Daoism Not as We Know It: The Pheasant Cap Master - Journal of Daoist Studies 2016
Daoism as a school of thought does not appear until after political unification. Its first definition goes back to the summary by Sima Tan 司馬談, father of grand historian Sima Qian 司馬遷 (145-86 BC), of the Liujia 六家 (Six Schools), i.e., Yinyang, Confucius, Mozi, Law, Logic, and Dao. In his view, Dao 道 (Way) is supreme because it encompasses the best of all the others (Shiji jijie lxx, 555). Daoism thus could be seen as eclectic and non-partisan.
The question is how and when was it formed? Central to Daoism, I would argue, is the idea of unity, spiritual as well as geopolitical. Kidder Smith (2003) argues Sima Tan personally invented Daoism and other schools himself, which just goes to show the extent of the problem. To solve it we need to re-evaluate Dao’s role in the Qin empire, the elephant in the room. It was Qin that shaped the crucial transition from the Warring States to the Han empire—a period still poorly understood.
1. Inclusive Unity
Zhuangzi xxx (The Under-Heaven) depicts the Hundred Schools as fragments of the Way’s integral and primal unity. Conspicuously Laozi and Mozi among others, but no Confucians, are included. Mengzi, rejecting the categorical extremes of Yangzi’s autism versus Mozi’s altruism, endorsed a Dao of inclusive unity. He refers to the expression ‘holding to unity’ (zhizhong 執一), a phrase from early meditation and physical self-cultivation texts, notably Xinshu 心術 ‘Mind Technique’ and Neiye 內業 ‘Inner Training’ (Guanzi xxxvii, xl; Zhuangzi iii, xxiii; Hanfeizi l; Huainanzi xiii. Kirkland 2004: 28, 77-78, 236 n.4)
Mengzi informs us, speaking of a rival philosopher:
Zimo holds to the middle. Holding to the middle is close to it.
Yet holding to the middle, without expedience,
is like holding to unity.
What I dislike about ‘holding to unity’ is that it robs the Way.
It elevates the one but rejects the hundred.
(Mengzi vi-a, 26)
This illustrates the point that unity is of two kinds, inclusive unity and exclusive unity. Mengzi distances himself from dogmatism and intolerance, even one under the guise of centrism. Xunzi (ca. 250 BC) similarly attacked rival thinkers as partial or sectarian versions of the totality of the Dao: “Zhuangzi was obsessed by heaven but did not know men.” He further dismissed Lao Dan for having “insight into contraction but not into extension” (Xunzi Jinzhu Jinyi xvii, 343; 21, 430).
This is the first mention of the Laozi we know as author of Daode Jing, the classic of the “Way and Virtue.” Thus, like Zhuangzi, Mengzi and Xunzi, these two leading Confucians, associate Dao as the Way with an inclusive unity, a non-sectarian vision of whole objective truth. Their weltanshauung is never far from the goal of political unity. This ideal is expounded most fully in the writings on Taiyi 太一 (Grand Unity) by Heguanzi 鶡冠子, the Pheasant Cap Master (v, ix, x, tr. Wells 2013). Centralized political unity came to China with the Qin annexation of the warring states in 221 BC. Qin’s model was followed in 206 by Han over the next four centuries.
2. Dao becomes a Religion
How was it that a school of something called Daoists and Daoism (Daojia and Daojiao) suddenly appeared in the Han dynasty, fully armed as it were like Athene springing from Zeus’s head, with no evident antecedent? Russell Kirkland in his ground-breaking Taoism, the Enduring Tradition elucidates the much-ignored role played by Daoism in Chinese history, but omits the contributions of Qin, whose First Emperor was one of the earliest recorded Daoist immortality seekers. Kirkland admits, just as an after-thought, “further research on such matters remains to be done” (2004, 77-78, 236n4).
The greatest monument in Chinese literature to the diversity of Warring States thinkers is Lüshi Chunqiu 呂氏春秋 ‘Mr Lü’s Springs and Autumn Annals’, published in 239 BC by pre-imperial Qin. Here we have smorgasbord of ideas across the intellectual spectrum of classic Chinese philosophers arranged by topic. The first half is arranged as an almanac, ingeniously reconciling the clash of competing doctrines through the annual cycle of the seasons. It is a model for a unified society in which every opinion has its place and time.
