by Livia Kohn
Ethnic Identity and Daoist Identity in Traditional China 37
larly in its use of “Qin” to stand for Chinese. This usage is found in the Dadao jia lingjie and would seem to tie both sources to the early church when it was still centered in the northwest.
15. See Yunji qiqian (HY 1026), 85.1b–2b, quoting the Taiji zhenren feixian baojian shangjing xu.
16. Zhengyi fawen taishang wailu yi 4a–5a. Schipper tentatively dates this scripture to the fifth or sixth century (see Schipper 1994, 74). The translated passages, later, were made with reference to Schipper’s translation of this section.
17. This term “shan’gen,” representing the originally Buddhist term “kusala-mula,” refers to merit won through virtuous action that results in an auspicious encounter with the true teaching or a worthy teacher in a later lifetime.
18. This is made clear in the following section of the Wailu yi (HY 1233), which details the petition of thanksgiving to be submitted three days after ordination (5ab). There, we are told, if the new Daoist is as yet unable to complete the petition, someone can “lend a hand” ( jiashou), presumably meaning that they would take hold of and direct the writer’s hand, and if even that proved impossible, a teacher or friend could write the petition on behalf of the newly ordained priest.
19. The full title is Taishang dadao yuqing jing, which Schipper translates as
“Book of the Precious Purity of the Exalted Great Dao.”
20. On the Yao and Daoism, see Shiratori 1975, 1981; Strickmann 1982; Skar 1992. In an article studying the Yao charter myths, ter Haar (1998) points out that the physical membership of the Yao community has been rather fluid, with Chinese and members of other ethnic groups redefining themselves as Yao, and Yao becoming Chinese. This has interesting implications for the process by which the Yao adopted Daoism.
21. Admittedly, such an approach would face many obstacles. One would first, for example, have to determine what premodern ethnic group can be reliably identified with the modern one and when and where they lived, then look for proof that they were converted to Daoism directly by the Chinese rather than hearing of it from some other minority group. On his website (http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/bth/yao.htm), ter Haar has argued that the Yaos’ adoption of Daoism is later than the Song. If true, this would push the survival of true Daoist communities in China even later.
Bibliography
Bokenkamp, Stephen R. 1997. Early Daoist Scriptures. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Chen Cheng-siang. 1980. A Geographical Atlas of China. Hong Kong: Cosmos Books.
Dong Qixiang. 1987. “Ba Yu wu yuanliu kao.” In Ba Shu kaogu lunwen ji, ed.
by Xu Zhongshu, 167–177. Beijing: Wenwu.
Duan Yuming. 1992. Xi’nan simiao wenhua. Kunming: Yunnan jiaoyu.
Harada Masami. 1963. “Minzoku shiryo to shite noboken.” Philosophia 45:1–26.
———. 1967. “Bokenbun ni mirareru meikai no kami to sono saishi.” Toho shukyo 29:17–35.
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Harper, Donald. 1985. “A Chinese Demonography of the Third Century b.c.”
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 45:459–498.
Kleeman, Terry F. 1998. Great Perfection: Religion and Ethnicity in a Chinese Millennial Kingdom. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
Prusek, Jaroslav. 1971. Chinese Statelets and the Northern Barbarians, 1400–300
b.c. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Riedel.
Pulleyblank, E. G. 1983. “The Chinese and Their Neighbors in Prehistoric and Early Historic Times.” In The Origins of Chinese Civilization, ed. by David N.
Keightley, 411–466. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Rueh Yih-fu. 1957. “Laoren kao.” Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica 28:727–771.
Sage, Stephen. 1992. Ancient Sichuan and the Unification of China. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Schafer, Edward H. 1967. The Vermilion Bird: T’ang Images of the South. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Schipper, Kristofer M. 1994. “Purity and Strangers: Shifting Boundaries in Medieval Taoism.” T’oung Pao 80:61–81.
Seidel, Anna. 1987. “Traces of Han Religion in Funeral Texts Found in Tombs.” In Dokyo to shukyo bunka, ed. by Akizuki Kan’ei , 714–733. Tokyo: Hirakawa.
Shiratori Yoshiro. 1975. Yojin monjo. Tokyo: Kodansha.
