Gods of Mount Tai Familiarity and the Material Culture of North China, 1000-2000 9004504257, 9789004504257

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Gods of Mount Tai

Gods of Mount Tai

Leiden – Boston 2022

Familiarity and the Material Culture of North China, 1000–2000

susan naquin

Published by BRILL Plantijnstraat 2 2321 JC Leiden The Netherlands brill.com Design Peter Yeoh, New York Production High Trade BV, Zwolle, The Netherlands Printed in Slovakia ISBN 978-90-04-50425-7 (Hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-51641-0 (E-Book) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Detailed Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data are available on the internet at http://catalog.loc.gov Copyright 2022 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Brill has made all reasonable efforts to trace all right holders to any copyrighted material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful the publisher welcomes communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permission matters. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. Cover images: Front cover: detail of Figure 14.8. Back cover: detail of Figure 5.8.

For Willem A. Grootaers ᇸࠪヘ Thomas Shih-yü Li ଽԒᒶ G. William Skinner ැߗ઩ Jonathan D. Spence ੗࢓ቜ Teachers all

Contents

List of Illustrations

xi

What This Book Is About The Importance of Place The Conventions of Time Scholarship, Sources, and Methods Chinese Religion: Basic Issues Using Material Culture The Power of Familiarity What’s Next

1 2 8 10 17 23 29 31

PART ONE: SETTLING IN

34

2

Mount Tai, 1008 The Great Eastern Peak: Mount Tai A Great Convergence of Propitious Portents, 1008 The Religious Landscape around 1000 Empowerment through Patronage, 1008–1012 Female Gods

37 38 44 49 53 56

3

The Jade Woman and the Eastern Peak, 1000–1350 At the Great Eastern Peak The Jade Woman Shrine Beyond the Mountain Gods on the Move Looking Like Mount Tai’s Jade Woman

61 62 71 75 79 84

4

Master of the Azure Clouds, 1350–1550 Ming Reunification Recasting the Eastern Peak The Jade Woman Transformed Not Alone Becoming a Mother

89 89 90 92 101 106

1

PART TWO: EXPANSION AND ACCEPTANCE

110

5

Beyond Mount Tai, 1400–1640 Moving Beyond the Mountain Homes Away from Home Yuanjun’s “Territory” Building New Homes Seeing Bixia Yuanjun

113 114 119 125 128 130

6

Toward Acceptance, 1400–1640 Spreading the Word Gatekeepers Elite Ambivalence

134 135 141 144

7

Investing in the Mountain, 1550–1630 Imperial Patrons The Incense Tax Empress Dowager Li More Patrons, New Sights Elite Tourism

153 154 158 162 165 170

PART THREE: AT HOME IN NORTH CHINA

176

8

A Pilgrimage Mountain, 1550–1640 The Language of Pilgrimage Going to Mount Tai Expenses Pilgrim Experiences An Iconography for Bixia Yuanjun

179 180 182 187 192 203

9

Looking Like a Mount Tai Niangniang, Ming to Qing Images of Gods The Jade Woman in Stone Dissemination in Clay Assemblages in Wood Outfitting with Iron Material and Cultural Limits

211 212 216 220 230 234 243

10 Prospering Under a New Dynasty, 1600–1900 From Ming to Qing The State and Mount Tai Imperial Patrons, Qing Style Pilgrims and Visitors Into the Nineteenth Century

249 250 252 258 266 273

11 A Place in the Empire, 1650–1900 A Zone of Her Own? A Place in the Empire Neighbors and Rivals Sojourners in the North

283 284 287 298 304

12 At Home in North China, 1650–1900 Satellite Centers Xun County and the Northern Capital In a Sea of Other Gods

312 313 317 323

PART FOUR: BECOMING TOO FAMILIAR? 13 The Bronze Ladies of Mount Tai, 1600–1900 Bronze Statues of the Taishan Niangniang The Bronze Economy Size and Body Age and Gender Time and Space

332 335 336 338 346 361 363

14 Popularization through Pictures, 1800–1930 Pigment, Fabric, and Paper Paintings for Temples and Homes Woodblock Prints of Gods Geographic Diversity Into the North China Pantheon Problems of Identity

373 374 379 391 397 404 408

15 Changing Times for Mount Tai, 1900–2000 Interregnum In the People’s Republic Looking Ahead

415 416 421 432

Appendices Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3

436 437 439

Endnotes Bibliography Acknowledgments Index

442 504 531 534

x

List of Illustrations MAPS Map 0.0 Mount Tai and its sights, with the path to the summit. Map 1.1 Provinces of North China ca. 1650–1850, with their provincial capitals. Map 5.1 Location of Ming dynasty temples to Bixia Yuanjun, by county. Map 11.1 Location of Qing dynasty temples to Bixia Yuanjun, by county. Map 11.2 Temples to the Celestial Empress (Tianhou) in North China, 1650–1850. Map 11.3 Qing dynasty Shanxi-Shaanxi temple-lodges in Henan province. Map 12.1 Bixia Yuanjun temples that were pilgrimage centers during the Qing. Map 14.1 Major woodblock printing centers in early twentieth century North China. GRAPHS Graph 3.1 Temples to the Eastern Peak in North China, 960–1368. Graph 5.1 Temples to Mount Tai gods in North China, 1368–1644 Graph 8.1 Ming pilgrim group inscriptions at Lingyan Si, 1588–1639. Graph 10.1 Qing pilgrim group inscriptions at Lingyan Si, 1644–1691. Graph 11.1 Temples to Bixia Yuanjun, 1644–1911 TABLES Table 5.1 Ming and Qing names used for the Jade Maiden of 1008. Table 13.1 Identifiable three-dimensional images of Mount Tai Niangniang. FIGURES chapter 1 Figure 1.1 Topography of the North China Plain and its surrounding mountains. Figure 1.2 Central courtyard of the Azure Cloud Palace, Xun county (Henan), 1999.

Figure 1.3 Life-size clay statue of a Son-Sending companion of Our Lady of Mount Tai, 2007. Figure 1.4 Temple on the western edge of the Taihang mountains. Twentieth century. chapter 2 Figure 2.1 View of Mount Tai from the plain to the south, 1907. Figure 2.2 Song Zhenzong’s stele of 1013. Figure 2.3 Glazed ceramic bird-woman unearthed at the Dai Miao in 1970. chapter 3 Figure 3.1 Mount Tai, showing important early eleventh century sites. Figure 3.2 Iron water vat cast in 1101, on the terrace of the Dai Miao. chapter 4 Figure 4.1 Great Peak Temple (Dongyue Miao), ca. 1504 Figure 4.2 Image of Bixia Yuanjun on the 1504 bronze mirror in the Great Peak Temple. Figure 4.3 Painting of the Jade Sovereign, dated 1545 (detail). Figure 4.4 Empress Earth August Mother. 1503 mural (detail), Gongzhu Si (Shanxi). chapter 5 Figure 5.1 Temple to Guan Yu in southeastern Henan, 2007. Figure 5.2 Local temples in a town in Luan department (Hebei), 1898. Figure 5.3 Woodblock-printed image of Bixia Yuanjun, 1576 Figure 5.4 Bronze image of Taishan Tianxian Yunü, 1534. Figure 5.5–5.6 Bronze image of Bixia Yuanjun, 1520. Front and rear views.

chapter 6 Figure 6.1 “Song Gongming encounters the Mysterious Maiden of the Nine Heavens,” from the novel, Shui hu zhuan. chapter 7 Figure 7.1–7.2 Rectangular iron incense burner in the Dai Miao, cast in 1573. Figure 7.3 Reassembled 1497 stele located along the pilgrim path. Figure 7.4–7.5 Bronze Hall, cast ca. 1614, at the foot of Mount Tai in 1912 and 1999. Figure 7.6 Temples off the southwest corner of Tai’an city, as of 1907. Figure 7.7 Woodblock illustration of the south side of Mount Tai from San cai tu hui, 1609. Figure 7.8 Song Xu (1525–1606) album leaf, “Ancestral Dai.” chapter 8 Figure 8.1–8.2 1533 iron pagoda at the foot of Mount Tai in 1925 and 2013. Figure 8.3 1603 bronze statue of Bixia Yuanjun at Mount Tai. Figure 8.4 Life-size painted clay Niangniang in 1999. Figure 8.5 Layout of today’s Dai Miao as it looked ca. 1580. Figure 8.6 Woodblock illustration of the ascent to the Southern Gateway to Heaven, 1774. Figure 8.7 Panoramic photograph of the Mount Tai summit in 1942. Figure 8.8 Photograph of the main approach to the Azure Cloud Place in the late 1990s. Figure 8.9 Photograph of the Azure Cloud Palace in 1906. Figure 8.10 Woodblock illustration of the Azure Cloud Palace as of 1587. Figure 8.11 Bronze image of Bixia Yuanjun donated by Empress Dowager Li ca. 1611. Figure 8.12 Bronze Bixia Yuanjun, probably late Ming.

xi

Figure 8.13 Stone Bixia Yuanjun in a decorated niche (detail), dated 1535. Figure 8.14 Frontispiece from a 1673 woodblock printed scripture dedicated to Bixia Yuanjun. chapter 9 Figure 9.1 Modern gold-painted clay Taishan Bixia Yuanjun in the Bixia Gong in Linqing city (Shandong) in 1999. Figure 9.2–9.3 Marble Bixia Yuanjun, dated 1635. Feicheng county (Shandong) in 1907. With detail. Figure 9.4 Limestone head of Bixia Yuanjun, front view. Figure 9.5 Painted clay, hollow-frame statue of Tianxian Laomu (Bixia Yuanjun), ca. 1900. Figure 9.6 Life-size painted clay figure of Yanguang Niangniang. Yizhou (Hebei) in 1999. Figure 9.7–9.8 Clay image of a Niangniang from Shanxi. Figure 9.09–9.10 Taishan temple in Changqing county (Shandong), with carved clay gable, as of 1907. Figure 9.11–9.12 Carved wood female deity, probably Bixia Yuanjun. Figure 9.13 Wood Yuanjun, with paint and gilt. Figure 9.14 Wood head of Yuanjun, with red lacquer and gilt. Figure 9.15 Multimedia Yuanjun on a temple veranda in Xun county (Henan) in 1999. Figure 9.16 Homemade Yuanjun sleeping in the Bixia Gong in Linqing (Shandong) in 1999. Figure 9.17 One 1807 iron incense burner and two iron vats in the Bixia Gong, Xun county (Henan) in 1999. Figure 9.18–9.19 1569 iron bell at the Wangmu Pool temple near the Dai Miao at Mount Tai. With detail from the inscription. Figure 9.20 Cast-iron chime-bowl made in 1897 for an Emperor Guan temple near Tianjin (Hebei). Figure 9.21 Cast-iron Yuanjun, with traces of paint and resin. Figure 9.22 Famille verte porcelain Queen-Mother of the West. Qing period. Figure 9.23 Cizhou-type fired ceramic statue of Zhenwu in a dynamic pose.

xii

gods of mount tai

chapter 10 Figure 10.1 Wall painting of the Great Emperor of the Eastern Peak leaving for his circuit (detail) in the Dai Miao, as of the 1990s. Figure 10.2 Azure Cloud Palace in the 1760s in an imperially produced woodblock image. Figure 10.3 Archaistic bronze incense-holder with the symbols for the Five Great Mountains. Qianlong reign. Figure 10.4 Qing pilgrimage association stelae in the Lingying Gong, at the foot of Mount Tai, 2013. Figure 10.5 One of a pair of carved stone lions in front of the Lingying Gong; donated in 1692. Figure 10.6 Woodblock image of the buildings at Houshiwu (Rear Stone Shelter) as of 1771. Figure 10.7 Multimedia Yuanjun posed on the veranda of the Azure Cloud Palace in 1942. chapter 11 Figure 11.1 Photograph of the wood image of Confucius in the Kong Miao at Qufu, early twentieth century. Figure 11.2 Woodblock print of Emperor Guan from Beijing, Qing or Republic. Figure 11.3 Cizhou-type glazed ceramic White Robed Guanyin. Collected in Henan before 1930. Figure 11.4 Gilt bronze image of Zhenwu, dated 1439. Figure 11.5 Lead-glazed August Mother. Qing. Figure 11.6 Wood image of Tianhou, with paint and gilt. Possibly Qing period. Figure 11.7 Front courtyard of the Qing dynasty ShanxiShaanxi lodge in Sheqi (Henan), 2007. chapter 12 Figure 12.1 Woodblock of entertainers at a Taishan Shengmu touring-palace on 4/18 in Linqing (Shandong). 1849. Figure 12.2 The layout of the two mountains at Xun city (Henan), as of the 1990s. Figure 12.3 A painted clay image of Zisun Niangniang in Xun county (Henan), 1999. Figure 12.4 Gilt bronze Bixia Yuanjun and her eight companions. Possibly Qianlong reign.

Figure 12.5 Homemade cloth eyes donated to Yanguang Pusa, Xun county (Henan) in 1999. Figure 12.6 The temples of Macheng town, Luan department (Hebei), as of 1898. chapter 13 Figure 13.1 Back of a bronze Yanguang Niangniang. Qing dynasty. Figure 13.2 Official photograph of the Qing dynasty bronze image of Bixia Yuanjun in the Azure Cloud Palace, 2021. Figure 13.3 Bronze Zisun Niangniang, side view. Qing dynasty. Figure 13.4 Bronze Yanguang Niangniang, side view. Qing dynasty. Figure 13.5 Bronze images of Zisun and Yanguang Niangniang from the same set. Seventeenth century? Figure 13.6 Cast-bronze standing attendant to a Mount Tai Niangniang. Possibly Ming. Figure 13.7 Bronze Yanguang Niangniang. Late Qing. Figure 13.8 Three-sided bronze headdress for a Mount Tai Niangniang. Figure 13.9 Bronze Yuanjun with richly decorated surface. Figure 13.10–13.12 Gilt bronze Bixia Yuanjun of the late Ming type. Figure 13.13–13.15 Bronze Bixia Yuanjun collected at Yantai (Shandong) ca. 1900. Figure 13.16–13.19 Two cut-away bronze statues from Henan, one female and one male. chapter 14 Figure 14.1–14.2 Altar in a side hall of the Taishan Xinggong near Boshan (Shandong) in 1999. With close-up of the painted hanging scroll. Figure 14.3 Print-style painting on paper of Bixia Yuanjun and two attendants. Cao county (Shandong). Twentieth century. Figure 14.4–14.5 Hanging scroll of Bixia Yuanjun with attendants. Paint on fabric. Twentieth century. With detail. Figure 14.6–14.7 Painted image of Bixia Yuanjun, on paper. With detail.

Figure 14.8 Hanging scroll showing Bixia Yuanjun. Ink and colors on silk. Late Ming? Figure 14.9 Our Lady of Smallpox. Paint on paper. Qing. Figure 14.10 Bixia Yuanjun practicing inner alchemy. Paint on paper. 1890. Figure 14.11 Painting of Bixia Yuanjun on silk, possibly for a home altar. Qing. Figure 14.12 Woodblock print of Tianxian Niangniang and two companion deities. Beijing, 1930s. Figure 14.13 Drawing of a Beijing peddler of new years prints. Ca. 1940. Figure 14.14 Small woodblock print of Tianxian Shengmu and two companions. Mizhen Shan (Liaoning), 1934. Figure 14.15 Yanguang Niangniang. Woodblock print. Beijing, ca. 1931. Figure 14.16 Woodblock print of the three Mount Tai Niangniang. Beijing, twentieth century. Figure 14.17 Yanguang Niangniang. Woodblock print with added paint. Yangliuqing (Hebei), twentieth century? Figure 14.18 Woodblock print of Taishan Niangniang. Jining (Shandong). Twentieth century. Figure 14.19 Bixia Yuanjun. Woodblock print. Possibly Henan, twentieth century. Figure 14.20 Nine Mount Tai Niangniang among other gods. Woodblock print mounted as a hanging scroll. Beijing, 1889. Figure 14.21 Woodblock print of all the gods. Collected in 1934 in Dalian (Liaoning).

Figure 14.22 Bixia Yuanjun among the gods. Woodblock print. Yangjiabu, Wei county (Shandong). Twentieth century. Figure 14.23 Woodblock printed calendar for 1932. Collected in Xi’an (Shaanxi) in 1935. Figure 14.24 The Queen-Mother of the West in her chariot. Detail from a kesi silk tapestry. Late Qing. chapter 15 Figure 15.1 Cast-iron incense burner in the Azure Cloud Palace in 2013. Dated 1927. Figure 15.2 Tang and Song imperial cliff inscriptions on the summit of Mount Tai in 2007. Figure 15.3 Hall of Heaven’s Great Gift (Tiankuang Dian) in the Dai Miao. Ming/Qing in style and size. As of the 1980s. Figure 15.4 Empress Dowager Li’s bronze image of Bixia Yuanjun, safely preserved in 1999. Figure 15.5 Photographs on the cover of Mount Taishan ೉‫ځ‬, 1981. Figure 15.6 Mass produced god-images for sale in Tai’an in 2013. Figure 15.7 Painted ceramic statue of Bixia Yuanjun. Tai’an, 2013. Figure 15.8 Approach to the Azure Cloud Palace in 2013. Figure 15.9 Visitors at Mount Tai’s highest rock outcropping in 2010. Figure 15.10 2009 incense burner in the Lingying Gong in 2013.

xiii

Map 0.0 Mount Tai and its sights, as seen from the south. The red line indicates the Pilgrim Path of Ming and Qing times. (After Chavannes [1910].)

xiv

Key to Map 1 Haoli Hill ⌜Ѧ‫ځ‬ 2 Lingying Gong ࢼ‫׎‬࿮, Palace of Efficacious Responsiveness 3 Zhenjun Temple-lodge ѐᅿᜐ 4 Abbey of Heaven’s Writ ϳ‫޲ڣ‬ 5 White Dragon Pool Ձहဩ 6 Puzhao Monastery ૦ؕᕖ 7 Tai’an County City-wall ೉ԥ້‫ڵ‬

8 Outer Entrance Pavilion, Yaocan Ting ༃‫᠀۾‬ 9 Great Peak Temple, Yue Ci/Miao ៈṽ/ᜐ; Dai Miao ┬ᜐ 10 Shuzhuang Yuan ᒝೳࡨ, Villa for Freshening Up 11 Queen-Mother’s Pool, Wangmu Chi ࣼআဩ 12 Tang dynasty Dai Peak Abbey ┬ₙ޲; Laojun Hall ҡᅿஇ

13 Guandi Temple-lodge Ԭ෌ᜐ 14 Hong Men ‫ی‬՞, Red Gate (the start of the Pilgrim Path) 15 Doumu Gong ૓আ࿮, Dipper Mother’s Palace 16 Sutra Stone Valley, Shijing Yu ੘Ҭ≋ 17 Yuanjun’s Middle Temple ׄᅿЅᜐ 18 Second/Middle Gate to Heaven ԏ/Ѕϳ՞ 19 Five Eminent Pines ٚϽਜ਼ग़

20 Eighteen Twists, Shiba Pan ֐ࡂ࣪ 21 Gateway to Heaven ϳ՞; Southern Gateway to Heaven ۪ϳ՞ 22 Heaven’s Street ϳঅ 23 Azure Cloud Palace, Bixia Gong ካᎇ࿮; Jade Woman Shrine ർѽṽ 24 Confucius Temple, Kongzi Miao ႘жᜐ 25 Jade Sovereign Summit and Palace, Yuhuang Ding/Gong ർ෦্/࿮; Yudi Dian ർ෌ឆ

26 Dongyue Miao ֆₙᜐ, Eastern Peak Temple 27 Imperial Cliff Inscriptions, Mo Ya ಎ᝽ 28 Sunrise-viewing Peak, Riguan Feng я޲๢ 29 Suicide Precipice, Sheshen Ya ലӱ᝽ 30 Houshiwu ћ੘ᩕ (Rear Stone Shelter); ћ੘൙ (actually located on a separate, lower peak on the far side)

xv

chapter 1

What This Book Is About

Mount Tai rises from the Great North China Plain like an island from the sea. Over countless eons, silt-filled rivers had poured down from the ranges to the west and encircled this ancient rocky massif with fertile flatland. In time, settlers called the visible peak the Great Mountain. By two thousand years ago, they had imputed to it the power to judge the dead and had created in its foothills a place for propitiating the fearsome male god thought to preside over its underground hells. In the year 1008, a new female deity was discovered on the uninhabited 1,500-meter summit and worshipped in a small shrine there. By the year 1500 belief in the powers of these two gods, the Great Emperor of the Eastern Peak and the August Lady of Mount Tai, separately and together, had transformed the mountain into a bustling tourist and pilgrimage destination, a place for prayers and promises, poems and graffiti. Its antiquity established by historians, rulers used the mountain to legitimize their claims. In the course of time, both the older male and newer female god took iconic forms, acquired companions, found patrons, and faced competition. Today, Mount Tai is more popular than ever and millions visit this World Heritage site each year. Its temples are overwhelmed by eager visitors in search of excitement, selfies, and souvenirs. The mountain has not only transcended the entrenched categories of Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian but become a national symbol that confounds distinctions between sacred and secular. In a society where the Communist state readily denounces the seriousness of religion,

many devotional practices have become commercialized, routinized, and trivialized. The gods of Mount Tai are still present, but they too have changed. After a century of political attacks and cultural marginalization, whether they can be infused with new vitality in the twenty-first century is an open question. To treat a period of a thousand years in an area the size of Western Europe has necessitated a book of some length. By following a single narrative line, otherwise invisible trends can be brought to the fore. Nevertheless, to prevent that focus from creating its own blinders, I have enlarged my peripheral vision to include certain neglected contexts. When my narrative moved away from Mount Tai into topics and places where secondary sources were lacking, restoring this context became essential. As a result, the chapters that follow do not represent a synthesis of existing work; instead, they are almost entirely new research, based on a wide reading in primary sources bound together by a rethinking of topics that have not been considered central to modern China’s long history. The landmark events in the history of Mount Tai itself are reasonably well known, less so the lives of its principal deities. I have drawn together these intertwined histories from the eleventh through the twentieth century. No account is definitive, but this one should be more thorough and authoritative than any to date. Moreover, because a pilgrimage center should not be studied independent of the larger cult that susgods of mount tai

1

tained it, I have followed the multiplication of temples devoted to the gods of Mount Tai out into the surrounding region. Establishing my arguments about the importance of regional materiality to this development required forays into local resources and manufacturing. These larger frameworks for the history of Mount Tai’s gods have called into question the general assumption that theirs has been a straightforward story of success. Bringing my account down to the present has led to unexpectedly sober reflections. The action begins in the year 1008 with the unprecedented appearance high on Mount Tai of shattered stones that were thought to resemble a “jade maiden.” Our narrative will follow this maiden’s transformations and examine her relationship with the older Eastern Peak god in whose territory she had appeared. We will see how she first slipped inconspicuously into the life of the mountain and then into the existing religious and material culture of North China; how pious individuals, Daoist clerics, pilgrimage associations, and rich emperors debated her identity and created her recognizable images; and how she acquired iconography, history, acceptance, and respectability. Riding a wave of new female gods, she became popular, familiar, and widely imitated, and the male god at the foot of the mountain suffered by comparison. In time, however, both became increasingly generic figures, vulnerable to waves of hostility and secularization in the twentieth century. As the title of this book suggests, the issues of concern here are the history of Mount Tai in particular and of the gods of North China more generally, the challenges of investigating regional material culture in China, and the rewards of appreciating familiarity everywhere. The storyline will weave in and out of the usual sequence of events that make up the Big Picture of Chinese history and resist wherever necessary the dominant narratives that impede our view. Our temporal focus will be long but the geographic focus will be confined to one region of northern China. In addition to several emperors, the people who drive the action will be the forgotten men and women who found these gods potent and responsive, who donated money in hope and in thanks, who built temples where the gods were worshipped and who manufactured their images, and who defended or denounced them in writing. By tracking in particular the replication of the 2

gods of mount tai

sculpted, printed, and painted images of the Lady of Mount Tai as her worship expanded, I will argue for the importance of regional culture in promoting a new deity in familiar ways and will bring into view the poorly recorded technologies that were essential to daily life more generally. By paying attention to the expression of gender among the gods, I hope to destabilize our easy categories while illustrating the expanding place of female gods in Chinese religion during the last millennium. By giving attention to the changing field of competing gods at and beyond the mountain, I hope to illuminate the forces that undermined as well as built their various identities and to contribute to our understanding of the difficulties of innovation and the perils of fame. Like most Chinese gods, the principal deities of Mount Tai had more than one name. The male god poses fewer problems for our narrative because despite many added titles he remained the “God of the Eastern Peak” (Dongyue ֆₙ). The “Jade Maiden” (Yunü ർѽ) would be variously called Woman, Immortal, Master, Mother, and Granny, but she is best known today as Bixia Yuanjun ካᎇׄᅿ. (See Table 5.1 for details on these names.) Because her appellations will appear gradually as our story unfolds, in this chapter I will call her the “Jade Maiden.” Her tale propels the narrative, provides the thread, and will guide our attention. This introduction will explain my orientations, methods, and terminology for dealing with the material at hand. We begin with where and when, defining the North China region that is the stage for the action of this book and introducing the ideas about time and space that were then in play. After consideration of the historiographical context and distinctive sources for my research, I will set out some basics about Chinese religion that are necessary to make sense of the narrative to come. Finally, two issues essential to the overall arguments of this book will be given preliminary attention: the problems of using material culture evidence and the advantages of appreciating the power of familiarity as a cultural force. THE IMPORTANCE OF PLACE Empire-wide events and institutions form the temporal and geographic arena for this book, but our action occurs within a smaller space that I call a region and whose geographic coherence and location in this larg-

er world, I will argue, shaped a distinctive material culture. This “North China region,” as I define it, does not have a precisely equivalent term in Chinese nor does it neatly correspond to a subdivision of China identified by modern scholars. Within the context of the many frameworks proposed by others, I hope to use this one area to show how the idea of “regional materiality” can serve the historian.1 An emphasis on physical connectivity, political centrality, economic robustness, and distinctive geology may also bring North China into a different and better focus. Today’s word “China” (and its cognates in other languages) began as a convenient concept for foreigners. The word created—and made it possible to speak of and believe in—a geographically defined political entity comparable to a European state and did so centuries before this idea was taken up by the Chinese themselves and converted into the modern “Zhongguo Ѕл.” A traditional focus on a succession of dynasties and an energetic nationalist insistence on unity and continuity have likewise obscured a more heterogeneous past. It is difficult to avoid the word “China,” however, and I will use it narrowly here to refer to geographically defined locations in the physical territory of today’s People’s Republic. This present-day unity was forged by successive regimes that linked centers with peripheries in multiple ways. The wealthy and powerful ruling elites disseminated their shared culture in textual, visual, material, and performative forms, and at the same time drew on, mixed with, and recirculated the diverse local cultures they encountered. Over the centuries, the local, the regional, and the national became increasingly connected and blended, especially in urban centers. Historians have concentrated on those people who made up the state, drove national events, and created the literary and historical record, calling their culture “Chinese” and understanding the term in an essentialized manner. Although this word, “Chinese,” seems impossible to do without, I mean it to be understood as a loose and plural adjective modifying the ideas and practices that came to be shared by most of the residents of those lands that became modern China.2 Successively more centralized states and more homogeneous elite culture have impeded efforts to write regional or local histories. Scholars who made the attempt have selected places that were in themselves

crucially important to the whole empire or that were microcosms through which to see a big picture or its key trends. The focus of these studies has varied greatly, from the small to the large, the amorphous to the quantitatively defined, from independent kingdoms to administrative units, from different concentrations of human habitation to territory united by linguistic or economic features. In scholarly work, the term “region” has been weakened by frequent, contradictory, and unreflective overuse. In Literary Chinese, the open-ended fang Ҥ obviated the need for a more bounded word such as “region.”3 Moreover, the modern Western idea of “regionalism” is often vaguely defined as the grounds for opposition to centralizing power, while “regional” has been an informal way of not talking about the national or the local. When applied to culture or religion, the regional has been blended into the comparably imprecise categories of folk, local, provincial, vernacular, or just traditional, usually opposed unsystematically to the elite, metropolitan, imperial, palace, court, or modern. I will try to be more precise. In the chapters that follow, it will also become necessary to speak about the “local.”4 An even more relative word, its meaning usually varies with context, changing when contrasted with the domestic, the urban, the cosmopolitan, the national, or the global. In imperial China, the local (when expressed as difang с Ҥ) had long been understood specifically as a subordinated and limited part of the territorially based imperial order. Other key terms—xiang ൅, tu ग, ben ӆ—expressed a more personal vantage point and allowed not only flexibility but a convenient vagueness.5 This book will be focused on an area larger than the local and it will not be concerned with the social structure, practices, or history of any particular community. Our primary concern is with Mount Tai and its gods and with believers, pilgrims, and tourists— mostly in the aggregate. There is nothing “typical” about this one region, but through it we can better understand the differential impact of larger trends and processes and with it suggest a method for deconstructing and revisiting nationalist histories. Most historians who have chosen to circumscribe their research geographically have preferred to use the formal administrative units created by the state and reproduced in surviving sources. Such entities were chapter 1: what this book is about

3

Map 1.1 Provinces of North China ca. 1650–1850, with their provincial capitals.

Area of Detail

&ĞŶŐƟĂŶ

CHINA

LIAONING

ZHILI Beijing SHANXI Taiyuan

Ji’nan SHANDONG

Xi’an SHAANXI

N

NG ANHUI

SU

HUBEI Wuhan

JIA

Kaifeng HENAN

Nanjing 0

Rutgers Cartography 2020

straightforwardly political, essential to government, and accepted as meaningful by their inhabitants. Provinces, prefectures, departments, and counties have been the most influential way of characterizing the different parts of China during the last millennium. They created and sustained crucial vehicles for the flow of people, goods, and information, and they strengthened the political and economic resources of those cities where they were headquartered. They could be mapped, and they had teeth. Although these units did not align with economic networks and were the basis for social bonds mostly among elites, historians cannot do without them. In choosing which official names to use in a book that covers half a dozen dynasties, I have arbitrarily relied on mid-Qing-era names, even though their boundaries were not the same as earlier or later instantiations. Nine provinces and their capital cities overlie the territory relevant to this book: Shandong, Henan, Zhili (Ming Beizhili, modern Hebei), Jiangsu, Anhui, Liaoning (Fengtian, Manchuria), Hubei, Shanxi, and Shaanxi.6 See Map 1.1. 4

gods of mount tai

0

100 mi 100 km

As G. William Skinner argued decades ago, political units obscure other systems, and he was not alone in creating alternate sets of “regions.” Cosmology, geography, geology, population density, ethnicity, language, modes of production, transportation networks, and more—all provide meaningful grounds for differentiating people in space, whether in China or elsewhere. The system presented here is one among many. In this book, I have chosen to identify and define a region according to the materiality of its everyday culture. Isolating such a part from the whole cannot be done cleanly and is best thought of as a heuristic exercise that necessarily foregrounds certain features that distinguished this area from its neighbors. Nevertheless, I believe that an unconventional aggregation of sources for the material culture of religion makes possible new insights about such regional materiality. Specifically, I hope to show how cultural familiarity and geographic contiguity affected the communication and replication of religious ideas and practices.

What does “North China” mean in this book? Despite the many changes in the region over the centuries, Figure 1.1 offers one way of visualizing it. At the center is the Great Plain, ringed on three sides by mountains and created by the powerful Yellow River and other eastward flowing waterways. To the west stands the Taihang mountain chain (ѿҲ‫)ځ‬, up to 2,000 meters high along its spine, a natural wall separating the Plain from the drier and colder highlands farther west. To the south, a broken rim of lower mountains forms a barrier between the Huai River (ᝄ૯) and the mighty Yangtze (ӕ࢖).7 To the northeast, the valley of the Liao River (ᓡ૯) outside the Great Wall had slowly become connected to this Plain through the movement of people by land and by sea. The encircling mountains to the north, west, and south are usually thought of as North China’s lightly inhabited borders serviced by the cities, but the chapters that follow will argue that these seeming peripheries were crucial to life in the so-called core area and must be considered integral to the region. For this reason, “North China” is here used as shorthand for what I also call the “Greater North China Plain.” My use of “the north” or “northern China,” by contrast, will loosely refer to China north of the Yangtze River. I will have more to say about North China’s geology and geography in the chapters to come, but because they are essential to my arguments about regional materiality, readers may need a review of the essentials here at the outset, especially since some of my characterizations do not match the received wisdom. Northern China’s “Central Plain” (Zhongyuan Ѕ ֍) has come to be seen as the heartland of Chinese civilization. Home to successive capital cities, its long history is deeply embedded in the written record and its flatland agriculture was economically vital early on. Nevertheless, as the lands near the Yangtze were settled, differences between the older “north” and the newer “south” became important and have endured as broad, rhetorically versatile, and socially pervasive categories. The Plain thus became firmly “north.” By the twelfth century, the duality between a northerner and a southerner (‫ܚ‬Ϫ, ۪Ϫ) was assumed and expressed in distinctions of food, climate, disease, cultural styles, and so forth.8 This “south” meant the lower reaches of Yangtze River in today’s central China (not the distant south or west) and has been the focus

1.1 The topography of the North China Plain and its surrounding mountains in the late twentieth century. The red dot indicates Mount Tai. (Wikimedia contributor Ksiom, August 17, 2008, CC-BY-SA-3.0-migrated)

of most historical work past and present. Scholars have routinely characterized “the north” as agricultural, poor, densely populated, transportation-challenged, spottily commercialized, unevenly urbanized, disaster prone, and at times too influenced by “nonChinese” invaders. These clichés and half-truths have produced many blind spots. The scale of this region of the Greater North China Plain is impressive and not usually appreciated. It extends some 1,000 kilometers north to south and 1,500 kilometers west to east. If superimposed on a map of continental Europe, it would reach from Brussels to Rome and from Brittany to Vienna. Or, if you wish, from Vermont to Tennessee and from Chicago to Maryland. Rough estimates suggest that the population in late imperial times increased from perhaps thirty million to at least one hundred million between 1600 and 1900 and, mutatis mutandis, this North China usually constituted a third or a fourth of the territory that was directly administered from Beijing. For the thousand years covered in this book, successive dynastic capitals were located in the north. Each founding emperor infused these cities with artisans, specialists, and the wealthy, and Luoyang, Kaifeng, Beijing, Xi’an, and Nanjing became more cosmopolitan places as a result. Although smaller cities tended to be unimpressive compared to these capitals, they nonetheless were nodes in networks that tied the region together and linked the North with its imchapter 1 | what this book is about

5

mediate neighbors. Numerous, unwalled, convenient to transportation, and outside the immediate surveillance of officials, towns (zhen ๰, kou ‫ )ט‬were essential to the distribution of all kinds of goods to all kinds of people. There, local businessmen and long-distance traders congregated and merchant lodges were often located. Villages were more insular but less so on the Plain than in the mountains. Pilgrimage was important, especially when recurrent, for it took people outside their home areas on increasingly familiar routes where they could learn not only the variant languages of food and lodging, but also the miracle tales and pious practices of a wider area. Proximity to the dry plains and deep forests of the far north made North China vulnerable to repeated conquest and settlement by non-agriculturalists whose cultures could appear barbaric in Chinese terms. Over the centuries, with each dynastic change, the Plain was divided and redivided and its residents uprooted, resettled, and rearranged. Repeatedly re-centralized rule gave these northerners a periodic stirring up and, as a result, the area’s peoples became relatively similar to one another compared with other parts of the empire. The linguistic differences within the region were not radical, and long stretches of political stability created a robust foundation for shared practices. Perhaps because of periodic invasions and routine natural disasters, cultural resilience became a hard-earned strength and survivors knew how to recover. Continuity in daily life in general and religious life in particular was possible as communities were routinely damaged and rebuilt in a familiar physical environment. Although North China had long been incorporated into each dynasty’s territorial bureaucracy, a few pockets remained on the edges of the late imperial state’s formal reach. Most significant for our study were several hereditary categories of privileged people. Under Ming rule (1368–1644), imperial princes and their descendants were given landed estates and permanently set up in dozens of cities, many in the north, where they became effectively independent of local officials; during the Qing (1644–1911), their wealthy Manchu counterparts were concentrated in Beijing and the Northeast.9 The reigning dynastic house had the greatest command of people and resources, power that was organized into an independent institution that served the throne directly. This Imperial Household Agency (Nei 6

gods of mount tai

Fu ֶ௞, Neiwu Fu ֶ‫׉‬௞) had its own extensive staff and considerable sources of revenue, and it operated throughout the empire with seeming impunity beyond the control of the state bureaucracy; its manifold tentacles cannot be easily mapped. Climate and topography have usually been seen by modern scholars as defining economic features of Chinese regions, and the scholarly literature about the North China Plain has emphasized its distinctions from the warmer south and the dryer steppe: farmers not herders, millet and wheat not rice, paths and roads not rivers or open land. All studies of the northern economy discuss its system of ever-changing rivers and their divisive effects.10 Most primary sources were similarly concerned with the difficulties and expense of state-managed water control. The region’s vulnerability to flood and drought during the systemic collapses of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been emphasized as evidence of regional deficiencies.11 In fact, such natural disasters took no one by surprise. Local people knew that rain would not always fall when or as needed. Responsiveness and resilience were part of the culture of people who lived with such conditions, and were signs of strength. A simple material culture—few irreplaceable possessions, flimsy but easily rebuilt houses—allowed oral tradition to pass along invaluable information about preparing for and coping with foreseeable emergencies. Networks of acquaintances, knowledge of high or protected ground (cities, hills, temples), access to supplementary income, familiarity with government relief, these could also provide routine cushions against disaster. The “land of famine” stereotype does not, moreover, reflect the working strengths of North China’s economy. Until the calamities of the mid-nineteenth century, and perhaps for much of the late imperial era, the provinces of the Plain supplied the state with reliably steady shipments of wheat, millet, and beans and fed an ever-growing population. Influenced by the enduring clichés of “agrarian China” and “agriculture is fundamental” (nong ben హӆ), scholars have written much about “loess,” the deeply piled earth blown in from the northern and western plateaus that became the basis for the modern association of Yellow Earth, huangtu ࢶग, with China itself. The Great Plain had

been enriched by such “ochre-coloured rock-dust”12 for many centuries. For our purposes here, it is important to emphasize instead that North China’s combinations of clay-like soils were crucial to the non-agricultural economy as well. As we shall see in later chapters, the varied earths were well understood and used ubiquitously: transformed into sun-dried and kiln-fired bricks and ceramics, they were essential to material culture and to daily life. North China had its particular configuration of commercially productive networks, dominated by its dynastic capitals. Scholars have stressed the importance of the various versions of the Grand Canal (Yunhe ‫ػ‬૯) that linked those cities with the Yangtze and the south. The constant traffic along this corridor brought southern culture and goods north and the largess of northern capitals south. Zhenjiang and Yangzhou, prosperous urban centers by the Yangtze, were more closely tied to North China as a result. At the same time, the cities on the Canal where it cut through central Shandong were nodes from which commercial traffic and elite culture could move laterally into the hinterlands of the Plain. Connections in other directions also brought goods and peoples into the region from distant parts of the empire. On the southern rim of North China, just over the mountains and in the center of its own plain, the three-city metropolis of modern Wuhan (aka Hankou) at the confluence of the Han River (ఈ ࢖) and the Yangtze was a major transshipment and redistribution port for goods, raw materials, and people that moved south and north, west and east, along these two rivers, and—as we shall see—it was North China’s most important connecting point to southcentral and western China. By contrast, centuries of river-borne silt had pushed North China’s muddy coastline farther into the shallow saline gulf on the east. Low-lying and useful for salt production, this coast was poorly suited for shipping or fishing except at the eastern outer tips of the Shandong and Liaodong ᓡֆ peninsulas. There, excellent harbors gradually became important for ocean-going trade; other waterborne traffic stayed within the region. The seeming impenetrability of the mountain ranges west of the Plain was belied by the narrow but numerous corridors through them. Even steep gorges were traversed by steady streams of hundreds and

thousands of pack animals and human carriers traveling in single file. The corridor of the Wei River (ᢚ૯) valley that led to the metropolis of Xi’an (medieval Chang’an) was an active route not only to the northwest lands of Central Asia but to Sichuan province, Tibetan regions, and the mines of the far southwest. The clichéd contrast between the easy, inexpensive river travel of the South and the slow roads of the landlocked North seems exaggerated to me.13 Compared to most of China, North China was internally well connected. Across the Great Plain and into its many foothills, the flat terrain encouraged movement from node to node. Shallow but navigable streams and small rivers crisscrossed the Plain and supported a flourishing traffic during the late Ming and Qing periods. Rafts and narrow flat-bottomed boats were in constant use, skillfully transporting goods, while ferries, fords, and wharfs connected them to networks of markets near and far. Dry streams could be traversed in summer and frozen ones in winter, and the wind was harnessed to drive not only boats but wheeled carts and barrows running in fixed ruts. Inns and lodges supplied food and lodging. Another oft-mentioned feature of North China’s landscape, this one accurate, was its progressive deforestation. Photographs from the early twentieth century show a barren landscape with only the occasional evergreen in a cemetery or temple courtyard. (See Figure 2.1.) Too many people had lived on the Plain for too long, the ancient forests were gone, and the surrounding mountains were increasingly denuded. By 1800, the North China Plain had long since ceased to support a culture of wood. Large hardwood trees (ten meters and higher; pine, spruce, hemlock) survived only in pockets in the difficult terrain of the “old forests (ҡ৆)” of western Henan and southern Shanxi and in the unopened lands to the northeast beyond the Great Wall. Large buildings, therefore, had to rely on expensive imports or substitute stone and brick. A fixation on agriculture, cities, and intraregional commerce has led scholars to neglect North China’s significant artisanal population and its early modern industry. That industry depended on clay, iron, stone, and coal, underground resources that were the basis for its regional materiality. Some 220 million years ago, two geologically distinct tectonic blocks had collided along a V-shaped suture known today as the chapter 1 | what this book is about

7

Tan–Lu ⤗ᡭ fault. The mountains of the central Shandong massif and of the west-east Qinling and Dabie ranges that were created at the points of collision had unique mineral regimes. Mount Tai and nearly all of North China (including Liaoning and northern Korea) lie north of the fault zone, and their underlying rock, mineral, and clay resources are fundamentally different from those of the geological “south.”14 These homogeneous resources formed the basis of the regional material culture. In most of North China’s mountains and their lowhill remnants, limestone (੘ී੘) was readily available. Its uses were numerous, and it constituted a vigorous sector of the regional economy. Relatively easily quarried, limestone could be turned into lime through heating in a large kiln (fired by coal, often available nearby). The resultant powder was transportable and versatile. A powerful binding agent and sealant, lime was used in all kinds of construction, as well as in the manufacture of iron, ceramics, paper, dyes, leather. Not far from the surface lay seams of iron and coal that could be removed, processed, and employed in many kinds of manufacture. Stone for buildings, iron for nails and pans, clay for jars, coal for high heat. Although embedded in the ground, these important resources could be mined on uplifted slopes whose foothills attracted the industries that extracted and processed them. Centuries of experience had taught the residents of the region how to find and use these resources and how to adapt to the dangers and pollution of such labor. Rarely noticed in written sources, the Taihang range, extending four hundred kilometers from Beijing in the north down to the Yellow River, was North China’s dominant industrial zone. As deposits of loess, clay, limestone, coal, and iron were mined out, artisans could take their technologies and relocate elsewhere in the range. Southwest Shanxi became a major manufacturing center, but the strong consumer demand came from across the mountains on the Great Plain. North China’s mountains were therefore not peripheral or unproductive, but essential to a complex, robust, preindustrial industrial economy. They were concentrations of wealth and manufacturing power; their products were as much a part of daily life as food and clothing. Interdependent mountains and plain together formed an integrated regional economy. These familiar raw materials and their associated technolo8

gods of mount tai

gies were the foundation of North China’s distinctive materiality, and thus of its religious economy as well. Ordinary North China temples were built of brick, clay, tile, stone, and medium size local wood. Statues and murals were made overwhelmingly of clay; images were painted on rough local paper or fabric. Cast iron was used for important ritual utensils. By contrast, bronze statues, porcelain vessels, and sturdy timberframe architecture—famous today—replied on expensive imported materials and were likely to be available only in a handful of cities. North China’s long-standing regional material regime—not the elite culture celebrated in museums and textbooks—was the familiar context in which the gods of Mount Tai were made manifest and that shaped their history. We cannot see that history unless we look locally. Such a focus will turn the reader’s attention away from agriculture and toward mountain industries, away from elite culture and toward the widely shared affinities created by local resources and religious practice. Many well studied topics will therefore be pushed offstage, but I hope my focus will also encourage some fresh perspectives on the study of regional history more generally. THE CONVENTIONS OF TIME There are many ways to organize events in time and, although periodizing categories are unavoidable, none are free of preconceptions. For clarity and convenience, I have relied on the Western calendar for the temporal anchoring of years, and used centuries (loosely) as the least objectionable chronological reference points.15 In these terms, the story told in this book unfolds between the years 1000 and 2000. Historians have presented this millennium either as a series of dynasties or as a succession of eras or political systems, conventions that make China more commensurate with other parts of the world. Intermittent political fragmentation before the thirteenth century makes dynastic names and dates especially confusing. Some clarification at the outset may be of help in the early chapters of this book. Commonplace ideas about historical stages and the categories of traditional and modern also require some preliminary comment. The term “feudal,” once popular in Marxist historiography, has outlived its usefulness. I employ the

vague term “medieval” to refer to the era up to about the year 900 CE (without implying the negative connotations that still weigh down that term in the history of Europe and elsewhere). Between 960 and 1370, five important dynasties competed for power, often simultaneously (Song, Southern Song, Liao, Jin, Yuan). Although the carving and re-carving of northern China among these different polities did have a palpable effect on life, artificially precise dynastic dates add more clutter than clarity. Most (myself included) now believe that the Chinese world in the period before 960 appears increasingly different from that after 1370. As the reader shall see, I will point with spurious specificity to the year 1000 as a pivot point of this uneven and complex “transition.” For the period from about 1370 to 1900, when only two dynasties were in power, our task is easier, and I have often used their names in the formulation “Ming/ Qing,” acknowledging the political structures and social features that extended across these two regimes (1368–1644, 1644–1911). Between the tenth and the twentieth century North China was part of an expanding but unified empire. An emperor and a bureaucratic apparatus staffed by appointed officials constituted the formal government, but what I will call the “state” should not be understood as a monolith. Although not everyone agrees that a government headed by an emperor is necessarily an “empire,” I will use this sometimes contentious term (without normative implications) to describe the geographic areas under dynastic control. Not all of this territory was tightly ruled and it included the diversity often associated with empires elsewhere.16 “Imperial” is a confusing term in English. Here, it will be used in the narrow sense of “pertaining to the reigning family.” Hence, imperial palace, imperial domain, imperial patronage, and imperial household, all of which were formally outside the bureaucratic system of the state. For the wider sense of our “imperial,” I will use instead “empire-wide,” “of the empire,” and even sometimes the anachronistic word “national” (without implying any connection to the modern nation-state). The Ming/Qing period has been often characterized two different ways. Calling it “early modern” looks forward and highlights anticipatory connections, but this term has not yet brought the same rosy glow of relevance to China as it has in the histories of

Japan or Europe. To say “late imperial” points backward, emphasizing discontinuities with post-dynastic China. Because of the time period under consideration here, “late imperial” will be favored, especially when emphasizing the long-term trends in social organization, cultural and intellectual life, religious activities, and environment that give coherence to this era despite the many changes that gave it vitality. I will use the term “modern” sparingly and narrowly, either as a shorthand for the period after 1900 or to characterize scholarly work of the last half century. I have resorted to “pre-modern” as a regrettable but convenient shorthand for the entire era before the industrializing revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Although the cult of the gods of Mount Tai continues today, my story will taper off in the twentieth century. The post-1910 era, sketched briefly and somewhat ominously in Chapter 15, is left to others to examine closely. The now nearly meaningless term “modernity” brings more distractions than benefits but it cannot be easily dismissed. The concept has irreversibly reshaped our ideas about “tradition,” mostly negatively, and the subjects of this book are nearly always considered “traditional.” In common understanding, modernity innovates; tradition transmits. Modernity seeks a rupture; tradition resists change. Modernity is desirable, progressive, and inevitable; tradition is an impediment, doomed to be removed or transformed. Modernity is future-oriented; tradition past-oriented. Modernity is fulfilling; tradition is inadequate. Tradition bolsters existing power and smothers the new with its weight. A misplaced if natural reverence for the past compounds the difficulties for needed change. Because tradition appears so normal and effortless, adopting the new naturally requires courage and work. These ideas about tradition, which became staples of twentieth-century Chinese intellectuals’ critiques of their new nation’s past (and survive today) need to be reconsidered. In the written record, chuan ‫ ة‬was a powerful and positive term. Forming the basis of the word for “tradition,” chuantong ‫ࢃة‬, it connoted the authority of a long line of transmission, the stability of identifiable and sustained cultural anchors, and the strength that could be relied on in times of crisis. In the pre-modern culture of the Chinese educated elite, respect for the past was more than a cliché, and it enchapter 1 | what this book is about

9

couraged not only active intellectual and ritual connections across time but also an appreciation of everyday ways of operating as sources of stability and continuity. Moreover, the perceived closeness of the past to the present promoted a sense of timelessness that helped naturalize novelty and disruption alike. Indeed, the importance of tradition should not be too quickly dismissed. It does provide essential resources for coping with life: predictability, safety, and hope. And we should think of tradition in the plural. Homogeneity can be deadening, but the plurality of the transmitted past provided choices, robustness, flexibility, and dynamism. The experience of many generations framed within known parameters survives by being multiple and varied. It was the consolidation and rigidification of tradition that sapped its strengths and turned it into a weapon for beating up on the past. Traditions are about joining the past, the present, and the future, and they deal with the long term. They are constantly tested and are difficult to maintain without continuous nourishment. Without the day-to-day vitality of unconscious choices and adjustments, inherited practices disappear. Viable traditions are living traditions, even if their vulnerabilities expose them to loss and necessitate change. Traditions themselves provide tools for adapting in a measured fashion to new conditions. Because novelty and strangeness can be easy and appealing in the short term, traditions provide grounds for caution. When strong, traditions moderate the destabilizing effects of transformative change; when weak, they make such change both exhilarating and devastating. In examining the old and the new, we may not want to be so quick to take sides and, as we shall discuss in more detail below, thinking in terms of the familiar and the unfamiliar may be a more fruitful approach to these issues. In any case, the people who are the subject of this book lived simultaneously within many streams of time moving at different speeds: their life spans and those of their ancestors and descendants; their daily, monthly, and annual routines; the imperial reigns that named the years; and the dynastic sequences that organized their collective past. Although the gods, by contrast, were thought to stand outside time, they too had their histories. And, as this book will show, it took work to keep one’s deities actively part of the flow of life. 10

gods of mount tai

SCHOLARSHIP, SOURCES, AND METHODS The foundation for Western understanding of the gods of Mount Tai—and Chinese religion more generally—was the writings of visitors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These observers included the curious and censorious foreign missionaries and travelers of the late Qing; early generations of Chinese and Western social scientists; Japanese researchers during the wartime occupation and those who have built on their work; and Western anthropologists and Chinese folklorists of the 1940s and of the late twentieth century. Most accorded the Great Mountain an enduring place in China’s history but assumed that the religious practices they observed there were in need of improvement or replacement. Once the idea that Mount Tai was one of China’s “sacred” mountains was put into play, it became entrenched in foreigners’ writings without (in my opinion) sufficient attention to the ways this is a reductive and inappropriate characterization.17 Western-style folklore and ethnography have, however, inspired useful, focused studies of North China’s religious and cultural practices, including the pilgrimages revived after the Maoist era. Such piecemeal work by anthropologists has not yet—so far as I know—included encompassing research on the gods of this important mountain or of the region. Most histories of China’s changing supernatural universe have concentrated on the handful of gods who were best known at the national level in late imperial times or who were important to the people of one specific locality. Of the thousands of deities worshipped at one time or another, we still know very little. Attempts by pre-modern intellectuals to systematize or limit this variety were not as successful as modern scholars imply, and the long-term effects of empire-wide cultural integration are still not as clear as they could be. Although I am hardly the first to isolate and track the history of a single Chinese god,18 I hope here not only to take a regional approach, but also to emphasize non-textual sources. The images of gods, assembled on an unusually comprehensive scale and approached with attention to technology and materials, will play an important role as my evidence. For Mount Tai, despite the great many compilations of chronologically and topographically arranged prima-

ry sources, we still do not have a coherent history that integrates its different parts into a narrative that makes historical sense. While building on recent work, benefiting from my colleagues’ expertise and enjoying their company, I have nevertheless found that I needed to reresearch the history of the mountain in order to study its gods.19 Many points, small and large, have been corrected, made more precise, or reinterpreted here. Believing that Mount Tai drew strength from the variety of its visitors, I have tried to be especially inclusive in my attention to them. Moreover, the identity and early history of the female deity on the summit has perplexed her audiences since the day the stone maiden was discovered in 1008. I have therefore investigated the events of that year in sources as close as possible to that date (see Chapter 2). In order to recover her later history I have tried to fill in the blanks left by the secondary scholarship whose sources or goals were less extensive than mine.20 The Lady of Mount Tai has received some intermittent academic attention from anthropologists, although no substantial study of her history.21 The collecting world has been slow to recognize her iconography and predictably optimistic about dating her images. From early on, changing understandings of this god’s identity have been essential parts of her story but their accuracy has been beside the point for most people. Although my version of her story and account of her changing personas is more thorough than that in existing works, I do not expect to have the last word. To understand Mount Tai, it has also been essential to follow the trajectory of the Emperor of the Eastern Peak, whose worship at the base of the mountain was both more ancient and more esteemed than that of the Jade Maiden. I believe that if we rely on physical evidence, better establish the relationship between these two gods, and enlarge the context beyond Mount Tai, the history of this mountain will look quite different. I thus hope to contribute to the history of Mount Tai by using its gods to link early history to later accounts and to fill in the middle; by putting the mountain in the context of the deity-worship that extended far beyond it; by emphasizing the religious material infrastructure of the mountain’s places; by placing pilgrims in the context of other visitors; by examining the dispersal of the images of its deities in the surrounding region; and by re-examining the price of success enjoyed by both the mountain and its gods.

