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Late Imperial China, Volume 8, Number 1, June 1987, pp. 105-133 (Article)
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DOI: 10.1353/late.1987.0002
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Vol. 8, No. 1
Late Imperial ChinaJune 1987
T'AN-YANG-TZU AND WANG SHIH-CHEN:
VISIONARY AND BUREAUCRAT IN THE LATE MING
Ann Waltner*
Introduction:
The Cult
The intellectual world of the late Ming literatus was a rich and varied
one, and his interests frequently transcended categories bounded by what
we have come to think of as Confucian rationalism. Sixteenth-century
China seems to have undergone a religious renaissance in many dimensions. Monks like Chu-hung (1535-1615) and Han-shan Te-ch'ing (15661623) led a revival of interest in Buddhism. The Chia-ching (r. 1522- 1566)
emperor's fascination with Taoism fostered considerable attention at court
on prayer-writing and other Taoist skills. Lin Chao-en (1517-1598)
preached the unity of the three teachings of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. And Confucian philosphers themselves, especially the followers
of Wang Yang-ming, showed a marked interest in mystical experience.
Sectarian religions gained new vitality; indeed, the most important deity of
sectarian religion, the Wu-sheng Lao-mu, the Venerable Eternal Mother,
appears for the first time in the sixteenth century.1 One manifestation of
the upsurge in interest in religion in the late Ming is the cult of T'anyang-tzu, a young woman visionary immortalized by Wang Shih-chen
(1526-1590), a prominent bureaucrat and man of letters. The relationship
between these two, and the brief public upsurge of religious enthusiasm
which surrounded her attainment of immortality and his celebration of it,
are the subject of this essay. This episode shows men from the pinnacle of
the official elite as the disciples of a teenaged girl, not only encouraging
"heterodox" doctrines and incurring the risk of imperial censure, but also
flouting norms of gender hierarchy, marriage and the family system.
Wang Shih-chen has been described as "the" prose writer of his day and
the most important man of letters of the sixteenth century. He was
The author acknowledges support from a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, with funds provided by the Andrew Mellon Foundation.
1 On Chu-hung, see Yii, 1981; on Han-shan, see Hsu, 1979; on Lin Chao-en, see Berling,
1980; on the Venerable Eternal Mother, see Overmyer, 1976. On Ming religion generally, see
Liu, 1970 and 1971. On Taoism at the Ming court, see Miyagawa, 1977.
105
106Ann Waltner
prolific in both belles-lettres and historical studies: the eighteenth-century
compilers of the Imperial Catalog wrote that "since ancient times nobody
has surpassed him in abundance of writings." He was a leader of the
literati group known as the "Seven Later Masters" who spearheaded a
movement to restore to literary styles the clarity of the Ch'in and Han
ancients, abolishing the newfangled flourishes of T'ang and Sung prose
writers.2 In addition, Wang was an important and influential critic of
painting.3 He also served in a number of high official posts, achieving a
bureaucratic rank of 2a.4 Wang would seem to have been a model
classicist-official, more prolific and successful than most, but still an exemplary orthodox scholar-bureaucrat. He was scarcely the sort of man one
would expect to declare himself the disciple of a teenaged girl who claimed
to have visited the court of the Queen Mother of the West, one of the oldest and most venerable of Taoist deities. And yet he did.
The girl, T'an-yang-tzu, was the daughter of Wang Hsi-chüeh, a friend
and fellow townsman (T'ai-ts'ang in Soochow) of Wang Shih-chen. Rela-
tions between the two families were close: Wang Shih-chen described his
relationship with Hsi-chüeh as "closer than flesh and blood," 5 a similie he
also employed to describe his relationship with T'an-yang-tzu.6 Wang
Hsi-chüeh's credentials were no less impeccable than were those of Wang
Shih-chen. His daughter Wang Tao-chen, the second of four children,
was born in 1558, the year he achieved the chin-shih degree. While still a
child, she was betrothed to a Hsu Ching-shao, the son of Hsii T'ing-kuan,
a fellow-townsman who had received his chin-shih degree in the same year
as Wang Hsi-chüeh. Her fiance died in 1574, before the marriage took
place. T'an-yang-tzu's religious vocation had been clear from her childhood, but after the death of her fiance', her religious activities became
more intense. She was a visionary and a teacher: the bodhisattva Kuan-
yin, the Taoist Queen Mother of the West and a host of lesser deities
2 See his biography by Barbara Yoshida-Krafft in the Dictionary of Ming Biography
(hereafter DMB): 1399-1405, which cites the editors of the Imperial Catalog. See also Krafft,
1958. The attribution as "the prose writer of the century" occurs in Huang, 1981: 65. See the
biography of T'an-yang-tzu (under her given name of Wang Tao-chen) by Lienche Tu Fang
in DMB: 1425-27.
3 On Wang Shih-chen's classicism as an art critic, see Nelson, 1983:412. On his willingness
to make concessions as to the value of "the alternative culture of boldness and originality in
art if not in thought and literature" see Barnhart, 1983:34. See also the discussion of Wang
Shih-chen as an art critic in Liscomb, 1984:163-178.
4 Bureaucratic ranks ranged from nine (low) to one (high).
5 Wang Shih-chen (1526-1590), Yen chou shan jen hsii kao (More Works from the Man from
Yen-chou Mountain) (hereafter YCSJHK), Taipei, 1970:178/3b (p.8089).
6 YCSJHK, 78/25a (p.3837).
T'an-Yang-tzu and Wang Shih-chen107
appeared to her. She attracted a number of prominent followers in addition to her father and her biographer, several of whom joined Wang Shihchen in formal vows of discipleship. They included her own brother and
Wang Shih-mao (1536-1588, cs 1559), Shih-chen's younger brother.7 Four
of the other disciples received their chih-shih degrees in 1577: Shen Mao-
hsüeh (1539-1582), T'u Lung (1542-1602), Feng Meng-chen (1546-1605),
and Ch'ü Ju-mu (1548-1610). A fifth, Chao Yung-hsien (1535-1596, cs
157 1)8 served as an examiner for the group. The ties among these disci-
ples were permanent and pervasive: a daughter of Wang Shih-mou married a son of Chao Yung-hsien, and a son of T'u Lung married a daughter
of Shen Mao-hsüeh.9
Part of the explanation of their discipleship no doubt lay in the rather
prosaic and sordid realm of Ming court politics. In 1576, Wang Shih-chen
had been appointed to two official positions, but was denounced both
times. He retired home to Soochow, where he remained for a decade. So
Wang Shih-chen was not present at court in 1577 when the powerful
Grand Secretary Chang Chü-cheng refused to retire from office to follow
the prescribed twenty-seven months of mourning following the death of
his father. But Wang Hsi-chüeh was. Chao Yung-hsien and Wu Chunghsing had remonstrated with Chang and were flogged for their pains.
Wang Hsi-chüeh had led a protest of the flogging, but it was to no avail.
