After the era in which the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi were composed, very diverse movements arose in subsequent Chinese tradition that claimed to be inheritors of the Daoist tradition. The following are excerpts from an article tracing the complex history of such movements by one of the foremost scholars of this subject, the late Anna Seidel. The article was initially published as “Chronicle of Taoist Studies” in Cahiers d’Extreme-Asie 5 (1989-90): 223-347.
The study of Taoism is still in its infancy, and the great benefit of Seidel’s survey is that it describes the current state of our knowledge of various aspects of this subject, outlining also some of the obstacles that have prevented objective historical understanding of the Taoist tradition. Because of its extensive bibliographical references, the original article also serves well as a study guide for the reader who wants to pursue further reading on any given topic.
To simplify the essay for the general reader, I have omitted some sections, rearranged the text to give it a more topical order, added headings, put some of Seidel’s references in footnotes, and added a few footnotes of my own.
The following table of contents gives an idea of the resultant organization of the essay.
I. History 2
A. The beginnings of organized Taoist religions (140-400 C.E.) 2
1. Celestial Masters Taoism (c. 140 C.E.) 3
2. Revolutionary T’ai P’ing Movements (beg. 184 C.E.) 3
3. Highest Clarity (Shang Ch’ing, Shangqing) Taoism, at Mao Shan (circa 320 C.E.) 4
4. Numinous Treasure (Ling Pao, Lingbao) Taoism (397 C.E.) 5
B. Taoism under the T’ang Dynasty (618-906) 6
C. Taoist History after the T’ang 8
1. Monastic Taoism: The Complete Perfection (Ch’üan-chen, Quanzhen) Tradition. 8
2. Taoism in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1643) 9
3. The “Three Teachings” Movements 10
II. Taoism in Chinese Politics and Society 11
A. The Supernatural Bureacracy 11
B. The Moral Aspect 13
C. Taoism in the Imperial Court and Cult 14
D. Officialdom and Confucianism 15
E. Taoism and Popular Religion 18
F. Taoism in Modern China 20
III. Taoist Mythology: The Immortals 22
IV. Ritual 23
V. Meditation, Alchemy, and Medicine 27
A. The Body and its Terminology 27
B. Physiological Practices 27
C. Meditation 28
D. Alchemy 30
1. Laboratory Alchemy (wai-tan) 30
2. Inner Alchemy (nei-tan). 31
E. Medicine 32
VI. The Arts 33
A. Poetry 33
B. Calligraphy 34
C. Painting 35
I. HistoryA. The beginnings of organized Taoist religions (140-400 C.E.)
The organized Taoist religion came into being toward the end of the Han dynasty as a challenge and an alternative to the established social order. Its immediate antecedent is not Taoist philosophy but the political thought of the Han period and the disastrous social conditions of its waning years. During four centuries of Han rule, Taoist thought had developed into something quite different from the small philosophers’ circles that had produced and transmitted the Tao-te ching and the Chuang-tzu. Early Han Taoists were ignorant of or indifferent to the Chuang-tzu and gave a political and Legalist interpretation both to the Tao-te ching and to several similar scriptures that circulated under the name of the Yellow Emperor (Huang-ti). The masters of the political philosophy called “The Tao of the Yellow Emperor and Lao-tzu” (Huang-Lao Tao) influenced early Han policy. Under Emperor Wu (r. 141-86 BCE) they lost out to the Confucian and Legalist doctrines. Thus it came about that, throughout Chinese history, the examinations giving access to government office dealt, with few exceptions, only with Confucian texts and poetry. This fateful relegation away from the governmental sphere oriented the Taoist traditions toward the peasant base of Chinese society and was, at least in part, responsible for the split that henceforth developed between Taoism and the official Confucian doctrine.
From recently discovered inscriptions in Han tombs we know today that many beliefs and practices of the early Taoist church (e.g., the bureaucratized heavenly and netherworldly hierarchies) had been the religion of a literate class outside of officialdom–village elders, exorcists and specialists in funerary rites–since at least the first century CE (Seidel 1987).
- Celestial Masters Taoism (c. 140 C.E.)
The “Celestial Masters” Tradition is also known as “Orthodox Unity” (Cheng-I), or as “Five Pecks of Rice” Taoism. This religion became Taoism when the deified sage Lao-tzu revealed himself to the Celestial Master Chang Tao-ling (trad. date 142 CE) proclaiming a new cosmic dispensation, and when the text ascribed to Lao-tzu, the Tao-te ching, became a sacred scripture religiously recited and interpreted.
Belief in Lao-tzu as a god is first attested in an inscription dated 166 CE (Lao-tzu ming ; Seidel 1969) that commemorated an imperial cult to him by a desperate emperor (whom the Confucians never forgave for this outrageous breach of the imperial cult tradition). Nevertheless, the divinisation of Lao-tzu cannot be explained as popular superstition. Rather, it signified the elevation of the sage “Master of Emperors” to the rank of a supreme God, Lao-chun, as an alternative to the established order epitomized in the official cult of the “Uncrowned King,” Confucius (Seidel 1969, 1978). This established order was so thoroughly discredited in the middle of the second century CE that the suffering and rebellious populace shifted their hopes away from the dynasty and followed religious leaders preaching a new theocratic order of Great Peace (T’ai P’ing; cf. Balazs 1948, 1949 for an excellent description of this period).
The historical sources that deal with the theocratic state of the Celestial Master’s movement (T’ien-shih Tao) in Szechwan about the middle of the second century until its surrender to Ts’ao Ts’ao in 215 CE were studied several decades ago (Eichhorn 1955; Michaud 1958). In this short-lived theocracy, the Taoist religion became the official doctrine, the hierarchy of the Celestial Master took over the functions of the regional bureaucracy, and the priests (chi-chiu became the administrators of the people (Stein 1963; Seidel 1978a). Central to the new religion were its methods of faith-healing (Strickmann 1985) and its reform of popular cults (Stein 1979). - Revolutionary T’ai P’ing Movements (beg. 184 C.E.)
The political involvement of these early religious movements is even more apparent in the contemporaneous “Great Peace” rebellion (T’ai-p’ing Tao, 184 CE). Throughout the Han dynasty a political faction from the state of Chi had advocated a doctrine of “Great Peace” (T’al-p’ing at court (Eichhorn 1957). Eventually these ideas spread among the people and became an alternative to the discredited ideology of the regime (Kandel 1978; Michaud 1958).
However, the Classic of Great Peace (T’ai-p’ng ching as we have it today contains a political philosophy much more akin to the classical thought of pre-imperial China than to post-Han Taoism: T’ai-p’ing is not a revolutionary egalitarianism but an ideal social hierarchy in which everyone has a place appropriate to his birth and calling. New only is the moral responsibility of each individual; everyone can and must act in a way that permits the enlightened sovereign tco practice the Taoist rule by “Non-intervention” (wu-wei Kaltenmark 1979). Whereas the T’ai-p’ing movement perished in a direct confrontation with the imperial armies, and its religious tradition went underground, the Celestial Master’s church submitted to the new Wei Dynasty Defining themselves as a spiritual authority complementary to the Son of Heaven, the Celestial Masters founded a lasting religious organisation.
The T’ai-p’ing rebellion was the first major manifestation of a Taoist messianism that was to play a great role during the troubled period of disunity (220-580 CE). The leaders of numerous uprisings were hailed by the rebels as the divine emissary of the God Lao-chan, i.e., the messiah Li Hung whose advent would signal the collapse of the present order and the establishment of an empire of “Great Peace” (Seidel 1970). Traces of these messianic ideologies are found not only in the reports of rebellions in the dynastic histories and in the disapproving writings of the Celestial Master but also in the T’ai-p’ing ching, and the Tung-yuan shen-chou ching, the scripture of a very popular apocalyptic tradition preserved and edited by Tu Kuang t’ing (Mollier 1991; Strickmann forthcoming II, chapter III).
Zurcher (1982) and Strickmann (1983a) have shown that the Taoist messianic tradition in the Six Dynasties was strong enough to transform some basic tenets of Buddhist eschatology. Maitreya and several other bodhisattvas became messiah figures, and their followers carried out revolts that mirrored other rebellions in the name of the Taoist Lord of Great Peace. In one popular scripture found in Tun-huang, the messianic Golden Age is ushered in by Maitreya and the Taoist Lord of T’ai-p’ing, descending hand-in-hand from the heavens (Seidel 1984). However, a recent study by Petersen (1990) seems to argue that the most voluminous textual layer of the T’ai-p’ing ching denies the need for a messianic saviour who is to launch the age of Great Peace-thus reducing Taoist messianism to a millenarianism less threatening to the powers that be. In all kinds of virulent or conciliatory versions, throughout the period of disunity, Taoist messianism kept awake a nostalgia for the lost empire and eventually furnished the ideological underpinnings for the reunification of China under the T’ang (Seidel 1970; Bokenkamp 1983a). - Highest Clarity (Shang Ch’ing, Shangqing) Taoism, at Mao Shan (circa 320 C.E.)
The messianic promises not only attracted the classes of have-nots but also inspired a new Taoist movement among the southern aristocracy in Chiang-nan. When, after the fall of Lo-yang in 311, the court moved south, some great families of Chiang-nan compensated for their loss of political power by creating on Mt. Mao (Mao Shan, near Nanking) their own Taoist dispensation of Shang-ch’ing (Supreme Clarity), superior to the Celestial Master Taoism brought by the northerners (Strickmann 1977, 1981). The Shang-ch’ing religion not only built on Celestial Master Taoism but incorporated the rich local traditions of the Yangtse valley that had found expression, a generation earlier, in the writings of Ko Hung, (283-343), the Pao-p’u izu (Ware 1966; Sailey 1978).
The two creative periods of the Shang-ch’ing tradition were the Mao Shan revelations of the years 364-70 and their codification and elaboration by T’ao Hung-ching (456-536) T’ao Hung-ching’s scholarly and religious achievements were momentous, yet one would never know it from his biography in the dynastic histories. This discrepancy serves as a prime example of the need to study Taoism first from the primary Taoist sources, not from the official histories. The compilers of the histories were literati officials often prejudiced against all cultural activities unconnected to state orthodoxy and were always lay outsiders (su-jen) uninitiated into Taoism (Strickmann 1979).
To the literary genius of T’ao Hung-ching we owe a meticulously annotated collection of revealed discourses, called the “Declarations of the Perfected” (Chen-kao), which is both the most important source for Shang-ch’ing history and doctrine and a fascinating document on the cultural and social historv of south China in the sixth century. It shows that the anti-Taoist policies of the Buddhist emperor Wu of the Liang (described by Strickmann 1978a) did not affect the personal friendship between the emperor and T’ao Hung-ching or the imperial patronage received by his lavish establishment on Mao Shan where T’ao devoted himself to the alchemical fabrication of elixirs for the emperor (Strickmann 1979).
The Shang-ch’ing documents collected into the Chien-kao are revelations dictated by the deities of the Shang-ch’ing Heavens in an exquisite literary style that sets them apart from the popular mediumistic practices of planchette writing (Hyland 1984; Russell 1985). Their exemplary calligraphy prompted T’ao’s patient search for the original fourth-century manuscripts (see V.3.a and VI.3.b). The elite background of the Shang-ch’ing adepts expressed itself in a new emphasis on meditation and on ritual and visionary communication with an entirely new pantheon, mostly of stellar divinities. - Numinous Treasure (Ling Pao, Lingbao) Taoism (397 C.E.)
In 397, less than a generation after the Shang-ch’ing revelations (and no doubt inspired by their success), Ko Ch’ao-fu circulated the Ling-pao (Numinous Treasure) scriptures, a new corpus of revelations. Most likely Ko had composed these texts himself, drawing on the library of his famous relative Ko Hung and on already highly sinicised Buddhist texts (see VII.2). The heavy input of Chiang-nan traditions (i.e., of old Han culture better preserved in this southern region) is reflected in the claim that the revelation of the main text, the “Book of Salvation” (Tu-jen ching) had been received and handed down by the immortal Ko Hsuan (third century), a great-uncle of Ko Hung. Kaltenmark (1968) has traced the history of the term ling-pao and has shown that one of the sources of this new sect was the lore surrounding the “Text of the Five Talismans of Ling-pao”. This text originally formed part of the esoteric speculations (ch’an-wei) of the Han period “masters of techniques” (fang-shih).
The early Ling-pao texts of the fifth century, especially the unexpurgated versions that form the majority of the Taoist manuscripts found in Tun-huang (Ofuchi 1974), show such extensive terminological, stylistic and conceptual borrowings from Mahayana Buddhism that one can almost speak of “Buddho-Taoist hybrids” (Zurcher 1980; Bokenkamp 1983). New is the concept of a universal cosmo-political salvation, which replaces the ideal of the solitary seeker of immortality (stigmatised as “Small Vehicle” = Hinayana Taoism). The ancient ritual and magical roles of the Son of Heaven are blended with the image of the compassionate bodhisattva, saviour of all mankind (tu-jen The Ling-pao adepts saw their religion as a “Mahayanic” (ta-sheng advance beyond the individualistic quest for immortality (Lagerwey 1981: 24). The goal of this earlier quest, the avoidance of physical death, was replaced by the belief in a postmortem purification and restitution of the body through a process of smelting in a netherworldly “Supreme Yin” (t’ai-yin Seidel 1987a Bockenkamp) 1989).
Although emanating from the same southern aristocratic milieu as the Shang-ch’ing adepts, the Ling-pao dispensation became much more a religion of the people and developed a more institutionalised clergy: moral codes, collective liturgies, rituals for the state, ecclesiastic organisation and hierarchy took the place of individual meditation, longevity practices and alchemical elixirs (Robinet 1984: 183-97).
The ritual tradition of Ling-pao built on the Celestial Master codes of formalised dealings with the gods, enriched by some elements of a southern tradition (e.g., the establishment of a sacred space into which, in the old southern tradition, the gods descended and possessed a medium called ling-pao. To this day, the Ling-pao liturgy has remained the basic structure of all Taoist ritual (see V.7). The gods addressed in this liturgy are part of a new Ling-pao pantheon headed by abstract divinities of a completely new type: the Celestial Worthies (T’ien-tsun), personified hypostases of the Tao, who form a highest Trinity, the Three Pure Ones (San-ch’ing; Maspero 1950).