My research stands on three major primary-source legs: works written about Mount Tai, local histories of North China, and images of gods. These sources are similar in their fragmentary and scattered nature, and I collected large amounts of material at a time when digital technologies for managing Big Data were just coming into being. I have done no searches of online databases, but have otherwise tried to read everything potentially relevant. Texts written in Literary Chinese (ҹߞҹ) formed the core of the Classical education and intellectual universe that unified the empire-wide male elite and are the most prized sources for the study of the Chinese past. They survive in increasing numbers as we approach the present, in original, anthologized, edited, summarized, reprinted, and translated forms.22 Historians today, flooded with an expanding universe of online pictures and digitized texts, know both much more and much less than our predecessors. I have tried to be attentive to what was known and cited by my sources and to notice which texts were available when. Mount Tai is well documented. Its inclusion in state rituals for more than two millennia has assured its presence in the standard histories. As we shall see, the great historian Sima Qian’s ‫ެޅ‬ቜ second-century BCE accounts of royal visits in search of enhanced legitimacy embedded the mountain in the Classical curriculum, and the ascents by later emperors and the gifts they left became part of the dynastic records. From the medieval period on, Mount Tai’s growing prominence as a famous site generated both words and pictures. Written accounts by literate visitors (as ֮, ׂ֮, ߎ) and dedicated collections of such pieces appeared in the sixteenth century and multiplied thereafter. Educated visitors recorded their impressions in graffiti carved onto the mountain itself, and private paintings and printed drawings reached wider audiences. All are windows into the expectations, experiences, and language of mobile elites. Formal texts that were written by important people and carved on stone stelae (੘ᗍ, ᗍࡻ) were revered by scholars then and now and have been partially transcribed for publication (as words on less prestigious objects were not). Preserved in compendia compiled by historically minded scholar-officials, a great many such writings about Mount Tai survive and are available to modern scholars. These works constitute both the sources for chapter 1 | what this book is about

11

and the objects of study of this book. They quote and re-quote one another, adding new and deleting old information. Some are still rare, but most have been recently reedited or reprinted. In the long course of my own research, I have consulted all of these compendia, in different editions and in different libraries in many parts of the world, and wherever possible I have examined inscribed texts on site. I have preferred early printings or carved stone whenever possible, using those re-set in simplified characters only as a last resort, and I have rechecked the version closest to the original for all significant material. I have preferred a physical book to an online version. Given my method and the excess of repeated information, it has been nearly impossible for me to single out any one accessible compendium for the convenience of my readers. The closest candidate is The Complete Mount Tai (Tai Shan da quan ೉‫ځ‬ϽҪ), edited by specialists and published in 1995. Its 2,672 large double-columned pages drew together primarysource materials from ancient times to the present, from botany to current city governance, transcribing the stone inscriptions (in simplified characters) and reprinting hundreds of pages of excerpted references from private writings (and noting sources much of the time). This material, although voluminous and going far beyond matters relevant to our concerns here, is concentrated, comprehensive, and responsibly presented. There are a few copies outside China, and I have therefore often cited this work, rather than the material it quotes, even though I have nearly always seen the original version as well.23 Like studies of other famous pilgrimage mountains (Wutai ٚཅ‫ځ‬, Wudang ેԄ‫ځ‬, Putuo ૦ᕥ‫ځ‬, and others), nearly all scholarly works on Mount Tai have concentrated on the cult center, as did the indispensable 1910 study in French by Édouard Chavannes. I have added a second research strategy: following the worship of the Jade Maiden and the Great Emperor into temples that were built elsewhere. This approach, feasible because of the limited extent of the Jade Maiden’s cult, widens the temporal and geographic context in productive ways, as we shall see. To this end, I turned to local gazetteers (difang zhi сҤ࢑). This genre of geographically focused history, organized according to the nested administrative units of successive governments, has been produced in waves down 12

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to the present. Because gazetteers routinely list religious establishments within their jurisdictions, these works are valuable sources even though this information is incomplete and highly uneven. I have made use of their strengths by gathering such information in large volume in order to see the timing and distribution of temples dedicated to the gods of Mount Tai from the medieval period on. I also located relevant texts among the essays and inscriptions that this genre usually included. At the same time, I was attentive to—and learned much from—short references to artisans and local resources. (See Appendix 1 for details on my method and pool of sources.) This book has not drawn heavily from Ming or Qing dynasty archives. Ordinary religious culture came to the central government’s attention only rarely, the imperial record at Mount Tai is rather well documented, and few of the other temples and objects of interest to me had significant imperial involvement. I have therefore not systematically explored the voluminous Qing Imperial Household Archives that other scholars have begun to use during the last dozen years. These sources may be our best documented point of entry into Qing material production at the wealthy capital and throughout the imperial domain (a term I use to refer to all properties of the ruling house). Understanding the manufacture of objects for daily use by the population at large requires a different approach. For the underlying ideas and routine practices that constitute my history, I have tried to supplement words with objects, bearing in mind that objects have their own languages, clichés, genres, and skewed rates of survival. Temple buildings, god-images, and ritual paraphernalia are poorly documented, unsystematically preserved, and undervalued by collectors. Most lack secure dating; their locations are not well established; and they are usually understood as generically “Chinese.” My effort to rescue such religious objects from neglect and disdain has therefore required new methods and less obvious sources. The last century has been hard on the pre-modern material culture of North China. Intermittent ripples of warfare have swept across the region and modern firepower has made the twentieth century especially destructive of temples and their contents, exacerbating the fragility of wood and clay and the demand for

recyclable metal. Politically weak communities have found it especially difficult to resist the policies of the Republican and Communist governments that encouraged the demolition of religious establishments (especially their need for public buildings, hostility to religion, and modernizing goals). The “sample” of what has survived has been distorted by such forces and these biases have infected the received wisdom, such as it is. (See Chapter 15.) Although bronze ritual vessels have been of interest to scholars and collectors for millennia, the particular late imperial god-images and religious paraphernalia that are an important source for this book were not highly valued inside or outside China and they were only idiosyncratically written about or photographed in situ. The removal of such objects from temples during the first half of the twentieth century was further stimulated by the marketplace. The tastes of European and North American collectors in particular helped create a modest commerce in which mostly small, mostly bronze, statues of gods were added to the mantelpieces of private homes and the shelves of museums. Surviving temples have been an obvious source for my research, but modern state-led campaigns in the central provinces of the North China Plain seem to have been more thorough than in many other parts of China. Organized religious groups have long been perceived as dangerous to the state, and those labeled as heterodox or seditious sects that were often found in the north have been targeted from Ming times down to the present. Perhaps in consequence, even in the post-Mao era, locally organized lay activities have been seen as politically threatening. Military action and state policies were more readily and effectively carried out in the villages of North China than in more out-of-the-way places where it was easier to escape notice. Temples in the mountains, and especially those west of the Taihang range, are disproportionately represented in modern accounts of temples, murals, and statues in “northern China.” On the Plain, the small old buildings most likely to survive were those reconfigured as schools and police stations. In these instances, the structures were preserved but their contents were removed. Large famous religious buildings were more often spared, especially if they had once enjoyed imperial patronage, were defended by resident monastic communities, or could

claim historical or architectural significance. From a superficial familiarity with the situation in Fujian and Guangdong and my own experiences since 1979, it is my impression that temple-oriented religious life has been, even down to the present, more slowly reconstituted in the north than in the south. The sheer scale of North China’s traditional religious material culture is impressive. In government surveys carried out in the late 1930s of some 1,600 temples in greater Beijing, for example, more than 50,000 objects were identified (including god-images, ritual vessels, furniture, bells, incense burners, flagpoles, and books). This sounds like a large number and it is, for the capital city had many religious establishments (especially well funded ones), and even these totals included only what had survived a half century of pilfering and destruction. Nevertheless, it is an average of only thirty objects per temple, a small quantity that might have been typical of a modest establishment in an ordinary city. Multiplied against the many thousand temples that had once been built in North China, we can begin to see the extent of the resources that were dedicated to the paraphernalia of religion in the past, envision the scale of the loss, and appreciate better why some objects might even survive in the twenty-first century.24 Between 1900 and 1980, an enormous volume of religious paraphernalia was destroyed: banners ripped down, wood burned, clay objects smashed, stone statues overturned, iron and bronze vessels recycled, and anything valuable or useful taken away. After 1949 one temple in each (North China) city was often designated a Cultural Center (Wenhua Guan ҹ٩ఖ), a kind of proto-museum that was sometimes used for storage of objects that needed to be kept out of sight during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s. Cultural centers were later upgraded but remained careful about what religious objects were exhibited, and in the late 1990s new and old temples were only cautiously built or re-outfitted. In order to see any open temples, locate surviving religious objects, visit museums, understand the geography, and view the material culture, I followed methods I had used in studying Beijing. Starting in 1999 and continuing through 2013, I undertook a series of excursions crisscrossing this North China region. I made repeated visits to the Mount Tai area, where more buildchapter 1 | what this book is about

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1.2 Central courtyard of the Bixia Gong ካᎇ࿮ dedicated to the Lady of Mount Tai, at Fuqiu Shan ൿᠨ‫ ځ‬in Xun ⬋ county, Henan, 1999. The photograph shows the Ming and Qing dynasty stelae and incense burners, along with the marble stairs, wood doors, and large roof of the main hall. (Author’s photograph.)

ings and their contents remain because of the mountain’s continuing symbolic and historic importance. Nevertheless, at these North China temples, as with any place of human activity over many generations, things both accumulated and disappeared, and buildings were ignored, renovated, torn down, replaced, redesigned, and/or renamed. Temples dedicated to female deities and city-gods seem to have been particularly targeted in this region, and I encountered hesitancy and suspicion almost everywhere I went in 1999. Even Mount Tai itself has itself been a moving target since 1949, its complex of sites and sights undergoing intermittent “restorations.” Few sites were as well preserved in 1999 as the one on the small mountain in northern Henan shown in Figure 1.2.25 In dozens of other towns I visited, neglected or closed temple buildings served only as depots for confiscated religious paraphernalia. Large objects sat in 14

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vacant halls and courtyards, unlabeled and neglected (but fortunately often open to close inspection and photography under the relaxed eye of the people in charge). Statues were rare, small religious objects were few, but there was a wealthy of heavy iron bells, incense burners, stone lions, and the like—excellent sources for understanding the local material culture. The wave of county-level museum building in the early 2000s changed this situation, not entirely for the better from my point of view. Attention to ancient history was a priority and the few temple objects exhibited were usually behind glass.26 As tourism became easier, it was possible to discover older god-images and ritual objects in partially renovated temples, although these sites were usually under the nervous authority of clergy or local officials. Photography inside temple halls was as a rule forbidden, but changing conditions and the goodwill of local custodians provided welcome exceptions.

It has therefore been fortunate for my research that many religious objects were removed from China and have survived elsewhere. Once foreigners were permanently stationed in Beijing (after 1860) and long-term residents and short-term visitors steadily increased (after 1880 and especially after 1900), some late imperial temple objects from the north found their way to other countries. Foreign and domestic demand for Chinese “curios” and antiques and a burst of interest from Western-style museums of art, ethnography, and natural history created an era of intensified acquisition between 1900 and 1950. Dealers in Beijing and Tianjin gathered and resold a wide range of such goods from North China,27 and elite ambivalence and weak governments did little to stem the outflow. Foreign museums had the resources to acquire large items, but ordinary foreign visitors, not always swayed by an evolving academic preference for preSong Buddhist art, purchased small affordable statues and vessels from later eras. Because of the importance of Christian images to Western art history, images of Chinese gods were seen as both exotic and exhibitable regardless of date. With the full reopening of the People’s Republic after 1980, the collecting market resumed in new forms, but even in the 2010s the more highly valued religious objects were still mostly Buddhist statues, especially Tibetan ones. The god-images and religious paraphernalia used as sources for this book have played only a minor role in art history, and they are of interest mostly to museum curators and auction house experts. Just as tracing the history of the gods of Mount Tai required expanding my gazetteer research beyond the cult center on the mountain, so understanding the physical images of gods necessitated familiarity with a much larger number of deities. The scholarly literature on the (mostly Buddhist) statuary of the Tang and Song periods provided background for my investigations, but post-1000 and especially post-1400 images are less well researched. Ming and Qing non-Buddhist god-images (like non-elite objects more generally) have been unsystematically collected and stripped of geographic provenance; examples are usually undated, mislabeled, and misunderstood. Those in bronze have had the greatest market value.28 Since the 1990s, I have travelled to museums within northern China and across Europe, North Ameri-

ca, and Japan, examining their collections of postTang (and usually undated) religious statues and objects, concentrating on those that were not demonstrably Buddhist. I have also greatly enlarged my pool of sources by systematically going through back auction catalogues and monitoring the current sales of the auction houses specializing in Chinese materials, activities that gradually moved online in the 2010s. Whenever possible, I have attended relevant auctions in person. I have cast my net widely, examining any and all religious paraphernalia with a possibly northern provenance and potentially datable to the 1000– 1900 time period, no matter how damaged or unattractive. I learned through experience that the Mount Tai gods were unlikely to be made of expensive, prestigious, or southern materials such as gold, jade, porcelain, lacquer, cloisonné, and ivory. Instead, the images were of clay, stone, bronze, ceramics, wood, and iron, and illustrated in murals, paintings, and woodblock prints. From museums and auctions, I have amassed a large virtual collection of god-images and temple objects, many of which I have inspected in person. My methods and sources are mentioned in the Acknowledgments and described in some detail in Appendix 2. This database has its own history, of course, and was created over the course of more than twenty years. Beginning with information assembled for my book on Beijing, it evolved with the changing availability of primary sources and my own developing interests and expertise. As future chapters will show, I was able to view objects in a range of sizes and styles, and close looking taught me about materials and manufacture. The fact that most god-images were undated and uninscribed has been a problem for all who study them, and experts and scholars usually rely on some kind of stylistic analysis to date individual examples. Like the gazetteer entries for temples, my material evidence consists of fragments and derives its power from consideration in the aggregate. (See especially Chapters 9, 13, and 14.) Reconstructing the bundles of technologies embodied in Ming/Qing god-images and temples, also important to this work, has likewise been challenging. Today, most practitioners of these North China crafts are not revered as skilled custodians of unique traditions, and they survive out of sight, if at all. Unlike the much studied manufacture of porcelain and early bronzes, chapter 1 | what this book is about

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these ordinary, regionally specific fabrication processes have not been deemed interesting enough to merit sustained reverse engineering and reconstruction. Here too I have had to research the context myself. I have tried unsystematically to acquaint myself with the versions of the relevant practices that were still being done in the 1980s through 2000s in North China but I did not search for or work with traditional practitioners. In my travels, I did happen upon and pay serious attention to many of the processes relevant to my research: the mining of limestone and processing of lime; the construction of clay statues on wood frames; furnaces and bronze casting; iron mining; iron-sand dredging; stone quarrying and carving; woodblock carving and print making. As temples began to be reconverted, rebuilt, and made anew, I was repeatedly able to witness the early stages of their construction, as small simple buildings appeared and were then improved piecemeal. Even such superficial acquaintance has been extremely instructive. Shaking off assumptions about stagnation, I have tried to put the specialized knowledge of historians of art and technology, collectors, and museum curators into a historical and regional context. Reading the literature on comparable manufacturing processes from the early modern era in other parts of the world has likewise been essential.29 As I came to understand how specific things were made, the fragmentary references in Ming/Qing texts made more sense and became more useful. My descriptions in later chapters are based on what I have learned. I have tried to convey some of this specialized knowledge as clearly and accurately as possible, without going into details that would make this book even longer. I hope I have not been wrong in major—or even minor—ways, but I eagerly welcome further research into all of the topics that are raised here. Although the process often felt as if I was slowly “fording a river by feeling for the stones,” by collecting and analyzing many fragments and using these bits and pieces to illuminate each other and bring a larger picture into view, it has been possible to overcome the uneven, inadequate, and scattered nature of my sources, material and textual. I have endeavored to make my generalizations as robust as possible but I have not been able to indulge my preference for citing every source. Instead, I have tried to describe for the reader the par16

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ticular body of accumulated evidence that lies behind each set of conclusions, issue by issue, topic by topic.30 This reliance on a large volume of small bits has shaped the “who” that this book is about. The principal characters are gods; individuals and their personal experiences only rarely come to the fore. Human actors play their roles in the aggregate, and they were nearly all residents of North China. Most lived geographically constrained lives. Among them, I have focused on the men and women who took up and extended the worship of the gods of Mount Tai: believers, patrons, builders of temples, and makers of temple paraphernalia. What I know and can relate here has been strained and shaped by the educated authors of relevant essays, inscriptions, and books, and by the anonymous builders of temples and makers of godimages in different media. Wealthy donors to temples are the most easily studied because they dominate the textual record. Emperors and their family members will appear in leading roles on our stage. Although I dislike the loose use of the term “court,” which suggests a physical place where a fixed set of people interacted regularly with the ruler, I will use the word as an adjective to refer to officials, ritual specialists, or eunuchs who personally served the emperor and his immediate family, or (like “palace”) as a shorthand for the Imperial Household Agency and its employees. Funding that came from the Imperial Household will be distinguished whenever possible from moneys from the state treasuries (and thus, from officials acting in a formal capacity). Imperial China had a porous stratum that can be thought of as a ruling class, although historians of China have been unable to settle on what to call it. By the eleventh century, education, examination degrees, government office, landed wealth, leisure, and a highstatus lifestyle were defining such a class. I use “elites” to encompass its artificially separate components, saving “literati” for that subset whose credentials involved an examination-oriented Classical (“Confucian”) education, and “scholar-official” for those for whom exam success could lead to government office. Elite families were found all over the empire but, except for residents of the capital, North China’s elites were not especially rich, powerful, or prestigious. The

perceived cultural asymmetry between the North China region and the empire as a whole was paralleled within North China by a similar distance between those who lived their lives close to home and those mobile residents who had better access to the elite national culture. Such power differentials became explicit during acts of religious patronage—as when an emperor travelled through the countryside, a literatus composed a flowery inscription for his poorer neighbors, an official tore down a temple, a rich family made an ostentatious gift, or clerics changed a god’s name. The movement of people across the empire increased commonalities across region and class but elite culture remained, by definition, only partially accessible to most people. Nevertheless, its concepts, practices, and objects were eagerly (if selectively) imitated, adapted, or reinterpreted. The continuous flow of such interactions created shared ideas about prestige, even when real differences in cultural power were blurred or disguised. National elites were local people somewhere and they were, quite naturally, also immersed in the less exclusive cultures of their households and face-to-face communities. Like buildings constructed by the state, objects created by the Imperial Household, or practices favored in expensive rituals, elites served as conduits between the national and the regional, sometimes acting as members of the one, sometimes the other. Even locally, it was rich families that spent the most to recover, rebuild, and re-endow temples. Classically and Daoist educated elites kept relevant textual knowledge alive and growing. Some artisans made expensive and enduring religious paraphernalia. The texts themselves, once released into the world, preserved their content in different media. Managers of all sorts used and transmitted an extensive repertory of organizational technologies. One of the concerns of this book is how such empire-wide elite cultures were diffused and expressed within a geographically limited region, specifically in the material culture of religious practice. A focus on gods and temples reveals a contact zone where different kinds of people interacted and where cultural influences might be swapped. Key points of interaction included elite pronouncements, pilgrimage centers, places of worship, and images of deities. Physical objects, once made and put in circulation, were templates

for replication. The land continued to provide the materials to make buildings and things. And a religious system of rituals, beliefs, and institutions incorporated flexible mechanisms for both continuity and change. I have also tried to use my sources to pull on stage the large numbers of ordinary people who were the makers and users of temples: farmers, laborers, urban service workers, shop-owners, and producers of goods. Sometimes we see their names, usually we do not, but we can see the results of their actions in the objects funded by their donations and in the traces of their path-making pilgrims’ feet. In their numbers, all these people provided the motive force behind the transformations of Mount Tai and its deities. The star of this large cast, however, is the Jade Maiden, with the Emperor of the Eastern Peak in a supporting role. They are the ones whose lives we can follow through their appearances in the historical record and their manifestations in physical form. As the title of this book suggests, my concerns lie in a zone where our modern fields of History, Religion, and Art overlap. I am therefore writing for several different audiences, not all of whom share the same interests and assumptions. The basic story is a historical one, but the focus is on issues too often compartmentalized as religion. Moreover, this book covers a relatively long period of time and it deals with a part of China not usually seen as decisive in the national narrative. It draws its evidence from aggregated material culture rather than from the rarity of art and argues for the importance of familiarity in the process of change. It highlights the way that a better understanding of gods and their places of worship can illuminate the workings of Chinese society past and present. Although these will be running themes throughout this book, it may be helpful if some of the intellectual terrain is sketched out in advance so that my various readers can begin more or less on the same page.31 CHINESE RELIGION: BASIC ISSUES Western ideas about “religion” do not neatly coincide with pre-modern Chinese categories, and the English noun hardens the notion of a distinct sphere of life cleanly separated from other realms. For convenience, I will designate a religious domain as one that was chapter 1 | what this book is about

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concerned with intractable human issues (death, life, the unknown, fate, responsibility, fairness, morality) and that had its own bodies of knowledge and behavior. The phrases “religious culture” and “religious history”—for which there were no equivalents in Chinese—provide some useful if artificial categories of analysis. I will employ them, but I have no stake in defining precise boundaries. Like “religion,” “culture” is an objectifying, category-creating noun that has been the object of intense intellectual interrogation in the modern West and that is impossible to avoid in contemporary scholarly discourse. My usage will be more practical than theoretical. In ordinary contemporary English usage, “culture” includes nearly everything that people say, do, feel, or think. For historians of China, “culture” has usually been located in the powerfully attractive articulated ideas and practices associated with the literate members of the governing class. If translated as wen ҹ, culture was central to the ideas embedded in two millennia of texts in Literary Chinese, where it had a complex of much-debated meanings. I will use the term more generally to mean the complex of ways of understanding and doing things in a changing and heterogenous world, encompassing more than the putatively normative and rooted in the structures and fluid dynamics of power. I will attempt to be specific about whose culture is under discussion. For China’s three so-called great traditions, I find it most useful to turn their nouns into adjectives, and to use Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist to describe the self-defined spheres of their different professionals, the rituals that they devised and performed, and the scriptures that guided their thoughts and actions.32 Following Chinese practice, “monks” and “nuns” will refer to celibate Buddhist clerics and the noun “daoist” (lower case) will indicate Daoist clerics. There is no comparable term for the men who studied and carried out the rituals of the state and school system in their roles as officials; I shall treat them as Confucian ritual specialists. Some of these professionals partook of the self-consciously elite culture that was based on an ability to read and write Literary Chinese. I am aware that by treating these practitioners as competing specialists, I will inevitably be flattening distinctions among them, neglecting the content of their beliefs, and sidelining the institutions that they created. 18

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The words “deity” and “god” (which I will be using interchangeably) are rough English equivalents of the even more capacious shen ‫ظ‬. Chinese did not insist on a sharp line between sentient and supernatural beings, the living and the dead, the ghost and the ancestor, the immortal and the god, the sage and the divine.33 “Divine being,” “saint,” “sage,” or “worthy” are therefore also sometimes the most appropriate translations of shen; because the intentions of deities toward human beings were not necessarily benign, “demon,” “devil,” or “ghost” can also be correct. Xian ࿁ (“immortals”) were transcendent beings possessing many superhuman powers. Humans might transform themselves into such immortals, but they were not gods and were not usually worshipped. Some of this conceptual fluidity is clear in attempts to translate sheng ๦, an ungendered multivariant adjective that we will see used to convey deep respect and reverence for the powers of philosophers, ancestors, rulers, and gods alike, men and women. Many scholars have translated it with words that resonate differently in English-language contexts: august, sage-like, wondrous, divine, holy, saintly. No one of these fits all, but I find “august” the most widely appropriate single term. Although intellectuals and ordinary people might understand the gods differently, by middle and late imperial times they lived with many deities, all of whom were thought amenable to human suasion. Such gods could be violent and dangerous, and/or caring and generous, but it was accepted that they could “come down (ઁ)” and be embodied, undiminished, in an infinite number of images (xiang Ռ) in separate places, and that they were accessible to anyone though prayers and offerings. In this book, I will sometimes write as if the gods themselves were actors when I am actually pointing to the initiatives and powers attributed to them by believers. Such attributed agency gave gods—and their embodied images—the weight and momentum that made them historical forces in themselves, shaping in turn the behavior of the people who knew or worshipped them. For several millennia, Chinese gods have been embodied in physical images; these images were understood as repositories of power and active channels for communication with another world and were intended for placement on altars in homes, workplaces, and temples. (See Figure 1.3.34) I will use the slightly awk-

1.3 Life-size clay statue of a Sonsending companion of the Lady of Mount Tai, with two attendants. Adorned with homemade robes and headdress, she has boy babies clambering on her lap. Small, lightly painted white clay images of infants (recently made) have been placed on the altar before her by her devotees. Mount Song ⌗‫ځ‬, Dengfeng county, Henan, 2007. (Author’s photograph.)

ward “god-image” (Ռ, ‫ظ‬Ռ) as a generic way of referring to the representation of a god in any two- or three-dimensional medium (sometimes using godstatue for the latter). “Image” and “icon” are meant as equivalents, with no opprobrium attached. Most Chinese gods of the medieval period were either explicitly male or ambiguously androgynous. During the period under consideration in this book, female deities came to be more numerous and important. This development opens up tricky questions about gender among the gods—questions that the study of the Jade Maiden can allow us to probe. In the normative system of traditional China, male and female were clearly distinguished—nü ѽ, woman, female; nan Բ, man, male—and scholarly rethinking of these categories has been relatively recent. Most studies of clothing, family structure, and women’s writings and lives before the twentieth century have emphasized the stability and power of this male/female divide, and been confident about the ideal look and behavior of each.35 However, anthropomorphized

Chinese gods dwelt in a realm where there was expected room for gender neutrality and bodily ambiguity, a situation that scholars have tended to accept rather than explain. Today’s heightened understanding of and expanding vocabulary for non-binary identities may make us more sensitive to the silent ambiguities of past cultures. My concern in this book is narrowly with gender in gods, and I will use “androgynous” to encompass an appearance that we might speculatively also express as ungendered, beyond gender, transgender, both male and female, neither female nor male, or some other formulation. This book will take a close look at how the gender of (some) gods has been described in both words and images. I see evidence of what might be called ongoing disagreement, probably not explicit, about how female gods were to be represented in material form. On the one hand, the deity who plays the central role in our story was named (in texts and speech) with words that were firmly female and captured women’s roles from youth to old age: nü ѽ, maiden; mu আ, mother; niang chapter 1 | what this book is about

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ਔ, lady; nai ‫ލ‬, granny. At the same time, however, her physical images sent mixed messages, and she was called by names that were not clearly gendered: xian ࿁, immortal, and yuanjun ׄᅿ, master. By showing how physical images of gods can contribute to this analysis of androgynies and gender ambiguities, I will argue for the importance of such representations to the histories of women, gender, religion, and portraiture. Many questions will be left to others, including the perhaps unresearchable one of how such images affected the self-conceptions of believers. The difficult task of “reading” images of gods through today’s different spectacles is far from straightforward. Nevertheless, these issues can be engaged and may become clearer as we trace in the chapters that follow the trajectory of the Jade Maiden’s history and appearance between 1000 and the present. Most people in this society (as in most places) were known by more than one name and so it was with Chinese gods. The “same” deity was called by different appellations in different times and places and was represented in different poses and accouterments; each one could accrue stories, iconographies, specializations, and dedicated sutras and liturgies.36 A once-living person, a name, or a tale formed a narrative kernel that could be expanded or condensed, and to which other— often contradictory—elements could be added or subtracted. The titles for those select gods who were honored (feng ൄ) by the state were more readily fixed, but they too changed over time; standardizing institutions were weak and thus, even with clerical interventions, the components of what might be called each god’s “identity” accumulated but were poorly consolidated. The multiplicity of names for gods poses a problem for me as an author and you as a reader. Whether names are rendered in romanized Chinese or in English, much less both, having too many of them is distracting and confusing. For each of the minor characters in this story, I have therefore assigned one name, usually in English. The changing appellations and attributes of the principal gods are, however, crucial to their stories. (Table 5.1 lists the different names used for the Jade Maiden of 1008.) These names not only have to be introduced in turn but also made objects of analysis. Moreover, rather than focus on the identity-fixing goals of demonstrable interest groups (as others have done),37 I will emphasize the longer-term effects of such piled-up names and sto20

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ries: the appeals to diverse constituencies, the dangers of loose anchoring and incoherence, and the possibilities for co-optation and evisceration. There were, in any case, many gods. Some students of Chinese religion have assumed that there was an identifiable “pantheon” but, rather than one organized and controlled list, the universe of Chinese deities in imperial times was actually a chaotic and changing throng, not known in its totality by any single person. Buddhist and Daoist professionals attempted to co-opt and organize selected divinities, and even the government constantly tinkered with its own choices for entities entitled to official offerings in what I call the “state religion.” Modern categories have too often relied on these kinds of pantheon-creating claims, and the textual record may make those selections appear stable and universal rather than numerous, fluid, unsystematized, and often local. It seems clear to me that a limited number of different gods were known and worshipped in any given place and time. To laypeople, such a “pantheon” (if one must use the term) would have consisted of those gods on altars in temples familiar to them, those pictured in images intended for worship, and those invoked by local specialists during rituals. Even if it is not possible to divide China into “distinct cultural regions,” each with its own “unique local pantheon,”38 identifying such assemblages seems like a promising method for understanding some of the on-the-ground differences across large areas. Nevertheless, different mixes of different gods do not seem to have meant fundamentally different understandings of the relationships between humans and deities, nor should we assume any neat correspondence between clusters of gods and the social order that made and supported them. As in many religions, it was accepted that one god could be “lodged” in more than one place. Such representations took the form of prints, paintings, and statues that could be made of almost any medium and, accordingly, exhibited considerable variety in time and space. As this book shall explore in detail, local economics made some materials cheap and easily available and others rare and expensive. Durable materials were usually preferred but repair and replacement were routine. Centuries of population movement and cultural exchange created certain shared expectations about which materials were prestigious, but ordinary people

normally used those that were conveniently at hand and thus both affordable and familiar. The god-images that are the focus of this book were—I will argue— made within a regionally specific material regime that was in selective conversation with the larger culture. Although woodblock prints and small statues of popular deities may have been available in retail shops, temple images were normally commissioned by an individual or group and manufactured one by one. They thus occupied a special niche within and yet apart from the vigorous market economy of late imperial North China. Such images were enlivened by a ritual specialist but their authority derived from their placement on an altar, the presence of worshippers, the evidence of scripture, and the attention of officials and religious professionals. Temple halls required a variety of paraphernalia in addition to gods. As in many parts of the world, patrons were needed to pay for expanding and beautifying the physical space and for acquiring the bells, altar tables, hangings, and sets of ritual vessels (incense burners, candlesticks, and vases) needed for the altar. Like god-images, these objects were not commodities in the usual sense. Smaller items could be purchased in specialty shops, but others had to be special ordered. They may have also been partially shielded from commodification (and theft) by respect for temple premises and a fear of supernatural retribution. Such ritual objects would not have been removed except to be replaced.39 Maintained by individuals, families, and groups, temple god-images and paraphernalia were shared resources that embodied, focused, and built relationships in and beyond this world. We may say that Chinese gods were “worshipped,” but the English word can be misleading. Approaching and interacting with the image of a god required a deferential attitude and behavior but did not have to involve the kind of intense reverence (much less adoration) implied by “worship” in Abrahamic religions. In the context of this book, worship will usually mean an action rather than an attitude. It will include the several methods that laypeople used to create a reciprocal relationship with a god, but especially prayer and offerings. Praying was appropriate for all laypeople without distinction and was normally undertaken by an individual, alone, with none of the organized collective participation common to other religions. It was done

silently, or aloud, or in writing; it required an offering to a material representation of a deity but not quiet, isolation, clerical intercession, or an organized service. Children learned such behavior simply by watching and imitating adults. Altars, halls, and temple buildings were where individuals could go to acknowledge (አ), pay a visit on (⅐), pray to (ᔍ), worship (ྕ አ), or serve (НйѨҏ) a god. For the routine presentation of incense, food, drink, or gifts, usually called ji ់ (or more formally si ⊈), I have preferred “to make offerings” rather than “to sacrifice.”40 Prayers and offerings thus took place within a framework that offered laypeople a selection of supernatural beings who could respond to human requests for assistance with the trials of life and death and did not require knowledge of fixed doctrines or formal attestations of faith. Chinese gods were functionally interchangeable in many ways. They came to be differentiated by the length of their history, the numbers and prestige of their supporters (manifested in gifts), and especially their responsiveness to prayer, a quality, ling ࢼ, often translated as “efficacy.” In the transactional framework of prayer, this responsiveness was the defining feature of a god. Such power was demonstrated through the testimony of petitioners and, in a circular fashion, these testimonies evidenced the god’s powers. If a god’s reputation grew, worshippers and their gifts would increase, proof in turn of both the donors’ sincerity and the god’s ling. Participants used the volume of incense burned (xianghuo ‫ )ڮܫ‬as a proxy for a god’s efficacy and a measure of what we might call “popularity.” In the constant search for responsive deities, gods could be noticed, flourish, stagnate, and disappear. Using the languages of the marketplace, of popularity, or of rivalry should not diminish the sincerity and seriousness of a believer’s decisions about which gods to pray to, which to reward, and which to abandon. Life was dangerous and competition pervasive, even among gods. I shall have more to say about the dynamics of such a process in later chapters as we explore the problem of how a new god became established and survived. Choice was therefore a dominant, pervasive, and enduring characteristic of the worship of Chinese gods. Exclusivity was not required by either party. Gods responded to whomever they pleased, individuals could decide which deity or deities to pray to, giving or withchapter 1 | what this book is about

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drawing their devotion at will. I will use the word “devotee” to mean such a non-exclusive believer in the powers of a given deity. Like “believer,” however, the word may suggest too great a degree of intensity to the human–god relationship. I also use, with greater reluctance, the English word “cult,” but by it I mean the phenomenon of any deity having followers. “Cult” should not imply concentrated, shared, single-minded belief, or any personal connections among worshippers.41 As in my previous work, I continue to be interested in connections across space and time. This book will provide more testimony to the Chinese repertory of organizational technologies and to the ease with which such vital handed-down expertise was used in projects that bridged distance, class, and time, and that raised money, created leaders, connected people, and sustained the gods. Of these issues, pilgrimage is the most relevant to our concerns here. This cross-cultural category has usually been studied at the pilgrim’s destination or through the travel to it. Instead, in order to reveal the full geographic extent of one cult, I have here looked at how worship of the Jade Maiden spread outward from such a center, and have thus mapped the full geographic expanse from which devotees might come. (See Chapter 5 and Chapter 11.) Using this method, it is possible to put pilgrimage destinations in the context of not only other temples to the same god, but also rival zones. From this perspective, often-noted differences in practice between the regions north of the Yangtze River and better-studied communities elsewhere may become clearer. It was not easy for any deity to compete for a place in a religious world that required defining and expressing a memorable persona and demonstrating attention-getting responsive powers. In this struggle, finding a temple home in a supportive community was essential. An altar with an image could be placed almost anywhere, but this book will be most concerned with those inside the freestanding buildings that had been dedicated to the worship of gods since at least late medieval times. Spoken and written Chinese have a vocabulary of names for such buildings that is richer than our translations. In Ming and Qing North China, loose distinctions existed between open altars, tan Ⴋ (where representatives of the state performed rituals); si ᕖ, chanlin ᚵ৆, and an ⒨ (where Buddhist clerics and narrowly 22

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Buddhist deities might reside); guan ޲ and gong ࿮ (usually residences for Daoist clerics and their special gods). When si, an, and guan housed significant numbers of celibate clerics, I call them “monasteries” or “nunneries.” Miao ᜐ had become widely used to name most other religious establishments, and inclusive phrases (ᕖᜐ, Ѭᜐ, ᕖ޲, ᜐཡ, ᜐཡṽ޲, ๦ṽ) were routine in literary writing of the late imperial era. The sphere of the ci ṽ, an older word, shrank to mean a “shrine” where special deceased humans (including one’s ancestors) could be found, but it also retained a residual elegance when applied to more public temples. Although academic studies have focused on organized monastic communities, small temples that were home to only a few clerics or lay caretakers were far and away the most numerous. Most of the “temples” discussed in this book were miao, and I use the English word as a generic term for them.42 It was normal for all these religious establishments to house not only a principal deity and associates, but other gods as well. The buildings might be large or small, but they were systematically distinguished from secular homes, businesses, and government offices. Few miao had land beyond the ground they stood on and, lacking endowments of income-generating property, could not attract business-minded investors. Most had no regular source of funds for either maintenance or expansion. Not part of the budget of territorial officials, they had to survive on the unpredictable donations of individual patrons and intermittent fund-raising drives by the men and women who believed in the powers of the resident deities. Most miao were lightly and intermittently managed by patrons who lived in the vicinity and acted through a few clerics whom they had hired. Such benefactors were usually influential local people who acted in the name of the community, creating lasting public testimony to a collective sincerity and increasing their private store of personal merit. As a result, temples often experienced bursts of attention followed by slow neglect. The physical embodiments of any god’s cult were vulnerable to abandonment and destruction, and isolated deities could just disappear. This book will be concerned with such community temples in the aggregate but will not dig deeply into the workings of any particular one. However, we will

examine the quite different patrons and financing of the temples on Mount Tai. These establishments had no neighborhood funding. Instead, they were supported irregularly by the state, monasteries, more distant communities, pilgrims, and the throne, arrangements that were most comparable to other isolated pilgrimage centers with diverse constituencies. Temple buildings and paraphernalia were an important portion of North China’s religious economy. An examination of their materiality will draw attention to their understudied raw materials, skilled and unskilled labor, and manufacturing processes. Clothed in the language of piety and generosity, separated from the marketplace, this dimension of local production and consumption has too long remained invisible in China’s economic history. A fuller appreciation of this neglected sector will not only give us a better picture of the wider economy of the late imperial era, the history of Chinese religion may also look different as a result. USING MATERIAL CULTURE One aim of this book is to examine and illustrate how religious beliefs and practices manifested themselves materially over time. Another goal is to show how geographically specific religious buildings and objects might, in turn, have affected expectations about divinity and defined the culturally familiar. Both require that we take seriously the use of “things” as historical sources. When part of human culture, physical objects can embody values, induce actions, and store information. They have a capacity for creating shared experience and for accommodating difference and changing contexts. They invite exploration of the commodity chain from dust to dust. They give insight into the expectations and assumptions of makers and users and, considered over their lifetimes, help us recreate the social life of things. However, like ideas, things are culturally constructed, unstable, and multivalent. Despite their superficial appeal as seeming anchors in a world of representations, their transparency is illusory. Objects do not just “illustrate” or “express” culture, they constitute, define, create, contain, transmit, disguise, and shape it, prompting change and making continuity possible. They perform cultural operations and exist in a silent conversation with other things and their users and, rather than opening a window, they at best

show only through a glass darkly. Nevertheless, although it is far from straightforward for us today to “experience the past through things,” I do believe that we can learn about how physical objects were made, used, and understood, in part by examining the claims that were made about them, in part by looking at the things themselves. Working with surviving objects poses many methodological problems even when we know how they were used and made. They can “speak,” but usually not in words; information about how they were experienced, like most tacit knowledge, may never have been recorded and can be difficult to communicate in language. Perhaps even more than words or ideas, objects can impose constraints on their own meaning and possible uses, and some objects do so more than others. Attitudes toward those objects that were understood as possessing an ineffable quality that might be called “sacred” are almost by definition hard to express, especially if speaking or writing about such things was not thought necessary or if an appropriate vocabulary was not available. Recontextualizing objects is therefore especially important if we are to appreciate the relative forces that religious things exerted on their human and physical environment. Although familiarity is a crucial dimension of material culture, and one of interest to us here, recreating past associations and context is not easy when objects have been relocated, as so many have been. Within the field of material culture, study of the everyday requires its own methods; it encourages attention to production, utility, and multiplicity, rather than to aesthetics, originality, and personal expression. Everyday materiality takes us from events to context, from the national to the local. Indeed, it may be the commonplace timelessness of the everyday that removes it from the unmediated intentionality associated with “works of art.” Here, it will be most productive to think in terms of negotiated and collaborative work involving more than one patron, a workshop environment, a complicated cultural marketplace, and display in a public place. Where objects were made will be as important as when. To incorporate the material into historical work does not mean giving it more than its place among the forces that shape life. Likewise, to insist on the relevance of religious buildings and paraphernalia is not chapter 1 | what this book is about

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to deny the spiritual practices and ideas that enlivened them or to insist that their domain was more important than any other. To call attention to a region-based materiality is not to make determinative a physical environment that was itself interactive and changing. During the last half century, the study of material culture has developed intermittently in North America and Europe and there is now a diverse literature of increasing sophistication and depth. For China, most historical considerations of material culture are lodged in the fields of art and archaeology; there are few comprehensive reference works and few firm chronologies. We have little evidence for the orally and bodily transmitted expertise of craftsmen and, outside the elite and palace spheres, no models, patterns, manuals, or notebooks. Work on temple buildings and god-images has been channeled into disciplinary grooves and skewed by obvious sources. These constraints are impediments to a fresh approach. Materiality was unevenly theorized by pre-modern Chinese elites. Daoist texts assumed the immateriality and mutability of the world, and their meditational and ritual practices relied on direct correspondences between the mental and the physical. Buddhist philosophy also understood the phenomenological world as fundamentally insubstantial, and widely shared beliefs accommodated the assertion that renunciation was a viable path of escape from life’s cycles of rebirth. Classical philosophy encouraged thinking about the material world in abstract and moral terms and used the word wu ‫ ׉‬to mean “things,” but also matter, stuff, and the material universe. Such scholars did classify the things of the world but, for most, the importance of wu was that they were carriers of embodied principles (li ԑ) that could be understood best through words.43 At the level of religious practice, materiality certainly mattered. Temple buildings were expected to take recognizable forms and to house appropriate and effective images. Physical objects were essential to the rituals that governed a proper life, and Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian manuals and practice were attentive to precise specification of ritual icons and vessels. It was assumed that objects had the power to communicate and that their messages needed to be shaped correctly. 24

gods of mount tai

In the field of Chinese Art, considerable prestige has accrued to archaeological finds from the first millennium BCE and to Buddhist art before 1000, and to objects as expressions of essentialized culture. For the middle and late imperial eras that are the subject of this book, literati painting and calligraphy have dominated Chinese and English discourse, while porcelain and palace production have absorbed much academic and conservation energy. Individual works have been prized above studio or workshop products, teacherpupil distinguished above master-apprentice, and the amateur idealized by contrast with the professional. A dividing line between “art” and “craft” continues to be important, with the modern category of Art still dominating scholarship.44 Ideas about aesthetics and craftsmanship have had their own long and diverse histories and special vocabularies, and academic views have been strongly shaped by the distinctions prized by men of the Chinese scholar-official class. A transcendent elegance (ya ઩) was a much valued quality, recognized by connoisseurs and created by contrast with its opposite—the vulgar or ugly (su ཞ or lou ᢓ). Other language used to assign value distinguished “skills” (yishu ਲफ) of selected sorts from mere “work” (gong ֞). The prestigiously refined was continuously defined in opposition to both the smooth virtuosity of professional palace work and the functionality of objects marketed to urban consumers. Modern scholarly work has framed these constantly patrolled but moving boundaries as matters of taste—usually of the consumer—not resources or materiality. It is not often remarked upon that nearly all of what today constitutes Chinese art or high-quality craft was in its own time—that is, before 1900—never seen by most of the population. Tombs and grave goods were for the dead (and workmen, briefly); paintings and calligraphy were appreciated in small groups by connoisseurs; fine furniture, porcelain, silks, and precious stones were found almost exclusively in the private homes of the wealthy; and better buildings were closed off behind walls. Such a situation may have been not too different in other parts of the world, but there was no Chinese tradition of art placed in an open plaza, and there were no museums or public galleries for the display of treasures. Access to Chinese art has followed upon the creation of the category of “art” itself.

Private elite taste did, however, affect cultural production in wider circles, even if indirectly or invisibly. Trend-setters from the capital and the rich cities of central China circulated through other urban areas, proud of their cosmopolitanism and status-making consumption. A shared concern, even fascination, with things thought to be “precious treasures” (bao մ) underlay the hierarchy of culturally prestigious materials that seems to have pervaded all social strata by Ming and Qing times. Culturally, gold, jade, silver, bronze, and silk stood higher than wood, stone, paper, and clay. This ranking was reflected in spoken and written language, in multiple visual forms, in poem and story, and in the market price of raw materials. It affected the manufacture of objects throughout society and was the basis for status emulation, locally and nationally, in religious matters like many others. Although Christian churches and the images of holy figures have been central to Western European art, Chinese gods were not naturalized into secular or collectable objects, and they are still positioned precariously on the ambiguous edges of the modern world of Chinese art. In the twentieth century foreigners collected images of gods, and greater efforts were eventually made to preserve those still in situ in China—especially those dating from the fourteenth century and earlier. Ming temple murals are sometimes considered Art (if early or imperial), but god-statues only achieve that status if they are old and made of bronze, lacquer, or wood. Objects beyond those margins are less well preserved, catalogued, or published. Their histories are mostly unwritten. Recently, the trending idea of “visual culture” has encouraged scholarly scrutiny of a more diverse set of paintings, prints, and book illustrations while at the same time drawing attention to the decorative arts of a cosmopolitan imperial household and well-to-do urban consumers.45 Pictures of things do a poor job of rendering materiality, however, and they direct attention away from the things themselves. Moreover, what was seen (like what was read or said) had multiple, contending, and even incoherent meanings, depending on the viewer. It is easier to impute meaning rather than to explicitly identify whose visual culture is being analyzed, especially when creators and audiences are uncertain. Recreating the diverse visual world of ordinary people who left no written records continues to be challenging, both practically and intellectually.

Like “popular religion” or “vernacular architecture,” the terms “popular culture” and “folk art” attempt to name the culture of those who were by definition excluded from the cultural elite. These terms fail to identify what was shared across class and at the same time obscure geographic difference and temporal change. Even the (undeveloped) idea of regional styles of elite production fits uneasily into the enterprise of defining Chinese art for a modern China. The workshop production of anonymous artisans is infrequently historicized. For most scholars and collectors, statues from the later imperial era that are not identifiably Buddhist remain a category of marginal interest and weak critical attention. Although issues of quality and perceived value cannot be dismissed, I hope to impress on readers of this book that there is much to be learned from objects we today may not consider beautiful or well made. I hope I can make a phrase like “the religious art of Ming/Qing North China” sound less unlikely than it does now. It has been primarily students of national-level architecture and monastic communities who have focused their attention on the physicality of temple complexes. When Chinese architectural history began in the twentieth century, it concentrated on tombs and surviving public buildings, the older the better. The pioneering architectural historian Liang Sicheng’s ᅯ‫ڽ‬ ю denigration of the Ming/Qing as a “Period of Rigidity” (following eras of Vigor and Elegance) has remained influential.46 Access to the buildings, regulations, and archives of later dynasties has encouraged the study of their monumental architecture and imperial constructions. Because large timber-frame halls with tile roofs held up by wood bracket-sets are the ones deemed architecturally significant, palaces and monasteries have tended to be treated as normative rather than exceptional. Well known to scholars and tourists today, such impressive well-endowed complexes were shaped by nationwide elite ideals and built of expensive materials by craftsmen trained in prestigious traditions.47 Although only partially open to the public in the past, a few examples of such culturally powerful complexes were to be found in most sizable urban areas, visible for emulation. chapter 1 | what this book is about

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1.4 The Gongzhu Si (Princess Monastery) in Fanshi county, Shanxi, on the western edge of the Taihang Mountains, to the southwest of Beijing. Its mud-brick walls, tile roofs, and handful of old trees are typical of the North China region. (Chai & Jia [2006], fig. 189.)