In 1578, Wang Hsi-chüeh resigned his official post and returned from Pek-
ing to Soochow.10 According to Wang Hsi-chüeh's biography of Wang
Shih-chen, Shih-chen had offended Chang Chü-cheng, circulating a letter
describing Chang's purported sexual debauchery, and suggesting that an
earthquake in Chang's native place had been caused by his immoral
behavior.11 Shen Mao-hsüeh had offended Chang as well. For men allied
with Wang Shih-chen and Wang Hsi-chüeh, 1577 was not the best of years
to begin an official career. Retirement to Soochow seemed prudent.
But involvement with a young girl who had visions was not necessarily
prudent. In what lay her appeal? What did she teach her disciples? As
Wang Shih-chen's letters make clear, there were ethical dimensions to her
teaching, appealing to those who did not themselves aspire to immortality.
Immediately before her ascent into immortality she bestowed eight rather
conventional moral precepts on her disciples, which Wang repeatedly
7 DMB:1406-1408.
8 DMB:1192, 1324-1327, 138-140.
9 T'ai-ts'ang chou chih (A Gazetter of T'ai-ts'ang), (Taipei, 1975), DMB: 1236.
10DMB: 1376-77.
11DMB:1401.
108Ann Waltner
refered to in his letters. He stressed that she spoke of the essence of her
teachings as t'ien tan, peace and serenity, concepts of value in ordinary
life.
But ordinary morality and conventional harmony were only a small part
of the appeal of T'an-yang-tzu. A good portion of her power must have
lain in her personal charisma. Wang Shih-chen described her oral teach-
ings12 as well as her extreme aescetic practices, reporting in a letter that
she did not eat grains for five years and that she was able to meditate for
twenty days at a stretch.13 She transmitted to her followers the secrets
learned from the Queen Mother. This transmisson entailed both instruction in meditation techniques and the bestowal of texts. Furthermore, she
was able to cause the deities to appear before the disciples. Indeed it may
have been only her mediation which made the visualizations possible for
her disciples. In the words of her biographer's friend and spiritual adviser,
the monk Pu-ning, T'an-yang-tzu was a conduit (kuan) between the world
of heaven and the world of mankind.14 The core of her cult depended on
a single act: she attained immortality herself.
After T'an-yang-tzu's attainment of immortality, Wang Shih-chen,
Wang Hsi-chüeh and several other disciples retired to a shrine for several
months before resuming their official careers. The family of T'an-yang-tzu
collected and printed her writings, though they are no longer extant.15 Relics of a sort were preserved after her death. Wang Shih-chen's letters men-
tion gathas composed by her,16 thirty copies of the Heart Sutra in her
hand,17 and an image of her.18 But the most important monument to her
was the writing of her disciples, in particular, Wang Shih-chen's T'an-yang
ta shih chuan (Biography of the Great Master T'an-yang), which was composed within a year of her death.
These acts of commemoration were not without consequences. Indeed,
Wang Shih-chen seemed fully aware of the potential for controversy latent
in the Biography. In a letter written to T'u Lung while he was revising the
text, he expressed concern lest its contents leak out.19 Wang Shih-chen,
Wang Hsi-chüeh and Wang Heng (Hsi-chüeh's son and T'an-yang-tzu's
2YCSJHK, 178/22a(p.8127).
3YCSJHK, 189/10b(p.8582).
4 YCSJHK, 78/8a (p.3803).
5 YCSJHK, 186/3b (p.8446).
6 YCSJHK 172/24a (p.7883); 178/17b (p.8118); 179/19a (p.8165).
7 YCSJHK, 187/9a (p.8497).
8 YCSJHK, 189/14a (p.8596).
9 YCSJHK, 200/4b (p.8992).
Tan-Yang-tzu and Wang Shih-chen109
brother) were all impeached for heterodoxy as a result of their discipleship.
The Supervising Secretary Niu Wei-ping in the fifth month of 1581 accused
T'an-yang-tzu of witchcraft (yao-wang). Several days later, the censor Sun
Ch'eng-nan repeated the charges, specifically adding that Wang's T'an-
yang-tzu chuan (presumably the same text as the T'an-yang ta shih chuan)
seduced men's minds.20 Hsü Hsüeh-mo, the Minister of Rites who was a
fellow townsman, was able to intercede on behalf of the three Wangs, so
nothing came of the charges.21 In spite of such grave accusations Shihchen's devotion to his teacher continued. He quoted her, sometimes at
length, in other writings, especially writings about women. Even more
impressive is the fact that there are over eighty references to her in his
extant correspondence, in letters to thirty different people.22 Thus
although she was survived by no formal cult, her influence on Wang
Shih-chen at least, was long term and pervasive. And there is evidence
that her memory lingered in the collective consciousness of the people of
T'ai-ts'ang. A Ch'ing local gazetteer reported that a bridge near where she
attained immortality was called hsien-jen chiao (The Bridge of the Immor-
tal) to commemorate the event.23
The Text: T'an-yang ta shih chuan
The T'an-yang ta shih chuan (Biography of the Great Master T'an-yang)
is remarkable by any criteria. At sixty pages in length, it ranks among the
longest pieces produced by the prolific Wang Shih-chen. Written within a
year of T'an-yang-tzu's death, it seems to have found wide circulation. It
is a document rich in power and complexity.
The Biography opens with a brief epigram which asserts the unity of the
three teachings (of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism) and stresses that
T'an-yang-tzu transcends the division of the three by reaching back to
their fundamental unity. The Biography establishes her everyday social
antecedents of family and native place, and then goes on to mark her as
extraordinary from the moment of her conception. A disc of moonlight
entered the bed of her mother and her mother, the lady Chu, conceived.
Wang Shih-chen tells us that the lady Chu was afraid of childbirth, but
this birth was easy, so easy that there was no blood. When the infant
20T'an Ch'ien (1594-1658), Kuo ch'ueh (An Evaluation of Events in Our Dynasty) (Peking,
1958), chuan 71:4390.
21DMB:1436.
22These letters are preserved among the three volumes of his correspondence contained in
the Yen chou shan jen hsü kao.
23T'ai-ts'ang chou chih, 4/27a.
110Ann Waltner
mystic was only a month old, her wetnurse became ill and lost her milk.
The child became cranky and her skin turned yellow. Her parents, we are
told, were not especially fond of this already difficult daughter.
Her religious vocation is made manifest early in her life. As a young
child, she cut images of the bodhisattva Kuan-yin from paper and
worshipped them. She would chant the name of the Amida Buddha a
hundred times before getting up in the morning, every day.
She is betrothed in due time to Hsü Ching-shao, the son of Hsü T'ingkuan, a fellow townsman who had received his chin-shih degree in the
same year as her father. When T'an-yang-tzu is seventeen, betrothal gifts
between the two families are exchanged. T'an-yang-tzu responds to the
marriage preparations by sweeping her rooms and indicating that she
wants to become a disciple of Kuan-yin. When her mother asks her what
she wants, she responds, "To understand life and death, that is all." Her
frustrated mother responds by saying, "I do not know what you are saying." T'an-yang-tzu tells her mother that marriage to Hsü is not her destiny.