The Ling-pao clergy of the fifth century was the first to perceive–probably in response to Buddhism–a unity in all Taoist traditions and to devise a classification system for all Taoist scriptures. Thus, Lu Hsiu-ching (406-477), the principal codifier of the Ling-pao corpus, also compiled the “Index to the Scriptural Writings of the Three Caverns” (San-lung ching-shu mu-lu 471 CE). The “Three Caverns” are the three main divisions of the Taoist Canon (Tao Tsang) to which, about a century later, four supplementary sections (ssu-fu 990) were added to accommodate texts of other traditions. Since the first and highest “Cavem” contains not the Ling-pao but the Shang-ch’ing scriptures, this system might in fact antedate Lu Hsiu-ching and his catalogue (Boltz 1986, 1987; see III.1).
B. Taoism under the T’ang Dynasty (618-906)
The fifth and sixth centuries were an extremely creative period in the history of Chinese culture and religion. Buddhism developed the first authentically Chinese sects, and Cheng-I (Orthodox Unity = Celestial Master), Shang ch’ing and Ling-pao united to form what was to become the Taoism of the T’ang empire. In the north of China, the Wei dynasty made a serious attempt to transform Taoism into an official state religion under the Celestial Master K’ou Ch’ien-chih (d. 448 CE; Mather 1979), and Emperor Wu of the Northern Chou used Taoism as an ideological tool in his endeavour to reunite the empire. He sponsored the compilation of a Taoist summa, the Wu-shang pi-yao, as the canon of a universalistic Taoist church (Lagerwey 1981).
Most of the texts of this northern Taoism, however, disappeared very early, and it was the southern Taoist traditions that endeared themselves to the founders of the T’ang. Their prophecies of a messiah, Li Hung, inspired the imperial Li family to claim descent from the sage Lao-tzu (Seidel 1970). The resulting fusion of Taoism with the cult of the imperial ancestors accounts for the solid foundation of state support that Taoism enjoyed throughout the three centuries of T’ang rule (Bokenkamp 1983a).
The fact that scholars speak of T’ang Taoism, whereas earlier phases of Taoist history are named after the new movements they produced reflects the privileged semi-official status of Taoism at the T’ang court. Since the rivalry between Buddhism and Taoism in China was almost always exclusively prompted by competition for imperial sponsorship, this was the heyday of apologetic Buddhist writings against the Taoists.
The T’ang empire was soon dotted with a flourishing network of state sponsored Taoist abbeys and monasteries, and more and more rites were performed in these centres for the prosperity of the state. Conversely, imperial cults were appropriated by the Taoist clergy, as in 731 when the imperially sponsored sanctuaries at the Five Sacred Mountains were brought under Taoist control.
It appears that T’ang state ideology was neither very marked nor significantly enriched by Taoist ideas, since the Taoist contribution was mostly limited to philosophical and quietist classics, such as the writings of the “four disciples of Lao-tzu” canonised by Hsuan-tsung in 742: Chuang-tzu a, Lieh-tzu, Wen-tzu , K’ang-ts’ang tzu . The emperor decreed their use for the examinations held in Taoist academies.
Taoism was represented at court and in the lettered elite by a number of patriarchs of the Highest Clarity (Shang-ch’ing) lineage. The most outstanding among them was Ssu-ma Ch’eng-chen (647-735). His biography and his treatise on “The Absorption of ch’i” have been studied (Engelhardt 1987, 1989); his essay on meditation has been translated (Kohn 1987); and his poetry has attracted attention (Kroll 1978, 1981). Ssu-ma Ch’eng-chen’s life and times merit the same thorough research recently devoted to another great court Taoist, Tu Kuang-t’ing (850-933) by Verellen (1989). For a caricature of a late T’ang “court Taoist” cf. Miyakawa (1974).
The last great court Taoist of this period was Ssu-ma Ch’eng-chen’s disciple, the Shang-ch’ing master Li Han-kuang (683-769; Kirkland 1986). Some of these patriarchs produced extensive writings, among which collections and compilations of commentaries on scriptures and rituals outnumber original work.
Rather, the creative spirit of T’ang Taoism unfolded in literature (see VI.3.a). One important consequence of imperial sponsorship was the spread of Taoist abbeys to all parts of the empire, which brought Taoism into even greater contact with local cults. This “missionary” influence was to lead, in the Sung, to the upgrading of regional cult organisations (see VI.4).
C. Taoist History after the T’ang
Under the Sung Dynasty (960-1279), Taoism continued to enjoy state support. Soymie devoted two seminars (1974/75) to the role of Taoism at the courts of the Emperors T’ai-tsu, T’ai-tsung and Chen-tsung, a difficult subject because the political motives for the cults and the miracles, such as the apparition of the “celestial writings” (t’ien shu) were deliberately blurred from the start (cf. also Cahill 1980). Eichhom (1968) has translated the official regulations governing the Buddhist and Taoist clergy.
The reign of Emperor Hui-tsung (1101-1 126) was a landmark in Taoist history, as the Taoist Master Lin Ling-su (1076-1120) persuaded the emperor to consolidate his mandate by identifying himself with the highest deity of Lin’s new Shen-hsiao (Divine Empyrean) dispensation. Our negative image of Lin Ling-su goes back to an account written by his adversary, the academician Keng Yen-hsi, and requires a reevaluation. The meaning of the emperor impersonating a Taoist deity, surrounded by his court transformed into a Shen-hsiao pantheon, also should be reexamined in the light of Taoist sources, and decanted from the official historians’ stereotypes of the “corrupted last emperor who lost a dynasty” (Strickmann 1979a). An extensive corpus of Shen-hsiao rituals is preserved in the Taoist Canon (Boltz 1987a).
A whole spectrum of new ritual traditions was created in the Sung: the T’ung-ch’u (Youthful Incipience) rites on Mao Shan, the T’ien-hsin (Celestial Heart) movement based in Chiang-nan (Strickmann 1979a; Boltz 1987a), the Ch’ing-wei (Clarified Tenuity) tradition and the Ching-ming chung-hsiao Tao (The Loyal and Filial Way of the Pure and Perspicacious). These cults share an emphasis on healing and an acceptance of local cult traditions. In particular, the very popular T’ien-hsin cult seems to have been propagated by itinerant “grass roots physicians.” A new element in their elaborate therapeutic and exorcistic rituals (presumably of Tantric origin; see VII.4) was that the Taoist practitioners not only mediated the divine remedies but came to embody the deities in the rite (Boltz 1987a). Much of the religious fervour of these new movements stemmed from the integration of local gods and the upgrading of their cult centres (Boltz 1987a; see VI.4). Behind all these movements were, of course, the profound changes taking place in Sung society, especially the rise of an urban culture, the spread of printing, and the new mercantile and monetary economy.
The patterns of Chinese society set in the Sung continued until the twentieth century. This is underscored by the fact that it is also during the Sung that the netherworld of the dead acquires its final shape (see V.4.b). Taoist I ching speculations and the mystic tradition of “inner alchemy” (nei-tan see V.6.b) flourished just before and during the Sung renaissance of Confucianism and are said to have influenced Neo-Confucian thinkers. The life of and legends about an early patriarch of these Taoist traditions, Ch’en T’uan, have been studied by Knaul (1981). - Monastic Taoism: The Complete Perfection (Ch’üan-chen, Quanzhen) Tradition.
During the late twelfth centurv, several Taoist movements originated in war-torn north China. The monastic Taoism of the Ch’üan-chen (Complete Perfection) lineage was the only one of them to survive.
Waley’s (1931) translation of the life of the Patriarch Ch’iu Ch’ang-ch’un (I 148-1227) and his meeting with Gengis Khan (cf. also Boltz 1987a: 66) is prefaced by a description of the religious history of the Yuan period-also treated, in a most elegant and erudite fashion, in a study on Marco Polo’s China by Demieville (1957). A slightly dated presentation of late Yuan and early Ming Taoism includes a translation of an important inscription on Cheng-I (= Celestial Master) Taoism, composed by Chao Meng-fu (1254-1322; Ten Broeck el al. 1950). A delightful study by Hawkes (1981) shows how Ch’üan-chen legends and beliefs entered the popular imagination through Yüan drama and suggests that the imagery of the famous Eight Immortals (pa-hsien) may have been influenced by some folk memory of the Ch’uan-chen founder Wang Che and his seven apostles, one of whom was a woman (see also Yao 1980a).
The only monograph on the Ch’üan-chen lineage in a Western language (Yao 1980) is based on texts in the Taoist Canon (discussed in Yao *1977) as well as on numerous Chinese and Japanese studies. According to Yao, Ch’üan-chen was not so much a patriotic movement against the foreign Chin dynasty as a religious revival of traditional Chinese values in a chaotic time of foreign oppression. At a time of cultural disintegration, the founder’s personal crisis led him to a new spirituality that combined traditional elements taken from Taoist scriptures, Buddhist sutras and Confucian classics. However, like the later San-chiao (Three Teachings) movements of the Ming, the Ch’uan-chen lineage was essentially Taoist. Not the least of its merits as guardian of tradition was the preservation, in the White Cloud Abbey in Peking, of the copy of the Taoist Canon that became the basis of all modern research on Taoism. - Taoism in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1643)
Taoist influence in the Ming world of letters has been treated in several studies that show–despite the author’s clear predilection for the officials and scholars who opposed Taoism–that the spiritual life at all levels of society was permeated by Taoism in one form or another (Liu, 1962, 1966, 1968, 1970, 1970a).
The various Taoist centres and traditions in Ming and Ch’ing times still await study. From the late T’ang, the Celestial Masters Chang resided on Mount Lung-hu in Kiangsi. The genealogy of the Chang family has many doubtful sections between the first Celestial Master Chang Tao-ling (second century CE) and the twelfth century. It is, however, well established that the present 64th Celestial Master Chang in Taiwan is the descendant of the 30th Celestial Master Chang Chi-hsien, who reformed the Cheng-I Sect at the time of the Sung Emperor Hui-tsung (1101-1126 CE). Living among the people, the married Cheng-I priests, with their family traditions of ritual knowledge, exerted a deeper influence on Chinese religious life than the celibate Ch’uan-chen monks. However, they also inflated the importance of their lineage by attributing to their founder Chang Tao-ling many scriptures of different origin (Boltz 1987a: 17). Source material on the Chang family since the Sung has been collected by Reiter (1988) whose evaluations are subject to caution. The Cheng-i tradition survives today in many regions of south China and is the strand of contemporary Taoism that we have been able to see in action in Taiwan.
The Shang-ch’ing lineage continued on Mount Mao until the devastations of the T’ai-p’ing rebels in the nineteenth century. From the Sung, there also was an important cult centre on Mount Wu-tang (Hupei) for Chen-wu, the God of the North, who became the guardian deity of the Ming.
The most famous master claimed by the Wu-tang lineage, Chang San-feng, the patron saint of the Taoist martial arts, has been studied by Seidel (I970), his writings are examined by Wong (1982).
The Ch’ing-wei lineage continued under the Ming (Schipper 1987), and the Ching-ming chung-hsiao tradition flourished on Hsi Shan in Kiangsi. A student of any of these lineages will find a thorough resume of the source materials in the excellent Survey of Taoist Literature by Boltz (1987a).
Although Taoism continued to flourish under the Ming, with priests holding appointments at court, a new Canon printed (see III.1) and the various sects continuing to enjoy imperial support, the focus of religious life shifted away from the established Taoist institutions. Starting in the fourteenth century, new forms of revelation that had adapted to changed social conditions came to the fore: Overmyer describes this type of “voluntary association or sect that could be joined by individuals from different families and villages” (1986: 63). These sectarian movements led by laymen adopted various mixtures of Taoist, Buddhist or Confucian beliefs, expressed in an abundant vernacular literature of “morality tracts” (shan-shu) and edifying “precious volumes” (pao chuan). So far, only the Buddhist strands of this literature (mostly the White Lotus tradition) have received attention (Overmyer 1976, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1990; Naquin 1976). The study of these popular texts is also important for Taoism, because it is mainly through this vernacular literature that Taoist beliefs, myths and values reached the growing educated middle section of Chinese society situated between the scholar-official class and the illiterate people. - The “Three Teachings” Movements
Too much ink has been spilt, and to little avail, on a definition of syncretism that would be applicable to the varied combinations of the “Three Teachings” (san-chiao = Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism) which characterise these sectarian religions (e.g., Berling 1980). Overmyer (1990) proposes a limited and more strictly defined use of the term and recommends, moreover, a moratorium on its use, one reason being that it is a concept brought in from outside. I would add that the always slightly pejorative label of syncretism explains nothing in a culture where no religion claims extra ecclesiam nulla salus and where the urge to unify and synthesize beliefs has always been stronger than the urge to find exclusive formulations of universal Truth. In the Chinese religious world, those who show too much attachment to one particular doctrine are criticised for their neglect of Unity and for preferring words to reality (Robinet 1985). Thus, the Western perception of “syncretism” in the Chinese mixing of doctrines seems to be what the French call “un faux probleme.” Moreover, the whole san-chiao formula was in the Ming period already a hoary catchword for a phenomenon that Strickmann (1990: 76-77) found a thousand years earlier in fifth-century China, when many of the combinations now labeled Ming “syncretism” were first fused. T’ang emperors used the formula to express their impartial favour toward (that is, their hegemony and control over) the three traditions (e.g., Hsuan-tsung; cf. Faure 1988: 101). And, last but not least, there is a certain hypocrisy in the allegedly all-embracing harmony of the “Three religions,” since many clerics of all three persuasions subscribed to this refined and antiseptic Chinese ecumenism the better to exclude the omnipresent popular religion (see VI.4) and, by the Ming, also the important presence of Islam (cf. Strickmann 1982a: 55). II. Taoism in Chinese Politics and Society
A. The Supernatural Bureacracy:
Taoism modelled on notions of the Chinese Religious State
In 1928 Maspero published a complete panorama of modern Chinese mythology that included the Taoist pantheon and immortals galore. He was the first to note the bureaucratic structure of the modern Chinese pantheon (with ministries of rain, of thunder, etc.). When he discovered the same phenomenon in early Celestial Master Taoism, Maspero (and succeeding French scholars, including myself) interpreted it as a projection of the imperial administration of the Han dynasty (1950). The fourth century Shang-ch’ing revelations are similarly replete with official appointments, vacancies and advancements in celestial offices. The recipients of these revelations, as Strickmann has shown (1977), compensated for their loss of status in this world with lofty official honours in the supernatural world as well as in the imminent messianic empire of Great Peace.