———. 1981. “The Yao Documents and Their Religious Ceremonies.” In Proceedings of the International Conference on Sinology: Section on Folklore and Culture, Academia Sinica 311–318.
Skar, Lowell. 1992. “Preliminary Remarks on Yao Religion and Society.” Unpublished typescript.
Song Enchang. 1985. “Dali he Lijiang daojiao gaikuang” In Yunnan minzu minsu he zongjiao diaocha, ed. by Yunnan sheng bianjizu, 119–124. Kunming: Yunnan minzu.
Stein, R. A. 1963. “Remarques sur les mouvements du taoïsme politico-religieux au IIe siècle ap. J.-C.” T’oung Pao 50:1–73.
Strickmann, Michel. 1982. “The Tao among the Yao.” In Rekishi ni okeru minshu to bunka, ed. by Sakai Tadao sensei koki shukuga kinen no kai, 23–30.
Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai.
Ter Haar, Barend. 1998. “A New Interpretation of the Yao Charters.” In New Developments in Asian Studies, ed. by Paul van der Velde and Alex McKay, 3–19. London: Kegan Paul International.
Von Glahn, Richard. 1987. The Country of Streams and Grottoes: Expansion, Settlement, and the Civilizing of the Sichuan Frontier in Song Times. Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University Press.
Xueyuan, ed. 1990. Zhongguo ge minzu zongjiao yu shenhua dacidian. Beijing: Xueyuan.
Yang Cenglie. 1990. “Lijiang Dongjing yinyue diaocha.” In Lijiang wenshi ziliao 9:114–138.
Yoshioka Yoshitoyo. 1976. “Rikucho Dokyo no shumin shiso.” In Dokyo to bukkyo 3:223–283. Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai.
2
Confession of Sins and Awareness
of Self in the Taiping jing
Tsuchiya Masaaki
In the Way of Great Peace (Taiping dao) under the leadership of Zhang Jue in the later Han, the formal confession of sins was practiced. As the Dianlue (Scriptural Abstracts) says, as cited by Pei Songzhi in his commentary to Zhang Lu’s biography in the Sanguo zhi (Record of the Three Kingdoms):
In the Way of Great Peace, the leader wrote talismans and wove spells, holding on to a bamboo staff of nine sections. He told the sick people to knock their heads to the ground and remember their sins, then gave them a talisman, burned and dissolved in water, to drink. Those who got gradually better and were healed by this treatment were called good believers in the Dao. Those who showed no improvement were considered faithless.
The methods of Zhang Xiu were by and large the same as those of Zhang Jue. In addition, he established a so-called chamber of tranquility or oratory, where the sick would retreat to reflect on their wrong-doings. . . . Also, he appointed so-called demon soldiers who were in charge of the prayers for the sick.
To perform these prayers, they would write down the sick person’s name while formally reciting his intention to expiate all sins. This would be done three times: the first version was offered to Heaven by being exposed on a mountain; the second was offered to Earth by being buried in the earth; and the third was offered to Water by being thrown into a stream. Together they were known as “petitions to the Three Bureaus.” ( Sanguo zhi 8.264; Kobayashi 1991, 21)
The text here uses the expression siguo, “to remember one’s sins” or
“to meditate on one’s trespasses.” This compares to the term used in the contemporaneous Hou Hanshu (History of the Later Han), shouguo, 39
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Tsuchiya Masaaki
“to face one’s sins” (71.2299). What both texts refer to by these words is a formal ceremony of confession, used as a method of inner cleansing and easing sickness. The same notion is also apparent in the biography of Zhang Daoling in Ge Hong’s Shenxia
n zhuan (Biographies of Spirit Immortals):
Zhang Daoling made it a rule that sick people should write down all the sins they had committed since they were born and cast these written confessions into a stream of water, vowing to the gods that they would sin no more, on penalty of death. ( Taiping guangji 8.56; Giles 1948, 61)
This matches the description of the rite found in the Sanguo zhi, in each case the emphasis being clearly placed on the remembrance and written documentation of past sins.1 The sources thus shed some light on the practices undertaken in Zhang Jue’s Way of Great Peace as well as in the Celestial Masters led by Zhang Daoling and Zhang Lu.2
Similar formalities of confession were also undertaken in medieval Daoism. As Lu Xiujing’s (406–477) Daomen kelue (Abridged Codes for the Daoist Community, HY 1119) says,
The ill were not to take medicines or use the acupuncture needle or moxa. They were only to ingest talismans, drink water [into which the ashes of the talisman had been mixed], and confess all their sins from their first year of life. Even all those who had committed capital crimes were pardoned, and of those whose symptoms had accumulated and who were distressed by major illnesses, none were not healed. (Nickerson 1996, 352–353)
