr uit and Writing Utensils
Aside from the use of meat, the other notable feature of the Daoist

“list of of ferings” is the presence of fr uit and writing utensils, although

tea, soup, wine, and incense also played an impor tant role.
5
Fr uit as of fering is described in Jin Y unzhong’s (ﬂ. 1224)
Shangqing
lingbao dafa:
Fresh fr uit to be used as an of fering for the occasion should be well se-
lected and washed clean. According to the traditional obser vances for
jiao
rites, it must be changed ever y day. Excluded from use are pome-
granates, sugar cane and other fr uits of this type as well as all that con-
tain unclean, muddy substances. Pure fr uit growing on branches of trees
is best. It should be placed, together with hot tea, before the Highest
Emperor and the Three Treasures. Then a for mal of fering can be made

in accordance with the regulations. (17. 22a)
Fr uit is also used in the rituals per for med by other religions. How-
ever, in Daoism it is probably the ideal material for of ferings, because
its lightness, purity, and origin on the branches of trees match the light

and pure ener getic power of the high gods of the Dao. Thus numer-

ous ritual texts in the Daoist canon list fr uit as a key of fering, such as,

for example, the
Lingjiao jidu jinshu
(Golden Book of Salvation of the
Numinous Teaching, HY 466). Its list of “gifts to be used in the
jiao
rit-
ual” includes dates, nuts, pears, peaches, plums, apricots, lichees, lo-

tus seeds, mandarin oranges, tangerines, and persimmons, with a note

that they all could be of fered (319.41a). Other texts, not unlike the

Shangqing lingbao dafa,
mention that cer tain vegetables should not be
included among of ferings. The
Jidu dacheng jinshu,
for example, de-
crees that all vegetables should be excluded because they have been

fer tilized by manure and other human rejects (40.52b). Then again,

the
Zheng yi licheng yi
(Proper Obser vances of Or thodox Unity, HY
1202) records that sugar cane, taro, potatoes, herbs (especially roots),

lotus root, and kudzu vines are “unclean substances buried in the mud”

and, therefore, must not be used as of ferings (26a). The “unclean,
286 Asano Har uji

muddy substances” mentioned in Jin Y unzhong’s work cited earlier
thus may well refer to vegetables growing close to the ear th or roots,

such as taro, potatoes, and lotus root. Fr uit can be of fered (except

pomegranates and lotus seeds), but vegetables cannot.
Fr uit is also commonly used as a substitute for other food or as a
major for m of nourishment in the longevity practice known as “ab-

stention from grain” (
bigu;
see Lévi 1983; Eskildsen 1998). Practition-
ers avoid eating all grain and heavy food in order to prevent intes-

tinal congestion and render their bodies lighter. In many immor tals’

hagiographies, the protagonist consumes fr uit either during or after

the immor talization process —most commonly dates, persimmons,

peaches, and pine nuts. Although these are not directly related to fr uit

used as of ferings, the practice probably reﬂects the same underlying

consciousness. Whether to become an immor tal, to concoct an elixir,

to practice magic, or to communicate with the divine through of fer-

ings and sacriﬁces, in all cases adepts had to keep their bodies light

and pure and adjust their vital ener gies to the purer forces of the Dao.

Abstention from grain and eliminating impurities both come from this

same basic understanding. Whether it is in the sacriﬁce from which

the “ﬁve strong-smelling vegetables” and blood food are prohibited

or in the abstention from grain whose purpose is to attain longevity
or immor tality, “fresh fr uit from the branches of trees” plays a major

r
ole and is accepted with enthusiasm. It is highly suitable for both
deities who were originally transfor med from the light and pure en-
er g y of the cosmos and practitioners who wished to communicate with

or get closer to the gods.
If the same understanding of food is found in both ritual of ferings
and the abstention from grain, then there might be other common

features. One such feature is the distinction made between whole and

ground grains. Among ancient immor tality seekers, it is recorded in

the biography of Tao Yan in the
Daoxue zhuan
(Biographies of Students
of the Dao, in
Sandong zhunang,
HY 1131; see Bumbacher 2000):
T
ao Yan, styled Aijing, was from Xunyangin Lujiang. When he was about
ﬁfteen to sixteen years old, he changed his diet and began to abstain
from grains. At ﬁrst, he would still eat ﬂour, later he only ate dates.
(3.2a)
This shows that ground grains were still consumed in the early phases
of grain abstention and that a strong distinction was made between
ground and whole grains. To classify the of ferings from this angle, one

could list ground grains together with fr uit, that is, with the purest
Of ferings in Daoist Ritual 287

of of ferings. The reason why ground grains are used as of ferings may
well be due to the fact that they are often considered the equivalent

of fr uit.
Unlike fr uit, writing utensils are more like of ferings of meat and
can appear as its substitute. The
Shoushen ji
(In Search of the Super-
natural) describes the Lord of the Yellow Stones as a deity ver y fond

of purity who would never kill an animal in sacriﬁce. To honor him,

paper, ink, and br ushes were of fered instead (4.84). Aside from re-

placing meat sacriﬁces, of ferings of writing utensils also implied that

the image of the deity was that of a literati- ofﬁcial. In addition, their

of fering is related to the Daoist tradition of object-based devotion

(
zhenxin
).
A general description of this phenomenon is ﬁrst found in the
Huanglu dazhai yi
of the Song dynasty. It says:
People of old were pure and simple, they cherished the Dao and em-
braced vir tue, were free from greed and free from desires, each being
sufﬁcient upon himself. By merely using their will and sincerity, they

could communicate with the divine and elicit a response; without any
material objects or valuables, they could mysteriously har monize with
the per fection of Heaven.
However, in our latter-day age, people’s hear ts are full of pride and
deception, and they only desire riches and material goods, ignoring

the law of kar ma and retribution; they devalue life and honor wealth,
for getting their family and destroying their countr y. W ithin, they har-
bor the myriad evils; without, they accumulate bad for tune and disas-

ter, more and more causing destr uction for each other, without ever
becoming aware of what they are doing.
For this reason, it is impor tant to teach them to give things up. Then,
r
obbers will no longer arise on the outside, and both within and with-
out will be tranquil and at peace. All bad occur rences will be dissolved.
Thus, to prove one’s devotion and liberate one’s mind, using material
objects is primar y. If one is able to give them up, the mind will soon
follow suit and one will attain the goodness of sages.
As a result, one’s mind and intention will be as lofty as heaven, as
solid as the ear th, reaching out to the sages and per fected above. Then

there is nothing that will not be attained by one’s faith; nothing that
will not respond to one’s hear t. The ultimate in ﬁnding divine responses
lies in faith alone —and nothing else. (1.12b)
Object-based devotion thus means the voluntar y giving up of mate-
rial wealth and personal proper ties as a proof of faith and way of puri-
fying the mind and hear t. Only by of fering money, valuables, and other
288 Asano Har uji

material things can one ﬁnd proper communication with and response
to the divine. A list of suitable objects follows:
13 gold dragons
11 rolls of devotional colored silk
10 sets of devotional high-quality paper, ink sticks, br ushes,
and ink stones
10 bundles of devotional fragrant ﬂowers

2.4 bushels of devotional rice
2.4 dippers of devotional oil

24 pounds of devotional charcoal
14,000 units of devotional money
3 devotional wood tablets
10 devotional jade pieces
3 devotional jades for the casting of dragons

27 gold buttons
(
Huanglu dazhai yi
1.12b–15b)
Gold dragons are best made of gold, but people lacking the means
for providing them can also use other materials, more suitable to their
status and ﬁnancial situation. They appear even today in the for m of

small cards with dragon designs that are used in piles in Taiwanese rit-

uals. They are placed on wooden buckets ﬁlled with rice, the rice rep-

r
esenting the devotional rice of the earlier tradition. Similarly, the real
paper, ink stone, black and red ink sticks, and writing br ushes de-

manded here are often placed on wooden buckets. Although of fer-

ings in Taiwan today are, therefore, not comparable in scale to those

prescribed in the
Huanglu dazhai yi,
they are yet par t of the same Daoist
tradition of object-based devotion.
Why, then, are gold dragons, paper, ink sticks, and ink stones used
as of ferings? The text explains the presence of the gold dragons as

follows:
Dragons are steeds that car r y messages up to Heaven. In order to have
any communication established and to evoke a power ful response, there
is nothing better than a dragon messenger. As soon as the message is
put on his back, he is already soaring of f. (1.13a)
To
convey one’s wishes and messages to Heaven as par t of the prac-
tice of object-based devotion, gold dragons are, therefore, indispen-
sable. Should one tr y to get one’s message across without them, di-

vine retribution from the side of the heavenly ofﬁcials will inevitably

follow.
Of ferings in Daoist Ritual 289

As for the of fering of paper, ink sticks, and ink stones, the
Huan-
glu dazhai yi
says:
Setting up puriﬁcation ceremonies and conducting rites to the Dao can
be done either to rescue the souls of the dead, of one’s myriad ances-

tors and innumerable forebears, to pray for good for tune, or to ask for
divine grace in the dissolution of disasters and the prevention of bad
luck.
In all these cases, the various ofﬁcers of the Four [Heavenly] Bu-
r
eaus, Five Emperors, Three Worlds, and Ten Directions keep a detailed
r
ecord of all good deeds and merits, noting carefully and in detail the
sins committed. In order to do so, they need paper and br ushes, to write

in the ledgers of merit and good deeds. In of fering devotion to the Ten
Directions, these must therefore never be missing. (1.13b)
As human beings conduct rites on ear th, so the celestial ofﬁcials
will record the merit accumulated in the ledgers kept in the adminis-
trative centers of the other world. Only through their record keeping

does the ritual take ef fect. To have one’s merit, as it is ear ned through

the per for mance of the ritual, properly recorded, paper, ink stick, ink

stone, and br ush are indispensable. W ithout them, the ritual will not

be efﬁcacious, and to make matters worse, the divine ofﬁcials will mete

out punishments for the oversight. The
Huanglu dazhai yi
makes no
mention of ink sticks or ink stones, but br ush and paper alone will not

produce records; thus I think they should be par t of the discussion.

The text has, on the other hand, a number of other devotional ob-

jects to be of fered, together with a detailed description of which di-

vine ofﬁcial will mete out which punishment when a cer tain object is

missing in the presentation. Moder n versions tend to omit the latter,

but they include dragon cards, paper, black and red ink sticks, br ushes,

ink stones, and rice in the list of necessar y of ferings. These, then, can

be understood as belonging to the tradition of object-based devotion
.
Daoist ritual imitates the for mal rites per for med for traditional
literati- ofﬁcials, and Daoist priests are ofﬁcials in the divine realm. A

key component of Daoist ritual is to activate the power of the divine

ofﬁces through various for ms of written communication—memorials,

petitions, letters. Writing utensils are, therefore, not only par t of the

established tradition of object-based devotion, but can be considered

r
epresentative of the unique self-image Daoism has of its role in the
world and the functions of its rituals.
Fr uit and ground grain occupy an impor tant position in the of fer-
ings, as do paper, ink sticks, writing br ushes, and ink stones. Both in
290 Asano Har uji

traditional rites and in the rituals per for med today, they constitute the
dominant por tion of the of ferings, demonstrating the active exclusion

of blood food and reconﬁr ming Daoist identity in ritual action.
Conclusion
Daoism fundamentally rejects blood sacriﬁces as par t of its of ferings

as a way of reconﬁr ming and maintaining its identity vis -à-vis popular

r
eligion, pursuing a higher religious goal than the latter. However, in
the Song dynasty, when traditional Chinese sacriﬁce and ritual were

in decline and Daoist and Buddhist funeral rites and sacriﬁces in-

creased in popularity (see Matsumoto 1983), Daoists per for med ritu-

als less for their own sake or for that of the nation, focusing more and

more on the beneﬁt for the greater populace. At this time, they did not

oppose popular religion but developed a position of tolerance.
6
That
is to say, while Daoists basically kept their inherent self-understanding

and basic characteristics, they moved closer to the practitioners of pop-

ular religion. As a result, as the moder n list of of ferings shows, Daoists

today allow meat to be presented in the sacred area.
The purpose of doing so is to integrate of ferings typically used in
popular religion into the str ucture of Daoist ritual. The list of essen-

tial of ferings any Daoist client receives, then, includes meat as a valid

sacriﬁce; it shows that Daoists today accept meat sacriﬁces without hes-

itation. This, in tur n, raises the questions of whether a Daoist ritual

that includes blood sacriﬁces is still a Daoist ritual? To answer this, the

dif ference in emphasis and impor tance has to be pointed out. The

most impor tant components among Daoist of ferings are incense,

ﬂowers, candles, tea, wine, and fr uit, as well as products made from

ground grain, which have the same signiﬁcance and are used in many

for ms. In addition, of ferings of writing utensils, as based on the tra-

dition of object-based devotion, are also used prominently. Meat or

the ﬁve strong-smelling vegetables never replace any of them or attain

nearly as impor tant a position in the of ferings. They are included on

the peripher y, placed carefully away from the holiest altars, and mainly

ser ve to complement Daoist of ferings with popular ones in order to

achieve fuller efﬁcacy. Although Daoists, therefore, allow cer tain as-

pects of popular religion to enter their realm, the overall ritual str uc-

ture of the religion has not been altered. There is no mer ging of Dao-

ism and popular religion but a fr uitful coexistence and complementar y

practice.
In contemporar y Daoist rituals in Taiwan, to conclude, speciﬁcally
Of ferings in Daoist Ritual 291

Daoist features may appear rather inconspicuous. This is because they
are often per for med as par t of lar ger ceremonies at the request of

speciﬁc clients whose main orientation is popular religion. This is to

say that while Daoism is at the core of the ceremony, the ceremony it-

self is of a popular nature —and this is clearly reﬂected in the of fer-

ings.
7
Examining them, the identity and str ucture of Daoism in con-
temporar y Taiwan becomes clearer.
T
ranslated by Zhonghu Yan
Notes
The sources on Taiwanese Daoism used in this paper were obtained dur-
ing ﬁeld work in Taiwan. In 1980 I did preliminar y explorations on a shor t-
ter m basis. From 1988 to 1990 I under took more for mal ﬁeld work as a visit-

ing research associate of the Institute of Ethnolog y at Academia Sinica, Taipei.

I am deeply indebted for its generous hospitality. In the past decade, more-

over, I have continued to retur n to Taiwan for more shor t-ter m investigations.
1. Daoists in Taiwan are distinguished according to redhead and blackhead
(see Saso 1970; 1971). Although both are members of the lineage of the Ce-

lestial Masters or Or thodox Unity Daoism, their functions are slightly dif fer-

ent. Redhead Daoists are centered in the nor ther n par t of the island; they do

not per for m funerar y rites and refer to themselves as Zheng yi while calling

their blackhead counterpar t Lingbao (Liu 1994, 79; Lu 1994). Since both

stand in the Zheng yi lineage, however, I feel the distinction according to these

two ter ms is not properly applicable. I accordingly speak of both of them as

Zheng yi priests. Should a distinction be necessar y, I use the ter ms redhead

and blackhead. My ﬁeldwork was mostly under taken among blackhead Daoists

in souther n Taiwan.
2. Ginger in Daoism is typically not considered one of the ﬁve strong-
smelling vegetables, which are deﬁned variously. The
Shangqing lingbao dafa
(Great Methods of Highest Clarity and Numinous Treasure, HY 1213) has

them as onions, leeks, big garlic, small garlic, and caraway seeds (9.6b); the

Daoxue keyi
(Rules and Obser vances for Students of the Dao, HY 1118) has
them as leeks, big garlic, small garlic, onions, and scallions (1.4b). The latter

text, moreover, encourages Daoist priestesses to take ginger honey (1.19a),

showing that ginger was not considered unclean.
3. See, among others,
Sanhuang zhai
(Rites for the Three Sovereigns,
W
ushang biyao
[HY 581], 49.1b);
T
oulong bi yi
(Obser vances for Casting Dragon
Disks,
Huanglu zhaiyi
[HY 507], 55.3b);
Jijiao fa
(Methods of Of ferings,
Ling-
bao liuding bifa
[HY 581], 2b);
Ji tiannü shier xinü fa
(Rites to the Twelve Heav-
enly River Ladies,
Shangqing liujia qidao bifa
[HY 584], 5ab);
T
oulong songjian
(Casting Dragons and Sending of Memorials,
Shangqing lingbao dafa
[HY 1213],
41.3b)
.
4. A similar milk taboo is also recorded in the
Huanglu dazhai yi
(Obser-
292 Asano Har uji

vances for the Great Yellow Register Rite, HY 508, 2.15b, .49.5b) and in Jin
Y
unzhong’s
Shangqing lingbao dafa
(HY 1213, 17.22b).
5.
O
fuchi explains the signiﬁcance of incense by refer ring to ritual books
used in souther n Taiwan, including the
Huanglu zhaiyi
(Obser vances for the
Y
ellow Register Rite)
, Lingbao duren dafa
(Great Lingbao Methods of Salvation),
and the
Shangqing lingbao dafa
in its various versions. The smoke from the in-
cense, he concludes, ser ves to convey the people’s sincerity and wishes to the
gods (1983, 225 –226). In addition, Yamada Toshiaki cites the
Lingbao wufu xu
on the use of incense when inviting the Five Emperors. He believes that in

early Lingbao scriptures incense was of fered as a way to solicit the divine pres-

ence, its curling smoke assuming impor tant meaning (see Yamada 1989, 17).
6. Kleeman, in his classiﬁcation of Chinese religions from the perspective
of blood sacriﬁces, describes the religious community since the Song as the

