Nonhuman Self-cultivators in Early Medieval China - Re-reading a Story Type
At a Glance
Section titled “At a Glance”| Metadata | Details |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 2023-09-14 |
| Journal | Early Medieval China |
| Authors | Robert Ford Campany |
| Institutions | Vanderbilt University |
Abstract
Section titled “Abstract”AbstractHistorians of literature are well acquainted with early medieval stories of shapeshifting animals and other beings seducing unsuspecting men and women. This paper re-reads such narratives from the shapeshifters’ point of view. This requires escaping the customary disciplinary boundaries and viewing these creatures’ depictions against the backdrop of concurrently circulating “arts of the bedchamber” (fangzhong zhi shu 房中之術), one of several classes of techniques for “nurturing life” (yangsheng 養生). I argue that the shapeshifters’ actions make sense when understood within the framework of this mode of self-cultivation. This in turn implies a view of nonhumans as selves striving to realize aims—among them health, longevity, the acquisition of enhanced capabilities, and, ultimately, metamorphosis into higher species on the ladder of beings. The tales emerged, then, in a culture to some extent shaped by a worldview of the sort often termed “animistic,” one that saw nonhuman beings as co-participants with humans in self-transformational projects grounded in a common cosmology.Keywords: animismshapeshiftersself-cultivationbedchamber artsanecdotal literature AcknowledgmentsMy thanks to participants in the Harvard-Yale symposium “The Margins of the Human in Medieval China” (spring 2022), organized by Lucas Bender and Xiaofei Tian, and the 14th Annual Chinese Medieval Studies Workshop hosted by Wendy Swartz at Rutgers University and sponsored by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation; Xiaofei Tian; and an anonymous reviewer for their comments. This paper represents an early piece of a larger research project.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Small Gods (London: Gollancz, 1992), 6.2 How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 73-74.3 Zhuangzi jijie 莊子集解, ed. Wang Xianqian 王先謙 and Liu Wu 劉武 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1987), 41-42, adapting the translations in A. C. Graham, Chuang-tzu: The Inner Chapters (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981), 72-73, and Burton Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 63-65.4 Xinji Soushen ji xinji Soushen houji 新輯搜神記新輯搜神後記, comp. Li Jianguo 李劍國, 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2007), 2:6.535-36. Space limitations preclude listing all the loci where this and similar tales are attested (often with interesting variant readings) in Tang and Song anthologies. Stories featuring foxes are relatively well known, but other animal species as well as insects, spiders, and even household objects also figure in stories of this type, as we will see. As Roel Sterckx states, “Fox demons and fox possession were known at least as early as the third century B.C.E.” Sterckx, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002], 256n111; see also 35. On early recipes for countering fox possession, see Donald Harper, Early Chinese Medical Literature: The Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts (London and New York: Kegan Paul, 1998; hereafter ECML), 262, 264. For partial listings of pre-Tang anecdotes involving enspirited creatures, see Robert Ford Campany, Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996; hereafter SW), 254.5 See Sherry B. Ortner, “Patterns of History: Cultural Schemas in the Foundings of Sherpa Religious Institutions,” in Culture Through Time: Anthropological Approaches, ed. Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 60-63.6 W. Allyn Rickett, Guanzi: Political, Economic, and Philosophical Essays from Early China, Vol. 1, rev. ed. (Boston: Cheng and Tsui, 2001), 14. Guanzi was assembled around 26 BCE by Liu Xiang 劉向 (79-8 BCE) from older materials. See W. Allyn Rickett, “Kuan tzu,” in Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide, ed. Michael Loewe (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1993), 244-51; idem, Guanzi, 3-39; and Piet van der Loon, “On the Transmission of Kuan-tzu,” T’oung Pao 41 (1952): 357-93. On the “Neiye” in relation to contemporaneous debates, see A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1989), 