Again, we have in the Santian neijie jing (Scripture of the Inner Explanations of the Three Heavens, HY 1196), also of the early fifth century:
Those afflicted with illness who are above the age of seven—that is, the age of cognition—are to personally seek forgiveness for their transgressions and to employ all proper offerings, protocols, petitions, and talismans. For even long-standing diseases or difficult maladies that physicians cannot cure, one need only to take refuge in the divine law and confess in order to be immediately cured (1.6b; Bokenkamp 1997, 216–217)
These ideas of healing were found not only among the southern Celestial Masters, for even in the north we find highly similar notions. Kou Qianzhi’s (365–448) so-called “New Code,” the Laojun yinsong jiejing (Scripture of Recited Precepts of Lord Lao, HY 783), has a relevant rule:
Confession of Sins and Awareness of Self in the Taiping jing 41
If among the people of the Way there is sickness or illness, let it be announced to every home. The Master shall first command the people to light the incense fire. Then the Master from inside the chamber of tranquility, and the people on the outside, facing toward the west with their hair unbound, striking their heads to the ground, shall confess and unburden their sins and transgressions. (16a; Mather 1979, 117) After the fifth century, the texts begin to change as they increasingly reflect the influence of the Buddhist practice of chanhui, or “penitence and regret” (see Kuo 1994), one example being the sixth-century Zhengyi weiyi jing (Scripture of Dignified Observances of Orthodox Unity, HY 790), which contains two entries using the term in the description of formal confessions.
Ofuchi Ninji, in his recent analysis of the early Daoist practice of confession, has come to characterize it by six points:
(1) Confession was directly related to sickness, which was thought to be caused by sins.
(2) This view in turn was based on the notion that human behavior was supervised and evaluated according to its good and bad qualities by a supernatural administration of gods and spirits; this concept was significantly different from that held commonly in pre-Qin times and documented in texts like the Mozi.
(3) Confessions also contained a traditional Confucian element in that penitents had to kowtow to the gods and beg for the forgiveness of their sins.
(4) The formalities took place in a separate meditation hut or other isolated place, like the chamber of tranquility, or oratory.
(5) Confessing sins in order to heal diseases had the effect of lightening the penitents’ burdens and making them feel lighter; this was completed by the religious purification of “talisman water” ( fushui), which enhanced the psychological effect of the confession.
(6) Other religions, especially Christianity and Buddhism, have similar practices of formal confession. Compared with these, the Daoist ones appear less based on a deep inner feeling of guilt; they are, it seems, a more utilitarian and this-worldly measure of concrete, practical relief (Ofuchi 1991, 87, 92–93, 163).
Unlike Ofuchi Ninji, who denies any Buddhist influence on the early Daoist practice, Fukui Kojun has argued that it reflected a great degree of similarity (1987a, 44; 1987b, 91). Then again, Yamada Toshiaki, in his discussion of Daoist zhai rituals, argues that in their development from Han-dynasty purification rites to the full-blown Rites of
42
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Mud and Soot ( tutan zhai) in the fifth century, formal confessions and the breast-beating of the Way of Great Peace were integrated. As the rite was expanded to include the purification of both body and mind, the possibility to express one’s shouldering of sins through self-punishing acts came to be of increasing importance (Yamada 1994).
Most recently, Yoshikawa Tadao has studied the oratory, or chamber of tranquility ( jingshi ), as the concrete setting of formal confessions, describing its origins and development under both Daoist and Buddhist aspects in some detail. He has also successfully elucidated the consciousness of sin that prevailed among the medieval Chinese (see Yoshikawa 1998; also 1987; 1992; 1994).
Following in the footsteps of these eminent scholars and their research, in this chapter I would like to discuss the setting and special characteristics of early Daoist confessions, examining them particularly in regard to the fifth and sixth points made by Ofuchi and focusing on their practice as undertaken in the Way of Great Peace and as documented in the Taiping jing (Scripture of Great Peace).