It pays particular attention to “nourishing life” (yangsheng 養生), a health concept traced to the hedonist thinker Yang Zhu 楊朱, critiqued by Mengzi. In this regard, we should note Qin’s probable engagement with the above-mentioned meditation texts and the compilation of medical classics ascribed to the legendary Yellow Emperor (Huangdi 黄帝) and transmitted to Han.
3. Qin and Daoism
The mausoleum of First Emperor Zheng 正 (lived 259-210 BC) who ruled first as king of Qin from 247, then as emperor 221-210, has just begun to share its secrets. Its terracotta and bronze sculptures evidence an artistic revolution in realism and individuation on an industrial scale crafted in life-like detail. Twelve monumental statues from melted down weapons were erected at the Qin capital but did not survive beyond Han.
Calendars indicating auspicious and inauspicious dates with appropriate spells and rites have been recovered from the graves of Qin officials. There we find the earliest record of the duodenary animal zodiac cycle basic to Chinese astrology. There is even a tract on the Dao of personal cultivation for magistrates (Wenwu 1990, 167-76, 180-255, 219-20).
In terms of state ritual and worship, the Han merely continued the Qin protocol for a century until in 104 BC the Martial Emperor (Han Wudi, r. 140-86 BC) decreed a new era Taichu 太初 (Grand Start), replacing Qin’s water emblem with that of fire.
“Water’s virtue” (shuide 水 德), adopted as dynastic sign by Qin, had been extolled by Laozi as the paragon of goodness and invincibility. (Cf. Laozi viii on water’s goodness; lxxviii on water’s invincibility. Guanzi xxxv, ‘Water and Earth’ Shuidi enumerates water’s virtues and its divinity shen 神; Shiji xxviii, 225 on Qin’s ‘water virtue’.)
The Han dynasty Kongzi Jiayu attempts to appropriate Laozi for Confucianism. It cites Confucius on nine virtuous qualities of water (ix. 6b); and has Confucius recalling Lao Dan had told him that the five agents had “gods called the Five Emperors” for which each royal dynasty adopted one colour in succession (xxiv. 1a). In 140 BC, Han Wudi established Confucianism as state orthodoxy, the official ideology of the Han dynasty and banned the ‘hundred schools’ baijia, then not a term celebrating diversity of thought, but a pejorative for heterodoxy as first used by Confucian Xunzi (xxi, 425).
Thus, ironically, we first hear of ‘Daoism’, along with Legalism and the Yellow Emperor, only after it was banned. Still, Wudi was active like Qin’s First Emperor in visiting and supporting temples and shrines to a host of deities, and he further established a temple to Taiyi, the god of Grand Unity (Shiji xxviii, 225-26). Contemporaneously, the dissident historian Sima Qian writing in secret informs us that Qin’s First Emperor had already systematized a hierarchy of “Heaven and Earth, famous mountains, great rivers demons and gods” (xxviii, 224). This required an imperially sanctioned priesthood and calendar of observances, establishing Daoism as the national religion organized of a unified China.
Sima Qian recorded that the First Emperor became personally obsessed with the cult of immortality and in 212 even proclaimed himself a zhenren 真人 (true man), a Daoist immortal (vi, 44). Guanzi’s ‘Mind Technique’ had spoken of the ‘straight man’ (zhiren 直人), an orthographic variant of ‘true man’ and its earliest known usage (xxxvi, 219. Wells: Pheasant Cap Master 125). Ironically, it was on his alchemical quest for immortality, on mountain pilgrimage far from his capital, that the emperor may have unwittingly poisoned himself thereby enabling eunuch Zhao Gao’s usurpation.
In a social dimension to Daoism, Laozi had criticized the militarism and oppression of the Warring States. Yet it was Qin’s First Emperor who established a new unified world order of peace and morality, proclaimed in great sacred mountain inscriptions (transcribed by Sima Qian). In his revolutionary new order, hereditary feudal barons were replaced by meritocratic bureaucracy, under an auto-autocratic god emperor, Huangdi 皇帝 ‘Augustan Emperor’, a title created by the First Emperor for himself.