Some scholarly attention has been given to “vernacular” (xiangtu ൅ग) architecture, but that category is now usually understood to mean housing (for people). Panoramic surveys have catalogued surviving buildings from all over modern China, grouped them loosely by geography or by the ethnicity of their residents, and turned this patchwork into examples of national diversity. Few scholars have been deeply interested in the thousands of ordinary religious buildings that previously hosted private and community activities but have now largely disappeared. See Figure 1.4. These buildings were not the unchanging expressions of an architect’s vision but the loosely coordinated work of teams of craftsmen. Understood as worksin-progress, always awaiting further piecemeal improvement, they are not amenable to a fetishized 26

gods of mount tai

concern with fixed dating. By late imperial North China, shared understandings shaped what such a building should ideally look like: a central hall on a raised platform containing an altar for god-images, surrounded by a wall pierced by a gate. Modular expansion was the normal method of improvement, and new halls could be added along the sides and central axis, with rooms for other gods and resident clerics. Modern insistence on fixing the style, period, and date only distracts from attention to the variety of evolving shapes of each complex as it was experienced by generations of users. These familiar upgrades were called xiu ࢗ, usually too narrowly translated as “repair.” Most were small projects, punctuated by the occasional quantum jump, and guided by known models, affordable materials, and

available funds. Enlarging, replacing, rearranging, and rebuilding would have been ever-present goals, however infrequently realized, because damage and destruction were constant threats; each improvement would testify reassuringly to the still-responsive powers of the deity. As physical objects, temples were carriers of tradition and live centers for the production and display of material culture: found everywhere, created by artisans, and sustained by the individual and collective local efforts of communities.48 The construction and outfitting of temples necessitated the activation of personal connections to generate funds, assemble skilled workmen, and concentrate appropriate materials. A person of no wealth or education could freely enter these buildings and see a variety of material objects. The few high-status religious establishments allowed limited exposure to more rarified tastes. If there was accessible “public” art before modern times, religious objects may have both embodied and housed it. In a culture where walls created private spaces everywhere, temples were uniquely public.49 Architecturally distinct outside and inside, their iron incense burners, bronze bells, stone stelae, metal vessels, earth or metal statues, painted hangings and murals, and silk and cotton banners were rarely seen in other venues and certainly not in such concentrated fashion. For a person whose home had few objects beyond the most basic, for someone who would never enter the compound of a wealthy family, even a humble temple was probably the largest and finest structure they would ever be in and its furnishings the most expensive objects they would ever see. Intentionally immobile, temples were intended for use and display and, in a world where access to the past was uneven and unequal, their accouterments blended past and present into powerful embodiments of enduring tradition. Temples were also places where one might see expensive technologies of metal casting, clay-moulding, roof-building, and statue-making. And, as we shall see, a new cultural element could surround itself with such familiar things and so become part of the existing cultural fabric. To call temple buildings and their contents a kind of “public art” or “public religious art” is to invoke concepts unfamiliar to the people of imperial China, and yet the possibility can encourage us to enlarge our concepts of Chinese art and to make “temple culture” and

god-images part of the “shared structures of [our] attention.”50 Trained as we are by the canon of Western art and the look of the contemporary world, modern historians may have difficulty seeing Chinese religious art anew. Ming and Qing educated elites, their minds disciplined by their own insistent self-conscious standards of elegance, also had trouble looking through the eyes of those who were not their social equals. A proper study of material culture requires an understanding of materials, producers, and technologies. Attention to marketing and use or to traders and consumers are not enough. To study the god-images and temple paraphernalia that form one strata of evidence for this book, I have chosen a somewhat archaeological method of assembling a large volume of examples that are concentrated in space and time, and complementing them with attention to the materials out of which these objects were made, their makers and manufacturing processes, and the ways that they were circulated.51 In the aggregate, this pool of objects can also illuminate resource exploitation, illustrate commodity chains of production and use, and testify to larger economic forces. The history of Chinese technology was effectively launched by the multi-book series Science and Civilisation in China, initiated by Joseph Needham in the 1950s (twenty-five volumes and counting). It began with comparisons of China’s intellectual and technical accomplishments to those of Europe and argued that heights reached in the Song era were followed by stagnation and decline until the breakthroughs of modern science and industrialization. The early history of bronze casting and the now famous inventions of the middle period (paper, printing, gunpowder, compass) have been reasonably well studied, while centuries-long foreign demand for Chinese silk and porcelain have assured attention to their technological history. Nevertheless, innovation continues to be considered more significant than use, change more interesting than routine, and high-profile materials more important than plebian ones. The better-documented state sector has encouraged attention to imperial management, large-scale manufacturing, and the movement of goods into society through the hands of businessmen. Because imperial-era social distinctions between the literatus and the artisan discouraged the gentleman’s study of or acchapter 1 | what this book is about

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tive participation in technical or manual work, there were no public organizations to promote experiments in natural history or useful arts. The opposition or gap between “traditional” technology and “modern” industrialization is still assumed to be large. The concerns of this book are elsewhere. The technologies relevant here are those of making singular objects that did not have moving parts and were intended to be sturdy but immobile. Our agents are the people who worked in material-specific workshops whose key features were assemblage, teamwork, and the oral and bodily transmission of expertise. Like ritual and organizational technologies, this kind of manufacture drew on certain fundamental processes, required specialists, permitted improvisation and tinkering, and was a repertory of human-level solutions that could be applied flexibly to general problems. Western and Chinese attitudes toward the lines between art, craft, and work keep the artisan in a world apart. In the twentieth century, Chinese intellectuals turned to an ancient and capacious term, gong ֞, referring to materially productive work and, re-understood as “labor,” made it the core of important new concepts.52 Inherited class prejudices against the makers of things left artisans associated with the backward and traditional and their work too easily characterized as “sidelines.” China did not have an influential Arts and Crafts movement (as did Japan and the West), and mid-century Maoist enthusiasm for the popular arts of the masses (‫ھ‬ҽϽ੃ϡ਴भ) has faded.53 The academic overlap between the fields of technology and art remains small. In Classical Chinese texts, artisans were compartmentalized in the powerful and enduring idea (at least as old as the Song) of four ranked social statuses: shi ࡲ (scholar, government official), nong హ (peasant, farmer), gong ֞ (artisan, worker), and shang ࠱ (merchant, businessman). Although these categories matched only very loosely the increasingly fluid social reality, scholars had for centuries praised farmers and agriculture as foundational and seen themselves as those who set moral standards and ran the state. Scholar-official policy-makers of necessity wrestled with issues of money, monopolies, and trade, but the producers themselves remained marginalized. Confucius himself set the tone for the attitude of educated men toward the makers of things: “The gentleman is not an 28

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implement (ᅿжϤॆ).” Nevertheless, elites did dabble in certain prestigious crafts, technical expertise was recognized if not lauded, and not a few officials became efficient managers and specialists in what we might call civil engineering.54 By Ming/Qing times, the ancient term jiang ᪢ was both a formal government tax status and a term of self-identification for what we might call (with our own ambivalences) craftsmen or artisans. In English, “craft” tends to be associated with art, “artisan” with work; “craftsman” emphasizes the careful work of dedicated individuals rather than the more marketdriven and routinized production of teams and workshops. Both terms tend to be generic and judgmental. Because of the importance of collective workshop labor to the religious economy, “artisan” will usually be my preferred term. Workshops (chang ྃ, zuo ӑ) were the main form of manufacture and they served as the organizational and productive locus for the goods that everyone needed, commoner to emperor. Under the Ming, jiang were a separate legal category, organized around the economic identity of the male head of household, and assigned differentiated labor service obligations to the state; the term persisted even after this corvée system had broken down. Unlike merchants, who were not socially or legally distinct and could disappear up into landed scholar-officials or down into petty shopkeepers and farmers, artisans seem to have remained socially isolated even in times and places of relative mobility, secure in their niche, their skills handed down within families and workplaces. Because they sometimes signed their work, we know that it was this word “jiang” that Ming/Qing artisans routinely used to designate themselves, employing it in compound phrases that linked them to the materials in which they specialized—and into which this manufacturing sector was divided. Those of concern to us are those who worked with stone (੘᪢), bricks and tiles (တ᪢), wood (ަ᪢), iron (ੌ᪢), paint (ޫ᪢), and paper (ௌ᪢). The usual verbs for these kinds of making were zao ߃ and zhi ३, but their meaning of “to cause something to be made by someone else” reflected the privileging of the patron over the worker. Within each specialization, artisans could set standards (in our case, for buildings, god-images, and ritual objects), but they seem to have been relatively

localized in their influence—except when powerful patrons relocated them. Although some artisans who produced for the religious economy were probably functionally if unevenly literate, they relied on the experiential person-to-person transmission of useful knowledge. Socially distant from cultured elites, they have left few written records of their lives or work.55 Recent studies of the Ming and especially the Qing Imperial Household Agency have helped identify the styles and technologies of luxury products that moved outward from palace workshops into selected points of intersection with local cultures.56 These sources are a promising vein for research on high-end craftsmen and their materials, but in this book there will be little attention paid to expensive objects of ivory, porcelain, cloisonné, lacquer, bamboo, hardwood, or silk; there will be no rhino horn, no soapstone, no inkstones, no coral, no glass, no silver, no gold. And no actual jade. Instead, we will direct our attention toward ordinary available materials; doing so will expose the less-noticed impacts of non-agricultural environmental depletion, and may encourage comparable studies of resources, technologies, workplaces, and producers elsewhere in the empire. The routine production of temple paraphernalia—god-images, bells, vessels—remained in the realm of local artisans. Those who play a role in our story belonged to families in which skill and organizational knowledge were shared and perpetuated, and they labored in workshops that concentrated on separate parts of the production process. Religious objects made on commission were probably only a small fraction of the workshop output of more saleable objects in the same material. In places where raw materials were concentrated, whole neighborhoods or villages were involved in manufacture. By realizing that specialized artisans were to be found near the sources of raw materials we can locate artisanal workshops in time and place. Information on geological deposits of copper, lead, coal, iron, lime, and clay in North China’s mountains is thus crucial to my analysis. Although informed consumers could have identified the nearest or best centers making woodblock prints, casting iron, quarrying granite, carving marble, producing lime, firing bricks and ceramics, or building furniture, most were not among the nationally famous sites that we know of today.

Work with everyday materials took skills that were rarely appreciated by elites. Artisans could show off their technical expertise in ways best understood by insiders, workshop comrades and nearby professional competitors, but reputations came into play during the negotiations when an object such as a god-image was commissioned. In such conversations—which we must try to imagine—craftsmen learned to explain what was possible at what level of expense and consumers learned to articulate their wishes, and in the process shared expectations were adjusted. By looking at the resulting objects, this book will thus also explore how, during the building and outfitting of temples, the continual matching of resources, workshops, and patrons might have yielded a coherent regionally based content. It will also allow us to explore the familiar, that is, the unremarked characteristics that made everyday life possible and that afforded protection against the unknown. THE POWER OF FAMILIARITY The stones discovered on Mount Tai in 1008 were turned into a god by being named and worshipped in a conventional fashion. In this book we shall see how being embodied in regionally familiar materials and established within a coherent geographic area naturalized the Jade Maiden’s presence and gave her a home. Once recognizable, her prayer-granting powers made her popular; with the passage of time, she became commonplace. Imitation siphoned off her hardearned identity and blurred her differences from other gods. An empty generic name and look submerged her in a sea of other female deities. The story of the Jade Maiden is not one of confrontation between tradition and modernity. The arc of her trajectory from unusual to exciting to familiar to routine came about gradually. The process had many components, not the least of which was the openness of Chinese religious culture to new deities, but in the chapters that follow I will also emphasize how she was folded into and carried along by a familiar, local, material regime. These days we tend to assume that the new is more interesting and more important than the familiar, but it is the habitual and predictable that sustain life. The familiar is more than a dull alternative to the novel; it is a concept that can help us probe the meaning of the local, understand the chapter 1 | what this book is about

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comforts of the known, and think about the dangers of formulas and banality. “Familiar” in English suggests closeness to one’s person, family, or household.57 Familiar people, objects, and places can be those that have been near at hand for some period of time, close enough for easy interaction, recognizable, conventional, needing no introduction, taken for granted. Like the traditional, the familiar is a vehicle for keeping the past in an active relationship with the present, using both as a foundation for the future. But familiarity is also a relative state, defined by different degrees of knowledge, intimacy, and danger. Life involves novelty, to which caution is a prudent response and predictability a comforting hedge. With the familiar, anticipation is less stressful and fluency satisfying. Habits screen out the irrelevant and slowly incorporate the new. They can be a routine, even pleasurable, way of coping with disruptions, and they serve as the foundation for order, stability, safety, and continuity. “Familiarization” describes the progressive building of relationships through repetition and exposure over time. Such repetition can be an efficient and robust mode of enhancement and transmission. It can also stifle variety, impede singularity, resist change, hollow out meaning, and become an invisible prison. In the Jade Maiden’s story, it is possible to see familiarization as a normal process of cultural change, one that does not lead in a single direction. The traditional, taken-for-granted layouts and paraphernalia of Chinese temples, homes, and workshops preserved and prompted the routines that sustained daily activities, just as did the performance of rituals, mobilization of established organizational mechanisms, writing in known literary genres, and making of objects in established ways. When room was left for improvisation, change could be made manageable and uniqueness encouraged. Familiarity was also the basis for the exclusionary hierarchies of taste; it could establish the range of acceptable variation but preclude singular greatness. The well-entrenched could be robust, sometimes too much so. The familiar comes into being in many ways, but for the great majority of residents of imperial China for whom textual knowledge was out of reach, it was carried in mental, bodily, and material memory, and revitalized through word of mouth, well known spaces, 30

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copied physical action, oft-used objects, and significant ritual occasions. Redundancy and routine helped assure a healthy continuity. The repeated enactments of familiar ways of thinking and doing helped establish and kept alive the bonds between people. Maintaining a familiar environment was not easy and required constant effort and endless small adjustments. The regional material culture that I will explore in this book was constantly responding to the presence of people from other parts of the empire, people who sometimes passed through quickly, sometimes stayed for years on business, and sometimes sojourned for a lifetime. Although this exposure kept North China in constant touch with the rest of the empire, there were still many more locals than outsiders, and their short-distance movements within the region had the effect of keeping shared practices both well stirred and in place. With formal education limited to a few and religious institutions kept weak, the perpetuation of accepted beliefs and practices was diffuse and unsystematic. Institutions drifted and aged, procedures were forgotten or reinterpreted, and important distinctions were lost. The habitual could become mindless and empty, enervated, useless, even dangerous. In radically new circumstances, familiar ideas and behavior could become rigid, fragile, risk-averse, defensive, and boundary-making, deployed to generate fear of the new, the different, the strange, or the foreign. The idea of the “new” (xin Ј) in pre-modern China has not been well studied, but even when it meant only “renewal,” it was still associated with risk. A safer quality, the “strange” (qi ࡞), was established as an elite category for the anomalous, unusual, personally expressive, exciting, but unthreatening. The Chinese term for the “customary” (su ཞ), what was known and done, was often invoked as a source of authority and justification for current practice but, even then, elites deemed such customs low, “non-standard” (bu zheng ϤԜ), and vulgar. The daily ways of the people were more often seen as merely “local” (tu ग): acceptable but always in need of improvement. Nevertheless, the familiar and customary remained comforting, enduring sources of stability and predictability for all members of society. Understanding the “unconsciously familiar” is challenging, especially since it is so rarely remarked

on. Repeated exposure can make anyone oblivious to what is ordinary, and studying it in past times and places is obviously not straightforward. Among modern social historians, the rubric of “everyday life” (richang shenghuo я‫׶‬Т҅) has directed some attention away from the uniqueness of better-documented elites to the ordinariness of ordinary people. This has been a welcome development, but such works have tended to limit daily life to certain locations (especially the home) and to ascribe an unchanging timelessness to the pre-modern everyday. Among historians, maintaining continuity may not have been sufficiently appreciated as a task that requires effort. In today’s world of unceasing stimulation and connection, repetition has been newly appreciated as a problem. Implanting a cultural entity in a new place, struggling to make it fit in, confronting widespread imitation, and then dealing with a loss of distinctiveness—processes analyzed in this book—these seem to also be part of the homogenization that has come with globalization in our own time. We recognize that not only discardable traditions but also important ideas and practices can lose force through overexposure and quickly become emptied of content and rhetorically reduced to clichés. Identifying and protecting core values, endangered places, and rare objects and life forms from the unprecedented onslaught of replication, interpretation, and commodification can seem a quintessentially modern dilemma. But even in past eras, as we shall see in the latter chapters of this book, popularity had its pitfalls and its price. This book’s attention to both familiarity and banalization suggests that such issues speak to the past as well as the present. A focus on such continuities and habits will, however, push differences to the margins, deemphasize change, and encourage generalization. These are dangers in this book, where we shall be more concerned with the forces that quietly created and undermined familiarity than those better-studied ones that explicitly attempted to alter it. The reader can judge whether attention to North China’s material culture serves as an effective entry point to processes of gradual change and everyday familiarity, and whether attention to variation across geography, time, and class sufficiently differentiates what was shared.

WHAT’S NEXT Mount Tai is the anchor for this book. The main storyline follows the gods of the mountain. In particular, we will track the history of the Jade Maiden as she emerged, survived isolation and lack of patrons, piggybacked on a male rival, found a new cultural niche shared with other female deities, acquired new names and identities, presented herself in distinctive images, endured criticisms and won legitimacy, enjoyed regional popularity, coexisted with a host of rivals, and then saw her individuality slip away and her world violently attacked. Her tale is intertwined with that of the Emperor of the Eastern Peak, her predecessor, neighbor, and competitor. His worship in North China was the scaffolding for the Jade Maiden’s rise, but his much older presence stagnated as the new star was born. Our protagonists also include those who paid homage to these Mount Tai deities—the throne, daoists, artisans, travellers, patrons, pilgrims, and petitioners. They found the Jade Maiden on Mount Tai, advertised her distinctiveness, promoted her to their neighbors, took her home, and embedded her in their local communities. They colonized the North China Plain on her behalf but ultimately were unable to keep her hard-earned identity from draining away or to defend her effectively against strong state hostility. The main events of this book are therefore not natural disasters, intellectual breakthroughs, foreign invasions, or the rise and fall of dynasties, but creating, travelling, giving, building, naming, confusing, and forgetting. Put together, such activities can tell instead the story of Chinese gods who mattered much more to most people than the historic events of our textbooks. The transformations at Mount Tai between 1000 and 2000 will be set in several larger contexts that are usually ignored in comparable accounts of the lives of Chinese deities. First, the history of the other gods with whom the new Jade Maiden competed and found company. Without them, we cannot understand her. Second, the geographic spread of temples to the Jade Maiden beyond Mount Tai, a datable context that allows us to see the North China character of this cult. Without these temples, we cannot understand Mount Tai. Third, research into images of the Mount Tai gods in all available media, an endeavor that permits investigation of their date, audience, and location. Without such images of the Jade Maiden, we cannot grasp who this god was. chapter 1 | what this book is about

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Along the way, this book makes a number of interrelated arguments about the dynamics behind the successes and failures of temples and gods, including the roles of gender, iconography, and physical images. In addition to its main narrative and its possible contributions to the history of religion and culture in North China, this introduction has pointed to two other areas of intellectual concern. One is an argument for the value of regional-level Chinese history. In order to understand the foundations of a locally grounded cultural familiarity, I hope to illustrate the rewards of looking away from the empirewide state and its elites, and toward geology and nonagricultural resources. In this case, the Greater North China Plain is an example of what might be done with attention to regional materiality in order to show the national from the perspective of the local, to push elite culture toward the periphery of our inquiries, and to advance our understanding of everyday familiarity. The other is an argument about the value of material culture evidence for the study of history, as a complement to and substitute for texts. I emphasize objects in the aggregate, not the singular example, and give particular attention to the availability of raw ma-

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terials and knowledgeable artisans. This emphasis should present an expanded vision of what constitutes both art and material culture. In this instance, images of gods are used to understand not only the history of one god but also the religious economy and the ideas about the identity and gender of gods in general. I hope to show also the importance of temples as carriers of culture, centers of production, meeting places for people, and loci for public art. Encouraging an appreciation of the familiar and the known, not the new or the modern, would be a gratifying byproduct. Moreover, despite its length, I consider this book to be a preliminary investigation of region-based material and religious culture. Despite my efforts here, much of the needed context is still unresearched. I have tried to pose interesting open-ended questions and perhaps have guessed right in my answers, but more than anything I hope that this book will stimulate others to carry these issues forward and correct me wherever and as often needed. If my methods prove useful, all the better. Likewise, the story I tell served me as an emerging framework on which the evidence could be arrayed as I did my research; however, the results should not be

taken as a rigid narrative or the last word. The future of the Mount Tai gods in the twenty-first century will undoubtedly recast these preceding periods in a different light, and this is as it should be. Having now, I hope, given the reader some introductory background, I offer a preview of what is to come. The story begins in Chapter 2 at Mount Tai with Song Emperor Zhenzong’s enshrinement of a stone statue of a jade maiden in the year 1008, situating the reader at an important turning point in Chinese religious history. Chapter 3 traces the changing relationship between the small mountaintop shrine and the state-sponsored temple to the male god of this Great Eastern Peak whose worship had dominated understandings of Mount Tai before 1400. Chapter 4 explains the Maiden’s transformations into Woman, Mother, and Master. In Part Two, Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 follow the action as the cult developed and expanded beyond the mountain into North China, a Ming dynasty phenomenon. Chapter 7 and Chapter 8 take a closer look at the patrons, pilgrims, and tourists who made the ascent of Mount Tai into both a regional and empirewide experience.

Part Three turns to the more settled situation between the seventeenth and early twentieth century. Chapter 9 examines North China’s regional materiality more closely, along with the role of images and objects in the worship of the Lady of Mount Tai. With Chapter 10, we consider the impact of Qing dynasty rulers on the mountain. Chapter 11 and Chapter 12 consider the Lady in the context of the other gods with whom she competed and coexisted, and examines the relations between cult and territory. Part Four takes a closer look at the physical images of Mount Tai’s female deities and their evidence for her weakened identity. Chapter 13 focuses on statues in bronze in order to examine changing patrons, placement, and gender. Chapter 14 uses god-images that were painted and printed to explore the distribution of the cult across social strata and geographic areas within the North. Both chapters trace the deity’s continuing assimilation and increasing homogenization. The fate of Mount Tai and its gods in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is taken up in Chapter 15. All stories have a beginning. Ours is on a mountaintop in the chilly autumn of the year 1008.

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part one

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Settling In

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chapter 2

Mount Tai, 1008

The god who has the starring role in this book made her first appearance on the remote summit of an already famous mountain during a time of dynastic insecurity. The Jade Maiden discovered there in 1008 slowly settled in, survived centuries of isolation, showed her powers, and grew popular as an object of worship, on the peak and then beyond. She became a neighbor and then a competitor of Dongyue, the God of the Eastern Peak, the multifaceted male deity whose worship at the foot of the mountain was already a millennium old. Without understanding him, we cannot understand her. Without understanding the mountain, we cannot understand either. Mount Tai, Tai Shan ೉‫ځ‬, had long been a resonant symbol for states that controlled northern China. The ancient rituals directed toward the powers imputed to its massive presence spilled over into the worship of these two gods, transforming the mountain’s place in the cultural, economic, and social life of North China. The tale repeated in later centuries is that when Emperor Zhenzong of the Song dynasty nervously performed the historic Feng and Shan rituals at Mount Tai in the year 1008, a jade maiden was found high on the summit. Taken as an auspicious sign, the stone figure was immediately worshipped at the spot. Few Chinese gods had such a historically grounded beginning, firmly fixed in time and place. Part of a documented imperial event, this origin story laid the groundwork for the Jade Maiden’s future transformations. It was later questioned but not discredited. Nor

has it been thoroughly studied. Here at the outset, we will examine its accuracy and put it back into the context of its time. In revisiting Mount Tai’s past, it is important to set aside the impressions left by an actual or virtual visit to the mountain today. A thousand years ago the now sprawling city of Tai’an at its foot barely existed; the large fortified Dai Miao ┬ᜐ temple complex, now home to scholars and government officials, had not been built. The distant summit to which hordes of tourists ascend by cable car was deserted and a daunting struggle to reach. Nevertheless, Mount Tai’s long early history, striking physical presence, and proximity to the centers of civilization on the East Asian continent have allowed its own signature identities to accumulate, discouraging encroachment on its rocky slopes and increasing the mountain’s cultural weight to match its physical size. In the year 1000, powerful gods were androgynous or male, and the development of a vaguely imagined jade maiden into an enduringly and widely popular deity was by no means easy or predictable. Moreover, although the story of this Jade Maiden’s initial entrance onto the stage of history during an imperial procession to the summit was generally known in later centuries, the facts were murky from the outset. With the passage of time, they grew murkier still and, as the fame of this female god grew, both curious believers and skeptics had more and more questions and few and fewer answers about her origins. gods of mount tai

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2.1 View of Mount Tai and its distinctive profile, as seen from the plain to the south. The lack of trees was typical of late imperial North China. Photograph by Édouard Chavannes, 1907. (©RMN-Grand Palais AP12780/Art Resource, NY.)

This chapter begins with the events surrounding the future Lady of Mount Tai’s first appearance as a jade maiden. That moment was witnessed by only a handful of people but became known to a larger number of the emperor’s circle and was probably gossiped about by more. No one knew then that they were witnessing the birth of a long-lived god and, like many seemingly inconsequential moments in turbulent times, the incident seems to have been quickly forgotten. Surviving sources are few. Nevertheless, we probably know more now about eleventh-century China than anyone did in the intervening centuries. With our access to textual and material sources that have been saved, reprinted, photographed, consolidated, and made generally available to interested scholars, it is possible to get closer than one might think. Much will remain a mystery, to be sure, and perhaps this is as it should be. We will revisit 1008 with a focus on the god-to-be rather than on the significant national events that have 38

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preoccupied historians of the period. If we are to go one step further and see how the Jade Maiden fit into the gender-skewed pantheon of gods of her day, it will also be important to put the imperial journey to Mount Tai in the context of Zhenzong’s patronage of other deities. THE GREAT EASTERN PEAK: MOUNT TAI Before there were gods, there was the mountain. Rising directly from the plain, Mount Tai’s height and striking shape were obvious from afar. The summit’s sharply etched silhouette made it easy to name and to conceptualize “the mountain” as an identifiable entity amidst a cluster of lesser peaks. Its mass of hard rock had been a physical anchor when the Great North China Plain was still a sea, unrivaled to the peninsular east and a counterpoint to the powerful Taihang range out of sight to the west. (See Figure 1.1.) As the mountain became a by-

word for permanence, deities associated with it were enveloped in its visible and palpable power. What might be thought of as a single entity was understood in different ways. In Chinese, Tai Shan ೉ ‫ځ‬, Great Mountain, meant the physical mountain itself,1 but in the course of the first millennium of our era, the name also conjured up specifically the sight of the southern face as seen from the plain, from the ravine-cut hillsides up to the visible summit. (See Figure 2.1.) Another name, Dong Yue ֆₙ, Great Eastern Peak, designated instead the inchoate powers that people saw as inherent in that mountain. Some of these powers had come to be also embodied in a single, male, anthropomorphized deity, the God of the Eastern Peak (here rendered as one word, Dongyue). Devotees and historians agree that worship of the deity who is most commonly known today as Bixia Yuanjun ካᎇׄᅿ began on the summit of Mount Tai in the autumn of the year 1008, a time of considerable insecurity for the ruling Song dynasty. Dismissing the advice of some of his ministers, Song Zhenzong ѐᅓ, the reigning emperor, had come to the Great Eastern Peak in order to perform two hallowed but infrequent rituals expressive of both self-confident imperial power and the expectation of Heaven’s favor. Among the many auspicious signs that surrounded this event was the discovery, at a pool on the peak, of broken stones resembling the figure of a woman. It was immediately identified as an auspicious “jade maiden” (yu nü ർѽ), and the emperor commanded that it be placed upright and offerings be made. And so worship began. This mountain summit did not initially seem a propitious location for a new god. In the year 1008, the windswept mountaintop was bare and the boulderstrewn hillsides were uninhabited. At the foot of the mountain there stood the venerable temple to the male God of the Eastern Peak, already revered for more than a millennium. During those centuries, buildings and objects for worship, along with ideas, texts, and practices, had created a mountain-related religious culture that provided familiar templates for the eras that followed.2 Shan ‫ ځ‬is a flexible term for mountains, used to refer equally to entire ranges, distinct peaks, and culturally significant small hills. Tai Shan, Mount Tai, stands 1,524 meters above sea level (some 5,000 feet) and is the highest peak in the cluster of gneiss and di-

orite mountains that dominate the fertile flatlands on the eastern side of the North China Plain.3 Its metamorphic rock was formed more than two million years before there was anything like “China” and its buff-colored boulders have been rounded and weathered over countless ages. There had been human settlements in the foothills around the marshy North China Plain for many millennia before the year 1000 and ideas about the high mountain and its visible peak seem to have formed their own now-lost bedrock of traditions and tales. Some such ideas and stories were later recorded and transmitted in writing to generations of educated readers of Literary Chinese. These texts, especially those that survived the centuries before widespread printing, created a history of the mountain that could be read by those who had never traveled to it. Some of them became part of the educational curriculum, and their contents were in turn circulated through other media to a wider audience. Oral traditions fed less readily back into textual records. It was in the Shi ji ੗֮ (Records of the Grand Historian), written around 100 BCE and read thereafter as a historical masterwork,4 that Sima Qian created the textual locus classicus for most subsequent understandings of the important relationship between great mountains and emperors. “The Son of Heaven,” he wrote, “sacrifices to all the famous mountains and great rivers of the empire (ϳЎӜ‫ځ‬Ͻඇ). He regards the Five Great Peaks (Wu Yue ٚₙ) as his high ministers and the Four Great Watercourses as his feudal lords.”5 Mountains with power to stabilize the civilized world (ϳЎ) had, he noted, been recognized and utilized by rulers going back to the far distant past. The five mountains associated with the center and the four cardinal directions had a special relationship with the state: rulers visited them on tours (xun ፶) and codified rituals that bound them together.6 The Grand Historian also put into textual play another enduring distinction between the physical mountain and its powers. Tai Shan meant the specific place but Dai Shan ┬‫( ځ‬Mount Dai, an early name) and Daizong ┬ᅓ (Ancestral Dai, Paramount Dai), as well as Dong Yue, referred specifically to its position in the Great Peaks system.7 The Great Eastern Peak was further distinguished from the other four when the ambitious unifier and chapter 2 | mount tai, 1008

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first emperor of the Qin presumed to perform there what he understood to be time-honored rituals for which Mount Tai alone was appropriate: the Feng ൄ and the Shan ᚵ. These were to be carried out by the ruler in person and only when unusually auspicious omens signaled the empire’s flourishing state. In 219 BCE the First Emperor had travelled to the mountain and boldly ascended to the summit from the south side along what could only have been a steep, dangerous, and infrequently used trail. The Feng rituals, directed to Heaven, were performed somewhere on the windy expanse of unevenly sloping rocks that constituted the summit plateau. The Shan rites (directed to Earth) took place separately in the foothills, reached through a descent down the even more precipitous north side.8 (For the location of the major sites on Mount Tai mentioned in this book, see Map 0.0.) The remarkable creator of the unifying emperorship had marked his expeditions to mountains in conquered states with enduring memorial objects: stones carved with inscriptions and known as bei ᗍ, or stelae. These stones were the material assertions of an older tradition of kingly circuits, and the First Emperor had one made for the summit of the Eastern Peak to commemorate his Feng–Shan.9 Aware that the Qin empire had collapsed only a few years after this ruler’s 219 BCE rituals, Sima Qian retrospectively dubbed the excursion inauspicious, and his powerfully influential cautionary account attached to these rituals the enduring leitmotifs of imperial hubris. Although routine rites at the Five Peaks were later made part of state practice, the Feng–Shan became seen in political circles as both alluring and dangerous. The Shi ji also provided carefully phrased information about the Feng–Shan rites carried out between 110 and 93 BCE by Emperor Wudi of the succeeding (and Sima’s own) Han dynasty. Han Emperor Guangwu again presumed to perform the Feng– Shan in 56 CE. The Great Historian’s account had thus created one long-lived identity for Mount Tai: as a mountain at whose highest point great emperors might risk direct communication with High Heaven. The Han empire disintegrated in 220 CE and during the subsequent centuries of division into independent kingdoms, the distantly remembered Eastern Feng (ֆൄ) rituals acquired the gravity of antiquity and the patina of a lost unity, but no one dared repeat 40

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them. Centuries passed. Amid conflicting counsel, the founder of a newly reunified Tang empire considered making an attempt but it was his son, Gaozong, who finally did so in 666 after forty years on the throne. He performed the Feng rites on the summit while Wu Zhao, his wife, the future Empress Wu ેछ ϳ, carried out the accompanying Shan below.10 Tang Xuanzong dared to do so again in 725.11 Heaven and Earth, the objects of these rituals, were understood to be abstract entities and were probably represented by spirit-tablets and worshipped in the open air.12 With ministerial debate and imperial confidence, a memorable if risky ritual link was thus again forged between the Eastern Peak and dynastic greatness, perhaps stronger for being so rare. Before the age of print, it was a challenge to preserve accurate historical information and precise ritual knowledge over long periods. Because the Shi ji and selected dynastic histories were available to and valued by scholars of later eras, these written accounts of the Feng–Shan rites of Qin, Han, and Tang emperors became influential templates, scoured for precedents and copied in their particulars.13 As such materials became printed books, they brought the mountain into the legitimizing Literary Chinese world of rulers and the educated men who staffed their governments. When Emperor Zhenzong of the Song dynasty climbed the mountain in 1008, he knew this history and he had a diverse staff of competing ritual advisors. The ease of modern travel and the cheerful crowds who today make their way up and down Mount Tai year round make it hard to realize how dangerous and remote its summit was in the early eleventh century. The ascent was not for the fainthearted. Extremes of heat and cold routinely fractured the mountain’s stony mass, while springs and streams, driven by wind and rain, sent boulders crashing down in giant torrentdriven rockslides. Treeless heights held little soil, and level ground was rare even at lower elevations. Loose stones underfoot and uncertain handholds made coming down even more hazardous than going up. Nevertheless, a twisting trail to the top that could be made suitable for an imperial carriage (ӝѬ) must have existed at the time of the Tang imperial ascents. Going up from the southern foothills, the slope through trees, vines, and uneven rock was gradual at first, but the path increasingly angled upward in the

middle stages, winding between precipitous cliffs and bent-over pines and across uneven fields of boulders. The route then made its way to a fortuitous fault between ridges that had opened a natural channel for wind and water and so created one long steep track to the summit. Even mitigated by “eighteen twists and turns” (shiba pan ֐ࡂ࣪), this last stretch was a punishing climb, up to the visible cleft that seemed a veritable Gateway to Heaven (ϳ՞, today’s Southern Gateway).14 From there, it was not too far or nearly as arduous to reach the actual summit. Even in 1008, a thousand years after the First Emperor’s ascent, there seem to have been few human traces on the barren plateau. The Qin stele was still there, as were some remnants of the deteriorating stone platform that had been built for the Feng altar. In 725, however, Tang Xuanzong had decided to leave a dramatically more visible sign of Heaven’s favor— and of his own presence. He made use of another practice already with a venerable history among Chinese elites, that of carving a text directly onto natural rocks (moya ಎ᝽). Just short of Mount Tai’s highest point, a south-facing rock wall presented an invitingly moreor-less sheer surface to the bold emperor. There, over a stele-shaped expanse thirteen meters high by five meters wide, he had had carved in imperial calligraphy a thousand-character “Record” of his proud but reverent rituals.15 This unmistakable sight transformed the wild summit. (It is shown in Figure 15.2.) Nevertheless, when Xuanzong’s reign ended in scandal and rebellion in 756, historians turned his Feng–Shan into another problematic precedent. We can thus say that in the time leading up to the next Feng–Shan in 1008, the mountain had made itself part of the assiduously transmitted political history of emperors and their dynasties. Rulers understood it to be a unique point of access to Heaven by virtue of its age and height and history, but it was a place also associated with overreaching pride before a fall. Because Mount Tai was adjacent to the Great Plain, where agriculture and commerce sustained villages, towns, and cities, in times of peace and prosperity travelers could detour from the major thoroughfares without too much difficulty to take a look at it. As a result, during the first millennium of our era the mountain had also become a familiar cultural landmark,

known to, written about, and sometimes seen by the great men of their age. During this time, associations that would turn into clichés were being formulated and preserved: the mountain’s height and nearness to Heaven, its grandeur and distant vistas, its location in the East facing the rising sun, and its associations with the generative powers of life.16 A line from the fourth-century philosopher Mencius attached Mount Tai to the life of the sage Confucius himself. Both men came from the nearby area dotted with small hills just to the south, and the follower said of his teacher: “When Confucius ascended the eastern mountain [in his native state of Lu], he realized how small Lu was; when he ascended Mount Tai, he realized how small the empire was.”17 The connection between the great teacher and the humbling mountain became more widely known in Song times as the works of Mencius were incorporated into the Classical core essential for examination success.18 Later scholars reenacted Confucius’ purported ascent and commemorated it in stone. In these early times, empty mountains were attractive only to the dedicated recluse, the eccentric, or the desperate, and hard-to-reach summits held little interest. To “go into the mountains (Պ‫ ”)ځ‬meant to explore accessible places. Even isolated monasteries were not usually very far off the beaten track and the building of temples on mountaintops was not normal practice. Hiking and rock climbing were not sports. On the heights of Mount Tai, the winds blew relentlessly and their insistent force had long since scoured the ancient rocks, leaving them bare and dangerously precarious. Despite the clinging clouds and reliable springs, only hardy vegetation could survive, even in sheltered ravines. The slopes were steep and no trails were secure. The nights could be chilly even in high summer, and in fall and winter the summit was fiercely cold and the paths threatened by snow. In 1008, people worried about encountering tigers. Mount Tai’s hard rock was devoid of minable minerals. Men and women who lived in and near the habitable foothills would have known the mountain best, exploring and finding ways to put to practical use its extractable trees, stone, and plants. They also seem to have already identified the pools where water accumulated and, following an already venerable practice, made offerings there to local dragon-gods thought to chapter 2 | mount tai, 1008

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control supplies of fresh water.19 At some point in the late sixth century, Buddhist monks had ventured a short distance up the southern side and found an enormous sheet of slanting rock, already smoothed by millennia of running water. There, writing on the face of the mountain, they had painstakingly carved the text of the Diamond Sutra in characters each 50 centimeters square.20 Human readers may have been few, but the project enacted a common Buddhist practice of establishing the Dharma in and on the mountains of the Eastern Land. For most people, however, Mount Tai in 1008 was a place into which only the adventurous few might penetrate, and its lingering mists, fast moving clouds, and soaring birds were best admired from the safety and comfort of the plains. And yet, it was in the mountains that one might also encounter the extraordinary. The unexplored crags and valleys had been thought, probably from very early times, to shelter human-like (genderless?) transcendent immortals (xian ࿁). In the medieval period, as organized Daoist religious traditions developed and scriptures were written and circulated, practitioners envisioned a landscape in which subterranean grottoes and unexplored heights were inhabited by Perfected Beings (Zhenren ѐϪ).21 And so, like other mountains, Mount Tai accumulated an extensive unwritten lore about the rich possibilities for contact with this liminal world, lore that was sometimes preserved in poetry and folk tales. Above ground, decidedly female jade maidens were prominent among those sky spirits and rarified entities that poets, daoists, and seekers of long life expected to encounter on wild mountains.22 The poet Li Bo ଽՁ (among others) immortalized them in verses written after his own Mount Tai ascent in 742. Of these enticing women, he wrote, in Paul Kroll’s translation: ...Gliding and whirling [they] descend from the Nine Peripheries. Suppressing smiles, they lead me forward by immaculate hands, And let fall to me a cup of fluid aurora (୾ϢԵᎇ࣭).23

Such pure ethereal women—“in form and substance they are as luminous and clean, as clear and shining as jade”24—already had a long poetic and literary history, and by Tang times they were understood (especially in 42

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Daoist terms) as mysterious attendants and guides of the sort that one hoped to encounter on a place such as Mount Tai. Perhaps one might acquire the secret knowledge that was like an unreadable writ formed by the tracks of birds (఩࿑‫)ڣ‬.25 Not objects of worship in their own right, such maidens were numerous, generic, subservient in their attentiveness to male actors, and not intended for procreation. The Jade Maiden who is the subject of this book emerged from this company of young women. It was not only Mount Tai’s heights that were associated with female spirits. The Queen-Mother of the West (Xiwangmu ՝ࣼআ) was a singular celestial being already known in Classical texts. Legendary King Mu had reportedly encountered her at a Gemstone Pool associated with a Sweet-wine Spring (Li Quan ⚳໩) in the far distant western Kunlun Range; for her rendezvous with Emperor Han Wudi, she had appeared in a cloud-borne carriage with an entourage of fifty Celestial Immortals (Tianxian ϳ࿁).26 There was already a Queen-Mother’s Pool (Wangmu Chi ࣼআဩ) at the foot of Mount Tai, where Li Bo himself had drunk.27 In medieval elite culture (and in more ephemeral lore), deep caverns, winding gorges, rare vistas, fairy grottoes, and sweet springs had come to readily conjure up visions of nubile women, some young, some mature, who waited on their male guests, bird-like messengers with secret access to the transcendent. During the first millennium of our era, the unmapped peaks and valleys of Mount Tai, more familiar than the unexplored summits on the far frontiers of the empire, were an active terrain for such poetic and visual imaginings.28 These ideas—most lost to us now—added to the cultural construction of Mount Tai by emphasizing it as a place of mystery and immortality. Immortality was also a way of thinking about death, and Mount Tai had long harbored a dark, frightening side—below, not above. Deep beneath the mountain, it was thought, lay the tribunals of hell. Already by Han times, people believed that potent forces at the mountain could determine human life spans and judge the souls of the dead. Such powers were thought concentrated in a kind of office (fu ௞) and embodied in the implacable Prefect of Mount Tai (Tai Shan Fujun ೉ ‫ځ‬௞ᅿ).29 Over the centuries, entwined if unsystematic ideas became deeply rooted in orally transmitted beliefs: that inside the mountain resided such judges of

the dead as described in Buddhist texts (politely called “kings” and known collectively as Yanwang Ἡࣼ or Shi Wang ֐ࣼ); that the entrance to this hell (called Fengdu ⰉЁ) was on Mount Tai’s south side; and that the God of the Eastern Peak was one of these officers, possibly even the supreme judge.30 These beliefs had come to be specifically concentrated at “Mount” Haoli (⌜Ѧ ‫)ځ‬, a hill close to where the Tang-era Shan rites had been performed.31 There, the anxious could petition and propitiate these lords of hell with sincere prayers and offerings. The association of Mount Tai with stern arbiters, fierce underlings, terrifying tortures, painful suffering, and earnest prayers had become powerful and widespread before 1000. During the same centuries, the idea that emperors should collectively propitiate the great mountains and rivers had been institutionalized in a state religion and fixed in ritual practices with associated permanent arenas and cosmic implications that were paid for by the government and carried out by its officials or by the emperor himself.32 Rites performed regularly at Mount Tai, as one of the Five Great Peaks (ٚₙ, ٚៈ), were part of this continuing effort by ruling dynasties to assert their preemptive right to draw on the powers of the mountain. Moreover, by the seventh century, daoists (daoshi Ѭࡲ) with responsibilities for communicating with the powers of the Eastern Peak were installed on a hillside site east of Haoli. This Dai Peak Abbey (Daiyue Guan ┬ₙ޲) had been built for Tang imperial envoys, and no later than 661 Tang Gaozong and his ambitious consort had used it for intermittent rituals performed at the nearby Queen-Mother’s Pool. Metal dragons and jade slips were thrown into the water, not so much to invoke a personified deity as to exorcize any dangerous residents of the pool or cavernous interiors of the mountain.33 The identity and authority of these clerics would change in future centuries but daoists of some sort would continue to claim ritual access to Mount Tai’s inchoate supernatural forces. During the eighth to tenth centuries, a town grew up near the abbey, the pool, and the hill. By 972 it had become the site of a government office and was a convenient base for ritual access to the mountain’s powers.34 It seems to have been Empress Wu (who reigned 684–705 as if a male emperor) who focused attention specifically on Dongyue as a personified god of the

mountain, and beginning in 686 she testified to his powers and launched his imperial career. In 696 she honored him as Prince Equal to Heaven (Tianqi Jun ϳ ಞᅿ).35 When Tang Xuanzong performed the Feng– Shan at the mountain in 725, he used the occasion to elevate the god with a promotion to King Equal to Heaven (ϳಞࣼ).36 Although two- and three-dimensional god-images were a familiar phenomenon by the eighth century, no early images of this god are known. Judging from later iconography, however, Mount Tai’s Dongyue was unmistakably male and was seated in an authoritative front-facing position. (See Chapter 3.) As the name of the mountain god became stabilized as “Dongyue” and his imperial honors became known, and as his powers over the punishments of the dead were consolidated, temples dedicated to the Eastern Peak (called Dongyue Miao ֆₙᜐ) were increasingly built elsewhere in the empire. By 1000, they were already widely but thinly scattered throughout northern China (and probably elsewhere), often located in important cities or outside the east or south gates of administrative seats.37 Dongyue was thus becoming a well-known object of organized popular worship, sponsored by the state and loosely tethered to the Shandong mountain.38 By the year 1000, Mount Tai’s place in the culture of northern China and the larger Chinese world was already complex. The mountain was made up of and enhanced by multiple identities and constituencies that coexisted unsystematically.39 The powers thought to inhere in the mountain were accessed in different places: for emperors, at temporary altars that were points of access to Heaven and Earth on the summit and in the foothills; for ritual specialists of the state religion, before the deity known as the Prime of the Five Peaks (ٚ ₙҏᅓ) in the Dai Peak Abbey; for petitioners of the gods of hell, at the nearby Haoli Hill temple; and in the poetic imagination of writers, everywhere on and in the mountain. The name “Tai Shan” referred to all these places and the name “Dongyue” could encompass these different supernatural personas. This combination of diverse parts enhanced the aura of the whole. As a personified God of the Eastern Peak became better defined, contradictions developed among these competing understandings. Even in a society as relatively relaxed about doctrine as this one, the early inchapter 2 | mount tai, 1008

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volvement of the state made popular worship of Dongyue a likely site for scrutiny. The addition of an unknown female deity to Mount Tai’s identities would only increase the possibilities for assembled strength, fissive weakness, and official interest. Far from a homogeneous monolith, tenth-century Mount Tai was thus home to quite different kinds of supernatural powers, important but not central to the imperial institution, the expanding pantheons of nonBuddhist gods, elite poets, and ordinary people. I am not convinced that it is appropriate to call it a “sacred” place, given the weight this word has in Western religions. Moreover, compared to the Five Mountain Terraces of Shanxi province (Wutai Shan), where Buddhist clerics had already created a remote network of numinous sites that were known for life-changing experiences, the Eastern Peak’s heights were underdeveloped, its physical space relatively inert, and its constituents decidedly heterogeneous. But in a single stroke the Song revival of the Feng– Shan rites shook up the protean identity of Dongyue, put the summit more firmly on the map, and introduced a new god. In the years that followed, Mount Tai’s already multilayered history would supply both the context and resources that shaped this new deity’s identities and history. Her story will advance in stages: first a treaty, then rituals, and then a jade maiden. It is time to turn to 1008.40 A GREAT CONVERGENCE OF PROPITIOUS PORTENTS, 1008 The Tang empire had collapsed in 907, but by 960 a new ruler had swallowed up the small states that had survived the political wreckage, and this founder and his brother had consolidated their control over a substantial reunified territory. Four decades later, the man on the throne was Zhao Heng ᕿၼ, the founders’ son and nephew, who reigned 997–1022 as the Zhenzong ѐᅓ emperor. In any dynasty, the third generation can be pivotal and this juncture was especially dangerous for the recently established Song. The international situation was unsettled. One active rival had been too big to swallow: the northeastern Khitan (Qitan) tribesmen who called their dynasty Liao and controlled a great swath of northern China, including the area of present-day Beijing. For decades, this state continued to challenge the Song 44

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and to press it militarily. In early 1005, Zhenzong was in his late thirties and in the seventh year of his reign. Despite a contentious debate among court officials, he was weary of war and signed a peace treaty with the Liao emperor. Considered from the long view of later dynasties or of China’s modern nationalist historians, this treaty was regarded as the capitulation of a native Chinese ruler to foreign barbarians, and a disgrace. Some scholars, by contrast, have viewed it as a realistic, forward-looking model for “China among equals.”41 Seen from the medium term, the 1005 treaty gave the still-fragile dynasty a century of relative cultural and political stability. In the very short term, however, the peace was an expensive gamble, negotiated in an atmosphere of doubt and disagreement, and followed by acrimony and recrimination. The deed done, Zhenzong, inspired by auspicious portents, decided to carry out the Feng and Shan rites at Mount Tai—rituals no emperor had dared perform for nearly three hundred years. Contemporary and later critics of the emperor’s foreign policies and religious preferences have been nearly unanimous in their harsh judgments of this expensive and grandiose performance, chalking it up to a weak ruler being manipulated by charlatans and evil advisors. Here, framing the event in terms of the history of Mount Tai, we shall be concerned less with politics than with the ritual’s understudied religious aftereffects. How did this Feng–Shan come to happen? The 1005 agreement had concluded a difficult war with a powerful neighbor by abandoning claims to disputed territory and promising payment of substantial indemnities. It was more settlement than victory, and critics immediately denounced it as humiliating. Zhenzong’s motives for undertaking expensive rituals of celebration in 1008 are unknowable, but what ruler would not have been fearful that the treaty was a mistake, or made uneasy by the vocal disagreement in the capital, or worried by distress among the people? Omens and prayers mattered to everyone, and performance of the highly charged Eastern Feng could demonstrate that Heaven’s mandate was not in jeopardy.42 But even in a cynical view, putting on a pageant near the new border, orchestrating signs of Heaven’s favor, and enlisting the support of powerful gods were all actions that might settle the populace and boost confidence in the dynasty. Zhenzong may thus have

reasonably been full of both panic and hope, and deeply sincere in wanting to convince his officials, his subjects, the Liao, and perhaps himself, that the treaty was bringing a lasting peace. To combine Daoist rituals with Confucian ones, as he did, was no less sensible, even if some Classically educated scholar-officials disagreed. Both were centuries-old methods for communicating with the Eastern Peak powers. How successful Zhenzong was in alleviating his own worries or those of other constituencies is beyond our scope here, but it does seem fair to acknowledge that his other religious activities during the 1000s–1020s addressed real concerns and were aimed at an audience much larger than those officials with whom he interacted on a regular basis. Performing the Feng–Shan three years after the treaty framed this foreign policy decision as an act of strength, but when discussions about these rituals began in 1007, many of Zhenzong’s officials reacted with disapproval. Historic debates over the appropriateness of any Feng–Shan ritual had been known since the Shi ji, and Zhenzong and his advisers knew the script: a ruler anxious to show confidence in the strength of his dynasty orchestrates entreaties from the people to perform these rites. A bitter debate among bureaucrats and confidants follows. Omens appear and are eagerly (or suspiciously) assessed. A prudent man hesitates. A foolish one goes ahead. Disaster may ensue. In this case, it turned out that the uneasy peace held and Zhenzong’s gamble paid off. And as an unintended consequence, Mount Tai and the religion of North China were significantly altered. Lurking behind these political concerns there seem to have also been personal ones. In 1008, Zhenzong was in his fortieth year, two empresses had already died and, as far as I can tell, he had no surviving sons.43 Dynastic succession under his two predecessors (father and uncle) had been destabilized by the early deaths of possible heirs, and anxious fears would have been inescapable in and beyond the capital—and troubling to the emperor most of all. Signs of favor from High Heaven, powerful gods, and imperial ancestors in the form of an heir would have been most welcome. Such was the fraught domestic and international context for Song Zhenzong as he planned his approach to the Great Eastern Peak.