“public religious world.” He obser ves that here “Daoism has been most suc-

cessful in responding to the demands of popular religion” (1996). From what

I have lear ned in my own studies in Taiwan, I can only agree with him.
7. Fur uie and Matsumoto (1991) obser ved Wang ye sacriﬁces in souther n
Ta
iwan from the perspectives of both Daoist priests and village residents (that
is, clients). They concluded that the nature of the ritual and the demands of

the client are unrelated except for tangential contact.
Bibliography
Asano Har uji. 1994a. “Gendai Taiwan no d
o
ky
o
saishi ni oker u sonaemono
ni tsuite.”
Kokugakuin daigaku Nihon bunka kenky
u
jo kiy
o
73:157–190.
———. 1994b. “D
o
shi to d
o
shidan: Gendai Taiwan nanbu no jirei kara.” In
D
o
ky
o
bunka e no tenb
o
,
ed. by D
o
ky
o
bunka kenky
u
kai. Tokyo: Hirakawa.
———. 1995. “D
o
ky
o
girei no sonaemono.”
T
o
h
o
sh
u
ky
o
86:24 –55.
———. 1996. “Keidokagi no kumotsu.”
Girei bunka
23:62– 89.
Bumbacher, Stephan Peter. 2000.
The Fragments of the
Daoxue zhuan. Frank-
fur t: Peter Lang.
Eskildsen, Stephen. 1998.
Asceticism in Early Taoist Religion
. Albany: State Uni-
versity of New York Press.
Fur uie Shinpei and Matsumoto K
o
ichi. 1991. “
O
ya sh
o
sai no girei k
u
kan.” In
K
an Ch
u
goku kai no minzoku to bunka
, ed. by Uematsu Akashi, 1:63 – 83.
T
okyo: Gaif
u
sha.
Kleeman, Ter r y F. 1996. “You jisi kan Zhongguo zongjiao de fenlei.” In
Y
ishi
miaohui yu shequ,
ed. by Li Fengmao and Zhu Ronggui, 547–555. Taipei:
Academia Sinica.
Lévi, Jean. 1983. “L’abstinence des céréals chez les taoïstes.”
Etudes Chinoises
1:3 – 47.
Liu Zhiwan. 1994.
T
aiwan no d
o
ky
o
to minkan shink
o
.
T
okyo: F
u
ky
o
sha.
Lü Chuikuan. 1994.
T
aiwan de daojiao yishi yu yinyue.
Ta
ipei: Xueyi.
Matsumoto K
o
ichi. 1983. “S
o
r
ei saishi ni mir u S
o
dai sh
u
ky
o
shi no ichikeik
o
.”
In
S
o
dai no shakai to bunka,
ed. by S
o
daishi kenky
u
kai, 169 –194. Tokyo:
Kyuko shoin.
Of ferings in Daoist Ritual 293

Nickerson, Peter. 1996. “Abridged Codes of Master Lu for the Daoist Commu-
nity.” In
Religions of China in Practice
, ed. by Donald S. Lopez Jr., 347–359.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
O
fuchi Ninji. 1983.
Ch
u
gokujin no sh
u
ky
o
girei.
T
okyo: Fukutake.
Saso, Michael. 1970. “ The Taoist Tradition in Taiwan.”
China Quar terly
Jan–
Mar:83 –103.
———. 1971. “Red-Head and Black-Head: The Classiﬁcation of the Taoists
of Taiwan According to the Documents of the 61st Celestial Master.”
Bul-
letin of the Institute of Ethnolog y of the Academia Sinica
30:69 – 82.
Y
amada Toshiaki. 1989. “D
o
ky
o
s
o
ky
o
shiron.”
Ch
u
goku gaku kenky
u
8:11–20.
294 Asano Har uji

Amah
¸
˝
Anba
{
z
anyin
w

anzhen dongfang zhenwen
w
Ì
F
Ë
u
Â
Aofeng shutang
¥
p—
Û
Ba
⁄
ba
˝
Ba youhun zhenfu
ﬁ
’
Ó
u

Ba Yu wu
⁄
¸
R
Bai yunguan
’

[
Baidu pai
’
˘
£
Baihe guan
’
b
[
Bailong jingshe
’
s
Î
Ÿ
Baiyi shenggong Pangu Dingguang
’
Á
t

L
j
w
˙
Baiyundong zhi
’

}
”
Bamen kaidu Tianzun
K
˘
}

—
L
Bamen yanqin shenshu
K
˘
t
V
´
—
Ban Gu
Z
T
Bandun Man
O
„
Z
bang
]
banjiao
P
–
Bao Jing
j

Baodao tang
Í
D
Û
baoji wan
O
Ÿ
Y
Baopuzi
Í
µ
l
Baosong baohe ji
_
Q
Í
b
O
Baoyuan taiping jing
]
”

g
beiyin
ı
Ù
Bian Jue
Û
N
Bian Que zhenzhong bijue
‰
ˆ
E
§
µ
Z
biao
Ì
bigu

™
bing
L
bingshu
L
—
bingzi
Ê
l
Bo Ya
B
˙
bu
R
Budong
£
?
busi
£

Cai Wenji

Â
V
caiwan
Ê
J
caizi
]
l
Canhua gong
©

c
Cao
‰
Cao Cao
‰
ﬁ
Ceng Y iguan
ø
@
e
chan
I
Chang’an
¯
w
Changchun daojiao yuanliu
¯
K
D
–

y
Changqu lidu nü tuoluoni zhoujing
`
£
Q
r
k
˚

ß
G
g
Changsheng lingfu
¯
Õ
F

295
Glossar y

Changsheng shu xuming fang hekan
¯
Õ
—
Ú
R
Ë
X
Z
Changzhou
`
{
chanhui
b
¨
Chanhui wen
b
¨
Â
chen

Chen
Ø
Chen Minggui
Ø
?
^
Chen Mou
Ø
—
Chen Rongsheng
Ø
a
±
Chen Tao
Ø
Chen Tiquan
Ø
È
˛
Chen Xianzhang
Ø
m

Chen Zhong
Ø
Ú
Cheng’an
¤
⁄
Chengdu
®
£
chengfu
”
t
chenggao fengxing
”
¢
^
Ê
Cheng-Zhu
{

Chenhou Y inzi dui
Ø
J
]
Í
–
Chen-Li Ji
Ø
ı
Ÿ
Chenmu
¤
¿
chenwei
b
n
Chi Daomao
˚
D
Z
Chi Tan
˚
Ë
chijin
ÿ
˜
Chijingzi
™
Î
l
Chiyou
E

Chizhi dizhi fu
’
Ó
a
È

Chongsheng guan
R
t
[
Chongxu guan
R
Í
[
chou
°
Chu
°
chu
p
Chuci
°
„
Ch
u
inr y
u
§
|
y
chukuang

R
Chunfu
¬
j
Chunqiu fanlu
KÓ
c
S
Chunqiu yi
KÓ
ı
Chunyang shengzu
¬
ß
t
™
Chunyu Y i
E
_
N
Ci’en si
O
¶
x
citang
®
Û
Ciyi jing
¤
@
g
congci
O
®
296 Glossar y
Cuanyu lieyu aotuo shenyu
y
_
P
_
D
˚
M
t
cun
s
cunren
¯
H
cunxin
s
ﬂ
dabing
j
Ê
Dacheng
j
®
Daci dabei jiuku jiudu dahui
zhenren Ning
j
O
j
d
œ
W
œ

j
f
u
H
Á
Dadao jia lingjie
j
D
a
O
Ÿ
Dadong zhenjing
j
}
u
g
Dagu
j
T
Dai Zhen

_
Daizong
N
v
dalian
j
ƒ
Daluo tian
j

—
Dan Ranhui
F
M
z
Dangqu
X
Î
daochang
D
ı
daode
D
w
Daodian lun
D
Â

Daofa huiyuan
D
k
|

daoguan
D
[
Daojiao yishu
D
–
q
œ
daoke
D
Ï
Daomen kelue
D
˘
Ï
§
daoshi
D
h
daotan
D
¬
daotang
D
Û
Daoxue keyi
D
«
Ï
ˆ
Daoxue zhuan
D
«
«
Daozang jiyao
D

Ë
n
Daozang xubian
D

Ú
s
Daqi
j

Datang liudian
j

ª
Â
daxing fanqi fu
j
Ê
Î

Daxue yanyi lunduan
j
«
t
q

_
Daxue yi
j
«
ı
Dayu
j
Í
de
o
Deming
w
˙
Deng Yougong
H

\
Dengling shi
H
Æ
Û
dengshan
n
s

Dengxi
H
R
Dengzhen du fuming
n
u

R
Di
Ã
dianku
Ò
w
Dianlue
Â
§
diao
’
die
ﬁ
ding
©
Dingguang fo
w
˙
Ú
dixian
a
P
Diyi juetan
ƒ
@
±
¬
Diyi kaihua tan
ƒ
@
}

¬
Diyi tan
ƒ
@
¬
Dizang
a

Donghua dijun
F
ÿ
“
g
Donghua pai
F
ÿ
£
Dongji jiulong fuming
F
•
E
s

R
Dongjing hui
}
g
|
Doumu
Ê
¿
Du Fu
˘
j
Du Lüzu sanni yishi shuoshu guankui
™
f
™
T
ß
Â
@
°
z
ﬁ
s
Du Yangdong
˘
ß
…
Du Yongchang
˘

˜
Duan Chengshi
q
®
h
Duan Yucai
q
…
Ù
Duren jing

H
g
Duren shangjing dafa

HW
g
j
k
Dushi lunduan
™
v

_
egui
j

Enhong
¶
x
Ezhou
k
{
fa
k
fa puti xin
o–
£
ﬂ
faguo
o
G
fahui
k
|
falun
k
¸
fan
Î
Fan Ao
S
l
Fan Ben
S
N
Fan Changsheng
S
¯
Õ
Fan Li
S
˘
Fang Ciweng
Ë
®Œ
Glossar y 297
Fang Dacong
Ëj
z
Fang Fengwu
Ë
{
»
Fang Huan
Ë
A
Fang Jue
Ë

Fang Wen
Ë
Z
Fang Wenzhao
ËÂ
”
Fang Xian
Ë
w
Fang Xun
Ë
ﬂ
fang yankou
Ò
K
f
Fang Zhong
Ë
Ú
Fang Zhuang you
Ë
ß
ﬂ
fangji
Ë
ﬁ
fangliang
Ë
}
Fangshan pai
Ës
£
fangxiang shi
Ë
¤
Û
Fangzhai cungao
Ë
N
s
Z
Fanyu
f
Î
Fanyu xian xuzhi
f
Î
§
Ú
”
Fayuan zhulin
k
b
]
L
Feizhi yin

Ë
L
fendeng
¿
O
Feng Yan
æ
l
Fengdu
Z
£
fengpian

˘
Fengsu tong yi

U
q
q
Fengxue jiaozi shu

–
l
—
Foshan yaoye zhi
Ú
s
ƒ
~
”
Foshan zhong yi xiangzhi
Ú
s
æ
q
m
”
foshou guo
Ú
‚
G
fu

Fu Xi
Ò
q
fuming

R
fushui

Ù
Fuyou dijun

ˆ
“
g
Fuyou dijun jueshi jing

ˆ
“
g
±
@
g
Fuyou shangdi tianxian jinhua zongzhi

ˆ
W
“
—
P
˜
ÿ
v
Æ
Fuzhou
÷
{
Gai Gong
\

gancao tang
Ã
Û
ˆ
ganguo
Ã
G
ganlu
Ã
S
Ganquan
Ã
u

Gaogong daoshi
™
\
D
h
gaoqian
™
˙
Gaotang fu
™

·
gaozi
|
J
Ge Hong
Ø
x
Ge Xuan
Ø
»
Gelao
h
–
gewu
Ê
´
geyi
Ê
q
gongde fashi
\
w
k
v
Gongde wenjian
\
w
Â
À
Gongmo
^

Gongshan she

¿
Gong yang yishi
—
I
ˆ

Gong yu shuyuan

…
—
|
Gu hongmei ge
j
ı
ˆ
’
Gu shuyinlou cangshu
j
—
Ù
”

—
Guan Y in
ˆ
®
guanding
È
ª
Guang
˙
Guangchengzi
s
®
l
Guangdong nianjian
s
F
~

Guanghuazi Huijue
s
l
f
±
Guangji zhenjun
s
Ÿ
u
g
Guangzhou
s
{
Guansheng dijun
ˆ
t
“
g
Guansheng dijun mingsheng jing zhujie
ˆ
t
“
g
˙
t
g
`
—
Guanyin
[
µ
Guanzizai
[
¤b
guhun
t
Ó
guibing

L
guidao

D
guishi

v
guiwu

guizhu

D
guizu

Ú
Guochao qixian leizheng chubian
Í
¬
œ
m
˛
x
Ï
s
Guodian
¢
±
guoshi
Í
v
Gushi shijiu shou
j
÷
QE

298 Glossar y
hai
Ë
Han Fei
˙
D
Han He
~
e
Han Yu
˙
U
Hanfeizi
˙
D
l
Hanshi waizhuan
˙
÷
~
«
Hanshu
~
—
Hanyang
~
ß
Hanzhong
~
§
He Baiyun
Û
’

He Qizhong
Û
“
æ
Hefu tongzi
X

£
l
Henan Fangshi
e
n
ËÛ
Heqiao
Û
Ï
Hong’en lingji zhenjun
x
¶
F
Ÿ
u
g
honggui
ı
t
Hongjiao enshi
ª
–
¶v
hong yuan
ı
˚
Hou Hanshu
·
~
—
Houcun xiansheng daquan ji
·
¯
˝Õ
j
˛

Hua Zhushi
ÿ
D

huahu

J
Huainanzi
a
n
l
Huajian shan
·
y
s
Huang Xuanxian
¿
»
À
Huang Zhonghuang
¿
§
¿
Huang Zongxi
¿
v
q
Huangdi
¿
“
Huangdi sijing
¿
“
|
g
Huangfu Mei
”
j
T
Huangfu Peng
¿
j
B
Huangjing hui
”
g
|
Huang-Lao
¿
—
Huanglong guan
¿
s
[
Huanglu dazhai yi
¿
¸
j
N
ˆ
Huanglu zhaiyi
¿
¸
N
ˆ
huangquan
¿
u
Huangsha
¿
F
Huangshi gong
¿
¤

Huanzhu qiao
Ù
]
Ù
Huayangguo zhi
ÿ
ß
Í
”
Hubei
Ú
_
Hui Shi
f
I
huiguang
j
˙

huihe
|
X
Huijue
f
±
Huijue dizi Jiang Yupu shouzhong
shi
f
±
Ã
l
N
©
Z
u
§Û
Huilan
z
ı
Huixing shantang
f
Ê

Û
Huiyuan
z

hunqi
Ó

Ikeda On
¿
–

Ji tiannü shier xinü fa

—kQG
À
k
k
jia
“
jia
a
Jia Y i
Î
À
jiaci
a
®
jiamiao
a
q
jiang baxian

K
P
Jiang Shuyu
±
˚
÷
Jiang Yupu
±
©
Z
jiangbi

ß
jianjue
C
Z
jianshou
C
‚
jiao
Á
jiaobing
Á
Ê
jiashou

‚
jiazhi
[
K
jibi
‰
ß
Jidu dacheng jinshu
Ÿ

j
®
˜
—
Jidu jinshu
Ÿ

˜
—
jie
T
jie
—
Jiebi
—
Õ
jiefa yin

k
L
jiejie
—

jieyin

L
Jijiao fa

Á
k
jijiu

s
Jilian keyi

“
Ï
ˆ
Jin Yunzhong
˜
§
Jing

jing
q
jing
Î
jingbao
q
]
Glossar y 299
Jingming yuanliu
b
˙

y
Jingming zhongxiao dao
b
˙æ
µ
D
Jingming zhongxiao lu
b
˙æ
µ
˝
jingshe
Î
Ÿ
jingshi
R
«
jingsi
Î
‰
jingtu
b
g
Jinhua keyi
˜
ÿ
Ï
ˆ
Jinhua Taiyi
˜
ÿ
”A
Jinjing
Tg
jinshi
i
h
Jinshu
?—
Jishan
n

