Because these genres were so personal and were performed to small audiences in relatively informal settings, they were highly effective in communicating ideas and values. Indeed, the solo genres, rather than opera and ritual, were the most effective vehicles ever devised in China for the intentional inculcation in ordinary people of specific religious ideas and ethical values. The main purpose of ritual was to bridge the gap between the human and divine worlds; opera aimed to entertain. Both taught, of course, and taught powerfully, but that was seldom their primary purpose. If you had a message to convey to people, you would not usually write an opera or a liturgy. Hence the solo genres are of great importance for this survey. There was an immense variety of them, but they can conveniently be divided into three types on the basis of literary form: verse, prose, and chantefable, a combination of verse and prose.
VERSE
There were many kinds of narrative song. Some were accompanied by wooden clappers, others by drums, yet others by the pipa, and their subjects ranged from the romantic to the pious. Together they form a mighty stream of Chinese popular literature, and it is not surprising that many religious works can be found among them, including some, such as the following, of great dramatic power.
WOMAN HUANG EXPLICATES THE DIAMOND SŪTRA
The tanci genre first developed during the late sixteenth century in the coastal areas of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong, and by the eighteenth century it had become a largely urban art centered in cities such as Suzhou, Hangzhou, Yangzhou, and Guangzhou. “By early Qing times tanci had already become immensely popular, particularly with the women in large southern cities, and the stories concentrated on the theme of romantic love. . . . Late Ming and early Qing tanci were also closely related to the baojuan, which promulgated popular Buddhism and various folk religions.”14 This tanci gives a vivid portrayal of the tragic conflict between Woman Huang’s love for her family and her desire for salvation, which requires renouncing such ties.
The text was published in Shanghai, probably in the first decade of this century; it is almost entirely in seven-syllable verse.
The tanci begins with Woman Huang (we are never told her given name) attempting to persuade her husband to give up being a butcher.
“As a butcher you are committing sins without end, And the sufferings of Hell will be hard to endure.”
Her husband, Zhao Lianfang, who has previously argued that he does not believe in the karmic retribution she is warning him about, now reminds her that she herself is polluted because she has given birth to three children.
“When you gave birth to your children you also committed a sin:
How many bowls of bloody water, how many bowls of fluids?
For every child, there were three basins of water;
Three children, and thus nine basins of fluids.
You dumped the bloody waters into the gutters,
And so you polluted the Sprite of the Eaves.
Three mornings and you were already back in the kitchen,
And so you polluted the God of the Stove.
Before ten days were up, you went into the front hall,
And so you polluted the household gods and ancestors.
Before a month was up, you went out of doors,
And so you polluted the sun, the moon, and the stars.
You washed the bloodstained clothing in the river,
And the tainted waters polluted the Dragon King.
You spilled these waters onto the ground,
And the spirits of Hell had nowhere to hide.
After washing the clothes, you laid them on the bank to dry,
And so you polluted the Great Yin and the Great Yang.
In vain you rely on your reading of the Diamond Sūtra—
The sins of a lifetime will not be easily redeemed.”
Woman Huang is horrified by her husband’s words, and immediately dresses in simple clothing, puts away her makeup, and resolves to dedicate herself solely to her devotions, in particular the recitation of the Diamond Sūtra, in order to purify herself. However, this also means that she must no longer share her husband’s bed or do any housework. Zhao Lianfang, afraid now that the household will fall apart, pleads with her to keep the marriage vows they once made and continue to fulfill her wifely responsibilities. She, in return, replies that the love between husband and wife will not last forever.
“Do not say that you have a long life ahead of you,
In a blink of an eye, your hair will turn white.
Every life, every death, is like a spring dream. . . .
My husband, think carefully about the life you’ve led,
Why not change your ways and read the Diamond Sūtra?
Here at home, I have the simple robes of a monk,
Let’s go to the sūtra hall and repeat the Buddha’s name.
Even if a man’s life were to last a hundred thousand years,
It would still be better to do good and not go astray.
Whether it be riches or fame, it is all up to Heaven,
So we must heed Heaven’s will in living out our days.
For Death cannot be bought with coins of gold and silver.
Why then suffer so, dashing madly to and fro?”
Zhao Lianfang is finally swayed by his wife’s tears and her pleas:
“Today let us each live in separate rooms,
And so avoid your lifetime being shortened.
The three-year-old boy will go along with me,
Cut as with a knife from his mother’s milk.
We will never again share the same bed,
Nor think of ourselves as husband and wife.”
