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c h a p t e r t h r e e The Making of a Woman Chan Master Qiyuan Xinggang Qiyuan Xinggang (1597–1654) can be considered the grande dame or, perhaps more appropriately, the matriarch of seventeenth-century women Chan masters, not only because she was the one of the first to set foot on the stage in that century but also because she left seven women Dharma successors, one of whom wrote a relatively detailed biographical account (xingzhuang) of her teacher’s life.1 Much like European vitae of the saints, that account was written not primarily as self-revelation but rather as a record of character and deeds that might serve as a model for later generations. This is true, in fact, of much of traditional Chinese biographical writing, particularly as related to women. Nevertheless, while largely exemplary in intent, these accounts can differ considerably as to detail and tone, depending on the subgenre to which they belong: nianpu (chronological records), liezhuan (biographies of exemplary persons), lienü zhuan (biographies of exemplary women), xingshi or xingzhuang (factual records of a life ), zixu (self-written biography), taming (funerary stupa inscription), and so on. Susan Mann differentiates, for example, between the lienü zhuan and the xingzhuang as follows: The “factual record” is an intimate biographical form that could be written only by someone personally acquainted with the subject and/or her family. In contrast, the “exemplary woman” biography is what a scholar of the time might have considered a routine, even formulaic, writing assignment.2 It is significant, then, that some of the most valuable information about and insight into Qiyuan Xinggang’s life is found in the xingzhuang compiled not by a male patron or disciple but by one of her own closest female disciples, Yikui Chaochen, who was indeed in a position to 38 eminent nuns observe her teacher’s everyday behavior (xing).3 What this means is that although clearly the primary purpose of such writing remains exemplary, there is often a more “intimate” and thus somewhat more revealing tone than one might otherwise expect in a biography of this sort. It must be emphasized that even Yikui Chaochen’s account does adhere fairly closely to established conventions of how a Chan master’s life should be written. Nevertheless, when one considers that the descriptions are compiled and written by a woman about her female teacher, and that the activities described—including chastising male literati visitors for their superficial glibness—are being carried out by a woman Chan master, then they immediately acquire a new significance. And of course there are certain issues that are particular to the story of a woman religious, such as the questions of how to deal properly with marriage (especially when one is not so inclined), widowhood, and one’s traditional obligations to kith and kin. Thus these biographical/hagiographical accounts are valuable not only for the information they occasionally provide, but above all for their descriptions of religious women’s lives as related by religious women themselves. Yikui Chaochen’s xingzhuang is supplemented by another, shorter biographical text, in this case an inscription written in 1558 for Qiyuan Xinggang’s funerary stupa by the well-known literati-official Wu Zhu (zi Dingwu, 1597–1682, jinshi 1618).4 Wu Zhu was a personal acquaintance of Qiyuan Xinggang. Her discourse record collection includes several letters and poems addressed to him, and it is clear that he was an active Dharma patron. Moreover, his wife, Madame Qian, was a most devoted lay disciple of Qiyuan Xinggang. Thus his inscription is based on personal knowledge rather than secondhand information, as was often the case in such texts. From these two major sources, supplemented by brief notices found in local gazetteers and other writings, we can reconstruct the following basic outline of Qiyuan Xinggang’s life. She was born in Jiaxing, the only child of a retired scholar (jushi) by the name of Hu Rihua (his zi, or style name was Yangsu, or “nourishing the simple,” a possible indication of his eremitic inclinations). It appears that her mother was Hu’s concubine, Madame Tao, rather than his primary wife, Madame Gao, although from the wording of Yikui Chaochen’s account, Qiyuan Xinggang regarded them both as her mothers. Although I have been unable to find any biographical information on Hu Rihua, it is quite likely that the motivation behind his retirement was political and that he was, like many if not most of the other...

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