This seemed to confirm Maspero’s interpretation that the social world is projected onto the supernatural. Further confirmatory evidence came from T’ao Hung-ching (456-536), who made strenuous efforts to fit the Taoist gods of all the various traditions into one orderly flow chart. His “Tables of the Ranks and Functions of the Perfected and the Gods” (Chen-ling wei-ye t’u ) was the clearest formulation of the supernatural bureaucracy. Stein (1963) pointed out that the titles of Taoist parish offices (“libationer,” chi-chiu ; “keeper of the records,” chu-pu) and of minor Taoist gods (such as “communal chief,” t’ing-chang ) came from the communal level of small local officials and virtuous village elders of the late Han, which was the milieu of the Celestial Master theocracy in Szechwan. Recent finds of pre-Taoist Han tomb inscriptions, by the way, show that the netherworldly bureaucracy of T’ai-shan was not invented by the Celestial Masters but was already a feature of Han religion, which they adopted (Seidel 1987). In a further article, Stein (1979) showed that the Taoist priests of the Six Dynasties tried to curb or abolish popular cults by converting their “deluded” adherents to the “pure gods” of the Tao (see VI.4). In as much as the priests understood themselves to be celestial office holders invested with power over the popular “demons,” their social role was little different from that of the imperial officials who did the same, but on the authority of the terrestrial government.
As to the image and social role of the imperial officials, recent work has shown that they too were more than just representatives on the local level of a secular central administration. They also had power to summon and to exorcise local nature deities, to destroy temples and abolish cults-not as agnostic secular notables, but as representatives of a rival and superior religious authority, that of the emperor, Son of Heaven. Their weapon was the official decree, the administrative document, which could contain orders addressed not only to human subjects but to recalcitrant and noxious deities. These documents essentially are of the same nature as the talismans and heavenly decrees of the Taoist priests (Seidel 1983; Levi 1987; Boltz 1989), and they are couched in the same administrative jargon (Seidel 1987). Stein (1963) found late Han Confucians who, by the recitation of their classics, subdued demons. Taking Stein’s analysis a step further, Levi showed that, before the Taoist priests started their reformation of the popular cults, the Confucian official of the Han empire was already charged, through the power of his mastery of script and his sacerdotal investiture in the official hierarchy, not with combatting “popular superstitions” but with abolishing yin-szu which does not mean “lewd” or “debauched” cults here, but “illegitimate” ones. In other words, the official was to prevent all communication with the gods outside the proper channels and by unauthorised people. Only the Son of Heaven and his representatives, the officials, had jurisdiction over the gods and possessed the proper rituals to deal with them in the imperial cult (see VI.1). The correct administration of the seen and the unseen universe was the prerogative of the Chou king and the Han emperor and of their cosmic administrative hierarchy idealised in the classic “Rites of Chou” (Chou Li ; Levi 1987).
At this point it became clear that our projection theory was wrong. The Chinese supernatural bureaucracy does not, after all, seem to be a copy of social conditions; it is the other way around. The Han administrative structure was itself based on a preexisting religious model (and, so, no sooner cleared of Marxist leanings we incur the no less embarrassing odium of being Eliadean epigones … ).
Keightley (1978) arrived at similar conclusions from his study of completely different and much more ancient materials. He found that “the generational, hierarchical, and jurisdictional taxonomy by which the Shang kings classified their ancestors and the bureaucratic, contractual way in which the kings dealt with their ancestors served as models for secular institutions and relationships. He suggested that there is a relationship between Shang religious beliefs and later bureaucratic conceptions.
All through the Chinese Middle Ages, the established hierarchies, be they governmental, Taoist or, to some degree, Buddhist, endeavoured to “civilise,” that is, transform (hua), the ecstatic cults (which, incidentally, were by no means limited to the “lower classes”) into the worship of Confucian heroes and Taoist “pure gods,” i.e., deities existing inside “bureaucratically ordered relationships” which, as Keightley said, “came to be conceived of as the sine quo non of civilized life” in China. And they did this not only for utilitarian, ideological reasons of control and dominance–as adepts of Michel Foucault would tend to see such measures–but “for reasons of ultimate, religious significance” (Keightley 1978: 223).
At this point, one might object that Chinese religion is from the start not only dominated by, but outright identical to, relationships of power a la Foucault. Why is this objection wrong? Perhaps because the bureaucratic mentality in China was never completely severed from its religious roots. Its primary concern was not Realpolitik and domination, but the integration of absolutely everything into one coherent system, an urge we see at work in other domains, such as the efforts of the T’ien-t’ai Buddhists to fit all doctrines into one Vehicle (Ekayana) and the efforts of the San-chio (“Three Teachings”) movements of various ages to synthesize all respectable teachings into one coherent system (see IV.3). The bureaucratic model was not created as an ideological tool to strengthen political power, although it could serve this purpose; it is the Chinese “charter myth.”
B. The Moral Aspect
One important function of the supernatural bureaucracy was the recordkeeping and periodic inspection of human conduct. The connection between sins and an untimely death (as old as the T’ai-p’ing ching and the Paop’u tzu) the concepts of punishment (in “prisons below the earth,” ti-yu, turned into hells by the Buddhists) and reward longevity, worldly or postmortem official honours), the celebrations of fasts (chai) on fixed days of the year to gain merit (kung ) and to appear as pure as possible to the inspector-gods who descend on these fast days-all these aspects of morality can be understood only in relation to the supernatural bureaucracy, especially that of the netherworld (for the latter, cf. Seidel 1987b).
Soymie (1969/70, 1970/71, 1971/72) has devoted seminars to (1) the cult of the Northern Dipper (pei-tou ), the great stellar regulator where the Taoists placed the offices and archives of destiny, (2) the inspection of human conduct by various celestial officials, a theme influenced by the Buddhist Ssu t’ien-wang ching , and (3) the different yearly observances of fasts in Taoism and in Buddhism (see also Soymie 1977). His study of the acolytes of the bodhisattva Ti-tsang also concerns this theme because Ti-tsang, the Buddhist saviour of those in hell, is surrounded by the scribes and record-keepers of the Chinese netherworld administration and by the “boys of good and evil,” who observe and note human conduct (Soymie 1966). The Buddhists had their own reasons for adopting this system. In Buddhist terms, the records of destiny represented the karmic balance sheet that determines one’s next existence. The Taoist fast of the “Middle Primordial” (chung-yuan ) merged with the Buddhist yuIan p’en rite on the fifteenth of the seventh lunar month (see VIII.4). Teiser’s (1988) book on the history of this important festival discusses its Taoist antecedents. In pre-T’ang Taoist texts, the tribunal of King Yama already appears as a minor feature in the Taoist world of the dead (Thompson1989).
The definitive shape of the netherworld administration emerged during the T’ang-Sung transition. Between the tenth and fourteenth centuries there evolved the system of ten courts presided over by the “Ten Kings of Hell” who judge the souls of the dead. The entirely bureaucratic scenery of these ten tribunals seemed Taoist to early scholars (its iconographical expression has been studied by Ledderose 1981). We now know that the belief in the “Ten Kings” appears first in a Buddhist context (Teiser 1986, 1988). Its bureaucratic features are due not to the Taoists but probably to the contemporary formation of the popular pantheon and to developments similar to those that created the city gods (see VI.4). The Taoists made a belated and unsuccessful attempts to transform these popular Ten Kings into Taoist “Per fected Lords” (chen-chun Teiser 1989, and Teiser in McRae et al. 1989: 80-2), then apparently compromised. Even today Taoist priests officiate at funerals surrounded by scrolls depicting the Ten Kings.
An efficient centralised administration controlling human conduct and determining human fate in this world and the next might seem to be a nightmarishly suffocating vision worse than any FBI dream of complete and top-secret files on all citizens-worse because inescapable even in death. In fact, the system was very “human”: amnesties could be granted by properly worshipped gods of fate, records could be fudged by properly bribed infernal clerks to avert misfortune and postpone death. Unintentional foul-ups in the netherworld archives were the classic set-up for reports on the world of the dead brought back by mortals who had been summoned thither before their time (Soymie 1967; Demieville 1976; Teiser 1988a). Moreover, there is an entire class of beings whose “opting out of the system” we have already noted above (V. 1). Perhaps one function of the immortals was to counterbalance this obsession with rank and all-inclusive hierarchies. Scholars have, in fact, begun to challenge the validity of the bureaucratic model in connection with immortals’ cults involving local elite worship in the Southern Sung (Hymes, in McRae et al. 1986: 76) and in connection with Chi-kung the kind of eccentric who defies the bureaucratic ethos and order (Shahar, in McRae et al. 1989: 1 10). Further research therefore might look into the ways and the periods in which the immortals (and non-“officialised” popular gods in general) were linked with local cult centres, and how they escaped becoming respectable divinities ranked in official pantheons (see VI.4).
C. Taoism in the Imperial Court and Cult
No study has yet dealt directly with the relationship between Taoism and the imperial court or with the structural affinities between the imperial cult of Heaven and Taoist ritual. These topics have, however, been touched on here and there in other contexts, most of which have been mentioned elsewhere in this chronicle. Again, there are more questions than answers.
The Chinese emperor was not only the sovereign but the high priest of the realm, and his ritual worship of Heaven was the only officially sanctioned communication between mankind and the highest (impersonal and distant) divinity. It is therefore to be expected that any indigenous Chinese religion would: (1) in some ways, consider the imperial system as its model; (2) feel compelled to justify its existence alongside the official religion; and (3) risk coming into conflict with the imperial monopoly on dealings with the divine.
The Celestial Masters regarded the ages of the ancient emperors, whom they believed to have been guided by the wisdom of Lao-tzu incarnate in their advisers, as the pre-history (or “Old Testament”) of their dispensation. From the founding of the Celestial Master’s dispensation through the revelation of Lord Lao, it was, in Taoist eyes, the “Master of Heaven” chosen by the god who should advise the emperor, Son of Heaven (Seidel 1978). The Celestial Master, in the eyes of the Taoists, was also the guarantor of the Mandate of Heaven. His priests were empowered by sacred objects (lu , registers) homologous with the auspicious portents legitimising Chinese sovereignty (the epitome of which is the River Chart ), and the ultimate concern of Taoist ritual was identical to that of the ruler–Great Peace. Against this background one can understand why the rulers of many dynasties during the period of disunity (220-581 CE) sought to strengthen the legitimacy of their rule by inviting Taoist dignitaries to celebrate, at court, a Taoist investiture ceremony called the “Transmission of [Taoist] Registers” (shou-lu ). The Chinese God-Emperor had his hallowed place in the supernatural hierarchy of Taoism; and, conversely, Taoist ordination initiated one into the same transcendent reality as the imperial investiture rite (Seidel 1983). Verellen (1989: 76) found that “enfeoffment ceremonies involving local deities in a relationship of feudal vassalage, with the implication of allegiance owed to the king by the votaries of the cult, constituted one area of Taoist ritual participation in the founding process of the kingdom” of Shu (907-925). These findings further disprove the identification of organised Taoism with popular cults (see VI.4) and also shed light on the specific nature of Taoist messianism. Taoism, by its very essence, could never assert a spiritual authority against the empire–as in the medieval Christian dispute between spiritual and worldly power–but Taoist-inspired uprisings could turn against those emperors who, in the eyes of destitute peasants, had lost their mandate (Seidel 1970, 1983a).
It has been said that Taoist ritual (see V.7) was modelled on the imperial feng and shan sacrifices and on Han court ceremonial, but we have not yet furnished sufficient proof of these reasonable assumptions. Another unexplored field is the overlapping of imperial ancestor worship (and imperial cults to nature gods) and Taoist rites in the T’ang dynasty (cf. Schafer 1987; see IV.2). The elaborate Taoist liturgies at the courts of two Sung emperors (see lIl.1, IV.3), the invitations to court extended to eminent Taoists throughout the ages–all such contacts between the imperial sphere and the Taoist religion should be examined to see what both had to gain. The Taoists, for their part, seem to have gained prestige and tangible sponsorship, while the imperial side gained immense propagandistic value from the Taoist legitimation (Seidel 1970a, 1983). Sages flock to the court of a charismatic emperor, and wisdom comes to the sacred centre to be distilled and redistributed like new blood to all parts of the social body (an image found in the T’ai-p’ing ching; cf. Kaltenmark 1979). Most court Taoists, it appears, were not part of the state bureaucracy but were attached to the palace and were neither approved of nor mentioned by the official historians (Verellen 1989a).
As to areas of conflict, there was first the competition with Buddhism for imperial sponsorship, which culminated in the Taoist defeats in debate and the destruction of the 1244 Hsuan-lu pao-tsang edition of the Taoist Canon at the order of the Mongol (Yuan) emperor Khubilai in 1281 (van der Loon 1984: 56). There were also sporadic persecutions of Taoism for various political reasons, as under Emperor Wu of the Liang, (Strickmann 1978a). More often, Taoists were subjected to strict measures of state control, as under the Northern Wei (Mather 1979), the Northern Chou and in all codes since the Sung (de Groot 1901; Eichhorn 1968; Overmyer 1990a in this volume).
Potential for more serious conflict between Taoism and the court lay elsewhere. The keystone of Taoist ritual is communication with celestial deities and with a whole panoply of gods and spirits outside the narrow limits set by imperial codes for all non-official cults. Stein (1979) showed to what length Taoists went to avoid being included among the “illegitimate cults” (i.e., those infringing on imperial prerogative, yin szu, condemned by the officials (see VI.4). Even during the Ming the issue was still open, and an imperial decree of 1391, neither the first nor the last, forbade the Taoist clergy to “send up to heaven ‘green writings’ (ch’ing szu that is, the written memorials sent to heaven in Taoist rites (de Groot 1901: 82).
The first scholar since de Groot (1901) to address this problem from the viewpoint of imperial codes demarcating areas of competence in the domain of the cults seems to be Overmyer in his study (in this volume) of the official attitudes toward popular religion as expressed in the “Ming Statutes” (Ta Ming hui-tien , 1587 CE). Most of what he says in regard to popular religion holds true as well for Taoism. Although completely out of touch with the social and religious reality of the Ming period and “deliberately archaic” in its approach, the ideology of these codes not only determined the outlook (although less the concrete policies) of Ming officials but, as Overmyer shows, even today informs the attitude toward popular religion (and communal Taoism) in the People’s Republic. Any spontaneous religious expression by the ordinary people (shumin that is, those wretched “masses” who, in imperial times, had no official rank and who, today, are not cadres) is to be suppressed and punished or, at least, curbed and controlled. This conviction is as old as the Chinese empire and deeply engrained enough to have outlived it. The P.R.C. persists in lumping Cheng-i Taoism together with all popular cults and has, moreover an organisation that guarantees enforcement of this religious oppression on the local level with a frightening thoroughness no Chinese dynasty ever attempted.