Jishan li
n

Jiu Tangshu
¬

—
jiujin
E
˜
Jiuku zhenfu
œ
W
u

jue
Z
Jueqi
M

Juetan
±
¬
Jueyuan baotan
±

_
¬
Jueyuan bentan
±

ª
¬
Jueyuan jingshe
±

Î
Ÿ
Jugong
®

Jupo jingshe
‚
Y
Î
Ÿ
juren
|
H
jushe
~
Ÿ
Jutao yin
®
¸
L
juzi
®
l
kaipi fu
}
P

kanwei
Œ
Ï
kaozheng xue
“
“
«
Ke Yanggui
_
ß
¤
kechuan
»
Ó
Kobayashi Taichir
o
p
L
”
´
¶
Kong-Mo
’
•
Kongzi
’l
Kou Qianzhi
F
æ
ß
kuangzu
g
˝
Kunlun shan
X[
s
La
æ
Lan’gong
ı

Lao
y

Lao Dan
—
C
Laojun yinsong jiejing
—
g
µ
w
Ÿ
g
Laozi yi
—
l
ı
leiju
p

Li
ı
Li Bo
ı
’
li chang
˜
z
li diji
z
a
ˆ
Li Hu
ı
Í
Li Mingche
ı
˙
˝
Li Qingfu
ı
M
L
Li Qingqiu
ı
M
Ó
Li Shang yin
ı
”
Ù
Li Si
ı
µ
Li Te
ı
S
Li Wenyuan
ı
Â
J
Li Xiong
ı
Ø
Li Y i
ı
ı
Li Y ing
ı
r
Li Zhaoji
ı
¸
Ú
Li Zhi
ı
Ù
Li Zhongsheng Tang
ı

”
Û
Li Zhuguo
ı
W
Í
Li Zi’an
ı
l
w
Li Zongjian
ı
v

Liang Qian
Á
Á
Liang Ren’an
Á
Ø
g
Liang Wudi
Á
Z
“
liangzhi
}
æ
lianhua
Â

lianhua fa
Â

k
lianshi
Â
v
Liezi
C
l
Liguan zhutian fu
˙
ˆ
—
—

Liji
ß
O
Lin Lingzhen
L
F
u
Lin Wenjun
L
Â
T
Lin Ziyao
L
¤
ª
Lingbao
F
_
Lingbao dalian neizhi xingchi jiyao
F
_
j
Â

Æ
Ê
˘
˜
n
Lingbao duren dafa
F
_

Hj
k
Lingbao lingjiao jidu jin shu
F
_
‚
–
Ÿ

˜
—
Lingbao liuding bifa
F
_
ªB
µ
k
300 Glossar y
Lingbao wufu xu
F
_

«
Lingji gong
F
Ÿ
c
Lingji xinggong
F
Ÿ

c
Lingji zongmiao
F
Ÿ
v
q
Lingjiao jidu jinshu
F
–
Ÿ

˜
—
Lingjue
‚
M
lingwei
F
Ï
liren

H
litou

Y
Liu Du’an
B

⁄
Liu Jia

Î
Liu Kezhuang
B
J
¯
Liu Shouyuan
h
u

Liu Tishu
B
È
§
Liu Xiang
B
V
Liu Yuzhen
B
…
u
Liu Zongliang
B
v
}
Liu Zong yuan
h
v

Liu Zong yuan quanji
h
v

ë
˛
Liu Zongzhou
B
vP
liudao
ª
D
Liujia feishen shu
ª
“

´
N
liujia zhi yaozhi
ª
a
ß
n
¸
liuyi
ª
¿
Lixu
ı
Ú
lixue
z
«
Long Yu
À
…
Longghu shan bichuan shoujue
s
Í
s
µ
«
‚
Z
Longhan
s
~
Longmen
s
˘
Longnü si
s
k
x
Longqiao
s
i
lou
”
lü
ﬂ
Lü Chunyang
f
¬
ß
Lü Dongbin
f
}
´
Lu Wenchao
c
Â
p
Lu Xiujing

R
Lu Y infang

u
È
luanji
}
‰
Luci gang

}
‰
Lujiang
f
ø
Lunheng

Lunyu

y
Luo Chi

¿

Luo Qinshun

‹
ﬁ
Luofu shan

B
s
Luoshen fu
•
´
·
Luotian jiao

—
Á
Luqiao
Ò
º
Lüshi chunqiu
f
Û
KÓ
Lüzu
f
™
Lüzu quanshu
f
™
˛
—
Lüzu quanshu zongzheng
f
™
˛
—
v
ø
Lüzu shi xiantian xuwu taiyi jinhua
zongzhi
f
™
v
˝
—
Í
L
”A
˜
ÿ
v
Æ
Lüzu xunyu
f
™
V
y
Lüzu yaoqian
f
™
ƒ
“
Lüzu zhenjing
f
™u
g
Magong
®

malao
¬
y
mao
f
Maojun
T
g
Maoshan
T
s
Mawangdui
®
˝
Ô
Mazu
˝
™
Meng Jing yi
s

l
Meng Ke
s
a
Meng Sheng
s
”
Meng Xi
s
ﬂ
Meng Zhizhou
s
º
P
mengbu
⁄
R
Mengshi
s
Û
Mengzi
s
l
mianyang
—
œ
mianzhu
—
ﬁ
miaoyu
q
t
Miedu wulian shengshi miaojing
¿

“
Õ
r
Æ
g
migui
Ã
t
milao
Ã
y
Min Y ide
{
@
o
Minbei
‘
_
Mindu ji
‘
£
O
ming
W
ming
R
Mingr u xue’an
˙
ß«

mingtang
˙
Û
Glossar y 301
mingwang
˙
˝
Mingzhen ke
˙
u
Ï
Minnan
‘
n
Minzhong lixue yuanyuan kao
‘
§
z
«
W

“
Mo
Á
mo
Ø
Mo
•
Mo Chou
ˆ
T
moluo
]

Mouzi lihuolun
»
l
z
b

muquan
”
È
Nah mouh louh
‰
L
–
Nanchang
n
˜
Nanhai
n
¸
Nanhai xianzhi
n
¸
§
”
Nankang
n
d
Nanshi
n
v
Ni Heng
•

ni
’
Ning Quanzhen
Á
˛
u
niwan
d
Y
nü
k
Nüqing
k
C
Nüqing guilü
k
C

ﬂ
Ouyang Xiu
⁄
ß

Pan Jingguan
Ô
R
[
Pan Lang
Ô
¶
Pan Y i’an
Ô
ˆ
⁄
Pan Yue
Ô
®
Panhu
n
}
Paodian liuzi shu
ﬂ
I
B
l
—
Pei Songzhi
p
Q
ß
Peng Meng
^
X
Piling
i
Æ
pingfu
Ã
˛
po diyu yinzhou
}
a
ª
L
G
Po diyu zhenfu
}
a
ª
u

Po’anji
y
⁄

Pou
œ
poyufu
}
ª

Pozhuan yin
C
”
L
pudu

Pugao sanjie fu

i
T
…

Puquan she

U
¿

qi

Qi Y ing
œ
^
qi’an jiao
Ë
w
Á
qia
t
qian
o
Qiande
Æ
w
Qianfu lun
Á
“

Qianheng
Æ
Î
Qianjin yifang
d
˜
l
Ë
Qiankun yizhang tu
Æ
[
@
x
œ
Qianlong
Æ
©
Qianshan
Æ

qianshi
“
÷
Qianwei
Æ
˚
Qianxin
Æ
ﬂ
Qianyuan
Æ

Qianzhen ke
d
u
Ï
Qidiao shi
£
J
Û
qin
^
Qin Guli
V

Á
qing shifu
–
v
˜
Qingbu
C
¨
qingge
M
q
Qingpu
C
E
qingshi
M
«
Qingsong guan
C
Q
[
Qing yuan
M

Qing yuan xianzhi
M

§
”
qitou
¡
Y
Qiu Changchun
Ù¯
K
Qiuzu yulu
Ù
™
y
˝
Qu Yuan
}
Ï
Quan Tangshi
˛

÷
Quanshu zhengzong
˛
—
ø
v
Quanzhen
˛
u
Quanzhou
u
{
Quduo
£
h
Randeng
M
O
Ren An
Ù
w
Renpu
H
–
Renwang huguo bor uo boluomi jing
Ø˝
@
Í
Î
Y
i

e
g
r
enwang
a
‘
˝
r
enwang
b
Ø˝
Rong
•
Ronghui sanjiao
ƒ
|
T
–
302 Glossar y
Ru
ß
Rui Lin
Á
Ô
san enzhu
T
¶
D
San Lüshi
T
[
Û
sanbao
T
_
Sanbao yin
T
_
L
Sandong zhunang
T
}
]
n
sanfang han
TË
Á
Sangong jiuqing
TE
Î
sanguan
T
x
Sanguo zhi
T
Í
ß
Sanhuang zhai
T
”
N
sanjie
T
…
Sanni yishi shuoshu
T
ß
Â
@
°
z
Sanqing
T
M
Sanqing qibao gong
T
M
C
_
c
Sanshan
Ts
Santian neijie jing
T—
—g
Sanxingdui
T
P
Ô
Sanyuan gong
T
c
Shan Tao
s
‹
shan’gen

⁄
Shangdi
W
“
Shangqing
W
M
Shangqing lingbao dafa
W
M
F
_
j
k
Shangqing liujia qidao bifa
W
M
ª
“
Ë
´
µ
k
Shangshu
|
—
shangzhang
W

Shangzhi tongzi
W
º
£
l
Shanlue fu
s
§
˛
shanshe

¿
shanshu

—
shantang

Û
Shanyu rentong lu

P
H
P
˝
shanzhen haiwei
s

¸
˝
Shao Zhilin
Ú
”
Y
shen
a
´
shen
b

Shen Dao
V
Ï
Shen Quanqi
Hﬁ
¡
Shen Yue
H
˘
shen’gen
´
⁄
shence
´
I
Shenggong caotang dashi jiyao

Ÿ
`
Û
Û
j

ˆ
n
Shenggong lu
Ÿ
`
˝
Shengtian lu
Õ
—
¸
Shenhu yin
´
Í
L
shenjin sheng ye
´
z
Õ
G
shenjin shenshi

…
´
u
Shennong
´
A
Shennü fu
´
k
·
Shentian sanquan
@
—T
È
Shenxian zhuan
´
P
«
Shenxiao zishu dafa
´
]
µ
—
j
k
shenzhou
´
G
shi
÷
Shi Qiu
v
œ
Shi zhuanhui lingpin
Q
‡
^
F
~
Shicheng
¤

shifang
QË
shifu
÷
·
shihui zhai
Q
j
N
Shiji
v
O
Shijing gong
¤
´
Shilei guhun wen
Q
˛
t
Ó
Â
Shiquan hui
Q
˛
|
shishe
÷
¿
Shiyi
÷
ı
shizuo
‡
y
shouguo

L
shoujin
ÿ
˜
shoujue
‚
Z
shouyin
‚
L
Shu
æ
shu
®
shu
N
Shujing
—
g
Shun
œ
Shunqu

Î
Shunqu xiansheng wenlu

Î
˝Õ

˝
Shuowen jiezi
°
Â
—
r
Shuoyuan
°
b
shushu
N

Shuye
˚
]
Shuyi
—
ı
shuyuan
—
|
Shuzhu shan
§
]
s
si
‰
si
x
Glossar y 303
si jiguan
|
˚
a
siguo
‰
L
siguo
|
G
Sima Qian
q
®
E
Sima Xiangr u
q
®
¤
p
simiao
x
q
Siming zhenjun
q
R
u
g
Sizhen hetong fu
|
Ì
XP

Song Bing

Ê
Soushen ji
j
´
O
Su Lang
¨
‘
Su Shi
¨
˝
Sulao guan
p
R
[
Sumen
¨
˘
Sun Simiao
]
‰
‰
Sun Xing
]
?
Sunshi
]
Û
Sunü
¿
k
T
aihe dong
”
M
}
taiji
”
•
T
aiji zhenren feixian baojian
shangjing (xu)
”
•
u
H

P
_
C
W
g
«
T
aiping dao
”

D
T
aiping dongji jing
”

}
•
g
T
aiping jing
”

g
Ta
iping yulan
”

s
˝
T
aishang chishe shengtian baolu
”W
’
j
Õ
—
_
¸
Ta
iyi dijun dongzhen xuanjing
”@
“
g
}
u
»
g
Ta
iyi jinhua zongzhi
”A
˜
ÿ
v
Æ
T
aiyi jiuku Tianzun
”A
œ
W
—
L
T
aiyin
”
±
T
an Changzhen
”
¯
u
T
angchao haofang nü

¬
®
Ò
k
tangda
}

tanzhi
u
¸
tao
a
o
tao
b
t
T
ao Hongjing

T
ao Qian

Á
T
ao Shi’an

¤
⁄
T
ao Yan

¢
taozhi
t
¸

T
englong yin
À
s
L
ti
D
T
ian Pian
–
Ê
T
ian Shu
–
˚
T
ian Wangsun
–
˝
]
T
ian Yannian
—
µ
~
T
iandi
—
“
tiandi jiao
—
“
–
T
iandi shizhe
—
“
œ
Ã
T
ianhuang yin
—
”
L
T
ianhuang zhidao taiqing yuce
—
”
‹
D
”
M
…U
tianjin
—
˜
tianjun
—
g
tianku
—
w
T
ianlao
—
—
tianqian
—
˙
tianshen
—
´
T
ianshi
—
v
T
ianshui
—Ù
T
ianxia
—U
T
ianxian
—
P
T
ianxian xinzhuan
—
P
ﬂ
«
tianxiang
—
¤
T
ianxin zhengfa
—ﬂ
ø
k
T
ianzun
—
L
tie
K
T
ie’an ji
K
⁄

T
ong’an
Pw
tongji
£
‰
T
ongren
q
Ø
T
ongshan she
P

¿
T
ongwa yiyuan
F
ÿ
Â
|
tongzi ke
£
l
Ï
T
oulong bi yi
Î
s
z
ˆ
T
oulong songjian
Î
s
e

Tu
 Yu’an
O
t
⁄
tuchen
œ
@
T
udi gong
g
a

T
uo Xiao
¶
¤
tutan zhai
\
¥
N
W
anfa fanzong
U
k
‘
v
W
anfa guizong
U
k
k
v
W
ang Chang
˝
˜
W
ang Chong
˝
R
W
ang Dao
˝
D
304 Glossar y
W
ang Ji
˝
B
W
ang Mang
˝
ı
W
ang Qizhen
˝
¥
u
W
ang Shouren
˝
u
Ø
W
ang Wei
˝
˚
W
ang Xianzhi
˝
m
ß
W
ang Xuanhe
˝
a
e
W
ang Yangming
˝
ß
˙
W
ang Yanxiang
˝
µ
¤
W
ang Y ingshan
˝

s
W
ang Zhaojun
˝
L
g
W
angfu shi
Ê
“
¤
W
anggong shendao bei
˝
´
D
O
W
angwu shan
˝
Œ
s
W
ang ye jiao
˝
›
Á
W
ei
¬
W
ei Mou
Q
»
W
ei Ruyi
Q
p
N
W
ei Xiao
Q
’
W
ei Zheng
Q
x
W
ei Zhuangqu
Q
¯
Î
W
eishan zuile

Ã
÷
W
en Feiqing

Î
W
en Ting yun

x
a
W
en Weng
Â
Œ
W
enji
Â
V
wenjian
Â
À
W
enxuan
Â
Ô
W
ong Tai Sin
¿
j
P
wu enzhu

¶
D
Wu
Y
ang

ß
Wu  Yo u
d
ß
wu zhuoshi

B
@
W
u[xing] dadi
d
[
m
]
j
“
W
uchang
Z
˜
W
ucheng
Z

W
udi

“
wugong
»
—
W
uhu shan

Í
s
wulao

—
W
ulian jing

Â
g
W
ulong
Q
s
W
ushang biyao
L
W
µ
n
W
ushang huanglu dazhai licheng yi
L
W
¿
¸
j
N
ﬂ
®
ˆ
W
ushen
Q
H

W
usheng laomu
L
Õ
—
¿
W
ushi
d
Û
W
ushi shan
Q
¤
s
wushou

~
wuxin

Ø
Wu
xing pian

Ê
g
wuxiu

q
W
uzhen pian chanyou
©
u
g
ƒ
’
Xi K ang
]
d
Xi Shi
Ë
I
Xiajie zhifu li
U
…

O
Xiang

xiangbing
ª
Ê
Xiangfu shi
¤
“Û
Xiangli shi
¤

Û
xiangren
m
H
xiangshi
ª
«
xianguan
P
]
Xiang ying miao
ª

q
Xiang ying miaoji
¸
ª

q
O
xiang you qian
ª
o
˙
xianshi
Â
v
Xiantian dao
˝
—
D
Xiantian xuwu taiyi jinhua zongzhi
˝
—
ÍL
”A
˜
ÿ
v
Æ
Xianxue
„
«
Xianyi guan
w
y
[
Xianyou zhenjun
„
ˆ
u
g
Xiao
t
Xiao Shi

h
Xiao Yan

l
xiaolian
p
ƒ
Xiaoliang si

Á
x
xiaolong zipai
p
s
J
P
Xiaoyou dong
p

}
Xici
¥„
Xie Daoyun
¬
D
•
Xin Tangshu
s

—
Xinshan tang
H

Û
Xinshu
s
—
Xinyu
s
y
Xiong Qufei
µ
h
D
Xiongnu
I
£
Xiqiao shan
Ë
ˆ
s
Xiqiao yunquan xianguan shiji
Glossar y 305
Ë
ˆ

u
P
]
v
O
Xiuyuan jingshe

Î
Ÿ
Xiwangmu
Ë
˝
¿
Xu
}
Xu Jing yang
\
‹
ß
Xu Shen’an
\
`
⁄
Xu Xun
\

Xu Zhenjun
\
u
g
Xu Zhi’e
}
æ
k
Xu Zhizheng
}
æ
“
xuan bifan kai zangfu fashi fu

µ
Î
}
¶

k

xuan kai yanhou fu

}
|
Ô

xuan poyu fu

}
ª

Xuandu daxian yushan jinggong yi
»
£
j
m
…
s
b
—
ˆ
xuanjiang

ø
Xuanpu shan lingkui bilu
»
E
s
F
º
µ
¸
Xuantian shangdi
»
—W
“
Xuanyin
»
L
xuanyuan tan
»