Her mother does not wish to pursue the matter. But her younger
brother, Wang Heng, who must at this time be twelve or thirteen years
old, follows her and sees her strike the ground with a rock, making an
unexpected jingling sound. The sound grows louder, and a light appears,
a light so strong that even had it been night one would have been able to
see. The light grows stronger:
Now wheeling and spiraling like a light cloud,
Now whirring and flashing like thunder
Now scattering and sputtering like a falling star
Now ascending and rising like a torch
Now clear and white like frozen sleet
Now lustrous purple like ebony.24
The boy tells his father what he has seen. The father verifies the accuracy
of the boy's report by following his daughter himself, and then swears the
boy to silence.
After the betrothal gifts are exchanged, T'an-yang-tzu stops eating:
Ten days or so later, my master [T'an-yang-tzu] suddenly directed her
attendants, "Don't bring me any food. I am not hungry." When the
24 YCSJHK, 78/2b (p.3792).
Tan-Yang-tzu and Wang Shih-chen111
academician [her father], worried about her, forced her to eat, she
vomited it all up. Another time they brought her various fruits, but
she again vomited. Only when they brought her peaches and apricots
was she able to eat the juice. The academician was concerned
because she had not eaten for a long time and believed her to be ill,
so he called a doctor to diagnose her. My master laughed and said,
"I am definitely not ill. The reason I am not eating is that one night I
dreamed of a Supreme Perfect One. Her beauty was extraordinary.
On her head she wore a seven-ridged cap; on her feet were
embroidered slippers. She was seated beneath a five-colored cloud,
with one arm resting on a small arm-rest. Her other hand rested on a
white jade zither which had no strings. At her right there was a
Taoist nun, clad in green with her hair hanging loose. Her appearance
resembled that of the first goddess. Her age must have been less than
thirty. On her left there was an old woman, clad in brown. She was
more than seventy years old. The younger one pointed to the one in
the middle and said, 'This is Ta-shih [the bodhisattva Kuan-yin]
whom you have worshipped.' She then pointed to the old one and
said, 'This is the Preceptress Ou Hsien-mi. I am Chu Chen-chün.'
Ta-shih looked at me warmly and smiled. Then Master Ou burned
incense. The incense rose in thread-like smoke and formed the char-
acter shan [good].25 Chen-chün told me that if I hurried and sucked it
in, I could go without food and confirm my saintliness. Thereupon I
woke up. And for that reason I am not eating. How can I be ill?"
Her father and the lady Chu gradually gave in to her wishes.26
Three months after the betrothal gifts are exchanged, Hsü Ching-shao
dies. T'an-yang-tzu is aware of his death even before her mother tells her.
Her fore-knowledge shows not only her spiritual power but also her profound spiritual connection to this man. Despite the fact that she had not
wanted to marry him, she reacts strongly to his death:
My master, disheveled and barefoot, wept for three days. She had
made a plain white silk garment and straw shoes, which she wore.
When she saw her parents, she said, "Although I was to have been
25A graphic pun perhaps is intended here. Shan1 can be written with the food or the flesh
radical, in which cases it means food. Thus by ingesting the word for food, T'an-yang-tzu can
avoid the need for ingesting its substance.
26YCSJHK, 78/2b-3a (pp.3792-3793).
112Ann Waltner
Hsü's wife, out of concern for my parents, I will not seek death.
Nonetheless, I want to serve as Hsü's widow." Her father, objecting,
said: "But you were not his wife, so how can you be his widow?"27
She convinces him, using an argument we will disuss at some length
below, and assumes the status of widow.
The lady Chu, her mother, is appalled by her daughter's continuing
visions. She sprinkles pig and dog blood on the girl's bed in an attempt to
exorcise the spirits. But it is to no avail: as her daughter explains to her,
these are not the sort of spirits that can be exorcised. And so the attempts
at exorcism cease. Chu Chen-chün and other deities next appear in broad
daylight. Their upper bodies are clearly visible, but their lower bodies are
obscured as if by a white cloud curtain. The deities explicate to T'anyang-tzu the Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist text which enjoyed great
currency during the Ming. That these are authentic visionary experiences
becomes clearer to both T'an-yang-tzu and her biographer. When T'anyang-tzu awakens after a dream in which she has visited Kuan-yin, the
deities are all still present.
T'an-yang-tzu now enters a stage in which whenever she meditates
deities appear and whenever she stops, demons appear. She inhabits a
world of spirits, which she can control through discipline and meditation.
The demons tempt her to leave her discipline, and the nature of their
temptations clarifies the nature of her transcendence. In the first temptation, a woman with a lewd book appears, and T'an-yang-tzu banishes her.
The second apparition is a comely young man who presents a calling card
which identifies himself as Hsü, her dead fiance. He says that she has
suffered much on his account and offers to comfort her, which she inter-
prets as a sexual invitation. She responds by saying that she does not know
if he is truly her fiance' or if he is a demon come to tempt her. She tells
him if he is her husband, he should go back to the grave and wait for her
there. If he is a demon, he should vanish. The apparition, without
offering conclusive proof of his identity, disappears. The third apparition
is a man who appears and begins to assault T'an-yang-tzu. A second man
appears and puts a knife to her throat, saying if she submits and "marries"
her attacker, she will live. If she continues her struggle, she will die. She
chooses death, but at the crucial moment Chu Chen-chün appears and
saves her. The final apparition, immediately following upon the other
three, is of a man who appears and says, "I lament that your life is as brief
27 YCSJHK, 78/4a (p.3795).
Tan-Yang-tzu and Wang Shih-chen113
as mushrooms and dew and want to save you. If you start eating again,
your elegant skin and lovely hair will exceed all earthly models of beauty."
He interprets her silence as refusal and vanishes. In the end Chu Chenchün and Master Ou come and tell her that they have tested her and that
she has passed.28
The temptations ~ a lewd book, the erotic attraction to a comely man,
attachment to physical life itself, and the sensual potential of her own
body ~ all must be denied. The nature of the temptations makes it clear
that her physical, sensual nature must be transcended for her to attain
immortality. Having successfully passed the test set for her by her mentors, T'an-yang-tzu visits Kuan-yin. This is a more complex visualization
than her earlier encounter with the bodhisattva, in which Kuan-yin visited
her; now T'an-yang-tzu summons the entire divine realm rather than a
single deity.
T'an-yang-tzu next has an enlightenment experience: the sound of the
music of immortals is present in her head, she sees lights, and she is able
to achieve inner alchemy, a process whereby through meditation the adept
uses her body as a crucible to generate the elixir of immortality. The text
describes an internal alchemical transformation and its external manifestations:
In her head she perceived the indistinct sound of the music of the
immortals, which came from the void. The steam of the former
heavens luminously circled through her five viscera and formed an
elixir. At first it was scarcely the size of a grain of rice. Then it grew
to the size of a cross-bow bolt. Its outer appearance was like gauze. Its
color was true red and yellow. It remained suspended in her lower
elixir field. Sometimes it would rise and fall; occasionally she would
take it out and hold it in the palm of her hand, where it would blaze
with a brilliant light, shooting forth radiance. From this time on she
stopped taking liquids or cooked food and no longer had fruit brought
to her. Her father resigned his position and together with her mother
came home. My master warmly greeted her parents; she was very
happy. Morning and evening she looked after them. She did her
embroidery more diligently than her sisters. In her social relations, all
was more or less as usual. It was just that she did not eat. 29
28YCSJHK, 78/6a-6b (pp. 3799-3800).