D. Officialdom and Confucianism
Sivin (1978: 316) has found “Confucianism” as difficult to define as “Taoism.” Scholars of Confucianism tend to jump from the classical age of Confucius to the beginnings of the Confucian renaissance in the late T’ang period. Han Confucianism from Tung Chung-shu (c. 179-c. 104 BCE) to Ho Hsiu (129-182 CE; whose thought has recently been studied in a complete vacuum by Cheng 1985) has been out of favour with Neo-Confucians, as well as with their modern-day emulators in Academe. Most probably the divisions among the New Text School and Old Text School, the more technical fang shih learning, Huang-Lao philosophy and amateurs of the Lao-tzu and the Chuang-tzu were at that time much less clear-cut than we tend to suppose. Han Confucians instituted a religious cult to Confucius and the Duke of Chou (Shryock 1932) and sacrificed to local “worthies.” They chased demons, exorcised haunted houses, produced rainfall by reciting the classics, and proposed to rout the armies of the T’ai-p’ing rebellion by reciting the Classic of Filial Piety. In the lower ranks of the Han administration was the office of libationer (chi-chiu); also there were the officials whose salary was measured in five pecks of rice and the scholars who, when out of office, taught the classics in “pure chambers” (ching-shih ). This, as Stein (1963) has shown, is the milieu in which “Five Pecks of Rice Taoism” (= the Celestial Masters) developed with its chi-chiu priests, Lao-tzu recitations and pure chambers for the confession of sins. Perhaps we can sympathise with the Neo-Confucians’ desire to hide Han Confucianism under a fig Ieaf, but this surely is no reason for us not to study this important phase of the Confucian tradition.
To the extent that the “esoteric” (wei-shu) commentaries on the Confucian classics written by the “masters of techniques” (fang-shih) can be considered part of Han Confucianism, Taoism owes very much to Confucianism ) (cf. the fang-shih biographies translated and studied by Ngo 1976). The authors of the early portions of the Book of Great Peace (Kandel 1978) and the late Han founders of Taoist movements themselves came from the milieu of the fang-shih (Seidel 1983). Many of the beliefs and practices of Shang-ch’ing Taoism were derived from these masters of techniques (Robinet 1979a; cf. also Kaltenmark 1968, 1982; Yamada 1989).
But was this tradition Confucian? In fact, Han Confucians themselves discussed the question of who could call himself a Confucian. Yang Hsiung (53 BCE-18 CE), in his Fa-yen had to defend Mencius’s right to the title of Confucian (Nylan, personal communication). Yang Hsiung has recently been called the “first Neo-Confucian,” as he was among those Han thinkers who elaborated a new synthesis of Confucian and other beliefs adapted to the changed conditions of the Confucian empire (Nylan 1989).
The well-bred gentlemen, in or out of office who engaged in “pure discussions” (ch’ing-t’an cf. Mather 1976) and wrote commentaries on the Laotzu, the Chuang-tzu and the Book of Changes in the third to fourth centuries used to be referred to as “Neo-Taoists” (i.e., the Chinese “Profound Studies,” Hsuan-hsueh tradition). They belonged to the high society and had enough classical Confucian education to, as one scholar recently put it, “cleanse” the Chuang-tzu of “superstitious” elements. The fact that they actually had little to do with Taoism has, thanks to Gernet (1972), already reached the history books. They were sons of good families at odds with the Confucian tradition of their forefathers and enamoured with Taoist mysticism (cf. the magistral essay by Balazs 1948; and the lucid introduction in Henricks 1983). The best minds in medieval China simply were not attracted to Confucianism but dabbled in Taoism or became Taoists, like Ko Hung (whose “Confucian” Pao-p’u tzu wai-p’ien , translated by Sailey 1978, could be reexamined in this light), or eminent Buddhist monks.
There is, to my knowledge, no recent study on anything Confucian between the Han and the late T’ang. Therefore, all we can say about the first thousand years of interaction between Taoist priests and Confucian office holders is to repeat what was said above in the context of “bureaucracy” (V.4.a) about the work of Stein (1979), Levi (1986, 1987, 1989), and Johnson (1985). Imperial officials (if, and how, and to what extent they were Confucians is still anybody’s guess) as well as Taoist priests and, to some degree, Buddhist monks constituted the clerical elites of the Chinese Middle Ages. They shared a mastery of literary Chinese and an esprit de corps based on their respective hierarchies and a common sense of mission to combat and “civilise” the popular cults (for examples involving Buddhists, cf. Miyakawa 1979). There are also tances of literati officials espousing Taoist causes in common opposition Buddhism, such as the minister Ts’ui Hao WM (381-450) whose role was rucial in the establishment of the Taoist theocracy of the Celestial Master K’ou Ch’ien-chih (Mather 1979).
Summing up Chinese and Japanese studies, David Yu (1977) has found that here was a much more lively and positive give-and-take than previously assumed between officials and Taoists from the Six Dynasties period onward. Literati such as Ou-yang Hsiu, Su Shih, and Su Ch’e composed Taoist ritual texts, studied alchemy and wrote poetry full of Taoist imagery. Taoism, unlike Buddhism, had no fundamental conflict with the Confucian world-view, and further research will no doubt reveal more than hitherto acknowledged collaboration and mutual influence between representatives of the two traditions, especially in the fields of divination, ritual and philosophy. As to the last, a study of the Taoist philosophical input in the formative period of Neo-Confucianism is long overdue (cf. Barrett * 1978).
Once Neo-Confucianism had become the established moral and political orthodoxy, Taoism and Buddhism were in for a harder time. They were attacked more and more and condemned in countless Confucian essays, some of which read like hate mail. This hatred determined policy, and we see it implemented in the codes of the Ming and Ch’ing dynasties (cf. de Groot 1901; Overmyer 1990a). Confucian opposition based on philosophical principles (Taoism and Buddhism as heterodox [hsieh] doctrines disturbing cosmic harmony; cf. de Groot 1901: 7-15) and on the Confucian establishment’s unwillingness to share its privileges (cf. the diatribe of a Sung Confucian translated in van der Loon 1984: 10-1 1) does not satisfactorily explain the viciousness of these denunciations. As modern scholarship revises the vision of a monolithic, static, “orthodox” and, above all, rational and agnostic Concianism (a vision reinforced by the Chinese intellectuals of the 1919 Cultural Revolution), it becomes increasingly apparent that Neo-Confucianism was a synthesis of Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist elements. Revitalised by Buddhist and Taoist spirituality and practices, this new Confucianism may have felt the need to set itself off from the two other traditions just as, for example, early Taoists had to stress the difference between their “pure creed” and the (too similar) practices of popular cults (see VI.4). In other words, there may be a connection between the borrowing from and denunciation of the other tradition. Han Yu’s poem about a Taoist nun is famous (Schafer 1978). Chu Hsi , wrote a treatise on inner alchemy. Kao P’anlung , author of an anti-Buddhist diatribe called “Refutation of Heresy” (I-tuan pien ) in the late sixteenth century, visited many Buddhist monasteries where he practiced Neo-Confucian “quiet sitting” (ching-tso) seated in total isolation in lotus position, with closed eyes and incense burning before him (Gernet 1981: 479-80; cf. also Taylor * 1978). This is one of many examples from Gernet’s important studv of the Neo-Confucian adaptation of Ch’an Buddhist concentration exercises. Neskar (forthcoming) is investigating the religious worship of Confucian sages by Sung Confucians in temples (sheng-hsien tz’u that were clearly not part of the traditional ancestor cult. Would this sort of Confucian religious worship perhaps add motivation to the attacks on Taoist and popular temple worship?
There is today a kind of dividing line running through the whole field of sinology. Eminent philologists and specialists of Confucianism and classical literature tend to emphasise the study of the Chinese elite culture as traditionally defined. Anthropologists, sociologists, those who come from the French school of socioloeie religieuse, and specialists of Taoism and of popular religion have reacted against what they see as a one-sided identification of China with the culture of its tiny elite. They tend to identify China with the popular culture of the majority of its people. Both sides tend to throw the baby out with the bath water. Scholars of Taoism and popular culture might keep in mind that the leaders of the movements they study had more classical Confucian and literary Bildung (and sometimes also Buddhist scholastic knowledge) than they themselves give to their students these days. How are these future sinologists to recognise elements of the elite culture in the sources they will study? As scholars specialising in Confucianism today begin to abandon the earlier generations’ vision of a lofty, agnostic philosophy and a state orthodoxy contemptuous of “popular superstition,” we can begin to perceive the interaction between Taoism and Confucian oflicialdom and philosophy. We have to wait until scholars of Confucianism give us a more realistic assessment of how the lively Confucian traditions shared and contributed to the multifaceted beliefs of their times, changing over the ages, accommodating contradiction and assimilating elements about which “the Master did not speak”–for the Master had no idea of the uses to which he would be put, from the “Uncrowned King” of Han state doctrine, through K’ang Yu-wei’s revolutionary, all the way to Creel’s first democrat.
E. Taoism and Popular Religion
Attempts to define Taoism, as opposed to popular or folk religion, and descriptions of the give-and-take between the two traditions have attracted so much scholarly attention that these topics have already been mentioned repeatedly in the sections on Sung Taoism (IV.3), the immortals (V.1) and the supernatural bureaucracy (V.4.a). The best introductory reading on popular religion is Stein (1979) for the medieval period and Johnson (1985) for developments since the late T’ang.
The phenomenon of “popular religion” is so complex that some scholars today reject the term itself. The frequently advanced argument that popular religion is so omnipresent and basic that it never needed a name, does not get us very far, because ancient cults throughout the world, as well as religions that do not have to define themselves against other religions, also get along without a self-appellation (e.g., ancient Judaism and medieval Christianity). “Popular” here is not in opposition to “elite” religion, as we find “popular” cults at all levels of society. Following Hansen’s use of “popular” in contrast to organised or established religion associated with clerical groups (in McRae et al. 1989: 82) is better than searching for another term with (necessarily) other drawbacks.
Although (and because) popular religion is the most ancient, most vigorous and most pervasive Chinese religion, it has always had the full weight of the Chinese literati elite against it. The most recent Chinese dictionary of religion accords less space to it (min-chien tsung-chz’ao than to Hinduism or to Japanese Shinto (Tsung-chiao tz’u-tien, Shanghai 1981).
In their self-definition, Taoists never saw themselves in opposition to Confucianism or Buddhism, but to popular religion. It may be useful at this point to give a brief and very general summary of Taoism as seen against popular religion:
- Taoism has a hereditary priesthood, demanding professional training, esoteric initiation and ritual ordination. The specialists of popular religion are self-chosen and often realise their calling through shamanistic talent and experiences (Schipper 1982, chapter 4). 2. Transmission in Taoism is always the transmission of texts. The scriptures and rituals of Taoism are written in literary Chinese and constitute a body of prose and poetry that has its place in the history of Chinese literaturePopular transmission is oral. The moral tracts (shan-shu edifying texts (pao-chuan) novels and rituals of popular religion are in the vernacular (Schipper 1985; Lagerwey 1985).
- The Taoist clergy perceives itself as an elite and has contributed mystics, philosophers, poets, alchemists and scholars to Chinese culture. The specialists of popular religion do not form organised clerical groups, have no esprit de corps, and produce no elite.
4.Taoism is a religion conscious of its identity expressed in a canon of scriptures in concepts of orthodoxy and heterodoxy and in the traditional commemoration of a historical beginning. Popular religion is the rich storehouse of archaic traditions, a vast receptacle of the most diverse influences, a multiplicity of beliefs and customs, without conscious identity or sense of history. The list might continue but it should now be clear that Taoism, especially during its first millennium, can in no way be confused with popular religion.
When the sources present conflicting evidence, one should keep in mind that, whenever two religions competed for imperial favour, the winning party tended to atgtibute to theloser all kinds of popular (i.e., disreputable) elements. I remember Stein saying in one of his seminars that this happened not only to Taoism but also to the Bon religion of Tibet. Johnson (1985) is right when he sees the “political and clerical elites” (including Taoist priests) opposed to the cults of the populace and their shaman priests. The Taoists called the popular cults the same names that the officials did: the way of demons (kuei tao), illegitimate cults (yin szu) sorcerv (wu kuei), the way of baleful spirits (yao tao) etc. They describe the cults as consisting of sacrifices of bloody meat (condemned already in the Pao-p’u tzu and the Chen-kao), pantheons of impostor gods other than those registered in Taoist codes, “wasteful”, “ruinous” banquets expiatory rites of healing, and oragastic worship involving dance, songs, and mediums prophesying in trance.
On the other liand, many Taoist cults were so similar to popular practices that Taoist authors themselves were sometimes hard put to distinguish between the two. There is no contradiction here, because Taoism was a superstructure at least partially derived from and alwavs in close contact with popular religion. It was in order to keep their religion “pure” that Taoists developed a ‘Calously guarded orthodoxy and orthopraxis (cheng). Ever fearful of contamination by unregenerate popular elements, the Taoists multiplied the condemnations of “heterodox” (maleficent, hsieh) practices in their codes (k’o). For example, the T’ang-tai Tao-tien lun defined the illegitimate cults (yin- szu) with a citation from the “Book of Rites”‘ (Li chi) which shows us that Taoist criteria for condemning the cults were the saine as those of the literati officials (Stein 1979).
According to the most recent studies, the major change in the religious landscape during the late T’ang and the Sung period seems to have been the promotion of regional cults and their popular gods, expressed in imperial title-granting and government sponsorship on the one hand, and in integration into the Taoist hierarchy on the other. As Johnson (1985) has suggested, the old indigenous cults–often violent, sometimes even involving human sacrifice–were by T’ang times in retreat and the gap had been narrowed “between what peasants believed and what the political and clerical elites felt they ought to believe.” Hansen has treated the evolution of popular gods in a study (1990) based partly on a wonderful collection of tales, the I-chien chih. In two papers she has contrasted the new popular pantheon with the more hierarchical Taoist pantheon (in McRae et al. 1989) and argued (as did Johnston in 1985) that during the T’ang-Sung transition the government well as well as the Taoist priests gradually changed their age-old (and mostly unsuccessful) policy of suppression to a conditional acceptance of popular gods by obscuring, if necessary, their murky origins and by integrating them into new categories of generic gods, such as the city god (cheng-huang shen) or the monastic guardians (ch’ieh-lan shen; Hansen 1989; cf. also Cedzich 1990).
