Heroes, rogues, and religion in a tenth-century Chinese miscellany.

• Author: Halperin, Mark
• Position: Report

In the Tang, Huang Chao [??] (?-884) violated the palace, and [Emperor] Xizong [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (r. 873-88) went to Shu. Minister of State Zhang Jun [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (fl. 890-95) was of humble status and had not yet passed the examinations. (1) At the time he lived at an estate in Yongle in Hezhong. (2) In the hamlet there was a Taoist, who sometimes wore hemp clothes and sometimes wore a feathered cape. One could not be on familiar terms with him. One day Zhang was walking ahead on the village road. From behind there was a cry, "Gentleman Zhang Thirty-four, the troops ahead await you to defeat the bandits." He turned around, and it was this Taoist. The Minister of State said, "I am only a commoner. What basis could I rely on to be able to defeat the bandits?" The Taoist urged him to enter Shu. Just then the chancellor's parents were very ill, and it turned out that he could no travel south. The Taoist then gave him two cinnabar pills and said, "[Have them] take these and for ten years you will be without calamities." The Minister of State took the pills and gave them to his parents. They recovered from what ailed them. Later [Zhang] eventually ascended to be a Chief Bulwark of the State. The Taoist further was never seen again. As for the talk of defeating the bandits, how could it be verified? (3) This narrative contains several features often found in tales relating to Taoists in Chinese medieval anecdotal collections. The Taoist appears as an unusual, solitary, unapproachable figure. The encounter takes place suddenly, without warning, not in a temple or at a home but on the road, and the two parties never meet again. He divines the future of an educated man and offers healing prescriptions that turn out to be efficacious. By dint of his modesty and filial piety, as well as his assistance in the rebellion's suppression and later in his service at the court of Tang Zhaozong (r. 889-904), the beneficiary proves worthy of such attention, despite the anecdotalist's final note of skepticism. The Taoist also affirms the imperial order, then gravely imperiled by the Huang Chao Rebellion (874-84).

What makes this story especially notable is its source, the Beimeng suoyan [??], or Sundry events from the north of Yunmeng, a miscellany completed by the literatus Sun Guangxian [??] (896-968) in the 960s. As an example of biji [??], or "brushed notes," the work exhibits the rich variety typical of the genre. We learn about the personalities of various Tang emperors, as well as about methods for extracting terrapin urine. Two features in particular distinguish this collection. First, the Beimeng suoyuan belongs to the tenth century, a period of remarkable literary obscurity, especially when compared with the glittering talents and productivity of the ninth and eleventh centuries. At its present size of roughly twenty-five chapters, Sun's volume numbers among the largest extant works composed in the tenth century by a single author who did not belong to the Buddhist or Taoist clergies, and ranks as the largest miscellany of its time. (4) Second, despite Sun's conventional note that he wrote his book to transmit the "enduring fine reputations of the court and countryside" of the late Tang and Five Dynasties era, (5) the collection as a whole portrays a polity and society in ruins. Feckless monarchs, scheming officials, brutal warlords, and presumptuous scions of noble families serve as Sun's main dramatis personae, who combine to produce a world of constant insecurity, corruption, gratuitous violence, and sudden death. In a manner matched by few works, the Beimeng suoyan reflects the troubled atmosphere of China's second, uncelebrated era of disunion.

Amid this grim tableau, the Zhang Jun anecdote above, with its portrayal of virtue and efficacy, offers a distinct contrast. (6) Other tales of success in Sun's collection involve the supernatural and do so to a striking degree. In this article I examine anecdotes in the Beimeng suoyan that deal with religious specialists and religion, namely Taoists, Buddhists, and local cults. Far from being otherworldly, reclusive figures, clergy and spirits are presented in these stories as deeply engaged in secular society. Moreover, although diversity and randomness characterize biji as a genre, Sun Guangxian employs clear, albeit unarticulated, principles of selection regarding what must have amounted to a multitude of stories circulating in his time. In particular, we find a clear polarity, produced, one can speculate, from considerable reflection concerning those claiming access to the divine and who might use that access to influence the human world. First, Buddhists reflect the corruption of the age and deserve little more than contempt. Second, and perhaps more notably, Taoists and local spirits prove both powerful and virtuous, constitute some of the most admirable figures in the entire collection, and assume almost the mantle of culture heroes in a distressed age. Sun's veneration cannot be considered as "piety" in the conventional sense; no anecdote presents him as worshiping deities or following any religious regimen in his daily life. Rather, he casts religious figures (except Buddhists), among the larger community of elites that wielded power in medieval China, as authorities of exceptional virtue.