29YCSJHK, 78/7b (p.3802).
114Ann Waltner
The Biography portrays meditation as arduous, even dangerous. The
first time her spirit leaves her body, she is frightened. She tells her father
that spirit-wandering was like a dream-world; everything was unclear sometimes she was frightened, sometimes ecstatic. Wang Hsi-chüeh consults with Pu-ning, who confirms that spirit-wandering is a dangerous business: once the spirit leaves the body it might not return. Pu-ning tells
Wang Hsi-chüeh he should guard the body of his daughter while her spirit
wanders. When she next decides she wants to go spirit-wandering, she
tells him:
"Don't go out; stay for a while and look after me. As the daylight
fades and my face becomes red, and the breathing from my mouth
and nose becomes faint, this will mean that my spirit is departing.
Take care that no one from the household spies on me." At noon her
spirit really did depart. Her father held his breath and guarded her,
protecting her while he waited. In late afternoon, an icy sound like
chimes came from the void.
My master then woke up. She smiled and said to her father, "Luckily nothing went wrong. In an instant I travelled hundreds of
thousands of //. I beheld all sorts of things: mountains, rivers, grasses
and trees, dragons, snakes, the nests of birds and bees. And all of
them are spirits that reside within my body."30
The knowledge she gains from her spirit wandering is that meditation
makes manifest the spiritual powers which lie latent in everyone.
The extreme lengths to which meditiation leads T'an-yang-tzu are
shown in another episode. In the process of refining her form, she
becomes very light, almost bird-like. During this process of transformation, her father asks to see her. She sends him a note, saying that she has
no wish to be disrespectful, but she cannot receive him. Because she is in
the process of refining her form, she is afraid he would be startled if he
saw her body.
Having converted her father by curing him of an illness, she later causes
the spirits to materialize to convince the remaining sceptics in her family.
As she is preparing the room for the visit of the spirits, three sheets of
paper with "true words" (that is to say, a message from the immortals) on
them appear. Wang Shih-chen tells us, "The words are esoteric and I have
not recorded them. But their gist advocated doing good and accumulating
30 YCSJHK, 78/8a-8b (pp. 3803-3804).
Tan-Yang-tzu and Wang Shih-chen115
blessings."31 From then on, the spirits are regular visitors in the Wang
household. They transmit and annotate texts: the Diamond Sutra, the
Heart Sutra, the Surangama Sutra, (three texts popular among Ming Buddhists) and a text entitled Ling pao chen ching (True Text of the Numinous Treasure) are among them. At one point in the Biography, a goddess comes to T'an-yang-tzu and punctuates a troublesome text for her.
Thus the secrets of immortality are esoteric, but the preparation necessary
to receive them is textually transmitted. Indeed, at one point, deities
accompanying Kuan-yin marvel that T'an-yang-tzu understands the distinction between admiring an object and desiring it. T'an-yang-tzu
explains that she has learned the distinction from texts the deities have
bestowed on her.
As her religious development continues, she acquires a white snake,
whom she names Hu Lung, Guardian Dragon. It makes a habit of sleeping in an empty bookcase. Even a very special snake sleeping in the
bookcase proves unacceptable to other members of the family, and T'anyang-tzu is forbidden to keep her pet indoors. He must live in a shrine
that has been erected at the grave of Hsü, her dead fiance'.32
The culmination of T'an-yang-tzu's spiritual development, and the
center of the Biography, is her visit to the court of the Queen Mother of
the West. On the first day of the sixth month of 1580, Chu Chen-chün
arrives and tells T'an-yang-tzu that the Queen Mother will be able to see
her in three days. On the fourth of the month, T'an-yang-tzu is told that
there will be another three-day delay. The appointed day finally arrives
and T'an-yang-tzu goes to the palace of the Queen Mother. The palace is
surrounded by clouds and water; heaven and earth are indistinguishable.
T'an-yang-tzu stands outside the gates, expectant, but nothing happens.
She stays there for several days, until she is finally rescued by Chu Chen-
chün, who takes her to the Queen Mother. It is a complex visualization:
the Queen Mother is attended by a hundred women. Upon her first
presentation at the court she is received as an initiate, not as a mere mortal who is hoping to learn secrets of immortality. This is a talisman of her
31YCSJHK, 78/ 12a (p.38 11).
32A Freudian interpretation of the snake who lives in the shrine of T'an-yang-tzu's dead hus-
band is doubtless possible. However the reader should keep in mind that the white snake was
a heavily-laden symbol in Chinese folklore. The white snake was a shapeshifter who could appear in the guise of a beautiful woman. One easily accessible example of the white snake tale
as known in T'an-yang-tzu's day is the twenty-eighth story in Feng Meng-lung's Ching-shih
t'ung-yen, translated by Diana Yu as "Eternal Prisoner under Thunder-Peak Pagoda," in Ma
and Lau:355-378.
116Ann Waltner
spiritual power and of her coming immortality. When the Queen Mother
speaks, T'an-yang-tzu thinks she hears her mention the name of her father
and her biographer, but the sounds are indistinct and she cannot be sure.
Then we come to the crux of the teaching - the essence of the doctrine,
the words for which T'an-yang-tzu stood, patiently, outside the gate for
days on end. Wang Shih-chen tells us that those things are secret and cannot be transmitted. Chu Chen-chün comes seven days later to tell T'anyang-tzu that the deities will not come any more. She is on her own. The
secrets have been transmitted. In three months she will attain immortal-
ity.
She then retires to the grave of her dead husband, where she lives in a
shrine on a felt mat. Her body becomes luminous and gives off a scent
like sandalwood. She attracts a crowd of 100,000. Three months later,
she moves to another shrine, still at the grave of her dead fiance. After six
days of transformation she attains immortality on the ninth day of the
ninth month. Wang Shih-chen describes the scene at the shrine with a
mixture of anticipation and pathos. The theme of her service to her
parents and their solicitude for her, present throughout the Biography, is
poignantly portrayed here.
She again approached her father, bowed and said: "I repudiated my
father to follow the Tao, but I am not willing to forget you." Her
father and mother cried until they lost their voices.33
As she sits secluded in a room at the shrine of the dead Hsü, among her
last acts are the writing of "several tens of pages" of text. Her writing
finished, she dressed "as if it were a normal occasion," and bade farewell to
her relatives. The final scenes of her life are shrouded in drama and mystery:
At this time, outside the balustrade [of the shrine] on three sides there
were perhaps a hundred thousand people: some worshipping, some
kneeling, some weeping, calling out to my master, calling out the
name of the Buddha. It is beyond what can be described. In the middle of the sacrifice room in the shrine, from far and near, they offered
incense and prostrated themselves. Day and night were strung
together, pearl-like, without end.34
33YCSJHK, 78/22b (p.3832).
34YCSJHK, 78/24b (p.3836).