Two recent studies have traced the evolution of these generic gods: Johnson (1985) showed that the city god started as a local cult but not to the old rural and ambivalent nature gods. Rather the city god is a new kind of “urbane” (in both senses of the word), otherwordly official integrated into a supernatural hierarchy not unlike the Taoist pantheon. Kleeman’s study (1988) argued that the cult of the God of Literature, Wen-ch’ang, had its roots in a local cult to a malevolent viper, but gained recognition and, eventually, a nationwide following only after transformation into a hero, assimilation to a stellar deity and promotion to a position in the Taoist pantheon.
Interesting in this context are several cases of local gods in the Sung whose attitudes reflect the varying success of the Taoist campaigns against the bloody sacrifices rendered to all popular deities, with or without government recognition. Some gods resist promotion into the Taoist divine hierarchy with the argument that they cannot renounce their diet of raw meat offerings without losing their spiritual efficacy (Kleeman 1988: 115; Hansen 1989: 29). Inversely, other spirits refuse an official title as a popular god (and the concomitant bloody meat offerings) because they do covet a career in the “pure” Taoist bureaucracy (Lagerwey 1987b: 243; Hansen 1989). However, Kleeman (1988, 1989) finds that, during the Sung, Taoists compromised by accepting the popular blood sacrifices for the local gods, a tolerance that won them the role of custodians of the popular religion (see also V. 7).
The many differing images these gods presented to the various groups of worshippers is illustrated in Cedzich’s study (1990) of the archaic shan-hsiao @itti nature goblins, alias the Wu-t’ung ghosts, alias the officially recognized urban Wu-hsien gods, alias the Taoist Heavenly General. The Taoist and Buddhist garbs of the immensely popular Celestial Consort (T’ien-fei) or Ma-tsu, goddess of the seafaring population of China’s east coast, have been examined by Boltz (1986a). The generic difference between popular gods and both Taoist gods and Taoist priests is illustrated in the legends of Marshal Wen (Lagerwey 1987b, chapter 14).
F. Taoism in Modern China
In present-day Taiwan, the exorcists (fa-shih) of local traditions and Taoist priests practice side by side in the same communal temples, while maintaining conscious distinctions between their cults and pantheons. To the Taoist priest, himself a member of the celestial hierarchy, the local gods are inferior spiritual beings under his authority.
The confusion of some forms of Taoism (e.g. Cheng-i) with popular religion still lurks in the minds of P.R.C. officials. They are all indiscriminately labeled “feudal superstitions” (as opposed to “religions,” tsung chiao such as Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and approved monastic (Ch’üan-chen) Taoism; cf CFA 4: 189-98). The extreme pejorativeness of this term is clear in the current P.R.C. campaign against the “six evils,” a campaign aimed at rooting out prostitution, pornography, drugs, gambling, the abduction of women and. . . “feudal superstitions” (Japan Times, Feb. 22, July 18, 1990).
(From p. 305) Taoism and the cults of the people were the major challenge to the religious monopoly of the Chinese god-emperor and his ruling class of literati-officials (see VI. 1 & 2). The dividing line did not run between the elite (= Confucianism) and the people (= Taoism) but between officially sanctioned cults (carried out by whomever) and religious activities outside the ideologically acceptable, codified norms, whether performed by emperors, officials, Taoist priests or popular mediums. Complementing the imperial concept of religion and the elite concept of culture, both of which were enforced from above, Taoism was the unofficial high religion that grew up from below.
(From p. 306) Taoist priests and their religious activities suffered far more than Buddhists during the years of the so-called “Cultural Revolution,” because Taoism had no believers or advocates outside of China whom the P.R.C. government would have hesitated to offend. In the 1980s many Taoist cult centres were restored, not so much to revive the religion but to create tourist attractions that double as fake displays of “religious freedom”–fake because only monastic Taoism is considered a religion (entitled to a certain amount of constitutionally guaranteed freedom; on monasteries today cf. Hahn 1989), whereascommunal Taoism is branded a “feudal superstition” (feng-chien mi-hsin). For the dwindling number of Taoist priests in the P.R.C., the Western interest in Taoism enhances not only their position in the eyes of the government and the local cadres, but also their own self-esteem, broken by years of relentless humiliation. There is an urgent need for field-workers like Dean and Lagerwey to record the traditions that will die with these last authentic representatives trained before 1949 and 1966. It was not until the “Cultural Revolution” in 1966 that the official battle against religion penetrated to even the remotest local centres of temple life and nearly wiped China clean of the traditional social networks that form the basis of religious activities. Recent revivals of religious seminaries seem to create a new, government-controlled and monotonously uniform class of religious functionaries.) We also need more studies of local religious life of the kind Dean has been conducting in Fukien and descriptive surveys like Grootaers’ of cults and temples for as many different regions as possible.
For the scholars of Taoism in the P.R.C. universities, our work is important for reasons too complex to discuss in detail. Their long intellectual isolation, the neglect of their own traditional literati culture, the lowering of academic standards, a lin-ering Confucian contempt for the religions of the people combined with Maoist indoctrination against “feudal superstitions,” the decimation of the higher educational system, the disastrous library conditions, the intellectual chaos, lack of an adequate terminology for religious studies and the political risks of publishing anything worthwhile on Taoism-all these and other factors have made it almost impossible for Chinese scholars to do meaningful work on Taoism (for an illustration of some of these problems, cf. CEA 4, 1988: 189-98; cf. also Kandel 1980; Hendrischke 1984). Since the Tiananmen massacre in early June 1989, the curtain has gone down also on the many international conferences Chinese scholars could attend in China and abroad (since the late 1970s) and on those that had been planned for the future. Since about 1988, an intoxicating obsession with the alleged link between Confucianism and successful modernisation is spreading rapidly among Chinese scholars and intellectuals in general. This again narrows their perception of their own cultural heritage down to that old elite ideology which, whatever it might be contributing to the success of the “five newly industrialised nations” of East Asia, has been a bane as much of religious and popular traditions as of modernisation in China itself.
It might appear presumptuous to assume that the Western research on Taoism could teach the Chnese anything about their own culture. However, the fact is that, whenever free to do so, Chinese colleagues have manifested a keen interest in our studies and have used it as an argument to justify their own work. Another point to keep in mind is that we, who are not believers in but students of Taoism, naturally do not have the right to defend or encourage harmful superstitions. However, we do have an intellectual and moral obligation not to fool ourselves or our readers about the horrendous abuses perpetrated under the propaganda slogan of “abolishing superstitions.” (cf. Dean * 1989). A clear-eyed and sympathetic monitoring of the fate of Taoism in the P.R.C. can prevent us from becoming the sort of “fellow travellers” that so many Western China experts became during the “Cultural Revolution,” applauding a government while it destroyed irretrievable cultural values and religious traditions, leaving the people deprived of their cults and in a cultural and spiritual wasteland. During those years, Simon Leys’ perspicacious analysis and denounciation of the Chinese tragedy (1971, 1973, 1976, 1983) sounded a lonely voice against the chorus of academic opportunism (or incompetence) and the wall of uncaring silence.
Ann Anagnost (in McRae et al., 1989: 110-2) analysed the government’s negative attitude toward popular ritual and reported on the periodic and very recent “anti-superstition campaigns,” in the course of which hundreds of temple cults were suppressed, the organisers arrested and the temple buildings assigned to “healthy” uses (and reconverted into temples as soon as the state’s zeal had subsided). As Overmyer writes (p. 220 in this issue), “Popular religion is an expression of local community life, so its revival is an important test of how much freedom and autonomy will be allowed.” This is also true of all forms of Taoism that are part of local community life. Taoism is like the canary that miners take along to serve as a test for the air in the mine. When the canary keels over, they are alerted to the presence of poisonous gases; when Taoism is under attack, we know that all of Chinese culture is at risk. Since the fall of 1989, a campaign against the “six evils” has once again set out to stamp out “feudal superstitions”, which means that any local official is free to combat any non-monastic forms of Taoism as a criminal activity (see above VI.4). The canary is again lying on the bottom of the cage. Even if Western scholars of Taoism cannot revive it, we can refrain from applauding its tormentors and do our very best to draw attention to its plight. III. Taoist Mythology: The Immortals
It is not easy to find a study on Taoism that does not, in one way or another, mention the immortals (hsien, but few have dealt explicitly with them.
Definitions and short characterizations of immortals (hsien), the “Perfected” (chen-jen) are found in many general studies of Taoism. Kaltenmark’s translation of the oldest (Han dynasty) collection of immortals’ legends or hagiographies, the Lieh-hsien Chuan, also includes a study of their mythology (1953). Kaltenmark’s copious annotations to each hagiography contain detailed studies of the major legendary themes (the affinity with birds, solar myths, fire and cremation, grottoes, potters and metal-workers, medicinal plants and mushrooms, the gourd, jade, etc.).
A new genre of legends appears in the Shang-ch’ing lineage. These tales, called “esoteric biographies” (nei-chuan), no longer focus on the miracles performed by the immortals but deal with the long quest and the gradual initiation of the “Perfected” and retrace the divine lineage of the revelations they receive. Often this revelatory lineage served to integrate the methods and famous saints of previous traditions into the Shang-ch’ing order.
A case in point is the “Esoteric Biography of the Perfected of Tzu-yang” (Tzu-yang chen-jen nei-chuan , a Taoist Bildungsroman that delighted Maspero (1950). Another novelette of this kind, famous in medieval China, is the “Esoteric Biography of Emperor Wu of the Han” (Han Wu-ti nei-chuan . It has been translated and its main theme–the ancient legend of the visit of the Queen Mother of the West (Hsi-wang-mu) to Emperor Wu–has been explained in its original mythological and ritual context (Schipper 1965).
The mythology of the ancient goddess Hsi-wang-mu, Queen Mother of the West, later queen of the immortals, antedates Taoism. Although she is omnipresent in Chinese religion, no early texts deal with her explicitly. A courageous first study outlines her ancient history, examines her “biography” by Tu Kuang-t’ing (850-933) and deals with her image in T’ang poetry (Cahill 1982).
Immortal women, their role in Taoism, their legends and their specific practices of inner alchemy are a rich field of study awaiting the attention of intelligent feminist scholars. Despeux’s study (1990) presents a wealth of sources that need much further reflection and interpretation. The female immortals, water goddesses, river nymphs, dragon ladies and rain maidens in T’ang poetry and prose seduced Schafer into devoting a book to them (1973). Medieval poets loved to describe mysterious encounters with transcendent beings such as Elder Mao, who taught worthy adepts, healed the sick and rescued victims of demon possession (Schafer 1986b; see also VI.3.a).
Many immortals owe their popularity to their role as a prophet who legitimises a new dynasty. The birth of a legend and its historical core in the case of the early Sung master Ch’en T’uan, who allegedly gave his blessing to the founder of the Sung, has been studied by Knaul (1981). Another such figure is Chang San-feng, who is said to have lent supernatural support to the Ming mandate. He later became a popular deity of spirit medium cults and today is the patron saint of the T’ai-chi ch’uan tradition (Seidel 1970). The earliest (Northern Sung) legends concerning the most popular immortal since the Sung and Yuan, Lu Tung-pin, show that his cult was propagated not only by travelling merchants but even more so by itinerant Taoists, such as drug pedlars, healers, mediums, exorcists and diviners (Baldrian 1986).
The origin(s) of the most famous and picturesque group of eight immortals (pa hsien) is still unclear (for one interesting theory, cf. Hawkes 1981)-perhaps because we have not yet adequately grasped the significance and the social function of the entire phenomenon of the lore of immortals. This phenomenon may help us not to extend the very helpful insight into the bureaucratic character of the Chinese supernatural world beyond its proper limits (see V.4.a & b). Most of the immortals (except, and for good reason, the Shang-ch’ing “Perfected”) do not fit the bureaucratic model: (1) they are not integrated into celestial bureaucracies but rather are often identified with local cult centres; and (2) they are not dignified bureaucrats but rather eccentrics, hermits, mysterious strangers or even incognito apparitions, disguised as drunkards,jesters or beggars. One evident reason for their quixotic behaviour is that the immortals took on the role of anti-hero, demonstrating the relative worthlessness of learning and fame, of institutionalised saintliness and high position in this and even in the other world. Strickmann (1984) has drawn attention to the oft-encountered trickster or simpleton who turns out to be an immortal temporarily banished from heaven (che hsien) and the uncouth rustic or illiterate child whose spiritual excellence or philosophical skill puts saints and sages to shame (also Soymie 1954). These figures and themes have a long and rich tradition in China, mostly unexplored except for famous examples among the lettered classes, such as the “banished immortal,” Tung Fang-shuo , the court jester of Emperor Wu of the Han. IV. Ritual
It is difficult, if not futile, to define Taoism by its doctrines because the essence of the religion lies in its methods, techniques, practices and ritual. The rank of a priest is not determined by his doctrinal knowledge but by the extent of his initiation into the liturgy of his particular tradition. Ritual texts predominate in the Taoist Canon, but Chavannes (1919) is still the only scholar to have devoted an exhaustive study to any one Taoist ritual. De Groot (1886) noted the importance, for the people of Amoy in the 1880s, of what he called the Taoist “mass” or “sacrifice,” but it was only in the 1960s that some Chinese (Liu Chih-wan), Japanese (Ofuchi Ninji ) and Western scholars (Schipper, Saso) observed and sometimes participated in various Taoist rites in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Saso was the first to attempt a general description of contemporary Taoist ritual. Unfortunately, his two books (1972, 1978) on the practices of the priest Chuang-Ch’en Teng- yun of Hsin-chu in northern Taiwan are not very reliable in their ethnographic description and in their presentation of Taoist history (cf. Strickmann 1980; pp. 219-22 of this article are a summary of work done on Taoist ritual). Lagerwey (1987b) has described the principal Offering (chiao) and “merit” (kung i.e. mortuary) rites of southern Taiwan. Like Ofuchi, he based his work on the tradition of the T’ai-nan priest Ch’en Jung-sheng Lagerwey (1987c) and Berthier (1988) have studied the ritual of the so-called red-headed priests of the Lu-shan tradition in Taiwan and Fukien.