Woman Huang then expresses her deep gratitude for her husband’s understanding and, taking her two daughters with her, goes into the sūtra hall and begins to recite the Diamond Sūtra day in and day out, leaving all of the household responsibilities to her husband. In due course, her religious zeal attracts the attention of King Yama, and he sends the Golden Lad and Jade Maiden to bring Woman Huang down to the Underworld to explicate the sūtra (which, of course, means her death). Woman Huang is very frightened by the sight of King Yama’s messengers and attempts to bribe them to leave and come for her again after her children are grown. She is not afraid of death herself, but is reluctant to leave her children behind. She also begins to question her own faith:
When Woman Huang heard this, her blood ran cold,
And the tears from her eyes rolled down her chest.
“But reading the sūtras should lengthen one’s life,
Who would have known that chanting cuts it short!?
If you want me to give up my life, I don’t mind,
But to leave behind my children would break my heart.”
The Underworld messengers remain unmoved, however, and Woman Huang, resigned to her fate, asks only to bid farewell to her family, which she does in a series of very moving passages. These make it clear that she is well aware of the possibility of being criticized for her negligence as both wife and mother, another indication of the sense of spiritual crisis that pervades the story.
After an extended tour of the Underworld and all its horrors, Woman Huang is brought before the Kings of the Ten Courts and is put through a long interrogation to test her piety (which also serves as a kind of popular catechism for the audience), all the more stringent because she is a woman, and a mother as well. The interrogation covers many different areas, including an extended section on the origin and history of the Diamond Sūtra and its efficacy. Woman Huang answers all the questions in great detail, breaking down only when she is reciting all the benefits of reciting the Diamond Sūtra, which include long life, as once again she expresses her bafflement and sense of betrayal:
“Although the Diamond Sūtra can still be found in the world,
You will hardly find anyone who chants sūtras and Buddha’s name.
I began reciting the sūtra at the tender age of seven;
Why then has King Yama cut my
life short and summoned me here?”
When King Yama heard this, he smiled slightly:
“Good Woman, how very little you know.
To die early is actually a much better thing;
Why do you want to remain in a woman’s body?”
Finally, Woman Huang is asked to ascend a tall platform, built expressly for the purpose, and recite the Diamond Sūtra. However, before she has finished reciting it she is asked to stop, since the combined power of her piety and the Diamond Sūtra itself is causing havoc in the universe by bringing salvation to the evil as well as the good.
King Yama then said, “Good Woman, please sit down;
Listen and I will explain it to you from the start.
If you recite this sūtra three entire times,
The Living Buddhas of the Western Heaven will appear!
The Lord on High will open up the Avici Hell,
And the Gods of the Underworld will not kill people.
The North Star will not dare determine life and death,
And the South Star will not dare determine lifespan.
Good and Evil will be difficult to distinguish,
Human kings and emperors will also be worried.”
We have here the real expression of Woman Huang’s power, the power of a compassion so great that it threatens to destroy the distinction between right and wrong, not only in the Underworld but in the world of the living as well.
Woman Huang is reborn as the talented son of a wealthy and pious couple named Zhang. He passes the examinations and becomes an official, only to renounce his career to seek enlightenment with his parents. Earlier, this Zhang had visited Woman Huang’s former family and discovered that they all were prosperous and happy. When Zhang’s spiritual cultivation allows him to transcend his mortal soul, which, of course, is Woman Huang’s soul, it is reborn in the second son of Woman Huang’s son, bringing this tale of salvation and reincarnation almost full circle.
[Gailiang Huang shinu you difu dui Jingang chuan ben: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan Lishi yuyan yanjiusno cang Suqu, microfilms reel 19. Adapted from Grant, “The Spiritual Saga of Woman Huang,” pp. 266–287—DJ]
SONG OF GUO MOUNTAIN
This is a brief hagiography of the Honored King of Broad Compassion (Guangze Zun Wang), whose cult, which originated in the late tenth century, is one of the most important in the province of Fujian. The main temple is located on Guo Mountain, near Shishan in Nan’an County, Fujian, but another center of the cult is the tomb of the god’s parents, about fifteen miles away. Both Daoist and Confucian rituals are used in the celebration of the cult today. This song is an excellent example of how narrative verse could be used to convey the central elements in the myth of a popular deity. According to the Guoshan Temple Record (1897), a collection of works relating to the home temple of the cult, our text is based on a song in an “old ballad book.” Was it ever actually performed in this form? That is hard to say, but it is written in the seven-character lines standard for popular narrative verse, and the confusing quality of some of the narrative may suggest that it has not undergone significant literati editing.
Beneath Poetry Mountain in Minnan [southern Fujian] in the Later Tang
Master Guo had a son but no daughters. The boy had a lofty nature, quite uncommon;
The family was poor, there was nowhere for him to study.
At the household of Yang the Elder
They received their meals in return for looking after the livestock.
Thinking of his parents, he wept through winter and summer.
August Heaven was unkind—he lost his father;
Mother and son stood face-to-face deep in sadness.
Her dowry could not cover the costs of a grave site;
Leaving a relative unburied, they felt empty and sad.