Tan-Yang-tzu and Wang Shih-chen117
The ascent into immortality itself is not described in the text, presumably
because the details fall into the category of esoteric knowledge. T'anyang-tzu's next appearance in the Biography is in a dream. She appears to
both Wang Shih-chen and Wang Hsi-chüeh: "her form and face could no
longer be seen, but her voice tinkled like white carnelian." 35
Interpretation: Text and Cult
The above summary and excerpts have only hinted at the richness of
the text. The first two-thirds can be read as an Odyssey of spiritual progress. T'an-yang-tzu begins by devotional practices and subsequently
proceeds through the successively more difficult stages of dreaming, visions
at night, and visions during broad daylight. In the most complex visualization of all, she visits the court of the Queen Mother. She is finally able
to put the teachings of the Queen Mother into practice and she herself
attains immortality. Each visualization experience is more complex and
more intense than was the last one. But after the ascent of T'an-yang-tzu,
the Biography, which continues for another dozen or so pages, becomes
diffuse.
Events before and after her death are mixed with excerpts from hagiography and other sacred texts. It is as if the narrative structure of the text
mirrors a central problem for Wang: What is, after all, the meaning of
T'an-yang-tzu's immortality? How do we know that his account is not
simply the fabrication of an overly-imaginative man of letters, masquerading as biography? There is abundant evidence that Wang Shih-chen was
serious in his discipleship in the Biography itself, in his writings about his
contemporaries which refer to T'an-yang-tzu, and in his attempts to place
his experience in the context of religious tradition.
The language Wang uses to describe the encounters between his master
and the immortals is simple and direct. Some of the crucial visionary
experiences, especially the earlier ones, are described as dreams (meng)
from which T'an-yang-tzu later awakens (chiieh, hsing). But Wang perceives the development of visionary experience to be progressive. Dreams
are merely an early stage. In fact he uses the word "real" (c/zctî)36 to dis-
tinguish the authentic visionary experience from the dream. Frequently
the divinities "appear" (hsien), but just as frequently they "come" (lai) or
"arrive" (chih) or "enter" (ju). When T'an-yang-tzu visits the immortals,
the verb used is yeh, a perfectly ordinary word for visiting a superior. The
35YCSJHK, 78/25a (p.3837).
36YCSJHK, 78/3a (p.3794).
118Ann Waltner
language is direct and ordinary. It is not "as if the deities are coming:
they come. At the level of rhetoric, the events are real.
But internal rhetorical evidence is not the only kind of clue to Wang's
stance toward the Biography. The essential factual framework of the story
- T'an-yang-tzu's date of birth, her brother's age, the progress of Wang
Hsi-chüeh's official career — may all be verified from other sources. A
court debate held in 1574 over the proper honors to be paid to Wang
Yang-ming is alluded to in the Biography and described in the Ming
Shih-lu. The Biography implies that Hsi-chüeh was promoted as a result
of his skillful participation in that debate, and the Shih-lu tells us that the
interval between the debate and the promotion was a mere two months.37
In other writings, Wang Shih-chen quoted T'an-yang-tzu, referring to
events which occur in the T'an-yang ta shih chuan. One such example is
his epitaph of Lin Lai, a young woman who was engaged to be married to
a man named Ch'en who died before the marriage took place. Lin Lai
followed Ch'en in death. In an episode demonstrating the sordid depths
to which virtue might sink, the two families, the Lin and the Ch'en, quarrelled as to which of them might claim the dead girl and the honor of her
virtuous suicide. In composing the epitaph, Wang cites T'an-yang-tzu's
arguments that she herself should be treated as a virtuous widow in sup-
port of the Ch'en family claim.38
T'an-yang-tzu was then for Wang a source of secular moral authority
and a model of chaste widowhood. But of course Wang Shih-chen
regarded his teacher as much more than a secular moral authority. She
was a mediator between two worlds, the world of the human and the
world of the divine. Mere mortals could not aspire to that position. This
is made abundantly clear in the funerary writing about Shen Mao-hsüeh, a
disciple who died unexpectedly in 1582. Wang Shih-chen wrote extensively and movingly about the death. His epitaph closes by saying that
only T'an-yang-tzu had true knowledge of immortality (pu-wang)?9 T'an-
yang-tzu had attained immortality: Shen had merely died. This defined
the gulf between them. Even grieving friends at the moment of death
37Ming Shen-tsung shih Iu (The Veritable Records of Shen-tsung of the Ming), (Peking:
1962), 26/1 la.
38YCSJHK, 126/8a (p.5815). In the version of the argument presented in the Biography,
T'an-yang-tzu explicitly states that out of concern for her parents, she has no wish to join her
fiancé in death, implying perhaps that were she less filial she might be inclined to take a more
absolutist stand on virtue. But in the epitaph of Lin Lai, T'an-yang-tzu is quoted as saying
that she wished to follow her fiancé in death.
39YCSJHK, 125/16a (p. 5787).
Tan-Yang-tzu and Wang Shih-chen119
could not console themselves by saying that Shen had become an immortal. Their consolation took a form more conventional in the context of
Chinese literati culture: he would live on in the words of those who wrote
about him. The immortality of T'an-yang-tzu was an immutable fact to
Wang Shih-chen and his circle, but it was only one piece in their picture
of a multifaceted reality. And direct experience of immortality was an
aspect of reality to which they had access only through the mediation of
T'an-yang-tzu. As Wang shih-chen himself wrote in a letter, it was
through his experience with T'an-yang-tzu that he understood that in this
world there are holy people (chen jen) and holy principles (chen Ii). 40
Thus the Biography and other writings attest to Wang Shih-chen's
enduring discipleship on the personal level. These sources are also pro-
foundly influenced by tradition, especially Mao Shan Taoism.41 Indeed, in
the final pages of the Biography itself, Wang summarized the Chen kao
(Declarations of the Perfected),42 one of the founding declarations of Mao
Shan Taoism. The Biography also quotes from the biography of T'an-luan,
a man of the Wei dynasty known both for his contributions to Pure Land
Buddhism and for his search for immortality. The connection between
T'an-yang-tzu and T'an-luan, implied by the shared first syllable of their
name (a not-uncommon component of Buddhist religious names) is made
explicit when Wang Shih-chen states, "From his transformation counting
down to the time of my master there were a thousand and seven years."43
These are merely the most obvious references to Buddhist and Taoist texts
in the body of the Biography.
In addition to the T'an-yang ta shih chuan, Wang composed a text
called the Chin mu chi (A Record of the Golden Mother).44 The Chin mu
chi is an historical pastiche of earlier writings on manifestations of the
Golden Mother and an analysis of how T'an-yang-tzu fits into the tradition. The text begins: "My master T'an-yang-tzu visited the Golden
Mother and returned." The centerpiece of the essay is the encounter
between the Queen Mother and the Han emperor Wu-ti. The goddess
visits the emperor, who has expressed interest in obtaining from her the
secrets of immortality. She feasts him with the peaches of immortality
40YCSJHK, 193/4b (p.8728).
41On Mao Shan Taoism and the Chen kao, see Strickmann, 1977 and 1981.
42YCSJHK, 78/30a (p.3847).
43YCSJHK, 78/26b (p.3840).
44The Chin mu chi is contained in chuan 68 of the Yen chou shan jen hsü kao, pp.32733306. The Golden Mother is another name by which the Queen Mother of the West is
known.
