«Небожительница с шапкой из волос»: о жизни и даосских деяниях Тянь Сянь-гу

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of the female spiritual path in the Daoist school of Complete Perfection (Quanzhen). The Quanzhen school was famous for actively attracting followers, regardless of gender and social status. One example of lower-class women who converted to Daoism and became abbess of monasteries was the Daoist Tian Xian-gu. For twenty years, she did not comb or wash her hair, collecting it upstairs in a high hairstyle, for which she received the nickname “Celestial Lady with a Hat of Hair” (Fa-guan Xian-gu). Despite the fact that Tian Xian-gu came from a peasant family, thanks to her eccentric appearance and extraordinary abilities, she was worshiped as a saint and a temple was erected in her honor. In memory of her Daoist deeds, the Stele conferring the highest decree [on the monastic abode of the name] “The Palace of Ultimate Perfection and Endless Longevity” (Chi ci Jizhen wanshou gong bei) was installed in it by the Yuan scholar and writer Zhang Yang-hao (1270–1329) which served as the source of this study. The most important mile­stones of her spiritual path, listed on the stele, such as reclusion, begging, asceticism, purification of the heart, are explained through the poetic and prosaic instructions of the first patriarchs of the Quanzhen school. The ques­tions of improving the Daoists nuns in the point of view of the philosophical, religious, social, historical and cultural ideas that existed in the medieval China and had a great influence on the further evolution of Daoism and its institution of monasticism are studied on the example of the female monastic tradition in XIII–XIV centuries.