Kingship had always had a divine sanction but the previous Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties had been ruled by wang 王 (kings), not emperors. Such terms were reserved for the pre-dynastic period of myth and legend. Yet it was to that period of prehistory, a time popularly ascribed to the Yellow Emperor and purported founder of Daoism, that the First Emperor evidently chose to reconnect. His chosen title has the same sound. Qin’s First Emperor was posthumously elevated to the Daoist pantheon as Northern Emperor in Fengdu, the underworld. Tao Hongjing (456-536: Zhenling Weiye Tu, Beidi Shangxiang, seventh position on the left.)
The north quadrant was identified with water and the color black. Han founder Liu Bang (Gaozu r. 206- 195) learnt in 205 BC that Qin had venerated only White, Green, Yellow and Red Emperors. He thereupon decided it was for himself to make up the fifth, as Black Emperor and re-instated Qin’s high priests (xxviii, 225). Han had thus unobtrusively stepped into the Qin’s First Emperor’ shoes.
4. Laozi’s Apotheosis
However great his sins, the First Emperor was a man of big ideas as well as actions. For want of a better designation, we may use the term Legalist Daoism to categorize his cosmic vision. In this, Laozi and Pheasant Cap’s prophecy of a coming Ninth Augustan, surely played a role. Sima Qian records that, in 384 BC, Grand Historian Dan 太史儋 of the royal house of Zhou sensationally reported a prophecy to Duke Xian of Qin on his accession:
“Zhou was anciently to Qin state joined but separated. After having been separated for five hundred years, it will be rejoined. Having been rejoined for seventy years, a king hegemon will issue from it.” (v, 34).
Sima Qian merely remarks in his biography of Laozi: “some say that Dan was Laozi” (lvi, 355). True or false, this claim promoted a linkage of Laozi to Qin with a quasi-divine portent. The First Emperor’s political agenda required such religious justification.
How did Laozi under the Han come to achieve revered status equal to or higher than Confucius? This process of apotheosis contained two key elements nascent in the late Warring States. First, that Laozi as Lao Dan was the teacher of Confucius as alleged by Zhuangzi and Qin’s Lüshi Chunqiu (ii, 99b; Zhuangzi xiv, 516). Second, that Laozi left the world by migrating west through the state of Qin (Zhuangzi xxvvii), implying that he never died, contradicted by Zhuangzi vii. It is at Louguantai by Hanguguan pass, near Mt Hua, that Laozi he is reputed to have composed the Daodejing as his passport to enter Qin. (Wells 2013, 40).
This legend suggests that the elevation of Laozi and his work to the icon of Daoism was engineered by Qin as a counter Confucius, whom it rejected. Laozi's barbs against conventional morality, with his philosophy of inconstancy and change, read well as an attack on Confucian conventions and hypocrisy. Legalist Hanfeizi (ca. 280-233) wrote two commentaries on Laozi, the earliest known, along these lines, reportedly for presentation to the King Zheng of Qin, the future First Emperor (Hanfeizi xx, xxi).
Zhuangzi repeatedly satirizes the person of Confucius and his disciples. As we saw, his concluding survey of rival schools in the philosophical landscape, which includes the Yellow Emperor and Lao Dan’s Grand Unity while criticizing Mozi, Huizi, and others, completely omits Confucianism. Its mention of Zhuangzi himself obviously distances it from the man in person (Zhuangzi xxxiii). Could this epilogue reflect a Qin audience?
5. Yellow Emperor and Laozi
Traditionally, Daoists have honoured the legendary Yellow Emperor as their founder. This figure as encountered in Zhuangzi is a mystic who “by unity… attained the lofty heavens” (vi), rather than a military and political leader. He has a point of contact with the god Grand Unity in Heguanzi (xi, 165) in that both are space travellers in the apparent sense of making shamanic spirit journeys (Kohn 2014, 53, 84, 158-59).
While Laozi the ‘Old Boy’ became god of the Way, the Yellow Emperor Huangdi progenitor of the hundred clans and culture, became in effect the god of Law whose minister Cangjie was credited with the invention of writing. Pheasant Cap tells us: “Cangjie created law through writing.” (Wells 2013, 128) Written law spelled the end for rule by feudal custom. Thus, was born Huang-Lao the ‘Yellow-Old’ school. It fused the Way and Law (daofa 道法) with the key tenet of unity. This unity was no mere theoretical abstraction or pious hope. It meant no less than the unification of the world, the Under Heaven under one supreme ruler.