120Ann Waltner
which are her emblem. But she finds him unworthy as an adept and
returns to her immortal abode at the Jasper Pool without transmitting to
him the knowledge that he sought. AU that the king can do is keep the
seeds of the peaches, which the goddess informs him will not grow in the
sparse soil of China. He fails to transcend his mortal form not only
because he is unworthy (he is lewd and ambitious) but also because secrets
of immortality were not made for worldly monarchs. The Chin mu chi
relies heavily on the text by the T'ang Taoist author Tu Kuang-t'ing (850-
933) entitled Chin mu yuan chiin, which is preserved in both the Yung
ch'eng chi hsien Iu (Registers of the Collected Transcendents of the
Fortified Walled City, HY 782) and in the Yun chi ch'i ch'ien (Seven Slips
from the Bookbag of the Clouds, HY 1026).45 But Wang does not limit
his discussion of the history of the Golden Mother to Tu's text. He draws
on an even earlier Six Dynasties text, the Han Wu-ti nei chuan, which was
also a major source for Tu's late T'ang text. In fact Wang's text follows
this original more closely than does Tu's.46 The Chin mu chi ends by placing T'an-yang-tzu's contact with the Golden Mother in its context. Mad
king Mu of Chou and the powerful Han emperor Wu-ti tried but failed to
make contact with the goddess. Where they had failed, T'an-yang-tzu succeeded.
The Chin mu chi is invaluable in identifying the scope and breadth of
Wang Shih-chen's reading about the Queen Mother. Here we find a rich
store of antecedents for many of the specific religious visions attributed to
T'an-yang-tzu in the Biography. But the fact that we can find literary
antecedents for Wang's descriptions of the Queen Mother does not mean
that the descriptions are fraudulent. Millard Meiss has shown how the
visions of Catherine of Siena are profoundly influenced by paintings and
other images,47 and William Christian has shown that apparitions of the
Virgin Mary in late medieval Spain were frequently recognized as such
because they were precise replicas of the Virgin in the parish church of the
visionary.48 Victor Mair has shown ways in which images of deities were
used in T'ang Buddhism as aids to visualization.49 That revelation is
45On Tu's text, see Cahill, 1982 and 1985-86. Wang's text is rather longer than Tu's and the
presentation follows a slightly different order. Tu errs at least once in a matter of scholarly
attribution: he mistakenly cites the Erh ya as the source of a description of some of the more
fearful aspects of the goddess. Wang corectly attributes the quotation to the Shan hai ching.
46On Han Wu-ti nei chuan, see Schipper, 1965.
47Meiss, 1951.
48Christian, 1981.
49Mair, 1986.
Tan-Yang-tzu and Wang Shih-chen121
firmly grounded in culture and visions have textual and iconographie
sources in no way diminishes their authenticity.
Gender and the Religious Vocation
Wang Shih-chen's Biography is strangely silent on the issue of gender.
But by comparing the story of T'an-yang-tzu to that of other female religious figures and by examining the function of symbols, especially those
relating to food and sex, we can arrive at some conclusions about gender
and the religious vocation.
The story of Miao-shan, a Sung dynasty manifestation of Kuan-yin,
highlights two gender-related themes we saw in the life of T'an-yang-tzu:
the desire for chastity and the conflict with parents. Miao-shan's father
seems to accede to her wish that she be allowed to follow a religious life
and permits her to become a nun. In his rage at her fellow nuns' report
that she seems to be accompanied by spirits, he burns the nunnery down,
intending to kill his daughter as well as the other nuns. But Miao-shan is
saved by a tiger and carried off to a mountain retreat at Hsiang-shan.
Later her father contracts a loathsome disease in retribution for his
cruelty. The only medicine that can cure him is a drug concocted from
the eyes and arms of one who would give up eye and limb without anger.
He learns that there is a hermit at Hsiang-shan who would do so, and
proceeds there to obtain the medicine. After the hermit has gouged out
her eyes and hacked off her arms, he recognizes her as his daughter and as
(the thousand-eyed and thousand-armed) Kuan-yin. He repents and
becomes a devout Buddhist.50
T'an-yang-tzu need go to no such violent lengths. Her father is cured
by the simple offering of a glass of water. But the cure is enough to convert him. The scepticism of her family is initially no less real than is that
of the family of Miao-shan, but it is handled more elegantly. After her
father declares himself to be her disciple, he suggests that T'an-yang-tzu
arrange to have spirits materialize to convince his parents and his wife of
their existence. The Miao-shan story is of course a story with an explicitly
Buddhist message. It is a parable about charity, forgiveness, and, above
all, salvation. But it is also a family drama, a story about the conflict
between the duty owed to one's father and the demands of a religious
vocation.
Other accounts of female sanctity can be found scattered throughout
Ming local histories. The K'uai-chi gazetteer records the following story:
50 On Miao-shan, see Dudbridge, 1978, and Sangren, 1983.
122Ann Waltner
A woman of the Chin family, the wife of a Chang Ning, was attacked by a
band of soldiers. While she was being raped, she closed her eyes and
chanted the name of Kuan-yin. The text tells us that several of the soldiers took her body in sport. She survived the rape itself, but later became
delerious and died. After her death, she became a shen, a spirit. Her
biography was classified with those of virtuous women, rather than those
of religious figures. Nonetheless it tells us that when local people (hsiang
jen) prayed to her, she always responded. The violence of her wrongful
death had granted her spiritual potency.51
Another story whose richness is only hinted at in the bare outlines of a
gazetteer account is that of a young orphaned idiot girl from Pao-ting
named Shih Hsien-ku, who lived with her brother and sister-in-law, who
did not much like her. This unfortunate girl took care of a diseased beg-
gar, a man who was scorned by the rest of the village. As a reward for her
virtuous behavior, she was borne off by a cloud and became an immortal.
The account ends by telling the reader that no one knows the end of the
story, but that local people worshipped her.52 Her immortality is due to
her virtue. The recorded details of these stories are sparse: indeed, they
merely suggest the richness of the lives of these women. But it is clear
that sanctity in the late Ming might well manifest itself in the form of a
young woman.
But how does gender affect the nature of a young woman's sanctity?
The conflict between the demands of the domestic and the religious is a
theme common to the lives of Chinese religious figures. (Indeed, it may
well be common to the lives of all religious figures, irrespective of gender.)
But the conflict has a special urgency for women because of the demands
society places on them due to their reproductive capacities. This point is
suggested by the sensual nature of the temptations of T'an-yang-tzu, but it
is made even clearer by her chaste widowhood.
By avoiding marriage, T'an-yang-tzu avoids both the responsibilities of
family life and the pollution inherent upon sex and childbirth. The mode
of her chastity - widowhood - has significant implications. Widow chastity was a veritable cult during the Ming. The state honored with
memorial arches women widowed before they were thirty who remained
chaste until the age of fifty. A widow who committed suicide at the death
51K'ang-hsi K'uai-chi hsien chih (A Gazetteer of K'uai-chi, Compiled During the K'ang-hsi
era), (Shaohsing: 1936), 27/2a.
52Ku chin t'u shu chi cheng (A Compendium of Books and Maps, Old and New) first published 1728 (Shanghai: 1934), ts'e 510/1 lb.
