Der Orden des Sima Chengzhen und des Wang Ziqiao. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Shangqing-Daoismus in den Tiantai-Bergen by Thomas Jülch (review)

Abstract

110 Journal of Chinese Religions secular–religious dichotomy? Does the case of The Great Ming Code not demonstrate that the political and the religious (that is, acknowledgment of, and references to, superhuman forces) were intertwined? Should the starting point of a “China-centered Chinese history” (p. 178) not be the recognition that it is often the terms of analysis that are suspect? After all, how should we understand the significance of The Great Ming Code? One promising approach, as Jiang has shown from time to time, is diachronic. The idea of the Mandate of Heaven was of course not new. Neither, it would appear, was the use of law as a transformational tool. One obvious question then is to what extent was the The Great Ming Code a departure from its predecessors. Was the legal cosmology reflected in the Code significantly different from earlier (or later) periods? For students interested in these and other questions concerning Chinese law or religion in the late imperial period, Jiang’s learned study should be an obvious starting point. LEO K. SHIN, University of British Columbia Der Orden des Sima Chengzhen und des Wang Ziqiao. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Shangqing-Daoismus in den Tiantai-Bergen THOMAS JÜLCH. München: Herbert Utz Verlag, 2011. v, 145 pages. ISBN 9783 -8316-4083-6. €49.00 hardcover. Mao Shan 茅山, “Mao’s Mountain,” in Jiangsu was the center of the Daoist Shangqing 上清, or “Highest Clarity,” tradition which “prevailed among the upper classes of China from the fifth until the tenth century.”1 When, in the middle of the eighth century, Li Hanguang 李含光, thirteenth patriarch of this tradition, made Mao Shan his home, “[…] Mao Shan has come to be the [true] begetter of studies of the Dao for all Under Heaven.”2 However, Li’s predecessor Sima Chengzhen 司馬承禎 (647–735) had moved the Shangqing headquarters, as it were, to Tiantai Shan 天台山 in Zhejiang 浙江. Sima Chengzhen, arguably the most important Daoist of the Tang dynasty, played an important role as consultant to Emperor Xuanzong 玄宗 (r. 712–756), bestowing upon the emperor a religious diploma and assisting him in making 1 Edward H. Schafer, Mao Shan in T’ang Times (Boulder 1980), 1. 2 Yan Zhenjing, as quoted in Schafer 1980: 39. Book Reviews 111 Daoism a sort of state religion. Apart from his “official” role, Chengzhen is also credited with the authorship of several important Daoist texts. Thus, any research concerning Sima Chengzhen and his work has to be welcomed. Chengzhen’s move from Mao Shan to Tiantai Shan asks for explanations. Firstly, why had it to be Tiantai and no other mountain? And secondly, how could he legitimize this move? This small book, whose title may be translated as The Order of Sima Chengzhen and Wang Ziqiao – Inquiries Into the History of Tiantai Shan’s Shangqing Daoism, attempts to provide an answer to both questions. It consists of an introduction and three chapters (plus a 1.5 pages conclusion) originally written as separate articles during the work on a Ph.D. thesis on Tang Buddhism3 and put together to form a second monograph. There is no index available. The introduction puts forward the very interesting thesis that Sima Chengzhen created an “ideology whose focus was Wang Ziqiao 王子喬, the central figure among the Perfected [immortals, SPB] of the Shangqing school” (p. 2, my translation). Wangzi Qiao (Jülch transliterates as Wang Ziqiao) alias Wangzi Jin 王子晉 (Jin, Crown Prince [of King Ling of Zhou 周靈王]) had a long pre-Shangqing history (pp. 7–10) before he appeared to Yang Xi 楊 羲, the medium and calligrapher who laid the foundations of the Shangqing tradition. This tradition believed Wangzi Qiao to be the immortal official in charge of the Jinting dong 金庭 洞, the “Golden Court Grotto” located below Tongbo Shan 桐柏山 of Tiantai. It was this connection between Wangzi Qiao and Tiantai that made him so important to Sima Chengzhen that he composed a Wangzi Qiao life, the Shangqing shi dichen tongbo zhenren zhen tuzan 上 清侍帝晨桐柏真人真圖讚 (“True Illustrations with Eulogies of the Director Aide to Imperial Dawn of Shangqing and Perfected of [Mount] Tongbo,” DZ 612, fasc. 334). Why was it Wangzi Qiao who among all the Shangqing immortals attracted Sima Chengzhen’s attention? Precisely because he...