Emperors, officials, and subjects lived in a world pulsating with portents and they used ritual to try to keep danger away. Ritual specialists, for their part, sometimes needed anxiety-producing signs in order to justify their own solutions. In the 980s Zhenzong’s father had himself considered announcing his successes on Mount Tai, but he had backed off when palace fires were thought to bode ill.44 Late in 1007, when debates about the treaty were still lively, auspicious signs appeared about which Zhenzong had been forewarned in dreams, omens that seemed to validate the his authority (and the legitimacy of his dynastic line) and that encouraged him to perform the Feng–Shan.45 Then, a mysterious and unreadable “Writ From Heaven” (tian shu ϳ‫ )ڣ‬on silk appeared on new year’s day in the palace in the capital city of Kaifeng.46 Persuasive interpretation of these potentially scary messages became key. Zhenzong chose to understand these dream-forecast writings as evidence of Heaven’s continuing support, and he declared a general amnesty and immediately changed the era-name to Dazhong Xiangfu ϽЅ ፖላ, Great Convergence of Propitious Portents. Fu ላ suggested a kind of compact between Heaven and the emperor, in which Heaven’s promise was extended through auspicious portents that invited and expected matching actions by the ruler. Approaching Heaven on Mount Tai could be seen as just such a necessary response. Conveniently, Zhenzong then began to receive petitions from residents of Shandong, begging for the Feng–Shan rituals. In the 6th month of 1008, as court debate gathered intensity, another Writ From Heaven appeared on the mountain itself. The emperor’s understandings of these events were shaped by Wang Qinruo ࣼᯃ઎, a close adviser, official, and serious Daoist interpreter of these signs from Heaven (vilified by his enemies).47 Overruling those who viewed the writs with suspicion and opposed the presumptuous rituals, Zhenzong made plans to perform Eastern Feng ceremonies later that same year. The Liao throne was informed. As the necessary altars were being built at the mountain (probably near today’s eastward-facing Sunrise-viewing Peak), other reassuringly favorable omens were reported there. In the 10th month, Zhenzong determinedly set out for Shandong (a distance of some three hundred kilochapter 2 | mount tai, 1008

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meters) with a large retinue and much expensive fanfare.48 Like many politicians, he was surely buoyed by the crowds that his own advance men had helped marshal. On the 23rd and 24th days of the 10th month of 1008, when the emperor had reached the mountain, the Feng rites were performed on an open altar at the summit of Mount Tai and the Shan in its southwestern foothills. Han and Tang imperial precedents were followed, the first two Song emperors were made present in spirit-tablet form, and the venture was declared a grand success. One of the auspicious signs that was woven into these events was the appearance of a Jade Maiden.49 The 1183 Xu Zizhi tong jian Changbian (Long draft for the continuation of the “Comprehensive mirror for aid in governance”)—seemingly our most detailed and reliable source50—tells us the following: In the 5th month of 1008, as preparations were being made on Mount Tai, a muddy spring at the foot of the mountain suddenly bubbled forth sweet water (seemingly near the familiar Queen-Mother’s Pool). The emperor had the reported event investigated and was encouraged to learn that during the 6th month, a clogged-up Jade Maiden Spring (ർѽ໩) at the summit had also suddenly produced fresh clear water with no taste of bitterness.51 Strange and marvelous events, we must remind ourselves, were not infrequent in this world, and need not have been deliberately conjured up for an emperor. The pond on the summit was therefore ordered dredged and cleaned in anticipation of the autumn imperial visit. Thus, auspicious miracles associated with water and two well-known female denizens of the mountain were already in the mind of the emperor and his staff that summer. Then, early in the 9th month, before he had left for Shandong, Zhenzong was told by Wang Qinruo that a somewhat broken “stone statue” had been discovered beside (not in) that high Jade Maiden Pool (ဩᄫϩ੘ՌᏡᛯऽ). I see no evidence that this constellation of stone had been previously noticed, but representing deities in stone was an established practice and so the fortuitously discovered figure could be recognized, reassembled, and honored as an entity worthy of offerings. Hearing of it, the grateful emperor ordered the original figure be replaced by one of finer “jade” hardstone (‫ډ‬йർ੘). Pleased at yet another sign of divine favor, he also had a niche cut 46

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into the nearby rock (⨍੘Њ➟) so that Wang could arrange for offerings to this new Jade Maiden statue.52 The identity and gender of the fallen stones were surely derived from the jade maidens who frequented mountain pools in poetic, Daoist, and popular lore; the rocks might have only loosely conjured up a woman, but the hastily created replacement surely did so more. The boulder-strewn area at the summit had enough piled-up rocks and low ridges to make possible the creation of a shallow shrine. The niche (➟), the image (Ռ), and the offerings (់) make clear that this singular jade maiden was immediately intended to be treated as a divine being. (Questions about how it came to be there were not asked or answered in our sources.) Although this image has long since disappeared, some of its later iconography referred back to this beginning, and we will have much more to say about the maiden’s appearance in the chapters that follow. Zhenzong himself arrived at the summit in the 10th month (a chilly November). After a worrisomely difficult ascent in stormy weather, the last portion on foot, he inspected the sweet spring (and presumably the original stone image) and then viewed with admiration (and envy) the nearby massive 726 Tang imperial inscription.53 The following day the Feng rites were successfully performed and cries of “Long Life to His Majesty” were said to echo up and down the mountain. The emperor and entourage made their slippery descent down the northwestern slope,54 and the Shan rituals took place the following day. Once safely back in the capital, Zhenzong and those who had made it to the summit with him must have impressed their audiences with tales of the challenging climb on a dangerous path, the winds and clouds, the views from the heights, the frighteningly careful rituals, and the precipitous journey down. Soon thereafter, at end-of-the-year celebrations, the emperor feted his close officials with the best wine and “sweet water” sent specially from the White Dragon, QueenMother, and Jade Maiden springs of Mount Tai.55 The monumental imperial inscription of Tang Xuanzong had clearly made an impression, and Zhenzong soon ordered that his own, shorter, formal account of the ascent be carved into the cliffside directly next to the Tang one. This report (skimpy on details) was written in his own calligraphy, dated the 27th day of the 10th month of the first year of Dazhong Xiangfu

(1008). As insurance, a second version was inscribed on five large stones and placed at the foot of the mountain where visitors could more easily see it.56 Today, alas for Zhenzong, the stones are gone, and his cliff carving, defaced, ignored, and partially overwritten, is mostly unreadable.57 (See Figure 15.2.) The stone maiden was not important enough to be mentioned, but the emperor did write at least one account specifically about “The Jade Maiden Spring Stone Image (ർѽ໩੘Ռҏ֮),” all but the title unfortunately lost to us.58 The statue was also specifically referred to on a surviving contemporaneous stele: the inscription of 1009 entitled “Hymn for the Shan [rituals] at the Sheshou Altar” that was placed in a small shrine beside Haoli Hill.59 In the middle of this long text, a specific, credible reference is made in passing to “new Jade Maiden statue (ЈർѽҏՌ).”60 This stele was not so large and, being out of the way, it does not seem to have been noticed in later centuries or by modern scholars. Eager to secure his accomplishments, Zhenzong left many other stelae as records of his activities at Mount Tai.61 Composed under his direction immediately following the rituals and carved on stone soon afterwards, these inscriptions are the surviving accounts closest to the time and place of the 1008 events. Many were placed in or moved to the new Eastern Peak temple when it was built, and they survive in situ today.62 A 1013 stele, on the tortoise base that was already a marker of imperial provenance, is eight meters high and two meters wide (see Figure 2.2); its 2,319-character text was composed by the emperor and written in a running hand.63 Even in plain view the words are not easy to read and they have endured primarily as traces on the large stones that embodied expense and projected the importance of their imperial patron.64 Once the Feng–Shan was completed, Emperor Zhenzong was immediately caught up in a vortex of other important religious activities (of which more below), and he seems to have left the Jade Maiden to fend for herself on the summit. When this era of Propitious Portents was brought to an end a decade later, the emperor was in ill health; he died in his fifties in 1022, leaving one young son and a capable wife. He never returned to Mount Tai. So it was that in 1008, rocks by a spring on the summit brought to life ideas about jade maidens and

became a stone figure that an emperor regarded as a singular divine Jade Maiden. These facts had the making of a good story and, when this maiden came to command a devoted following, her connections to the historic rituals were not forgotten. The association with mountain spirits also survived, perhaps even more powerfully, in the god’s names and attire. The combination complicated questions about the god’s identity that would continue to trouble later visitors and modern scholars. Is there enough evidence to be sure that the discovery of the stone maiden actually happened? Yes. Weighty with signs of auspiciousness, the entire Eastern Feng was clearly a performance put on for the emperor. Song Zhenzong, many of his officials, and even residents of the Mount Tai area encouraged one another to believe in these signs or to act as if they did (the difference may not have mattered). Omens were sought and found, reported and accepted, announced and recorded. Our stone figure played a minor role in this show. The summit of Mount Tai had long tempted emperors and there was already a Jade Maiden Spring at the peak. It seems to me quite believable that, in preparing for Zhenzong’s ascent, some configuration of stones was encountered as part of the cleanup at the summit, read as another encouraging sign, honored, and celebrated. Mention of the Jade Maiden in a 1009 stele, together with compatible evidence immediately after the event, persuade me that these basic facts are reliable: there was a Yunü spring at the summit and a nearby stone image was viewed by the emperor during the Feng–Shan and treated as a minor deity at imperial command following the preparatory work of Wang Qinruo.65 It is also important to understand the relative insignificance of this discovery of the Jade Maiden. She played a small part in a great event, a bit player in the parade of propitious portents. The discovery was noted in the capital, but she was not embodied in a large gilt-bronze statue like those of other gods that the emperor had made in Kaifeng, and she would soon be further eclipsed by Zhenzong’s many other acts of religious patronage.66 Much of the difficulty in researching the Jade Maiden’s later history comes not just from lack of interest on the part of elite record keepers and a dearth of contemporaneous primary sources but also from the fact that she enjoyed only fleeting importance in her own time. chapter 2 | mount tai, 1008

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2.2 Song Zhenzong’s stele of 1013, on a tortoise base and with a swirling dragon headpiece. 8.20 x 2.15 m. In the Dai Miao in 2013. This stele recorded Zhenzong’s 1011 decision to honor the God of the Eastern Peak with the rank of emperor. (Author’s photograph.)

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It is rare that textual spotlights allow us to know so precisely and credibly when and where a Chinese god made a first appearance in history. Unlike the Shakyamuni Buddha and others, the Jade Maiden was not a deified human being and her appearance was not understood as a moment of birth. The stone image was just there (ϩ). And “there” was a clearly specified and important place. This event was the historical core from which her worship would grow, later joined by competing stories about her origin. The practices that created the Jade Maiden do not seem unusual in terms of past and current practice. We might say that she was the offspring of a familiar family of beings who turned up in a likely location and provided unexpected confirmation of an emperor’s authority as Son of Heaven. The appellation “Jade Maiden” supplied ideas about how this deity might look and behave, but it also raised questions about the extent of her powers. The stone figure had answered no prayers and mountain summits were not then thought to be a natural place for the presence of proper deities, as they would be in later centuries. Jade maidens were anonymous and comparatively lightweight beings, servants to men, not masters. Nevertheless, here was a “new (Ј)” jade maiden made god-like by the recognition expressed in the niche and the offerings. By thus acknowledging (and in effect creating) her powers, this Yunü became more than a maiden, and we will note this change by henceforth calling her a Jade Woman (the Chinese ർѽ is the same). Any god might turn out to be responsive to prayer, but this one’s beginnings were far from promising. She was unusually isolated, with no obvious community to keep her alive. During the incubation period that followed, however, her worship would be enfolded within the material and religious culture of North China, and she would gradually find her own homes, devotees, and iconographic expression. Her story is a particular one but comparable to the trajectories of other deities whose careers paralleled hers and, in this world of religious choice, who sometimes competed with her—many of whom we will meet in the pages that follow. In 1008, few of these other gods were demonstrably female. Dongyue, the God of the Eastern Peak—in whose territory the Jade Maiden came into existence and who would be her companion, counter-

part, and rival—was already conceived of as a male judge, official, and ruler. The localized transition from jade maiden to Jade Woman was, we can see only in retrospect, part of a more general increase in female deities within the wider Chinese pantheon. To understand what the Jade Woman in the niche on Mount Tai actually looked like and what might have been expected of her after the Feng–Shan was over, we need to zoom out briefly to survey the larger context. THE RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE AROUND 1000 Beyond the immediate events of Song Zhenzong’s reign, beyond the clouds and spirits of Mount Tai, a larger world of Chinese ideas, institutions, practices, and gods constituted the religious landscape of North China before the eleventh century. Looking backward and outward from 1008 can help us understand where the Jade Woman came from and what she brought with her. Despite satisfying advances in our scholarly knowledge of that relatively underdocumented period, a coherent history that draws together all of its elements has yet to be written and is beyond the scope of this book.67 I will provide only a superficial sketch here. By the year 1000, a variety of specialists used ritual to create protections against life’s many dangers. They claimed to be able to attract supernatural powers with offerings to physical images on altars and dedicated rituals. Between the fourth and the tenth centuries, Buddhist scriptures had been imported, translated, copied, annotated, and newly written, and they publicized the names and iconography of major and minor deities (Maitreya, Amitabha, Manjusri, and a host of guardians, demons, attendants, and so forth). This supernatural world of an infinite multitude of buddhas and bodhisattvas merged nicely with the diversity of other already familiar natural and supernatural forces, increasingly anthropomorphized as gods (shen ‫)ظ‬. People expected some deities to be more efficacious than others and were often on the lookout for alternatives. There was no monotheism comparable to that of the Middle Eastern and European worlds. Gods might increase in influence, be absorbed by more prestigious deities, or die out entirely. New gods appeared and found wider fame, or failed to find a following and survived on the margins. As noted in Chapter 1, pantheons were local and changeable. chapter 2 | mount tai, 1008

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During these late medieval centuries, a very slow standardization (encouraged from above) nibbled away at local variety. The practice by rulers of bestowing names on temples was complemented—no later than the time of Empress Wu—by the selective honoring of designated gods with titles (ൄ‫ى‬, Ӹ‫)ى‬.68 The Song state honored a few deities (all gendered male) as Duke (Gong ԍ), King (Wang ࣼ), and Emperor (Di ෌)—Zhenzong (as we shall see below) was especially liberal in his actions. But even as a state religion took shape in the centers of the expanding administrative structure, there was no overarching authority able to oversee or control the proliferating world of gods. At the same time, indigenous Daoist religious teachers emerged, creating and drawing on their own lines of transmission, written scriptures, beliefs, and liturgies. They too took for granted another realm inhabited by gods, some of whom could be mentally conjured up and summoned by trained daoists (Ѭࡲ) and then commanded, promoted, demoted, and generally harnessed by special rituals. By the tenth century, the gods of this realm already numbered in the hundreds, even thousands. As the empire expanded and accessible supernatural entities increased, it was probably only the highest Confucian (i.e. state-approved), Buddhist, and Daoist gods who were known beyond relatively limited geographic areas. With the empire-rebuilding unifications from the seventh century, religious specialists competed for the resources and prestige provided by the patronage of the ruling house. By creating rituals that would demonstrate Heaven’s support for dynastic rule and by enhancing its own authority through specialists who made regular offerings, the state elaborated and consolidated its own institutions and precedents. By building and generously endowing monasteries and by paying monks or daoists for prayers and rituals on public and private occasions, the government also helped develop a prestigious repertory of ritual spaces and paraphernalia. And by sponsoring the copying and reproduction of liturgies and scriptures, pious rulers could not only earn merit but also promote the standardization of rites and the efficacy of particular gods. Nevertheless, the Classical curriculum that underlay the increasingly important examination system fostered suspicions about imperial enthusiasms, hostility toward clerics, and a disdainful unease about 50

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popular customs, and scholar-officials helped perpetuate state jealousy of any rival institutional power. Over the centuries, waves of support for different religious specialists had the effect of creating shared expectations and mutual survival. The same rites could be directed toward different gods, resulting in a certain interchangeability and non-denominational openness. Rituals and texts were added and subtracted, and older gods were neglected and dropped away as new and more responsive deities were taken up. The Jade Woman of 1008 was therefore joining a fluid religious universe. Open to newcomers, its chaotic local diversity was unevenly constrained and weakly systematized. Increasingly, gods were understood to have human foibles and individual life stories: some were flawed mortals whose premature deaths had given them enhanced powers, others derived power from lives of holiness. Once translated into gods, they became unchanging and ageless. By the eleventh century, places where old and new gods could be worshipped had expanded beyond those maintained by Buddhist or Daoist clerical communities. In these smaller halls (ॣ, இ, ឆ, ᡛ), variously called shrines or temples (ci ṽ, miao ᜐ, gong ࿮), images of gods could be worshipped without intermediaries.69 They were where such supernatural powers could be focused and settled, where a god could rest (ᩗ), be given a home (ྎ), and reside (ሏ), where the powers of gods could be concentrated and accessed for human use. Such comparatively smaller structures were replicable and scalable, requiring little initial investment and having considerable capacity for modular expansion. From these community temples developed the great multiplicity of establishments that would dominate rural and urban life from Song times on. When the Jade Woman came into being in the middle imperial period, a religious culture was being created in North China that was locally diverse but increasingly blended. Beginning in 1008, the imperial patronage of Song Zhenzong was stirred into this mix. Written sources do not tell us how Emperor Zhenzong’s many orders for work on the mountain were carried out. The tasks of building and installing an image in the new temple for the worship of the God of the Eastern Peak or in the new niche for the Jade Woman presumably followed existing templates, but

no structure or statue from the early 1000s survives at Mount Tai today to guide our inquiries. The intended users were not numerous. For the temple below, imperial envoys, posted officials, the religious professionals housed at the site. For the remote niche on the summit, no obvious constituency at all. There seems little doubt that Zhenzong’s Daoist adviser, Wang Qinruo, then in his forties, was the man who had orchestrated the Heavenly Writs and Feng– Shan before, during, and after the events of 1008 (he is certainly blamed for his influence over the emperor). Mostly active in the capital, where a host of other demanding issues required his attention during the winter and following year, Wang probably delegated responsibility for the Mount Tai construction projects to agents at the mountain. The work itself was shaped at least as much by the materials at hand in Shandong and by the artisans who carried it out. Local workers were the logical choice for the (probably frantic) preparations in the summer of 1008, especially on the mountain itself, where it had been necessary to clear trails, set up camps, and ready the long-neglected ritual arenas. After the imperial departure, many important tasks remained: carving Zhenzong’s account on the cliff face near the summit (this could not have been easy); transcribing it and others for inscription on large stelae to be made and placed at key sites in the foothills; and building an entirely new temple for the Eastern Peak at a new location. Although Song emperors may have been able to procure construction materials from all over their empire and beyond, it is unlikely that even the imperial stelae would have warranted such efforts when there was ample lumber, clay, and stone readily at hand in the Mount Tai area. The existing temple and town would already have generated sufficient demand to support stone masons experienced in catering to government needs. Local rather than imported talent would have been sufficient for creating the improved Jade Woman image (which was probably done after the Feng–Shan was completed). As for jade (ർ), there is no evidence that the statue was made of this rare material. A piece of even close to human size was out of the question. I imagine that the replacement image was made of a harder stone (politely called “jade”) in a workshop close to nearby quarries and then was tied with rope to long carrying poles and taken by hired mules and men up the steep path to the summit.

A proper shelter for this image would also have been part of the post-visit agenda. Judging from the much larger mountainside niches at Longmen ह՞ (near the Song ruling family’s native place of Luoyang in Henan), we can imagine a vertical concavity drilled out of the side of a nearby rock face, just high and deep enough to hold the statue. The rock atop Mount Tai was quite hard and the niche could not have been spacious, and it would have needed to be enclosed for protection against the fierce wind and weather. For reasons to be discussed below, I believe that the figure was standing on a small base. A heavy stone or metal incense burner would have been placed in front and someone designated to provide offerings, probably the ritual specialists housed at the foot of the mountain. The emperor and the capital bureaucracy surely took a deeper interest in the construction of the new temple to the God of the Eastern Peak at the foot of the mountain, beside the town (today’s Tai’an). Here, Zhenzong again seems to have wanted to outdo his predecessors in a display of sincere gratitude and imperial power. Completed by 1010, his new, ostentatiously named Hall of Heaven’s Great Gift (Tiankuang Dian ϳ㒼ឆ)—celebrating the Writs from Heaven—was built to the southwest of the Tang dynasty hall, closer to the town. (The repeated reconstructions at this new site will punctuate our history.) Despite imperial funding, it seems logical that here too the project managers turned first to resources that were near at hand, going farther afield only as necessary. Conveniently, there was earth and stone for a terraced platform under the hall, clay for brick walls and for the fired roof-tiles that protected the wood frame and interior walls. At this date, some tall strong timber to hold up such a roof could probably have been found or commandeered in central Shandong but it was possibly imported. In the 1010s as many as ten stelae (ranging between two and four meters high and proportionately wide and thick) were also made for the temple courtyard. This considerable work took at least one year of probably frenetic activity.70 The stone masons would have been extremely busy, as would the carpenters and roof-tile men. Can we know what the building looked like? Construction took place rather swiftly on the more level ground of the new site and probably followed imperial standards for timber-framed high-status buildings. It chapter 2 | mount tai, 1008

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seems more likely that it was a scaled-down version of that ideal, in keeping with its out-of-the-way provincial location. Although we can be sure that this hall was intended to match or outdo its Tang predecessor, it probably amounted to not much more than a large central room for the god and side buildings for clerics and visitors. The many fires and subsequent reconstructions that followed make clear that this was not the huge hall of the same name that we see today (and that is shown in a 1980s photograph in Figure 15.3).71 The paraphernalia for use in Song Zhenzong’s Hall of Heaven’s Great Gift—including ritual vessels and statues—were probably initially moved from the Tang site and then replaced with upgraded items from Kaifeng to meet cosmopolitan standards. Such transfers may also have involved the presumably Daoist ritual specialists who had been in residence under the preceding dynasty and who would have been expected to maintain the new building, make routine offerings, and carry out special rituals as ordered by the throne.72 They were the most obvious people to be put in charge of the Jade Woman at the summit. Constructing and outfitting both the new temple and the niche on the summit were thus moments of intense interaction between the throne, the capital city, and the managers and artisans at the mountain. Although dynastic capitals (Xi’an, Luoyang, and Kaifeng) were part of a northern material regime, imperial taste and resources were a world apart from central Shandong in the early eleventh century; this disparity would endure, and quality, expense, and rarity would continue to be associated with distant metropolitan elites. Determining what either the God of the Eastern Peak or the Jade Woman looked like in 1010 is far from straightforward. No dated images of either survive at Mount Tai from this time. We can, however, expect them to have been in accord with widespread expectations about what gods should look like, refracted through the preferences of the artisans and ritual specialists resident in the immediate area. Those gods and sages discussed in sacred texts and worshipped by organized ritual specialists were more likely to have their iconography and hagiography become standardized and recognizable. Dongyue was probably in this category. Where neither state nor 52

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clerical establishment was involved and devotees were few—as in the case of the Jade Woman—we should expect more unpredictability. In any case, although conventions about what was appropriate were emerging, systematizing mechanisms were weak, even within this one region. Those representations of human beings and gods known to me that could have been familiar in North China at the time of Zhenzong’s ascent of Mount Tai already constituted a diverse repertory.73 They would have included: Seated buddhas and bodhisattvas, with standing or flying attendants; these would have been cut in relief on stone stelae, or carved into and out of stone cliffs, or painted on fabric or paper or onto cave and building walls, or printed on paper, or portrayed as stand-alone figures in stone, bronze, wood, clay, or iron. Daoist immortals and gods, and Confucian teachers and sages, in comparable poses and media (but perhaps especially on paper). Portraits and statues of rulers made for display during and after their lifetimes. Images of deceased individuals and couples, and their household servants, painted on walls, or made of stone or clay and placed inside underground tombs. Freestanding stone guardian figures set above ground at tombs. Sages and historical figures in carved stone relief on architectural structures. Early Buddhist god-images had inspired and set the standards for the emerging Daoist and popular representations of deities in North China. Nearly all of these images were male or not clearly gendered, with clothing that left bare the feet and parts of the upper body. These gods either stood or sat cross-legged on round stands representing lotuses, a base that would continue to identify a Buddhist god-image down to the present day. Principal deities faced front, toward the viewer/petitioner, with expressions that conveyed an otherworldly distance. Signs of implied power were their halos (mandorlas), hand positions (mudra), and attendants. In a place of worship, these gods were often accompanied by fellow deities of similar stature. Like powerful people everywhere, they were also usually attended by servitors and guards. By the sixth century, there were already both Daoist and Buddhist god-statues in stone, frontally seated on ledges, sometimes with their legs hanging down in front. As Daoist scriptures were produced and liturgies developed, more of their proprietary divinities

took human form. In addition to Laozi himself (ҡж, Laojun ҡᅿ), the highest of these Heavenly Worthies (ϳಀ) were by the seventh century already represented at Mount Tai in mural paintings and stone sculpture.74 As sculptural technology and skill developed, more fully realized rounded images appeared on altar tables and ledges. These god-images, cast in bronze and iron or made of clay built up on wood armatures, created expectations of lifelike three-dimensionality that could make stone statues look stiff. By the early Song, the four-legged chair, which seems to have arrived with Buddhist monastic practice, provided a high-status alternative to both the existing mat- and stool-level cultures of elite sitting and the tiered stands of cross-legged Buddhist and Daoist gods.75 The boundary between ancestor, deity, and ruler, porous from very early times, remained open, and many representations of male deities were modeled on powerful and prestigious men. Song Zhenzong was himself lavish in rendering his father, uncle, and a newly revealed patrilineal progenitor as names on spirittablets, as portraits, and as statues.76 Formal imperial portraits survive for the early Song emperors, and Taizu (died 976) was shown seated in a chair, in plain robes, hands in lap, and facing slightly to his left (as his nephew Zhenzong himself would also be posed).77 A great many of the religious activities that scholars today call “Song” can actually be attested only during the Southern Song (1127–1279) and demonstrably belonged to the quite different society south of the Yangtze River.78 If we focus our attention on what is known about Chinese gods in North China circa 1000, we find only a few of those non-Buddhist deities that became commonplace objects of widespread worship in later centuries and especially few wellknown, identifiably female deities. The reign of Zhenzong (998–1022) gives us a vantage point on these later developments and a chance to reassess his impact. It also introduces us to the changing company of other gods who became a kind of cohort for the gods of Mount Tai and who are an essential part of their story. EMPOWERMENT THROUGH PATRONAGE, 1008–1012 The supernatural universe of Song Zhenzong’s time was heterogeneous and not subject to any single authority. Buddhist deities were somewhat ordered by scrip-

tural authority and the empire-wide efforts of ordained clerics. Daoists had a less extensive presence and their attempts to claim and organize the gods at their command were more private. The state, operating through the administrative hierarchy, could at best standardize and maintain the rituals performed by their officials. There was plenty of room for newcomers, but weak scaffolding for obscure local gods to secure a wider following. Under these conditions, singular acts of imperial patronage could make a big difference. Immediately after the Feng–Shan, as if encouraged by its apparent success and relying on his Daoist advisors, Zhenzong ostentatiously gave support and prominence to a number of gods who would later become regionally and nationally significant.79 He followed practices that were not new, but he did so with an energy not seen since the significant actions of Empress Wu three centuries before. Both rulers energetically bestowed titles, funded endowments, and made offerings in person or through emissaries. Because these activities met with official opposition or have been ignored by later scholars, their impact has been poorly understood. The activities of Zhenzong and his advisers during the Great Convergence of Propitious Portents (1008– 1016) also constituted what we might call a substantial Daoist colonization of the inchoate world of non-Buddhist gods. By supplying titles from their own evolving, selective, imagined community of deities, by being the ones to determine appropriate rituals of worship, by taking charge of the building and enlarging of temples, by directing imperial gifts and endowments, these daoists also enlarged their own ritual sphere in the capital and beyond. Although imperially sponsored patronage was not always followed up on and took place in an empire of many active gods, it had enduring benefits for religious establishments in North China.80 It is not surprising that, in order to add an enduring dignity to the Feng–Shan rituals directed at Heaven and Earth, Emperor Zhenzong cleaned up, reorganized, and elevated the worship of Mount Tai itself. In the 10th month of 1008, on the day he completed the rites, he bestowed on the god (‫ )ظ‬of the mountain, already titled the King Equal to Heaven, a two-word extension, Ren Sheng წ๦, making the Eastern Peak deity now the Magnanimous and August King Equal to chapter 2 | mount tai, 1008

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Heaven (Tianqi Rensheng Wang ϳಞწ๦ࣼ).81 His new temple should have been provided with ongoing funding to maintain the building, offerings, and community of ritual specialists, and perhaps it was.82 Nevertheless, in centuries to come, inconsistent cooperation between throne, state, and local daoists would be a recurring problem for this ostensibly important shrine to Dongyue. The new building complex for the God of the Eastern Peak was just the beginning of a rush of religious activism by the throne. In the autumn of 1008, with the rites at Mount Tai just completed, the royal entourage made its way to Qufu, a nearby town that was the home of the Kong family, purported descendants of Confucius. There—probably mollifying the Classically trained officials who had objected so strongly to the Feng–Shan—the emperor paid his respects with appropriate pomp to Kongzi ႘ж, the master himself. Zhenzong presented offerings in person at the hall dedicated to Confucius and visited what was thought to be his grave. The revered teacher had already been elevated with titles by Tang rulers, and so Zhenzong immediately followed suit and honored him further: promoting him from the King who Propagates Culture (Wenxuan Wang ҹୌࣼ) to the Profound and August (២๦) King Who Propagates Culture. (The powerful multivalent term sheng ๦ was thus applied to both figures; on which, more below.) Improvements to the Qufu temple followed in the emperor’s wake.83 Thereafter, the geographic proximity of Mount Tai to the home of the Sage made such combined visits a popular practice. Zhenzong also used the occasion of his Shandong journey to honor another god of the great mountain: Qingdi ‫ݙ‬෌, Dark-Green Emperor, an older deity associated with the streams and pools that flowed down Mount Tai.84 His temple in the foothills was rebuilt by Zhenzong but the god was given a comparatively lowly name, Life-Expanding Imperial Master (ܰТ෌ᅿ), a title that placed him in the ranks of deities to whom daoists claimed ritual access. The choice of the phrase guang sheng ܰТ may also have reflected imperial worries about the emperor’s fertility.85 While at Mount Tai, Zhenzong had reaffirmed that the Eastern Peak was still the Prime of the Five Peaks (Daizong). In 1011, he declared that “the gods of the very highest mountains are masters of miracles (ࢼҰ)” 54

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and promoted all five from King to Emperor (di ෌) and their wives to Empress (њ). Moreover, the collective state offerings to the Great Peaks and Rivers in the capital suburbs were continued, thus more firmly establishing them as part of the state religion.86 This emphasis on the peaks as a group may have reflected a bureaucratic attempt to officially tamp down the disproportionate prominence of the Eastern Peak among the five, but it also kept northern China culturally important even after the political and cultural center of the empire shifted southward.87 Others of Zhenzong’s religious activities were more directly tied up in what we might project as a combination of his personal anxiety about living up to his two predecessors’ legacy and a deep need for their—and any—supernatural assistance. The realistic possibility that the dynasty itself might collapse seems to have been his unrelenting fear: “Do not dissipate your forebears’ determination!” he was commanded in a dream.88 In 1012 an elucidating vision had revealed to the emperor that the Writ from Heaven had been delivered by a previously unknown progenitor of his very own Zhao family, sent by a deity known as the Jade Sovereign (Yuhuang ർ෦).89 Zhenzong had already exalted his intimidating father and uncle in 1008 by designating them as the Two August Predecessors (Er Sheng ԏ๦), and making sure that they were present (in spirit-tablet or image form) at the Feng–Shan and other important rites.90 He now added this newly discovered more ancient forebear as Shengzu ๦ྥ (August Ancestor, sheng again) and treated him as a god.91 In this way, the Zhao patriline conveniently acquired a divine progenitor, as the Li lineage of the Tang had had.92 The Jade Sovereign was also given titles, and temples were built to honor his images. Worship of this deity, who was later central to organized daoists and ubiquitous in popular worship as the putative ruler of all the gods, seems to have begun here.93 Titles implied hierarchies, and Zhenzong’s burst of activity, however satisfying to him, challenged ritual specialists in the capital to bring order to the expanding number of gods and scriptures.94 In the competitive environment of Chinese religion, the awarding of titles, refurbishing of temples, and dissemination of scriptures by the ruler could unquestionably be helpful to a particular god’s career. They gave a deity legitimacy, enhanced the appearance of efficaciousness,

publicized an iconography, raised the god’s public profile, and provided short- or long-lived material resources for worshippers. Such honors were an obvious way for a new god to become part of the existing cultural infrastructure. (And useful to those who could provide ritual access.) What might be seen as the fickleness of imperial patrons and the infighting of ritual masters was at the same time an important force behind the creation and strengthening of enduring mechanisms of empowerment. In the contrasting histories of Dongyue and the Jade Woman, even sporadic imperial patronage could be decisive. The 1008 Feng–Shan, recorded on the monuments of a centrally located mighty mountain, has been remembered by countless visitors and historians. But the event itself was formally complemented by a nowforgotten expedition that also made a difference in the life of a local god. In order to perform another set of historic rituals, Zhenzong made a dangerous journey in 1011 to a temple in an out-of-the-way location on the Yellow River. Having followed Han and Tang precedents for the Feng–Shan rites, the emperor also determined that there were precedents for making comparable offerings to Earth (Dizhi с⢢) at another special site, this one to the northwest of his capital and farther away. His goal was Fenyin ⁩೾, on the banks of the Yellow River along its southward course between steep mountains, before it turned to flow across the Plain.95 (See Map 12.1.) This site, where the Fen River joined the Yellow, had been ritually linked with Mount Tai long before the Song. In 116 BCE, an unusual, auspicious, and legitimizing metal cauldron (ding ᑾ) had supposedly been found in the river there, an echo of even earlier stories about a legendary Yellow Emperor (ࢶ෌). Accordingly, Emperor Han Wendi had had a shrine to a deity called Houtu њग, Mighty Earth, built on the east bank,96 and he went there in person as part of his Feng–Shan rituals in 110. So had later Han and Tang emperors (Xuanzong in 733).97 This Houtu complex had been repaired by the second Song emperor in 979 and was already being patronized by Zhenzong before the Great Convergence, but from a distance.98 Although on the cusp of a transition, Mighty Earth was still an impersonal force in the state’s eyes, not an embodied deity.

And so in 1010, perhaps cautiously encouraged by the birth of a son that spring,99 Zhenzong began planning an imperial progress to perform rites to Houtu.100 It would be a risky journey. Fenyin was in threatened territory that had not (yet) been lost to the nearby Liao state. The assertion of imperial authority there thus also had wider political resonance and utility, but the journey was opposed (again unsuccessfully) by many capital officials. Zhenzong made the difficult four-hundred-kilometer trip in the chilly 1st and 2nd months of 1011, travelling from Kaifeng to his western capital at Luoyang and then north, finally reaching the shrine overlooking the fast flowing Yellow River.101 The imperial rites echoed those of the Feng–Shan on a smaller scale, with auspicious omens, jade books, and commemorative stelae. As we shall see, these actions recharged the cult and helped propel Houtu toward a transgendered life as a northern god. Obviously anxious for even more supernatural support, the emperor acknowledged and promoted the powers of yet another deity already known to him, one with deep exorcistic roots in the natural world: Xuanwu ២ે (Dark Martiality, now usually rendered Dark Warrior). This deity associated with the north was herewith, Zhenzong ѐᅓ declared, to be called Zhenwu ᢾે (Perfected Warrior, to avoid the taboo on ២)(and echo his own reign name?).102 He was also said to be embodied as a general (jiangjun ԕ‫ )ݲ‬and thus understood to have human male form; in 1018, he was further elevated with a higher Daoist title.103 Patronized by Emperor Zhenzong’s successors and promoted by Daoist professionals, this Perfected Warrior would be an important North China god associated with his own mountain in northern Hubei. Like Houtu, he would also become a regional rival to the Jade Woman of Mount Tai. Song Zhenzong was one of those emperors whose occasional actions made a palpable difference not only at Mount Tai but in the history of Chinese religion more generally.104 Even this superficial account indicates his energetic role as patron of six important rising deities: Dongyue, Confucius, Jade Sovereign, Dark Warrior, Mighty Earth, and the Jade Woman. He acted through key advisers and in opposition to ambivalent scholarofficials to build temples, bestow titles, perform rituals, print scriptures, endow clerics, and fund the chapter 2 | mount tai, 1008

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standard-setting products of talented craftsmen. Although imperial patronage could create and sustain gods, it did not guarantee them a long life. Neglect could set in with the unavoidable change of ruler, and deities were easily lost in the expanding sectarian pantheons and the ever-larger empire. Nevertheless, the early eleventh century did mark a crucial point in the ascending trajectories of not only the gods just mentioned but most of the supernatural entities who in later centuries would dominate popular worship in North China and beyond. Given what we know about the Jade Woman, it is noteworthy that none of the deities singled out for honors by Zhenzong were female. The highest objects of state ritual (Heaven, the Five Peaks) were not human at all, the Shakyamuni Buddha was male, while Amitabha, Maitreya, Avalokiteshvara, and the many buddhas of the era were ungendered in their physical images. Others were unambiguously male and of known types. If women were so rare in the world of powerful gods, how did the Jade Woman fit in? FEMALE GODS Chinese attitudes toward female bodies in the late medieval period, known from geographically scattered surviving works made by men, are well beyond the scope of this book, but they seem to have included the following ideas: the powers of women varied according to their ages; women of childbearing age were polluting but essential to continuation of the patriline; ascetic bodily discipline and gender denial could be a path to long life. Because of the dearth of clearly dated North China images of non-Buddhist gods before the year 1000, it is difficult to be sure how the gender of supernatural beings was visualized in this period, especially since our standards are unlikely to have been theirs. Male deities resembled powerful men in life: physically or politically powerful, imposing or dynamic in stance. But not all beings were either male or female, it was also possible to be both or neither. Nakedness and explicitly sexual features and poses were not emphasized as they were in other parts of the world; indeed, judging from later evidence, sexless androgyny predominated. In a male-dominated patrilineal society such as that of the Song period, women were essential for their generative powers, and being a fertile wife and the mother of sons was a position of consequence. All 56

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people had mothers, even gods and celibate clerics, and Buddhist sutras of the medieval period had introduced to Chinese culture a number of important mother figures. Lady Maya (ಎኬਜ਼Ϫ), who gave birth to the future Buddha (thus, Fo Mu ౷আ), and the aunt who raised him were part of his life story. And among the countless Buddhist deities referred to in scriptures, at least one had become part of the visual repertory. She too was a mother, associated (in Sichuan) with the bringing of children: Hariti ✛۱෌আ (Guizi Mu ૤жআ).105 For such venerated women, fertility and nurturing were important and sexuality was muted, and they were represented as mature women, fully clothed and sitting down. God-like women with the capacity to respond to the prayers of people who were not their relatives do not appear to have been a significant presence in the supernatural world of medieval China.106 Today, the best known exception is the Queen-Mother of the West (Xiwangmu ՝ࣼআ). The name identified her as a woman whose powers derived from male offspring.107 In Han dynasty texts that continued to be available in later centuries, however, she was described as a remote and dangerous entity, part animal and part human, resident of the high western mountains, and capable of delivering both life and death. Modern access to the funerary objects placed in Han tombs has revealed a seated Queen-Mother who was sometimes placed in a position of prominence opposite a more clearly male figure, making a parental pair. Her head and torso were visually emphasized, along with a high headdress, covered arms, and sometimes wings. The location of such images across an arc from Sichuan to Shandong indicates some widespread familiarity with Xiwangmu in the centuries around the beginning of our era.108 The understandings attached to the name are far from consistent or coherent (to us, at least), but the seated front-facing position of a being to whom others attend is systematically distinctive, as is the disjuncture between the name and an image whose bodily features were ungendered. For the period after the first century CE, there seems to be a distinct dearth of above-ground evidence for the Queen-Mother as a deity who was actually worshipped. Her name was commonplace in poetry of the Tang, however, and references in prose texts kept alive her associations with distant mountain realms.109 Al-

though it would take a close reading of all the pre-Song poetic and Daoist literature to track this increasingly domesticated persona, male literati authors had already fantasized about a Queen-Mother who was a beautiful, banquet-hosting, immortality-dispensing lady bountiful, associated with birthdays and peaches and jade-maiden attendants. The name implied a woman of childbearing age and her lore made her airborne, albeit in a dignified fashion. In the tenth-century Taiping guang ji ѿ‫֮ܰכ‬, for example, she rode to welcome Emperor Han Wudi in a carriage made of purple clouds and drawn by nine dragons.110 Later visual representations echoed this idea. It is less clear to me why ponds were named in her honor but, as we have seen, there was already a venerable Queen-Mother’s Pool (ࣼআဩ) at the foot of Mount Tai—one that had auspiciously turned color in anticipation of the Feng–Shan in 1008. In the Sichuan region, where people from the Central Plain had fled during the tenth-century era of decentralization between Tang and Song rule and with which there was cultural exchange despite the difficult route, sources indicate a substantial array of locally known female deities. There, Daoist texts were full of august mothers (๦আ), golden or mysterious women (‫ؖ‬ѽ, ២ѽ), as well as jade maidens and the QueenMother of the West.111 This term Shengmu ๦আ, August Mother, a polite way of addressing an emperor’s mother, had also been slipping into the vocabulary for female deities, an example of a convenient route from powerful human to god. As a title, August Mother seems to have been used in Shanxi and areas to the southwest (Shaanxi, Hubei, Sichuan) for female deities as well as human mothers, carrying with it associations of both age and power. Along the east side of the Yellow River in Shanxi, there seems to have been worship of August Mothers since at least Empress Wu’s time. That remarkable woman had been born in this area in 624 and had appropriated the auspiciousness of the Fenyin Houtu (Mighty Earth) site in her own self-transformation along a path toward divine emperorship. In 688 she took for herself the title August Mother and Divine Sovereign (Shengmu Shenhuang ๦আ‫ظ‬෦), adding a weighty religious and political valence.112 By 1000, sheng ๦ had several strong overlapping meanings reflecting attitudes toward exceptionally powerful and unusual exemplars: admirable, august,

sage-like, wondrous, divine. We have already seen that Zhenzong called his two (male) predecessors the Two Sheng, and it was not by chance that he put the word in the titles of Dongyue, Confucius, and Houtu. As he explained: “We use sheng to indicate the most divine and marvelous (۠‫ిظ‬ѓҏ஽๦).”113 Sheng was clearly a quality of the god-like, however we translate it.114 Given what is today a paucity of surviving images of god-like women before the eleventh century, is it possible to speculate about what a jade maiden might have looked like in 1008? The phrase itself was general. Yu ർ, jade, was a rare treasured material associated with enduring value. Nü ѽ, woman, was an everyday word, used for ordinary women and girls. Jade maidens, as we have already suggested, were a familiar category of minor beings for early Song elites, daoists, and probably others. They were said to be— variously—the handmaidens of the Queen-Mother, daughters of the Yellow Emperor, and sexual companions of Daoist adepts. In these contexts they appear mobile, nubile, and immortal; they lived in a mountain’s upper air, and served as alluring intermediaries between men and higher powers. Ideas about jade maidens had been drawn into the world of Daoist scriptures and practices where sexuality was sublimated. There, they often formed a pair with young boys, and both were enlisted as ritual servitors (jiashi ࿓ᬐ) of Daoist high gods.115 This kind of jade maiden had also been associated with Mount Tai. Under Tang Emperor Gaozong and Empress Wu, images of an Immortal Youth (Xiantong ࿁ু) and a Jade Maiden, both understood as Perfected Beings (ѐϪ), were made (statues, seemingly) and placed as standing attendants in the Dai Peak Abbey.116 Compared to the empresses, queens, and august mothers who were then the most powerful women in the other world, a jade maiden was therefore a subordinate person. From the 660s through 720s, this Tang temple at the foot of Mount Tai had been used by emissaries from the throne and it seems likely that ritual knowledge and the older images survived into the Song. When Wang Qinruo ordered that a new statue of better quality stone be made to replace the broken figure on the summit in 1008, he may have relied on the daoists at that abbey for their inherited knowledge. They in turn would have been dependent on the experience of local workmen. chapter 2 | mount tai, 1008

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To have commanded notice as recognizably human-like, the original jade maiden image at Mount Tai was probably close to life-size. Principal Buddhist and Daoist deities faced forward; lesser figures stood deferentially beside them. A jade maiden in a ritual context was an attendant who would have been shown kneeling or standing, turned toward the left or right in the act of presenting something with both hands to a superior who took center place.117 Song Zhenzong’s auspicious Jade Maiden, by contrast, was found alone; she may therefore have been understood instead as one of the nubile and lightly dressed poetic maidens who flew about the mountain heights as messengers to emperors.118 Unexpected evidence of iconographic connections with aerial messengers came in 1970 when half a dozen glazed ceramic figures were unearthed near the northwest corner of the Dai Miao.119 Ranging in height from 43 to 63 centimeters, they embody half-bird halfhuman entities, with the clawed feet, legs, and tail of birds, winged upper bodies, and women’s heads. Their hair is wound into high topknots, and there seem to be floral designs on the headdress and chest. They stand on narrow bases, hands covered and clasped at chest level and holding some object. Each has a pair of wings on each shoulder and one along the back folding into a tail. See Figure 2.3. These bird-women have been understood as Chinese versions of the Buddhist kalavinka human-bird deity.120 The unearthed figures were reported as “Song,” but I believe that they could antedate the construction of the Hall of Heaven’s Great Gift near this location in 1008.121 Pending further investigation, we can speculate that they belonged to some earlier building, perhaps even Dai Peak Abbey, but were removed and ritually buried at the spot where they were discovered in 1970. Although commonly associated with Central Asia, kalavinka images were known in eleventh-century North China and we should include them as possible sources of inspiration for Mount Tai’s Jade Woman. Ideas about winged gods had already been established in Shandong centuries before. Han dynasty texts mentioned mountain immortals as “feathered people” (yu ren ሞϪ) and bronze mirrors showed many kinds of part-human creatures with wings. Moreover, as we have seen, the Queen-Mother of the West was herself sometimes represented with wings, 58

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2.3 Glazed ceramic bird-woman unearthed at the Dai Miao in 1970. Possibly of Song date. (Courtesy of the Tai’an City Museum ೉ԥ‫ص‬ѕ‫׉‬క.)

while Tang poems described jade maidens in flight.122 Daoist man–bird –mountain imagery was plentiful.123 There are, therefore, reasons to think that religious specialists in Kaifeng or at Mount Tai in 1008 may have associated the “broken stone image” from the mountain summit with such a winged female. As we shall see, the presence of vestigial wings on later images of the Jade Woman (hitherto not noticed by scholars) makes this association quite plausible to me, and I will make a point of it in this book.

Whatever her sources of inspiration, once the 1008 Jade Maiden stone figure had been found and enniched, she was transformed into a deity in her own right, even if an unimportant one. In my opinion, both the original image on Mount Tai and its first replacement were therefore very probably standing figures who faced squarely forward so as to receive offerings directly. This statue may have been made identifiably female, as her name insisted, by having a woman’s coiffed hair and being attired in a long simple robe. And perhaps she had wings. But I cannot imagine that either of the first two 1008 images were anything like the seated woman who came to take their place in later centuries—changes that will unfold in the chapters to come. That a piece of stone roughly in the shape of a human being might be discovered, pulled from the rubble near a shallow pond, and assumed to be an object of worship was in itself not unusual. Existing practices had provided a template for identifying, naming, enshrining, and worshipping. Moreover, creating a specific deity out of a general category was also already a familiar process involving animals, hybrid beasts, astral entities, and nature spirits. A standing frontal pose would have signaled the transition from generic jade maidservant to a particular and special Jade Woman. The difference in age and sexuality implied by the English words Maiden and Woman hints at the multivalent identity that will play an important role in her history. The various gods we have mentioned here were only a fraction of the thousands of supernatural entities worshipped in Song Zhenzong’s domain. Outside the clerically organized pantheons, most were honored and propitiated within geographically limited localities. Many, perhaps most, have since disappeared. Among them, a stone maiden was next to nothing. And yet, five centuries later she would equal or surpass older gods in prayer-answering efficacy, be housed in a famous temple at the center of a pilgrimage network that extended over a large area of northern China, and be worshipped by millions. And she would be one of many well-known female deities. Within a few centuries, an ungendered bodhisattva would spawn several distinctively female personas and find devotees everywhere, across class

and region, in and beyond monasteries and nunneries. An unmarried young woman from southern China would become both an empress and an august mother, and temples to her would line the waterways and coasts from the south seas to the northern plains. In Shanxi, Mighty Earth would survive as an August Mother. As more gods were understood to be women, the era of androgynous deities seems to have tipped toward a more distinctly gendered one. Explaining these empire-wide trends is beyond what is possible in this book, but from a later vantage point we can better distinguish these trajectories, invisible as they were at the time. Invisible and far from inevitable. Even though she did not cause it, the Jade Woman was lucky enough to ride this wave. In 1008 the Jade Maiden sprang forth, Venus-like, already an adult. Without parents or history, her life thereafter was primarily shaped by the place where she had first appeared. Although Mount Tai was then empty and its summit high in the clouds, it was a famous and historic sight, and its foothills were home to a male god who was already supported by the state and worshipped near and far. On this scaffolding, the cult of the Jade Woman would slowly be built, her survival and successes by no means assured. In the meantime, the unseen immortals and mysterious maidens of Mount Tai would be gradually replaced by human visitors who were drawn to its lofty peaks. As trails were expanded and named gods imported to populate new shrines, the fame of the mountain was increased by the attention. New or different gods only enhanced its cultural importance. In Chapter 3, we will follow the history of God of the Eastern Peak and trace the slow emergence of the Jade Woman between 1000 and 1350. Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 will then show how, nourished by devoted patrons, the summit temple became a self-sustaining center of region-wide popular worship and the Jade Woman’s fame spread down the mountain and onto the plains. In the process, as Dongyue himself changed, the newer female god became demonstrably efficacious, acceptably orthodox, culturally familiar, and his rival. Let us begin by examining what happened after the hoopla of 1008 had died down.