Tan-Yang-tzu and Wang Shih-chen123
of her husband might also be honored by an arch.53
T'an-yang-tzu's profound connection to her dead finace' was shown by
the location of her shrine at his grave, by his ghostly visit to her, and by
the fact that when she bade farewell to her assembled relatives, his parents
figured among them. Her chaste observance of her widowed state is commemortated in a Ch'ing edition of the T'ai-ts'ang local gazetteer, which
states in a terse line and a half that the daughter of Wang Hsi-chüeh was
engaged to marry Hsü Ching-shao, but he died before the marriage took
place and she starved herself to death at his grave. The gazetteer further
notes that a memorial arch honoring her chastity was erected during the
Wan-li (1573-1620) reign period.54
In her refusal to (re)marry, T'an-yang-tzu gained a measure of freedom.
She was able to pursue her religious vocation. On the one hand chaste
widowhood constituted an opportunity for legitimizing her dedication to a
contemplative life. On the other hand it also conformed to a social pattern
and rendered her entire story subject to interpretation as if it were no
more than a conventional morality tale. It is significant that what the local
notables who compiled the T'ai-ts'ang gazetteer saw as praiseworthy in the
life of T'an-yang-tzu was not the charismatic teaching, the aescetic practices, the visionary experiences, or even the moral precepts. It was her
chastity and her death, which they interpreted in terms consonant with
their own conventional ideas of praiseworthy (though extreme) female virtue.
Linked to T'an-yang-tzu's chastity is her refusal to eat. Like her chastity, it must be interpreted on several levels. We should not ignore the
first level: its literal meaning. T'an-yang-tzu's refusal to eat is crucial to her
religious discipline. One Taoist technique of attaining immortality is the
cultivation of an "immortal embryo" which resides in the body of the
adept. Worms which reside in the body inhibit the development of the
embryo and must be destroyed. Mortal food, especially grains, nourishes
these worms; hence abstinence from grains is advocated by most Taoist
dietary regimens.55 Indeed, perhaps not coincidentally, Pu-ning, the man
who advised Wang Hsi-chüeh on how to manage his daughter's spiritwandering, attained a measure of renown as an abstainer from grains.
Not only did he not eat, he never even got hungry.56
53Elvin, 1984.
54T'ai-ts'ang chou chih, ?47.
55Maspero, 1981; Robinet, 1979, 1985-86.
56T'u Lung, Po yueh chi, 6/ 14b (p. 3 14).
124Ann Waltner
The connection between abstinence from food and from sex is a prominent theme in the lives of medieval Christian saints. Recent work has
suggested first, that fasting is a more prominent form of aesceticism
among women than it is among men57 and, second, that fasting and chastity are linked themes in the lives of female saints.58 The common presence of these dual themes in the life of T'an-yang-tzu and in Western
saints is all the more striking when we consider the radically different
theological underpinnings of the Chinese and Christian contexts. Caroline
Bynum argues that abstinence from food and sex in the lives of medieval
religious women does not represent a denial of the body. Instead, it
represents a re-dedication of the body to extraordinary purposes, a tran-
scendence of the mundane realm.59 Bynurn's insights are appropriate to
T'an-yang-tzu: her austerities make possible meditational feats which are
described in great physical detail. AU of the senses are evoked in her visits
to the deities and the deities' return calls. This is not a denial of the phy-
sical body, but rather a reorientation of it. The female body, which in the
dominant mode has one clear function - reproduction — has here another
function - the attainment of immortality. Immortality is not something
that can be attained by a disembodied mind.
Late Ming Neo-Confucianism, the Neo-Confucianism in which T'anyang-tzu's disciples were steeped, doubtless influenced by Ch'an Buddhism, placed a good deal of emphasis on the actual experience of enlight-
enment.60 But within the context of Neo-Confucianism the potential for
women to become enlightened sages was limited. Sagehood as an ideal,
however mystical, still retained its connotations of a kingly role within this
world, a role inappropriate for a woman. Mystical perceptions of the
unity of the self and the universe were not a part of the Neo-Confucian
repertoire for her. The ideal woman as portrayed in Neo-Confucian texts
is a gentle wife and wise mother.61
But both Buddhism and Taoism, especially the popular forms of these
religions, offered the potential for female spirituality. When a woman
57Weinstein and Bell, 1982.
58Bynum, 1987.
59Bynum, 1987, chs. 8 and 9.
60An example can be found in Wang Ken: his enlightenment followed a dream in which he
saw the heavens falling and people fleeing in panic. In response to their cries, he pushed up
the heavens and restored order to the heavenly bodies. He awoke from his dream bathed in
perspiration. Shortly thereafter he experienced enlightenment, which he "described in terms
of being united with all things through his humanity and of finding the universe within himself." (deBary, 1970: 158).
61Kelleher, 1985 and 1986.
Tan-Yang-tzu and Wang Shih-chen125
underwent a spiritual crisis similar to that which a man could describe in
terms of Neo-Confucian enlightenment, she (and her hagiographer) would
see it in terms that were available to describe female experience, such as
visits to the Queen Mother of the West or attendance upon Kuan-yin. It
is not that T'an-yang-tzu was a Neo-Confucian manque', or that had she
been male she would have conformed to orthodoxy. But human beings
describe mystical experiences in whatever vocabularies are open to them,
and religion, perhaps especially late Ming religion, offered both vocabularies and avenues for action for women which were without parallel in
any other sphere of Chinese life. In the world of the Queen Mother and
Kuan-yin, female gender formed no barrier to the religious vocation.
Elite and Popular Religion: The Cult of T'an-yang-tzu
The family of T'an-yang-tzu came from the pinnacle of the bureaucratic
elite. After her death, her father went on to become Grand Secretary. If
we are to use the concepts of "elite" and "popular" at all, there is no way
we can escape labeling T'an-yang-tzu and her disciples as participants in
an elite cult. And yet there are suggestive parallels between the cult of
T'an-yang-tzu, with its emphasis on the Queen Mother of the West, and,
to a lesser degree Kuan-yin, and the emergence of the Wu-sheng Lao-mu,
the Venerable Eternal Mother, as a new deity in late Ming sectarian religion. The name of the Eternal Mother appeared in pao chiian, precious
scrolls which were the doctrinal texts of the sectarian movement, in the
1560s and 1570s. But in the texts dating from those early decades, she is a
shadowy figure. It was not until the precious scrolls of the 1590s that the
Eternal Mother attained her full personality: a grandmotherly figure who
labors to win salvation for her lost children, the inhabitants of this
world.62 The Venerable Mother, although she represented a dramatic theo-
logical innovation, was not a goddess without antecedents. Kuan-yin and
the Queen Mother of the West were seen as manifestations of the Venerable Eternal Mother. The precious scrolls make the identification clear.
Huang Yu-p'ien cites a work called the Hu kuo wei ling Hsi wang mu pao
chiian, written in 1634, in which the Queen Mother was explicitly referred
to as a deity of the three teachings, and as a transformation of the Venerable Eternal Mother. The Venerable Mother, as one of the late Ming
manifestations of the Queen Mother, was a sectarian deity, an important
62 Shek, 1980:302.
126Ann Waltner
figure in popular culture, and clearly marked as heterodox.63
T'an-yang-tzu's epiphany at the court of the Queen Mother occurred
during the same years when the Venerable Mother began to make her
appearance in popular literature and pao chiian. It would be difficult to
pinpoint a precise textual relationship between the accounts of the Queen
Mother in the writings of Wang Shih-chen and those of the Venerable
Mother in contemporary pao chiian. Indeed, a precise relationship might
not exist. But Wang Shih-chen was one of the most popular literary
figures of his day; that he both read widely and was widely read is clear.