It meant the inauguration of the centralized Chinese empire. Following the example of the legendary Yellow Emperor who subdued the evil “rebel” Chiyou at Zhuolu, this was achieved through battle and law imposed by force of arms. This Huang-Lao or Daofa school remained dominant over the first sixty years of Han rule from BC 206 after the fall of Qin (Kang and Wei 1976, 18-20; Shiji lxi).
Following the accession of Han Wudi, the Martial Emperor, Huang-Lao was banned never to return and replaced by Confucianism. This must have been a tactical compromise by the emperor because in his personal sphere he emulated Qin's First Emperor, worshipping at the shrines on the sacred peaks, seeking the elixir of immortality, and sending his armies out to expand the empire. Under his reign, Chinese armies for the first time penetrated westward to Central Asia.
Sima Qian's account of Qin's nefarious book-burning has provided a ready explanation for gaps in the narrative of transition between the golden age of philosophers in the Warring States and the succeeding Han. Yet Han was itself responsible for suppression of heterodox writings. The early Han tomb at Mawandui in 1976 revealed tracts of a Yellow Emperor, not as patron saint of immortality seekers, but as a militant apostle of imperial unification and law. Indeed, the very first chapter of its silk manuscripts is entitled Daofa 道法 ‘The Way's Law’, reflecting a school of thought lost for over two thousand years.
6. Grand Unity as a God
In a subsequent chapter, titled Chengfa 成法 ‘Complete Law’, God on high sends down a phoenix to announce the gospel of unification in one word: ‘Oneness and nothing more’ (Wenwu 1980, 72). Here is geopolitical Daoism, boldly enunciated. Whose agenda did it serve?
Scarce mention of gods, in the philosophical discourses of north China centered on Qi and Lu (Shandong), has led scholars to see a disjunct between ‘philosophical’ Daoism of the classic period and subsequent ‘religious’ Daoism. Essays and dialogues compiled under the name of Heguanzi, the ‘Pheasant Cap Master’ can help bridge that gap.
Pheasant Cap Master, whose family name is unknown, is thought to have been a native of the southern state of Chu. If so, this could help explain the overtly religious and lyrical aspects of his book, in particular his focus on ‘Grand Unity’ Taiyi as ideal and god (Wells 2013. 10-11, 256-60.). Taiyi as a deity is celebrated in Chuci 楚辭 ‘Song of the South’ (translated by David Hawkes as ‘The Great One’) and in the recently excavated scroll Taiyi shengshui 太一生水 ‘Grand Unity Generates Water’, both from the state of Chu (Hawkes 1957, 36, 115, 144, 158; Wenwu 1998, 123).
References to directly involved statesmen, places, and dateable events place Pheasant Cap in Zhao (southern Shanxi/Hebei) of about 250 BC. Zhao was then a leading front-line state facing Qin. His work, unlike that of Laozi, now dated to before 300 BC, provides precise internal evidence of its context. Pheasant Cap appears to borrow verses from Laozi xv, absent from its 300 BC Guodian ms., in his chapter on the elusive Yexing 夜行 ‘Night Walker’ (iii, 96-97; ix, 8). It is unclear whether this is of a metaphorical or supernatural being:
None knows his shape,
Pictures cannot depict him, Names cannot raise him.
If forced to describe him, I say: Vague oh! Murky oh!
Later (xix, 210) he cites a maxim on winning without fighting from Sunzi's Art of War (Bingfa iii), again in the context of Night Walker which adds a martial dimension to it. The Lüshi Chunqiu of 239 BC paraphrases the same Laozi verse to describe the Way and Grand Unity. Its essay under Mid-Summer: Great Music, a homonym for ‘Great Joy’, says:
Myriad beings’ origin was created by Grand Unity,
transformed by shade and sunlight [yin and yang]…
The Dao - look and you do not see it, listen and you will not hear it.
It is the shape of no shape… It may not be named.
If forced I call it Grand Unity. (5.2.4a-4b)
Lü, a millionaire merchant, had become premier of Qin and ‘stepfather’ (zhongfu 仲父) to Zheng, future First Emperor. It was at the Zhao capital Handan that he met the boy’s father a political hostage there. There Zheng was born and lived his first nine years before return to Qin in 250.10 It was in Zhao that the vision of Grand Unity as an achievable practicality germinated in the work of Pheasant Cap. In 250, they returned to Qin from Zhao on succession to the throne of Zheng’s father (250-246). The First Emperor received the surname Zhao after his birthplace. (Shiji vi. 39).
