The Lady of Linshui Pacifies Demons: A Seventeenth-Century Novel.

• Author: Hegel, Robert E.

The Lady of Linshui Pacifies Demons: A Seventeenth-Century Novel Translated by KRISTIN INGRID FRYKLUND; introduction by MARK EDWARD LEWIS and BRIGITTE BAPTANDIER. Seattle: UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS, 2021. Pp. xxiv + 280. $35.

The Lady of Linshui Pacifies Demons narrates the development and the miraculous adventures of the goddess Chen Jinggu [phrase omitted] , the "Lady of Linshui" [phrase omitted] , me central figure in cults of Southeastern China and overseas Chinese in insular Southeast Asia. Her primary role is protecting expectant mothers, women in childbirth, new babies, and small children from disease in the area under her protection. As Mark Edward Lewis and Brigitte Baptandier point out in their excellent introduction: "Her story can be read as a dramatic narrative, as a rich source for religious history, and as a meditation on the position of women in the society of late imperial China." (p. xi)

Like other figures in traditional Chinese religions, Chen Jinggu is related to both Daoism and Buddhism in varying degrees. But as Brigitte Baptandier points out in her monograph on the Chen Jinggu cult, The Lady of Linshui: A Chinese Female Cult (tr. Kristin Ingrid Fryklund [Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2008], p. 2.), this goddess is particularly identified with the former because of the inherent search for "the feminine" in Daoist practice--despite the pervasiveness of masculine authority figures and male-oriented scriptures. Baptandier is at pains to emphasize Chen Jinggu's associations with the Daoist Zhengyi [phrase omitted] --sect, although like other traditional Chinese deities, the Lady of Linshui draws upon a variety of religious traditions and practices in her protective roles.

The story of Chen Jinggu is narrated here against the historical background of the Kingdom of Min (909-945), her point of origin, although early sources date her birth in the eighth century, during the Tang dynasty. She was bom from a drop of blood from the finger of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Guanyin [phrase omitted] . At a young age she flees her natal home to avoid marriage, to return three years later only to heal her parents, who had been beaten nearly to death when she escaped. While away, she develops her magical powers under the tutelage of Xu Zhenjun [phrase omitted] the mythic Mount Lii [phrase omitted] school of Daoism. Her return home occasions a forced marriage. She dies at the age of twenty-four as predicted by her mentor, in part because she had declined to learn the magical arts of fetus, infant, and mother protection from her tutor. More immediately, she dies after removing a fetus from her own womb to facilitate performing a rain-making ritual that would guarantee the fertility of her community; a snake demon obtains the fetus and eats it, insuring both its death and that of its mother. Chen Jinggu was canonized in 1241; as a deity, she specializes in those protective and curative arts that she had scorned during her lifetime.

Chen Jinggu's adventures are paralleled and, to an extent, generated by those of her nemesis, the White Snake (Bai she [phrase omitted] ). Born at the same time as Linshui, the snake was a transformation of a lock of the bodhisattva Guanyin's white hair. Both White Snake and Chen Jinggu were created to fulfill a vow made by...