¬
Xue Hui
ß
f
Xue Yanggui
ß
ß
@
Xuepen hui
Â
÷
|
xun
S
Xunyang
Ò
ß
Xunzi
˚
l
Xuxian hanzao
}
P
´
¶
Xuxian zhenlu
}
P
u
˝
Xuzu
\
™
yan
u
Y
an Song
Y
C
Y
ang Hou
®
p
Y
ang Qing
ß
y
yangqi
i

yankou
K
f
Y
anshi
C
Û
Y
aochi jinmu

¿
˜
¿
Y
aoxiu keyi jielü chao
n
Ï
ˆ
Ÿ
ﬂ
r
Y
aoyong wupin dan
n
Œ
´
~
Ê

Ye
Û
Ye
 Mingchen

W
`
Ye
 Zongmao

v
Z
yi
N
Yi
U
Y
ihe lou
Á
b
”
Y
ijing
ˆ
g
Y
ili
ˆ
ß
yin
L
yin
G
Y
in Wen
®Â
Y
ing Shao

s
Y
ingwu zhou
x
M
w
Y
ing yuan gong

c
yinjiao
»
§
yinyang
±
ß
Y
inzhiwen tushuo
±
c
Â
œ
°
yishe
q
Ÿ
yiwen
æ
Â
Y
ixin she
@
s
¿
Y
ong’an xiang

w
m
you
ª
Y
ou Qi

Q
you yan san guan
Â
b
T
x
youxin lang

ﬂ
¶
Y
ouyang zazu
ª
ß
¯
[
Yu
 Liang lou
ÿ
G
”
Yu
 shantang
P

Û
Yu
 Xuanji

»
˜
Y
uan Miaozong

Æ
v
yuan
˚
Y
uan Zhen

u
Y
uanhuo shan

ıs
yuanqi

Y
uanshi fuming

l

R
Y
uanshi tianzun

l
—
L
Y
uanxu
Ï
«
Y
ue Chengong
÷
⁄

Y
ue wumu wang
®
Z
p
˝
Y
uedong
f
F
Y
uefu
÷

Y
uegang yuan
V
^
|
Y
ueshi
÷
Û
Y
uexiu shan
f
q
s
Y
uhuang benxing jing
…
”
ª
Ê
g
Y
ujia jiyao jiu anan tuoluoni yankou
guiyi jing
Ï
˜

n
œ
¸
306 Glossar y
¯
˚

ß
K
f
y
ˆ
g
Y
ulanpen hui
ª
ı
÷
|
Y
unquan xianguan

u
P
]
Y
uqie jiyao yankou shishi yi
Ï
˜

n
K
f
I

ˆ
Y
uqing jing
…
M
g
Y
uqing tang
l
y
Û
Y
uzhang
›

zai
_
Zai Quheng
¸
¸
Î
zaju
¯
~
zangsuo

“
Zanling ji
Ÿ
F

Zeng Chunshou
ø
œ
ÿ
zhai
N
zhaijie
N
Ÿ
zhaishe
N
Ÿ
zhaishi
N
«
zhaitang
N
Û
Zhan Ruoshui
Ô
Y
Ù
Zhanbei feng
È
O
p
Zhang
i
zhang

Zhang Daoling
i
D
Æ
Zhang Gao
i
™
Zhang Jue
i
§
Zhang Ling
i
Æ
Zhang Lu
i
Ù
Zhang Shuang’an
i
n
⁄
Zhang Shujing
i
˚
q
Zhang Xu
i
Ú
zhangjue
x
Z
zhangshi gui
Ÿ
I

Zhao
L
Zhao Fenliang
¤
ƒ
}
Zhao Lianshi
Ø
Â
v
Zhao Zunsi
¤
L
|
Zhen’gao
u
¢
zheng renshi
ø
H

zhengfa
ø
k
Zhengjian gongde die
ø
À
\
w
ﬁ
Zheng yi
ø
@
Zheng yi fawen jingtu kejie pin
ø
@
k
Â
g
œ
Ï
Ÿ
~

Zheng yi fawen taishang wailu yi
ø
@
k
Â”W
~
¸
ˆ
Zheng yi jiaomu yi
ø
@
Á
”
ˆ
Zheng yi jiaozhai yi
ø
@
Á
v
ˆ
Zheng yi jie’e jiaoyi
ø
@
—
Ã
Á
ˆ
Zheng yi licheng yi
ø
@
ﬂ
®
ˆ
Zheng yi lun
ø
@

Zheng yi weiyi jing
ø
@
¬
ˆ
g
zhenmu wen
u
”
Â
zhenyan
u
•
Zhenzhong hongbao yuan bishu
E
§
E
_
b
µ
—
Zhenzhong sushu
E
§
¿
—
zhi tianzheng
v
—
F
Zhibao tai
‹
_
x
zhicheng
‹
¤
zhifu
»

zhihun
¢
Ó
zhijue
¸
Z
Zhiqi
”

Zhiqiu
”
Ó
Zhiyi
º
™
Zhizhuo
”
Ù
Zhong Ziqi
È
l
¡
zhongdang
ÿ
“
Zhongli Quan
È
˜
v
Zhongliang shi
Ú
}
Û
zhongmin
ÿ
¡
Zhongshan
§s
Zhongxiao jie
æ
µ
Û
Zhong yong
§
e
zhongzi
ÿ
l
zhou
G
Zhou Chong
P
R
Zhou Daotong
P
D
q
Zhou Dinglai
P
©
”
Zhou Qi
P
Û
Zhou Ruli
P
º
F
Zhou Shixiu
P
@

Zhou Side
P
‰
o
Glossar y 307
Zhou Sui
P
Ê
Zhou Yehe
P
±
b
Zhou Y i
P
›
Zhou Yue
P
°
Zhouli
P
ß
Zhouyi yi
Pˆ
w
Zhouyi zheng yi
Pˆ
ø
q
Zhu Faman

k
°
Zhu Gui

^
Zhu Hong
]
ª
Zhu Quan

v
Zhu Xi

Q
Zhu Yuanzhang

˝
Zhu Yunyang

ß
zhuang
¨
Zhuang Xing’an
¯
I
⁄
Zhuang Zhou
¯
P
Zhuangzi
¯
l
Zhuguo jiumin zongzhen biyao
U
Í
œ
¡
`
u
µ
n
Zhuyuan
À
È
zhuzi
—
l
Zhuzi Fang

µ
Ë
zi
l
Zi Gong
l
^
Zi Si
l
‰
Zi Zhang
l
i
Zi’an
l
w
zibo
¤
I
Zichan
G
¤
£
Zimo
˜
ˆ
Ziran zhaiyi
¤
M
N
ˆ
zisong
¤
^
zize
¤
d
Zong
Î
zongheng
a
Ó
zongzi
Í
l
zu
™
zumiao
™
q

Akizuki K an’ei
Ó
Î
[
^
Araki Kengo
Ó
Ï
£
©
Asano Har uji
L
•
K
G
Asano Y
u
ichi
L
•
Œ
@
Chen Bing
Ø
L
Chen Cheng-siang
Ø
ø
ª
Dong Qixiang

‰
ª
Duan Yuming
q
…
˙
Fan Chunwu
d
¬
Z
Fukui Fumimasa
÷
´Â
Æ
Fukui K
o
jun
÷
´
d

Fukunaga Mitsuji
÷
˙q
Fuma Susumu
“
®
i
Fur uie Shinpei
j
a
H

Guan Xiang
ˆ
æ
Harada Masami
Ï
–ø
w
Hu Fuchen
J

`
Huang Junjie
¿
T
«
Huang Shiqing
¿
B
C
Ikeda Tomohisa
¿
–
æ
[
Jiang Boqian
±
B
Á
K
amitsuka Yoshiko
´
Ô
Q
l
K
awai K
o
z
o
t
X
d
T
Kobayashi Masayoshi
p
L
ø
¸
Kobayashi Yoshihiro
p
L
q
s
Kokusho K ank
o
kai
Í
—
Z
Ê
|
Kond
o
Hiroyuki
Ò

E
ß
Li Huichuan
ı

t
Li Ling
ı
s
Li Qing
ı
y
Lin Guoping
L
Í

Liu Xiangming
B
V
˙
Liu Zhiwan
B
K
U
Liu Zhiwen
B
”
Â
Liu Zhong yu
B
Ú
t
Lü Chuikuan
f
¡
e
Luo Y ixing

@
P
Mabuchi Masaya
®
W
˜
]
Mar uyama Hiroshi
Ys
ª
Matsumoto K
o
ichi
Q
ª
E
@
Misaki R y
o
sh
u
T
T
}
P
Mitamura Keiko
T
–
¯
c
l
Miyakawa Hisayuki
c
t
|
”
Mizokuchi Y
u
s
o
æ
f
Ø
T
Mizuno Minor u
Ù
•
Í
Mori Yuria
À
—
Q
»
Nan Huaijin
n
h
@
O
fuchi Ninji
j
W
‘

309
Names of Authors Cited

Pang Pu
e
µ
Peng Wenyu
^
Â
t
Qiao Qingquan
Ï
M
±
Rueh Y ih-fu

h
“
Sahara Yasuo
ı
Ï
d
“
Sakade Yoshinobu
¡
X
ª
´
Sakai Tadao
s
´
æ
“
Sano K
o
shi
ı
•

v
Shiga Ichiko
”
P
´
l
Shimamori Tetsuo
q
À
ı
k
Shiratori Yoshir
o
’
æ
⁄
¶
Song Enchang

‰
`
T
akeuchi Fusashi
Z

–
q
T
suchiya Masaaki
g
Œ
˜˙
310 Names of Authors Cited
W
ang Jianchuan
˝
£
t
W
ang Ming
˝
˙
W
ang Qiugui
˝
Ó
¤
W
ang Zhizhong
˝
”
æ
Xiao Dengfu

n
÷
Xu Dishan
\
a
s
Xu Xiaowang
}
Â
Ê
Y
amada Masar u
s
–
Â
Y
amada Toshiaki
s
–
Q
˙
Y
ang Cenglie
®
ø
P
Yo
shikawa Tadao
j
t
æ
“
Y
oshioka Yoshitoyo
j
£
q
é
Yu
Min
M
¡
Zheng Zhenduo
G

M

Contributors
Co-editors
Livia Kohn
is Professor of Religion and East Asian Studies at
Boston University. She received her Ph.D. from Bonn University,
Ger many, after which she under took post-doctoral studies at Kyoto

University, Japan. A specialist of medieval Chinese religion and es-

pecially Daoism, she has written and edited many works, including

T
aoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques
(1989),
Early Chinese Mys-
ticism
(1992),
The Taoist Experience
(1993),
Laughing at the Tao
(1995),
God of the Dao: Lord Lao in Histor y and Myth
(1998), and
Daoism Hand-
book
(2000).
Harold D. Roth
r
eceived his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto
and ser ved as visiting lecturer at the University of Alber ta and at

the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. He is cur rently

Professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies at Brown Uni-

versity, specializing in Chinese religion and early Daoist thought.

Major publications include
The Textual Histor y of the Huai-nan Tzu
(1992) and
Original Tao: Inward Training and the Foundations of Taoist
Mysticism
(1999).
Contributors
Asano Haruji
is Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at Koku-
gakuin Junior College in Sapporo. He specializes in the under-

standing of contemporar y ritual in Chinese society and has under-

taken ﬁeldwork with a focus on Daoist ritual in Taiwan since the

1980s. He has published various ar ticles in prestigious jour nals,

such as
T
o
h
o
sh
u
ky
o
(1995) and
Girei bunka
(1996).
311

Suzanne Cahill
is Adjunct Associate Professor in the Histor y De-
par tment at University of Califor nia-San Diego. She is the author
of
T
ranscendence and Divine Passion: The Queen Mother of the West in
Medieval China
(Stanford University Press, 1993).
Mark Csikszentmihàlyi
is Associate Professor of Religion at the
University of W isconsin at Madison. He is the co -editor, with Philip

B. Ivanhoe, of
Essays on Religious and Philosophical Aspects of the Laozi
(State University of New York Press, 1999)
Edward L. Davis
is Associate Professor of Chinese Histor y at the
University of Hawai‘i. He holds a B.A. from Har vard College and
an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Califor nia at Berkeley. He

is the author of
Society and the Super natural in Song China
(Univer-
sity of Hawai‘i Press, 2001) and co - editor of the
Encyclopedia of Con-
temporar y Chinese Culture
(Routledge, for thcoming).
Terry F. Kleeman
is Associate Professor of Chinese and Religious
Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is the author of
A God’s Own Tale: The Book of Transfor mations of Wenchang
(State Uni-
versity of New York Press, 1994) and
Great Per fection: Religion and Eth-
nicity in a Chinese Millennial Kingdom
(University of Hawai‘i Press,
1998).
Mabuchi Masaya
is Professor of Chinese Thought at Gakush
u
in
University and focuses on the understanding of Ming-dynasty phi-
losophy. He has published papers in both volumes edited by the So-

ciety for the Study of Daoist Culture (1994; 1998) as well as in the

impor tant jour nal
Ch
u
goku tetsugaku kenkyu
(1990).
Maruyama Hiroshi
is Associate Professor of East Asian Religion
at Tsukuba University. He is one of Japan’s foremost scholars on

questions of contemporar y Daoist ritual and has under taken ex-

tensive ﬁeldwork in Taiwan. He is published widely in such presti-

gious jour nals such as
T
o
h
o
sh
u
ky
o
(1986; 1991),
Shakai bunka shigaku
(1986), and
Acta Asiatica
(1995).
Mitamura Keiko
is Lecturer of Chinese Studies at Meikai Uni-
versity in Chiba. She is especially interested in the study of medieval

Daoism and has variously studied its texts and worldview. Her writ-

ings appear in the volumes edited by the Society for the Study of

Daoist Culture (1994) as well as in
T
o
h
o
sh
u
ky
o
(1998) and
K
o
za d
o
ky
o
(1999).
312 List of Contributors

Mori Yuria
is Associate Professor of Chinese Histor y and Culture
at Waseda University in Tokyo. His area of specialization is the his-
tor y of the Quanzhen lineage in the Ming and Qing dynasties. His

publications explore this almost unknown area of Daoist and Chi-

nese histor y, appearing in the volumes edited by the Society for

the Study of Daoist Culture (1994; 1998) as well as in
T
o
y
o
no shis
o
to
sh
u
ky
o
(1998) and
K
o
za d
o
ky
o
(1999).
Peter Nickerson
is Assistant Professor of Religion and Asian and
African Languages and Literature at Duke University. His publica-

tions include “ The Great Petition for Sepulchral Plaints” (in

Stephen R. Bokenkamp, ed.,
Early Daoist Scriptures
[University of
Califor nia Press, 1997]) and “A Poetics and Politics of Possession:

T
aiwanese Spirit-Medium Cults and Autonomous Popular Cultural
Space” (for thcoming in
Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique
9.1
[2001]). He is cur rently completing a book manuscript,
T
aoism,
Bu
r
eaucracy, and Popular Religion in Early Medieval China
.
Charles D. Orzech
is Associate Professor and Head of the De-
par tment of Religious Studies at The University of Nor th Carolina–

Greensboro. He is the author of
Politics and Transcendent W isdom:
The Scripture for Humane Kings in the Creation of Chinese Buddhism

(Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998).
Shiga Ichiko
is Lecturer of Chinese Anthropolog y at Tokyo
Seitoku University. She focuses especially on the development of
contemporar y for ms of Daoism in Hong Kong and souther n China.