The Taiping jing has come down to us in only one edition, that contained in the Ming-dynasty Daoist canon, which consists of fifty-seven scrolls. As mentioned in the Buddhist text Mouzi lihuolun (Mouzi’s Examination of Doubts) of the second or third centuries c.e., the original Taiping jing of the Way of Great Peace had 170 scrolls, which means that a good two-thirds of the text is lost. As a result, there are many doubts regarding the integrity of the transmitted text, which scholars have tried to resolve in various ways.
Among Japanese scholars, the first to take up the issue was Fukui Kojun. He suggests that the transmitted Taiping jing was first compiled in the Yuan dynasty on the basis of a text called Taiping dongji jing (Scripture the Pervasive Ultimate of Great Peace) in 170 scrolls, which in turn was put together in the Six Dynasties and survived throughout the Tang and Song (see Fukui 1936; 1937). In contrast, Yoshioka Yoshitoyo, who focused his examination on the Dunhuang fragments of the text (found in S. 4226), concludes that our Taiping jing is the remnant of a version created under the Chen emperor Xuandi (r. 658–682), which conflated the Taiping dongji jing and the surviving fragments of the ancient text (1970, 150). Yamada Toshiaki, next, follows Yoshioka and elucidates the different versions more clearly in a study of the meditation technique of “guarding the One” (1999, 27–48). In addition, Ofuchi Ninji has shown convincingly that our Taiping jing contains some content that could not have been written by men of the late Six Dynasties (1957); the same point is also made by the Chinese scholar
Confession of Sins and Awareness of Self in the Taiping jing 43
Wang Ming, who furthermore provides evidence that the text’s language in many instances reflects Han-dynasty rather than later usage (1984, 183–200).3 To conclude, we may say that the transmitted Taiping jing, which forms the basis of my study, contains information and material that go back to the ancient movement and show the early Daoists’ ideas of self and world.
The following study, then, is based on an interest not only in the early history of Daoism, but more generally in the phenomenon of traditional Chinese autobiography. The latter was characterized by Kawai Kozo as follows:
Autobiography in traditional Europe developed from the regret of personal misdeeds and the confession of sins, from formulating the wrongs one had done and thus from the reflection of the difference between one’s former (good) self and one’s recent (
sinful) self. This kind of elementary examination of the self lies at the root first of “spiritual self-advancement,” then of European autobiography. In China, in contrast, there was in general no comparable regret of one’s deeds and confession of sins, nor was there the formal pronouncement of one’s wrongs.
(Kawai 1996, 5)
In a highly similar argument explaining the absence of self-searching autobiography in China, Wu Peiyi says:
The two major groups of Chinese self-literature we have dwelt upon, spiritual and fictional autobiographies, have one thing in common: an affirmation of the self. The tortuous quest in the first and the exuberant display in the second were both predicated on a fundamental optimism. If the autobiographer finds fault with his life at this or that point, he is usually sustained by hope. There may be occasions for despair, but never harsh self-stricture. (Wu 1990, 207)4
Not entirely convinced by these arguments, I would like to suggest that there exists a deeper dimension of Chinese autobiography that goes back to in-depth self-examinations first practiced among the Daoists of the Way of Great Peace. To appreciate this deeper dimension more fully, it is necessary to understand the ancient texts and their views on their own terms rather than through modern concepts. The following is an attempt in this direction.
Confessions in the Way of Great Peace
In early Daoism, confessions were practiced with the aim of healing illness and disease. How were these two thought to be connected? Why
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should enumerating one’s sins have an impact on one’s physical well-being?
Ofuchi explains the connection in his fifth point by suggesting that confessions served to alleviate feelings of sinfulness and badness, thus relieving the psychological stress that may have caused somatic symptoms and therefore aiding in the healing of illness. I would agree that certainly a psychosomatic element plays a role in the procedure; however, in the ancient sources the understanding of the effect of confessions has nothing to do with stress relief. Rather, they insist that the sins of the past are the immediate cause of illness and disease. How, then, do the sins come to cause illness? What are the ways in which moral behavior affects physical health in traditional Daoist thought?