7. Pheasant Cap Master and Mozi
Pheasant Cap uniquely took Grand Unity both as an anthropomorphic god who speaks and as a politico-religious goal. Pheasant Cap’s book consists of essays, verses and dialogues centred on the theme of an inclusive unity of humankind and a prophetic blueprint for world unification. He illustrates this concept of mankind’s intrinsic unity by the image of a fixed quantity of grain which no matter whether measured out in pecks or bushels is unaffected in its totality (Pheasant Cap ix, end).
From a Realpolitik perspective, he turns to a harsher metaphor. Six predators of different species, like the six rival warring states of the third century BC, fight over a corpse, like that of the defunct Zhou empire, because the object of their desire is the same:
When tigers and wolves kill a man, crows and flies from above,
worms and maggots from below, gather on him. These six are
different species, yet they they simultaneously converge. Why?
What they desire is the same. (ix. end)
Paradoxically the thing that divides them is the thing that links them.
8. Non-contrivance v. Activism
The problem then was how to bring about the new order. Mozi hoped to do this by converting existing rulers to his moralistic reasoning but without a plan for a new order. Pheasant Cap had a scheme of centralized bureaucracy whose operations would be strictly governed by a system of gradated reporting according to districts and dates in the annual calendar. He called this the “heavenly melody and solar technique” (ix, 147).
Yet, the harsh penalties prescribed for non-compliance are consistent with legalism. Its implementation would require a form of quasi-divine intervention, foretold in the stars and sanctioned by the celestial personage of Grand Unity.
The idea of tianming 天命 (divine mandate) for the Son of Heaven to rule the Under-Heaven was not new in China. Mozi (xxxv; Mozi 163-165) condemned the idea of ming or ‘mandate’ as fatalism. Pheasant Cap paradoxically upheld it but insisted on its operation through human endeavour and contracts. In this, he seems at odds with Laozi who reckoned things in the world would right themselves if left alone, as by Adam Smith's ‘invisible hand.’
Pheasant Cap, like Mozi, urged a program of youwei 有爲, affirmative action, ‘having contrivance’. Yet timely action may not be spectacular and so escape notice. This is exemplified by the case of a prescient doctor who cures a disease before its symptoms become obvious (xvi, 194). Thus, his achievement appears to the public as if he had done nothing. Laozi himself implies the same:
“When success has been achieved, the affair terminated,
the hundred clans all call me spontaneous [ziran 自 然]” (xvii).
In other words, Laozi’s wuwei 無爲 (non-contrivance) is not inaction but, like that of a good doctor, well-timed intervention that creates little stir and so passes virtually unnoticed. Pheasant Cap’s Sage adapts to the dynamic of timing and the intrinsic power derived from compliance with individuals’ innate desires, the physical realism or actuality of human qing 情 (emotional reality) (x. 163). By conforming to popular desire for change the small become great, the weak strong.
9. The Nine Augustans
Pheasant Cap warns a corrupt world of impending danger if reform is not implemented. He condemns militarism but cautions that military preparedness can never be neglected for a single day (vii, 123). Nine Augustans Pheasant Cap’s new order of unity and meritocratic utopia differs from that of Huang-Lao but has some points in common.
He prophecies a golden age to be inaugurated under Chengjiu 成鳩, the ‘Complete Ninth’. ‘Complete’ has the added sense of victorious, as in the title Cheng Tang 成湯 ‘Victorious Tang’ for the founder of the Shang dynasty. ‘Ninth’ jiu 九 in his name is written with the added bird symbol niao 鳥, which also give it the meaning of ‘dove’. The word ‘nine’ itself is a homonym for ‘long lasting’.
This Victorious Ninth is the last of a quasi-historical series of Jiuhuang 九 皇 (Nine Augustans) or celestial emperors described in the Royal Axe chapter (ix). Their cult, associated with the nine stars of the Dipper, or Plough, constellation, two of which being invisible, was explained by ‘Confucian’ cosmologist Dong Zhongshu in the Han and became prominent in state Daoism during the Song dynasty (Wells 2013: 18, 69).