She has published widely in such jour nals as
K
o
za d
o
ky
o
and recently
brought out a book entitled
Kindai ch
u
goku no shamanizumu to d
o
ky
o
(Tokyo, 1999).
Tsuchiya Masaaki
is Associate Professor of East Asian Thought
at Yokohama University. He is primarily interested in the early Daoist
movements and in questions of self and self-understanding in tra-

ditional China. His publications cover various subjects in this gen-

eral area and have appeared in the volumes edited by the Society

for the Study of Daoist Culture (1994; 1998).
List of Contributors 313

academies, Confucian, 198; member-
ship in, 199
Acala, 216
ac
a
r
yas, 215
accommodation, and identity, 215

Aiyu shantang, 201
alchemy, and
pudu,
228
altar: ar rangement of, 291; of awaken-
ing, 175 –176, 183; as body, 222;
disciples of, 173; and healing, 172;
in moder n Daoism, 185 –209; of fer-
ings on, 277, 279, 281; preparation

of, 275; protection of, 261; in Qing,

167; setting up of, 259
Amah, 120, 122

Amit
a
bha, 176 –177
Amoghavajra, 215 –217

am
r
ta
.
See
sweet dew
ancestors: anxiety about, 72, 75; cult for,
160; of ferings for, 290; temple for,

152–153; worship of, 75
Ancestral Hall, 158, 160, 163

anger, 14
animals, ﬁve, 276, 282; in of ferings, 288;
sacriﬁcial, 278
announcement, 65, 261–263; ceremony
of, 259 –260; for dead, 66; in ritual,

257
Aofeng, 151, 155, 157, 161, 163
Aofeng shutang, 159

apocr ypha, Buddhist, 213. See
chenwei
appropriation, 215

Asano Har uji, 18

Asano Y
u
ichi, 83
“At the Temple Washing Silk Gauze,”
121
autobiography, 43

A
valokitesvara.
See
Guanyin
Ba people, 11, 25, 28 –35; beliefs of,
26; Daoist attraction of, 27; kingdom
of, 29
Ba youhun zhenfu
, 263
Baidu pai, 154
Baihe guan, 190
Bailong jingshe, 167, 170 –171, 173
Baiyun dong, 198

Baiyun guan, 179

Baiyun shan, 193
Baldrian-Hussein, Far zeen, 194
ballads, 112

bamboo, 122

Bamboo Grove, Seven Sages of, 111,
116, 118 –119
Bamen kaidu Tianzun, 225

Bamen yanqin shenshu
, 253
Ban Gu, 89 –90, 98

banjiao
, 31
banquet: as audience, 226; in
fang
yankou
, 221–223; and of ferings,
282; in
pudu
, 225 –227; ritual, 10
Banshun Man, 35
Bao Jing, 191
Baodao tang, 196, 203

Baopuzi
, 71, 244, 284, 286
Baosheng dadi, 160
Baosong baohe ji
, 203, 205, 208
Baoyuan taiping jing
, 94
Index
315

barbarians: Chinese views of, 30 –32;
conversion of, 31
Beijing, 151, 176
Beimeng suoyan, 125
beiyin
, 156
benevolence, 130
Ber ger and Luckmann, 4

Bian Que zhenzhong bijue
, 99
bigu
, 287
blood: magic of, 284 –286; sacriﬁces,
10, 18, 27, 280 –284, 291
Bo Ya, 116, 123

boats, 104, 109, 111–116, 124
bodhi
, and Dao, 216
bodhicitta
, 222–224, 228
bodhisattvas, 162; in ritual, 223
body: as altar, 222, 226; as cosmos, 228;
in Daoism, 12; at death, 67– 68; deﬁle-

ments of, 45; and hand signs, 237;

lightness of, 287; as microcosm, 52;

and mind, 51–52; spirit, 271; as state,
226, 228
Bokenkamp, Stephen, 220, 231
Boltz, Judith, 220, 227

boundaries, and identity, 2
bowls, as of ferings, 277
Brahm
a
, 225, 231; in hand signs, 239 –
240; language, 220
buddhas: assembly of, 223 –224; invoca -
tion of, 221, 223; of the past, 158;

in ritual, 223 –224
Buddhism: comparison with, 99; and
Daoism, 58; and Daoist identity, 7;
and Daoist ritual, 231–234; discipline
of, 31; Esoteric, 213 –234; and guilt,

41– 42; and literati, 157; and Ming

Daoism, 137–138; in Ming dynasty,
10, 131, 143, 235 –255, 274; and
moder n cults, 205; and mor tuar y

rites, 74 –75; of ferings in, 279; and

popular religion, 163; ritual of, 15,
16 –17, 256; temples of, 104; under-
standing of, 35
Budong, 216

bureaucracy: imperial, 107; other-
worldly, 10, 58 –77.
See also
ofﬁcials
butterﬂy dream, 114
Cahill, Suzanne, 14
Cai Wenji, 121
cakes, as of fering, 276, 283

candies, as of fering, 276 –277, 283

candles, as of fering, 275, 283, 291
316 Index
Canhua gong, 198

Canton, spirit-writing in, 187, 189
Cao Cao, 27, 29
“Capturing W illows by the Riverside,”
112–113
Catholics, and identity, 6

Cedzich, Angelika, 60 – 61
Celestial Elder.
See
T
ianlao
Celestial Masters: beginnings of, 99 –100;
confessions in, 39 – 40; early histor y
of, 96 –97; and ethnic groups, 26, 28,
33; and identity, 7– 8; merit rituals of,
256 –273; new Daoism under, 58 –77;

ritual of, 274 –294
Celestial Monarch.
See
T
iandi
Ceng Y iguan, 190, 192

Central China, 23

chamber of tranquility.
See
orator y
Chan Buddhism, 158, 162
Chang’an, 102, 104, 105, 118
Changchun daojiao yuanliu
, 190 –192
Changchun xianguan, 200

Changqu lidu nü tuoluoni zhoujing
, 241
Changsheng lingfu
, 263
Changsheng shu
, 166
Changsheng shu xuming fang hekan
, 166
Changzhou, 167
Chanhui wen
, 56
chanting, 267
Chen Minggui, 190

Chen Mou, 166, 173
Chen Qiyou, 97
Chen Rongsheng, 259, 275

Chen Tao, 118

Chen Tiquan, 195
Chen Xianzhang, 140, 146
Chen Zhong, 98

Cheng Mou, 172

Chengdu, 25
chengfu
, 218
Chenhou Y inzi dui
, 99
Chen-Li Ji, 195
Chenmu, 169
chenwei
, 24, 92
Chi Daomao, 46
Chi Tan, 46

chicken, blood of, 284

Chijingzi, 94
children, and spirit-writing, 196 –197,
206
Chiyou, 71, 75
Chongsheng guan, 104

Chongxu guan, 190 –192, 204

Christianity: guilt in, 41; histor y of, 99;
r
evelation in, 96 –97
Chu, 25, 105; clans of, 112; king of, 107
Chuanxi lu
, 132, 145
Chuci
, 62, 114, 117, 123, 124
Chunqiu fanlu
, 56
Chunqiu yi
, 145
Chunyang [shengzu].
See
Lüzu
Chunyang guan, 192
Chunyu Y i, 93 –94

Ci’en si, 104
citang
, 153
city god, 262, 265
Ciyi jing
, 246
Clark, Hugh, 162–163
Clar t, Phillip, 187
clothing, in Daoist identity, 104 –111,
123 –124
Cold Food Festival, 117–118
Colpe, Carston, 214
commitment: in Daoism, 8, 9 –10;
and identity, 4 –5
commoner, clothes of, 110
Complete Per fection.
See
Quanzhen
confession, 39 –57; acts of, 46; in mod-
er n Daoism, 20; ter ms for, 39
Confucianism: academies of, 198; and
Buddhism, 213, 217; classiﬁcation

of, 97; and Daoism, 58; and Daoist
rites, 65; and healing, 41; and Ming

Daoism, 137–138, 145; in moder n

cults, 187; of ferings in, 279, 281–282,
284; and popular religion, 162; and
r
eligious identity, 7; ritual of, 256
Confucius, 84 – 87, 91, 130; in Ming
Daoism, 138; and souls, 69
consecration, 221–222, 225

conversion, 217

corpse, preparation of, 64 – 66

cosmogony, 132–134
cosmolog y, 17, 60
cr ucible, 228

Csikszentmihàlyi, Mark, 13 –14

Cuanyu lieyu aotuo shenyu
, 239
culture: encounters of, 218; and
identity, 6
Dacheng, 29

Dadao jia lingjie
, 30, 37
Dadong zhenjing
, 34
Dai Zhen, 145
Daizong (Tang emperor), 216 –217
Daluo tian, 120
Index 317
Dan Ranhui, 166

Dangqu, 29

Dao: and bodhi, 216; grace of, 262;
in Han dynasty, 89 –90, 98; levels
of, 137; in Ming, 130, 133; principle

of, 132; root of, 134; and transcen-

dence, 135; versus
fa
, 152
daochang
, 275
Daode jing
, and Buddhism, 214
Daodian lun
, 246 –247
Daofa huiyuan
, 236, 249 –250, 251, 252,
284, 286
Daoism: areas of, 8; and Buddhist prac-
tice, 235 –255; Buddhist ter ms in,

231; early schools of, 88 – 89; identity

in general, 7–11; key concepts of, 8;
metaphors in, 226 –227; origins of,
96 –97; poetr y of, 102–126; and popu-

lar religion, 149 –164; schools of, 83;

shift in studies of, 149; sociological
development of, 81–101; ter m, 96;
women in, 102–126
Daoists, 27; deﬁnition of, 139; literati,
7, 8 –9; redhead and blackhead, 253,
292
daojia
, 83, 139
daojiao
, 139
Daojiao yishu
, 30 –31
Daomen kelue
, 40, 284
daotan
, 13, 16, 185 –209; growth of, 206;
list of, 188
Daoxue keyi
, 292
Daoxue zhuan
, 287
Daozang jiyao
, 166, 172–174, 176, 178, 183
Daozang xubian
, 166
Dark War rior, 188

Datang liudian
, 235
dates, 287; as of fering, 284
Davis, Edward, 15

Daxue
, 216 –217
Daxue yanyi lunduan
, 145
Daxue yi
, 145
de
.
See
vir tue
dead: liberation of, 59; of ferings for,
290; rituals for, 58 –77, 255 –273;

tablets for, 156
death: avoidance of, 74; as punishment,
52
DeGroot, J.J.M., 219
demon soldiers. See
guizu
demons: control of, 247–248; killing of,
243; of ferings for, 276, 282; rites for,
27.
See also
exorcism

Deng Yougong, 237
Dengxi, 98

descent, of gods, 196

desires, 52, 288
destiny: control over, 256; r uler of,
188; of world, 264
devotion, 288
dh
a
rani, 228, 231, 239 –240.
See also
mantras
dhar ma, 216 –217, 223, 225, 231

Dhar madh
a
tu, 223
Di people, 31

Dianlue
, 39
dif ferentiation, 3

Dingguang fo, 158, 163

Dip
i
mkara, 158
Dipper: in hand signs, 236, 239 –240,
242–244, 249 –250, 252; invocation

of, 249; Mother of, 192
disasters: avoidance of, 193; and
morality books, 187, 200 –201
discipline, religious, 106

diseases, dispelling of, 267.
See also
healing
divination, 93, 156; and Daoism, 82; and
Ming Daoism, 128; in temples, 155
Divine Empyrean, 237

Division of Lamps, 259

Diyi kaihua tan, 173, 183
Dizang, 224
documents: bur ning of, 260; contents
of, 261; editing process of, 266;

envelopes of, 261; notes on, 260;
in rituals, 256 –273; types of, 257
Donghua dijun, 205
Donghua pai, 271

Dongji jiulong fuming
, 263
Dongjing hui, 34

Doumu, 192

dragon cards, as of ferings, 278 –279, 289

dragons: as hand sign, 239; as messen-
gers, 289; as of ferings, 289; talisman

of, 271; talisman order of, 263
dr ugs.
See
medicines
dr unkenness, and poetr y, 113, 115 –116,
118 –119
Du Collection, 259 –260, 261, 263, 264 –
265, 267, 269, 270
Du Fu, 108, 111

Du Lüzu sanni yishi shuoshu guankui
, 180
Du Yangdong, 191

Du Yongchang, 258 –259

Duan Chengshi, 63
318 Index
duck, blood of, 284

Duren jing
, 267
Duren shangjing dafa, 247–248, 268

Dushi lunduan
, 145
“Dwelling in the Mountains,” 110 –111
“Early Autumn,” 118
Ear th: Depar tment of, 271; Door of,
243, 245; god of, 261–262, 265; and

hand signs, 252; ofﬁcials of, 69;
qi
of, 51; realm of, 263; spirits, of, 52
eccentricity, in poetr y, 115, 116, 118

egui
.
See
hungr y ghosts
Eight Immor tals, 196
elite, local, 151–153
elixir, concoction of, 285

ener g y. See
qi
enlightenment: essence of, 224; proof
of, 175; seed of, 222–224
Envoy.
See
T
iandi shizhe jie
equivalence, 221; in translation theor y,
215 –217
Erikson, Erik, 1–2

Er nst, C.W., 230

eroticism, 104, 115, 116 –117, 121–122,
123
Esposito, Monica, 165, 166, 172, 182

essence. See
jing
ethnicity, 11; in China, 7; and identity,
6, 23 –38; in moder n Asia, 32–33;
understanding of, 34 –35
exorcism, 61, 62– 64, 71–73, 241–242;
and hand signs, 238, 246, 249; in
moder n Daoism, 193
fa
, 152
family shrine, 160

Fan Ao, 173
Fan Ben, 29
Fan Changsheng, 29

Fan Li, 93

fang
.
See
methods
Fang Ce, 155

Fang Ciweng, 161

Fang Dacong, 153 –154, 161–162

Fang family, 149 –164
Fang Fengwu, 161
Fang Hong, 153

Fang Huan, 161

Fang Ji, 155
Fang Jue, 153, 155
Fang Lue, 163

Fang village, 197

Fang Wen, 161
Fang Wenzhao, 161

Fang Xian, 161
Fang Xun, 161
fang yankou
, 16, 213 –234; description
of, 221–225
Fang Zhao, 163
Fang Zhong, 161
Fang Zhuang you, 161

fangliang (demon), 62

Fangshan, 155, 159
Fangshan pai, 154
fangshi
, 17, 244; and hand signs, 237
fangxiang
, 62– 64, 69, 71, 74
Fangzhai cungao
, 138
Fanyu, 202

Fanyu xian xuzhi
, 202
Fayuan zhulin
, 284
fendeng
, 259
Feng Yan, 93

Fengdu, 226 –227, 265

Fengsu tong yi
, 63
Fengxue jiaozi shu
, 253
Festival: Cold Food, 117; of Hungr y
Ghosts, 199; Mid-Autumn, 196 –197
festivals, 158, 162, 185; annual, 199;
and local temples, 158
ﬁre: as passions, 224; phase of, 51;
in ritual, 222–223
ﬁsher man, 111

ﬁve directions, 278

Five Emperors, 290, 293
Five Marchmounts, 59 – 60
Five Pecks of Rice, 100

ﬁve phases, 51; hand signs for, 243

ﬂow, going with, 114, 115, 124
ﬂowers, 289; as of fering, 275, 283, 291
“Following the Rhymes of My Wester n
Neighbor,” 117
food: distribution of, 230; as of fering,
275; raw versus cooked, 280.
See also
blood, sacriﬁces
For mer Heaven, 174, 176

Foshan, 194 –195
Foshan yaoye zhi
, 195
Foshan zhong yi xiangzhi
, 194
freedom, and identity, 111, 116
Freud, Sigmund, 1
fr uit, 290; of immor tals, 287; as of fering,
275 –276, 283, 286 –288, 291
Fu Xi, 93, 130
Fujian, 149 –164, 187, 271

Fukui K
o
jun, 41
Index 319
funerar y rites, 291–292

Fuxing, 203

Fuyou [dijun].
See
Lüzu
Fuyou dijun jueshi jing
, 196
Fuyou shangdi tianxian jinhua zongzhi
, 165
Fuzhou, 151
Gai Gong, 95
games, and spirit-writing, 196 –197

ganlu
.
See
sweet dew
Ganquan wenji
, 143
Gansu, 29

Gaogong daoshi, 257, 259

Gaotang fu
, 107
Gaoxiong, 258, 261
gati
, six, 221, 225, 230 –231, 265
Ge Chaofu, 231
Ge Hong, 40, 71, 244; and mudras, 17

Ge Xuan, 65
Gelao people, 27, 35
genealogies, in Song, 154

generals, celestial, 261

Gennep, Ar nold van, 70
geomancy, 157
gewu
, 136
geyi
, 214, 230
ginger, as of fering, 277
“Given to a Neighbor Girl,” 105
goats, as of ferings, 276, 278, 280 –282

goddess, Daoist, 107, 189

gods: and ghosts, 160; local, 153
“Going Along the Yangzi River,” 114
gold, as of fering, 278, 283, 289

Gongde wenxian
, 258
Gongshan she, 186
Gong yang yishi
, 253
Gong yu shuyuan, 198
good works, 186 –187, 189

goodness, 131–132, 135; basic, 140, 142;
counter feit, 138; and healing, 202;

practice of, 201; and righteousness,

131; root of, 37; sprouts of, 135;

utmost, 136
gover nment, and hand signs, 252
grain: abstention from, 287; and elixir,
285; ground, 287–290; as of fering,
276, 283
Granet, Marcel, 64, 100
grave-securing writs, 58 –77
Gray, Isabella, 192–193