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chapter 3

The Jade Woman and the Eastern Peak, 1000–1350 The first twenty years should have been easy. After Emperor Song Zhenzong’s interventions at Mount Tai in the 1010s, the Dongyue hall was new, funding was reasonably assured, the recently installed daoists were still living, and the throne’s interest was not likely to be forgotten by local officials. With the passage of time, however, as new rulers took the throne, rituals became routinized, bureaucratic protectors lost interest, buildings and objects were damaged, maintenance expenses mounted. This course of events was to be expected, and in later times Mount Tai’s infrastructure repeatedly experienced stretches of inactivity and neglect punctuated by bursts of action and reinvigoration. The Eastern Peak Temple was relatively secure— a small endowment and intermittent patronage might carry it through hard times—but the situation of the new shrine on the summit was more precarious. For worship of the Jade Woman to become a coherent emergent phenomenon, she first had to stay alive. That life would have to come from people, people who—in addition to Emperor Zhenzong—could testify to the god’s responsive efficacy. The initial phase of the Jade Woman’s history is largely a blank. After three hundred years, when she first began to be worshipped beyond Mount Tai, pilgrims, travelers, and scholars remembered the link with Emperor Zhenzong of the Song but knew little about the intervening centuries. In this chapter, we will try to shed some light on this obscure era. Some answers can be found on the summit and in the foot-

hills of Mount Tai, but for others it has been necessary to look farther afield. The resulting research illuminates this incubation period, a time when the Jade Woman adapted and lived on to become a familiar and sustainable feature of the local environment. From today’s vantage point, it is easy to assume that the Jade Woman would automatically have become a popular deity. In fact, her success was by no means assured, or even likely. Active worship of Dongyue at the foot of Mount Tai would be essential to the Jade Woman’s survival, a source of both minimal sustenance in the early years and continuing protection-by-association in the face of later difficulties. We will therefore begin with the God of the Eastern Peak, the anchor for Mount Tai’s fame, and show how his already multifaceted cult developed after 1008 through the efforts of its varied patrons. We will then turn to the improbable longevity of the Jade Woman’s shrine and her transformation into a known deity. These events did not occur in isolation. Mount Tai’s deities had contemporaries and competitors whose histories helped shape theirs. With that context, it will be possible to start tracing how, as her cult slowly came of age, the new female deity developed a distinct identity and recognizable look. Chapter 4 will then examine the more dramatic changes of the Ming era, when the Jade Woman found new homes and the original shrine on Mount Tai became a self-sustaining center of region-wide popular worship. gods of mount tai

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But first, a quick look at the Jade Woman high on the peak. The immediate challenge for the newly enshrined statue atop Mount Tai was one of survival. The physical structures for the 1008 Feng rites had not been elaborate, perhaps no more than a cleared stone platform. Once the imperial cliff inscription had been carved and the temporary paraphernalia dismantled and carted away, little was left on the uneven summit plateau.1 The most impressive human trace was the vertical rock face slightly farther down with the imposing words of two emperors (Tang Xuanzong and Song Zhenzong). The original Jade Woman niche (presumably near the core of today’s temple) was a bit lower and to the east of that cliff, and a visitor would pass it en route uphill toward the site of the august rites. A tourist on the mountain today—overwhelmed by the choice of sights and the noisy crowds—may have difficulty imagining how deserted the summit once was even as recently as the early twentieth century. Photographs from that era show only a few low-lying buildings and a rocky, windswept, and deserted expanse. (See Figures 8.7–8.9.) In Song Zhenzong’s time, there was little more than the great sky and moving clouds above, boulders underfoot, and extraordinary vistas. No proper buildings were there to shelter those who made the arduous climb. Why wasn’t the Jade Woman soon forgotten, the statue allowed to tumble down into the pool, the niche disappearing in cracks and brambles? It was not obvious in 1008 that anyone beside Zhenzong and his coterie considered this new Jade Woman image worthy of worship. Because the emperor and his high officials became immediately preoccupied with other matters, the presence of the hastily made statue in an isolated inhospitable location associated only with the controversial imperial rites did not ensure interest from any but the most intrepid visitor. The steep harsh terrain of the mountain itself was not fit for agriculture and most of its rocks were hard and unworkable. The foothills had some settlements, but there were no “local” residents to look after the shrine as would have been the case for a hillside monastery or community temple. Considering the extent of scholar-official opposition to the Feng–Shan of 1008, the linkage between that extravaganza and the Jade Woman probably made both distasteful to Song elites. In any case, by 1025 Emperor Zhenzong and his principal Daoist advisers were dead, 62

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their attentions to Daoist deities had been diluted, and a mere jade maiden could be conveniently neglected. For the men and women who lived near Mount Tai, however, the events of 1008 were more significant. The sudden influx of officials from the capital, the dramatic commandeering of labor and stimulating expenditure of funds, these had not been seen since the Tang imperial visits three centuries before. Even after the work was completed in town and on the summit and imperial interest fell away, however, the Hall of Heaven’s Great Gift remained. The long history of Eastern Peak rituals and the administrative upgrade, relocation, and rebuilding of the new complex brought vigor to the locality and kept the Daoist community at the foot of the mountain connected to the imperial center. Because the Jade Woman emerged from a religious culture that easily accommodated the coming (and going) of gods, praying to an unfamiliar deity did not require abandoning others. Although the Jade Woman was in some sense new, her worship required no change to established beliefs and practices and no “conversion” in the Judeo-Islamo-Christian sense. Even though she was a woman in an overwhelmingly male host of gods, she was of a piece with them and a product of the same forces. Nothing made her special except her location and first patron. Association with a high mountain that was already well known through texts and the occasional visitor would turn out to be a valuable advantage. Just as important as the impressive physicality of Mount Tai and its centrality to the North China Plain was the fact that it was already understood as the home of Dongyue, a powerful god who controlled the courts of hell. The future of the Jade Woman would be closely tied to this already famous male figure. His history clothed the Jade Woman in familiar stories, his iconography influenced hers, his clerics attended her, and it was in contrast to him that she would develop her own independent identities. To understand her, we must first look at the scaffolding he provided. AT THE GREAT EASTERN PEAK As we saw in Chapter 2, over the centuries Mount Tai had been acquiring a variety of loosely integrated identities. “Mount Tai” (Tai Shan ೉‫ )ځ‬was a place, a concentrated cluster of peaks and valleys around a summit that was usually visualized as the south-face seen from be-

low. (As shown in Figure 2.1.) “Going to Mount Tai” meant travel to this well-defined viewpoint. “Eastern Peak” (Dong Yue ֆₙ) was more than another name for the physical mountain; it designated a locus of power within a system of great peaks that framed and supported a cultural-political rulership. As such it was the object of state-sponsored rituals. The ancient name “Dai ┬” identified this particular peak (yue ៈ, ₙ).2 “Dai Yue ┬ៈ” was thus the educated man’s name for the mountain conceived of as both a site of power to which ancient emperors travelled and one of the set of Five Great Peaks (Wu Yue ٚₙ) to which collective rituals had been long been institutionalized. A belief that the physical mountain also housed agents who controlled the souls of the dead had become associated in an unstable

fashion with various locations at the foot of Mount Tai and with a god who embodied such powers, who was also known as “Dongyue.” Dongyue the deity was present not only at the mountain, however; he could be prayed to in image form and worshipped anywhere, by anyone. All these personas were preserved and circulated in oral traditions and texts that provided little coherence to such simultaneous claims about the mountain. Although the 1008 Feng–Shan left the summit still deserted, the settlement at the base of Mount Tai underwent a burst of construction. Zhenzong reorganized the state rituals and abandoned the Dai Peak Abbey (located to the east of where the path to the summit begins today, near the current Queen-Mother’s Pool). See Figure 3.1. There, Tang Emperor Gao-

3.1 Mount Tai, showing the trail to the summit (in red) and important early eleventh-century sites. 1. Imperial Cliff inscriptions ಎ᝽. 2. Jade Woman Shrine ർѽṽ. 3. Gateway to Heaven ϳ՞, today’s Southern Gateway to Heaven ۪ϳ՞. 4. Sutra Stone Valley ੘Ҭ≋. 5. White Dragon Pool Ձहဩ. 6. Haoli Hill ⌜Ѧ‫ځ‬. 7. Abbey of Heaven’s Writ ϳ‫޲ڣ‬. 8. Entrance to the trail to the summit. 9. Queen-Mother’s Pool ࣼআဩ. 10. Site of Tang dynasty Dai Peak Abbey ┬ₙ޲. 11. Site of Song dynasty Hall of Heaven’s Great Gift ϳ㒼ឆ. (After Tai Shan tu zhi [1774], j. ۰ 38.)

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zong and Empress Wu had left a pair of massive stelae recording the rituals directed toward Daoist deities performed from the 660s through the early 700s. Song Zhenzong, in gratitude and hope, further strengthened the protective relationship between this Great Peak and his own dynasty by relocating and improving this shrine. He had selected a different site, flatter and more spacious, a kilometer away toward the southwest, closer to the plain and to the growing town, and directly in line with what was becoming the preferred route to the summit.3 There, in 1009, as recounted in the preceding chapter, the emperor ordered construction of the Hall of Heaven’s Great Gift (Tiankuang Dian ϳ㒼ឆ), , where the courtyard would house the first of many stelae commemorating his thanks.4 This hall, outfitted with ritual vessels and perhaps a new image, was the core of what grew into today’s far more extensive Dai Miao ┬ᜐ. It seems that a small community of Daoist specialists took up residence there to be responsible for imperial rites and temple maintenance.5 (Zhenzong also had the more modest Abbey of Heaven’s Writ, Tianshu Guan ϳ‫ڣ‬ ޲, built at the nearby site where this miraculous gift had first appeared.6) Seemingly intended primarily for state-funded and -staffed rituals, the new temple also promoted the general reputation of the personified god of the Eastern Peak. In 696, he had been imperially honored with the title of King and in 1009 this title was lengthened. In 1011 the god’s identity as a personified equivalent of a ruler was further sharpened when Zhenzong elevated him to the rank of Magnanimous and August Emperor Equal to Heaven (Tianqi Rensheng Di ϳಞწ๦ ෌). In popular parlance, his temple soon came to be called the Temple of the August Emperor (Shengdi Miao ๦෌ᜐ).7 As such titles became more common, longer and higher ones would be needed to maintain this god’s position relative to others similarly recognized by the state. In past centuries, Dongyue had been sufficiently humanized that some believers assumed that he had a family just as they did, and Zhenzong added his imprimatur to such humanizing ideas by having these relatives comparably promoted and housed. The god’s consort was now formally the Shuming Empress (ᎂ Ҵ෦њ) and one son made the Bingling Duke ẅࢼԍ 64

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(Duke of Brilliant Efficacy).8 Another hall immediately to the rear appears to have been built around this time as the Private Chambers (቞࿮, њ቞࿮) of the god and his wife.9 The earlier name of the county seat headquartered at the foot of the mountain (which had previously commemorated a Tang imperial ascent) was changed by Song Zhenzong to Fengfu ൄላ, The Feng Portents, echoing the compact between Heaven and the emperor expressed in the era-name.10 These actions drew different aspects of the Eastern Peak further into the ritual system supported by the state: as a personified god, as one of the Five Great Peaks, and as a singular mountain. Renewed imperial blessings meant an imprimatur of orthodoxy that was, in turn, taken on by all of the mountain’s other identities. And they implied the regular funding that was essential to the long life of any religious establishment. The Song state seems to have been more ambivalent about the belief that Mount Tai provided an opening to the realm of the dead. The temple by Haoli Hill ⌜Ѧ‫ځ‬, only a few kilometers southwest of the new hall, perpetuated a rather different view of the Eastern Peak. There, private prayers were directed straight to the lords of hell who, with their underlings, occupied seventy-five small offices (si ‫ )ޅ‬and decided the fate of each dead soul.11 Vivid if unsystematic ideas linking Mount Tai to such purgatorial trials were already well and widely established in written as well as oral form.12 Deeply personal fears about death thus further focused belief in the efficacy of the mountain’s embodied gods. It was to the Haoli shrine (called a si ṽ at this time) that worried petitioners came, hoping to save themselves or those they loved from torments in the afterlife. Many centuries old and independent of state support, this worship had already taken the form of organized groups, and it was concentrated during the 3rd lunar month, which was understood as the time of Dongyue’s birthday, when he might be generous in his judgments.13 In 1080, boatmen who plied the rivers to the south had raised money for a tall flagpole (made of disease-resistant catalpa wood) to be placed within the main courtyard of Zhenzong’s official temple. There, they sought not the great god, but his son, the Bingling Duke, and those deputies politely called “assistants to the August Emperor (๦෌ᔆԚҏ‫)ظ‬,” that is, the fearsome but more accessible judges in their many offices of

hell. It was, however, at nearby Haoli where these and less organized petitioners were able to worship in their own unconstrained fashion, to sai ॴ, a term that included a host of penitential and festive pilgrimage practices.14 We can understand such activities as both a supplement and an alternative to the official and clerical rituals to Dongyue himself, even though collectively all contributed to the fame of the mountain and the god. In 1016, the era of Great Convergence of Propitious Portents was brought to an end. Zhenzong died in 1022. Building materials left over from his various Mount Tai projects were reallocated to nearby Qufu for the Confucius Temple complex.15 State sponsorship of worship at the mountain was reduced to routine activities initiated by the Ministry of Rites. Perhaps not coincidentally, Mount Tai became more and more an object of historical, poetic, and popular religious interest thereafter. Its location, not far from well-travelled transportation routes, made it a manageable detour for travelers, and the nearby attractions of the famous Confucian temple and the Buddhist Lingyan Si ࢼ☈ᕖ enhanced the area’s appeal. Lingyan, a monastery founded in the sixth century, was nestled in the hills on the northwestern side of the Mount Tai massif in a valley that extended off an important north-south road. At the time of the 1008 Feng–Shan, pious donors and the monks there had just embarked on the ambitious project of constructing a nine-story eight-sided brick pagoda, an effort that was finished only in 1057; a new hall for life-size clay-sculpted arhats (Lohan ஛ఈ) was completed a few years later.16 This substantial Buddhist establishment was probably the only rival to the Haoli/Dai Miao complex as a regional pilgrimage destination in the eleventh to twelfth centuries. Officials sent to offer routine prayers were among the regular visitors to the Temple of the August Emperor, and their visits were a lifeline for the daoists. While on imperial business, of course such men took time to enjoy the local sights, and it was not long after Song Zhenzong’s ascent that well-to-do travellers wrote poems and accounts of their own “leisured touring” (you ղ). Letters, conversations, and occasional writings stimulated the appetites of others to see Mount Tai for themselves. As a winding trail upward became more passable and better defined, visitors began to plan their “ascent to the summit of Dai (ࠪ┬).”

Showing off their education, they carved short inscriptions on the cliffs and, as each one enhanced the experience for others and as the tales told rippled outward by word of mouth, the attractiveness of Mount Tai to select travelers increased. A few of its unknown vistas were tentatively explored, and a second route was developed partway up a mountain valley just to the west, where a White Dragon Pool attracted elite attention.17 With more outsiders came new ways of referring to the Emperor of the Eastern Peak’s still-new temple. Known in official discourse as the Great Peak Shrine or Temple (Yue Ci ៈṽ or Yue Miao ៈᜐ), and more informally as the August Emperor’s Temple, it was also being called the Tai Peak Palace (Tai Yue Gong ೉ ₙ࿮) by ordinary worshippers.18 This plurality was probably a reflection of the different origins of visitors and the multiplicity of the building’s functions. While scholars carved on the mountainsides, devotees of the god enhanced his temple with donations of money and things. Two large white-cast-iron vats (һ ᄤ), dated 1101 (and still in place today), were one religious association’s substantial contribution to a major renovation; they were intended to keep water available for fighting the fires that threatened the wood columns and ceiling of the main hall. See Figure 3.2. Their panels featured finely drawn dragons, phoenixes, and other familiar high-status auspicious animals, and the cast-in inscriptions expressed the donors’ public acknowledgment of the god’s invisible powers over disaster and good fortune. Also recorded on the iron surface were the names of the iron workers, of the association leader (huishou Ͼ۰) and thirty-four members (including two women), as well as the amounts given toward the casting of the vats (165 strings of copper cash). These donors were nearly all from the Mount Tai vicinity. Well made and well preserved in a protected environment, these vats set a long-lived example for later patrons, and for us they can hint at similar but more ephemeral gifts of religious paraphernalia, like the boatmen’s wood flagpole, that are long gone.19 These vats also make it clear that town officials and temple daoists had to deal with enthusiastic and organized pilgrims, who could be both a blessing and a problem. Haoli Hill and the new Great Peak Shrine nearby were not the only objectives of these crowds, and the relationship between those responsible for the

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3.2 One of a pair of iron water vats, cast in 1101, on the terrace of the Dai Miao in 2013. 115 x 178 cm. If the dragons on the second band referred to Dongyue, the accompanying phoenixes could even have been indirect references to the Jade Woman of the summit. (1992 photograph; courtesy of the Tai’an City Museum ೉ԥ‫ص‬ѕ‫׉‬క.)

temple complex and those who came to pray to the many embodied powers and numinous sites at the mountain continued to be complicated and troublesome for all parties. Some worship associated with the Tang-era Dai Peak Abbey shifted not to the new hall but to the closer Queen-Mother’s Pool, where access was initially uncontrolled. A proper temple was built there in 1053, and in 1103 an encircling stone wall was added.20 And no wonder. One visitor in 1114 was amazed to discover that so many people were coming to the pool every year in order to throw in their gifts for the gods—mounds of gold, silver, and silken clothing! Clerics from the Great Peak Shrine had taken to draining the water annually early in the 4th month and securing the riches that had been brought for the god’s 66

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birthday.21 Because state interest in Mount Tai postZhenzong was narrowly routine, the daoists of the Peak Shrine must have welcomed these pilgrim gifts as an additional income stream. These two sources of funding—visitors and the state—would continue to be important down to the present day. Active imperial involvement at the mountain did not return until a century after Zhenzong, when the threat to Song rule from northern neighbors had again intensified, spurring even more serious dynastic worries about Heaven’s support. A twenty-year restoration of the Great Peak Shrine was completed in 1122 by Song Emperor Huizong. A much more substantial project than Zhenzong’s initial construction, this version probably included a larger timber-frame and tile-

roof structure that turned the hall into a significant imperial-style building. The number of rooms around this main hall was significantly increased to more than eight hundred and the complex was enclosed in a protective wall. The emperor’s earnest nine-by-two-meter stele commemorated this event and remains the largest ever installed there.22 To critics then and since, this project—like that of Zhenzong—was a gross misallocation of resources, a judgment seemingly confirmed when, only a few years later, the Jurchen state overran the north. The ruling family fled and founded a geographically truncated “Southern” Song regime. The Eastern Peak’s place in Chinese culture had survived previous changes of dynasty, and it did so again this time. Jin rulers seized the capital at Kaifeng in 1127 and took over Mount Tai and most of the North China Plain. Periodic local resistance continued into the 1160s.23 A new border to the south of the mountain, in the marshy lands of the meandering Huai River was eventually secured. When the Yellow River changed its course in the 1190s and took a new route due east across the Plain, Mount Tai was further isolated and the geographic/political divide between north and south was reinforced. The homeland of the new Jurchen rulers was farther north but they too recognized Mount Tai’s ritual and religious power, and they renewed state patronage of the mountain’s temples as part of their claim to legitimate rule. The people who had fled to or lived under the Southern Song, among whom worship of the Emperor of the Eastern Peak was by now established, were severed from Mount Tai for a century. For them, the persona of the powerful god (like the state-sponsored worship of the Five Peaks) continued locally, more detached from the mountain itself but at the same time more deeply embedded in a bigger Chinese culture. The Jade Woman, by contrast, remained a strictly northern phenomenon, even though she too benefitted from the patronage of the new ruling family. The popular Haoli Hill temple was destroyed during the Jin conquest, and so it was no longer available as a place where one could propitiate the gods of hell. Because of the expense and the difficulties of obtaining the necessary materials, only the state or the clerics would have been able to undertake rebuilding there, and they could not or would not. But this elite neglect did not discourage popular worship. Con-

cerned suppliants were just driven to find other venues for their prayers. The perceived importance of the Great Peak Shrine protected it from destruction during the dynastic transition of the late 1120s but it faced other ever-present dangers. Song Huizong’s expanded hall, the highest building in sight, was now perilously surrounded by trees that were at least a hundred years old, all easy targets for lightning strikes. Inside, incense and candles were meant to be kept burning and even metal water vats were not enough to protect painted columns, rafters, and doors from flames caused by human carelessness or natural forces. In 1178, the temple suffered a serious fire, not the first or the last. Only the walls, stone stelae, and perhaps some trees survived. Fortunately, in a pattern often repeated in later centuries, Jin Emperor Shizong (r. 1161– 1189) stepped in and provided funds that, combined with contributions from devotees, made possible the rebuilding of the complex, seemingly on the same large footprint, finishing in 1182 after three years’ work.24 Reliance on both state and popular funding testified to the ability of the temple clerics to use all of the constituencies of the Eastern Peak god as sources of funds. The complex was now more frequently called the Yue Miao ₙᜐ (Great Peak Temple), a reflection of its size and perceived importance. The county itself was renamed once more and became Tai’an ೉ԥ (Tai at Peace), the name that it still uses today. A handsome 1182 stele on a tortoise commemorated the Jin esteem for both god and mountain and was added to the monuments in the temple’s courtyards. Like its Song counterparts, the text publicized established clichés in Literary Chinese that emphasized the transcendent powers of the mountain, not the god: “East is where the ten thousand things are born (ֆҤ‫׉ݛ ٷ‬ҏ‫ ”)״‬and “Mount Tai is the most senior of the great peaks (ळₙҏӕ).”25 The rebuilt Peak Temple attracted everyone from rowdy pilgrims to royalty. In the 3rd month of 1190 (presumably for Dongyue’s birthday), just as a new Jin emperor took the throne, a princess and her husband came in person to burn incense.26 Less aristocratic visitors displayed a cheerful combination of piety and high spirits, leaving their substantial gifts to the Emperor of the Eastern Peak to be swept up and treated as temple income. The 1182 stele even criticized boisterous civil and military officials who used the Great

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Peak Temple as a hotel when they passed through the city. Those buildings were now ordered converted to storerooms, and the emperor called for more dignified (ᑜ෧) behavior in what should be the tranquil home of a god (‫ݕࢼظ‬᫭ҏྎ).27 Attention to both the profits and the dangers of pilgrim and tourist crowds would continue to be matters of interest and concern to the underfunded order-loving local authorities. When worshipped in the state rituals to the Mountains and Rivers, the Eastern Peak was probably represented by an inscribed spirit-tablet. But as a god, an emperor no less, human form was expected. Life-size stone images of some Daoist gods had been made for the older temple at the time of Tang Empress Wu.28 No Song or Jin era image of Dongyue has survived at Mount Tai, but because the god was already known in many places across these empires, it is possible to look elsewhere for some evidence of what he might have looked like in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. He would not have resembled any kind of buddha, seated impassively on a lotus base. Nor was he likely to have been similar to the San Qing ѧ֜, the Three Pure Ones, high gods of the communities of serious Daoist practitioners. Those bearded male figures, their hair tied in topknots, were represented seated cross-legged on high platforms, as befit deities with claims to transcendence.29 It seems likely that maintaining an iconographic line between Dongyue and their exclusive gods may have been a goal of the daoists at Mount Tai, whose responsibilities were to them both. From at least the tenth century, images of ten “kings” of hell (Shi Wang ֐ࣼ) had been generated within a Buddhist context and, given the antiquity and prominence of the associations between hell and Mount Tai, they may well have shaped and been shaped by representations of Dongyue. Presumably also modeled on living officials (who could be glimpsed by the public), images of these judges spread through Buddhist sutras and murals, where they were shown sitting at tables, with brushes and paper, allotting punishments to the sinful. As their iconography became more widely known, it helped create the template of god-as-official that would partially overlap with that of Dongyue—and may have done so from early times.30 Nevertheless, a grander self-presentation imagined for emperors would have been more appropriate 68

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after the god’s promotion to that rank in 1011.31 Two stone statues carved inside separate niches of one cave in the cliffs of central Sichuan, from 1152, suggest that the features of the better-documented Ming deity of North China—and other emperor-gods—may already have been consolidated there.32 Sichuan could be reached from the North China Plain by travel up the Wei River valley to the Tang capital at Xi’an and then southwest through high mountains. The imperial court had fled this way there several times in the eighth and ninth centuries, bringing their culture with them, and there were continued cultural transfers and the possibility of iconographic conversations in both directions during the Song. That life-size Sichuan pair, which nearby inscriptions identified as Dongyue and his empress, are both formally seated in gender-neutral frontal positions; her hands are covered and resting in her lap, his are clasped uncovered at mid-chest (a tablet of authority may be missing). His hat is high, tied under the chin, flat on top with long ribbons trailing down the two sides; she wears earrings and her headdress sits cleanly on top of her head.33 He is beardless but, especially when presented as one of a couple, readable as a man. The pair’s pose eschews movement and dramatic effect in favor of the restraint of confident power. It is difficult to find any images of any god with the rank of emperor securely dated before 1300, but this one from Sichuan does resemble North China’s Dongyue of later centuries, and the mid-fourteenthcentury Quanzhen Daoist-inspired murals from southern Shanxi (discussed below) confirm his flattop hat to be iconographically appropriate for an emperor. Moreover, since the eighth century, the officially sponsored image of Confucius at Qufu had also worn such a mian-style hat with nine strands of pearls hanging in front (ᲂ॰【). (In 1009, Song Zhenzong officially increased the number of strands to twelve.) Such status-defining headwear was based on ideas about ancient rulers and was thus appropriate for Dongyue after his promotion.34 We also know that in directing the 1182 restoration of the Yue Miao, Jin Emperor Shizong had had a new image made of stone, although it is not known to what extent he turned to daoists for guidance or execution. He did insist that a clean pure look (೓) was necessary for such a god, and ordered that white marble from fa-

mous quarries not far from his capital (at present Beijing) be used for the god-image. Dongyue was probably seated—a convenient pose in stone—and wearing silk robes and a real-life hat with pearls.35 A vehement critique of the Dongyue god-image, of a sort that would become frequent later, was articulated by Chen Chun ಴᳝ (1159–1223) and it gives us more clues about his appearance. Chen was speaking of images that he would have seen in the south, but they seem to have had similar attributes. “How can a mountain be even a man, much less an emperor?” he fulminated. “And now people establish temples in which he sits, with hanging strands [of pearls], flat ceremonial mian-hat, and formal garments (ѵ߹ᜐ Ẹ ѼᎾ【ઉᲂ‫ژ‬ᬘ ґ‫”!)ܩ‬36 A woodblock print from the fifteenth century included a figure of the Jade Sovereign (Yuhuang) that is not radically different from these Song characterizations of Dongyue.37 As we shall see in later chapters, this emperor-god pose and iconography would have such widespread prestige in the Ming and Qing that it was regularly used by deities, male and female, with claim to equivalent rank. Dongyue would become one of many and not so easily distinguished. Under both Song and Jin rule, imperial patronage of the Emperor of the Eastern Peak had continued at a high, if intermittent, level. The state-sponsored temple at the foot of the mountain grew in size, prestige, and popularity in the two centuries after 1008, at the expense of the hell-worship at Haoli Hill. After the twelfth century, two significant developments affected the Dongyue cult at Mount Tai. One was the increase in the number of temples to the male god that were located far from the mountain. The other was the emergence of a new kind of organized Daoist practice that recast the relationships between Daoist professionals and the throne on the one hand, and local communities in North China on the other. Both these factors became crucial to Mount Tai and to the survival of the Jade Woman. The long history and popularity of the hell-oriented Haoli worship had made Mount Tai into a destination for pilgrims even before the Song, and it had encouraged the building of temples to Dongyue in other places.38 Between the founding of the Song dynasty in 960 and the Jin conquest of the north in 1127, I can identify

several dozen new temples (ᜐ) dedicated to Dongyue that appear in the historical record for cities, towns, and villages on the Greater North China Plain.39 Some of this increase seems to have taken place under official sponsorship in county seats, some was due to enthusiastic locals.40 The pace of increase in North China stepped up under the Jin, and by the end of that dynasty in 1234, there were (at least) seventy-some Dongyue Miao within the region. Moreover, worship of the Emperor of the Eastern Peak had continued after 1127 in the territory ruled by the Southern Song. With Mount Tai itself out of reach, those Dongyue temples themselves became focal points for pilgrims, and the cult of this god in central and southern China took on a life of its own.41 Some of the temples dedicated to Dongyue under the Jin and later the Yuan also had offices for the gods of hell, some did not; some were sponsored by local officials, some not. All this worship spread the fame of the god. Most of the Dongyue temples were called miao ᜐ, temple, but a few were called xingci Ҳṽ or xinggong Ҳ ࿮, touring-palaces. This concept had been transferred from the imperial lodgings of royal progressions to Dongyue’s temples distant from Mount Tai. Emperors could only be in one place at a time, but gods, whose multiple instantiations permitted simultaneity, each “touring-palace” was an independent home. Although it is difficult to recover the early history of this concept, it made possible and encouraged a separation between the deity and the mountain. At the same time, the term also implied the invisible circulation of the god through some or all of his increasingly widely scattered temples and it could suggest a stopping place for extra-local pilgrims on the road. My imperfect translation is employed with deliberate ambiguity.42 The development of the Quanzhen Daoist order brought important changes to Chinese religious belief and practice in northern China.43 Meditation, internal alchemy, and self-cultivation had long attracted lay and clerical interest and had been the foci for successful schools of Buddhists, Daoists, and Confucians, but Quanzhen Ҫѐ (Completed Authenticity) brought these concerns together in a new monastic form of ascetic Daoist practice. The origins of the teaching were not unlike those of other sects and religions. Working within what he knew, one man, Wang Zhe ࣼⰣ, conceived (around 1160) of a communal celibate religious

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life distinct from Buddhist doctrines and practices, organized around Daoist scriptures, and focused on the pursuit of the Dao Ѭ, the Way, through intense visualizations. By the 1180s and 1190s, a group of charismatic pupils had coalesced as the next generation of leaders and found sympathetic patrons among the Jin dynasty rulers. They established a presence in Kaifeng and organized publication of relevant scriptures. As their followers increased, existing temples were converted and new abbeys or monasteries were built for their collective use. Originating in Shandong, Quanzhen was taken across the north by its practitioners. In 1222, Chinggis Khan, whose Mongol rule had not yet displaced the Jin (this would be in 1234), was persuaded to grant extensive privileges to this new religious formation, and he continued to encourage its development in his domain. Its daoists added texts to a new canon and institutionalized their precepts and their lineages. To the state, it may have seemed useful have these clerics installed in some of the now numerous temples dedicated to explicitly non-Buddhist gods, while to the Quanzhen daoists, such gods had attractive powers that they could harness with ritual. Their scriptures and practices also reinscribed tales of immortals and jade maidens on certain mountains, presumably including Mount Tai.44 Quanzhen clerics were not nearly as numerous as Buddhist monks and nuns, but theirs was a missionizing religion, open to women, with a message that concentrated on techniques of self-cultivation, and their distinctive clothing and topknot hairstyle soon became familiar to the people of North China. By 1300 there may have been as many as 4,000 Quanzhen monasteries.45 During the thirteenth century, after the Mongol Yuan dynasty claimed control of a reunified empire, Quanzhen took its place as a ritual tradition in a predictable competition with Confucian, Buddhist, and southern Daoist specialists, but its particular form of celibate clericalism remained distinctly northern, especially by contrast with those married Daoist ritual masters (fashi ֚ؓ) who were becoming the local Daoist professionals in much of sub-Yangtze China. Mount Tai did not escape the Quanzhen revolution. The first monastery there was started around 1200 in a simple room that was expanded a decade later as numbers increased, a pattern that reflected the 70

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order’s dual emphases on the hermetic and the communal. This Dongzhen Guan ၻᢾ޲ was on a low “mountain” on the far northwest side of Mount Tai, off the road to the provincial capital. Another small center (the Quanzhen Guan) was built on the plain southwest of Tai’an city. Several Quanzhen patriarchs were later said to have practiced internal alchemy on Mount Tai, most plausibly the influential patriarch Qiu Chuji ᠨ‫؛‬Қ in the 1160s, although it was actually his disciples who made a local home for his teachings and practices.46 Their transformative presence would not come until the 1280s when, as we shall see, Quanzhen power would be established in the state-supported Yue Miao itself and would take on ancillary responsibility for the Jade Woman. The amplified powers of Mount Tai had thus become the target of many competing and cooperating forces. Emperors and their families wanted the mountain and its gods for the legitimacy and protection of their dynastic lines. The state wanted to claim and use in its rituals the stabilizing influences of this First of the Five Peaks. Local county administrators worried about behavior of crowds at popular celebrations but enjoyed the income from such worshippers. Quanzhen daoists included the Emperor of the Eastern Peak in their liturgies and would use his temples as footholds in local communities. The pilgrims prayed from afar or came in person to make or fulfill vows and entreat these judgmental gods about matters of life and death. By the early fourteenth century, under unified Mongol rule, pilgrims from all social classes were coming to Mount Tai on the god’s birthday on the 28th day of the 3rd lunar month. As worship of Dongyue spread “everywhere under Heaven” (of which, more below), fears about the afterlife fueled his reputation and was diffused into a wider popular culture. In one compelling Yuan dynasty drama, for example, Little Butcher Zhang travels to Mount Tai to immolate his young son in a horrifying exchange for the cure of his elderly mother. He does so, in great distress, at the huge basin of burning incense at Haoli Hill. There he prays to the Bingling Duke, the son of the great god, whom he finds among the kings of hell and their “ghostly attendants and their underlings” busily rendering judgments and dispensing punishments. In a complicated but dramatic maneuver the god spares the boy and punishes an evil pawnbroker instead.47

Such texts and performances brought Dongyue vividly into the lives of people far from Mount Tai. But what of the other god, high on the massive mountain’s summit? Where did the Jade Woman fit into the nexus of personas that were being created for the Eastern Peak, Dongyue, and the lords of hell? THE JADE WOMAN SHRINE During the three hundred years after Song Zhenzong’s ascent in 1008, the Jade Woman not only survived but grew in potency. The changing religious landscape at the foot of the mountain provided a nourishing environment for the maiden on the summit. Imperial investments had relocated and constructed the temple to Dongyue at the foot of Mount Tai and expanded and improved it in the 1120s and 1180s. The adjacent Tai’an county seat was secured in the Shandong provincial administrative structure. As time went by, the religious landscape was filled out by important Buddhist and Daoist monasteries nearby. The belief in Dongyue’s fearful powers over life and death was undiminished even after the destruction of the Haoli Hill complex, and the Queen-Mother Temple and Pool grew in compensating popularity. The appearance of temples to the Emperor of the Eastern Peak in places distant from the mountain testified to and bolstered that god’s wider fame, and the appearance of a new cohort of professional clerics created new rituals and communities. As visitors increased and older structures were improved, Mount Tai was also advertised by word of mouth and written accounts. During this period, the mountaintop niche grew by accretions, unplanned and unorganized but following a familiar template for the worship of efficacious deities. Through the mysterious interaction between petitioners’ prayers and the god’s responsiveness, the Jade Woman was acquiring a reputation as ling ࢼ. The outcome of this gestation period was not assured, however predetermined it may seem in retrospect. A period of withering and disappearance was just as likely. In any case, one can hardly call small changes over three centuries a fast start. Compared with the accessible activities on the lowest slopes of Mount Tai, the climb to the top remained arduous. What is now the main pathway could not yet have been well defined, there were no amenities, and the summit was as likely as ever to be envel-

oped in mist and clouds or whipped by high winds, cold, and snow. These heights were not like those at the Five Terraces dedicated to Manjusri in the Taihang range across the Plain, a numinous terrain where the presence of Buddhist deities was diffused across low rolling summits dotted with communities of monks and nuns. Although elusive jade maidens may have once been sighted at Mount Tai, no one reported transformative visions and even modest places of reclusion were few. The summit still offered only historical traces and distant vistas. Mount Tai’s highest point was encouragingly visible from Tai’an town, however, and as its exhilarating views became more famous, the ascent became more tempting. In the era of roads, airplanes, and Google Earth, it is easy to forget how unusual it was to look down at one’s world from a great height, and no other mountain summit offered as spectacular a panorama in all directions. Elevation transfigured what was known, making it marvelous, and it is no wonder that the trail was marked by a series of points known as “Gates to Heaven.” On a clear day, the summit afforded the startling sight of the walled city and fields below, the distant plains to the west, and the lower peaks of lesser mountains north and east. It seems to have been intrepid travelers, not devout pilgrims, who were initially the key to the future of the Jade Woman, even though she was not usually the reason they made the climb. Elite visitors, especially those who were in Shandong on official business, seized the chance to climb (or be carried) to the top of the famed mountain, and a few written accounts by such travellers—including short inscriptions carved directly in the rock, graffiti-style—help us trace the early history of the Jade Woman’s shrine.48 In the early twelfth century, the Eighteen Twists by which one painfully zigzagged up the steep slope toward the summit were already known (see Figure 8.6) and chair carriers (᫖ၵ), fit local men, were available to do the work for the rich, the leisured, the elderly, or the too dignified.49 The highest point on the summit plateau (ߺ্), sometimes called the Taipingding ѿ‫( ্כ‬Great Peace Summit), was now increasingly conceived as a goal. These were elite men who climbed to admire the view, watch the sun rise, and casually examine those traces of the past with which they were already familiar (a category of sightseeing called, variously, ࣲ඿; භࣲ; ऋ

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ࣵ‫୾ڊ‬඿). Those who had read the Great Historian’s work wanted to find the First Emperor’s stele and they carried on a debate about it that went on for centuries.50 Others sought out and admired the imperial cliffside inscriptions, and a few bold ones added their own modest scratchings on other rocks. Because the Jade Woman shrine was located on the way to the top, just below the imperial cliff carvings, travelers could not have missed it, whether they had heard of her or not. In any case, they mentioned the shrine in passing, and stories of the origins of the Jade Woman were probably passed along orally if at all.51 The stone statue, hastily installed in its cliffside niche in 1009, did remain an object of dedicated worship, saved perhaps by a combination of imperial imprimatur and general unease at the sight of any untended shrine. This initial home began to be improved, and when we see it again (textually) in 1087, it had become a named building, the Jade Woman Shrine (ർѽ ṽ), a place where one paid a respectful visit (ye ⅐) to a god.52 The stone jade maiden had probably been moved onto an altar in a one-room structure but visitors’ accounts said nothing about it. In these first several centuries, this modest shrine was still the principal building at the summit. When Zhao Dingchen ᕿᑾᜪ and his party visited in the spring of 1114, he called it the Jade Woman Hall (ർѽ ឆ). This possible upgrade may have accompanied the twenty-year-long renovations of the Great Peak Shrine that had begun in 1101, as those activities below increased the visitors above.53 It seems probable to me that by 1100 this hall was a stone room. A higher-status building of brick, wood, and tile would have necessitated a considerable investment if it was to survive the harsh conditions. Stone slabs and flat rocks could have been piled up and mortared to make walls, with a domed roof of the same material, and would have been better able to endure the wind, rain, heat, and cold. Similar structures had been built in this area from early times,54 and the raw materials were everywhere on the summit and could have been hacked into slabs or rolled into place. Such a oneroom building would have been sufficiently permanent (and repairable) to house a hardy cleric or two (seasonally) and big enough to provide simple food and housing (਺) for those who wished to spend the night on the summit. Seeing the sun rise at dawn from the eastern 72

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edge of the summit plateau—already known as the Sunrise-viewing Peak (Riguan Feng я޲๢)—was becoming a notable Mount Tai experience. A sheltered place to spend the night had become a necessity. Visitors of the early twelfth century also found a second, small primitive dwelling place (⒨, ᡭ) in the summit area. Zhao Dingchen encountered there an ascetic daoist from eastern Shandong who had been in residence for “seven or eight years,” and they chatted amiably about medicinal herbs. (Zhao was from nearby Henan province.) Despite the rough accommodations, more and more elite visitors made the climb and rhapsodized about the magnificent sights, “the finest vista in the empire (ϳЎ໖޲Ї)!”—as indeed it may have been.55 Having spared the mountain temples during their takeover, as well as assuming the imperial responsibilities for the Eastern Peak that had been exercised by the Tang and the Song and upgrading the Yue Miao and the city generally, the Jin throne did not neglect the summit. The princess who had come with her husband in spring of 1190 to offer incense at the foot of the mountain also climbed to the top to “pray at the Shrine of the Jade Immortal (ୋҿർ࿁ṽ).” She may have imported the name “Jade Immortal” (Yuxian ർ ࿁) from local use elsewhere;56 nearly everyone else continued to use “Jade Woman (ർѽ).”57 Prestigious patronage by female members of the royal family would continue to reinforce recognition by literate elites to disseminate knowledge about the pleasures and excitement of a mountain ascent. And a precedent was set, if one was needed, for women to make their way to the summit shrine. The local disasters and intermittent warfare that marked the end of Jin rule and the reunification of north and south by the invading armies of the Mongol Yuan dynasty made the early thirteenth century a painful era for the town and temples around the Great Peak Temple. A desperate attempt by Jin rulers to reproduce a Tang-style dragon-tossing Feng ൄ ceremony at that temple in 1211 could not stave off their dynastic collapse.58 As the capital was lost, men from the central Shandong area rose in rebellion, including one man from Tai’an itself. By the time order was restored in 1215, the temple to the God of the Eastern Peak, rebuilt just thirty years before, had once again been almost entirely

destroyed. Two minor buildings survived, along with some aged cypress trees and the stone stelae.59 Because the hell-lords’ temple at Haoli Hill had already been demolished a century before, both important Dongyue temples near Tai’an town were gone in the 1210s. Some visitors may not have minded, but it seems to me likely that during the next seventy years (before the next wave of reconstruction) most worshippers looked more eagerly up to the mountaintop for someone to answer their prayers. This thirteenth-century interlude may have fostered a crucial boost to summit traffic and to the growing reputation of the Jade Woman. In times of trouble, the high peak was protected by its isolation. From below, the profile had become reassuringly familiar: the narrow throat of switchbacks, the visible notch in the ridge, and the highest point rising just beyond. The fact of the mountain itself, reinforced by its lengthening textual and oral history, also conveyed a calming permanence in years of dislocation and upheaval. The informative accounts by the former Jin official and poet Yuan Haowen ׄϮ՛, who was in Tai’an only two years after the entire north had fallen to Mongol rule in 1234, make clear that the Great Peak Temple was in ruins but the summit still offered an exhilarating experience.60 One could ascend to see the First Emperor’s stele, spend the night at the Jade Woman Hall, and then then hope for a cloud-free view of the sunrise. The untroubled vistas of distant mountains and plains had not changed. The more visitors who went to the top, the more prose and poetic accounts, the more stories told to friends, the better these attractions became known. And as some modicum of normalcy returned under Mongol rule, and as travel revived and the climb became easier, the more familiar and attractive a trip to the summit was. Although the writings by visitors and historians that survive from this period make no explicit mention of the association between Song Zhenzong’s Feng–Shan and the history of the Jade Woman, it seems likely that this link was known in some form. As the Yuan conquered the Southern Song territories in the 1270s, travel between south and north opened up once more. Southerners, long deprived, could now go in person to Mount Tai. Following what were now established precedents documented in published sources, the Mongol ruling house took over patronage of the Great Eastern Peak (and the four oth-

ers). Under Kublai (d. 1294), “all the gods were cherished (ॕଞ‫)ظښ‬,” temples were repaired, and organized Quanzhen daoists were made responsible for many northern temples and monasteries. These communities of celibate clerics were then enjoying considerable success, and by 1264 they were already in charge of (Ұ) a host of consequential renovations to the still ruined Peak Temple complex.61 One cleric, Zhang Zhichun ‫࢑פ‬য়, (1220–1285?, aka Tiannizi ϳ᫻ж, Omniscient One[?]), exemplifies the institution-building capacity of the empowered Quanzhen movement, and he played a decisive role in the history of Mount Tai.62 Zhang was an unusually able local man who had been trained nearby in the new sect. By the 1260s, then in his forties, he was chief cleric (֙‫ )ف‬of the Yue Miao community and eventually he was put in charge of the state’s Daoist affairs in Tai’an. Working closely with Shandong officials, with whom his relations appear to have been cordial despite the then still-dangerous mix of dynastic loyalties (Jin, Southern Song, Yuan), he was responsible for an extensive rebuilding program. Zhang first directed his attention to what remained of the Great Peak Temple at the foot of the mountain, the site of imperial worship since it had been built under Song Zhenzong, and badly damaged in the 1210s. This small-scale third reconstruction (after those of 1009 and 1182) began at what is the center of today’s temple complex, with a new Ren’an Hall (წ ԥឆ), a place where “the spirit of the Peak could settle (ᔃₙࢼ).” A modest walled enclave of no more than two courtyards when completed in 1266, it was probably constructed on one of the pounded earth terraces on which previous halls had been built. It was improved enough to house a new image of Dongyue.63 These few new halls may have been enough to house the daoists and the god but would not have been able to absorb the pent-up popular demand for a place to propitiate the gods of hell. Responsive to this constituency, Zhang Zhichun therefore turned next to the Haoli Hill temple, gone since the 1120s. Inspired by a supportive local man and powerful Yuan official, and citing early texts as his authority, by 1284 Zhang had brought back to life that complex dedicated to collective deities (‫ظ‬ṽ). It was reconstructed at the eponymous hill to the west of Zhang’s new but small Yue Miao, near where the Song dynasty Shan rites had

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once been performed. There, the demonic officials and their minions were again assembled and contained, the better to be worshipped. The responsibilities of all seventy-some offices of hell were spelled out on stelae and embodied in fear-inspiring statues, each with its particular clientele (the abandoned, the unfilial, the thieves, the sick, the demonic, the debauched). Commemorated by no less than three stelae, the new Haoli shrine was a substantial undertaking, and it again became a popular destination for those who were anxious to alleviate the suffering of their deceased relatives or themselves—and a new source of income for Zhang’s Quanzhen community.64 Moreover, through his official position, long associations with many scholars, and honorific title given him by the throne, Zhang Zhichun had brought social prestige to the Quanzhen enterprise in the Tai’an area. During the latter thirteenth century, new small Daoist abbeys sprang up in the mountain’s vicinity, refuges for those men and women who sought to distance themselves from worldly affairs, at least for a time.65 (Those resident in the Great Peak Temple may have found an activist life more congenial.) In 1291 the aging emperor, Kublai, added “Da Sheng ϽТ” to the Eastern Peak god’s title. He was now the Great Life-giving, Magnanimous, and August Emperor Equal to Heaven (ϳಞϽТწ๦෌).66 This recognition affirmed the god’s place in the state religion independent of the Five Peaks and thus as a recipient of separate regular offerings from the government. Tai’an officials could, therefore, also act on any concerns about the growing popularity of the mountain god. And pilgrims were coming again, drawn by the rebuilt temples and new images; a stele was erected in 1292 prohibiting them from swimming in and polluting the Queen-Mother’s Pool and forbidding farmers from using mountain lands for private crops.67 And there was still implicit competition, if we may call it that, from the local Buddhist establishment. The Lingyan monastery northwest of Mount Tai, although not on a scale with richer institutions elsewhere in the empire, had continued to flourish under the Jin and Yuan, and other small Buddhist temples were built in that area.68 Zhang Zhichun had also given his attention to the trail to Mount Tai’s summit, a destination that was no longer an afterthought. At the resting place provided 74

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by nature at the top of the last killing flight of steps, he had a building constructed. This natural Gateway to Heaven (Tian Men ϳ՞) had been so named since at least Song Zhenzong’s time and was a well-known landmark of the climb, visible from below. (See Figure 3.1.) Thanks to Zhang, after 1264 exhausted climbers were rewarded with covered shelter here, a place to rest before they turned toward the summit plateau.69 Even more important for our story, Zhang Zhichun also transformed the Jade Woman Hall. The one room of the previous century was expanded to three, probably rebuilt of brick (made below, hauled to the summit), and given a new Quanzhen name: Zhaozhen Guan ᢘѐ޲, Evident Authenticity Abbey. I estimate that this important event took place in the early 1260s.70 A new image was also installed. Zhang “sought white jade-stone from the eastern seas for an image in human form, appropriate for the hall’s more spacious size (Լֆ֋Ձർ੘ЊՌҒϪѼ ϣिឆҏܰ ὡ).”71 (White granite from the Laizhou area on the Shandong peninsula to the east would not have been hard to obtain for such a well-connected person.) The image may have been carved at the Gao ҙ family workshop, run by local Tai’an men who had been involved in many Quanzhen projects in this period.72 This may have been the time when efforts to incorporate the still-anomalous deity (a maiden? an immortal?) into the normalizing systems of organized Daoist teachings became more serious. If the statue of the Jade Woman had not been seated before, I believe she certainly was now. This posture, used for Dongyue in the Sichuan statues mentioned above, reflected the convention that powerful gods should be shown sitting down. It would also have made this female deity more distinct from standing or flying handmaidens and manifest definitively that she was a god in her own right. At the same time, a capacity for flight may also have continued to make the Jade Woman special. As we shall see in Chapter 4, there may have been other sources of inspiration, but the 1260s may have been the time when remaining traces of a standing birdwoman were reduced to the mere hint of wings and small legless birds in the headdress. The renaming and rebuilding were part of the Quanzhen attempt to dignify the Jade Woman cult and make it more Daoist, to reframe the more generic “shrine” or “hall” as a “monastic residence (޲)” for

their community, and to take justifiable control of this now established deity. Like many comparable attempts, these goals were only partially realized. During the next two hundred years (before another renaming took place), pilgrims and visitors continued to prefer the name Yunü Ci ർѽṽ, Jade Woman Shrine. Although for the educated men who knew some history and had read their Shi ji (as they seem to have done), the Qin stele, the Feng–Shan altar platform, the Tang and Song cliff inscriptions, and the view were still the main attractions, many others who left us no records now made the climb to petition this deity. As the peak became popular, the entrepreneurial Zhang Zhichun initiated the construction of other temples there as well. One was a (surely small) Dongyue temple ֆₙᜐ, above and to the west of the Jade Woman Shrine, just in front of the imperial cliff inscriptions. There, Zhang tried to establish the male god’s presence at the peak (perhaps there was now a need to do so), and he claimed a good location for his daoists to keep an eye on the historic calligraphy and the nearby rock-faces that were attracting graffiti.73 The fierce weather at the summit made it inhospitable to long-term residence, however, and Mount Tai’s jagged peaks, sheer cliffs, thin soil, and deep valleys piled high with fallen boulders were a challenging environment generally. Farmers ignored prohibitions and planted crops (perhaps fruit trees) on the lower slopes, but they left the upper reaches of the mountains alone. Although twisting paths were widened and small shelters built amid the stunted trees and rockfalls, Mount Tai in the thirteenth century remained wild and uncivilized. In consequence, except down on the edge of the plain, the mountainsides were not populated by Tai’an residents. During these first several hundred years, the Jade Woman Shrine seems to have been sustained financially by visitors, and the need for caretakers must have grown as numbers and donations increased. As at the Queen-Mother’s Pool, someone needed to sweep up the riches. By Zhang Zhichun’s time, if not earlier, responsibility for this prize seems to have been claimed by the Great Peak Temple clerics but competition over this revenue stream was beginning. Zhang’s example shows that his energized Quanzhen community could organize broad support for the improvement of Mount Tai’s facilities. By being in residence at the summit at

least part of the year, these daoists could see to the needs of pilgrims and visitors, maintain offerings to the god herself, and take immediate possession of the gifts. The two cults, Dongyue and Yunü, had thus become institutionally intertwined, an entanglement that would benefit them both, at least initially. This productive period would last no more than half a century. Upheavals of the 1340s helped produce another change of dynasty and it would not be until the 1370s that an unprecedented period of prolonged political and social order would make possible a new phase in the history of the mountain, one that we will take up in Chapter 4. BEYOND THE MOUNTAIN In Yuan times, the reputation of the Emperor of the Eastern Peak was affected by a revitalization not only at Mount Tai but elsewhere. Reunification after 1280 had opened up the mountain to Southern Song devotees of the god and the proliferation of Dongyue temples in the north had deepened his presence in the region. The Yuan rulers kept an altar to the Five Peaks in the state rituals and, having honored the God of the Eastern Peak with an amplification of his title in 1291, soon put a further imprimatur on the deity by constructing a temple dedicated to him in their North China capital.74 Although they had already patronized Quanzhen, the Mongol emperors put this new temple under the charge of the quite different but increasingly organized Zhengyi Ԝϣ daoists who took the Celestial Masters (Tianshi ϳؓ) line from Jiangxi province as a source of ritual authority. Under the direction of two energetic daoists and despite a chaotic and ongoing succession crisis, Beijing’s Dongyue Miao ֆₙᜐ was built outside the east gate of the Yuan Great Capital, where it stands today. Completed in 1323, this complex brought together and gave equal weight to the different elements that had been hitherto kept separate in Tai’an. Directly inside the main gate was a square courtyard surrounded by seventy-odd small offices for the lords of hell and their minions. Straight ahead was the central hall for the officially recognized Eastern Peak god, fronted by a raised terrace for ritual performances. Thanks to a generous Yuan princess, another hall was constructed in a third courtyard at the rear and outfitted to serve as the Private Quarters (Houqin ћ቞) for the god and his

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Graph 3.1







 




















 











 


Temples to the Eastern Peak in North China, 960–1368.

wife and sons. The resident Zhengyi caretakers lived in a separate compound on the east side. Dongyue was thus partially captured by ordinary believers, Confucian officials, and Daoist ritualists. Endowed with income-producing land, this Dongyue Miao also continued to receive imperial household gifts of incense and offerings.75 Such unprecedented public recognition for the god securely implanted his worship in the city that would remain the imperial capital for the next six hundred years. For the new statues of temple gods, one of the most famous craftsmen in the city—and indeed one of the few skilled artisans in clay whose name we know today—was persuaded to do the work. Liu Yuan ฀ׄ (aka Liu Zhengfeng ฀Ԝአ) was from the area just south of Beijing. He had found favor with Emperor Kublai for his Buddhist images, had been singled out to study with the resident Nepalese master, Anige, and had himself become a favorite imperial craftsman. His expensive technique for making hollowbodied images was said to consist of wrapping layers of silk and lacquer around a clay core (itself built on a 76