100-5, and Michael J. Puett, To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002), 109-21.7 Li Xiangfeng 黎翔鳳 and Liang Yunhua 梁運華, eds., Guanzi jiaozhu 管子校注 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2004), 931, consulting Rickett, Guanzi: Political, Economic, and Philosophical Essays from Early China: A Study and Translation by W. Allyn Rickett, vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 39; Graham, Disputers, 101; Puett, To Become a God, 110; and Harold D. Roth, Original Dao: Inward Trainings and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 46.8 Paul W. Kroll, A Student’s Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 216; Manfred Porkert, The Theoretical Foundations of Chinese Medicine (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974), 176.9 Du Guangting, Yongcheng jixian lu 墉城集仙錄, DZ 783, 1.5b-6a. Texts in the Ming Daoist canon, Zhengtong daozang 正統道藏, are cited as DZ and by the number assigned them in Kristofer M. Schipper and Franciscus Verellen, eds., The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).10 Du, Yongcheng, DZ 783, 1.5b-6a.11 Ge Hong, Baopuzi neipian jiaoshi 抱朴子內篇校釋, collated by Wang Ming 王明, 2nd ed. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1985; hereafter NP), 114. A seminal recent study of this ubiquitous notion is Michael Stanley-Baker, “Qi 氣: A Means for Cohering Natural Knowledge,” in Vivienne Lo and Michael Stanley-Baker, eds., Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine (London: Routledge, 2022), 23-50.12 Puett, To Become a God, is a compelling study of this discourse of self-divinization from the Shang through the Western Han.13 Or perhaps, in some cases, accumulated essence forms spirit, and metamorphosis at will is one of the capabilities of spirits.14 Lu Xun 魯迅, comp., Gu xiaoshuo gouchen 古小說鉤沈 (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1954; hereafter LX), 380. On Xuanzhong ji, see SW, 93, and Robert Ford Campany, A Garden of Marvels: Tales of Wonder from Early Medieval China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015), 74-75.15 Shuyi ji, in Han Wei congshu 漢魏叢書, comp. Cheng Rong 程榮 (n.p., 1592), 1.19b. The identification of jue 玃 is uncertain; see Kroll, Student’s Dictionary, 231. On Ren Fang and his Shuyi ji, see SW, 83-85; Garden, 58-60; David R. Knechtges and Taiping Chang, eds., Ancient and Medieval Chinese Literature: A Reference Guide (Leiden: Brill, 2010-2014; hereafter AMCL), 751-58.16 See Stephen Durrant, Wai-yee Lee, and David Schaberg, trans. and intro., Zuo Tradition/Zuozhuan 左傳: Commentary on the “Spring and Autumn Annals,” 3 vols. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016), 1:600-1, and the discussion in SW, 103-4.17 Bill Brown, “Thing Theory,” Critical Inquiry 28.1 (2001): 4.18 Overviews of yangsheng practices include “Methods of ‘Nourishing the Vital Principle’ in the Ancient Taoist Religion,” in Henri Maspero, Taoism and Chinese Religion, trans. Frank A. Kiernan (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981), 441-554; Sakade Yoshinobu坂出祥伸, ed., Chūgoku kodai yōsei shisō no sōgōteki kenkyū 中國古代養生思想の総合的研究 (Tokyo: Hirakawa shuppansha, 1988); idem, “Changsheng shu 长生术,” in Daojiao 道教, ed. Fukui Kōjun 福井康順 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1990), 1:195-231; idem, “Daoism and the Dunhuang Regimen Texts,” in Medieval Chinese Medicine: The Dunhuang Medical Manuscripts, ed. Vivienne Lo and Christopher Cullen (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2005), 278-90; ECML, 112-47; Stephan Stein, Zwischen Heil und Heilung: Zur frühen Tradition des Yangsheng in China (Helzen: Medizinisch Literarische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1999); and Livia Kohn and Yoshinobu Sakade, eds., Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques (Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1989). On Dunhuang manuscripts, see Catherine Despeux, “Hygiène de vie et longévité à Dunhuang,” in Médecine, religion et société dans la Chine médiévale: Étude de manuscrits chinois de Dunhuang et de Turfan, ed. Catherine Despeux (Paris: Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, 2010), 769-870.19 Rather than being restricted to Daoist transmission lineages, yangsheng methods and writings circulated widely, and many Daoist texts either condemned such methods outright or selectively subordinated them to self-declaredly higher regimens