Gray, John Henr y, 192–193

Great Clarity, 241–243

Great Master, 85, 98

Great One.
See
Great Unity
Great Peace: confessions in, 39 –57; ideal
of, 28, 31; and identity, 7– 8, 11, 12
Great Per fection, 29
Great Ultimate, 132, 137
Great Unity, 132, 134, 170, 176, 177,
182, 245
grif fon mask, 63, 74

grottoes, 121–122
growth, 267
Gu hongmei ge, 168

Gu shuyinlou cangshu
, 166, 176 –180, 182
Guan Y in, 98
Guandi, 187, 193
guanding
, 221–222
Guangchengzi, 202, 208

Guangdong, Daoism in, 185 –209
Guangdong nianjian
, 190 –191, 193
Guangdong tongzhi
, 191
Guangji zhenjun, 175
Guansheng dijun mingsheng jing zhujie
,
187
Guanyin, 160, 223, 231

guhun
.
See
souls, orphaned
guilt, 41, 43, 44 – 45, 54 –55
Guizhou, 33
guizu
, 27, 39, 55
Gujilue
, 191
Guo Qingfan, 97
Guochao qixian leizheng chubian
, 172
Guodian, 81
Gushi shijiu shou
, 118
Habsbawm, Eric, 91

hair, in poetr y, 115 –116

Hall of Light, 246
Han dynasty: healing in, 39 –57; manu-
scripts of, 81; mor tuar y rites in,
13, 58 –77; in poetr y, 109, 118;

taxonomies in, 81–101
Han Fei, 130

Han River, 112, 114, 117

Han Yu, 145, 157, 159

hand signs, 17, 220, 235 –255; descrip-
tion of, 245; emer gence of, 237; lists
of, 239, 242, 243; in motion, 247–
251; origins of, 244 –247; pictures

of, 240, 244, 248, 250; texts on, 236,

237–238; words for, 235
“Handing Over My Feelings,” 115

hands, right versus left, 252

Hanfeizi
, 75, 86 – 88
Hangzhou, 23
320 Index
Hanshi waizhuan
, 98
Hanshu
, 14, 53, 88, 89, 94, 97, 98, 99
Hanyang, 114

Hanzhong, 25 –27, 29

Haoli, Elders of, 65, 67– 68

Harada Masami, 26

Harper, Donald, 26
Hayes, Glen, 231
He Baiyun, 198

He Jinmei, 261

He Qizhong, 204 –205, 208
healing: in early Daoism, 39 –57; and
hand signs, 238, 241, 249; and
identity, 7, 12; and lineage for ma-

tion, 172; and moder n cults, 189,
194 –196
Heaven: anthropomorphic, 50; ascent
to, 264; compassion of, 52; and
consciousness, 49 –51; and moder n
cults, 189, 194 –196; as cranium, 228;
and disease, 44; Gate of, 243, 245;

God of, 281; gods of, 45; and heal-

ing, 12, 54 –55; light of, 176; lord of,
52; music of, 176; of ferings to, 39;
order from, 266 –267; principle of,

132, 140 –142; punishments of, 47,

55; and radiance, 51; rebir th in, 264;
r
efuge in, 46; sublimation into, 272
Heavenly Sovereign, hand sign for,
239 –240
Heavenly Wor thies, 225, 231, 241–243,
268
Hefu tongzi, 268
hell: busting of, 218, 220, 224 –225; de-
str uction of, 263, 269; money for,
230; rescue from, 16. See also
fang
yankou
hells, nine, 268 –269
Henan, 151
Henan Fangshi, 155
Henr y, A. M., 191

Heqiao, 261

herbs, and poetr y, 108
Herd Boy and Weaver Girl, 117–118
Her tz, Rober t, 72

Hetu
, 92
hexagrams, 156

Highest Clarity, 241–243
Highest Emperor, 286
Hinduism, 215

Hmong people, 35

Hocar t, A.M., 219

homa
, 222–223, 228

Hong Kong: Daoism in, 16, 185 –209;
jiao
in, 220; spirit-writing in, 167
Hong’en lingji zhenjun, 151
Hong’en lingji zhenjun miaojing
, 163
Hongjiao enshi
, 174
Honolulu, 220
Hou Hanshu
, 39, 53, 55, 95
Houcun xiansheng daquan ji
, 161
Houcun xiansheng quanji
, 154, 158
Hua Zhushi, 129 –130

huahu
.
See
barbarians
Huainanzi
, 56, 90 –91
Huajian shan, 200

Huang family, 259

Huang Xuanxian, 205
Huang Zhonghuan, 169
Huang Zongxi, 128, 140

Huangdi, 13, 59, 74 –75, 91–93, 95, 99,
100, 208
Huangdi sijing
, 81
Huangfu Mei, 103, 125

Huangfu Mi, 69

Huangfu Peng, 238 –239
Huangji hepi xianjing
, 179
Huangjing hui, 34
Huang-Lao, 13, 24, 81, 91–92, 94, 95, 99

Huanglong guan, 190

Huanglu dazhai yi
, 288 –290, 292–293
Huanglu jiao, 158

Huanglu zhaiyi
, 292–293
Huangshi gong, 288

Huanzhu, 193
Huayangguo zhi
, 26, 27
Hubei, 112, 117
Hui Shi, 98

Huijue, 182
Huilan, 113
Huixing shantang, 202

Huiyuan, 214, 230

Huizong (Song emperor), 237–238
hungr y ghosts, 221, 225 –228, 229 –230,
231; of ferings for, 276, 280 –281, 282
Hymes, Rober t, 152, 154
identity: and apocalypse, 187; and
coherence, 138; in Daoism, 7–11;
deﬁnition of, 2; and economic
r
eality, 283; and freedom, 111, 116;
limitations of, 105, 107; through
lineage, 180; of Master Zhuang,

171; Muslim, 215; perspectives
of, 138 –139; and popular religion,
149 –164; and prejudice, 214; as
Index 321
process, 3, 8, 272; and religion, 1–11;

through ritual, 256 –257; theor y of,

1– 6; and translation, 213 –234; in
W
ester n thought, 1–2; word for, 1;
with world, 223.
See also
self
immor tals: commentar y of, 180; descent
of, 197; and food, 287; in poetr y,
110, 116, 122; prefaces by, 172; pre-
scriptions of, 195 –196, 199; and
r
evelation, 166, 168; ritual transfor-
mation into, 222; in Song, 162; in

Song-Ming, 151; types of, 74.
See also
séance; spirit-writing
incense: as of fering, 275, 283, 291;
chamber for, 45
initiation, 220, 229
ink, as of fering, 278
inner alchemy, and hand signs, 237

inner nature, 132, 143.
See also
mind
inner or gans, 51
inscriptions, 156
institutions: in Han, 95 –96; and identity;
and lineages, 84
integration, 3
intention, 51, 53
invocations, 222–224

Islam, 215
Jade Clarity, 226, 241–243, 252
Jade Emperor, 163, 281; bir thday of, 199

jade yang, 228
Jakobson, Roman, 216, 231
James, W illiam, 1

Japan, 24, 33; invasion, 204

Ji tiannü shier xinü fa
, 292
Ji Yugong, 125

Jia Y i, 98

jiaci
, 160
Jiang Boqian, 85
Jiang Shuyu, 266
Jiang Yupu, 15 –16, 165, 173; altar of,
174 –175; followers of, 183
Jiangsu, 16, 24

Jiangxi, 152, 154, 162
Jianzhi lue
, 192
jiao
, 10, 18, 99, 158, 185; altar of, 283;
deﬁnition of, 274 –275; of ferings in,
286; for peace, 257–258
jiashou
, 37
Jidu dacheng jinshu
, 270, 285
Jidu jinshu
, 268, 270
Jiebi
, 98
Jijiao fa, 292

Jijie
, 99
jijiu
, 27, 28, 55
Jilian keyi
, 253
Jin Yunzhong, 262, 286 –287, 293
jing
, 44
Jin’gai shan, 176 –180, 181
Jin’gai xindeng
, 180
Jingming (school), 16, 166, 169 –172,
180 –182
Jingming yuanliu
, 169 –170
Jingming zhongxiao dao, 169

Jingming zhongxiao lu
, 169, 179
jingshi
.
See
orator y
Jinhua keyi
, 182
Jinhua Taiyi, 170

Jinjing
, 245
Jinshu
, 35, 45
Jishan li, 157

Jishan xiantan, 204

Jiu Tangshu
, 99
Jiuku zhenfu
, 263
Johnson, Mark, 216 –217

jour ney: as metaphor, 217–218; post-
mor tem, 66 – 69, 71–72.
See also
boats
judgment: and afterlife, 59 – 60; and
metaphors, 217; powers of, 142;

and sins, 53, 54
Jueqi
, 30
Jueyuan bentan, 175

Jueyuan tan, 173, 183

Jung, C. G., 165

Jupo jingshe, 200
kalpas, 177, 187, 264
K
ant, Immanuel, 1
kaozheng xue
, 138
kar ma, 265, 288, 290; abrogation of,
225; in China, 218; destr uction

of, 227, 230; road of, 226
K
awai Koz
o
, 43
Ke Yanggui, 192

Kierkegaard, Soren, 1

King Mu, 188

kingdom, Daoist, 29
kings, humane, 217
kitchen feasts, 157

Kleeman, Ter r y, 11, 181, 293

knife, as hand sign, 243
knots, untying of, 269 –270
knowledge: and action, 140; pure, 135,
140 –141
Kobayashi Yoshihiro, 154
322 Index
Kong-Mo, 91

Kongzi.
See
Confucius
Korea, 33

Kou Qianzhi, 40

kuangzu
, 63
Kuhn, Dieter, 125

Kuhn, Thomas, 70, 73
Kum
a
raj
i
va, 214
Kunlun shan, 121, 239
lads, 268 –269.
See also
talisman lads
Lager wey, John, 219, 257, 266
Lakof f, Geor ge, 216 –218

landowners, in Han, 86
Lan’gong, 169
Lao Dan, 98

Lao people, 27, 31

Laojun yinsong jiejing
, 40 – 41
Laos, 33

Laozi: emigration of, 31; revelation by,
24; versus village cults, 149; worship

of, 193
Laozi:
in Han, 82; and literati Daoists,
7, 8; meditation in, 100; in Ming,

14 –15, 127–146
Laozi yi
, 127–146
“Late Spring Sketch,” 108, 114

laws, and traditions, 85

lecture sessions, 187, 189

ledgers, of sins, 52–53
LeFevre, André, 216
Legalists, 83, 88

Leibniz, W ilhelm, 1

letters, 290
Li Bo, 108, 111, 116 –117
Li Hu, 26

Li Ling, 93

Li Mingche, 192
Li Qingfu, 161
Li Qingqiu, 190

Li Shang yin, 119

Li Si, 98

Li Te, 29
Li Wenyuan, 182
Li Xiong, 29

Li Y i, 102, 119

Li Y ing, 106
Li Zhaoji, 195
Li Zhi, 145

Li Zhongsheng Tang, 195

Li Zi’an, 113
Li Zongjian, 198
Liang Qian, 144

Liang Ren’an, 201
liangzhi
, 135 –136, 140, 142
Liaoning, 23
libationer. See
jijiu
Liezi
, 100, 145
light, 224
Liji, 63
Lin Lingzhen, 268
Lin Wenjun, 138

Lin Ziyao, 239

lineages: and aristocracy, 10; conscious-
ness of, 160; creation of, 168, 178,

181; in Daoism, 9 –10; duality in,

169 –170; in early Daoism, 81–101;

establishment of, 156; for mation,
165 –184; and identity, 180; legiti-
macy of, 166; legitimation through,

205; membership in, 89; in moder n

cults, 205; names of, 88 – 89, 170;
nine, 90; or thodoxy, 175; and ritual,
257; r ural, 157; scroll of, 179; in

Song, 149 –164; succession of, 179;

and texts, 13; transmission in, 84
ling
, 231, 246
Lingbao: brilliance of, 226; and Bud-
dhism, 7; Daoists of, 292; and death,

67; and hand signs, 238; and mudras,

17; relief through, 227; revelations
of, 65; ritual of, 69, 219 –220, 263,
271, 274; scriptures of, 231
Lingbao dalie neizhi xinchi jiyao
, 220
Lingbao duren dafa
, 293
Lingbao lingjiao jidu jinshu
, 220
Lingbao liuding bifa
, 292
Lingbao wufu xu
, 285, 293
Lingji gong, 15, 150 –151, 155, 158 –159,
163
Lingji xinggong, 161

Lingji zongmiao, 156

Lingjiao jidu jinshu
, 286
Lingjue, 30

lingwei
, 185
litanies, precious, 259, 267–268, 271

literati Daoists, 14 –15, 191, 194
Liu Du’an, 170
Liu Jia, 99

Liu Kezhuang, 162

Liu Shouyuan, 174
Liu Tishu, 167
Liu Xiang, 74, 94

Liu Yuzhen, 169

Liu Zhiwan, 258

Liu Zhong yu, 239 –240
Index 323
Liu Zong yuan, 145, 156 –157, 159

Liu Zong yuan quanji
, 156, 161
Liu Zongzhou, 56, 144
Liujia feishen shu
, 253
living, rites for, 275
Lixu
, 35
lixue
, 127
local elite, 187, 191, 194, 199, 200 –201,
203 –204, 206
Locke, Herber t, 1

lodges, 193

long life, talisman of, 263
long night, 265.
See also
hell
Long Yu, 122
Longghu shan bichuan shoujue
, 252
Longhan, 264
Longmen lineage, 16, 171, 175 –180,
182, 189, 204 –205
Longnü si, 187
Longqiao her mitage, 176 –177
Lord Lao, 30.
See also
Laozi
Lord of Ghosts, 27, 35
lotus blossom, 224

Lu, 85
Lü Chuikuan, 258
Lü Dongbin.
See
Lüzu
Lu Jiuyuan, 146

Lu Wenchao, 98
Lu Xiujing, 40, 284
Lu Y infang, 205

luanji
, 155
Luci gang, 114
Lujiang, 287
Lunheng
, 49, 74, 99
Lunyu
, 84 – 86, 128, 142
Luo Qinshun, 140
Luofo shan, 189 –191, 193 –194, 206
Luofu zhinan
, 191
Luoshen fu
, 123
Luoshu
, 92
Luotian jiao, 158

Luqiao, 102

Lüshi chunqiu
, 48, 49, 85, 97–98
Lüzu: legends of, 194; in moder n
Daoism, 185 –209; names of,

173 –174; and Qing lineages, 16,

165 –184
Lüzu quanshu
, 165, 167–169, 171
Lüzu quanshu zongzheng
, 166
Lüzu shi xiantian xuwu taiyi jinhua
zongzhi
, 166, 182
Lüzu yaoqian
, 199
Lüzu zhenjing
, 197

Mabuchi Masaya, 14
Macao, 203, 207

magic, 26; of blood, 284 –286; and
Daoism, 149
Magong, 187

maid, murder of, 102, 105, 124

Man people, 23, 31; types of, 35
mandala: eight-sided, 231; Vajradh
a
tu,
216
mandates: in ritual, 257; twelve, 268 –
269; to under world, 259 –262, 271–

272; of yin and yang, 270
mantras: in
fang yankou
, 10, 221–222,
224; and hand signs, 239 –240; in
pudu
, 219 –220; in ritual, 228 –229
Maojun, 169

Maoshan, 155

mapping, in religions, 217–218

markets, for religions, 219
Mar uyama Hiroshi, 17–18, 34
material culture, and Daoism, 14,
102–126
Mawangdui, 81, 99 –100
Mazu, 145, 160
McRae, John, 34

meat: dried, 285; as of fering, 277–278,
280 –284, 291
medicine: and cults, 205 –206; and
Daoism, 82; and Ming Daoism, 128;

and moder n cults, 189, 201–203
medicines: and moder n cults, 194 –196;
peddlers of, 194 –196; revelation of,
195 –196, 204
meditation, 45, 106, 199
melancholy, 105, 108 –109, 110, 113,
117, 121, 124
memorial, 259 –260, 290

Mencius, 81, 117, 132, 135

Meng Jing yi, 64 – 65, 66, 74

Meng Ke, 98
Meng Sheng, 98
Meng Xi, 95

Meng Zhizhou, 64

mengbu
, 155
merit, ofﬁcers of, 265

metaphor: of guest in ritual, 222; and
r
eligion, 11, 14, 17, 214 –218, 221,
228 –229; studies of, 231
methods, and lineages, 88 – 89, 91–92,
98; in Han, 87
Miedu wulian shengshi miaojing shenjing
,
67, 69, 238
324 Index
milk, as of fering, 285 –286; taboo of,
292–293
Milky Way, 106, 117

millenarianism, 26

Min County, 149 –164
Min Y ide, 15 –16, 166, 175 –180, 183
Minbei, 151, 159

mind: examination of, 246; in Ming
Daoism, 127–146; and phenomena,
134, 140; and
qi
, 50 –52; substance of,
136, 140, 142–143; transcendence of,
135 –136, 140 –141
Mindu ji
, 154, 161
ming
(school), 45, 55
Ming dynasty: hand signs in, 17, 235 –
255;
Laozi
in, 14, 127–146; of ferings
in, 285; order in, 158; phar macies
in, 195; ritual in, 257, 261, 268 –272;
T
aiping jing
in, 42
Mingr u xue’an
, 128, 129, 140 –142
mingtang
, 246
mingwang
, 216 –217
Mingzhen ke
, 268
Minnan, 151