In the 1970s, interest turned to the origins and history of ritual. In 1968, Schipper claimed that the Cheng-I liturgy of present-day Taiwan has its roots in the late-Han Celestial Master tradition (summarised in Welch 1970). A thorough examination of the rare traces of this early ritual has shown that the major innovation that distinguished it from earlier popular cults was the adoption of “bureaucratic” procedures to deal with the gods. Early Taoist ritual was “an administrative procedure that included written communication with the Three Offices of the Beyond was carried out by male and female officials [= priests] according to codes of universal law (k’o ) and followed set patterns; it was primarily intended to ward off disease and death caused by dead ancestors (Cedzich 1987: 81-2; Seidel 1988). Prayers in the form of written memorials presented to the gods by an officiant in a visionary journey to the heavenly courts (or by burning) are still an essential part of Taoist ritual (Schipper 1974, Strickmann forthcoming I). Prayers written in literary Chinese not only distinguish Taoist ritual from popular religion (Schipper 1985), they also permit us to trace the antecedents of Taoist ritual back to the feng and shan sacrifices of the Han emperors and, indeed, to the very origin of Chinese script.
The deep roots and extraordinary persistence of Taoist ritual can be gauged from the fact that Chinese writing probably was invented for use in written communication with the spirit world. Prayers have always been offered in writing, and gods have answered-through legible cracks in oracle bones, through divine scriptures discovered in sacred mountains and through the writing brush of mediums and visionaries-in literary Chinese or in a variety of sacred talismanic scripts (see V.3).
The most recent studies of the basic conceptual patterns underlying Taoist ritual show that Taoism has perpetuated and elaborated a number of ancient concepts and practices going back it least as far as the Warring States period. The ritual dance patterns of the pu-kang, (still performed today) go back to the ancient shamanistic “Steps of Yu” (Yu-pu) with which Yu the Great is said to have tamed the floods. They are also connected with the Emperor’s annual ritual progress through his cosmic temple, the Hall of Light (ming t’ang Andersen 1990, in this volume; cf. also Robinet 1979, 1986a). Ancient exorcistic postures and movements reappear in Taoist healing and longevity rituals (Harper 1985). The study of a Celestial Master rite of sexual union has revealed a structure based on an extremely complex system of symbols and correspondences derived from ancient mantic arts (Kalinowski 1985). The interpenetration of and the identical paradigms underlying imperial ceremonial, divination, astro-calendrical sciences (Needham 1976, III: 302-10, 541-3; Harper 1979, 1981), board games (Needham 1980, IV.I: 314 34), shamanistic exorcism and Taoist ritual are a promising field for further study. For Lagerwey (1987b, chap. 1) Taoist ritual is first of all a theatrical expression of pan-Chinese cosmology.
The history of Taoist ritual has known many phases the most important of which are: the Ling-pao liturgy of the fifth century and the ritual renaissance of the Sung. When Celestial Master Taoism spread in what was then the south of the empire, it incorporated the ancient cult practices of Chiang-nan (the ch’an-wei and Ling-pao traditions; Kaltenmark 1968, 1982), absorbed Buddhist elements (such as the rite of circumambulation) and Shang ch’ing (meditational) practices to become the highly successful Ling-pao liturgy (Bokenkamp 1983; Robinet 1984; Lagerwey 1987a; Schipper 1988). Bell (1988) has spelled out the interplay of text and rite underlying the evolution of communities and priestly hierarchies in the Ling-pao tradition. All these features, already present in the earlier parishes of the Celestial Masters, now, in the fifth century, took the shape that has dominated Taoist cult practice ever since.
We have seen above (V.4.a) that Taoist priests are divine officials. In keeping with the bureaucratic mentality, Taoist ceremonies always involve the acquisition of merit and the advancement and investiture of divine and human participants. The ghosts of the unshriven dead were redeemed and “promoted” (Cedzich 1987), and the legitimacy of priests as well as of worldly powers was consecrated through ritual. The Taoist priests of the Six Dynasties and the T’ang fashioned their own ordination rites, the “Bestowal of Registers” (shoulu ), modeled after the Han imperial investiture rites of the same name and, subsequently, came to perform them for numerous emperors of the time (Seidel 1983). The combination of the traditional state religion with Taoist rites honouring T’ai-shang Lao-chun in the imperial liturgy of the T’ang emperor Hsuan-tsung (r. 712-756) is documented in the rhapsodies (fu ) composed by court poets (Schafer 1987).
Toward the end of the T’ang and during the Sung period, we witness a new involvement of Taoist ritual with local cults of saints (see VI.4). This development does not reflect a “popularisation” of Taoism but the use of Taoist ritual by new local power elites, such as the emerging merchant guilds, to consecrate the investiture of their leaders (Schipper 1985a) and to upgrade their local cult traditions through imperial recognition and integration into the Taoist pantheon (Cedzich 1985, 1990).
This social process together with the generous patronage of several Sung emperors led to a proliferation of new ritual dispensations, which Strickmann (1979a) has called a Taoist renaissance. Extensive compendia of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in the Taoist Canon (studied by Boltz * 1985, 1987; van der Loon 1979, 1984) contain these newly revealed rituals. They range from the imperial Shen-hsiao (Divine Empyrean) liturgy, through which Emperor Hui-tsung confirmed his divine mandate, all the way to the therapeutic T’ien-hsin (Celestial Heart) rites of exorcism with which itinerant Taoist healers proselytised South China (Boltz 1985; Strickmann 1979a).
Besides the Offering (chiao) liturgy for the benefit of the living community, healing and the salvation of the dead have always been prime concerns of Taoist ritual. Ritual faith-healing, often effected through the salvation of ancestors suffering in infernal prisons, was the major attraction of Celestial Master Taoism (Strickmann 1985; Seidel 1985, 1987, 1987a) and continued in the Ling-pao liturgy (Bokenkamp 1989). Taoist healing rites using seals and talismanic scripts have been so popular throughout Chinese history that we find numerous adaptations of them in Chinese and Japanese Tantric rituals from the Middle Ages until today (Strickmann 1985a). Any relationship between these Taoist therapies and those of “classical medicine” has not yet been demonstrated.
Rites for the dead may involve elaborate meditations of the nei-tan type in which the priest descends inside the microcosm of his own body, down to an infernal realm (Boltz 1983; Lagerwey 1987b, chap. 13). The priest may also use the labyrinthine map of hell to betake himself to the mountain of Feng-tu and open the prison gates for the dead (Boltz forthcoming; see also V.3.c). The redemption of suffering souls from hell, which he achieves in his visionary experience, lends efficacy to the external salvation rite he is conducting.
The close connection between ritual and theatre has been pointed out by van der Loon (1977). Theatrical performances not only accompany religious feasts but can be part of rituals, and dramatic performances such as that of the story of Mulien are themselves purification rites. The drama of the Buddhist monk Mu-lien (Maudgalyayana) saving his mother from hell was so popular that the Taoists integrated it into their own funeral services (Schipper 1989; Johnson 1989; see also VII.4). Marionette theatre in Ch’uan-chou temples in the 1980s still demonstrated “the underlying continuity of exorcistic ritual and theatrical performance in China” (Dean I 990).
The development of Taoist cultic life since the Sung remains to be explored. It seems that the communal ceremonies of the medieval Taoist parish, which involved all members holding various registers of initiation, disappeared (traces have been discovered in the Taoist religion of the Yao culture in northern Thailand, where each male in the parish still undergoes various initiation rites, Lemoine 1982; Strickmann 1982). Instead, the rites of the ordained Taoist priest, mainly the chiao Offering, became the esoteric part of local festivals of renewal, enacted behind closed doors inside the temple (Schipper 1968; Lagerwey 1987b). The priest is no longer in charge of a community, rather he is a ritual specialist in the employ of local cults. The exuberant, indigenous cult traditions disrupted the unity of the medieval Taoist church but not of its liturgical tradition. Through the elaboration of new rituals and scriptures the priests absorbed local saints and “upwardly mobile” demons into their universal Taoist pantheon. This must not be understood as a fusion of Taoism with popular religion but as an upgrading–involving extensive transformation–of local cults into a universal Taoist dispensation. In this context, Kenneth Dean (1988b) has called Taoist liturgy “the alchemy of Chinese society.”
The study of Taoist ritual has barely begun but should make rapid progress, given the current fascination with ritual in the humanities. Taiwanese Taoist priests have been invited to perform rituals in Hawaii and Paris. Ritual manucripts have been collected (Schipper 1966; Dean 1988) and published (Saso 1975; Schipper 1975; and most important: Ofuchi 1983); performances have been videotaped; and an effort is being made to study the revival of ritual practice in the P.R.C. after the destruction wrought by the “Cultural Revolution.” (For a description of a Taoist exorcism witnessed by an impressionable White Russian emigre in the 1920s in a monastery near Soochow, cf. Goullart 1961: 83-90). The fact that ritual specialists who survived the “Cultural Revolution” are few and very old lends a particular urgency to field-work on Cheng-i and Ch’uian-chen rituals in the P.R.C. Lagerwey (1988, 1990) has traced Taiwanese ritual traditions to their origins in mainland Fukien, and Dean (1988a) has completed the first comprehensive ethnographic study of local cultic life in the very region of Amoy where de Groot (1886) observed the seasonal cycle of temple feasts.
In 1984, art historians, anthropologists and specialists on India and China met in Berlin to compare notes on “Classical Asian Ritual and the Theory of Ritual.” The astounding persistence of certain ritual structures in Asian religions has suggested to Staal (1985) that ritual traditions that cut across religious boundary lines are perhaps more meaningful categories of classification than the doctrine-related labels of Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism. This makes sense in the case of the Indian fire ritual, which can be traced from Vedic sources through esoteric Buddhism all the way to the Japanese goma rites (Strickmann 1983b and in McRae et al. 1989: 78-80). It also applies to Taoism in the sense that the label “Taoism” does not group a complex of religious traditions united by common basic doctrines but rather primarily designates a twice millenary ritual tradition with roots that reach back even further. At the core of this tradition are the codified patterns of ritual communication with gods and spirits enacted in written literary Chinese. V. Meditation, Alchemy, and Medicine
A. The Body and its Terminology
The human body, which is at the center of so much Taoist practice, imagery and theory, is not the material object studied and manipulated by Western medicine. The Taoist goal of physical immortality is not eternal life in the kind of body a physician can see through his CT scanner. An article by Staal (1984) on Indian concepts of the body provides a good comparative introduction to these questions. For China, it is of course Needham who has done the most penetrating studies on the conceptual preconditions that made the idea and pursuit of material immortality possible in China and not in the West (Needham 1956, 11: 139-54; 1974, V.2: 71-127).
The basic physiological and philosophical vocabulary that the Chinese use to speak about the body-mind continuum, about matter, energy, vitality, life, split, soul, etc., is wellnigh impossible to translate correctly. To leave these terms untranslated, as many scholars do, only postpones the problem until we have a better idea of what we are talking about. Porkert (1974) established “theoretically involved and narrowly technical” (cf. Andersen 1989) definitions for manv of these terms in medical contexts, and tentative physiology or philosophy. More recently Engelhardt (1987, 1989) examined the meaning of ch’i, “breath,” Ishida (1989) the concepts of body and mind, and Robinet (1986c) the concept of “life,” “human nature” (hsing . More is to be found in studies on Chinese medicine, such as those by Lu Gwei-djen & Needham (1980) and Unschuld (1985).
In the pan-Chinese system of correspondences, the body is a microcosm, a map of the universe, each point of which is related to corresponding points in other domains of reality. The physiological practices of the Taoists function on the basis of a rich and ancient symbolism of the microcosmic body in relation to celestial spheres, social entities and sites of sacred geography (Schipper 1978; 1982, chap. 6). The Taoist definition of life, moreover, is the presence in the body of divinities who also exist in their stellar palaces or terrestrial paradises, and the goal is to prevent the departure of these divine spirits by furthering the communication of these “interior gods” with their celestial counterparts (Maspero 1937).
B. Physiological Practices
Texts dealing with physiological practices present quite a number of difficulties: (1) Most manuals provide only the theoretical framework because the essential “oral formulae” (k’ou-chueh ) were given only to the initiate. (2) Terminology was often meant to function on several levels, so that one and the same text might be read as a manual for self-culdvation or as directions on how to govern the state (as in the case of the Tao-te ching) or, later, as instructions for laboratory alchemy (wai-tan) or for the purely mental exercises of “inner alchemy” (nei-tan) and maybe, to the eyes of the initiate, for sexual longevity practices (cf. Needham 1983, V.5: 211). (3) The difficulties in this field are mainly due to the fact that the texts generally are pointers for practice and are not meant to be understood by readers outside of the master-disciple relationship.
The complete translation of the most important text on all early Taoist immortality techniques (Ko Hung’s Pao-p’u tzu nei-p’ien) was somewhat disappointing when it finally appeared, because it is barely annotated and tackles none of the problems of interpretation (Ware 1966). However, much of this work has since been done by Needham (1956, II; 1974, V.2; 1983, V.5, passim).
The Taoist notions of longevity and immortality practices have been so extensively studied by Needham and his collaborators in SCC that it will suffice here to point out some recent monographs and articles on specific topics, texts, and techniques.
The oldest treatise on breath-cultivation discovered in the Ma-wang-tui tomb (168 BCE; Harper 1987: 555) already mentions the distinctly Taoist abstention from grain (ch’ueh ku). Levi (1983) has shown that the association of grain with civilisation–from which Taoists wanted to retreat to the undifferentiated, primordial chaos–was the mythological underpinning of this dietary prohibition.
Several studies of gymnastics and respiration have profited from training a contemporary master, as these Taoist practices are very much alive today. Despeux’s (1976) book on T’ai’-chi ch’uan gymnastics is based on fieldwork done in Taiwan (see also her survey of the history of tao-yin gymnastics, 1989). Engelhardt (1987, 1989) has gained an understanding of T’ang dynasty texts on the respiratory training that accompanies T’ai-chi ch’uan (ch’i-kung ) bv practicing with P.R.C. teachers.