Who should come along but an old man with white hair;
Stroking his beard by the side of the road he spoke to them.
Their misery and complete filial piety moved him;
He truly showed them a perfect grave site in the shape of a sleeping cow.
The boy went to Yang the Elder’s home and begged for it.
“No matter how much you beg I won’t give it to you.”
Then he pitied this young boy of such a perfect nature;
He called him back and listened to him.
“We are in dire straits; wind and rain pierce our lonely hut.
I seek a single grave mound in which to rest the spirit of my ancestor.
When my father was alive, it was hard for me to leave home.
Now that my father is dead, my mother’s life is even more difficult.
Depending on others we cannot experience good times.
We eat vegetables and drink water in the side courtyards.”
From antiquity perfect sincerity could model Heaven.
The birds planting and the elephants plowing [for the filial paragon Shun] were no ordinary events—
How much more so such perfect conduct in one so young.
Mysteriously his conduct truly moved Heaven to feel pity.
The Heavenly Emperor said, “Ah, on the earth below there is a filial boy.”
He ordered Wu Yang [the legendary physician] to descend and summon him, saying,
“Otherwise I fear he will be consumed by goblins.”
In the setting sun the boy stood in a straw raincoat on the top of the mountain.
“Who is it that comes here?” It was the Taishen, the Messenger of Heaven,
In embroidered robes, riding a horse with feathered cape.
Holding jade court tablets and golden books, he proclaimed the emperor’s words. “I don’t want to go to Heaven; I want to stay on earth.
At home I have an old mother who relies on her only son.”
But alas, how could the emperor’s order be disregarded?
He sat atop an ancient vine and died with tears streaming down.
The wine was gone from his wine-jar and only the bones were left of his buffalo.
These strange events indeed coincide with those of antiquity.
By his side was a group of children scared half witless;
The cattle returned and pushed against the thatch fence.
His mother threw down her spinning and rushed to see what had happened.
His two eyes shone brilliantly and his left foot hung down.
“My son, after you are gone, how will I live on?”
The pain of his old mother could not be assuaged,
She wailed and wept in the empty mountains; her tears fell like the rain.
The elders knelt down by the roadside and said,
“Old woman, do not feel so bitter this night;
Your son has transformed this village with his filial piety.”
These events were fully recorded.
See how the neighboring women and children brought her food.
Later Heaven sent down a jade casket;
Like the people of Lu, she was buried together with her husband.
From this time on, the power of the Honored King of Broad Compassion took shape.
Horses of wind and chariots of clouds came down
To express thanks to the people of the village for carrying out his wishes.
In his home region he drives away disaster and sweeps away adversity.
Beginning in the Tang and Song dynasties and lasting for so many springs and autumns,
His magnificent temple stands atop Phoenix Mountain.
He drove away plagues of insects and demons of drought;
With his deep red banner on his white horse, he routed rebel leaders.
His heavenly words are resplendent; he is worshiped in the Register of Sacrifices.
Living under the care of the True King, people have no worries.
His overflowing virtue and abundant deeds are difficult to recount in full.
[Dai Fengyi, Guoshan miaozhi 7: 3–4; adapted from Dean, Taoist Ritual and Popular Cults, pp. 150–151—
DJ]
PROSE
Didactic lecturing and storytelling were quite common by Qing times. In early twentieth-century Hunan, for example, there was something called simply “lecturing,” of which we have an eyewitness description: “I would often go and listen to performers reciting and singing in the alleyways and at the foot of the bridge [in my village]. . . . On the fifteenth of the first month there would also be lecturing. The lecturer would place candles and incense on the ‘platform of good and evil’ and, seated on it, would tell tales of good and evil.” In Hubei such performances were called “morality books” (shanshu). “After the harvest was in, a tall platform would be erected in a clearing in the fields and decorated with candles and incense. Then a professional performer would ascend the platform and, with the help of a written text, chant the story. The atmosphere was rather somber and sad, and the performance would often elicit weeping and wailing from the women. . . . The most popular forms of entertainment among the rural villagers were local drama, shadow plays, and these shanshu performances.”15 There was also a fascinating type of performance known as Sacred Edict lecturing, which is the subject of the following selection.
SACRED EDICT LECTURING
The maxims of the Qing emperors Kangxi and Yongzheng, known as the Sacred Edicts, are presented in chapter 25. They were recited and explained by men in authority on formal occasions and probably reached the ears, if not the hearts, of millions of people in that form. But discoursing on the Sacred Edict did not remain a monopoly of officials; at some point itinerant storytellers began telling moralistic but entertaining stories under the guise of “Sacred Edict lecturing.” The following is a description by the great scholar Guo Moruo of Sacred Edict lecturing in rural Sichuan early in the twentieth century. (Note that the “lecturers” familiar to Guo used a combination of prose and verse.)
Sources of Chinese Tradition, Volume 2 Page 19