or goals. Nevertheless, the Daoist canon is an important repository of yangsheng works. Synopses may be found in Schipper and Verellen, eds., The Taoist Canon, 92-99 and 344-77.20 For fuqi, see Fuqi jingyi lun 服氣精義論 (DZ 830), a comprehensive treatise based on centuries of precedent that was written by Sima Chengzhen 司馬承禎 (647-735), translated and studied in Ute Engelhardt, Die klassische Tradition der Qi-Übungen (Qigong): Eine Darstellung anhand des Tang-zeitlichen Textes Fuqi jingyi lun von Sima Chengzhen (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1987). For the other types of breathing techniques, see Ute Engelhardt, “Qi for Life: Longevity in the Tang,” in Livia Kohn and Yoshinobu Sakade, eds., Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques (Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1989), 263-96; Stephen Eskildsen, Asceticism in Early Taoist Religion (Albany: State University of New York, 1998), 43-68; and Robert Ford Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth: A Translation and Study of Ge Hong’s Traditions of Divine Transcendents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002; hereafter TL), 18-21, 133, 279, 311, 365n23.21 See Catherine Despeux, “Gymnastics: The Ancient Tradition,” in Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques, ed. Livia Kohn and Yoshinobu Sakade (Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1989), 225-61; Vivienne Lo, “Huangdi Hama jing (Yellow Emperor’s Toad Canon),” Asia Major 14.2 (2001): 61-100; ECML, 310-27; and TL, 82, 173-75, 178, 182-83, 283, 333.22 Gu 穀 in such contexts rarely means “grains” taken narrowly but is a synecdoche for processed foods. See Ute Engelhardt, “Dietetics in Tang China and the First Extant Works on Materia Dietetica,” in Innovation in Chinese Medicine, ed. Elisabeth Hsu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 173-91; and Robert Ford Campany, Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009), 62-87.23 See the parallel passages from these two manuals, both of which were preserved in chapter 28 of Tamba Yasuyori’s Ishinpō 醫心方 (984) and are anthologized in Li Ling 李零, Zhongguo fangshu kao 中國方術考, rev. ed. (Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe, 2000; hereafter ZGFSK), 502; translated in Art of the Bedchamber: The Chinese Sexual Yoga Classics Including Women’s Solo Meditation Texts, trans. Douglas Wile (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 85.24 In addition to Wile’s Art of the Bedchamber, other studies include Donald Harper, “The Sexual Arts of Ancient China as Described in a Manuscript of the Second Century BC,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47.2 (1987): 539-93; idem, “The Bellows Analogy in Laozi V and Warring States Macrobiotic Hygiene,” Early China 20 (1995): 381-91; ECML, 135-40, 412-22; ZGFSK, 382-433, 469-540; Li Ling 李零, Zhongguo fangshu xukao 中國方術續考 (Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe, 2000), 350-93; Li Ling and Keith McMahon, “The Contents and Terminology of the Mawangdui Texts on the Arts of the Bedchamber,” Early China 17 (1992): 145-85; Yan Shanzhao 嚴善炤, Gudai fangzhong shu de xingcheng yu fazhan: Zhongguo gu you jingshen shi 古代房中術的形成與發展: 中國固有精神史 (Taipei: Xuesheng shuju, 2007); Zhu Yueli 朱越利, “Mawangdui boshu fangzhong shu de lilun yiju 馬王堆帛書房中術的理論依據,” in A Daoist Florilegium, ed. Lee Cheuk Yin 李焯然 and Chan Man Sing 陳萬成 (Hong Kong: Shangwu yinshuguan, 2002), 8-51; Paul Goldin, “The Cultural and Religious Background of Sexual Vampirism in Ancient China,” Theology and Sexuality 12.3 (2006): 286-308; Dominic Steavu, “Buddhism, Medicine, and the Affairs of the Heart: Āyurvedic Potency Therapy and the Reappraisal of Aphrodisiacs in Medieval Chinese Sources,” East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 45 (2017): 9-48; and TL, 30-31, 81, 172-86, 416-21. TL 172-86 and 416-21 translate and analyze the fourth-century Shenxian zhuan 神仙傳 hagiography of Pengzu 彭祖, which dispenses much bedchamber-arts instruction. Another such figure was Master Rongcheng 容成公, who was the subject of a Liexian zhuan 列仙傳 hagiography associating him with sexual arts (see TL, 358-59), who appears in Mawangdui manuscripts as a teacher of such methods (ECML, 393-99), and whose name was attached to a now-lost bedchamber manual listed in the Han shu bibliographic catalogue (ECML, 393n1).25 This becomes explicit in texts preserved in the Ishinpō; see for