Sexual disciplines for health and longevity, already well explored by van Gulik (1974), have received new impetus from the discovery among the Ma-wang-tui manuscripts of a number of sex manuals several sections of which have been admirably studied by Harper (1987). Kalinowski (1985) deciphered an early text on a specifically Taoist collective rite of sexual union that is of such symbolic and choreographic complexity that it does not invite emulation. On an individual level, the Han and Six Dynasties practices of the “bedchamber” (fang-chung ; Needham 1983, V.5: 189-218) might well still be practiced today and are propagated in the West as the “Tao of Sex.” A different attitude developed in the Shang-ch’ing tradition, which aimed at chaste and mystical nuptials with “pure” goddesses in visions. In the context of inner alchemy, after the late T’ang, it was thought that the male and female forces within the adept’s own body must be brought to union in order to engender the embryo of immortality (Robinet 1988). Reading the superb conclusion of Needham’s historical account of sexual techniques, one should keep in mind the high degree of ritualisation of these techniques as well as the generally male-oriented benefits (1983, V. 5:184-218; cf. also the “gynophobic” description of Hsi Wang Mu’s preservation of her youth through robbing young boys of their yang essence, in van Gulik 1974: 158; and Cahill 1986: 168).
C. Meditation
One of the oldest meditation techniques, “Guarding the One” (shou-yi ), alms at stabilising the spirits of the body by visualising the Three One (San-yi ) divinities in the universe and in the body. A sixth-century Shang-ch’ing treatise on this technique (HY 253) has been studied by Andersen (1960; cf. also Robinet 1979; Kohn 1989). Visualisation of the “interior gods,” as they are described in the classic Canon of the Yellow Court (Huang-t’ing ching , cf. Robinet 1979: 85-149) was also practiced with the aid of magic mirrors (Kaltenmark 1974).
The Shang-ch’ing lineage transformed ancient southern techniques of trance into ritualised, repeatable exercises of visualization. The texts describe complex psycho-dramas that take place in the microcosmic interior of the adept, change his perception of himself and lead him through catharsis, rebirth and divine revelations to a flaming apotheosis in the cosmic centre, surrounded by the emblems of the four poles of space. The fabulous imaginary universe of the Shang-ch’ing visualisations, and the adept’s metamorphoses, ecstatic flights and stellar excursions in it, are a major contribution to Chinese imagery (and literature, see VI.3.a). Robinet (1979) has described this universe, traced the ecstatic flight and stellar journeys of the visionary (1976, 1989), examined its textual tradition (1984), and outlined the kind of perfected immortal the visionaries sought to become (1986b; cf. also 1986a).
The more abstract and philosophical T’ang dynasty meditation manuals show considerable influence from Buddhism, something that has been briefly discussed by Robinet (1984.1: 89) but has not yet been properly analysed. The Tso-wang lun (Kohn 1987), the T’ien yin tzu (Kohn 1987a) and other T’ang texts, like the Nei-kuan ching (Kohn 1989a), have recently been interpreted as “mystical canons” of a Taoist tradition of “mystical philosophy” in which the body is a “fragile framework that … the spirit transcends,” a “house with rotting walls” that has to be abandoned so that the “spirit-self” can ascend to heaven. Unless we are dealing here simply with unlucky renderings of key terms into English, this mystical philosophy constitutes an amazing departure from the Taoist view of things in which man and the universe are one continuum of chi in various rougher or finer states. It is true that, among the many attitudes toward physical death, indifference to the decay of the body is sometimes encountered, but scarcely among those who aspired to immortality in any form. Chuang-tzu’s acceptance of death and Mo-tzu’s (late fifth century BCE) criticism of sumptuous burials were invoked by a number of sober and parsimonious people who asked to be buried “naked,” i.e., in a shroud without a coffin. One of these, a minister of the T’ang emperor Hsuan-tsung, explained his wish by saying that “the dead are unconscious and end up blending with earth” (Gernet 1985). There is no mysticism here and no thought of life beyond death.
For most medieval Taoists aspiring to immortality, there was no mystical way around some kind of physical preservation or restoration of the body. Even in the elixir-poisoned, putrified corpse of a successful Shang-ch’ing alchemist, the elixir preserved a pilot-flame in the seat of life (the all-important five viscera) so that the adept could later reclaim his body in order to achieve immortality (Strickmann 1979).
In the more popular communities of Celestial Master and Ling-pao Taoism, where no one had the means or leisure to brew elixirs, the visible death of the parishioners had to be explained by a kind of postmortem immortality: Five celestial lords of the five planets and the “five viscera will descend to take charge of the cadaver, bearing it to the Palace of Supreme Darkness where the Blue Spirit will rejuvenate it, refining its flesh and bones in alchemical fashion and preparing it for eternal life” (Bokenkamp 1989; Seidel 1987a).
This is of course the well-known Taoist method of gaining “deliverance by means of the corpse” (shih-chieh or hsing-chieh) in which the adept is believed to reclaim his body from the coffin after burial. Disciples who later opened the tomb would invariably find an empty coffin (Robinet 1979b; Needham 1974, V.2: 294-304). The preservation of the body as proof of saintliness and enlightenment was also a wide-spread Buddhist belief in China (Seidel 1988a); the most famous “empty coffin” is Bodhidharma’s (Faure 1989: 90). It remains to be seen how T’ang Taoists like Ssu-ma Ch’eng-chen used Lao-Chuang and Buddhist ideas to obviate the Taoist dilemma that immortality was unthinkable without preserving the (however sublimated) body-mind continuum beyond death.
After reading this section, Lagerwey suggested that we drop the body-mind distinction and think about longevity practices rather in terms of physical (= left behind like the chrysalis of the cicada) versus spiritual body. The real difficulty here lies not with the Chinese texts but with our Western lack of a discourse apt to express what the Taoists mean by physical immortality.
D.Alchemy
- Laboratory Alchemy (wai-tan)
Among the most advanced contemporary scientists in physics, astronomy and biology, we hear voices today saying that our twentieth-century perception and interpretation of the universe is conditioned by nineteenth century scientism–and is subject to changes occurring in our mental perception of the world. Despite its tangible achievements, today it seems that modern science is no more than one method among many for perceiving and classifying reality. The ways of perceiving the world and man in the civilisations of the past, whether Western or non-Western, may reveal aspects of knowledge that remain hidden to the eyes of modern science. Such reflections have stimulated contemporary interest in the “sciences” of traditional civilisations, including alchemy, medicine and technology. Chinese alchemy has been extensively studied, not by specialists of Taoism but by historians of Chinese science whose contribution to our knowledge of Taoism is immense.
The supposedly greater open-mindedness of Taoists to the observation and technological manipulation of nature has been much discussed (Needham 1956, 11; in a critical wav, Sivin 1978). There is no doubt that the same cultural matrix produced alchemy and most Taoist traditions, and it is no coincidence that the first mention of alchemy in the sources is linked with the Taoist legends of the Yellow Emperor and with the “masters of techniques” (fang-shih ; cf. Schafer 1975; see IV.2). The goal of Chinese alchemy was physical immortality, and its texts are preserved thanks to their inclusion in the Taoist Canon.
There was no alchemy in early Celestial Master Taoism. It is only in the milieu of fourth-century Chiang-nan drug-culture (studied by Wagner 1973) that Chang Tao-ling was transformed into a master of alchemy (Shen-hsien chuan). Ko Hung firmly believed in the existence of elixirs that confer immortality and laments that he does not have the means to acquire the costly ingredients. Needham accords Ko Hung’s Pao-p’u tzu an important place in the history of alchemy (esp. 1974, V.2; 1980, V.4).
Studies of the alchemical activities of the Shang-ch’ing patriarch T’ao Hung-ching have shown their connection with eschatological beliefs (i.e., there are alchemical procedures to save the adept in the cataclysms of the Final Age). It also appears that Shang-ch’ing alchemists were fully aware of the toxicity of their (mercury-, lead- or arsenic-containing) products and that some of them ascended to high rank in the stellar palaces of the Shang-ch’ing heavens through a kind of ritual suicide.
Needham’s monumental work on alchemy needs no introduction. I shall only point out some of his findings that are particularly useful for students of Taoism. The parallel between the alchemical laboratory and the Shang-ch’ing oratories (ching the homology of the all-important incense-burner (lu) with the alchemical furnace, and the similarity of the Shang-ch’ing visions with later nei-tan visualisations all suggest a Taoist liturgical context for alchemy (Needham 1974, V.2: 128-54; Schafer 1978b). The “this-worldly and non-ethical” orientation of ancient Chinese thought is the basis of Taoist alchemy-before Buddhism introduced ethical polarisation and the ideal of transcending this world and moving to a more desirable existence in a nonmaterial realm beyond physical death (Needham 1974, V.2: 77-59).
The religious character of alchemy is borne out by the fact that participation in the highly ritualised processes of transmutation was generally considered more important than the ingestion of the resulting elixir (1974, V.2). Needham’s SCC V.3 (1976) is a history of alchemy that focuses on Taoist masters (Wei Po-yang , Ko Hung, et al.), texts and traditions. The theoretical background of elixir alchemy is examined by Sivin (in Needham 1980, V.4: 210-305). This important study is summarised in an excellent article that, although published before SCC V.4, represents a later stage in Sivin’s research (Sivin 1976). He focuses on the concept of time and its manipulation in the alchemist’s procedure of “maturing minerals” by accelerating the natural time cycles. Proposing that we should not restrict our attention “to those isolated accomplishments that entitle the alchemist to credit in the light of modern chemistry,” Sivin concludes that alchemy was not “dedicated to the search for abstract knowledge, but was a means of self-perfection. “In China the operative alchemy of the laboratory, no less than the physiological and introspective disciplines that borrowed its language and symbols, was a form of self-cultivation, a means toward transcendence” (Sivin 1976: 525, also 1987a). - Inner Alchemy (nei-tan).
By the late T’ang (tenth century), Taoist meditation masters had sufficiently integrated Buddhist (Madhyamika) thought to produce a new and completely Taoist reaction to Buddhism, i.e., a system which reconciled concrete physiological training and the imaginative meditation of the Shang-ch’ing tradition with the more intellectual and abstract contribution of Buddhist philosophy. This new synthesis is called “inner alchemy,” because the terminology it employs is that of laboratory alchemy (wai-tan; e.g., lead, mercury, the furnace, the cauldron, etc.) combined with the discourse of the Book of Changes (I-ching) Robinet 1989a). One of the main features of this tradition, which sometimes serves to characterise it, is “dual cultivation” (shuang-hsiu the integration of physiological with psycho-mental practices (on shuang-hsiu, cf. Sivin 1980: 212; Needham 1983, V. 5: 239).
An indication of Buddhist participation in the transformation of alchemy into mental practices is the fact that perhaps the first to use the term nei-tan was the Buddhist monk Hui-ssu (517-577; cf. Needham 1983, V.5: 140). Baldrian-Hussein (1990, in this volume) observes that the term came to be used only after the T’ang, but that the influence of T’ien-t’ai and Tantric Buddhism on inner alchemy needs more study (cf. also Robinet 1989a). Here again Needham’s work is the most comprehensive and the first one should turn to (1983, V.5). He reexamines much of the early history of physiological practices (treated in 1956, II) from the novel perspective that these techniques were intended “to produce a physical enchymoma of salvation, as it were, within the body of the practitioner” (1983, V.5: 29). Needham describes the evolution of the various macrobiotic techniques up to their inclusion in the nei-tan synthesis, discusses the factual (e.g., the toxicity of elixirs), social and esoteric reasons for the shift from wai -tan to nei-tan, and contrasts Chinese physiological alchemy with Indian and Tantric yoga (1983, V. 5).
Several specific studies on nei-tan have been published since Needham’s survey. The most important is a translation and study of the Pi-ch’uan Cheng-yang chen-jen ling-pao pi-fa the most explicit and complete text of the nei-tan anthology Tao-shu by the twelfth-century scholar Tseng Ts’ao (Baldrian-Hussein 1984, also 1985). This text is illuminating because it not only tells about the speculative aspects but gives unusually clear indications of the actual physiological training. Tseng Ts’ao’s theoretical discourse, however, is of such complexity (yin inside the yang, inversions of the agents fire-water etc., at different levels and phases, etc.) that the lengthy review of Baldrian-Hussein’s book by Robinet (1986) is of great help. The long and laborious physiological and mental training described by the Ling-pao pi-fa leads finallv to a liberated state of spontaniety. which is, according to Baldrian-Hussein, the point where the nei-tan texts leave off and more mystical authors like Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu start their quest; in other words, it is the point at which the perfect mastery of body and mind allows one to enter mystical trance.
A clear and succinct essay on the main characteristics of inner alchemy has been furnished by the prolific Isabelle Robinet (1989a), who also examines one particular tradition, the Chen-yuan school, in this volume of CEA (1990). Despeux (1990) has drawn attention to the scarce and mostly late treatises on nei-tan practices for women.
Of the growing number of popularised translations of nei-tan texts, catering to current tastes, I will mention only Chang Po-tuan’s (983-1082) Chin-tan ssu-pai tzu – (Cleary 1986; on this text, cf. Needham 1983, V.5: 88-92); the Ch’ih-feng-sui by Chou Lu-ching (early seventeenth century; Despeux 1988); and the Wu-chen p’ien ff. by Chang Potuan (Cleary 1988; cf. Needham 1983, V.5: 88). There are many more such delicacies, right down to the amusing Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street by David Payne. I don’t knock them, as long as they are not too pretentious and absurdly pseudo-mystical, and as long as they entertain some readers and make others breathe more deeply. Still, how difficult it is to really understand and translate any of these texts (even if the received version is clear and complete, which is rare) can be gauged from what Needham has to say about Richard Wilhelm & C.G. Jung’s famous Secret of the Golden Flower (1929; Needham “The ‘Secret of the Golden Flower’ Unveil’d,” 1983, V.5: 243-57). In contrast to recent authors, the great sinologist Wilhelm had the excuse of exploring completely uncharted territory.
E. Medicine
Chinese medicine and Taoist healing have been two separate and often competing traditions for the past 2,000 years. However, they evolved from the same magico-religious culture of antiquity and have often overlapped: Among Taoist priests and healers have been famous physicians such as Sun-mo (Sivin 1968; Unschuld 1985), and physicians have based their art on a manual very close to Taoist traditions, the Inner Canon of the Yellow Lord (Huang-li nei-ching cf. Unschuld 1985: 106) and never–until the advent of Western medicine–completely discarded ritual aspects from their repertoire of healing, or spirit-possession from their aetiology (cf. Sivin 1987: 102-6).