It is still observed, with that of Doumu 斗母 ‘Dipper Mother’, in Southeast Asia’s Chinese festivals, as in Penang and Phuket (Cohen 2001, 25-27, 51-52) among others. There, ecstatic rituals and body piercing by jitong 乩童 mediums are celebrated following the ninth day of the ninth month. The custom is said to have been introduced to Phuket in the nineteenth century by an operatic troupe from Jiangxi to combat a plague.
One legend equates the Nine Augustans to nine heroes of Ming executed by the Qing, their worship making it highly subversive. Parallel groupings of nine and similar eschatologies can be found in cultures around the world. India has the nine Jaina saviors and nine past avatars of Vishnu with one Kalki still to come (Doniger 2010, 474). The Mayans have nine lords of the night who guide sun underground. One Muslim sect looks to the coming of the Tenth Imam.
10. Cosmic Dynamics and Grand Peace
Heaven's timing has always been foretold in the stars. The northern Dipper/Plough constellation appears to revolve around the Pole Star like the hand of a celestial clock. It was believed to point the direction of success with its xuange 玄戈 Dark Halberd’ star (Pheasant Cap v. 109). This is detailed on bamboo slat documents from a Qin tomb (Wenwu 1990, 187-88).
Fundamental to Pheasant Cap's thinking is the belief in the inherent unity of creation and its propensity to world union by the propensity of a dashi 大勢 ‘great dynamic’. This is the force within the unity of opposites and their huanliu 環流 ‘circular flow’. It encompasses a dialectic for positive change and recovery (v. 112-13). Qin’s First Emperor’s holy mountain steles, dated to 219, 218 and 215 BC respectively, proclaim his reign a new age of ‘enlightened law’ (mingfa 明法), the ‘Way’s principles’ daoli 道理, and ‘Grand Peace’ (taiping 太平: Shiji vi. 42-44).
This neologism Grand Peace became a slogan for subsequent Daoist-inspired utopian movements. The first to use it was Gan Zhongke 干忠可 who, at the cost of his life, presented an apocalyptic revelation to Emperor Cheng (r. 32-7 BC) announcing the commencement of a Grand Peace era (Wells 2013: 133) to replace of Han. Gan’s movement gave rise to the first formal Daoist scriptures, entitled Taiping Jing ‘Grand Peace Classic’.
This millenarian dream culminated in the massive mid-nineteenth century Taiping rebellion of similar inspiration whose leader claimed Christian divinity. At the same time as the first Taiping sect, the goddess cult of Xiwangmu 西王母 Western Queen Mother, reflecting the dominance of the feminine principle in Laozi’s classic, ignited peasant rebellion, that helped end Western Han.
The mother goddess icon remained a key figure in popular religion and resistance to patriarchal authority (Naquin 1976, 2-3). Then, Buddhist missionaries began entering the scene from the western regions. The new religion soon gained adherents from both Confucians and Daoists. Buddhas and bodhisattvas with attendant Hindu deities infiltrated the Daoist pantheon and gradually became assimilated with native gods and goddesses.
In the north, non-Han invaders accelerated the process. The end of Eastern Han two centuries later in 220 was preceeded by comparable insurrections. These ultimately succumbed to military defeat but serendipitously spawned a Daoist ‘church’ under the Tianshi 天師 ‘Celestial Teachers’ hierarchy, independent of secular authority.
Following Han, China underwent almost four centuries of political disunion until the Sui, followed quickly by Tang, which established Daoism as state religion, as did the subsequent Song and Ming. The Mongol Yuan and Manchu Qing dynasties favoured Tibetan Buddhism. Yet throughout all, the Three Religions of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism coexisted for the most part in peace.
11. Daoism in Drama, Fiction, and Spirit Cults
Popular religion was propagated through performing arts, musical storytelling, drama, and fiction. Acts martial and comic, like the Baixi 百戲 ‘Hundred Entertainments’ of Han, were already current at the First Emperor of Qin’s court whose jester Youzhan’s 優旃 jokes “matched the Great Dao.” Zhuangzi’s satires on Confucians would have found a ready audience there. Statuettes of dramatic entertainers survive. Qin’s Second Emperor enjoyed ‘wrestling and comic’ spectacles (juedi paiyou 觳抵俳優) at Sweet Springs’ Palace (Ganquan. Shiji cxxvi. 539; lxxxvii. 428).