example the passages in Art of the Bedchamber, 102. But the same idea is already implicit in the Mawangdui manuscripts (see ECML, 140, 333).26 Art of the Bedchamber, 7.27 ECML, 137.28 See, for example, the passages from Yufang mijue anthologized in ZGFSK, 510, and translated in Art of the Bedchamber, 102.29 ZGFSK, 501, and Art of the Bedchamber, 85.30 See, for example, the passage from Sunü jing preserved in Ishinpō, anthologized in ZGFSK, 501-2, and translated in Art of the Bedchamber, 85.31 See, for example, the passage in Art of the Bedchamber, 103 and 252n17. Incidentally, although this paper assumes that the sexual relations in question were heterosexual unless otherwise indicated, there was certainly the potential for gender fluidity, especially on the part of shapeshifters.32 See the Yufang mijue passage anthologized in ZGFSK, 515. Art of the Bedchamber, 102, and Goldin, “Sexual Vampirism,” 287, both miss the force of sun 損 in sun bing 損病, which signals that it is because of their loss of qi and essence that they fell ill.33 Liexian zhuan, DZ 294, 2.14a-b; Kaltenmark, Lie-sien tchouan, 180-83. The transcendent characterizes her practice as a dao dao 盜道; see Kaltenmark, 182-83n3 on the multiple valences of this term.34 Ge Hong does, however, mention the need for oral instructions to supplement the written texts. NP, 129.35 Harper emphasizes that in the social circles in which the Mawangdui and Zhangjiashan manuscripts circulated, yangsheng techniques, including sexual ones, were regarded as “normal” (Early Chinese Medical Literature, 147).36 See Donald Harper, “La littérature sur la sexualité à Dunhuang,” in Médecine, religion et société dans la Chine médiévale, ed. Despeux, 871-98, and Sumiyo Umekawa, “Tiandi yinyang jiaohuang dalefu and the Art of the Bedchamber,” in Medieval Chinese Medicine: The Dunhuang Medical Manuscripts, ed. Vivienne Lo and Christopher Cullen (London: Routledge Curzon, 2005), 252-77.37 See, for example, TL 81, 95, 178-79, 183-85, 205, 244, 355, 358-59, 390, 400, and 534-35.38 See Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 43-46, 284-85, 330-31; Gil Raz, The Emergence of Daoism: Creation of Tradition (London: Routledge, 2012), 177-209; idem, “The Way of the Yellow and the Red: Re-examining the Sexual Initiation Rite of Celestial Master Daoism,” Nan Nü 10 (2008): 90, 98-99, 119; Terry F. Kleeman, Celestial Masters: History and Ritual in Early Daoist Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016), 101-4, 171-74; and Jinhua Jia, “The Identity of Tang Daoist Priestesses,” in Gendering Chinese Religion: Subject, Identity, and Body, ed. Jinhua Jia, Xiaofei Kang, and Ping Yao (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2014), 104-12.39 XJSSJ, 325-26.40 In the two earliest collections of transcendents’ 仙人 hagiographies alone, Liexian zhuan and Shenxian zhuan, there are many dozens of examples. For two particularly striking cases see TL, 170-71 and whose stories are in the of the Liang zhuan are with similar In one there even a when a shapeshifting his a of and it was a See zhuan, in (Tokyo: Brown, “Thing Theory,” are social are and the (London: For a of a see and Anthropology supplement trans. in Garden, is attested in which a nonhuman and a an or and even See, for example, the Soushen ji involving Wang and a and zhuan translated in Garden, the is and of a who to a into in his this see Campany, from the by to his but because the to lu in trans. and Early Medieval Chinese Tales of the and the (New York: Columbia University Press, stories of metamorphosis or beyond the two already Soushen ji this from the in in congshu ed. Yan (Taipei: yinshuguan, by the number by the of the in that the in trans. Garden, trans. Garden, with in lu and as the as the sexual or a I as in we see a of nonhumans their actions to the Soushen houji Soushen houji trans. Garden, zhuan trans. in “The Social of in and the in as it a species from the Kroll, Student’s Dictionary, 287, trans. Garden, and as 294, See also “The and Religious a Medieval Chinese Cultural Journal of the stories also mention that the in the to be a or of See Sterckx, The Animal and the Wang on to however, that some are by to to be See Wang des et (Paris: NP, and similar passages are in Li yu yu de (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2010), include Soushen ji stories in XJSSJ, and a Soushen houji in lu stories in 294, and a zhuan in See, for