Very interesting work has been done by Harper on the earliest exorcistic and medical texts found at Shui-hu-ti (in a tomb dated 217 BCE) and at Ma-wang-tui (168 BCE). Exorcistic ritual and medical treatment are not yet dissociated in these ancient texts, and it appears that the professional physicians emerged from among the ranks of shamans (wu). Incantations (chu) and ritual scenarios were part of the therapeutic process, not only for ailments caused by demonic intrusion but for other, purely physical maladies as well. The initiatory transmission of medical knowledge contained in secret treatises was governed by ritual exchanges that may have been the prototype for the payment of pledges involved in later Taoist transmission rites of sacred scriptures (Harper 1982). Prophylactic postures advocated in the Shui-hu-ti demonography for exorcising demons appear, in later physical cultivation literature, as names of therapeutic exercises (Harper 1985). In seven of the fifty-two treatments of diseases in a Ma-wang-tui medical text, Harper (1982) found the “pace of Yü” (Yü-pu the limping gait of the sliaman of antiquity that Taoist ritual has transmitted to modern times. For a systematic presentation of this phase of “demonic medicine” and “demonological therapy,” cf. Unscliuld (1985). A Review of Japanese studies dealing with the Ma-wang-tui medical texts has been written by Pregadio (1990a, in this volume).
Faith-healing through the confession of sins and through the ritual salvation of disease-causing ancestors suffering in the underworld played an important role in the propagation of Celestial Master Taoism. Recourse to profane medical therapy was even forbidden in the early messianic phase of Taoism, and it was only in about the fifth century that priests permitted their faithful to use the too attractive and efficacious classical medicine and drug therapy (Strickmann 1985). Even Yang Ch’üan, the fourth-century, Taoist author of “Medical Prescriptions” (Yao-fang) drank only water with the ashes of btirnt paper talismans (fu-shui) when he himself fell ill (Ledderose 1984). The ritual practice of imprinting sacred seals on the body of the sufferer or on talismans used in medicine was an extremely widespread therapy that Strickmann has traced in Taoist and Buddhist sources from the Six Dynasties all the way to the very popular (and beautiful) Go-o ho-in talismans still sold at some Japanese temples today (Strickmann 1985a). The relationship and interaction between Taoist healing and “classical medicine” needs more study; much can be gleaned from Unschuld (1985).
VI. The ArtsThe pervasive influence of the Lao-tzu, the Chuang-tzu and the Huai-nan-tzu texts on Chinese art and aesthetics was recognised decades ago (Chang 1963, 1975). Poetry, calligraphy and painting were activities fit for the gentleman of the official elite, as were the aesthetic discourse based on Lao-Chuang philosophy and the poetic imagery associated with the legendary immortals. The question is whether this aesthetic sensibility to the creative spontaneity of the Tao is all there is to the Taoist influence on Chinese literature and art (a recent comparative essay on classical Chinese aesthetics very much worth reading is Leys 1983: 11-39, 1987: 3-34). Poetry, calligraphy and painting are, together with music (mainly the playing of the lute), the art forms through which the educated elite discovered aesthetics in the fourth-fifth centuries CE. This evolution has been called a secularisation process through which these arts moved awav from their religious roots and were transformed into leisure activities for self-cultivation. Until their adoption by Neo-Confucianism however, and to some degree until today, these arts could not be completely understood without a feel for their religious (i.e., Taoist) roots and connotations.
A. Poetry
In the domain of literature, it is the great merit of Schafer and several of his disciples to have gone beyond the well-known and rather well-worn insight that Taoist mysticism contributed to the formation of Chinese aesthetics. Schafer found that “almost all approved translations of T’ang poetry … tell us approximately as much about the real meaning and character of T’ang poems as the works of Winkelmann and Canova tell us about the art of ancient Hellas.” In order to fathom the world-view of T’ang poets, this grand connoisseur of T’ang culture set out to study the Taoist system which, he recognised, could not be “completely defined by being styled merely religious… (Schafer 1977: 4, 224). The title of his book on astral and cosmic imagery, Pacing the Void (pu-hsu 1977, cf. also 1981), refers to the visionary dance on the Dipper stars and to a Taoist ritual (cf. Andersen 1990, in this volume; and Bokenkamp’s 1981 study of the ritual pu-hsu hymns). Through Schafer’s elucidation of the Taoist motifs in the “capeline cantos” (Nu-kuan tzu ) we perceive T’ang gentlewomen undergoing ordination rites as Taoist priestesses and longing for “mystic union with a Realized Person in the world or condition called ‘Highest Clarity… (Schafer 1978: 34; on the ecclesiastic careers of royal princesses and aristocratic ladies, cf. also Schafer 1985a, 1987; Cahill 1986). A Tao-tsang text on meditation techniques contains a pendant to this hierogamy: the visionary union of a male adept with a mystic jade Woman acting as a mediator of divine revelation (Schafer 1978a; more on Taoist goddesses in poetry in Schafer 1973; Cahill 1982, 1985, 1986). Two rhapsodies (fu) by poets at the court of Hsuan-tsung can be understood only against the background of ritual innovations in the imperial liturgy for the All-Highest Lord Lao (Schafer 1987). In two further books (1973, 1985), in articles (1977a, 1981a, 1983, 1983a, 1986, 1986b), and in a privately distributed series of research notes (reviewed by Seidel 1985a, 1986; cf. also Honey & Bokenkamp 1984), Schafer decoded the Taoist mysteries that inspired the exuberant imagery and metaphor of medieval Chinese poetry. In his studies of the sacred and the historical geography of Mount Mao the centre of Shang-ch’ing Taoism near Nanking, Schafer (1980, 1983, 1986a) demonstrated “how important T’ang poetry is as a historical source … whatever the quality of the poems.”
The composer of the famous “Record of the Peach-blossom Spring” (T’ao hua-yuan chi ), T’ao Ch’ien MM (365-427), was not a Taoist, although he took his inspiration for this tale of a paradise hidden inside a grotto from the legend of the Five Ling-pao Talismans in the Taoist Canon (Bokenkamp 1986a). For the great T’ang poets, like Li Po (Kroll 1984, 1986) and Wu Yuan (Schafer 1981, 1983), however, Taoism was more than poetic inspiration. It “meant the sacred scriptures, solemn practices, and holy mysteries comprehended in the religious sphere of the Shang-ch’ing and Ling-pao traditions” (Kroll 1986: 100, also 1985).
Cahill (1982) has distilled the image of the Queen Mother of the West as she appears in T’ang poetry. Cahill found that the godess presented, for the Taoist priestesses, not one of the traditional models designed to “keep women in line” but a model for an independent and creative religious life, (Cahill 1986; cf. also Schafer 1977a).
The golden age of Hsuan-tsung’s reign became the focal point of many legends. The hagiography of a legendary Taoist tutor of the emperor, a novelette found among the manuscripts of Tun-huang “Stein 6836), has been studied and translated by Cadonna (1984).
B. Calligraphy
Because a mastery of calligaraphy depends on the complete intention of body and mind in order to reach the necessary disciplined spontaneity, this art has been considered particularly Taoist. “Without any apparent effort,” the calligrapher “produces graphic forms embodying cosmic myths” (Baldrian-Husscin 1987: 299).
There is also a concrete link between Taoist divine revelation and the evolution of calligraphy. In the fourth century CE, Chinese writing acquired its definitive shape, and calligraphy became one of the elegant pastimes of the educated elite. The Taoist role in the evolution of this calligraphy becomes clear if one reads Ledderose’s (1979) history of calligraphy side by side with Strickmann’s (1977) study of the Shang-ch’ing revelations.
In a separate study, Ledderose (1984) has examined the Taoist elements in the calligraphy of the Six Dynasties. The most celebrated calligraphers, Wang Hsi-chih (307-365) and his son Wang Hsien-chih were Taoists of the Celestial Master tradition. The disciple of Wang Hsien-chih, Yang Hsin (370-442), whose appreciation of the two Wangs was instrumental in making their style the most emulated one down to the present, was a Taoist priest. His grandfather had himself received revelations that lie jotted down while in a religious trance. The central figure of the Mao Shan revelations, Yang Hsi (330-after 370), who received the dictations of the Shang-ch’ing gods between 364 and 370, was employed by the Hsü family, calligraphers and friends of Wang Hsi-chih. T’ao Hung-ching (456-536), who collected the “divine traces” of the Shang-ch’ing gods a century later, expertly ,judges the calligraphy of Yang Hsi as being “on the same level with the two Wangs.” He adds that “the reason that his fame did not spread is only that his social position was low” (Ledderose 1984: 258). Two important points made by Ledderose and others are: (1) these writings done in trance were all executed with brush and paper and so must be distinguished from the trance-produced planchette writing on sand that was practiced in popular religion; (2) the authenticity of manuscripts is not a matter of fact but of degree. Yang Hsi’s jottings in trance were considered to be copies of divine scriptures in the heavens. Yang later wrote out more legible versions that were in turn recopied by the Hsü’s and so forth. Thus from the Taoist perspective, there is no original to be distinguished from forgeries but rather “a chain of copies whose beginnings are hidden in obscurity” in the Taoist heavens (Ledderose 1984: 271). Although T’ao Hung-ching lamented that his contemporaries knew only how to trace facsimiles of the two Wangs’ work but were not able to copy the Scriptures of the Perfected in the same way (Strickmann 1977: 56), some manuscripts considered to be copies of Yang Hsi’s writings have survived (Ledderose 1984).
The “divine inspiration” of calligraphy was not only an aesthetic metaphor but a reference to its origin in visionary experiences in which gods guided the brush of the adept. Taoists considered the writing that was thus produced to be only a faint transcription of heavenly scripts too powerfully sacred to look at and unintelligible to ordinary human eyes (see V.3.a).
The well-known popular spirit cults that practiced mediumistic writing (fu-chi ) are first attested in sources as late as the T’ang. Nevertheless, Stein (1969a) has found that they were the predecessors and models of the more refined Shang-ch’ing revelations. He has elucidated the link between the Taoist revelations, where the visionary jots down the dictations of the deity with brush on paper, and the popular seances, where a medium uses a dustpan (chi), divining stick (chi) or marionette figurine of the popular goddess Purple Maid (Tzu-ku) to write on ashes or on sand. Fu-chl seances were a pastime of literati circles since the Sung. The Ming emperor Shih-tsung, (1522-67) consulted the fu-chi oracle for affairs of state. Stein (1969a) concludes that this is a case where the whole society, including the court and literati, participated in a popular religious practice; the Taoists were the only ones who refined the practice to suit the cultivated tastes of literati calligraphers (see also VI.4).
After the fourth century, Chinese calligraphy as an elite art did not develop any new tools of expression or any essentially new styles. The idea that the true artist is moved by divine forces was still very much alive in the T’ang. Han Yu said of the calligraphy of Chang Hsü (658-748) that it “seems to be animated by demons and by gods” (Billeter 1989: 253). The relative absence of Taoists in the later tradition of calligraphy reflects the separation between the Taoists and the literati officials. Whereas the literati culture developed the aesthetics of calligraphy, the Taoists stayed attached to the religious efficacy of the sign itself. They were the masters of talismanic script (see V.3.c). The breath-taking virtuosity of some Taoist priests even today in writing talismans apparently has remained outside the scope of literati appreciation of calligraphy (cf. a calligrapher’s view of Taoism in Billeter 1989: 252-7). The sacrality of the Chinese script, which was as much a Confucian as a Taoist belief that survived all cultural changes until the catastrophe of the P.R.C. simplification of the script, needs much further study.
C. Painting
Literati painting and religious painting (see V.8) have always been on opposite side of the gulf that separates the elite scholars who practiced the arts for self-cultivation from the professional artisans whose mostly anonymous work was used and then destroyed. What has been said about the Taoist-inspired aesthetics of calligraphy applies also to literati painting (Cliang 1963, 1975; Leys 1983: 11-39, 1987: 3-34). A recent studv of Ku K’ai-chi’s (345-406) “Notes on the Painting of Cloud-terrace Mountain” (Hua Yün-t’ai shan chi) shows that the theory and practice of landscape painting came into its own in the same fourth-century religious atmosphere as calligraphy (Delahaye 1981). The Yün-t’ai shan painting itself is lost, but the surviving description is detailed enough to permit a reconstruction of the landscape. The theme of the painting is the test to which Chang Tao-ling submitted his disciple Chao Sheng and the whole composition suggests a microcosm, a talismanic configuration of the transcendent shape ofthe mountain (in the tradition of the Ling-pao Talismans of the Five Sacred Mountains), an arrangement according to geomantic theories, a sacred space set off by bands of clouds, etc. Delahaye’s “iconological” reading of Ku K’ai-chih’s painting could certainly also be applied to later Chinese landscape painting in order to decipher more of its religious message.
Leddcrose (1983) has pointed out that landscape painting owes much to the three-dimensional, artificially crafted landscapes, such as the imperial parks, the “paradise gardens” (recreating P’eng-lai and other sites of the immortals), and their seculariscd version, the “natural” garden of the scholar, tray landscapes and chronologically the oldest type-hill censer (Po-shan hsiang lu; see V.8). If it is true that the style and composition of many landscape paintings owe more to three-dimensional man-made landscapes, especially tray landscapes, than to the actual observation of nature, then everything that Stein (1942, 1987, 1990) has said about the religious symbolism of miniature worlds should also apply to literati landscape painting, at least in its early phases before religious values moved into the background of aesthetics. A Taoist, detained at court against his will, one day explained to the emperor a sculpture of the three paradise mountains in the eastern seas. In order to prove that these supernatural regions are accessible, he suddenly became smaller and smaller, entered the golden portals of the immortals’ palaces, and was seen no more at court; ten days later, he was spotted crossing the eastern sea toward the paradise islands (Stein 1987: 60, 1990: 52-3; see also V.3.c). A twelfth-century inkstone in the shape of a landscape had, next to a cave at the base of the mountain, the inscription: “The lower cave communicates with the upper cave through a triple spiral. I took a mystical stroll through it one day” (Stein 1987: 46, 1990: 37). Ledderose (one of the all too few art historians who has read Stein) tells us that “painters are also said to have disappeared into their painted landscapes. The tiny figures that one finds so often in later paintings remind the viewer that such a possibility might still exist.” Ledderose concludes that “landscape painting in China is the representation of an earthly paradise,” ( 1983: 180).