 


gods of mount tai

wood skeleton), and then removing the heavy insides. The results were unusually elegant and lifelike. (They were also lightweight and fragile and have not survived.) In all, Liu made twenty-five figures for the new Dongyue Miao, but he worried most about what the God of the Eastern Peak should look like. We are told that he found inspiration in a picture he happened to see of the admired seventh-century Tang prime minister Wei Zheng ᪭ၹ. The resulting clay statue became widely known and was admired even by snobbish literati: impressive (᲋᲋) like the mountain itself, with the bearing of a ruler (෌ࣼҏ֏), they said. This Dongyue (surely seated) was accompanied by two serving women (ᬐѽ); images of his wife and sons would have been in the rear hall; the hell judges were arrayed in their cubicles in front.76 Under the Mongol Yuan, imperial open-mindedness about religion accommodated separate rituals to the Great Peak, the god of the mountain, and the officers of hell in the capital’s Dongyue temple, but the combination made Chinese bureaucrats uneasy. The stele announcing the completion of the Beijing construction,

composed by the scholar Wu Cheng ྶᖸ, made plain the paradoxes of a practice that would become commonplace in the centuries that followed: a Classically trained scholar accepted an invitation to write a celebratory temple inscription and then used his text to express doubts and criticisms of the god being celebrated. (We will see more of this in Chapter 6.) Here, Wu deplored representing the Eastern Peak in human form, ennobling it as an emperor, or worshipping it in a temple. For him, Dong Yue should be seen as only as one of the Five Great Peaks and approached by representatives of the state on a simple altar.77 Wu’s complaints, public and becoming predictable, had no obvious effect on the popularity of the god or the new temple. By this time, the idea had become established that a temple to the god Dongyue should be set up in each administrative center of the empire. Whether officially encouraged or not, the pace at which Dongyue Miao were being built in the provinces of North China picked up noticeably in the thirteenth century. The total number of Dongyue temples more than doubled in the century of Mongol rule, and of those located in county seats (forty percent of my pool), two-thirds appeared during the Yuan.78 Graph 3.1 shows the 171 temples to the Eastern Peak known to me that come into textual view (usually by construction activity) between 960 and 1368. These numbers are necessarily incomplete but the trend seems plausible.79 There are small upturns with the founding of the Jin in 1142 and of the Yuan after 1234 (partially accounted for in both cases by rebuilding after destruction), but although population grew and documentation improved during this period, the actual increase in the number of temples may have been even steeper than my graph suggests. Temples were founded by officials, private individuals, and whole communities, but despite the likelihood that those with official involvement were better recorded, most (60 percent) of those graphed were not in administrative centers. However, half of those called “touring-palaces” (sixteen in total) were in such cities, perhaps an indication that this more elegant name was acceptable to officials.80 There is not enough evidence to decide if this name might have designated centers of pilgrimage. The replication of Dongyue temples was not a unique phenomenon, but the ten-fold increase does

illustrate that one god could, with limited organized support, become more widely known. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that this momentum was far from obvious to people at the time. Even with word of mouth, I imagine that awareness of Dongyue’s divine powers would have still been low and uneven. As for the Jade Woman, there is no similar evidence of the spread of her worship. Although one can speculate (as I will in Chapter 5), it cannot be demonstrated that there were any shrines or temples to her anywhere except on the summit of Mount Tai before the beginning of the Ming. She had indeed become established and legitimized there before 1350, but expanding elsewhere was another matter. Lacking her own hometown patrons, the only people to carry the word about the Jade Woman were Quanzhen daoists or visitors to Mount Tai. Even after three and a half centuries, her cult was still incubating. In the meantime, however, much had been changing in the religious landscape of North China between 1000 and 1350, and these changes were making it easier for both these Mount Tai gods to find their places in a wider world. Even if secluded on their mountain, the Eastern Peak Emperor and the Jade Woman had been inseparable parts of the surrounding society. Visitors brought their previous knowledge with them to the mountain, and their oral and written accounts carried their experiences to other places. Such interactions accumulated over time. We do not yet have a coherent picture of the incremental changes in Chinese culture and society north of the Yangtze River under different political regimes between the early Song and the reconsolidation under the Ming dynasty in the middle of the fourteenth century. The religious history is fragmented, most buildings are gone, and surviving images are poorly dated, but it is nevertheless clear that much had changed since Song Zhenzong’s day. From many perspectives, the three centuries of Song, Liao, Jin, and Yuan rule constitute a break with earlier eras. A commercialized money economy grew beyond the controls of the state; cities and urban culture flourished on a new scale; the empire grew larger but was still concentrated in territories where Chinese culture predominated. Aristocratic families were

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no longer such dominant players in government, and a more diverse ruling elite consisted of extended families whose wealth and power were derived from landowning and/or business, supplemented by Classical education, examination success, and government service. Scholar-officials were oriented toward their home communities but they exercised cultural influence locally and nationally through their mastery of energetically defined intellectual, ritual, and aesthetic traditions. A self-conscious Chinese culture (expressed inter alia through shared ways of eating, dressing, marrying, and being buried) had spread from northern plains and mountains to central China, where the economic and cultural center of gravity increasingly lay. Printing further helped standardize belief and practices among the educated classes. Division and unification, flight and return, had resulted in cultural mixing and rebooting that simplified, concentrated, and strengthened what would become a storehouse of shared ideas about gods and supernatural power, about ritual and social communities. In North China, temples (miao) had become the most common type of public religious establishment. Not intended to serve a single family or be a home to a clerical community, they were built with locally raised donations, dedicated to one or more gods, and used by and considered the responsibility of people who lived more or less in the vicinity. Such a self-formed territorially based community in turn engaged a few Daoist or Buddhist clerics to perform routine rituals and/or serve as caretakers. Community temples were built only when their patrons were sufficiently numerous or generous to pay the start-up costs, and they survived if enthusiasm for the god could generate funds for repairs and improvements. By this middle imperial period, there were certain well-established assumptions (at least in the capital and among elites) about how these religious buildings might be laid out, regardless of the identity of the main deity. Outfitted with images and ritual paraphernalia, these sites stimulated the religious economy. Belonging to everyone and no one, the premises and contents were a uniquely public space. These ordinary miao depended fundamentally, however, on belief in the volatile responsiveness of their gods. Some deities became popular, others did not. Without the protective infrastructure of large endowments, state involvement, or 78

gods of mount tai

organized clerics, such properties were liable to contestation over management and vulnerable to neglect. Temples of this sort were the new residences for Dongyue, as they would be for the Jade Woman. It is not simple to study the history and proliferation of such gods in the north before the Ming. Most of them are unfamiliar, having been since absorbed into other cults or died out entirely, but one snapshot suggests the general picture for an urban environment just west of the Taihang range.81 By the 1340s, in the greater Taiyuan area of central Shanxi, of nearly two hundred religious establishments listed in one survey, two-thirds were Buddhist, less than ten percent were Daoist, and only twenty percent called themselves miao ᜐ.82 These proportions would shift as miao became more numerous, but they remind us of the considerable residual power of clerical communities. With more and more points of access, however, supernatural power was no longer the privilege of the ruler, the ordained, or the rich and powerful. Now many deities could be reached directly by appeals to their physical images, or indirectly through locally available ritual specialists. Housed in buildings, more gods were recognizable, with specific human-like names and attributes. Buddhists had already paraded statues of gods through the streets in the medieval period. With the Buddha’s birthday, and Laozi’s, and then the emperor’s as legitimate days for celebration, from perhaps the eighth century, the celebration of other gods’ birthdays (ᅈᜳ) had become normal, public, and increasingly festive.83 An annual calendar of such holidays evolved, specific to each community. (The consolidation of the idea that Dongyue’s birthday was on 3/28—as we have seen at Mount Tai—was part of this development.) Lay religious groups not only gathered to recite the Buddha’s name, but also supported pilgrimage and birthday celebrations, maintained clerics and temples, and did organized good deeds. Meanwhile, mountains in general, with their resonances with the body, the polity, and the clerical community, had become less forbidding. They became active landscapes for meditation, sites for the transmission of teachings, points of contact with supernatural beings, and the destinations of real and spiritual pilgrimages. Such multiplicity of temples and gods challenged the Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian establishments,

and they responded by consolidating their own institutions, defining themselves against one another, and selectively co-opting new deities. As publicly visible gods and temples proliferated, however, any attempts to standardize names and practices were uneven and limited. With a millennium of history behind them, small and large Buddhist monasteries and nunneries were everywhere, and their core deities had become familiar to most Chinese. Their gods, ordained clerics, illustrated texts, paintings, and statues had created obvious differences from other teachings. Although nowhere near as numerous, communities of Daoist clerics were also firmly on the North China scene, with their own distinctive proprietary gods whose powers were available to practitioners who had mastered their increasingly systematized liturgies. Other gods were actively drawn in as well, claimed, tamed through ritual, and loosely organized in hierarchical categories. Most clerics were housed not in self-conscious communities but by ones and twos in the ordinary sorts of miao that were becoming the norm by 1300. They made their living from day-to-day specialized ritual performances. Singly or in combination, they helped heal the sick, mourn and quiet the dead, write out key documents, assist the deceased through hell and toward favorable rebirth, or site a grave. A handful of gods had received uneven formal patronage at administrative centers, but the ritual practices of Classically trained officials were directed toward abstract supernatural entities such as the Five Great Peaks that were represented by spirit-tablets and worshipped on open altars. Wen Miao ҹᜐ (Temples of High Culture) were attached to state-supported academies and served as shrines to Confucius, the First Teacher, and a growing assembly of his important disciples.84 They were not meant to be homes for gods. The problem was that Confucius remained in a liminal zone between human being, teacher, philosopher, sage, and god. His temples were (confusingly) called miao and some people may have considered him a shen ‫( ظ‬god). Debates continued about whether he should be represented by a wood tablet or a statue. (For a later statue of Confucius, see Figure 11.1.)85 Men educated in Literary Chinese and the Confucian classics continued to meet as equals those Buddhists and Daoists who were well educated and at-

tached to large wealthy monasteries. Even though a low-grade hostility toward clerics and disdain for “popular customs” remained embedded in important texts and memorable events, most literati readily visited monasteries at home or on their travels and they composed and wrote out stele inscriptions for these and less prestigious temples. GODS ON THE MOVE I am far from the first to notice that in the Song-toMing era there were not only more gods in more temples but some gods who were known over greater and greater distances. Buddhas and bodhisattvas had long since been carried to most parts of the empire and the Daoist high gods were increasingly installed by clerics in many places. But by the fourteenth century, a few other deities were acquiring more-than-local reputations for their responsiveness. A handful were already becoming regionally and nationally known. Such staying power stimulated replication and was manifested in the proliferation of the new temples that were the tracks of gods on the move. Dongyue was not the only deity who was making a larger geographic mark after the tenth century; others had been doing the same. Eventually, the Jade Woman would follow suit. Although a coherent culture-wide picture of this important phase in religious history is less clear than one might think, scholars have already identified a few of the deities who populated the landscape of North China and sketched their early histories.86 Understanding these other players will reveal the difficulties that the Jade Woman faced. Doing so will require us to look beyond North China at the empire, to which this one region’s connections were increasingly close and permanent. Setting aside the high Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian deities, which gods were already on the regionwide scene in North China when the empire was reconstituted under Ming rule in the middle of the fourteenth century? Some were the by then more widely known male gods whose reputations had been enhanced by Song Zhenzong and since. Some were newly noticeable female deities who were changing expectations about what a god might be like. Together, they were creating a new religious geography for the north, one that entangled Mount Tai in webs of rival sites and rival deities.

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Zhenwu87 ѐે (Perfected Warrior), a god with northern roots, was anthropomorphized as a barefoot martial figure accompanied by his totemic tortoise and snake; he had been honored with a title by Song Zhenzong, and halls and temples to him had already begun appearing in many places in and beyond North China. Celestial Master daoists attempted to draw him and his exorcistic powers into their orbit through proprietary scriptures, liturgies, and altars. Thanks to their efforts, the god’s identity became increasingly consolidated, and by 1280, he had begun to receive imperial titles and patronage from the Yuan ruling house, rising to the rank of Emperor (෌)88 and being associated with a mountain in northern Hubei: Mount Wudang ેԄ‫ځ‬. On the southern edge of the North China Plain, with its own identifiable and accessible summit, Wudang would become exponentially more famous during the Ming, and Zhenwu’s history makes a useful parallel to that of the Jade Woman. (For later statues of Zhenwu, see Figures 9.23 and 11.4.) Guan Yu89 Ԭሞ had been a charismatic general (d. 220) whose history during the “three kingdoms” era that followed the Han dynastic collapse was preserved in official records. His exploits lived on in oral tales that celebrated his martial powers and lamented his death by beheading while still in his prime. Like other powerful men who met violent ends, Guan Yu’s traces attracted those in search of supernatural assistance. Some made contact with him in central Hubei near the place of his death, where Buddhists and Daoists competed to incorporate him into their liturgies. Others began to worship him at his birthplace by the great salt lake of southern Shanxi. Already imperially honored during his lifetime as an earl (hou ᢡ), Guan was bestowed a new title and the rank of king (Yiyong Wu’an Wang चରેԥࣼ) in 1014—again by Song Zhenzong—in recognition of his exorcistic powers at the Shanxi site. Other temples to him were built as Daoist professionals claimed that they had tamed this god; local businessmen may also have taken him along as they built networks of salt distribution during the next few centuries.90 A masculine god with a capacity for violence, Lord Guan, as I will call him (following Barend ter Haar), would later have a fame that extended far beyond these two centers. (For a later print representation, see Figure 11.2.) It was also during the eleventh century that a minor Sichuan deity started his own rise to regional and 80

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then empire-wide fame. Wenchang ҹቾ’s beginnings can be traced to mountain powers near the important route between the medieval capital at Xi’an and the Sichuan basin to the west. Vaguely embodied by the fourth century, honored with bureaucratic positiontitles by Tang emperors and again by Song Zhenzong in 1004, by the twelfth century this god was known for providing assistance in the examinations that had become so important to an elite male career. Now firmly understood as a man, he was taken up by daoists and his “own tale” was said to have been transmitted in Sichuan through a spirit medium in 1181. Knowledge of Wenchang seems to have spread down the Yangtze River into central and south China during the Southern Song, and was launched on a national scale after the Yuan unification, when his associations with the exams were reinforced.91 I see little evidence that he became a popular deity in North China. It is useful to remember that powerful patronage did not guarantee fame or fortune. Qingdi ‫ݙ‬෌, Darkgreen Emperor, had been one of five impersonal direction-oriented deities in the state religion under the Han, Sui, and Tang dynasties. Like Mount Tai itself, he was associated with the spring and with the East. Emperor Wen of the Sui had declined to perform a Feng– Shan, but he had come to the foot of Mount Tai in 585 and had built an altar to Qingdi there on the model of one in the capital.92 At the time of the 1008 Feng– Shan, Song Zhenzong had also visited and left two stelae to commemorate his improvements to the Qingdi Abbey near the town.93 During the late eleventh century, daoists from that temple served as guides for elite visitors who were climbing to the White Dragon Pool, a nearby scenic and potent site still visited by palace emissaries. Thirteenth-century visitors also noted the temple, but such attention seems to have had limited effect and—unlike the Jade Maiden—it did not generate wider worship.94 Into this largely male world of gods and ritual specialists came female deities whose presence and popularity among the worshipping public was increasing between 1000 and 1350.95 There are various ways that this process can be described and analyzed, although a full explanation of the empire-wide phenomenon is beyond our scope here. A look at religions world-wide suggests that the appeal of female deities is not unusual and may even be primal, no matter how male-dominat-

ed the religious or social structures. The compassion associated with a forgiving and caring mother resonates with men and women alike. So perhaps these changes were “natural,” and as more female deities became available, demand and supply were both further stimulated. To use an ecological metaphor, some female deities brought adaptations not found among older gods, found suitable cultural niches, and accommodated themselves well to new settings. A handful of the most successful ones absorbed local competition and challenged even well-rooted male deities. Many processes were at work, but one god seems to have paved the way. As is now well known, sometime in the late medieval period, the canonical bodhisattva, Avalokiteshvara, backed by scriptural authority for his shape-changing capacities, began to spin off alternate personas under the non-gendered Chinese name of Guanyin ޲‫( ٸ‬Perceiver of Sounds, aka ޲Ԓ‫)ٸ‬, some of which were female.96 As this god’s reputation for responsiveness encouraged lay individuals and communities to build separate temples, Guanyin worship escaped the confines of Buddhist monasteries and nunneries, and the deity flourished without losing the respectability of canonical origins or receiving a boost from official titles. The mechanisms for this expansion are not yet entirely clear, but because Guanyin would become so widely and diversely worshipped, it is important to clarify as best we can his/her North China identities during this transitional period. Medieval scriptures and dharani incantations had popularized and legitimized the notion of Avalokiteshvara as the Greatly Compassionate One (Dabei Ͻ঳), and this multi-armed, multi-headed, not-male not-female form, seated or standing, was already well known before the Song.97 Many of the other embodiments of Avalokiteshvara that we can locate in northern China in the tenth to fourteenth centuries are barefoot, underdressed, tall, standing and, if not male, not necessarily female.98 A headdress and prominently rendered band of hair above the forehead, arranged neatly in overlapping scallops, were features of these northern, temple-sized, pre-Ming statues that endured and would come to signify femaleness. A stele from 1100 set up in a temple on a low hill in central Henan brought fame and textual authority to an amalgam of earlier accounts of how Avalokitesh-

vara was embodied as a woman, describing her as a deeply religious young princess who cut out her eyes and cut off her arms to save her father’s life. The affecting story of Princess Miaoshan ి৖ travelled well and would gradually bring pilgrims to this Xiangshan Si ‫ځܫ‬ᕖ, among them a daughter of the Jin emperor.99 (An example of the greater latitude for personal visits and donations enjoyed by female members of imperial families as compared with emperors.) Even though the deity’s image used the androgynous Dabei persona with multiple eyes and arms, this incarnation had a clear life story as a young female. “Guanyin” and “Dabei” were not in themselves gender-specific names, and other iconographies of the pre-Ming era also showed the bodhisattva as a loosely clad figure, seated with legs apart—one leg bent at the knee either flat or raised, one hanging pendant. To a modern eye, this ambiguous pose seems unacceptable for a respectable Chinese woman.100 Most known examples of this type are made of wood and some may be as early as the eleventh century.101 A few dated god-images from elsewhere in the empire are discreetly seated and wearing more clothing.102Significantly, these more respectably feminine personas probably had their origin under the Southern Song, that is in central China, and perhaps specifically the city of Hangzhou.103 Chün-fang Yü, whose book on this god established the importance of understanding deities in terms of these spatially and temporally distinct manifestations, interpreted Avalokiteshvara’s change from male to female as part of the Chinese “domestication of Buddhism.” She placed this transition to a female Guanyin in the tenth to fourteenth centuries. In my view the change may have come first in central China, later in the north.104 Although Buddhist clerics were essential to the dissemination of Avalokiteshvara/Guanyin worship, the mechanisms of the shift to overtly feminine avatars still remain mostly invisible, as do the influences to and from other deities.105 In any case, it seems likely that Guanyin’s orthodox origins and increasingly obvious manifestations as a woman in the ever-more culturally significant regions of the Lower Yangtze helped to legitimize the worship of female gods more generally.106 (For a later Guanyin, see Figure 11.3.) Another explicitly female deity who would have a geographically wide following and be known under a variety of names in later centuries also had her begin-

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nings in the tenth century.107 A young woman (with shaman-like talents?) of the Lin family ৆ᖐ from the southeast coast of Fujian province became known during her lifetime (later said quite specifically to be 943–987) for the supernatural protection she offered against the dangers faced at sea. Shrines to this expressly female god (ѽ‫ )ظ‬began to be built, perhaps by Fujian merchants who plied the coastal trade, and within a century we can see her temples in the Lower Yangtze metropolis of Suzhou and at Penglai on the Shandong peninsula. In 1123, a report that her appearance in the skies had saved from sinking the ship of the imperial envoy to Korea (Goryeo ҙ‫ )ܡ‬led the Song emperor to bestow a title on her.108 The Southern Song state was quick to continue such patronage and, as imperial titles for prominent gods became a more common practice, Miss Lin was successively given eight new honors for her assistance with pirates and other emergencies. Male titles being inappropriate, she was promoted instead through the parallel hierarchy of imperial women, being made Court Lady (Furen ਜ਼Ϫ) and then Concubine (Fei គ) (1190).109 Such characterizations brought rank and distinction, but they may simultaneously have tamed the young woman (or tried to) by attaching her to a family, an (invisible) man, and (at some point) images of a respectable adult matron. As she became a god of both “rivers and seas (࢖ ֋),” temples to Miss Lin were gradually built along the coast and on the inland waterways of the empire. A succession of honorifics and state-sponsored prayers continued under the Yuan, consolidating her respectability, acknowledging her protection of the crucial grain fleets that supplied the north, and culminating in the title “Dynasty-protecting Illustrious Celestial Concubine (ࣆлҴЯϳគ)” in 1278. By the mid-fourteenth century, southern devotees of Tianfei ϳគ had built a string of water-accessible temples in North China, and one in Tianjin, the river, canal, and sea gateway to the northern capital.110 This combination of persistent imperial attention and a devoted mobile constituency seems to have led to Miss Lin’s relatively swift movement through space, and helped her become established in the north. A lack of dated pre-Ming images makes it difficult to be sure what she looked like at this time but see Figure 11.6 for a later image in a dignified seated pose. 82

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Belief in the powers of Shanxi’s Houtu њग (Mighty Earth) travelled less well. The cult seems to have been boosted by Song Zhenzong’s public attention to the temple overlooking the Yellow River in 1011 (described in Chapter 2), for the Jin ruling house continued to patronize that site and Emperor Zhangzong (r. 1190–1196) came in person to pay his respects. Houtu had had a long respectable history as a disembodied object of imperial worship, despite intermittent Confucian criticisms (“not found in the Classics”), and so had survived on the periphery of the Buddhist and Daoist pantheons. Nevertheless, this amorphous entity had probably already been embodied in a form more suitable to ritual offerings from ordinary people and had begun to generate alternate and more appealing personas.111 Perhaps building on the ancient associations of Hou њ with a female Earth, with imperial women, or with a popular tale,112 Houtu was locally understood in the Shanxi region as female.113 In 1020 she was already being addressed as Houtu Shengmu њग๦আ (August Mother Mighty Earth), the title fixing her gender.114 As Quanzhen daoists became a religious force, they took her up in Shanxi, and in murals of 1325 she was represented as a bedecked and bejeweled counterpart to a similarly co-opted Queen-Mother of the West.115 See also Figure 11.5. The competing interests of local worshippers and outside representatives of the state were apparent early on at the main Houtu temple at Fenyin, for ordinary visitors were ordered to make their prayers and perform their celebrations beyond the railing in the outer courtyard, not in the main hall.116 Such conflicts may have had some stimulating effect, however, and a few gifts from local supporters and outside visitors have survived as evidence from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.117 Nevertheless, imperial patronage of this shape-shifting deity was not enough to set Empress Earth (as I shall call her118) into motion, and the cult did not spread far or fast from this Shanxi center. At long intervals temples were built in the area along the Fen River to the east, but fewer than twenty in the next two and half centuries, and nearly all within one hundred kilometers of the main temple on the Yellow River.119 A scattering of others were to be found in adjacent provinces. In fact, many kinds of August Mothers (๦আ) were being worshipped in Song and Yuan North China.

Many were associated with springs and could have had their origin in older ideas about the mothers of water-dwelling dragons.120 The appellation was a respectful if generic one, intended to both induce and reflect the god’s assistance as well as highlight her respectability. One of the rare surviving August Mother temples from the Song is located at a spring in the center of Shanxi province, near the provincial capital at Taiyuan, where a 1087 stele dedicated a gift to her there. (The temple is famous today as the core of the Jin Ci ᕀṽ.) She too received honorary titles from the Song state. The image (possibly from the Song era) is a seated woman in a pose similar to that of the contemporaneous Daoist Three Pure Ones: cross-legged on a flat stand, fully dressed; her hands are covered and she wears an elaborate headdress.121 These male and female gods whose later fame is clear only with hindsight were the visible tip of the mountainous iceberg of gods who did not survive as long; their ascents to prominence were the result of contingent dynamics and followed no single path. Some began as real people who demonstrated extraordinary powers during their lifetimes but died violently or prematurely; others had lives and backstories created for them later. Some were taken up by daoists, others by Buddhists or Confucians. Some had begun as abstract entities but were represented on altars in human form. Others had been assigned positions in an otherworldly bureaucracy. Some gods were tied to a specific place through birth, or death, or miracles; most could be worshipped anywhere. Some were known for their martial skills, others for their piety. Some had their prayer-granting ability bolstered with the authority of written scriptures, others had only stories and tales. Some had received support from the state, some from clerical communities. Some were clearly defined as male, some were genderless, and a few were female. All were understood as continuously available presences that could be represented in physical form and to which histories could be attached. In 1350, the Emperor of the Eastern Peak had become one of these trans-regional deities, worshipped north and south in dedicated temples. The Jade Woman, by contrast, had not transcended her place of origin. She was one of a number of minor female gods, her identity not strongly defined by comparison with

her neighbors and potential competitors. At the outset, she had been no more than a generic jade maiden. After several hundred years, she still had no scripture, no story, no liturgy, no titles, and no local community. And she was still an outsider everywhere. Had she survived with any advantages? Yes. This Jade Woman was mentioned in the history books in connection with a significant and rare event at a famous place in the career of an infamous emperor. Once publicized, this connection was easy to hang on to. Furthermore, as Mount Tai itself attracted more visitors, her shrine there exposed her to an audience that was unusually diverse, geographically and socially. Having a powerful god of the mountain nearby, moreover, would allow the Jade Woman to piggyback on his fame. Furthermore, the Daoist community at the Yue Temple was available as the Jade Woman’s sponsors while her summit location put her somewhat out of the reach of interfering or censorious officials. Her lack of a backstory deprived her of a memorable personal narrative but allowed for new tales to be told; it also made prestigious names and titles particularly desirable. We shall look more closely in Chapter 5 at the mechanisms behind the geographic diffusion of worship of the Jade Woman. For now, it is enough to note that the histories of Zhenwu, Guan Yu, Wenchang, Confucius, Miss Lin, Empress Earth, and Dongyue, among others, illustrate most of the important ways that gods began to achieve wider recognition in the centuries before the Ming. The state promoted a select few through the administrative system; mobile social groups spread the fame of their particular gods as they travelled and sojourned on business; religious professionals co-opted and disseminated some of them through rituals and scriptures. In many cases, however, it was the invisible energy of orally transmitted claims of efficaciousness that helped create and spread a god’s reputation. Miracles. Moreover, as some deities became better known, a “founder’s effect” set in and, as the rich tend to get richer, so the already famous became disproportionately more so. Constraints differed, but except for the thinly spread representatives of the state, there were no empire-wide mechanisms for deliberately stopping the snowball of a reputedly efficacious god. “Authenticity” as we might understand it today or as conveyed by the Daoist zhen ѐ, was not as impor-

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tant as “responsiveness,” and such ling ࢼ, manifested in the accumulating testimony of a god’s ability to answer prayers, was as dependent on a specific god-image as the precise identity of the deity. That the Jade Woman’s images should look like her and like one another became an issue when her devotees increased in number. Moreover, as she became known beyond the mountain summit and as she adapted to this wider competitive supernatural universe, her iconography evolved in tandem with others. This process of mutual definition affected both the ascribed identities and appearances of all of the deities who became known throughout the North China region. The Jade Woman therefore became both similar to and different from her neighboring gods. Although the early history of the images of these gods is frustratingly thin, it is possible to glimpse some early stages of this process. LOOKING LIKE MOUNT TAI’S JADE WOMAN In isolation, gods could develop with relative independence, identities could be improvised, and appearances determined by local craftsmen. Visual literacy was local and similarities probably did not matter beyond the limits of communities of believers. Even before the fourteenth century, thanks to continuing clerical standardization and the circulation of people across regions, the numbers of known gods multiplied as their iconographies crystallized. This increasing intervisuality rippled across the wider field of representations of both women and men, humans and gods.122 Telling one god from another became more challenging. Fixing names and iconography over time and space was not easily done, and even when identities were temporarily consolidated, they easily slid out of control. It therefore seems better to think of gods in terms of loose personas that were made as claims, rather than as fixed “symbols” or definable “myths.” As we discussed in Chapter 2, it is possible to identify parts of the relevant iconographic repertory in place in 1000: buddhas were skimpily dressed, standing or seated cross-legged, bodhisattvas were posed sitting with one leg up, male authority figures sat frontally with legs down, and attendants and guardian figures stood. Male gods joined transcendent buddhas and during the following three centuries, poses and attributes continued to develop and become more sharp84

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ly gendered. As local deities became more human-like and were drawn into ritual pantheons, royal titles identified maleness by implication (Duke, King, Emperor) whereas more explicit names signaled femaleness (Concubine, Mother, Woman). Surviving objects make it possible to know what North China’s gods actually looked like in the half century before the founding of the Ming in 1368. These constitute some of the repertory available to patrons of the Jade Woman when she finally took up residence away from Mount Tai. It was against the assertively prestigious Buddhist and Daoist deities that new gods would be unsystematically defined.123 Other male deities were also seated and their identity and status were signaled through symbolic objects, clothing, facial hair, and headgear. They were often bearded, almost always fully clothed in formal wear, and like all important people wore some kind of hat. Although the bench or ledge continued to be favored for centuries, after the chair came into use in the Song, high-ranking male gods sat on them, their legs planted and spread in front. As such gods gained titles from the state, attempts were made to express these relative ranks through the hats. Ideas for how an emperor should look had also been long evolving, both stimulating and influencing the headgear (and the poses) of supernatural and human rulers.124 Thus, by no later than the thirteenth century, the Jade Sovereign and the Great Emperor of the Eastern Peak both seem to have worn the mian-style headcovering topped by a flat board, with strands of pearls hanging front and back.125 By the mid-fourteenth century, templates for some god-like women had also emerged.126 The most developed was that for the mothers and wives of great men: women of respectability, ancestors, persons to whom family offerings could be made. Because they were often paired with men, shared features are not surprising. From those whose iconography is currently known, we can see that such women also sat in chairs, covered their bodies, and wore status-defining headdresses. In addition to Lady Maya (mother of the historical Buddha and known through tales and pictures of his life) and Hariti (shown in Sichuan surrounded with young children), there were the regally outfitted teachers of the young male Buddhist disciple Sudhana (Shancai ৖੠ুж), illustrated in books of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and often positioned seated

and facing sideways in three-quarter view.127 There was the Queen-Mother of the West, whose Han dynasty poses seem to have been forgotten, but who was described in texts in terms of a regal mountaintop-living woman. There were the Shandong mothers of Confucius and of Mencius. All these women were far from maidenly and rather more wifely than motherly. Thus, as orthodoxy-minded elites cast (or recast) them, “mothers” and “empresses” were mature women, productive of sons, fertile but not explicitly sexual. And they were all aristocratic, authoritative on their chairs, imposing in their posture, intimidating in their splendor, and worthy counterparts of powerful men. Indeed, it seems that only their names and different headdresses distinguished them clearly from their male counterparts.128 The pre-Ming iconographies of Empress Earth of Shanxi and the Celestial Concubine of Fujian are currently unknown, but there are sufficient examples of the August Wife/Mother type to make clear that some expectations were shared from Shandong to Sichuan. Such a deity would have been seated on a tiered stand (or a chair), usually facing front, with an elaborate headdress, her hands invisible under her sleeves but clasping a tablet of authority. A woodblock illustration from a 1101 sutra showed Asa, wife of a king and the eighth sage (and first woman) consulted by Sudhana; it illustrates the pleasing symmetries of this pose, but relies on the text to specify the visually vague gender.129 We may, I think, call this an “empress” template, derived from the pose and authority of its male counterparts. The wall mural in the Hall of the Three Pure Ones of the Yongle Gong ‫ݖ‬Ӏ࿮, built around 1325 by Quanzhen daoists in southern Shanxi near the Yellow River and Henan, gives us an excellent view of another prototype that would have been part of North China’s visual universe.130 Murals were in common use in order to display the large numbers of deities who were ritually invoked and selectively invited to participate in certain Buddhist and Daoist ceremonies. The gods were made manifest when painted in procession inside temple halls. Although their individual names mattered for the liturgy, it was the deities’ collective presence that testified to the powers of the rites. In this case, those assembling arrived in regal attire, with flowing robes and elaborate headgear, as if walking slowly toward the central altar. Not all figures were

fully human, but the men were mostly bearded, carrying long narrow tablets that testified to the authority they had been given by higher powers and wearing an array of different kinds of hats. The principal women were pale-skinned, with long hair elaborately done up with gold jewelry, lavishly dressed, and accompanied by many attractive jade maiden attendants. These crowds of deities were turned toward the four primary gods who were seated on raised chairs at the center, together forming a panoramic audience for the rituals performed in the hall. The males were identified as Great Emperor of the Polar North (Beiji Dadi ‫ࡗܚ‬Ͻ෌) and Jade Sovereign and Supreme Emperor (Yuhuang Shangdi ർ෦ϼ෌), and they give us a good idea of the Quanzhen vision of such male gods. Both wear the by-now established mian-style imperial hat. The two female principals are Houtu њग (Empress Earth) and Jinmu ‫ؖ‬আ (Golden Mother), the latter said to be a Daoist version of the Queen-Mother of the West.131 Both are full-figured, regally outfitted, with jewels adorning their hair and persons, their hands holding tablets, and the turnedup toes of their shoes visible beneath their robes. Headdresses of filigreed gold cover their hair: Houtu’s is made of flaming dragons, Jinmu’s of flying phoenixes. They are distinguished in size and accouterments from their handmaidens. (A detail of a comparable Ming mural illustrating Empress Earth is shown in Figure 4.4.) Although influenced by their Shanxi location, these fourteenth-century wall paintings are particularly detailed examples of not simply Daoist ideas about the appearance of gods in processions, but more widely shared ones as well. Such murals were a characteristically North China medium, well suited to an environment in which painting on layers of clay was a common practice. Although many more survive today on the west side of the Taihang range, they were everywhere on the Plain in earlier times, their traces now erased. What of images of the Jade Woman herself? As I will argue in Chapter 4, none survive before the mid-Ming and detailed records about her are rare. One of the few comes from the Sou shen guangji എ‫( ֮ܰظ‬The expanded “In search of the supernatural”), an illustrated text about popular deities that dates from circa 1300 and that offers a rare window into how she may have

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been understood at that time. This book presents a sequence of gods, with line drawings facing brief accounts of their identity and history.132 It is probably best to read this work as a southern compilation that included northern gods. Dongyue was included in addition to Empress Earth. He is drawn in the processional mode, followed by two other men and two servants. The accompanying text tells us about Mount Tai, its place among the Five Peaks, the honorary titles bestowed on Dongyue, and the names of his five sons and their wives. One of the sons is the Bingling Duke to whom petitions about hell were directed. We are also told that that Dongyue had a daughter. Her names? Jade Woman and Great Immortal (Yunü Daxian ർѽϽ࿁) and Jade Immortal Lady of the Taiping Summit of Dai Peak (┬ₙѿ‫ ্כ‬ർ࿁ਔਔ).133 She is not illustrated, nor does the name “Yunü Daxian” appear in any other primary source that I know of, probably because this work was produced by someone who had heard of a female deity at Mount Tai but knew little about her. Whatever its provenance, this Yuan Sou shen text does tell us that travelers had been spreading the word about a temple on the summit of Mount Tai dedicated to a female god whose identity was not entirely stable. If the appellation “Yunü” (Jade Maiden/Woman) had begun to seem inadequate or inappropriate, there was still no obvious authority for what she ought to be called. “Great Immortal” built on her ambiguous link to the mountain’s airborne immortals. “Niangniang ਔਔ” was a familiar but respectful form of address for a reallife woman, the equivalent of a polite “My Lady.” More telling is the close connection asserted between her and Dongyue, said to be that of daughter and father. Such a relationship probably reflected the widespread felt need to give a god a family, in this case by placing her in a dependent and subordinate role within one.134 Moreover, like the firm geographic connection between the Jade Woman and Mount Tai itself, paternity tied the two deities together socially. (He already had a wife.) The initially unknown, now independent, an adult Jade Woman was thus made younger by being placed as a daughter in a family, someone controlled and controllable. Although those who knew and cared were probably not numerous, this interpretation had staying power, as we shall see, and is perhaps too easily 86

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understood today as no more than attempted taming by the forces of normative behavior. Having the God of the Eastern Peak as a father also lent the Jade Woman legitimacy, dignity, and history, dimensions that her devotees may have felt she needed. She had come, after all, with no life story, no scriptures, and no relics, only the stone image, stories, and the original name. And, as we shall see, most essays about the Jade Woman began by making her someone’s daughter. And yet visual hints of another more unfettered identity may also have been present and bolstered by unwritten narratives. Connections between the excavated half-woman/half-bird statues of the Song135 (shown in Figure 2.3) and the prominent birds in the Ming Jade Woman‘s headdress, like references to her mountain home and capacities for flight, may already have been also present. In the first securely dated image of the Jade Woman, from 1504 (shown in Figure 4.2), some of these accumulating contradictions would seem to have been resolved by turning the immortal, daughter, and/or humble maidservant into an authoritative adult woman whose headdress and garb were ornamented with birds. This cluster of visual and textual attributes would continue to convey mixed messages but, once established, it was kept together for centuries by the traditions passed down by growing number of artisans and patrons of her god-images. It seems likely to me that by the early fourteenth century, after the Quanzhen attentions of Zhang Zhichun in the 1260s, the Jade Woman would already have been pictured in this front-facing seated pose. Texts had both wrapped her in conventional family relations and reminded readers of free-roaming immortals. Her images emphasized convention and were probably already similar to those of August (and other) Mothers and male gods like her powerful seated neighbor. Such an appearance would not have been visually confused with a buddha, bodhisattva, or principal Daoist god, and certainly not with Guanyin. Names and images, as they developed, thus created ways to insert the Jade Woman into existing categories of gods while pointing to her unique features. Within this framework of what was already familiar to residents of North China, she was gradually finding a place. In this chapter, we have pieced together how, from very modest beginnings at a mountain pool in 1008,

the Jade Woman on the summit of Mount Tai survived centuries of potential isolation. Imperial patronage had provided crucial if intermittent support and valuable imperial associations, but eventually her only organized (and belated) protectors were the Quanzhen daoists in the Great Peak Temple below. Travelers and locals encountered her on their ascents, however, and some were becoming invested in her responsiveness to their prayers. These new devotees seem to have been the life blood that kept her cult alive as they took word of the Jade Woman back home with them, eventually to reproduce and worship her god-images there. By 1350 the Jade Woman had become an efficacious deity housed in her own temple, important enough to be textually and visually connected with the

immensely more powerful god at the foot of the mountain. But she was still nearly unknown and her future far from assured. Unlike Dongyue, she was not recognized by the state, and she was unassailably female in a world still dominated by men, both human and divine. A single temple was a fragile foundation for extended worship no matter where it was situated, and this shrine building was far from human habitation and at constant physical risk. With the collapse of the Yuan and the coming of a new dynasty in 1368, however, five centuries of relative stability were about to begin. This new era would prove congenial to the multiplication of temples to popular gods, including those at Mount Tai. In the next chapters, we will see how they fared.

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chapter 4

Master of the Azure Clouds, 1350–1550 Unified Ming rule after 1368 brought stability and allowed life in North China to settle into predictable grooves. Mount Tai’s place in the regional and national religious economy and culture was confirmed and its deities assumed their definitive late imperial forms. As earlier chapters have recounted, the 1008 shrine to the Jade Woman had stayed alive during the dynastic changeovers from Song to Jin to Yuan, remaining alone on the heights of Mount Tai. By the fourteenth century, her temple had become a recognized sight for those who made it to the summit, she had been claimed by the daoists at the foot of the mountain, and patrons from afar knew her name. A sleepy existence had turned lively as her worship was charged with new energy. Meanwhile, Dongyue remained calmly seated below, secure in his large state-supported temple complex at Tai’an city. Ample Ming source materials allow us more continuous footage of the changes at Mount Tai, panoramic views of the region, and close-ups of its leading actors. Concentrating on the period 1350 to 1550, this chapter will examine the popular, official, and imperial patronage that strengthened and diversified worship at the mountain. We shall see how worship of the Emperor of the Eastern Peak was constrained but his temples were restored, how the Jade Woman became known as the Master of the Azure Clouds and readied for takeoff, and how their personas each fit into the pantheon of existing gods. Then, in Part Two, we shall turn to the story of how by 1600 the Jade Woman had

found new homes away from home and pilgrims to her summit temple had swelled to a flood. Let us start with the reset of political and religious institutions mandated by the Ming founder. These changes help explain how the female and male Mount Tai gods became more demonstrably efficacious, acceptably orthodox, and culturally familiar. MING REUNIFICATION In 1368, a new wave of unification swept across the eastern lands of the Yuan, Jin, Liao, Southern Song, Song, and Tang. Building on its predecessors’ useful cultural and political institutions of governance, this Ming empire held together its large and populous territory until 1644. Its successor dynasty, the Qing, would make those institutions even stronger and preside over even more places and peoples. The result was five hundred years of relative stability within a unified state structure. The Ming and Qing periods have occupied many generations of historians, and thanks to an increasing abundance of sources, we know much more about them than about the preceding centuries. Moreover, despite their many differences, these two eras show many empire-wide continuities and common trends, and they form a context for the story of Mount Tai and the Jade Woman that extends into the twentieth century. Nevertheless, in the late fourteenth century it was the distinctive features of Ming rule that impacted the society of North China and the religious life of the gods of mount tai

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empire. The consolidation of power after 1368 by Ming Taizu, the formidable dynastic founder,1 had immediate benefits for the residents of northern China, especially those in the southeastern quadrant of the North China Plain. The destructive banditry and warfare that had accompanied the struggles there against Mongol rule were brought to an end, and a period of resettlement, recovery, and reconstruction began, gradually reinvigorating the economy and the inherited administrative apparatus. A single government structure, networked by land and water routes, now kept county seats in touch with the capital, a school and exam system fed the staffing of a relatively small but active bureaucracy and defined the standards for an educated person, and markets and monopolies mediated an increasingly commercialized silver-and-copper-based economy. The rich regions of central China came fully into their own as the intellectual, cultural, and political center of dynastic power. In the north, the Plain was resettled, in part by people who moved over the mountains from Shanxi, and productive work began anew.2 The natural environment had not changed, and shared spoken language, a consistent environment and material culture, and similar religious practices helped draw North China together. At the same time, connections back and forth over the Taihang range were renewed, earlier Mongol immigrants were better integrated, and active communications fed traffic between north and south. Early Ming rulers laid down lasting transportation networks and urban infrastructure. After a failed attempt to establish a new capital in northern Anhui, in 1374 Taizu selected instead an important city, modern Nanjing, on the southern bank of the Yangtze not far upstream from the Grand Canal crossing. His choice of this Southern Capital was substantially rejected half a century later when the founder’s fourth son, sent north as a young prince, seized the throne and declared that the former Yuan seat at modern Beijing would become his primary, northern capital, reducing Nanjing to a distinctly secondary status. The rebuilding of both cities involved the commandeering of material resources and relocation of populations typical of dynastic foundings and, as was usually the case, skilled artisans were particularly sought after and moved around. Mount Tai was conveniently located near the route between the two capitals. 90

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After the 1420s, the growing concentration of wealth in the Imperial Household Agency and its eunuch-managed network of monopolies and production sites gave Beijing a dominant position in North China. As the city attracted examination candidates, officials, merchants, and laborers, its physical and cultural linkages beyond the immediate area were steadily improved, giving the north some leverage against the economic and cultural power of the Lower Yangtze region.3 The possibilities for trade over mountains and beyond natural barriers became easier, and the Grand Canal was extended north from Hangzhou (south of the Yangtze) all the way up to Beijing. Prior to the Ming, diverse local religious practices had been increasingly stirred together. Among Buddhists and Daoists both, internal distinctions that had once mattered greatly faded in intensity. Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist rituals had become integrated into the daily life of emperors, officials, businessmen, artisans, and farmers, sometimes complementing each other, sometimes competing. More temples than ever dotted villages and city neighborhoods, each supported by nearby communities and staffed by a few clerics. There were now hundreds and thousands of gods. Classically trained officials presided over state rites at designated altars, but privately they led their families as patrons of these popular community temples. This fluid if sometimes contentious pluralism was brought up short by the founding of the Ming, and orthodoxies and standardization were thereafter promoted with more enduring effect than in the past. The state continued to hone its methods of co-optation, management, and pre-emptive fragmentation, but the circulation of books and people allowed new ideas to travel. Popular beliefs and practices were more or less allowed to go their own way—as long as social order, orthodox values, and state power were not publicly questioned. RECASTING THE EASTERN PEAK Like his predecessors, the Ming founder was quick to adopt the worship of the great mountains of the empire. Collective offerings to the disembodied Great Peaks, Stabilizing Mountains, Wide Seas, and Major Rivers (ₙ๰֋ά) were understood as necessary to dynastic authority. They were therefore designated as important rituals of the First Level, to be performed throughout the empire.4

But some great peaks were greater than others. The Eastern Peak (೉‫ځ‬, ┬ₙ, ֆ┬) was still preeminent, its identity and legitimacy established in the earliest Classical texts where it was praised as the Most Senior (ᅓ) of the Five Great Peaks. Lingering prestige derived from Mount Tai’s recorded history as the site of the Feng–Shan rites—even though none had dared perform them since 1008—constituted evidence of the mountain’s importance to legitimate rule. Imperial worship by successive dynasties at the state-supported Great Peak Temple (Yue Miao ៈᜐ, ៈṽ) in Shandong, whether by the ruler or a surrogate, was an enactment of this relationship. Outside the austere collective rituals of the Ming state religion, each of the great peaks was also being worshipped as a conceptually separate male god, and each had his own temple for both Daoist clerics and popular worshippers. Of them, Dongyue was long the most widely recognized. As we saw in Chapter 3, he had been repeatedly anthropomorphized by the throne, and his titles—elevating him from Lord to King to Emperor—testified to his political importance and supernatural powers.5 There were hundreds of temples to this Great Emperor (Dongyue Dadi ֆ ₙϽ෌) in North China alone, and in the 1320s, the Yuan throne had built a Dongyue Miao in their Great Capital at Beijing. Nevertheless, Ming Taizu (or perhaps his advisers?) was not comfortable with including this multi-faceted entity in state rituals and, as part of a general reform of the relevant statutes, Dong Yue and Dongyue (the mountain and the god) were singled out for particular concern. Should a Great Peak, officially worshipped in the form of a spirit-tablet, be embodied as a human figure? As the author of an earlier stele in the Beijing temple to Dongyue had wondered, should a mountain be enshrined in a temple, rewarded with titles, and represented in an image (ᜐҏ, ᡯҏ, Ռҏ)?!6 What about the wives and children that popular belief had conjured up? Very inappropriate, the decree said.7 Such Han, Tang, Song, Jin, and Yuan imperial favors had been granted in error. And should be swept away. Therefore, in 1370, having barely secured the throne, Taizu tried to roll back those practices and summarily stripped away the personal titles of all five great mountains. He acknowledged that Dongyue was the Prime of the Five Peaks, majestic and ancient, and

he coyly claimed that he dared not add more titles. Indeed, he wanted the deity—like the others in the state religion—to be known instead, more simply, by his original name (ӆӜ) as the God of Mount Tai, the Eastern Peak (ֆₙ೉‫ځ‬ҏ‫)ظ‬. The emperor ordered, moreover, that official worship take place only on the state altars in the capital and administrative seats intended for the depersonalized Mountains and Rivers, and then only as part of the annual spring and fall rituals—not in separate temples dedicated to the god.8 Expressed as an imperial proclamation, the text of the decision was displayed on an enormous stele in the Great Peak Temple in Tai’an even though a statue of Dongyue was still present, there for all to see.9 Although the implications for Mount Tai appeared ominous, the effects of this decree were, like much of Taizu’s legacy, neither as thorough as he wanted nor as ineffectual as a cynic might imagine. Even if unenforceable, the founder’s words could not be casually set aside and they would be reiterated periodically by ritual fundamentalists.10 In the event, within a few years of the emperor’s death in 1398, with a new man in power, objections to embodying the Eastern Peak as a male god began to melt away. Once the capital had been moved north, offerings went annually on the god’s birthday to Beijing’s Dongyue Miao outside the new city walls (where he had already been worshipped in statue form for a century), and that temple was refurbished at imperial expense in the 1440s.11 Twice a year, wood spirit-tablets representing the Mountains and Rivers (‫ځ‬ඇ) of the empire were worshipped on open altars by the magistrates of each county and prefecture. At the same time, a great many counties also had a separate tradition of semi-official worship of the God of the Eastern Peak in temples dedicated to that seated, titled, god-emperor. These temples do not appear to have been affected by the 1370 decree, but a lingering uncertainty about Dongyue’s status meant that while some magistrates chose to sponsor such worship, others did not.12 After 1400, the accumulating personas of Mount Tai and Dongyue continued to be expressed unsystematically empire-wide, but the situation was particularly complex right at Mount Tai. No one seems to have tried to remove the statue in the Hall of Heaven’s Great Gift and, although the god had been renamed, the regular dispatch of offerings was not interrupted.13

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Later Ming emperors also regularly sent delegates to the Great Peak Temple (usually still called the Yue Miao) in Shandong to announce their accession and to pray for good harvests, timely rain, and other respites from natural disasters.14 When a state-run system (the Daolusi Ѭ࠷‫ )ޅ‬was put in place in 1382 to manage important Daoist monasteries, Tai’an’s local office was set up inside the Great Peak Temple and its chief cleric was appointed from the capital.15 The Yue Miao does not seem to have been damaged in the violence of the Yuan-to-Ming dynastic transition, and the summit of Mount Tai had remained even farther from any military action. Just at the end of the Yuan, the optimistic official in charge of the Yue Miao imperial rituals had raised private money to make some modest improvements to the complex, concentrating on upgrading the two surviving Jin dynasty halls so that they could be more comfortable places for the ever-important visiting officials and envoys from the capital.16 During most of the first half of the fifteenth century, perhaps due to the founder’s lingering chill, no special imperial assistance to that temple was forthcoming. Instead, it was Shandong bureaucrats and the resident daoists (apparently still Quanzhen men17) who found the money to keep the Great Peak Temple in adequate repair. They did so by relying on provincial resources combined with the welcome heaps of donations.18 This broader and more systematic reliance on local and regional funding would characterize the rest of the Ming period and was an important solution to the demands of increasing popularity. Assembling funds could be slow, and it was almost a century after the Ming unification that a substantial, temple-wide, three-year project of repairs and improvements was undertaken and more or less completed (by 1461) at the Yue Miao. After another decade, with the assistance of generous Shandong officials and local businessmen, the daoists were finally able to reoutfit the altars with new and expensive ritual utensils. The regional economy could not provide most of these specialized items and deputies had to be sent south. The nearly eight thousand items were made of batches of identical objects: more than five thousand lightweight lacquerware vessels for holding offerings, nearly eight hundred porcelain dishes, several dozen tin altar vessels, barely a dozen quite small bronze utensils, 92