1. THE AUTHOR AND HIS WORK

   Although sources regarding his biography remain scarce, Sun Guangxian led perhaps as successful a life as a literatus might hope for in the turmoil of the final decades of medieval China. (7) He grew up in a Sichuan farming family at the end of the Tang and was known to be fond of study. In the Former Shu kingdom (907-925) he served as administrative assistant in Lingzhou, in western Sichuan. When that regime fell to the Later Tang in 925, Sun fled to the statelet of Jingnan (907-963), headquartered near present-day Wuhan, and soon received a position as chief secretary. Sun enjoyed a long career in Jingnan, rising to the positions of acting director of the palace library and censor-in-chief. In 963 he urged the final Jingnan monarch to capitulate to Song forces, and a grateful Song Taizu (r. 960-976) made him governor of Huangzhou. The court later summoned Sun to serve at the capital as an academician, but he died before assuming the post.

   Known as an erudite scholar and energetic bibliophile, Sun's own literary corpus at one time amounted to over one hundred fascicles, but apart from some works of verse, only the Beimeng suoyan now survives. According to Sun's preface, the collection originally comprised thirty fascicles, and the two major Southern Song bibliographies concur. In the early fourteenth century, the bibliography section of the encyclopedia Wenxian tongkao [??] reported that the collection contained only twenty fascicles, and every subsequent bibliography has followed suit. The earliest printed versions of the work date from the Ming Wanli (1573-1619) period. At the end of the Qing dynasty, another printed edition culled entries attributed to the Beimeng suoyan from other collections, principally the tenth-century Taiping guangji [??], and appended a four-fascicle supplement of the twenty-fascicle edition. Recent scholars have found elsewhere thirty-five entries.

   In general, posterity has looked favorably on Sun's miscellany. In the Taiping guangji, the Beimeng suoyan ranks as one of the most oft-cited sources, with 240 entries. Sima Guang [??] (1019-1086) used it in the composition of the Zizhi tongjian [??], and the editors of the eighteenth-century Siku quanshu [??], while faulting its loose organization and diverse selection of material, found it a worthy historical source. Modern scholars have used the work to study subjects as diverse as the deadly early tenth-century political infighting as well as the origins of the Wenchang [??] cult. The most significant recent work has come from Fang Rui, who has written several meticulous textual studies devoted to Sun and his collection. (8)

   Before taking up the narratives involving religion, we must underscore the distinctiveness of Sun's opus. Few collections evince more vividly and at such length the decline of the medieval order. Space does not permit a full discussion of this material, but the two entries below offer a sampling of its sanguinary character:

   During the Tang Xianzong reign (860-74), Pang Xun rebelled in Xuzhou. At the time Cui Yong (d. 869) commanded Hezhou. He surrendered to Xun and was taken to Pengmen. Yong excelled at conversation and obeyed [Xun] with deferential words, hoping to ease his misfortune. Xun also treated him extremely generously. [Yong's] son was young and exceptional. Through drinking, gambling, and tea parties, he himself was able to get close to [Xun], and there was no distance or suspicion. Because [Yong] had lost his authority to a bandit, he was distressed about his family. He said to his son, "You excel at approaching him. If you get an opportunity, could you assassinate him? Everyone has a death; if we can only achieve [it on] the right occasion, what regrets could we have?" His son undertook the order and secretly concealed a sharp knife. [In the event], his expression suddenly changed and his body trembled. Xun suspected a plot and thus had his person searched, finding the dagger there. Then he ordered [the son] boiled. The following day, he summoned Yong to come to dinner. After they had finished, he asked Yong, "Was the meat good?" [Yong] replied, "I believe the flavor was delicate and filling." Xun said, "This was none other than the meat of a worthy gentleman." He then ordered [Yong] killed. (9) Emperor Mingzong (r. 926-933) greatly detested material greed. The Dengzhou capital liaison representative Tao Qi was convicted by the Neixiang county magistrate Cheng Guiren of levying tax surcharges. [The court] demoted him to be Lanzhou vice-prefect. Chief Secretary Wang Weiji seized court rescripts to...