Minzhong lixue yuanyuan kao
, 159
mir ror, in translation, 216 –218

Mitamura Keiko, 17

Mo Chou, 112

Mo people, 31

models, 89
Mohism, 95; hierarchy of, 98
Mohists, 83, 88, 98

Mol, Hans, 2– 6

Moling, 176
monasteries, 152; in Guangdong, 191
money: incense,190; for lost souls, 259;
as of fering, 278, 288 –289; for spirits,

269
Monkey God, 193

moon, in ritual, 224

morality: Confucian, 117; and death, 61;
and ethnicity, 31, 37; and healing,
46, 52; and health, 41; and Heaven,
44 – 45; and mind, 135; in Ming

dynasty, 141–142; and ritual, 10;

r
oot of, 130
morality books, 16, 189; and eschatol-
og y, 187; in moder n Daoism, 186 –

187; and phar macies, 196; and

sickness, 202–203
Mori Ogai, 125

Mori Yuria, 15 –16

Mother Goddess, 189
mountain, entering of, 245

Mouzi lihuo lun
, 42
Mozi
, 41, 84 – 87, 91
mudra: in Daoism, 10, 17, 235 –255; as
Daoist ter m, 247; in
fang yankou
, 224;
in
pudu
, 219 –220; as seal, 239, 252
muquan
, 59
music, 109
myths, and identity, 5 – 6
Nah mouh louh, 193 –194, 207
Nanchang, 168
Nanhai, 195, 197–198

Nanhai County, 186

Nanhai xianzhi
, 192, 198 –199
Nanjing, 176

Nankang, 162

Nanshi
, 74
nature, Daoist, 106
Needham, Joseph, 61
Neo -Confucianism: Daoist assimilations
of, 32; and Daoist rites, 65; and Ming

Daoism, 127–146; and r ural order,
158
neolithic, 23
New Testament, of Dao, 61

Ni Heng, 121
Nickerson, Peter, 12–13
Nida, Eugene, 216, 230

nightmares, banishing of, 246

Nine Ministers, 25
Nine Obscurities, 265
“Nineteen Songs from a Nomad Flute,”
121
Ning Quanzhen, 266
Nir v
a
na, 228
niwan, 228
No exorcism, 62– 64

nonbeing, 132, 134, 177
noon sacriﬁce, 276
Nor ther n Emperor, 252

Nüqing, edicts of, 66

Nüqing
guilü, 27
objectivation: in Daoism, 8 –9; and
identity, 3 – 4
of ferings: consumption of, 284 –285; in
fang yankou
, 224; and healing, 40;
histor y of, 284 –285; placement of,

289; in ritual, 18, 271, 274 –294
ofﬁcials: celestial, 256, 266 –267; of
Index 325
Ear th, 69; as gods, 288; imperial,

218; and local elite, 154; metropoli-
tan, 158; names of, 267; needing
paper, 290; of ferings for, 282; at

Qing cour t, 172; receiving money,

269; as spirit masters, 172; of under-
world, 259, 261–262, 265
O
fuchi Ninji, 41– 42, 44, 258 –260, 270,
293
“On a Pavilion Hidden in the Mist,” 110

Opium War, 200
orator y, 41– 42, 45, 53

order, through ritual, 256

orders: of execution, 266; to other-
world, 257
ordination, in Qing, 179; rituals of, 229

or ganizations, today, 185 –186

or gans, 12
Or thodox Unity.
See
Celestial Masters
Or zech, Charles, 16, 236
Ouyang Xiu, 145
painting, 157
Pan Jingguan, 171

Pan Lang, 120

Pan Y i’an, 169 –170, 172–173
Pan Yue, 120
Pang, Duane, 219 –220

Pangu shan, 162

Panhu, 33
paper, as of fering, 278, 290
paradigms, in early Daoism, 58 –77

paradise, 121–122

Pardon, Writ of, 259, 261, 263 –267,
270 –271
“Passing Ezhou,” 111–112

Patriarch Lü.
See
Lüzu
Payne, Richard, 221
peace, of fering for, 275
Pearl River, 186, 189, 192–193, 194,
202
Pei Songzhi, 39
Peng Meng, 98
penitence, 47, 53

People’s Temple, 5

petitions: for dead, 61, 65, 66 – 67; and
healing, 39 – 40; in ritual, 257, 290
phar macies, 195 –196

Pidian liuzi shu
, 145
pigs, as of ferings, 276, 278, 280 –282
Piling, 167, 171–172, 178
pillow books, 94, 109

planchette, 155, 192–193, 196 –197.
See also
séance; spirit-writing
plum trees, 122–123; blossoms of, 162
pluralism, and identity, 6
Po diyu zhenfu
, 263
Po’anji, 144
“Poem Following the Rhyme Words of
Three Sisters,” 120
“Poem to the Reﬁned Master,” 107
poetr y, 102–126; societies for, 198
Pool of Blood, 259

popular religion: beliefs of, 26; and
Daoism, 58 –77, 149 –164; and Daoist
of ferings, 18, 274 –294; and moder n
cults, 16, 189; and moder n Daoism,

193 –194; of ferings in, 279, 281, 282–

283; ritual of, 256
population, expansion of, 204

possession, 156

precepts: and healing, 46; and lineage,
179; nine, 272
Precious Litany, 18

preta
.
See
hungr y ghosts
Priest of High Merit.
See
Gaogong
daoshi
priests: as bureaucrats, 272; in her-
mitages, 191; and of ferings, 275;

r
edhead, 284; today, 33; urban,
193 –194. See also
jijiu;
ofﬁcials
primordial beginning, 264; Heavenly
Wo
r
thy of, 268; talisman of, 263
principle: and Dao, 136; of Dao, 132;
and mind, 143
prison, in poetr y, 111

proto -Daoism, 61

pudu
, 16 –17, 213 –234, 259, 265; de-
scription of, 225 –228; similarities
with
fang yan kou
, 219 –220, 228 –230
p
u
j
a
, 222
Puji tan, 195, 201
punishment: death as, 52; through
Heaven, 47, 55; for wrong of ferings,

290
Puquan she, 186

Pure Land, 177, 221
pure songs, 109, 118
pur gator y.
See
hell
puriﬁcation: in alchemy, 285; and sins,
45
purity: and of ferings, 285 –286; in ritual,
280, 283
Purple-Robed Fangs, 153, 154, 159, 162

Putian, 154, 159, 162
326 Index
qi:
and consciousness, 50 –51; in cosmos,
12, 44; and healing, 54; in Ming,
136, 140 –141; nur turing of, 110;
strength of, 285; yin, 246
Qi Y ing, 199

qi’an jiao
, 257
Qianfu lun
, 74
Qianjin yifang
, 245
Qiankun yizhang tu
, 253
Qianzhen ke
, 238
qin
.
See
zithers
Qin, 81, 85; conquest, 24

Qin Guli, 98

Qing dynasty: Daoism in, 15 –16, 154,
190 –194; Daoist lineages in, 165 –
184; hand signs in, 235, 252
Qingbu, 151
Qingpu, 150 –151

Qingshui zushi
, 160
Qingsong guan, 205

Qing yuan County, 200

Qiu Changchun, 167

Qiu Chuji, 169, 171, 205
Qiu Xigui, 97
Qiuzu yulu
, 171
Qu Yuan, 105, 112, 117

Quan Tangshi
, 102–126
Quanshu zhengzong
, 165, 172–174, 175,
182–183
Quanzhen (school): in Guangdong,
192; lineages in, 16, 167, 170 –172,
175 –181; and moder n cults, 189 –
190, 204 –207; and nationalism, 32;

patriarchs of, 169 –170, 189
Quanzhou, 187
Quduo, 241
Queen Mother of the West, 121–122
rainmaking, 48 – 49
Randeng, 158

r
ebir th, realms of, 221
Reﬁned Master, 107, 108, 114

r
egisters: in Daoism, 218; of death, 65;
descent of, 266; in Heaven, 264
r
eligions: deﬁnition of, 35; encounter
of, 219; interaction of, 213 –215, 236;

types of, 214 –215
Ren An, 95

Renpu, 56

r
enwang
, 217
Renwang huguo bor uo bolomiduo jing
, 213
Renwang jing
, 217
r
equiem.
See
rites, of merit

“Retur n from Fishing,” 106
r
evelation: by immor tal, 180; through
Lüzu, 168, 174 –175
“Rhapsody on the Par rot,” 121

Rig Veda
, 231
righteousness, 131

rites: distinctions in, 256; of merit, 18,
185, 199, 256 –273; in Ming Daoism,

134; of passage, 70; preliminar y, 283;

travel, 71–72
ritual: Buddhist versus Daoist, 213 –234;
in Daoism, 10; documents in, 256 –

273; of ﬂaming mouths, 213 –234;

and hand signs, 235 –255; and heal-

ing, 39, 46; histor y of, 270 –271;
homa,
216, 222–223; and identity, 5,
8
–9; identity of, 219 –220; mor tuar y,
13, 58 –77, 185; of ferings in, 274 –
294; for protection, 246 –247; stan-
dardization of, 257; str ucture of,
70; study of, 256 –257; today, 17–18;

translation of, 213 –214; of universal

salvation, 213 –234; Vedic, 221–222,
231
Rober tson, Maureen, 125
Rong people, 30

Ronghui sanjiao, 138

Roth, Harold, 99 –100
Ru, 81, 83, 86, 88; masters of, 98
Ruan Zhao, 108 –109, 111

Rui Lin, 193

Rulers of Darkness, 18
r
ushe, 157
sacralization, 3, 6

sacriﬁce: attitude of, 288; for dead, 61–
62; travel, 71; for Wang ye, 293
Sacriﬁcial Hall, 153 –154, 159
“Sad Thoughts,” 109, 118
sages, 82
saints, 9

S
a
kyamuni, 130 –131.
See also
buddhas
saliva, swallowing of, 246
salvation, talismans for, 264
San Lüshi, 112

Sandong zhunang
, 30, 245, 247, 287
Sangren, Stephen, 231
Sanguo zhi
, 39, 40
Sanhuang, texts of, 75
Sanhuang zhai
, 292
Sanni yishi shuoshu
, 180
Sanqing, 192
Sanshan, 154
Index 327
Sanshui xiaolu
, 125
Sanskrit: spells in, 239 –240; ter ms
in Chinese, 215 –216
Santian neijie jing
, 40
Sanxingdui, 24
Sanyuan gong, 192

sarcasm, 106

Sar vatath
a
gatatattvasa
m
graha
, 221
Saso, Michael, 219, 253, 258

Schipper, Kristofer, 32, 207, 257–258

scholars: projects of, 34; views of, 9

schools: in Han, 83; in War ring States,
87
scripts, ancient, 25

scriptures, at ordination, 179

seals, 269
séance: by children, 196 –197; descrip-
tion of, 167, 176 –177, 192–193, 204;
and sickness, 202
seclusion, 108, 115, 191
“Secret of the Golden Flower,” 165 –184
seed people, 35

seed syllable, 222–224

Seidel, Anna, 26, 59, 60, 61, 69, 72, 75,
94, 165
self: afﬁr mation of, 43; blame of, 46 –
47, 48 – 49, 54; consciousness of, 152,

161; cultivation of, 82, 136, 140, 180,
186; deﬁnition of, 149 –150, 256; ex-
pression of, 14, 122; identiﬁcation

of, 138 –139; images of, 109 –110,

112; punishment of, 47; reﬂection
on, 141; understanding of, 291
“Sending Someone My Inner most
Feelings,” 122
senses, six, 265

“Sent to Wen Feiqing,” 119
“Sent to Zi’an,” 113

separation, pain of, 113

Seven Treasures, 261
sexual rites, 7
sexuality: and music, 116 –123; in poetr y,
107, 109, 119 –120, 121–122; in ritual,

220
Shaanxi, 29

shamanism, 27, 62– 63, 74, 238, 244

shame, 47, 54, 120, 123

Shan Tao, 119

Shang dynasty, 23, 24
Shangdi, 169
Shangqing, 7, 66, 107; lineage, 169;
and poetr y, 122, 124; and revelation,

93

Shangqing lingbao dafa
, 247–248, 262–-
267, 292–293
Shangqing liujia qidao bifa
, 292
Shangshu
, 134
Shangzhi tongzi, 268
Shanlue fu
, 180
shanshu
.
See
morality books
Shanxing, 275

Shanyu rentong lu
, 199 –200
Shao Zhilin, 15 –16, 165, 167–170, 178,
181
Shaoyuan (king), 71

Shen Dao, 98
Shen Quanqi, 118
Shen Yue, 56

Shenggong cantang, 196, 202, 204

Shenggong caotang dashi jiyao
, 202
Shenggong lu
, 202
Shengtian lu
, 264
Shenhu, 261

Shennong, 91–93
Shennü fu
, 123
Shenxian zhuan
, 40, 55
Shenxiao zishu dafa
, 251
Shi Qiu, 98

Shi Zhaolin, 182
Shi zhuanhui lingpin
, 268
Shicheng, 112

Shiga Ichiko, 13, 16, 167
shihui zhai
, 268
Shiji
, 13, 81, 88, 92–94, 95, 97, 99
Shijing
, 124
Shilei guhun wen
, 230
Shiliu pinjing
, 182
Shimamori Tetsuo, 100
Shint
o
, 24
Shiquan hui, 187
Shisan jing zhushu
, 97, 99
Shiyi
, 145
shoujue
.
See
hand signs
shouyin
, 235
Shu, 25
shu
.
See
methods
Shujing
, 29
Shun, 30, 87, 116 –117, 130
Shunde County, 204
Shunqu, 128

Shunqu xiansheng wenlu
, 129 –131, 135 –
137, 145 –146
Shuowen jiezi
, 74
Shuoyuan
, 74
Shuye, 117–118

Shuyi, 145
328 Index
Shuzhu shan, 192

Sichuan, 11, 24 –25, 29, 31–32, 33
sickness, 39 –57; and moder n cults,
201–203
silk, 111, 278, 289
Sima Qian, 81, 88 – 89, 90, 91–92, 95, 98

Sima Tan, 89, 98
Sima Xiangr u, 25, 116 –117, 119
simiao
, 160
simplicity, 109, 115

sincerity, 50
sins, 39 –57, 288; and death, 265 –266
Sioux, 2

Siu, Helen, 162

Six Dynasties: Buddhism in, 214;
hand signs in, 238; image in, 105;

mor tuar y rites in, 74; ritual, 271;

talismans in, 263
six schools, 88
snake, char ming of, 245
social work, 186

societies: charitable, 193 –194, 200, 206;
local, 157
sociolog y: in Han, 95; of moder n cults,
203 –204; and priesthood, 149 –150;

in Song-Ming, 149 –164
soma
, 222
Song Bing, 98

Song dynasty: Daoism since, 7, 37; fes-
tivals in, 162; hand signs in, 237–238,

241–244, 252; lineages in, 152; local
elites in, 159; Lüzu in, 194; national-
ism in, 11, 32; of ferings in, 288; reve-

lation in, 180; ritual in, 65, 257, 261,

267, 270 –272;
T
aiping jing
in, 42
Song Yu, 107, 114, 117

souls: invocation of, 246; jour ney of, 65 –
66, 68 – 69; obstr ucted, 230; of ferings

for, 280; orphaned, 221, 225 –228,
265, 276, 282; salvation of, 275;
sprites of, 246; sublimation of, 259;

summoning of, 63; transfer of, 272;

understanding of, 75; and under-
world, 59 – 60
soup, as of fering, 275, 283
Soushen ji
, 288
Souther n Song dynasty, 152

Souther n Tang dynasty, 151–152, 161
spells: and hand signs, 239, 245 –248;
and healing, 39; phonetic, 240 –241;
in
pudu
, 219, 220, 225
spirit: depar ture of, 67– 68; root of, 44

spirit mediums, 155 –156

spirit money, 278
spirits, feeding of, 227, 230

spirit-writing: and access to gods, 181; in
moder n Daoism, 185 –209; in Qing,

165 –184
Spring and Autumn period, 84, 86, 88,
95
Staal, Frits, 221

stars: as hand sign, 239, 242–243,
249 –250; in poetr y, 117
statutes, 179
Stewar t, Tony K., 17, 215 –217, 230
Strickmann, Michel, 58, 61, 93, 96 –97,
99, 229 –230
Su Lang, 172
Su Shi, 145
S
u
khavati, 177
Sulao guan, 190 –191