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and three dozen useful pieces of ironwork including six large braziers for burning paper-money (probably the only items that were Shandong-made).19 These mid-fifteenth-century attentions finally put the temple back in good working order—at least until the next fire a century later. The long list of this much-prized paraphernalia was carved on stone and placed outside the Peak Temple storeroom to discourage inventory losses and to advertise the welcome patronage. No sooner was the temple to the God of the Eastern Peak restored than attention was directed toward the mountain summit. By the 1460s, the Jade Woman had become more than an afterthought. Now she too would have a makeover, one that was as drastic as Dongyue’s, and far more enduring. THE JADE WOMAN TRANSFORMED Certain moments in the history of the Jade Woman were notably transformative. In the 1260s the energetic daoist Zhang Zhichun had given her a bigger and better shrine with a Daoist name (Evident Authenticity Abbey ᢘѐ޲) that brought a small jump in distinction. 20 The more dramatic changes in her shrine and her persona two centuries later would result not only from local initiatives but also from her growing reputation across North China. And this time with greater effect. Trips to Mount Tai had become easier with the relative stability of Ming rule, and the more people visited the summit, the more they stopped to pay their respects at the Jade Woman’s shrine. Her reputation for responsiveness grew, as did the donations of grateful petitioners. Within a century, as the demands of temple maintenance mounted, so did the revenue. The parties who had already cooperated to fix up and outfit the Great Peak temple also turned their sights to the mountaintop. These interventions of the 1460s can be seen as part of continuing efforts by the Yue Miao daoists to capture and control some of the Jade Woman’s growing charisma and, although the Shandong governor’s office asserted itself as a powerful interested party, pilgrim donations were crucial to this redesign. Together, all these stakeholders made possible the significant upgrade.21 The rocky incline of the Jade Woman’s summit shrine made it impossible to match the grandeur of

the Great Peak Temple below, and even the template for ordinary religious buildings had to be adjusted because routine North China building materials were inadequate. To protect against the intense sunlight, harsh wind, lashing rain, driving snow, and intense cold, unusual and costly precautions were needed. The hard uneven surface first needed leveling. The main hall, which two centuries before had been enlarged from a one- to a three-bay (Ҽ) room, was now expanded to five, requiring an impressive seven columns across the front, and fitted with a heavier overhanging roof that offered better protection. Although the buildings could be constructed of bricks fired in Tai’an, the new beams for the main hall were to be made of bronze and the roof covered with sturdy iron and hard lead-glazed roof-tiles. Inside, the wood columns and frame were sealed in red lacquer and paint. These decisions required expensive imported materials, impossible without connections and ample funds. The porticos on each side of the main hall were filled out and converted into new halls in which the Jade Woman’s two companions (of whom, more below) were installed in separate chambers that faced each other across the courtyard. A south-facing front gate was built and the entire complex was surrounded by a protective wall. A bell tower and a drum tower were added. The temple’s single courtyard became two, and another five-room hall was built in front and lower down to accommodate pilgrims wishing to pray to a modified suite of the lords of hell (೾௞‫ܥ‬٥).22 There was still a room for elite visitors to rest up and have a meal.23 This work could not have been easy but, despite the physical constraints of the site and the need for expensive materials, the Jade Woman’s shrine finally looked like a proper home for a proper god. Today’s complex appears to follow this general size and layout, and the woodblock illustration in Figure 10.2 shows this configuration in the eighteenth century. The new temple was tucked into the rocks on the south side of the mountain, where its one-story halls were somewhat sheltered from the worst of the weather. A standard entrance at the southernmost point was impossible because of the steeply plunging terrain. Instead, visitors arrived from the west, walking along the more-or-less flat pathway beside the plateau that led from the Gate to Heaven, and they entered into the front hall from the side. (See Figures 8.7–8.8 and

15.08.) Once inside, there were courtyards both down to the right and up to the left. With a grander temple compound came a longer and finer name for the deity: Tai Shan Tianxian Yunü Bixia Yuanjun ೉‫ځ‬ϳ࿁ർѽካᎇׄᅿ.24 She was still the Jade Woman of Mount Tai, but where did this rest of the new name come from and what did it mean? Ungendered celestial immortals (tian xian ϳ࿁) were long since commonplace in oral and written literature25 and the name “Celestial Immortal Jade Maiden (Tianxian Yunü)” had been mentioned in Daoist scriptures as early as the fifth century.26 “Celestial Immortal” may have been added prior to the 1460s as a way of enhancing the rather plain “Jade Woman,” but we see it in print for the first time as part of this fuller more dignified name: Celestial Immortal and Jade Woman of Mount Tai. These were plain and familiar words with clear meanings, instantly understandable (probably even across dialects) and not difficult to write or read: ೉‫ځ‬ϳ࿁ർѽ.27 But another four-character name had now appeared, one that (I believe) was new and unfamiliar: Bixia Yuanjun ካᎇׄᅿ (lit. blue-green, clouds, primal, lord). What was the meaning of this strange name? A combination of two familiar secular terms, yuan ׄ(primal, first, primordial, originary) and jun ᅿ (ruler, lord, superior person), Yuanjun ׄᅿ was already being used as one of several similar titles for the gods who were part of the imagined community of deities over which Daoist masters claimed ritual control. Various Yuanjun had been named in their scriptures since medieval times and seem to have been lightly gendered female deities, not of the very highest rank.28 (Yuanjun was not a common government title.) For most people, the term Yuanjun probably sounded like some kind of respected divinity lower than a god. Finding a translation appropriate to the context of this book has been difficult. I use “Master,” but with the intention that the word should imply skills, not oppressive power.29 Bixia is likewise awkward to translate. An ancient word used evocatively in Tang poetry, bi ካ meant a natural and pleasing color somewhere in the bluegreen range, associated with jade, deep water, or the heavens.30 Xia ᎇ, a venerable poetic word associated with immortals, referred to clouds to which the rising

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and setting sun gives a rosy color.31 I have rendered the combination as “Azure Clouds” in order to capture imperfectly the hues of both clouds and sky. Thus, we might translate the god’s new name, Bixia Yuanjun, as “Master of the Azure Clouds.” This name was not an obviously gendered one. The name “Bixia Yuanjun” is not explained in sources known to me, and we cannot be sure how it was initially understood or even if it was meant to be understood.32 All the evidence suggests that this elevated appellation for the Jade Woman originated with Mount Tai’s daoists.33 The name would have sounded Daoist to a Ming audience, and it thus staked out an implicit Quanzhen association with the deity.34 It was also formal and literary, using characters (bi xia ካᎇ) that would have been unknown to those lacking a Classical education. Unlike the other names that the Jade Maiden had been accumulating, therefore, this one seems to have come from an educated group, one that had definable interests and the power to institutionalize them. The obscurity and strangeness of the name “Bixia Yuanjun” can, I believe, be seen as a Daoist attempt to elevate the Jade Woman, demanding respect for her powers of demonstrable efficacy, while making her distant and impersonal, almost non-personable. The new name also masked and neutralized the strong and wellentrenched gender identity of the Jade Woman, turning a maiden into a who-knows-what. When expressed through a male pose of seated authority, this change emphasized established power, not flighty sexuality. The full 1460s name—Mount Tai’s Celestial Immortal, Jade Woman, and Master of the Azure Clouds—was not usually invoked all at once, but taken together it reinforced the god’s identity as a special jade maiden who had made her home with other transcendents on the high mountain. From the fifteenth century on, “Bixia Yuanjun” became the formal name for the deity, but “Bixia” was most often used in temple names and the god addressed as “Yuanjun.” We will track the proliferation of this and her other names in the pages that follow. It was not unusual for people in this society to be addressed in different ways. Identity changed with context and was not expected to be unitary, and a variety of appellations could enhance rather than fragment. For gods, names could express and encourage a useful diversification and localization. It was normal for the 94

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men and women whose prayers the Jade Woman had answered to use everyday names for her, and it was normal to bring her closer through images and stories. The new Daoist name probably sounded mysterious, a collection of unusual sounds, but perhaps no less powerful for that. Moreover, with time, like all proper names that come into common use, literal meanings were drained away through familiarization of the sounds: Bixiayuanjun.35 In any case, it has endured, especially in temple names, down to the present day. This renaming may have been made easier by a general vagueness about, or even ignorance of, the god’s origins. When a visitor knowledgeable about Zhenzong’s ascent arrived at the summit temple in 1465, the daoist there “didn’t know about its founding (ϤҌࡶ‫)״‬.”36 The 1488 Tai’an gazetteer made a difference by reprinting and putting into wider circulation a brief—but basically accurate—early fourteenth-century account that travelled further in later compendia. It mentioned Song Zhenzong’s Feng–Shan, the summit, the statue in a pond, the niche for offerings to it, but not much more.37 The 1460s summit temple reconstruction was accompanied by a refurbishing of the building’s contents, including the god-images.38 Three statues were installed in the main hall, seemingly all of Bixia Yuanjun herself. The one on the east was made of stone and was perhaps the oldest; the one on the west was of cast bronze, the first one documented in this medium. The image in the center, made of agarwood (ਭ‫)ܫ‬, a fragrant tropical hardwood, was probably the smallest. These latter two, made of expensive materials may have been gifts from someone connected to the Ming Imperial Household; they were signs of an upgrade towards elite-normative ideals that were beyond the reach of provincial daoists or officials. The presence of statues of different sizes in three different media would have been unremarkable except for their quality. As this work was going on, the temple at the actual highest point of Mount Tai was also being rebuilt as the (Daoist) Jade Emperor Abbey (ർ෌޲). A bronze image of that deity (this one a substantial 170 centimeters tall) and two attendants (112 centimeters) were eventually made and installed in 1483, paid for by the throne through eunuch and local official intermediaries. Despite this evidence for the prestige of this male god and recognition of the real summit, the bronze

Bixia Yuanjun statue could have been about the same size and had the same provenance. and they represented a considerable outlay.39 From what we can guess, the three statues of the Jade Woman already embodied enduring aspects of the god’s identity, but none have survived. Textual descriptions from the 1480s, along with slightly later god-images can, however, help us envision Bixia Yuanjun’s mid-Ming iconography. The earliest known image of the Master of the Azure Clouds was made for Mount Tai and is securely dated to 1504. (See Figure 4.2 below.) It makes clear that she had by then been made presentable in normative terms by imitating the seated poses of august mothers, empresses, kings, and emperors. This dignified and somewhat androgynous look may have eased her acceptance. At the same time, other features were also present in the 1504 image as well as the oral and written lore, features that echo ideas of more explicitly female human-bird hybrids, jade maidens, and celestial immortals. Texts mention that Bixia Yuanjun wore a fivephoenix pearl headdress (ٚང෿ഃ; ངഃ), which we will see on later images as an array of birds, their heads facing forward, tail-feathers raised up behind, with strands of pearls held in their beaks. Over her shoulders she wore what visitors called an immortal’s glittering cape (ಉ࿁➻; ᎇ➻),40 distinguished (in material images) by a wing-like fringe under the elbows. These iconographic elements—which we will explore at greater length—evoked an aerial life, so suitable for the god’s mountain abode, and a distinctive point of reference for a deity who had never had a life as a human being. They may also be, as I have already suggested, muted evocations of the Song era bird-women shown in Figure 2.3. In this reading, mobile birds were secured and miniaturized as a headdress on which tail-feathers waved, while wings were flattened and folded into a loosely worn cape. The texts make clear that this cloud-roaming ability was part of the god’s persona even when submerged in a seemingly sedate figure. The Tang poet Li Bo himself had long ago noted that “immortals roam the azure peaks (࿁Ϫׂካ๢)” of Mount Tai41 and a visitor account from the 1460s noted explicitly that “the colored clouds of azure hues (ᎇࠡካա)” above the human world were “where the Yuanjun god

roamed (ׄᅿ‫ׂظ‬লԷҼ),” and described how she could soar in the heavens, coming speedily to her shrine on the summit.42 One elderly late Ming devotee wrote of how he would soon be “following Yuanjun and rising up to the clouds beyond the edges of Heaven (‫ׄڨ‬ᅿ‫ڢ‬ᰯϨϳ‫)֔ࠥנ‬.”43 That such free flying might seem undignified is suggested by the fact that it already seems to have been common (among elites?) to imagine the Jade Woman rolling more grandly through the high heavens in a wheeled carriage, perhaps like the Queen-Mother of the West. These two different, perhaps competing, personas (free-flying and female, seated and man-like) had probably coexisted for some centuries, but we cannot see them until the end of the fifteenth century. For other gods, comparable multiplicity was often expressed instead in entirely separate iconographies. For Bixia Yuanjun, they were combined in one. At this time, the Jade Woman was no longer alone in her shrine but had been joined by two companions. They could have been present in the 1260s—when the creation of a three-bay-wide hall may have been intended to accommodate them—but in the new temple of the 1460s each had her own side-hall and a new Daoist appellation.44 (More on their identities below.) These likewise female gods were ritually “installed for worship (አ/ൄ)” by the daoists, and their acceptability confirmed by the name-plaques for their temple halls.45 Their statues, not mentioned, are likely to have been made of local materials, probably clay. This Daoist attempt to upgrade and rename the increasingly popular female deity was a largely successful one. Many factors contributed, but the simplicity and familiarity of the older components that were not abandoned—jade woman, celestial immortal—surely eased her reformulation.46 Rebuilding the summit temple was crucial to this transformation. In 1483, the work completed, it was renamed Azure Cloud Palace of Efficacious Responsiveness (Bixia Lingying Gong ካᎇࢼ‫׎‬࿮). As was appropriate for proper temples, this name might have been obtained by petition to the throne (through eunuchs) and carved on a horizontal wood name-plaque and placed above the entrance.47 Beginning as a rock niche (➟) so many centuries earlier, the shrine had become a hall (ឆ), then a Daoist abbey (޲), and now a gong ࿮, a palace. As was so often the case, the language of emperors had been bor-

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rowed for gods, in this case, to elevate the Celestial Immortal and Master of the Azure Clouds. Gong was already being used within the Daoist world for residences of certain deities, in contradistinction to the guan that housed Quanzhen communities. Ling ࢼ, efficacy, and ying ‫׎‬, responsiveness, were the qualities most hoped for a god, the miraculous attentiveness to the prayers and vows of sincere petitioners that were celebrated in the new temple name. The abbreviated “Bixia Gong” (Azure Cloud Palace) was thereafter the most common name for the summit temple, and from this point on “Bixia Yuanjun” or “Bixia” began to be used as the name of the new temples that were being dedicated to the deity in towns and villages distant from Mount Tai—an expansion that we shall take up in Chapter 5. But initially the new name probably sounded quite strange. The 1488 Mount Tai gazetteer still marked the temple on its map as the “Jade Woman Shrine (ർѽṽ),” a name that survived on the mountain but was not employed elsewhere for long.48 At the same time, a shorthand name for the god herself (even in stele inscriptions) became simply “Yuanjun ׄᅿ,” and I shall follow that practice henceforth. Alas, as so often occurred, within a generation the expanded summit temple to Yuanjun met with catastrophe. Despite many precautions, burning paper-money, nighttime stoves, and a wood frame were a dangerous combination. In the winter of 1494–1495, there was a serious fire. Judging from the subsequent rebuilding, the entire complex was badly damaged, and we must assume that the god-images were also wrecked or destroyed. Nothing more was said later about these statues of agarwood, stone, or bronze.49 By the time of this calamity, however, so many people knew about the mountaintop palace that a search for funds to rebuild could begin immediately. Even though local daoists appear to have taken responsibility for the subsequent reconstruction, provincial officials clearly wanted to be involved. A debate ensued in the capital (to which someone had apparently appealed) about whether Ministry funds could be issued for a god not listed in the Ritual Statutes.50 The word came down from on high: let the moneys accumulating from pilgrims at this popular temple be used for rebuilding and let Shandong officials formally manage 96

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this project. Some 7,300 ounces of silver were eventually spent, a considerable investment that gives us a glimpse of Yuanjun’s now attractive money-generating powers. Upon completion, nearly two dozen Shandong officials added their names to the 1497 commemorative stele composed by Xu Pu ጝᎱ, a powerful minister, and they probably donated to the project as well.51 This 1490s rebuilding on the summit used what materials could be salvaged and followed the layout of the still-viable foundation: a five-bay main hall, threebay side-halls for Yuanjun’s two companions, rooms (unspecified) for others in her entourage, bell and drum towers, a main gate. The lords of hell associated with Dongyue may have been removed at this time. A separate courtyard on the east side—certainly improved also—provided accommodations for daoists and official visitors. Reconstructed and repainted, the eighty-nine small rooms52 were also re-outfitted. Nothing was recorded about the images, but considering the apparent scale of destruction and the wealth and taste of some of the new patrons, I imagine that at least one bronze god-image would have been installed as a centerpiece to supplement more affordable lifesize clay statues. At least since the first Quanzhen expansion in the thirteenth century, there had probably been a few daoists in residence most of the year somewhere on the inhospitable peak. They would have kept the summit and Jade Woman’s temple ready for pilgrims, received important visitors, and periodically taken away donations. Living conditions must have been cramped and spartan. Now, two centuries later, with better facilities, a small community could be deputed there more permanently, to open and close up the temple each day, guard the gifts, and maintain order, (perhaps) all the while continuing their private devotional practices.53 Rain and natural springs may have supplied adequate water, but food and fuel had to be carried up. Visitors were now arriving year round, and so a few daoists may have been present even during the freezing winter months. In the late fifteenth century, the Jade Woman’s temple, whatever one called it, was becoming an essential sight for those who made their way to the top of Mount Tai, including those literati tourists who greeted the excursion with an excitement unrelated to the deity. The ascent was made easier by veteran porters

who were ready with their purpose-built chairs, but four friends who ascended partway on horseback in 1464 still found it hard going and needed their daoist guide.54 Some places along the trail (such as it was) had already acquired names but amenities were few. Once a traveller reached the steeper slopes, there were no sheltered rest stops before the top. The building spree of the 1460s through 1490s made the summit area more accommodating to visitors as well as clerics. The Gateway to Heaven at the top of the killing last stretch had been expanded (it was a building by now), and in one section an altar to Dongyue himself was set up and a locally made iron bell donated.55 In addition to the separate Dongyue temple already behind and above Yuanjun’s palace,56 the shrine to the Jade Sovereign was completed in 1483 on the highest, most vulnerable spot on the summit. Paid for with explicitly imperial funds, the work on this home for the reigning emperor’s divine counterpart was managed by eunuchs from the capital and included the bronze statue mentioned above. To meet the extremes of weather, the shrine was constructed of stone columns and (probably northern) hardwood rafters weighed down by iron roof-tiles.57 For those visitors with an interest in the still-obscure history of the mountain, an exciting find was made in 1482. Inscribed jade slips (ർߢ) that had been carefully buried as part of Song Zhenzong’s 1008 rituals were uncovered, making it possible to locate the historic Feng– Shan altar near this highest point. (The jades were reburied with appropriate rites.)58 As each of these small temples on the summit generated its own stream of gifts, the daoists of the Peak Temple may have had to scramble to maintain control over both the riches and the visitors. We can also see faint signs of competition over access to Yuanjun herself. In the 1460s, we are told that “of old,” some pilgrims had directed their gifts to shamans (wu ኊ) who would pray to her for them. Both the state and the Daoist establishments much preferred that such resources be channeled through them, but it seems unlikely that they were ever able to eliminate such rival intermediaries.59 The growing prominence of the temple on the summit also had the effect, as we shall see, of disturbing some of the educated men who were more frequently touring Mount Tai in their private and official

capacities and investigating its history. By the fifteenth century, as Song and Yuan books were being reprinted and fragments of even older texts were copied and circulated in compendia, such research was becoming easier. The rediscovery of the Jade Maiden Spring and its restoration to working order in the 1480s, for example, seems to have been inspired by access to Ma Duanlin’s magisterial 1339 Wenxian tongkao ҹຶ֡ߎ. That work recounted the discovery of the stone Jade Maiden by the pool during the 1008 Eastern Feng and its installation in a nearby niche. Reprinted in the first (1488) local history of Tai’an, this brief account achieved wide currency among Ming scholars, whose access to primary sources was far more limited than ours.60 During the chilly 1st month of 1486, the provincial official Shang Jiong ࣑㔝, travelling with friends, came from the Shandong capital at Ji’nan (one hundred kilometers away) to make the ascent. Staying in the town, now promoted to the seat of Tai’an department (߮), they first visited the restored Great Peak Temple, and then started out for the summit in sedan chairs with the intention of going up and back in a single day. When they reached the Evident Authenticity Abbey, they paid a call on (⅐) Bixia Yuanjun there. (Shang’s written account used these names for the temple and the Jade Woman.)61 They walked about the open, uneven, rocky plateau and admired the impressive, still famous, imperial Tang cliff inscription (Zhenzong’s was not mentioned). They looked for traces of the First Qin Emperor’s visit, then advanced to the Sunrise-viewing Peak, looked over the Suicide Precipice, and then gazed in amazement at the distant expanse of mountain peaks. After returning to Yuanjun’s temple for a meal and some warm wine in a room specifically set aside for (select) visitors, they were hurried down the mountain by their porters, skipping the Queen-Mother’s Pool and other sights nearer town. The following day, finally, led by a daoist armed with a candle, they descended into the spooky recesses of the cave near Haoli Hill that marked the entrance to hell.62 (We shall have more to say about all these sights in Chapter 8.) This Haoli complex near the Yue Miao was still a popular attraction. Last rebuilt in the 1280s, the caves and cubicles of the hell-lords, so clearly intended to generate an emotional reaction among nervous pilgrims, seem to have undergone endless piecemeal tinkering and improvement before being repaired in

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1466. A decade later a rival hall was built nearby, this one for an entity called the Great Emperor of Fengdu (ⰉЁϽ෌), named after another point of entrance to hell with which the mountain had also been associated for more than a millennium, but with an added a veneer of literary and Daoist respectability. This temple was more conveniently positioned between Tai’an city and the mountain and seems to have been intended to divert and capture pilgrim traffic (perhaps not very successfully). Classically trained men (ᭉ‫)ٷ‬, a local history tells us, considered this worship of the lords of hell to be “not right (ϤѬ),” but nonetheless useful for scaring ordinary foolish people (ፂ‫ )ھ‬into doing good and avoiding evil.63 The Quanzhen daoists may have felt similar unease, their ambivalence mixed with eagerness for additional donations. Not every visitor to the mountain climbed to the summit, and the Haoli income was presumably substantial. Bixia Yuanjun’s new temple was still a stiff climb, but there does not seem to have been a place to make offerings to her at the foot of the mountain until the late fifteenth century, perhaps testimony to the enduring ambivalence of her Daoist custodians. Song Zhenzong’s Tianshu Guan ϳ‫ ޲ڣ‬still stood, although decrepit, on the spot where a Writ from Heaven had been discovered in 1008. In 1486 this structure was turned to the service of the Jade Woman and renamed the Yunü Dian ർѽឆ. Although the recipient of imperial attention in the early sixteenth century, it does not appear to have attracted great popular interest (perhaps access was restricted?). In 1533, the current Yongning Prince, part of the Zhou ‫ ر‬principality enfeoffed in Kaifeng city and a descendant of one of the Ming founder’s sons, presented that hall with a new image of “Tai Shan Bixia Yuanjun.”64 Simultaneously, organized pilgrims (seemingly from that prince’s household) paid to have a thirteen-story brick pagoda (ൿᛅ) constructed on the grounds of what they called the Celestial Immortal’s Touring-palace (Tianxian Xinggong ϳ ࿁Ҳ࿮). The eight sides were covered with iron plates on which the names of the hundreds of donors (including many women) had been cast.65 (See Figures 8.1– 8.2.) (More on these princes in Chapter 5.) We cannot always see who was behind contributions from the privy purse (ֶ) to the expenses of temple renovations at Mount Tai, but we can sometimes identity the eunuchs who brought the money and 98

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managed the projects paid for by someone in the ruling family.66 The gifts of “incense money” (xiangqian ‫ )ؿܫ‬made by hundreds and thousands of anonymous individuals at the moment of their visits became what we today might call unrestricted funds. Those anonymous donors had no say in how the money and valuables were used, but their generosity greatly enriched the temples and those clerics who managed them on behalf of the gods. As we shall see in more detail in the chapters that follow, such wealth, intended as testimony to Mount Tai’s various powers, was coveted by both imperial and state authorities, and by the 1460s it was already being regularly diverted to cover emergency expenses in Shandong province. The monies paid for renovations may therefore have amounted to only a portion of the temple’s total income. Just as the rebuilding at the summit had been accompanied by less extensive repairs to the Great Peak Temple near the foot, so the post-fire construction high up was followed between 1499 and 1510 by more construction down below. By now, there were no persuasive objections to full imperial support for work at the temple to the God of the Eastern Peak. The Ming founding emperor’s ambivalence notwithstanding, his successors endorsed these expenditures. For repairs, the Hongzhi emperor (r. 1488–1505) sent a substantial 8,000 ounces of silver in 1499, put the eunuch Miao Kui ြ✩ in charge, and authorized Shandong officials to again use the temple incense income (Ϩᜐۭ⇉‫)ؿܫ‬ as needed. In 1503, the eunuch who was then managing that restoration had also been instructed to pray directly (and extra-statutorily) to Bixia Yuanjun.67 In effect, a three-way collaboration between the imperial household, provincial officials, and the temple daoists had taken charge of maintaining the temples to both Dongyue and Yuanjun using pilgrim donations. The halls and gates of the Great Peak Temple were partially reconfigured in 1503; the printed illustration in Figure 4.1 shows the layout.68 Still within the walled city of Tai’an, the temple’s central axis had become better defined by a series of gates in front of and behind the high and spacious six-bay main central structure. (This hall burned down in 1547 and is not the one we see today.) Chambers for the god and his family were again at the rear with a few smaller halls on the sides (only the roofs were shown in the illustration). The “palace” of the Bingling Duke was in the south-

4.1 Great Peak Temple (Dongyue Miao) ca. 1504. 1. Hall of Heaven’s Great Gift ϳ㒼ឆ. 2. Bingling Palace ẅࢼ࿮. 3. Yinyang School ೾‫ݷ‬ѹ. 4. Informal Entrance Pavilion स‫᠀۾‬. 5. Provincial Financial Office޿ू‫ޅ‬. 6. City gates. (After Tai’an zhou zhi [1488], n.p.)

east corner. A high protective wall, with towers at the corners and four imposing gates, enclosed and protected the central complex.69 Visitors were funneled in through a separately walled entranceway at the south; government buildings to each side housed a Yinyang School70 and an office for a representative of the Shandong financial administration. We can imagine that, as on the summit, the daoists’ own quarters (not shown, but possibly located within the main walls or outside on the east) were also improved. It is not entirely clear how much of this complex was open to the public besides the central axis. An initially modest hall called the Informal Entrance Pavilion (Caocan Ting स‫ )᠀۾‬already existed at the southern gate and opened to the streets of the town; as one entered, Mount Tai’s silhouette was in full view above and ahead. By 1504, the room had been enlarged, improved, and separately enclosed, and it was then (if not earlier71) dedicated to Mount Tai’s female god.

There, visitors and pilgrims could pay their first respects to her. Indeed, it may have become customary, even necessary, to stop and make a donation before proceeding (and perhaps buying a formal ticket). Two stone buildings (୥࣍) stood nearby for the safe burning of incense and paper-money. Hereafter, this Yaocan Ting ༃‫( ᠀۾‬Outer Entrance Pavilion), as it was usually called, became a major money-collecting node.72 (The building we see today dates from the Qing.) The Emperor of the Eastern Peak had been both the Jade Woman’s predecessor and her implicit competitor. As Yuanjun’s efficacy was demonstrated in a growing volume of “incense fire,” it seems that many parties would have wanted a place to worship her without making the climb. The Yue Miao daoists seem to have taken steps to see that such an altar would be under their direct control and so converted this entrance hall to that purpose. A god-image of Yuanjun would have been present on an altar inside. 73

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4.2 Image of Bixia Yuanjun cast in high relief on a bronze mirror dated 1504, intended for the Outer Entrance Pavilion at the southern entrance of the Great Peak Temple. Approximately 17 x 25 cm. In the Tiankuang Hall of the Dai Miao in 2013. (Courtesy of the Tai’an City Museum ೉ԥ‫ص‬ѕ‫׉‬క.)

In 1504 a substantial circular bronze mirror was dedicated and placed just inside this entranceway to repel demonic forces by confronting them with their own terrifying reflections, a self-styled Demon Deflecting Mirror (Zhao Yao Jing ؕၝ஗). This informative mirror tells us a little about its donors but much about the ways in which Yuanjun was envisioned at the start of the sixteenth century. Plain and round (150 centimeters in diameter), this mirror (஗, elsewhere sometimes jian ᅹ) was set in a beautifully decorated square frame, all finely cast in bronze.74 On the back, in the center, as one would see on a stone stele, is a cast-in inscription in raised characters. Across the top it reads: “Mount Tai, The Great Eastern Peak (ֆₙ೉‫)ځ‬.” Down the mirror’s left side: “[Placed before] the Hall of the Great Eastern Peak Mount Tai’s Celestial Immortal, August Mother, and 100

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Master of the Azure Clouds (ֆₙ೉‫ځ‬ϳ࿁๦আׄᅿ ឆЎ).” On the right side: “The Precious Mirror for Deflecting Demons, Inside the Outer Entrance Pavilion (स‫ؕ ֶ᠀۾‬ၝմ஗.)” In the middle, in smaller characters, the date: “Da Ming Guo Hongzhi 17/8/12,” that is, the 12th day of the 8th lunar month of the 17th year of the reign of the Hongzhi Emperor of the Great Ming Dynasty, the autumn of 1504. And, more humbly inscribed, the name of the lead donor: “The disciple [of the deity] Yang Fuxuan, who solicited donations to have [this object] made (੣ж໷‫׫‬ୌᠵࢊ߃).”75 At the very top, in the center, there is a small bronze image of Yuanjun cast in high relief and shown in Figure 4.2. Here we have a round-faced figure, fully dressed, serenely seated on a chair with a halo-like back that frames her head. Her hands, hidden by a kerchief, comfortably clasp a narrow rectangular tablet of

authorized power. Symmetrically posed, she is dressed in a flowing cape, with a knotted sash that hangs prominently down the center of her under-robe. Her legs are apart and her turned-up shoes protrude from under her robe. A single bird lies flat on her headdress with its wings and waving tail-feathers behind. A diadem hangs across her hairline onto her forehead, and winglike strands from the headdress extend along the sides of her face. The chair, the robe, the sashes, and the ribbons are executed in flowing, lightly dynamic lines. The elite-supplied vocabulary for describing the god that was used in Xu Pu’s 1497 inscription quoted above matches this physical manifestation, mentioning the robes, tablet, and jewelry (ᤓⶵ⍪Ⴌ) that we can see illustrated here. The poem of praise that brings that text to a close also referred to the deity’s “cloud headdress and gossamer skirt (ࠥഃᇑᬘ),” allusions to the flying associated with immortals that were at odds with the firmly fixed position associated with men.76 Moreover, the mirror makes clear that the once undistinguished Jade Woman had acquired (that is, been given or confirmed by the daoists) a visual identity to match the status of a Master of the Azure Clouds. The 1504 image comes to us fully formed (like the Jade Maiden herself), and we cannot at present see its creation or antecedents. Although it is impossible to be sure that the statues then in the temple on the summit looked like this one, it is remarkably consistent with known texts and images of later dates, and it seems to me likely that this figure recapitulated the features of the prestigious statues, now lost, that were installed on the altars. In later chapters, we will have much more to say about this iconography and will continue to explore how objects, pictures, and texts communicated this ambiguous, many-sided, and still-unfamiliar identity to an increasingly receptive audience. There were few organized constraints on the multiplication of the Jade Woman’s new names or representations. Indeed, the image of 1504 was not only influenced by oral lore that has not been preserved, it was created in a context bigger than this mountain or this god. The emergence on Mount Tai of Bixia Yuanjun was part of the parallel transformations of other Chinese gods that had also been taking place during the first half of the Ming. Events in Shandong continued, as they had for centuries, to be a part of bigger cultural mix and in conversation with wider changes.

To flourish beyond the mountain and to find a place in the hearts of new devotees and in distant temples, the look of the newly renamed Jade Woman needed to both elicit quick recognition and be distinctively hers. Evidence from 1504 indicates that she was well on her way to doing so. NOT ALONE As we shall see in Part Two, by 1500 the Master of the Clouds had flown off the mountain and found new homes elsewhere. This was not a simple matter. Beyond the protective isolation of the summit, she competed with more than only Dongyue as an answerer of prayers. Building temples and outfitting them with gifts was a commonplace community activity, and Yuanjun needed her own patrons to testify to her particular powers. For most people, she was still an unknown deity. With no sutras to guide them, god-images on Mount Tai and in any new temple were shaped by the existing gods in the world into which she had come. Although some deities were known only to clerics and others were buried in obscure shrines or texts, Ming reunification had encouraged the circulation of stories, miracles, and images of gods, strengthening both region- and empire-wide religious culture. Even with better documentation, tracking these intertextual and intervisual influences is easier said than done. Building on our earlier discussion in Chapter 3, however, and using Bixia Yuanjun in 1504 as a reference point, we can retrieve some dated and named examples of her early Ming North China neighbors. The results should highlight for us her commonalities and singularities. First, Dongyue. It does not seem far-fetched to conclude that the Jade Woman’s iconography was most immediately derived from his; he was from the outset her first, nearest, and most significant other. Deliberate similarities would have reinforced the idea that both were suitable for worship at Great Tai. We have seen that even before the Ming there were deities, male and female, separate and paired, who were pictured (in two or three dimensions) in a posture of confident authority that we can call imperial, official, parental, or just powerful: seated frontally, legs placed firmly down and apart, wearing enveloping robes and noticeable headgear, and holding a tablet. The 1504 Yuanjun mirror followed this template.

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4.3 Painting of the Jade Sovereign (detail). Ink, color, and gilt on silk. 122 x 87.4 cm. An inscription indicates that it was commissioned by Imperial Concubine Wen ҹ in 1545. The god is not identified here but this scene is replicated in Beijing paintings from the Baiyun Guan that call him the Jade Sovereign. (© image courtesy of Sotheby’s; Sotheby’s New York [September 13, 2011], lot 70.)

We have few surviving Ming images of the Emperor of the Eastern Peak,77 but images of other emperorgods help us imagine him.78 A 1457 scripture about the Jade Sovereign showed him seated on a large handsome wood paneled throne, with a canopy above and halo behind. His hat is flat with hanging pearls, he is in full robes, hands slightly slanted and holding a small tablet.79 Figure 4.3 shows a similar Ming painting of that god.80 Because makers of woodblock prints and paintings were freed of the necessity of creation in three dimensions, they could show the god seated in an idealized niche with all the necessary paraphernalia that might have been present in a wealthy temple. China’s emperors were not pictured in public media as rulers sometimes were in other times and places, and it was from god-images such as these that people formed their ideas about what their rulers should look like. In fact, intervisual influences went both ways. The full body portrait of the Hongzhi emperor (he died in 1505 and was thus reigning at the time the mirror was cast) was in this same posture, except that his arms were evenly held at chest level, hands hidden in his voluminous robes.81 Both Buddhists and Daoists also visualized some of their gods in this way, and this 102

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was probably also the pose of the seated Confucius himself.82 There are enough plausibly dated late fifteenth century male gods, seated in this manner with increasingly differentiated hats, to suggest that many deities with claims to king- or emperor-like status were being presented in this fashion, from celestial kings (ϳࣼ) to kings of hell (Ἡ஛ࣼ). We see such undated Ming figures in cast iron, murals, and paintings, and they doubtless existed in clay, wood, and bronze.83 As we have noted, this frontal seated position, the body fully clothed, was understood as appropriate for women as well as men, the two being distinguished almost entirely by means of the face and headgear. By imitating Dongyue (as I believe they did), Yuanjun’s early fashioners were availing themselves of this increasingly familiar and authoritative template.84 In a culture where sons formed strong bonds of obligation and affection toward their mothers and where senior wives were respected, it was only appropriate for wives to match husbands in iconography. Empresses, moreover, had an established place in the dynastic histories written by scholar-officials, and were likewise part of this active intervisuality with the world of the gods. They too drew on the repertory of female deities for inspiration, and vice versa. That Bixia Yuanjun should be presented alone, seated, and confident thus established her within the familiar conventions for a mature elite woman. These similarities were reassuring, and a strength. Some of the attributes of empresses also overlapped with Yuanjun’s most distinctive feature: birds. Gold hairpins of long-tailed birds with feather-tuft crowns had been worn by Liao aristocrats before the twelfth century, matching female phoenixes with male dragons; both before and after the mid-Ming, empresses and princesses wore headdresses (at least in death) on which gender-marking gold or jade birds were pinned. The imperial portraits of Ming empresses show only a portion of the upper body (and no arms or hands). Empress Xiaozhuangrui ᖮບᥧ, who died 1468, for example, was painted wearing an elaborate headpiece. The lower section was made of pearls, gems, and kingfisher feathers; on top were three gold filigree (female) dragons, one facing forward, the others to each side, and from their mouths hung down three-tiered starbursts made of pearls. Two large pearl-adorned appendages attached to the back of the headdress framed her face. The presence of similar ac-

4.4 Empress Earth August Mother, standing in a procession of deities. Detail from a mural in the Gongzhu Si ԍ Ұᕖ in Fanshi county, Shanxi. The temple was completed in 1503. (Chai & Jia [2006], 192.)

couterments on Bixia Yuanjun statues suggests that one source of inspiration for her bird-headdress could have been the palace.85 Whatever the source, the heads, wings, and tail-feathers that crowned Yuanjun’s head used familiar elite elements to complement the conventionality of her pose. The appearance of the Empress Earth August Mother (Houtu Shengmu њग๦আ) was likewise caught up in the development of visual styles for Ming imperial women. As previously noted, this cult had continued after Song Zhenzong’s 1013 visit and new temples had been occasionally built in Shanxi, Henan, and Shaanxi, sometimes with official patrons.86 Empress Earth and the Master of Clouds were both part of the post-1000 emergence of female deities, but disentangling their relationship before 1500 is difficult. A

mid-sixteenth-century gazetteer (dismissively) noted their similarities: “The god [Yuanjun] is painted as a female, her image is probably similar to that of Houtu, basically that kind of woman-thing (‫ظ‬ዻйѽՌ ౎њ गҏ‫ ظ‬ӆ೾ढ‫ݞ‬Ї).”87 The Song period Houtu Hall where Zhenzong had made offerings to Empress Earth at the foot of Mount Tai still stood five hundred years later.88 Images of her there, which would surely have shown her seated given her rank, could have thus been known to those who came to Shandong to worship Yuanjun.89 In temple murals of fourteenth- to sixteenth-century Shanxi, Houtu stands in procession in empress-mode: long flowing robes, covered hands holding a slender scepter, gold birds perched in her piled-up hair, and pearl side-ribbons.90 See Figure 4.4.

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Popular brands are quickly copied, and it is not possible to be sure who borrowed the bird-headdress from whom. Imperial fashions were not well known in the provinces in the early sixteenth century except through the princely establishments but the gifts of statues made by the Imperial Household and delivered by eunuchs could have also carried those standards to the Azure Cloud Palace. Worship of Empress Earth was sparse and localized and the Mount Tai cult probably did not extend west into the Taihang region until after 1500. By then, in any case, Yuanjun was becoming the more influential figure and birds her prominent identifying marker. In the meantime, another highly ranked female god was making her presence known in the north and she too needed to look both singular and plausible. Imperial titles that justified representation in a regal manner had already been awarded to Miss Lin from Fujian, who had been promoted (in 1278) to Celestial Concubine (Tianfei ϳគ). Her reputation had grown along with the waterborne coastal traders whom she protected, but two events of the 1400s–1410s brought her decisively north of the Yangtze. One was the early Ming sponsorship of voyages by imperial envoys to the Southern Seas and farther west. The other was the revived importance of through-transport from central China to the Northern Capital along the coast or by way of the Grand Canal. The Ming dynastic founder had added to Miss Lin’s titles in 1372, preferring to call her an August Concubine (Shengfei ๦គ),91 but her status in imperial eyes grew with the overseas expeditions of the eunuch admiral Zheng He ቼф between 1405 and 1433. Concern for the safety of these bold sailing ventures into largely unknown waters was met, apparently by those already familiar with Miss Lin’s powers, with prayers and promises to reward her upon their safe return. These fleets were built and outfitted in Nanjing, an important node in the lumber trade. A temple was built for her in that city in 1409 as well as several in and near Tianjin, the port for the Northern Capital.92 In that same year, when the fleets did return, Emperor Yongle bestowed on her a new long title.93 This attention and favor did not, we must note, mean that this god had become part of the standard rituals performed by provincial officials throughout the empire but they did bring her to the attention of the throne.94 104

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Beijing’s economic connections to the rest of the Ming empire had also encouraged the extension of the Celestial Concubine’s cult to the north. Boatmen of the grain transport system that fed the capital patronized her and were responsible for other temples along the Grand Canal and in Beijing in 1480.95 In the course of the fifteenth century, other domestic traders brought her into the Huai River network, along the tip of the Shandong peninsula, and across the Gulf to Liaoning.96 Her temples appear to have doubled as lodges for merchants from Fujian. By 1500, moreover, accounts circulated not only orally but in print about the life story and supernatural powers of the one-time Miss Lin, reinforcing her expanding reputation and general respectability in the population at large.97 Southern though her origin may have been, she had become part of the cast of North China’s efficacious female gods. Her name, titles, and personal history defined this deity as a young female, but what did she look like? Most of her surviving god-images are on paper or in wood (plentiful media in southern China) and are rarely early (or dated at all). A scripture from the Yongle reign (1403–1424) fortunately allows us to anchor her Ming-era representations.98 In this woodblock illustration, she is seated facing slightly to her right, in a proper chair, framed by two attendants holding fans above her head. As befitting her royal titles, she is dressed in fine robes, hands seemingly at chest level, with a flattopped regal headdress. We see plainly the clasped hands holding a tablet and the mortarboard headdress with front-dangling pearls that was very like the one worn by real and divine male emperors.99 This is the pose that we find in most later surviving representations of Miss Lin, and it was also Yuanjun’s no later than 1504. In light of such similarities, the Mount Tai Lady’s bird-headdress was a key distinguishing feature. Moreover, seen in the context of such early Ming imperial favor, the fifteenth-century Daoist enhancements to the status of Bixia Yuanjun were both limited and belated. By then, Miss Lin had been receiving imperial titles for centuries, she already resided in a “palace,” her temple names had long included the appellation ling ࢼ (efficacious), and she had been thanked by the emperor for “protecting the dynasty and its people (ࣆл᳗‫)ھ‬.”100 The Celestial Concubine’s responsiveness had been praised in 1431 for her services to Admiral Zheng,101 but not until the 1460s was the Jade

Woman renamed and only decades after that was her temple on Mount Tai designated the “Palace of Efficacious Responsiveness” (Lingying Gong). Was Yuanjun playing catch-up? The other regal female who was a better-known part of the early Ming North China religious universe was Xiwangmu ՝ࣼআ, the Queen-Mother of the West. She had long since left behind her fearsome traits, moved out of some (most?) temple halls, and taken up residence in the homes of people of every class. Usually represented on paper or fabric and associated with banqueting in a palatial Western Paradise, she had come to be described as soaring through the air in a dragon-drawn carriage surrounded by attendant celestial immortals.102 Associated since medieval times with a pool at Mount Tai, she seems a possible legitimating and popularizing inspiration for an airborne Jade Maiden.103 By the time we encounter her in datable images in the Qing, the Queen-Mother appeared seated (even when in motion), middle-aged, and empress-like, as her title would lead one to expect. And in that mode, she had become a commonplace cultural figure rather than an object of worship. Considered in this light, there was nothing unusual about how Yuanjun was represented on the 1504 demon-repelling mirror. Those who had been fashioning her iconography were both drawing from and influencing that of other comparable female deities of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Like them, Yuanjun had acquired a combination of normative respectability (her pose) and visible individuality (her headdress) that allowed her to blend in and still stand out. Any reader familiar with Chinese religion or art will have already been thinking of the most prominent exception to these generalizations about early Ming female gods: Guanyin. As Avalokiteshvara, this Buddhist deity had been nurtured within monasteries and nunneries, perpetuated by deeply embedded institutions, ideas, and practices. Miracle tales were drawn from printed sutras and developed in a host of other established written, oral, and visual media. Established conventions and a millennium of images had created a tradition of figures that stood or sat on lotuses, and were barefoot, skimpily clad, roped with jewels, and somehow asexual. As Chün-fang Yü has shown, transformations of the androgynous medieval bodhisattva became in-

creasingly common after about 1300, especially in central and southern China where we find her White Robed (Baiyi Ձ‫ )ژ‬and South Seas (Nanhai ۪֋) female personas. These cults were focused initially on a monastery in Hangzhou during the Southern Song and then later on Putuoshan ૦ᕥ‫ځ‬, an island off the nearby coast; both stimulated pilgrimages that were initially at least region-wide. Although these female avatars seem to have been slower to catch on in the north, the deity’s great compassion and ability to perform miracles gave her empire-wide recognition during and after the Ming.104 As a gender-neutral Guanyin became increasingly understood as a woman, god-images identified as the White-robed and South Seas personas spread to the north.105 The low-relief carving on a 1328 stele at the Lingyan monastery (near Mount Tai) appears to show a figure seated on a lotus, with right knee up, swirling robes, and the elaborate high headdress of earlier bodhisattvas.106 The line carving on a stone stele given to a Beijing temple in 1444 was commissioned by a nun from central China, and it shows a cross-legged frontfacing figure, with loose robes and jewels draped across her chest and the attributes of the Putuoshan Guanyin (vase, willow branch, parrot, ocean).107 None of these Guanyin looked conventionally regal, nor were they intended to, even when they were luxuriously dressed. Unlike daoists, Buddhist clergy did not aspire to model their deities on explicitly secular authority and did not bestow secular ranks on them. Moreover, by contrast with the austere high Buddhist gods, this bodhisattva was known for compassion and mercy (bei঳, ci፦), that is, warm generosity rather than parental strictness. By the early Ming, furthermore, imperial patronage of Buddhist monasteries and temples was largely a private affair, carried out with separate Imperial Household funds and not part of the state religion. Nevertheless, even without state support, Guanyin was becoming enormously popular all across the empire, in large and small monasteries and nunneries, in dedicated temples, and in private homes (for which the most explicitly feminine images may have been intended). Her diverse iconographies seem only to have enhanced her ability to adapt to different environments, while her name, scriptures, and clerical patrons held them loosely together.108

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There was scarcely any organized Buddhist presence on Mount Tai and the Jade Woman had been conceived outside a Buddhist sphere from the outset. Anxiety about acceptance and respectability encouraged her mature clothed formality by contrast with the bare feet, ample hair, relaxed poses, skimpily draped clothing, and shapely body that were becoming associated with Guanyin. The continuing role of daoists in shaping Bixia Yuanjun’s identities kept these two deities distinct, and it would take several centuries for such conspicuous differences to fade. Like the ubiquitous Buddhist deity and many male gods, Yuanjun was also acquiring a multiplicity of identities in this early phase of her career that were expressed most clearly in her names rather than her physical images. It was routine for a god’s different names to arise without the intervention of a powerful authority or the protracted support of a single community, and thus without consistency or coherence. Appellations might derive from imperially bestowed titles; or from a human biography; or from scriptures or written statutes; or just from the preferences of ordinary people. By 1500, such forces were at work, expanding popular understanding of the Jade Woman in diverse ways. In 1468, a literati visitor to Mount Tai described Yuanjun as the “Master of the Azure Clouds, Celestial Immortal and Jade Woman of Mount Tai (೉‫ځ‬ϳ࿁ർ ѽካᎇׄᅿҏ‫)ظ‬.”109 On the 1504 demon-repelling mirror she was called “Celestial Immortal, August Mother, and Master of the Azure Clouds.” Although these may have been intended to look and sound like long titles, comparable to those bestowed on Miss Lin and select male gods, they were actually just combinations of the separate two-character names by which the Jade Woman had become known. Like the pose on the mirror, these different names conjured up a deity whose powers were based on maturity, experience, family position, and location: immortal, master, mother, woman. Another more colloquial form of address for the god had also developed, moving (I presume) from the sphere of everyday conversation into the vernacular written record no later than 1300: Niangniang ਔਔ. Unlike niang ਔ, employed in various compounds as a polite way to address a young woman, “Niangniang” was used for 106

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someone older. In Song times it had meant one’s mother or an emperor’s mother,110 but it was extended to female gods in the empress-mode. A suitable translation might be “My Lady,” or “Great Lady,” as in “Jade Immortal, the Lady of the Summit of the Dai Peak (┬ₙѿ‫্כ‬ർ࿁ਔਔ).”111 “Niangniang” was used for the god and her temples with increasing frequency in the course of the Ming. In Beijing, which was becoming an influential center of her worship, temples to Yuanjun were frequently called Niangniang Miao.112 The “precious volume” scriptures that appeared around 1600 likewise made frequent use of Niangniang, not just for Yuanjun but for those companion deities who appeared with her. Indeed, it became a convenient advertisement that—as we shall see—the Jade Woman was now part of a group of “ladies.” As the human and supernatural world borrowed from one another, this process of semantic broadening would affect many modes of address as time went by. BECOMING A MOTHER As we saw in Chapter 3, the appellation “August Mother” had been used for imperial women in the seventh century and for Empress Earth in Shanxi in the eleventh. “Shengmu ๦আ” was also one of the names for the Jade Woman on the 1504 mirror, seemingly another example of lateral transference of attributes from one god to another. Even as it blurred her distinctiveness from others, the August Mother title did match Yuanjun’s pose and elevate her status; moreover, being a mother implied maternal intimacy and benevolence that appealingly contrasted with authoritarian father figures. How and when had this deity, once an unmarried maiden and then a mature woman with no husband, become a mother? To trace this growing association, we must follow linkages in several directions: from generic August Mothers, from associations with Mount Tai, and from Yuanjun’s new female companions. These threads will take us into the sixteenth century and away from the mountain—both developments that will be explored at length in later chapters. Furthermore, as we shall see, this aspect of Yuanjun’s story was also part of a larger development in the history of female gods: Guanyin was gradually acquiring a reputation as a god who could bring children, as were other unmarried

maidens (Princess Miaoshan, Miss Lin) who were nevertheless also being addressed as mothers. Gods to whom one could pray for the successful birth of a healthy child are probably as old as human religion. In a patrilineal society with a strong emphasis on the unbroken continuation of the male line, men and women (perhaps for different reasons) were anxious about childbirth, children, and sons. Infant mortality was high, as it was everywhere, and prayers were a normal response to fears of loss. And prayers to mother deities—by men as well as women—could seem especially efficacious. By the Yuan period we can see evidence of temples to this-or-that August Mother not simply in Shanxi, where they had been more common, but on the North China Plain. Fragmentary references make it difficult to track their history, but it is possible that “Shengmu” had already become a way of referring to the Jade Woman before 1504. In the 1260s in Henan, not far from the Yellow River, a stele described a mountain temple to a “Shengmu Yuanjun ๦আׄᅿ” who was also called a “Jade Immortal” and a “Celestial Immortal,” with two female companions,113 and there were quite a number of different kinds of “August Mothers” scattered all over that province. We shall return to these deities in Chapter 5, but there is ample evidence of the popularity of this appellation in North China before it can be attested at Mount Tai. An appropriate iconography may have accompanied the name, as seems to be the case with Houtu Shengmu. Once the linkage was made (August Mother = Jade Woman), pilgrims could both import it to Mount Tai and export it from there, and so deepen, extend, and confuse the associations. There was, at least among the educated, a quite separate connection between Mount Tai, the East, and the production of life. The capacious term sheng Т could mean the birth of people, the production of food, and the creation of things. Surely echoing earlier ideas, in 1008 Song Zhenzong had declared on one of his stelae that “the eastern lands are a place of birth and nurturing (ֆगТड़ҏс),”114 and for the Dongyue Temple in Beijing, a Ming emperor was only one of many to repeat and expand on such ideas: There are Five Great Peaks under Heaven and Mount Tai is the easternmost. Of what the people

desire (௰), nothing is more important than life (Т), and the East is where all life issues forth (ֆछТҏ ӛԩ‫)״‬. This is why the History Classic calls Mount Tai “Daizong ┬ᅓ,” and because of its virtuous merit in giving birth to the ten thousand things, it is the most revered of the Five Peaks (ٚₙҏಀЇ).115