We know that the T'an-yang ta shih chuan was composed and published
very shortly after T'an-yang-tzu's death, and that the work fairly quickly
became popular, even notorious. Wu Yuan-ts'ui reported, with some
disapproval, that when he was in the capital in 1580, all of his friends were
reading a "T'an-yang chuan."64 Sun Mao-ch'eng deplored in 1581 the
seductive effect the text had on men's minds.65 It is possible that a text
composed by a scholar of extraordinary prominence was influenced by
and subsequently itself influenced the sectarian image of the Venerable
Eternal Mother. At the very least, with T'an-yang-tzu, the Golden
Mother and the Venerable Mother, we have a case where the same metaphor is being applied simultaneously to religion at both the popular and
the elite levels.
K.C. Liu has recently suggested that the issue of orthodoxy and heterodoxy in late imperial China cannot be resolved in the realm of metaphy-
sics.66 Confucianism itself from Confucius to Chu Hsi to Wang Yangming adopted many metaphysical stances. Liu suggests rather that the key
63The Hu kuo wei ling Hsi wang mu pao chüan says that the Queen Mother is a manifesta-
tion of the Venerable Mother. The P'u tu hsin sheng chiù k'u pao chüan portrays Kuan-yin
as one of her manifestations. Both texts are cited and described in Hsiang, pp.1222-1223.
Huang Yu-p'ien (fl. 1830-1840), who made extensive collections of sectarian texts in order to
refute them, says that the Queen Mother is a reincarnation of the Venerable Mother. (Huang
Yu-p'ien, Hsu-k'an po-hsieh, 5b-6a, cited in Overmyer, 1976: 238. For a discussion of
Huang, see Overmyer, 1976: 29-32. Lu Niu, a mid-fifteenth-century religious leader, is
described as being both Kuan-yin and Wu-sheng Lao-mu. (Shek, 1980:197) Overmyer suggests that the Venerable Mother is a "later manifestation" of the Queen Mother (Overmyer,
1976: 139). In the Kuan-yin chi tu pen yuan chen ching, whose preface is dated 1667, Kuanyin appeals to the Yao-chih Chin-mu (the Golden Mother of the Jasper Pool), a well-known
name for the Queen Mother of the West (cited in Dudbridge, 1978:1 12, note 4).
64Wu Yuan-ts'ui, fl. 1550-1608, Lin chu man Iu (Casual Words from a Forest Hermit) I, sec-
tion pieh chi, 2/5b-6a.
65T'an Ch'ien, Kuo ch'ueh, chuan 71, p.4390.
66K.C. Liu, personal communication, January, 1985. These ideas will be developed in the introductions to Orthodoxy in Late Imperial China and Heterodoxy in Late Imperial China,
edited by K.C. Liu and Don Price, forthcoming.
Tan-Yang-tzu and Wang Shih-chen127
to a definition of orthodoxy lies in the realm of social doctrine. Taoism
and Buddhism were able to reach accomodation with Confucianism in so
far as they accepted key social values: filial piety, the benefit of hierarchy,
the significance of the written word. It is charismatic egalitarian sects
demanding absolute loyalty (such as those of the Venerable Eternal
Mother) which were consistently branded as heterodox whether or not
they ever actively opposed the state. The cult of T'an-yang-tzu at the elite
level briefly displayed the same inversion of hierarchy and extravagant
enthusiasm that provoked official censure (and repression) of "popular"
sectarians. But the response of the state was muted: the impeachment of
the three Wangs was without any lasting consequences. Liu's hypothesis,
as well as examples provided in this essay, suggest that in traditional China
elite and popular cultures drew on a common fund of images: whether the
images found orthodox or heterodox resonances depended on context, and
on the social uses to which those images were put.
128Ann Waltner
Glossary
Chang Chü-cheng ?-fc-Jü iChao Yung-hsien jkfi )^
chen jé
chen jen
~% /^
Chen kao
?. ¦%£
chen Ii j| y9
chih
$
CAw W!/ chi
/4<-JJ- ¿*>
C/h'm mu yuan chün
/£¡¡- ja % &
Chu Chen-chün >£ ^j. =g
Chu-hung ^ £
Ch'ÜJu-mu I >¿ ^
chüeh ,í$
IPTl^. tf „
Feng Meng-chen
>]£ Ji ^j|
Han-shan Te-ch'ing -j|s£ »i>... iffe,
^ £áj
^
Han Wu-ti nei chuan >* -f^ 'S ?> ?
Hsi wang mu
^ í. -Ja
hsiangjen ^p ^
hsien
hi*.
Tan-Yang-tzu and Wang Shih-chen129
hsien1 J^ C Í& ;
Hsien-jen ch'iao
? lí\ /^ jfE;
hsing f$L
Hsü Ching-shao 4f" 4 ^g
Hsü Hsüeh-mo ^ ^- -^
Hsü T'ing-kuan ^Jl ^
/íu fcwo w« /;'ng Hsi wang mu pao chüan ¦£& "1^1 jjV « ^ ? -^ ^ .&
ju
;v
'ai fc
Lin Chao-en fö. fc )f.
Im^ pao chen ching /5i '& ? ¿¡|j
Niu Wei-ping A »fl| ·>f
Mao shan
meng
Jt, ,*.,
Ä
Miao-shan ¿yì
Ou Hsien-mi ^ ^ ^
Ou-shih ^ %to
pao chüan 'f? ^*Pu-ning ^ *j^.
j,Q
Ann Waltner
pu-wang
f. -fc
P'u tu hsin sheng chiù k'u pao chiian jjj?- Jy^ jjfa j&. jjßc ^ ^f /q
shan .f
shan' fò $
shen %<%
Shen Mao-hsüeh ¿jfc $£ %§¦
Su Yüan-chün Jw; Kt ?>
Sun Ch'eng-nan J&, fa. fa
ta-shih
;^ -^r
T'ai-ts'ang ^ ^
T'an-luan yìte *jfc"
T'an-yang ta shih chuan
*& ai > /JjA j£
T'an-yang-tzu <|^ f^ ^
T'an-yang-tzu chuan fig -f$ ~3¡ A
t'ien tan
iV£ -;,£¦
Tu Kuang-t'ing -jf;·* ^1 ^
T'u Lung ,§($
Wang Heng
Ï ^.^
Wang Hsi-chüeh S. >4^ Jfc
Wang Shih-chen S -** ^L
Tan-Yang-tzu and Wang Shih-chen131
Wang Shih-mao
3. -W ^§t
Wang T'ao-chen
% ^f %·.
Wang Yang-ming J -fli >J(|
Wu Yuan-ts'ui \h. %, jgL
Wu-sheng lao-mu $t, >£ ^ -Wyao-wang ^^ ?
yeh
il
y««g ch'eng chi hsien lu ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
132Ann Waltner
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