example, Kaltenmark, Lie-sien tchouan, and TL, The same be of the of are with of or to thanks to their See Kaltenmark, Lie-sien tchouan, and TL, zhuan trans. Garden, The appears in one of the multiple lu Xuanzhong ji in As Xiaofei of cases of objects such as and to the and are to the of the Tian, “The Cultural of in China,” Journal of the I that it is because of this with their that objects were of some of their qi and essence to Tian, of Another involving a and two or appears in lu and is in Tian, of stories as their forms to of or To example, Yufang mijue as preserved in Ishinpō 28 the essence to Pengzu essence is the the the and to the the and although one one trans. in Art of the Bedchamber, trans. Garden, lu trans. Garden, lu trans. and in trans. Garden, Soushen houji trans. Garden, attested in several medieval On this see SW, and Garden, are the of in other anecdotes to or their to example, from Soushen houji (see trans. Garden, from lu (see trans. and See Campany, Making and On see and of and in Early Medieval China,” Journal of Chinese (2001): and TL, In of his is part of the of the of was a anonymous the of the in Liexian zhuan and in Ge Hong’s writings which see Campany, Making with to an animal as to to and is that animals and are two Transcendents are to a or and Campany, Making and but this is because they are in the of into are and animals are already is to is that in Zhuangzi animals are as of in to the of for sur 26 this is a See the of listings in Song kao (Beijing: Renmin by in through the On these see SW, and Garden, zhi translated and studied in The Translation 1987). On and Liu see and zhi the lu in and zhi trans. in zhi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, On the of and to of see Campany, Making The earliest of which I are two passages in in the century BCE) and Ge Hong’s Baopuzi but than a other in hagiographies of preserved in the Daoist On their as in Han for example, and of in Han 41 is that the and all in texts in the Daoist canon as of of as an anonymous the practices were on some which a for In the third chapter of his Baopuzi for example, Ge Hong that some classes of practice were based on of see NP, and bedchamber and nonhuman animal “The Social of and “The Social of Tian, “The Cultural of Robert Ford Campany, The Chinese (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center J. J. M. de The Religious of China, vol. (Leiden: Brill, The Religious of China, vol. (Leiden: Brill, and the of in The of in the Human and ed. George University Press, 2005), this on a type, stories are of the sort of for the of nonhumans the earliest in that Chinese a and they that a are of from a point of but they are assigned to as even as who and when with a “The in Chinese Journal of Asian Studies For studies of and for example, and eds., with New on (New York: Columbia University Press, in the and New A Historical University of Press, and and eds., and and (London: Routledge, A of University Press, 2010), How Think: For (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Campany, The Chinese many by beings of For discussion of the of and a of it to early medieval see Campany, The Chinese On is in this idea see How Forests and and The Anthropological (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, the view of some as are known to be because they or is their in a of to well that is For on this see Campany, The Chinese Zhuangzi consulting Watson, Complete Works of Chuang and Graham, On as see and How Campany, and a a and a an History of Chinese in the of the Asian Studies for ed. Paul W. and A. (Leiden: Brill, and Campany, The Chinese A. and in of the ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, See also the discussion in Campany, The Chinese Philosophical ed., trans. M. (New York: For a recent to see How Animal the (New York: and Studies of Annual of Anthropology 28 See Keith and in Early Medieval in Through Chinese History: to ed. Roel Sterckx, and (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Roel Sterckx, and the Animal in Early China,” & and SW, On as see Campany, The Chinese on Ford Ford is of Asian Studies at in the of early medieval Chinese and in the study of is the of Strange Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth: A Translation and Study of Ge Hong’s Traditions of Divine Transcendents Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China The Chinese and and in China, other works.