This orthodox association of Mount Tai with creation was picked up by literati devotees of Bixia Yuanjun, who echoed and redirected this idea. By the sixteenth century it had become Yuanjun herself who could control life (ҰТ), nurture the ten thousand things (‫׉ݛ‬ ҏड़), and answer prayers for sons.116 (More on this rhetoric in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6.) The Jade Woman may have simultaneously acquired associations with the birth of children from the two deities who had become her companions sometime before 1500. Initially, she had been alone on the mountain, but Chinese gods, like people, preferred company, and other images were added at some point. We know that when her temple was renovated and renamed the Zhaozhen Guan in the early 1260s, the widening of the main hall to three bays created a space clearly intended for a central statue (the Jade Woman) and two others. In the 1470s restoration, two gods were given their own separate side-halls and Daoist names, and by the sixteenth century their enduring appellations were announced over their hall entrances.117 On the east was the Sender of Sons and Grandsons housed in the Zisun жྒ Hall. And on the west, the Healer of Eye Diseases was in the Yanguang Ւ‫ׇ‬ Hall. Drawings in the 1587 Dai shi show that these names were stable no later than that date (and probably much earlier).118 (See Figure 8.10.) These two female companions each had their own separate, still-obscure histories, and their associations with other Mother deities probably started elsewhere (perhaps in Henan) and were then imported to the Eastern Peak.119 In Buddhist terms, the Sender of Sons could be seen as an incarnation of Avalokiteshvara, appearing in a woman’s body so as to better save all sentient beings (๦আӢۘѽԚЊܰ֏ੁТ‫ࣶݞ‬᲋᲋আ ӱ).120 Indeed, the similar appellation Songzi ‫؟‬ж(Deliverer of Sons) was also associated with Guanyin, perhaps from earlier times, and the Buddhist deity seems to have been rival of North China’s Sender of

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Sons, especially after 1600.121 The early history of Yanguang, the Healer of Eye Diseases, needs research. Although she would come to have her own exclusive temples, the initial expansion of her worship appears dependent on Bixia Yuanjun. It is usually said that she helped with the eye problems of young children. I wonder if it is not just as likely that she attracted the devotions of elderly parents and grandparents who were worried not only about continuation of the family line but about the loss of vision that accompanied their own old age. In the course of the sixteenth century, these two, Zisun (Sons) and Yanguang (Vision), became Yuanjun’s close companions, and once established in the summit palace, they were re-exported and accompanied her as the cult proliferated. Depending on the resources and space available, they might be placed on each side of her on the main altar, or in separate bays within the main hall, or in their own side-halls, or all three: Zisun on the east, Yanguang on the west. We can see the appearance of these two distinct deities as part of a larger process by which local female gods were swept up by Yuanjun’s cult and consolidated within it. During the sixteenth century, seemingly not at Mount Tai, still other female deities believed to assist women in childbirth were sometimes added as other companions. When the Touring-palace of the Emperor of the Eastern Peak in Yuanshi county (central Zhili) was restored in 1509 and again in 1519, separate altars and then rooms were added to Dongyue’s Chambers for the worship of Zisun and Douzhen ᄪឞ(Smallpox God, there a female deity who protected young children against this killer disease).122 One stele from eastern Zhili in the 1510s recorded a temple to three female August Ones (ѧ๦), namely: Shengmu, Zisun, and Douzhen. The uncomfortable local official author claimed to know nothing of the origin of these “three women” (ѧѽ,ϤҌԷоІ‫ڊح‬, ဪ‫ۥح‬ґЏ‫ױ‬Ӝ).123 By 1562, Zisun and Yanguang were being called more colloquially “My Lady” (Niangniang) rather than the more powerful “August Mother.” Attached to the “Celestial Immortal of Mount Tai,” they were collectively installed in a new temple in the suburbs of Beijing.124 By this time, such prestigious Beijing temples were becoming more influential than those on Mount Tai in drawing these childbirth-related Niangniang together under Yuanjun’s aegis. Perhaps through a ran108

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dom process of copying, even more (possibly preexisting) female gods whose responsibilities concerned young children were made part of Yuanjun’s expanding retinue and brought into her temples. By the early seventeenth century, Douzhen and at least three others had become her companions, and one observer claimed that those prayers about small children’s smallpox (ᄪᛲ) led to amazing results (࡞ࡐ).125 By the late seventeenth century, Yuanjun’s full entourage would number eight, nine including herself.126 We will examine later how headdress iconography would create a visual connection among these female deities when they were presented in sets on the altar. As Chapter 13 and Chapter 14 will show, those companions who were associated with children were portrayed with a small child (occasionally more than one), held in the hands or on the lap.127 We must presume that all these children were boys, although their sex was not usually obvious. Yanguang, distinctively, held a single or a pair of eyes (misunderstood by modern Western viewers). Yuanjun herself grasped only her tablet of male-like authority. Although she was eventually given her own private chambers on Mount Tai (by 1587), I have seen no evidence that she was ever given a husband. It was the presence of other Niangniang in the same hall or compound that created a companionate atmosphere that was family-friendly but more sisterly than patriarchal. The names and statues of these companions established what came to be a widely popular association of the one-time Jade Maiden with motherhood and children. By the late Ming, she was represented at Gaoliang Bridge near Beijing as someone who would “send down births (ઁТ)” on her own birthday, prompting the childless women of the capital to pour out of the city to pray here for a miracle (᜜ࢼ).128 The halls of Yuanjun’s temples thus came to be filled with thank-you gifts of small figures of babies (wawa ෈෈). (See Figure 1.3.) And for those men and women who were worried about their progeny—the young wife who had not conceived or who had given birth to only girls, or her husband, mother-in-law, or father-in-law—it may have been convenient to visit a temple hall where differently specialized female deities could be prayed to. Anxieties about sterility, a difficult pregnancy, the mother’s survival, infant death, and childhood disease could each be expressed in

prayer. Unmarried men may have felt ill at ease in such a hall, as they would when venturing into the women’s quarters at home. Husbands and fathers more deeply concerned about male progeny may not have minded. For older women, a room full of women and children was inviting and comfortable. Although Yuanjun was feminized and domesticated by her companions and by the images of children that would be found in her halls, she retained a spatially central male authority that helped legitimize so familyoriented a space. As we shall see, the ambiguities surrounding Woman, Immortal, Lady, Mother, and Master did not disappear, even as their content shifted, but companions made her part of a Niangniang group. She may have started out as a lightweight Jade Maiden, but her location had given her history, the attentions of emperors and daoists had provided a masterful status, and countless devotees had made her a mature woman surrounded by women. Hints of sexuality were probably pushed into ephemeral oral media. The confusing personas that have challenged historians were shared by many Ming literati who were asked to write inscriptions commemorating Yuanjun’s temples: “As for August Mother, we do not know what god she is (๦আϤҌԷ‫)ظ‬,” wrote one.129 We can feel some sympathy for the ambivalent author of a 1527 stele inscription who reluctantly singled out Bixia Yuanjun as the most popular of an array of deities in “shrines to females (ѽᅦṽ)” that might include august mothers, celestial concubines, silkworm maidens, dragon-mothers, immortals, and young ladies.130 Such growing prominence may have challenged entrenched gender categories, for (as we shall see in the chapters that follow) it did generate criticism from some Classically educated men. Similarities to other gods and to living women may have impeded the transmission of a clear message about who the Master of the Azure Clouds really was, but they also meant a convenient openness to different understandings and an attractive and versatile multi-

plicity. Female gods were no longer uncommon by the middle of the Ming and worship of this still-unfamiliar deity did not involve changes to established beliefs and practices. On the contrary, it was a product and of a piece with them. Although the Jade Woman at Mount Tai was part of a supernatural world that had once been overwhelmingly male, she and the other new female deities had enlarged the spiritual pie without obviously changing it. The developments that we have discussed in this chapter would continue to affect the history of the gods of Mount Tai during the second half of the Ming period. As the economy grew more commercial and interconnected, the movement of people, objects, and books increased, and the circulation of ideas and images across regions became ever easier. This intensity of interaction spurred the sharing of visual religious culture in and beyond the North, and the dissemination of information about Mount Tai and its history reached larger audiences. In the next section of this book, we will turn to the geographic expansion of the worship of the Lady of Mount Tai that took place during the Ming. The consequences were considerable, not only for the religious culture of North China but for Dongyue and Mount Tai itself. Pilgrimage took on new intensity and would spread knowledge of the mountain gods, and, as the power of popular believers increased and imperial interest flickered on and off, Quanzhen daoists and Shandong officials competed to use the revenue that was pouring in. Meanwhile, the need for new temples stimulated artisans all over the North to create new images of the deity. By the end of the Ming period, the transformed Jade Maiden had become a ubiquitous and intimate part of North China’s daily culture. Let us begin by looking at how Bixia Yuanjun flew down from Mount Tai to find new homes and new devotees.

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part two

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Expansion and Acceptance

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chapter 5

Beyond Mount Tai, 1400–1640

After four hundred years of isolation, the Celestial Immortal Jade Woman, August Mother and Master of the Azure Clouds, came down from Mount Tai. Her fame grew across the North China Plain, followers increased, temples were built, and pilgrimages to the mountain became ever more common.1 This extension of the worship of Bixia Yuanjun in the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was assisted by the general stability of Ming rule in North China after 1400, the interconnectedness of the economy, the relative safety of travel, and the lack of compelling challenges to received authority. Nevertheless, Yuanjun’s transformation into one of North China’s most popular gods was by no means assured. Her home on Mount Tai had proved advantageous, but with exposure came criticism and hostility. As earlier chapters of this book have shown, the stone figure in a human form that was discovered on the summit of Mount Tai had initially been given a generic label that placed her among the many jade maidens thought to frequent the mountain slopes. The first shrine, created in 1008, gave her a more specific identity, which I have rendered as Jade Woman, but it did not connect her explicitly to existing deities elsewhere. Located high on an uninhabited mountain, she had no preexisting or obvious community of worshippers, an unusual situation for a Chinese god. Her early sponsors did not live nearby but were occasional visitors from distant places. As for the residents of Tai’an city, there at the foot of the mountain, even though they may have

been among the earliest to climb to the summit and pray to the Jade Woman, I have seen no signs that they were ever her special supporters. That city had its own gods and temples, in addition to the government-sponsored ones to the Eastern Peak at the Yue Miao.2 The summit temple was maintained instead, with incrementally increasing attention, by the Quanzhen daoists resident below and by donors from afar. As that shrine received more visitors and as gifts piled up, local officials had become interested in commandeering those funds. Like the daoists, they helped sustain the worship of the Jade Woman at Mount Tai but did not promote her. Pilgrims and travelers to the summit brought income and fame to the god but, however numerous, they did not cohere into a permanent or organized community. Such was the dilemma of Yuanjun’s incipient success: dispersed devotees. The empire-wide reputation of the Great Eastern Peak as the most important of the Five Peaks and the location for the historic Feng–Shan rites antedated 1008 and was enhanced thereafter. By the fourteenth century, emperors, daoists, officials, scholars, and ordinary people knew also of the mountain’s manifold powers through temples elsewhere dedicated to the Great Emperor of the Eastern Peak and his subordinate judges of hell. Because of Dongyue’s ambiguous place in Ming state ritual, some of these temples were sustained quasi-officially. At Mount Tai, this male god’s powers provided an obvious context for understanding and legitimizing gods of mount tai

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the Jade Woman. As Yuanjun’s worship spread beyond Mount Tai, we will see that her devotees invoked the legitimacy of Dongyue as a pedigree for hers, used the mountain to make her more familiar, and turned his temples into scaffolding for extending her worship. As she outgrew this dependence and was regarded by some with suspicion, criticisms of the one were extended to the other. And so the relationship between the two gods remained ill-defined, complementary yet competitive. They lived more or less together on Mount Tai, and increasingly apart elsewhere, but during the Ming, their stories cannot be separated. Although Bixia Yuanjun’s success may look smooth in retrospect, it was a bumpy road for an unknown female god, and one not free of difficulty for the older male one. As she was relocated by her devotees, Yuanjun was represented in readily available media and, bringing along her companions, she developed her own new personas. The systematizing force of the Yue Miao Quanzhen daoists, never great, diminished as the cult settled into the religious life of villages and towns across the North. Imperial interest and resources were concentrated on Mount Tai, with little attention given to the deity elsewhere. Thus, it was the returned pilgrims themselves who did the initial work of extending the worship of Bixia Yuanjun and, together with local hosts, gave it new dynamism and diversity. By the early seventeenth century, pilgrims would be streaming to the mountain from all over the North, enhancing the prestige of Mount Tai itself and bringing Yuanjun’s worship into their home communities. When we look at the geographic extent of the new cult, moreover, it is possible to see that this rollout was made easier because convenient local resources were used to build her temples and make her god-images, imbuing them with both familiarity and freshness. We shall begin by exploring the extension of Mount Tai temples in the aggregate during the Ming period. We will then take a closer look at the mechanisms by which this process took place, at some of the people responsible, and at the geographic shape of the results. We shall also consider the ways in which godimages of Yuanjun made her physically present in different places, and how new publications and illustrations spread information about her, all of which helped her settle in her new homes. 114

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In Chapter 6 we shall consider how these developments might have been constrained by existing structures of power, and then examine the doubts and outright opposition of members of the Ming scholar-official elite. The multiplication of temples to the Jade Woman from one to many hundred was fed by and fed off the simultaneous transformation of Mount Tai into a vigorous object of tourist and pilgrim travel. In Chapters 7 and 8, we will look more closely at the intertwined and parallel story of those changes at the mountain that formed the vital core of the cult and that lay behind the history set forth below. MOVING BEYOND THE MOUNTAIN Most work on Chinese pilgrimage has followed the best sources and concentrated on a central site and the journeys there by pilgrims. For gods whose cult had a fixed starting point in space and time, some studies have been able to follow the spread of its temples but usually on a limited scale. My goal, to track down all Bixia Yuanjun temples beyond Mount Tai, has been a challenge, requiring the assembling of scattered fragments and a willingness to generalize from the results. First, the big picture. Graph 5.1 illustrates two trends. The upper line shows the increase in the existence of temples called Dongyue Miao ֆₙᜐ in North China during the Ming dynasty. (I have not undertaken to track the pace of this empire-wide cult outside the region.) Readers please note: these are temples known to me and the numbers are, necessarily, misleadingly precise; see Appendix 1. To the 185 pre-existing Dongyue temples at the start of the Ming at least 330 more were added, at an accelerating pace after 1500. More than one per year was recorded somewhere in North China in the course of the dynasty. We can see the changing shape of the upper curve, but it is not possible to comment meaningfully on the speed with which this process took place without more comparative data.3 The lower line shows temples to Bixia Yuanjun in the same period. All but a bare handful of these were new and were built after 1460. Because textual sources recorded at the most the construction of new temples, the preliminary stages of Yuanjun’s expanding presence are scarcely visible. The graph thus shows the iceberg only above the waterline. Nevertheless, we can see that temples to Yuanjun proliferated much




  











 
 







 


Graph 5.1













 





 


 


 


 


 


 


 


North China Temples to Mount Tai Gods, 1368–1644.

faster than those to Dongyue, and by the end of the dynasty the Master of the Clouds had nearly caught up with the Emperor (his 524 to her 444). Despite the spurious precision of these numbers, these relative trends seem quite believable, especially since Dongyue temples may have been more readily recorded. Having examined as closely as I could the local gazetteer record from 1008 on, I have found no temples away from Mount Tai prior to the Ming that were named for the Jade Woman or that replicated the 1264 Daoist name for her shrine on the peak (Zhaozhen Guan).4 (There are some hints of older connections with the Kaifeng area that will be mentioned below.) Only after a new name was bestowed on the god in the 1460s do we see an upsurge of new buildings where she was publicly worshipped. It is therefore clear and convincing to me that it was during the Ming, not earlier, and really after 1460, that independent temples to this deity were established away from her home mountain. (God-images said to date prior to 1400 should therefore be viewed with suspicion, a matter I will take up in later chap-

ters.) Although not obvious at the time, a tipping point in Yuanjun’s history had been reached. Once established elsewhere, her cult took off, and after the 1540s it expanded with growing speed compared to that of her male predecessor. Work to date on China and elsewhere has suggested various models for the extension of religious belief into new communities and new lands. Before examining how Yuanjun’s proliferation took place, it is worth considering what scholars have so far proposed as the general mechanisms for such processes.5 For missionizing religions, it has often been highly motivated individuals who set out to disseminate the word and convert the unconverted, and who then replicate elsewhere the institutions of the home religion or church, whether nearby or far away. This phenomenon was certainly known in China, but conversion-oriented Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians did not promote the Taishan gods, nor did fundamentalist Confucians. Late imperial North China was, however, the heartland of religiously inspired popular chapter 5 | beyond mount tai, 1400–1640

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movements that did encourage zealous recruitment. Their quasi-illegal status discouraged temple-building, but they eventually tried to co-opt Yuanjun as one incarnation of their central deity through some of their scriptures (a matter discussed in later chapters). Quanzhen daoists, however, were active proselytizers of a respectable orthodoxy. Their network of monasteries, circulation of clerics, and loose relationships with the Baiyun Guan in Beijing had resulted from an initial missionary phase, and had later assisted in popularizing selected gods. Dongyue was a minor part of their pantheon; Bixia Yuanjun was not. Nor do I know of lay patrons of either Mount Tai god who undertook to promote them in a systematic or widespread fashion. Scholars who study the history of Chinese popular religion have concentrated on the roles of sojourners in transporting the worship of their hometown gods to other places. Chinese are not alone in creating diasporic communities based on shared language, culture, ethnicity, and/or religion. Taking along a familiar, responsive god was natural and practical, and from medieval times Chinese with long-distance businesses readily installed such deities in the lodges they built in the nodes of their networks. Such practices had brought Miss Lin north with men from Fujian, and we will see other instances in Chapter 11. The ways in which local specializations (in products, expertise, or occupation) were developed and exported through chain migration thus definitely helped move Chinese gods to new places. It is not obvious to me, however, that such an “expansion” actually made those sojourning gods part of the communities into which they were brought, at least not immediately. More normally (during Ming and Qing times), they remained confined within temple-lodges that were at best quasi-public, but probably mostly private. The adoption of a sojourners’ deity by a host community was a distant second step. In any case, the area near Mount Tai was home to no such diasporically inclined community, and I have seen no evidence from North China that either Dongyue or Bixia Yuanjun was the tutelary deity of any emigrant sojourning group, nor did her new temples double as lodges. Less well-organized migrants also carried their old gods to new places, but I know of no such out-migration from Mount Tai during the 116

gods of mount tai

Ming. Once Yuanjun’s cult was entrenched in North China, however, it was taken beyond the Great Wall, especially during the Qing, by farmers in search of new land.6 (For the less obvious leadership role of eunuchs, see below.) Despite ambiguities in the status of Dongyue created by early Ming attempts to strip him of human characteristics, many local officials continued to assist temples to this god in county seats. These Dongyue Miao, and the magistrates who made offerings there, had helped solidify an empire-wide foundation for his reputation. Yuanjun, by contrast, was never part of the state religion of any dynasty and was not carried to new places by such practices. Although I will argue below that worship of Bixia Yuanjun was focused within one region, there is no evidence that she was understood as having a territorially defined identity. Like Mount Tai, whose claims to status were empire wide, Yuanjun remained positioned as universal, not regional or local or particular in her powers. Neither she nor the Emperor of the Eastern Peak became symbols of a more narrowly defined place or group. None of these well-studied mechanisms give us much help in accounting for the rapid spread of the worship of Bixia Yuanjun in the mid and late Ming. With no home community or organized patrons, her history was unusual. She was discovered by men and women who came to the mountain for different reasons, and some of them took knowledge of the god’s responsiveness home. It was these diverse pilgrims and visitors who personally brought the god down the mountain, testifying to her powers, and planting her elsewhere. Most them, as we shall see, came from the nearby region. Once Yuanjun’s worship was established away from Mount Tai, it could then travel by a common path of growth: expansion through increments, as neighbors learned from neighbors. Anthropological work in parts of southern China has shown that this dispersion could be understood in terms of an older “mother” temple from which incense was ritually removed and transferred to a newer temple to the same god.7 I have yet to see a discourse of such an “incense cutting” phenomenon in North China, and shall have more to say about the other ways in which the relationship between temples to the same god might be

characterized. But both involved individual acts of transplanting. Let us take a closer look at this process. The possibility of worshipping a single identifiable supernatural power in different places is commonly accepted in world religions, and in China it is at least as old as Buddhist shrines. In my Ming and Qing sources, I have found scattered phrases using different metaphors (in Literary Chinese) to explain some of the underlying ideas behind this unsystematized belief. A god can “move about anywhere in the empire (౶ҵϳ Ў).” “Gods are in the heavens like water is on the earth (‫ظ‬ҏϨϳҒһҏҲс).” Nevertheless, to be responsive to human requests, a god’s efficacy had to be manifested in a place (ࢼࣶӊ...) so that its powers could be “settled (ᔃ).” “From the past down to the present, the serving (Ѩ) of ghosts and gods has consisted of more than just reverent offerings and incense, rather it has necessitated the building of altars (Ⴋᚵ) as places for the gods to rely on (ལ࣊).”8 By setting a consecrated image on an altar, any devotee created a place to which the god could come (ϰ), where responsive powers could rest and be settled (ᔃ‫ظ‬ҏӛ, ϣԥ ‫)ࢼظ‬, an abode for the god (‫ࢼظ‬ҏӛྎ; ‫ظ‬Ҵᩗྎҏ с; ‫۠ظ‬ӛྎ). By making a god available for offerings, moreover, the area near the temple could also be stabilized and protected (๰ᐹ). Were these different locations the same as Mount Tai, where Yuanjun’s golden body sat (‫ؖ‬ӱ‫ܩ‬ӊ೉┬) and to which people from “all under Heaven” went to present incense? Some thought yes: “How can one distinguish between Mount Tai being far and our Fu [temple] being near (‫ح‬д೉‫ځ‬ҏ‫׼‬ዑᠨҏ‫ ”?)ײ‬Others thought no: Just as each locality had its own citygod, so “on Shandong’s mountain, you naturally (І) have an August Mother of the Eastern Direction (ֆҤ ๦আ). In my home place, we have my home place’s (ጌ ग) Shengmu. There is no need to confuse [them] and make them one (ౢґЊչϣ).” People in Henan said plainly: “Yuanjun is not on Dai, she is at Fu [our local mountain] (ϤϨল┬ґϨൿ).” No theology necessitated that these views be reconciled. Individual and local understandings prevailed. Although a god could be equally present in each of their images, the fact that gods could be more responsive in certain manifestations encouraged the optimistic creation of new temples where the powers of new

images could be made available to a new community. And there was no limit to the number of images and temples through which communication could occur. The mechanisms for creating a new home for a deity were also commonplace knowledge, and by following this process we can see “expansion” in concrete terms. A big new building was not essential. There had only to be some physical representation of the god, of any size, that could be placed upon a table or shelf where incense could be burned, whether in a home, workplace, or an existing building dedicated to another deity. It was this basic process that took place as Bixia Yuanjun came down from Mount Tai during and after the fifteenth century. In each case, a new image was placed in a known context. It seems logical that these start-up images would have been of Yuanjun herself, with companion deities following only as the place of worship became bigger. Once she became locally familiar, continued replication of images and altars became steadily easier. Because Chinese temples were not exclusive to one deity, one god could find space in the home of another. In those managed by a community of local people (rather than resident clerics or ritual specialists), objections were surely possible but there were few formal barriers. Added god-images could be set conveniently beside older ones, or given a separate altar to one side, or allocated a room to themselves. A temple was a hot zone for repeated moments of personal contact with gods—an ongoing enterprise, not a historic site—and each new statue was a source of hope and possibility that could recharge the whole. Should a newcomer prove especially responsive, side-halls and additional courtyards could be added to the right or left, front or rear. Dozens of gods thus could and did reside in a single complex, and later arrivals could outdo the main god in popularity and perceived efficacy. Most new temples began small, as the Azure Cloud Palace had. An open niche (➟) that merely sheltered an image was enough to start with, but a little one-room (ϣ⚖/Ҽ) building would be better. Except for the altar, which could be built-in, no furniture was needed. However, there was always more to do inside and out to make the temple larger, stronger, and more beautiful. Each improvement was understood as the best that the god’s devotees could provide at any given moment, but each was accompanied by the amchapter 5 | beyond mount tai, 1400–1640

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bition to do more and with the conviction that believers and the god, working together, would continue to make the god’s home better. Repair, restoration, renovation, and expansion (ࢗ, Գࠃ, ЈϽҏ) were all upgrades, desirable and expected phases in a temple’s life. They were not the carefully designed immutable results of an architect’s vision but the expressions of ongoing collective devotion—and ever-available occasions for the renewal of commitment and the formation of associations.9 For the buildings themselves, generic templates were available everywhere as models to emulate. In North China, simple buildings were made of brick and mud, but they could be improved by adding some timbers to the structure and changing from thatched to tile roofs. See Figure 5.1.10 A single hall with columns and a surrounding wall that formed a courtyard was already quite an achievement. Two courtyards were even better, while grand multistory halls and a line of courtyards were an impossible dream for most communities. (Because such elaborate complexes survive disproportionately today, travelers to China are given a misleading impression of the normal state of affairs in the past.) This process of replication and expansion took place entirely beyond the purview of the state, which concentrated on those religious edifices for which its designated representatives were responsible. Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian ritual communities could control their own spaces, but by the Ming, they too were outnumbered by temples with only hired caretakers or clerics. Those modestly compensated men and women usually had narrowly focused responsibilities, and it was instead groups of lay believers who stepped forward to raise funds and manage construction projects. Familiarity with such organizing techniques was widespread, artisanal expertise was nearby, and examples of other temples were everywhere. By the Ming there were hundreds of gods with generally similar claims about answering individual prayers. Miracles were sometimes mentioned in texts but more ordinarily were expressed in the word-ofmouth testimony of believers. Actual responsiveness varied, of course, but the size and wealth of each temple stood as public evidence. Even in a small community there were usually at least two or three gods to whom one might turn. Given unavoidable human 118

gods of mount tai

5.1 A newly built temple to Lord Guan in a small riverport town in southeastern Henan. A modern version of a plain one-room hall built of brick, with fired-tile roof, cement facing on the front, no courtyard, and a cement incense burner in front of the door. Inside were three life-size brightly painted locally made clay statues placed on a builtin ledge, a simple mural behind, and a few inexpensive altar vessels. (Author’s photograph, Xincai county, 2007.)

cares and concerns and the hopeful anticipation that is one of the pleasures of prayer, it is not surprising that believers could approach both old and new gods optimistically and be ever ready to abandon the unresponsive ones. Gods could acquire and lose their reputations, temples could increase explosively or die slowly of neglect. The religious landscape in any given place and time was thus uneven in its constellations of power, full of potential, only momentarily stable within a context of fluid change. Such an environment was receptive to the appearance of an unfamiliar deity. For Dongyue to stay active and for Yuanjun to become known beyond Mount Tai, both had to be demonstrably efficacious and responsive, lingying ࢼ‫׎‬. Miracles,

answered prayers, and altars were the essential currency of “success.” Although establishing new temples to Bixia Yuanjun did not involve any fundamental change in Chinese religious culture, there were certain kinds of religious establishments where she rarely turned up: those that housed an organized community of clerics, those where an official was formally involved in maintenance or ritual performance, and those where the patrons were a closed constituency. It was instead the minimally staffed unaffiliated temples, funded by loose and changing associations of donors and patrons who lived nearby, where those devoted to this god most readily made a home for her. Dongyue was known throughout the empire well before the Ming, his powers evidenced by history, state interest, and the fact of Mount Tai itself, and reinforced by hopes, fears, and stories about the torments of hell. His worship no longer depended on the testimony of pilgrims or visitors to Mount Tai, but was already performed in many places by officials, elites, and local communities. He had a reputation, he just needed to keep it. For the Jade Woman, the situation was more challenging. HOMES AWAY FROM HOME Despite the theoretical possibility that the cult of Bixia Yuanjun could be transplanted beyond from Mount Tai, it took many hundred years for this to happen. The earliest stages of this process are predictably difficult to spot. The temple names tracked in Graph 5.1 identified only the main god in the main hall, not the others who were also worshipped there. It seems impossible that the increasingly rapid growth after 1460 was not built on older foundations, and fragmentary evidence can show us how. I see at least three established procedures, which may constitute three stages, by which Yuanjun was given new homes beyond Mount Tai before she was given her own eponymous temples: placing her image on an altar to another god in an existing temple; dedicating a separate hall to her in such a temple; and making her the main god of a new temple not explicitly named after her. There is evidence that all of these processes were at work in the early Ming. An existing Dongyue temple seems an obvious choice for someone local to place an image of this fel-

low resident of Mount Tai. The female god could enter unobtrusively, and thus borrow not only the male deity’s physical space but also his history, his legitimacy, and his familiarity as an object of worship. A few tantalizingly brief examples are suggestive of this route. One Dongyue complex in central Henan was rebuilt in 1311 and even at this early date it included a hall to an “August Mother”;11 another, when redoing its god-images in the 1440s, included a statue of Shengmu along with one of Dongyue.12 Were these the Jade Woman? In 1439, in a new Dongyue temple at the Great Wall, ten lords of hell were installed to the west of the Great Emperor, while a female called Fanyu Shengmu Shengji ໪ड़๦আ๦ᮮ (Child-rearing August Mother and August Concubine) was placed in the hall to the east.13 These female deities could plausibly be Yuanjun (although I have no better evidence that she had been called “Shengmu” before 1500). Clearer evidence of the processes of dissemination becomes available well after the rebuilding and renaming at the summit of Mount Tai in the 1460s. Although I cannot tell if Yuanjun ever actually joined Dongyue in his own hall (perhaps not), sometimes her god-image was added somewhere on the premises during repairs or images of her companions were placed in his Private Quarters.14 In a Yuan-era temple rebuilt in 1553, for example, Dongyue, with his impressive imperial air (෌ࣼ ҏӠ), still occupied the main hall; on the east, a prestigious position, was a hall for “Shengmu Yuanjun ๦ আׄᅿ,” and on the west, one for the Bingling Duke and offices for the ten hell-lords. The commemorative text noted, moreover, that this temple was very popular with people praying for children, a sign of Yuanjun’s active presence.15 In another Dongyue temple (in 1577) an added Shengmu image was paired with a Shenggong ๦ԍ (August Father?), perhaps to make the August Mother seem more orthodox.16 A few scattered examples document the addition of a separate Yuanjun hall to the residences of other gods as well, to a Zhenwu temple in 1527 or a Stone-buddha temple by 1559, for example,17 but Dongyue temples were the most commonly borrowed and/or invaded premises. Yuanjun’s growing presence during the sixteenth century may have strained her relationship with the primary deities in such temples (and their patrons). A desirable if expensive alternative was, of course, to dedicate an entire temple to the female deity and put chapter 5 | beyond mount tai, 1400–1640

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Bixia Yuanjun Nainai Niangniang Shengmu Shengmu Niangniang Taishan Nainai Taishan Niangniang Taishan Shengmu Taishan Tianxian Shengmu Tianxian Niangniang Tianxian Shengmu Bixia Yuanjun

ካᎇׄᅿ

Tianxian Yunü Bixia Yuanjun

ϳ࿁ർѽካᎇׄᅿ

Yunü

ർѽ

Table 5.1

ਔਔ ๦আ ๦আਔਔ ೉‫ލލځ‬ ೉‫ځ‬ਔਔ ೉‫ځ‬๦আ ೉‫ځ‬ϳ࿁๦আ ϳ࿁ਔਔ ϳ࿁Тআካᎇׄᅿ

Ming and Qing names used for the Jade Maiden of 1008.

her in the main hall there. During the transitional era of the mid-Ming, this was done. Such temples seem to have been given an ambiguous temple name, one that I believe bridged this shift from the shadows into the spotlight: Taishan Miao ೉‫ځ‬ᜐ, Mount Tai temple.18 (I will render Taishan as one word in temple names to distinguish them from references to the mountain.) Prior to the Ming, temples dedicated to Dongyue had been called Tianqi ϳಞ or Dongyue ֆₙ Miao.19 But in the fifteenth century “Taishan” appears in the historical record as a temple name indicating, I believe, that Yuanjun was worshipped in the main hall. The sudden increase in Taishan temples and touringpalaces starting in 1469 closely parallels the rise of the lower line in Graph 5.1. This accommodating name conveniently obscured which Mount Tai deity was housed there. In fact, later temples dedicated to the Eastern Peak Emperor retained “Dongyue” in their names while most of these new ones treated “Taishan Shengmu” (or some variation) as the principal god but included the legitimizing presence of the lords of hell or even the Five Great Peaks. “Taishan Miao,” new but familiar, thus became a vehicle for the Ming expansion of Yuanjun’s cult.20 By the 1520s, the devotees of Yuanjun had left the “Dongyue/Eastern Peak” designation to the male god 120

Master of the Azure Clouds Granny Lady August Mother August Lady Mother Granny of Mount Tai Lady of Mount Tai August Mother of Mount Tai Celestial Immortal and August Mother of Mount Tai Lady Celestial Immortal Celestial Immortal, August Mother, and Master of the Azure Clouds Celestial Immortal and Jade Maiden, Master of the Azure Clouds Jade Maiden/Woman

‫ލލ‬

gods of mount tai

and claimed “Taishan/Mount Tai” for her temples. After all, wrote one commentator, “Yuanjun’s temple is on the summit of the Efficacious Great Peak. How can she not be called the god of Tai Shan (೉‫ځ‬ҏ‫”?)ظ‬21 Another said, “Tai Shan is the chief of the Five Peaks, Yuanjun is the most revered of the various gods (ᇠ‫ظ‬ ҏಀ).”22 The new name appeared unsystematically but had clearly caught on. These new Taishan temples sometimes sprang up on the tops of the large hills and small mountains that still dotted the North China countryside. Imitating Mount Tai by giving Yuanjun another summit to live on had a certain logic and strengthened the invisible connection between a local Yuanjun and the one on the great mountain. (Competitive small temples to the Jade Sovereign sometimes did likewise. Dongyue temples did not.) Because the god could be anywhere, temples that were distant from Mount Tai had their advantages. If Mount Tai was far, having a temple nearer home was certainly “more convenient (۬)” for those who could not travel such a distance in person. Or if bad weather made a pilgrimage difficult or impossible: “Once [our local temple is] established, the people of the district can worship here summer and winter. Why will it be necessary to go and climb Mount Tai?”23 One could

even go to a closer temple, face toward the farther one, and “worship from afar (ֳ់, ༃‫)۾‬.” A good many of the new temples to Yuanjun emphasized a different sort of linkage by being called xinggong/xingci Ҳ࿮/Ҳṽ, not miao. Hitherto, older shrines to Dongyue (dating from the Yuan and early Ming) had used this idea of the touring-palace to signal their relationship to the god’s home at Mount Tai. By the early sixteenth century, devotees of the Master of the Azure Clouds had appropriated this designation for her temples as well.24 Inscriptions connected with these projects indicate that the donors intended to emphasize this close association, and they frequently referred to visits to Mount Tai, or to active pilgrimage associations, or to how far away the mountain was. These xinggong may have served as launching points for pilgrimages to Shandong, but many (like the mini-mountains) became instead the nodes in smaller systems of pilgrimage and even major centers themselves, as we shall see in Part Three. If we look at the number of these touring-palaces across the sixteenth century, we see a version of the trends shown in Graph 5.1. Taishan Xinggong begin to appear in the 1520s, turn up about once every four years or so through the 1550s, then start increasing faster, and experience a burst in the 1570s and 1580s. They appear on the North China Plain, in places from which a pilgrimage to Mount Tai was practicable: mostly in Shandong and Zhili (Hebei), and in Henan only north of the Yellow River—which was then running straight east, that is, south of Shandong. (Chapter 8 will provide a context for understanding these pilgrims.) Of all the temples to Yuanjun founded the Ming, only 25 percent were in county seats (by contrast with 40 percent for Dongyue), and those were called “Taishan Miao” and built in the fifteenth century. It was only gradually thereafter that temples explicitly named after the female god would be constructed in cities where the male god had had a more noticeable presence. The existence of a Dongyue temple might thus have facilitated the initial extension of the Yuanjun cult, but his urban sponsors may then have encouraged (or pressured) her temples to find homes out of the cities, in suburban hills or the countryside.25 By the end of the sixteenth century, although Yuanjun’s temples were on their way to matching those of Dongyue within North China, we can still see a hesi-

tant diversity about what to call them or her. Just as many new names for Yuanjun were already in play before 1500, new combinations proliferated as new temples were dedicated. Many continued to include “Eastern Peak”: Dongyue Yuanjun Xinggong; Dongyue Taishan Tianxian Shengmu Xingci; Dongyue Tianxian Yunü Bixia Yuanjun Xinggong; Dongdai (ֆ┬) Shengmu Xinggong; and so forth. Others preferred simply “Mount Tai” (Taishan Bixia Yuanjun Xingci). A few new shrines used “Bixia Lingying Shengmu Xingci” or “Bixia Yuanjun Miao,” but it was not until the 1520s that this latter appellation increased significantly. The most common choice was “Taishan Shengmu Ci/ Xingci ೉‫ځ‬๦আҲṽ,” the Touring-shrine of the August Mother of Mount Tai. These loose aggregations of temple names mirrored the dynamic proliferation of ways to refer to the Jade Maiden herself that are shown in Table 5.1. This variety was characteristic of the rapid growth of this cult during the sixteenth century and should be understood as components of the novelty, uncertainty, and exhilaration of this phase. Such piled-up variety in the names of the god and her temples may seem to reflect confusion, and to some extent it did, but I think we should interpret it also as a sign of vigor: the energetic burst of a new phenomenon whose robust genetic diversity was the basis for growth and adaptability in later generations. As we shall see, the god-images from the sixteenth century show a similarly open-ended range of possibilities and are another kind of evidence for this initial unorganized vitality. Many scholarly analyses of new or intensified religious activity have attempted to examine the psychology or social situation of the individuals involved in such innovation. Although the statues of Bixia Yuanjun discussed below may hint at unarticulated hopes and fears, the textual evidence available to me comes largely through stele inscriptions, a poor source for information on such matters. Nevertheless, a few fragmentary examples of specific cases can give a feel for the excitement of this Ming era expansion, the period when the structural and physical foundations of the cult were put in place. Early in the sixteenth century, when Chen Nai ಴ ⹿, a holder of the highest examination degree, returned home to Qian’an county in the mountains east chapter 5 | beyond mount tai, 1400–1640

121

of Beijing, he recognized the familiar celebration of Dongyue’s 3/28 birthday (ӛ‫ࢨ܄‬Ԋ‫)ٷ‬, but he had never heard of a shrine with the (supposedly) imperially bestowed name “Bixia Yuanjun.” Inquiring, he discovered that a respected local man had successfully prayed to this Yuanjun and repaid his vow by building a temple for her. Once that man had pledged the land, other people had “wholeheartedly” chipped in, the wealthy with money, others with labor. By 1510 they had constructed a new building and installed a statue to the Master of the Clouds and several companions. Chen Nai, asked to compose an inscription for the temple in 1526 and still uneasy with the new deity, made sure that temple was named after the male god, specifically calling him “God of the Eastern Peak Tai Shan” as the dynastic founder had decreed.26 The story of a Bixia Gong in Xun county may illustrate better the kind of unplanned conjunctures, hesitations, and warm receptions that built the cult. Located on the Wei River in northern Henan province, Xun ⤨ is a place that will appear again in this narrative. Sometime before 1540, worship of the unfamiliar jade maiden had begun there in a single room (ϣ⚖) that was off to the side in the City-god temple in the county seat. Prayers to this deity were answered and demand grew for a larger space. Money was slowly raised by the grateful. A new magistrate arrived, a man from the far southwestern part of the empire, accompanied by his ailing son. Told that in this locality Bixia’s methods were efficacious (ካ ᎇҤࣶࢼᵯग), and remembering his own previous ascent of Mount Tai (where presumably he had had some exposure to the deity), Magistrate Jiang ignored the scoffing of some colleagues and prayed to her. To his delight and relief, his son rapidly recovered. Won over, Jiang began to treat the god as a god (‫ظ‬ҏ), and in 1540 he concurred with those who thought she deserved better quarters. And so he donated funds from his salary (making the action only quasi-private), combined forces with local fundraisers, and moved the deity to a new building atop a small hill just west of Xun city. (For the local terrain and temple locations, see Figure 12.2.) This temple was formally named the Bixia Yuanjun Touringpalace, but on the stelae that commemorated this history, she was also called the Lady (Niangniang) and Celestial Immortal August Mother (ϳ࿁๦আ). Within twenty years, local people had again organized to keep the expanding complex in good repair.27 122

gods of mount tai

As these cases of Qian’an and Xun county illustrate, the initiative to construct new temples to Yuanjun was shaped as much by contingency as general circumstances. A trip to Mount Tai was not necessarily the trigger; Yuanjun was sometimes mentioned by friends or appeared in dreams. Frequently, those who had heard about the god simply said that they wanted the convenience of a closer place to petition her: not everyone had the time or the strength (Ҩ) to make the trip to the mountain. There were, of course, other reasons why a new efficacious temple might benefit certain sponsors or certain communities, but raising the necessary money was rarely easy. In a world with many different August Mothers, not to mention Empress Earth, the Celestial Concubine, and Guanyin, Mount Tai’s many-named female god was not automatically identifiable, and certainly not by the spoken word alone. Even by the end of the sixteenth century, there were still many places where the cult was new and unfamiliar. In 1596 one stele author, for example, still needed to explain that their hilltop Taishan Touring-palace was actually a Bixia Yuanjun shrine, the most famous of six or seven others already in their county in northern Jiangsu.28 As late as 1639, a young man studying for the exams in Xiping county (central Henan) happened to visit a Tianxian ϳ࿁temple with friends. Impressed with the building but having apparently still never heard of this god, he inquired about who she was and (pointedly) whether she had any titles.29 The extension of Yuanjun’s cult to Beijing significantly increased her renown. Once she was established in the populous and much-visited capital, many different kinds of people, natives and outsiders, were exposed to her in a familiar setting. This worship seems to have begun in the fifteenth century, but our records for before the first part of the sixteenth are skimpy. These early temples, so far as I can tell, were called Tianxian ϳ࿁or Niangniang ਔਔMiao, using neither “Bixia” nor “Taishan” but the already simplified names by which she would be best known in the capital area. I know of more than twenty sites with one of these names in place before 1600.30 It is not currently possible to tell exactly what these structures were like. If one were to point—as many scholars like to do—to an organized interest group as active agents behind the expansion of Bixia Yuanjun beyond Mount

Tai, Ming eunuchs are likely candidates and, because of their particular powers under this dynasty, they do seem to have played an important role during this phase. Certain eunuchs may have been introduced to the Jade Woman when they were sent to Shandong to direct construction projects and/or to make offerings on behalf of someone in the palace. The 1460s and 1490s rebuilding of the Mount Tai temples to Yuanjun and the Jade Sovereign, and of the Yue Miao circa 1500, were all directed by such deputies.31 These men would continue to serve as official and private conduits to and from the mountain during the following century and a half, and they were responsible for several important new temples in Beijing. As the wives and daughters and mothers of Ming emperors, largely confined in their movements, learned of the responsive Shandong Lady, they too became increasingly involved as devotees and donors, turning to her with prayers for the health and fertility of male family members. In Beijing itself, a combination of eunuchs and palace women promoted the Celestial Immortal and helped establish her local reputation for efficacy.32 Their prestige and resources further promoted the deity in the city and beyond. In time, several of Yuanjun’s temples in the Beijing area became particularly successful. The Tianxian Miao just outside the northwestern corner of the city at Gaoliang Bridge ҙᅯ൮ had been “restored” in 1561 (perhaps an older temple was converted or a smaller one expanded), and the Lady of Mount Tai’s responsiveness to imperial concerns about sons and the imperial succession was made clear a generation later.33 This temple, along with another one at Maju Bridge ެ ᴄ൮ southeast of the city, and several more in the suburbs, became immensely popular sites of annual pilgrimages that were in full flower in the 1590s through the 1620s. Asymmetrical growth allowed these few big temples to dwarf or eliminate the many smaller ones.34 In Beijing, those success stories were the ones that not only claimed to be “summits (্)” like the temple atop Mount Tai but also included a hall to Dongyue. Beijing’s large Dongyue Miao, built under the Yuan, had already established itself as a major pilgrimage site even before the Ming founding. Thereafter, during the Great Emperor of the Eastern Peak’s protracted 3rd month birthday celebrations, the spacious premises outside the eastern walls of the city were full

of visitors of every social status. Yuanjun herself, however, does not seem to have been brought into the temple, and the only evidence of a connection is a badly degraded 1524 stele placed outside (perhaps of poor quality stone). It was dated the 4th month, by then established as the Lady’s birthday month, and I judge it to have been set up by a pilgrimage association that came to Beijing from elsewhere.35 Even as Dongyue’s temple became a major focus of popular religious life in the sixteenth century Ming capital, separation allowed Yuanjun’s “summit” temples to flourish independently. It would be dangerous to assume that the expansion of this (or any) new cult took place smoothly in an atmosphere of enthusiastic support, although devotees might choose to tell the story that way. (And we will have more to say about this problem in the next chapter.) Yuanjun’s beginnings in Beijing, as perhaps elsewhere, had a contentious side, despite her palace patrons. Indeed, in the poisonous political atmosphere of the late Ming, eunuch support of this god could hardly have improved her reputation with hostile scholar-officials. In the 1590s through the 1600s, at the Imperial Household’s Dye Workshop (ঢ❛ྃ) in the western suburbs, there were rival spirit possessions (of men) by the gods Zhenwu, Lord Guan, Jade Sovereign, and Bixia Yuanjun. Through a great manifestation of miracles in 1608, the Lady of Mount Tai finally triumphed. (The details must be imagined.) The resultant shrine, known as the Western Summit (՝্), soon became a major Yuanjun temple.36 Eunuchs were also the patrons who disseminated the cult outside the capital. They transported Yuanjun to their various North China workplaces and to their hometowns and villages, bringing palace tastes and Imperial Household-quality objects with them. In 1564, for example, eunuchs had a Yuanjun touring-palace built outside the east gate of Yangzhou (a major city on the Grand Canal in distant northern Jiangsu), and they arranged to give it a bronze incense burner apparently cast in Beijing.37 Many similar eunuch patrons may not be immediately visible in the sources. What about Ming Quanzhen daoists? Were they building new temples dedicated to Bixia Yuanjun away from Mount Tai? Not likely. Involved in that summit temple by virtue of proximity, they do not seem to have been special devotees of Yuanjun herself. They preferred to emphasize their association with chapter 5 | beyond mount tai, 1400–1640

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Dongyue, one of a specific array of other gods over whom their rituals gave them exclusive command and who were part of their oral and textual liturgies. By the sixteenth century, some Quanzhen daoists were living not in self-sustaining monastic communities but in ones and twos in community-supported temples. There, they seem to have been willing to take a role in raising money for new temples or halls for either of the Mount Tai gods, but not for Yuanjun in any systematic fashion.38 At the same time, information about Mount Tai, its temples, its pilgrimages, and the female god may have been spread informally but significantly by the daoists who traveled about the region from temple to temple. (And see below for some Daoist scriptures about her.) Another distinctly Ming source of local patrons and promoters of regional religious infrastructure were the princes. It was the policy of the dynastic founder to disempower his sons by resettling them permanently outside the capital, allotting them resources, enmeshing them in a system of ranks and honors, and confining them and their descendants to these residences. There were some thirty such principalities (ࣼ௞) within North China, half a dozen of which were large and enduring. They formed a local aristocracy in these provincial cities and, as some recent work has finally begun to show, were important cultural benefactors.39 Thanks to Richard G. Wang’s pioneering research, we know that some of these princely households were active patrons of Daoist institutions and activities. Temples to the God of the Eastern Peak, especially those with a community of daoists in residence, were sometimes among those so supported, as were those dedicated to Zhenwu, the god whose mountain temple complex in northern Hubei had become an important North China pilgrimage center.40 These princes were only occasional patrons of Bixia Yuanjun, but their relative wealth and access to expensive artisans and materials may have made their gifts—like those from the throne—important advertisements for elite tastes. The successive generations of Lu Ⴡ princes, for example, lived in Yanzhou city south of Mount Tai and they were undoubtedly familiar with the shrine on the mountain summit. But they were also the neighbors of the prestigious descendants of Confucius and Mencius. Lu princes do not seem to have been active pa124

gods of mount tai

trons on the mountain, but in their home town in the 1460s someone assisted the local daoist in restoring a much older Dongyue Miao in that city, and before the end of the Ming, princely funds helped add a belvedere to the Celestial Immortal’s touring-palace just outside Yanzhou and built a Taishan Miao not far away.41 The Heng ႗principality, with its home location in Qingzhou (northeast of Mount Tai, over the mountains but still in Shandong), was an active source of funds for the establishment of Yuanjun there. In the 1540s and 1560s, someone from that princely household contributed to the upgrade of a Bixia Yuanjun Miao (founded 1495); family members were also involved in building up Mount Yunmen ࠥ՞‫—ځ‬one of the city’s famous sights—where there were touring-palaces for both the Great Emperor of the Eastern Peak and the Lady of Mount Tai (೉‫ځ‬ਔਔ) (1534).42 The De ख़ principality was more centrally situated in the Shandong provincial capital at Ji’nan, the nearest stopping point for travelers to Mount Tai who were coming from the north. That family supported a thorough “restoration” of the Taishan Touring-palace in their city in 1516 and again in 1563.43 Many smaller gifts are invisible to us now. In the course of the sixteenth century, these wealthy principalities infused funds into the creation of larger and more permanent and thus more respectable temples to Yuanjun. Such support did not require a whole-family commitment, only the occasional decision by some member of the extended establishment, but it helped create centers that in turn brought the deity to the attention of other people. Moreover, these three Shandong principalities employed staff and hosted visitors who could be alerted to the promising Lady (or Ladies) of Mount Tai and encouraged to visit their temples. The enduring line of Zhou ‫ ر‬princes who were implanted in Kaifeng (farther away in Henan), took an especially active interest in Yuanjun. Several were intermittent patrons of temples on Mount Tai dedicated to the deity.44 It may have been a princely connection that took the Taishan cult along the busy commercial route over the Taihang Mountains into southeastern Shanxi, where there seems to have been a Taishan Miao in 1478, rather early, and certainly one or more a century later. A large 1573 cast-iron incense burner from the seat of the Shen ᔁ principality in Lu’an city still stands in the Dai Miao at Tai’an, an advertisement for

YUANJUN’S “TERRITORY” Even if we can see only the outlines of the expansion of Bixia Yuanjun worship during the Ming, we can still appreciate that between 1460 and 1640 her temples went from close to zero to more than 450. The same data makes it possible to see that they were spread out over a large area. Map 5.1, which offers the geographic counterpart to the data in Graph 5.1, illustrates the extent of the cult of Bixia Yuanjun as of 1644.48 (The Qing dynasty situation is shown in Map 11.1.) Although it flattens events in time and masks variation between counties, Map 5.1 makes it clear that by the end of the Ming Bixia Yuanjun’s temples were concentrated on the North China Plain as far north as the mountains beyond Beijing, between the Taihang range on the west and central Shandong on the east, and south as far as the Qinling range and adjacent mountains of central and southern Henan. The main northsouth roads were favored locations, as was the region

 

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