Sumen, 168
summons, to under world, 266
Sun Guangxian, 125

Sun Simiao, 245

Sun Xing, 53
Sunü, 92
sweet dew, 221–223, 228, 230

sword, and hand signs, 236, 238 –239,
241–243
symbols, 11
syncretism, 17, 213 –214
tablets, funerar y, 156, 185, 207
taboo, of meat, 280
T
aihe dong, 200
T
aiji zhenren feixian baojian shangjing
xu
, 37
T
ainan, 258, 273
T
aiping.
See
Great Peace
T
aiping dongji jing
, 42
T
aiping guangji
, 40
T
aiping jing
, 12, 13, 39 –57, 94; histor y
of, 42– 43
T
aiping yulan
, 63
T
aishang chishe shengtian baolu
, 264
T
aiwan: Daoism in, 17–18, 185 –209, 253;
ritual in, 219, 256 –273, 274 –294
T
aiyi dijun dongzhen xuanjing
, 245
T
aiyi jinhua zongzhi
, 15 –16, 165 –184;
editions of, 165 –166; in Jingming,

167–172; in Quanzhen, 175 –180;

in Tianxian, 172–175
T
aiyi jiuku Tianzun, 225
T
aiyi lineage, 170, 182
T
aiyin, 66
Index 329
talisman lads, 261, 268 –269

talisman orders, 260, 263 –264, 267–269,
271
talisman water, 40 – 41, 206; as of fering,
275 –276
talismans: and blood, 284; and dead, 67;
and hand signs, 238, 245 –247; and

healing, 39 – 40, 74; matching of,
269; and mor tuar y rites, 65, 74; pres-
entation of, 262; in
pudu
, 225 –227;
in ritual, 257, 260 –262; for under-

world, 226, 264
T
an Changzhen, 167
T
ang (Shang r uler), 48 – 49, 50
T
ang caixi zhuan
, 125
T
ang dynasty: Buddhism in, 213, 215,
284; codes of, 103 –104; Daoist life

in, 102–126; hand signs in, 236, 240,

246, 252; texts in, 35
T
angchao haofang nü
, 103, 125
T
angshi jishi
, 125
tantra, 222–223, 240

T
ao Hongjing, 285
T
ao Jing’an, 178
T
ao Qian, 116 –118
T
ao Shi’an, 176 –178
T
ao Yan, 287
T
ao Yuanming, 162
tapas
, 222
tathag
a
tas
.
See
buddhas
taxonomies, 81–101; stages of, 84

tea, as of fering, 275, 283, 291
teeth, clapping of, 246
temple cults: benefactors of, 157; and
Daoism, 149 –164
temples: gods in, 192; household, 161;
and Quanzhen lineage, 190; today,

33, 185 –186
ten directions, 259, 263, 290

T
enfold Retur n, Rite of, 268
texts: categories of, 89; chanting of, 193;
classiﬁcation of, 81–101; compilation

of, 178; Daoist, 13; editing process

of, 168; imaginar y transmission of,
178; revealed, 90 –94; revisions of,
173; sets of, 83; of three traditions,

199; transmission of, 86 – 87, 94 –97,

166, 176, 177–178; versions of, 173
Thailand, 32–33
theolog y, and identity, 2
things, investigation of, 136

Three Bureaus, 28

Three Caver ns, 65 – 66, 68

Three Dukes, 25
Three Heavens, 263

Three Kingdoms, 116

Three Pure Ones, 192, 225, 261–262,
275, 283
Three Sisters, 120

three teachings, 131, 137–138

Three Treasures: of ferings for, 286; seal
of, 269
Three Worlds, 283, 290; talisman of, 264

throats, opening of, 224, 227

thunder: and hand signs, 236, 249 –251,
252; r ulers of, 269
thunder rites, 237

T
ian Pian, 98
T
ian Shu, 95
T
ian Wangsun, 94
T
ian Yannian, 53
T
iandi, 59 – 60, 66, 73 –75, 201
T
iandi shizhe jie
, 59 – 60, 73 –75
T
ianhuang zhidao taiqing yuce
, 237–238,
252, 253
T
ianlao, 65
T
ianshi dao.
See
Celestial Masters
T
ianshui, 29
T
iantai shan, 271
T
ianxian lineage, 16, 172–174, 182
T
ianxian xinzhuan
, 182
T
ianxin zhengfa
, 33, 236, 241–243
T
ie’an ji
, 153 –154, 161
tiger: as hand sign, 239 –240; paper, 278,
284
ti/yong
, 152
tofu, as of fering, 277–278

T
omb, Sire of, 59, 67– 68
tomb contracts, 13, 58 –77; ter ms for,
73 –74
T
ong’an County, 162
tongji
, 155
T
ongshan she, 189, 205
T
ongwa Hospital, 201
T
oulong bi yi
, 292
T
oulong songjian
, 292
traditions: and early Daoism, 84; oral,
238
trance, 196

transcendence: through Dao, 135; in
Ming Daoism, 135, 140; in poetr y,

110
translation: deﬁnition of, 230; and
r
eligion, 236; and syncretism,
214 –218
transmission, across lineages, 181
330 Index
treasur y, 259, 261; loan from, 269 –270

trees, fr uits of, 286 –287

tribes, 23

trigrams, 145, 170

T
suchiya Masaaki, 12
Tu
 Yu’an, 168 –169, 170, 172–173
T
udi gong, 261
T
uo Xiao, 98
Tu
r
ner, Br yan S., 82
T
urquoise Pond, 121
tutan zhai
, 42
under world, 65 – 66, 262; kings of, 267–
269; road to, 259
unity, of action and knowledge, 141

Universal Salvation, rite of. See
pudu
urbanization, of moder n cults, 102–103

utopia, 29
vajra
, 219 –220, 226; in Daoism, 231;
in
fang yankou
, 224
van Gulik, Rober t, 103
V
edas
, 221
vegetables: as of ferings, 286 –287;
smelling, 276, 280, 285, 287, 292
vegetarianism, and ritual, 280

vidy
a
r
a
ja
, 216 –217
Vietnam, 33

vir tue, 130, 132–133
“V isit on Reﬁned Master Zhao,” 108
visualization: in Buddhism, 221, 223;
in
fang yankou
, 224; and hand signs,
249, 252; in
pudu
, 228; in ritual, 220,
267
W
ailu yi
, 36
W
anfa fanzong
, 253
W
anfa guizong
, 197
W
ang Chang, 105 –106
W
ang Chang yue, 178 –179
W
ang Chengzan, 160
W
ang Chong, 49, 50
W
ang Chunfu, 128 –129
W
ang Dao, 14 –15, 127–146; Laozi
adoption of, 130 –135; life and work,
128 –129; teachers of, 139 –141
W
ang Ji, 56
W
ang Kunyang, 178 –179
W
ang Mang, 25
W
ang Ming, 43
W
ang Qiugui, 253
W
ang Qizhen, 247, 262
W
ang Shouren, 127

W
ang Tingxiang, 140
W
ang Wei, 108
W
ang Xianzhi, 45 – 46
W
ang Xuanhe, 245
W
ang Yangming, 14, 127, 129 –146
W
ang Y ingshan, 161
W
ang Zhaojun, 112
W
angfu shi
, 117
W
anggong shendao bei
, 128
W
angwu shan, 121
W
ang ye jiao, 257
Wa
r
ring States, 62, 70, 81–101;
taxonomies in, 86 – 88
water, imager y of, 111
wealth, 288
W
eaver Girl, 118
W
eber, Max, 82– 83, 97
W
ei Mou, 98
W
ei Ruyi, 200
W
ei Xiao, 129
W
ei Zheng, 202
W
ei Zhuangqu, 146
W
eishan zuile
, 197, 207
W
en Feiqing, 119
W
en Ting yun, 119
W
en Weng, 25
W
enji, Lady, 120, 122
wenjian
, 257
We n l u
. See
Shunqu xiansheng wenlu
W
enxuan
, 107
W
ilhelm, Richard, 165
wine, as of fering, 275, 283, 285, 291

women: in Daoism, 102–126; and Daoist
identity, 14; in moder n cults, 205
W
ong Tai Sin, 195, 201–202
worship, in ritual, 267

W
rit of Pardon, 18
writing utensils, as of ferings, 278,
288 –291
Wu
 Peiyi, 43
Wu
 Yang, 62
Wu
 You, 53
W
u[xing] dadi, 160
W
uchang, 112, 114
W
ucheng, 128
W
udi (Liang emperor), 115
wugong
, 276
W
uhu shan, 154
W
ulian jing
, 67, 69, 238
W
ushang biyao
, 75, 292
W
ushang huanglu dazhai licheng yi
, 266
W
usheng laomu, 189
W
ushi shan, 153
Index 331
wuxin
, 276
W
uxing pian
, 81, 100
W
uyi shan, 160
W
uzhen pian chanyou
, 171
Xi K ang, 118 –119
Xi Shi, 120 –121
Xiang River goddess, 117
Xiang ying miao, 159, 163

Xiantian dao, 189, 205

Xiantian xuwu taiyi jinhua zongzhi
,
165 –166
Xianyi guan, 102

Xianyou zhenjun, 175 –177

Xiao River goddess, 117
Xiao Shi, 122
Xiao Yan, 115

Xiaolan, 162

Xiaoliang si, 115
Xiaopeng xianguan, 200
Xiaoyou dong, 120

Xici
, 92, 137
Xie Daoyun, 120 –121
Xiguan, 204
Xin Tangshu
, 27
Xinghua, 153

Xinshan tang, 167, 197, 203, 206, 207
Xinshu
, 98
Xinyu
, 99
Xiong Qufei, 159
Xiongnu, 121
Xiqiao Baiyundong zhi
, 198
Xiqiao shan, 195, 198, 201
Xiqiao yunquan xianguan shiji
, 198, 203
Xiqiu shan, 195
Xiuyuan jingshe, 192–193, 204
Xiwang mu, 121–122

Xu Brothers, 15, 149 –164

Xu Jing yang.
See
Xu Xun
Xu Shen’an, 170

Xu Xun, 169 –170

Xu Zhi’e, 151

Xu Zhizheng, 151

Xuandi (Chen emperor), 42
Xuandu daxian yushan jinggong yi
, 220,
225 –228, 231
Xuanpu shan lingkui bilu
, 238 –239, 240 –
241, 244, 247
Xuanyuan xianguan, 199
Xuanzong, 32, 239

Xue Hui, 137, 146

Xue Yanggui, 182

Xuepen hui, 158

Xunyang, 287
Xunzi, 48, 81, 86 – 88, 89, 135

Xuxian hanzao
, 151, 153, 155 –158, 160,
162
Xuxian zhenlu
, 151, 153, 157, 163
Y
amada Masar u, 187
Y
amada Toshiaki, 41, 42, 293
Y
an Song, 128
Y
ang, C. K., 97
Y
ang Hou, 95
Y
ang Qing, 94
Y
ang Xiong, 135
yangxing
, 109
Y
angzi River, 112, 114 –115, 152, 156
Y
ao (r uler), 87, 130
Y
ao people, 11, 32–33
Y
aochi, 120
Y
aochi jinmu, 189
Y
aoxiu keyi jielü chao
, 64 – 68
Y
aoyong wupin dan
, 275
Y
ates, Robin, 92
Y
e, 29
Ye
 Mingchen, 200
Ye
 Zongmao, 204
Y
ellow Monarch.
See
Huangdi
Y
ellow Register Rite, 258, 262, 265, 270
Y
ellow River, 92
Y
ellow Springs, 61, 74
Y
ellow Stones, Lord of, 288
Yi
 people, 27, 35
Y
ihe lou, 203
Y
ijing
, 92–93, 95, 99, 136 –137, 145,
156 –157; and Buddhism, 214;

and lineage names, 170
Y
ili
, 64
Y
in Wen, 98
Y
ing Shao, 63
Y
ingwu zhou, 114
Y
ing yuan gong, 192, 204
yin- yang, 94; cosmologists, 88;
and Ming Daoism, 128, 137
Y
inzhiwen tushuo
, 195
yishe
, 28
yiwen
, 65
Y
ixin she, 186
Y
ogatantras
, 228
Y
ong’an, 259
Y
ong’an xiang, 258
Y
ongle (Ming emperor), 15, 151
Y
oshikawa Tadao, 42, 53
Y
oshioka Yoshitoyo, 42, 230
Y
ou Qi, 138
332 Index
Y
ouyang zazu
, 63
Y
u, the Great, 112, 130
Yu
 Liang lou, 115
Yu
 shantang, 202
Yu
 Xuanji, 14, 102–126; biography,
102; works on, 103; writings of,

103 –104
Y
uan dynasty: academies in, 159; Jing-
ming in, 169; nationalism in, 32;

ritual in, 257, 261, 269 –272; ritual

manual of, 221
Y
uan Miaozong, 238
Y
uan Zhen, 117
Y
uanhuo shan, 112
Y
uanshi fuming, 263
Y
uanshi tianzun, 268
Y
ue Chengong, 95, 99
Y
ue Jugong, 99
Y
uedong, 172
Y
uefu
, 112
Y
uegang yuan, 191
Y
uexiu shan, 191–192
Y
uhuang benxing jing
, 34
Y
ujia jiyao
, 241
Y
ujia jiyao jiu anan tuoluoni yankou guiyi
jing
, 253
Y
ulanpen hui, 158
Y
unji qiqian
, 37
Y
unnan, 33 –34
Y
unquan xianguan, 186, 191, 199, 201,
203 –204
Yu
qie jiyao yankou shishi yi
, 220
Y
uqing jing
, 32, 37
Y
uqing tang, 158
Y
ushan tang, 203 –204
Y
uzhang, 168
Y
uzhen, 169
Zai Quheng, 172

Zangwai daoshu
, 182, 270, 285
Zanling ji
, 151, 156
Zeng Chunshou, 258

Zeng Collection
, 258 –259, 270
zhai
, 18, 41, 53, 263; deﬁnition of,
274 –275
zhaijie
, 45
zhaitang
, 155
Zhan Ruoshui, 14, 24, 129, 140 –141,
143 –145
Zhanbei feng, 112

Zhang Daoling, 47, 58, 65; biography
of, 40
Zhang Gao, 239

Zhang Jue, 39, 40
Zhang Lu, 26, 27, 30, 40; biography
of, 39
Zhang Shuang’an, 168
Zhang Shujing, 59 – 60
Zhang Xiu, 39
Zhang Xu, 64

Zhao Fenliang, 196

Zhao Lianshi, 107–108
Zhao Zunsi, 202
Zhejiang, 176, 271

Zheng Zichan, 162

Zhen’gao
, 107, 285
Zhengjian gongde die
, 272
Zheng yi.
See
Celestial Masters
Zheng yi fawen jingtu kejie pin
, 30
Zheng yi fawen taishang wailu yi
, 31, 37
Zheng yi fawen Tianshi jiaojie kejing
, 35
Zheng yi jiaomu yi
, 284
Zheng yi jiazhai yi
, 284
Zheng yi jie’e jiaoyi
, 284
Zheng yi licheng yi
, 286
Zheng yi lun
, 65, 74
Zheng yi weiyi jing
, 41
zhenmu wen
, 59
Zhenyan, 219, 240; and mudras, 17
Zhenzhong hongbao yuan bishu
, 94
Zhenzhong sushu
, 99
Zhibao tai, 204 –207
Zhiyi, 31
Zhong Ziqi, 116, 123
Zhonghuang, 169

Zhongli Quan, 172, 182

Zhong-Lü zhuandao ji
, 183
Zhongshan, 23

Zhongxiao jie
, 259
Zhong yong
, 143
Zhou Chong, 161
Zhou Daotong, 136, 145
Zhou Dinglai, 162

Zhou dynasty, 23, 24, 25

Zhou family, 149 –164
Zhou Qi, 93
Zhou Ruli, 161
Index 333
Zhou Shixiu, 161

Zhou Side, 270, 285

Zhou Sui, 153, 162
Zhou Yehe, 167, 169, 173
Zhou Y i, 161

Zhou Yue, 153, 162

Zhouli
, 62
Zhouyi yi
, 145
Zhouyi zheng yi
, 99
Zhu Faman, 64

Zhu Gui, 172

Zhu Hong, 56
Zhu Quan, 237
Zhu Xi, 127, 132–133, 136, 138 –
139, 140 –142, 144, 146, 158;

and academies, 159
Zhu Yuanzhang, 158

Zhu Yunyang, 171

Zhuang Xing’an, 170 –172

Zhuang Zhou, 98
Zhuangzi: and Buddhism, 214; among
Han schools, 85, 86 – 88, 92, 97–100,
114; and literati Daoism, 7, 8; in

Ming Daoism, 131, 144 –145; versus
village cults, 149
Zhuguo jiumin zongzhen biyao
, 238,
242–243, 244, 248 –249, 252, 253
Zhuo Wenjun, 116

Zhuyuan, 202
Zhuzi Fang, 153

Zi Gong, 87

Zi Si, 81
Zimo, 27
Ziran zhaiyi
, 263
Zisong, 56

zithers, and Daoist identity, 104, 116 –
123, 124
Zize, 56

zodiac positions, and hand signs,
247–251
Zong, 35

Zong yang gong, 178

zumiao, 152–153

Zürcher, Erik, 220, 230, 231