New Perspectives on Medieval Daoism

Abstract

New Perspectives on Medieval Daoism Livia Kohn Gender, Power and Talent: The Journey of Daoist Priestesses in Tang China by Jinhua Jia. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. Pp. xxvi + 324. $80.00 cloth, $79.99 e-book. Roaming into the Beyond: Representations of Xian Immortality in Early Medieval Chinese Verse by Zornica Kirkova. Leiden, Nld.: Brill, 2016. Pp. ix + 419. $158.00 cloth, $158.00 e-book. The Writ of the Three Sovereigns: From Local Lore to Institutional Daoism by Dominic Steavu. Hong Kong: Centre for Studies of Daoist Culture, Chinese University of Hong Kong: Chinese University Press; Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019. Pp. xiv + 370. $72.00 cloth, $28.00 paper. Imperiled Destinies: The Daoist Quest for Deliverance in Medieval China by Franciscus Verellen. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2019. Pp. x + 376. $75.00 cloth. The four recent publications by well-established scholars reviewed here open exciting new perspectives on medieval Daoism, building solidly on previous research while moving the field forward toward a better overall understanding. They each come at the religion from different angles and work with various dimensions, centering on different [End Page 455] social strata, religious schools, and other key features. As a result, taken together, they provide a refreshing and most intriguing picture of the wide scope and multifaceted nature of medieval Chinese religiosity. To begin, Franciscus Verellen in Imperiled Destinies: The Daoist Quest for Deliverance in Medieval China describes various concepts of destiny and causation, the impact of moral or sinful actions on life and health, and the ritual methods of redemption and resolution employed by different Daoist schools. He distinguishes four key dimensions in this context: root liability (gen 根), retribution (bao 報), restitution (shu 贖), and release (jie 解). More specifically, root liability designates the “debts and obligations that a sinner could expect to find recorded in his or her ledger of transgressions” (p. 9). It comes in three forms: • “personal responsibility,” the active transgression of taboos, rules, or precepts; • “exposure sustained,” that is, to ritual pollution, tomb plaints, curses, possessions, or negative miasmas; and • “arrears,” such as inherited ancestral evil or karmic debts of former lives. Retribution signals the results of this situation in life, divided into five categories: • “bondage,” incarceration, servitude, or entanglement; • “adversity,” different types of calamities, misfortunes, and suffering; • “loss of vitality,” ill health, decline, and early death; • “indictment,” legal troubles and judgments; and • “relegation,” future suffering in other forms of rebirth, such as the animal realm or the various hells. To remedy this multiplicity of liabilities, Daoists resorted to restitution, “aimed to improve an individual’s destiny in this life and the next, typically in hopes of healing, resolving adversity, or obtaining protection and blessings” (p. 11). Restitution comes in seven different forms, classified as [End Page 456] • “gifts” as ritual offerings and sacrifices; • “reparation” by atonement and repayment; • “renunciation” through retreats and precepts; • “purgation,” or different forms of purification and cleansing; • “supplication” in prayers and rites of petition; • “devotion” through meditation and recitation; plus • “thanksgiving” by offering rewards and recompense. The ultimate results of all these activities, then, was release, matching the type of retribution it resolved: • “liberation” in different forms of extraction, deliverance, succor, and discharge; • “preservation” through protection, healing, and recovery; • “acquittal” by means of pardon and absolution; as well as • ultimate “promotion” to the realms of the blessed by ascension and transcendence. This awesome variety of features plays out differently in the course of Daoist history, outlined in the three parts of Verellen’s book, each consisting of four chapters. Part 1 centers on the early Heavenly Masters (Tianshi 天師) school; part 2 focuses on the reformer Lu Xiujing 陸修靜 (406–477), a representative of both the Heavenly Masters and the Sacred Jewel (Lingbao 靈寶, commonly called Numinous Treasure) schools; and part 3 discusses the integrated synthesis under the Tang. Each part begins by succinctly presenting the core organizational features and conceptual structures of the form of Daoism in question, expertly summarizing previously established facts with ample references to relevant original sources, then moves on to specific visions of liabilities and their resolution. The tendency among the early Heavenly Masters, discussed in part 1, was to see evil and sin as incurred from outside...