By the Tang, Buddhist miracle tales (bianwen 變文) were narrated at Dunhuang where texts were preserved in a temple cave on the Silk Road. Under the Jurchen Jin of twelfth century north China, Grand Unity Daoism flourished while Quanzhen 全真 ‘Complete Truth’ Daoism, with its syncretism of the Three Religions, of Qiu Chuji 丘處機 (1148-1227) won patronage from Jurchen emperors (Kirkland 2004. 108-109). Qiu’s message even found personal favour with Genghis Khan, who summoned him to Afghanistan. It was propagated under Mongol Yuan in operas enacting the playful adventures of its colourful Eight Immortals at temple theatres. (Wells 2006, 59-61; “The Blue Sky Song Qingtian’ge 青天歌 and Qiu Chuji).
The fullest Quanzhen Daoist narrative is the prose epic Fengshen Yanyi 封神演義 ‘Ordination of the Gods’, attributed to master Lu Xixing (ca. 1520-1601; Liu 1976, 991-93). It adapts (v. 36-37) a poem on ‘Honouring the Dao’ (Zundao Fu 尊道賦), on the supremacy of Dao over Confucianism and Buddhism, by Northern Song emperor Renzong (r. 1023-1063: Yuan Minghe Yuyin 鳴鶴餘音 ix; Wells 2013: 135).
The novel depicts a contest between two types of Daoism, ‘open teaching’ chanjiao 闡敎, which enlists among others both Laozi and Buddha, versus ‘exclusive teaching’ jiejiao 截敎 (xv. 121). The exclusivists, loyal to the corrupt Shang of antiquity, represent ‘Orthodox Unity’ Zhengyi 正一 Daoism, favoured by the Ming founder, against the inclusivists representing Quanzhen who anachronistically forsake their vow against killing to rebel against the tyrant. Interestingly, ‘usurper’ emperor Yôngle actually did favour Quanzhen, with a massive temple at Mt Wudang in Hubei.
Here, against the backdrop of the historic war by Zhou, three thousand years earlier, to topple the last Shang emperor, men and gods on each side do battle with weapons of supernatural powers. The defeated and fallen warriors of both sexes are given fiefs as gods of the starry firmament to the number of three hundred and sixty-five.
More recently, a syncretic revelation cult Xiantian Dao 先 天道 (Prior Heaven’s Way) arouse in the seventeenth century only to be banned. As Yiguan Dao 一貫道 (United Link Way), it re-emerged in Tianjin after the fall of the Qing. Like Quanzhen, and Falun Gong ‘Dharma Wheel’ violently suppressed by Beijing from 1999, it combines elements of the Three Religions.
Yiguan Dao, after further bans, was finally legalized by Taiwan’s R.O.C. in 1987. It actively proselitizes overseas. I was personally introduced to it from 1970 among taijiquan internal martial artists in Taipei, and in Chinese communities at Seoul and London. There I attended a service of kowtows to an extensive series of assorted past worthies, followed by a spirit-writing medium séance and a vegetarian meal.
Conclusion:
Daoism, though polytheistic, is inextricably permeated with the idea of unity, realized in doctrine and political reality. Arguably, this emphasis helped turn the subsequent development of Confucianism and Chinese Buddhism in an inclusive direction.
Its connection with imperial power, and I argue its genesis from Qin, can be seen throughout history but also in the heavenly hierarchy of its pantheon which mirrored the earthly one. Parallels may be drawn first with Emperor Ashoka and later Kanishka’s elevation of Buddhism in India or Emperor Constantine’s adoption and institutionalization of Christianity throughout the Roman empire.
Qiu Chuji of Quanzhen Daoism, on the eve of Mongol conquest, sought to reconcile the Three Religions of Confucius, Laozi, and the Buddha with the ascendant power. In similar fashion, Pheasant Cap propounded a grand unification theory against the background of Qin conquest. It may be that he or disciples, like Qiu with Genghiz Khan in 1221 a millennium and a half later (De Hartog 1989, 124-27), reached an accommodation with the ancient “world conqueror” and point the way to peaceful world tomorrow.
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