The Lady of Linshui: A Chinese Female Cult (review)

There is a myth that there is no such thing as mythology in traditional China. It says that, compared to the rich epics of ancient Greece, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, or the extensive and often convoluted divine tales of traditional India, notably the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, ancient Chinese narratives of gods and culture heroes are sparse, fragmented, and incoherent. They lack complex symbolism, are not reenacted in ritual or folk practices, and have little to do with the reality of a living, breathing populace, either then or now.

Baptandier's new book goes a long way to dispel this notion. Following in the footsteps of such venerable scholars as Maspero, Karlgren, Granet, and Eberhard—pioneers of the early twentieth century—she presents an extensive and detailed study of an important female goddess, exploring her tales and cult on every possible level.¹ The book is historical in its exploration of the origin and development of the goddess myth and its symbolism; philological in its analysis of language and names; sociological in its detailed study of the stories' impact on community life; and anthropological in its attention to the roles of different members of society (notably women and children) and to the activation of the myth in rituals and traditions.

The subject of the study—admittedly fairly recent, when compared with India or Greece—is the Lady of Linshui (Linshui furen), a woman of the eighth century called Chen Jinggu (d. 790), who lived a short life of twenty-four years in the town of Gutian in the southeastern province of Fuzhou. Exhibiting supernatural abilities from childhood, she underwent Daoist and shamanic training, married Liu Qi, became pregnant, and died while performing a rain-making ritual, but not before vowing to stay in touch with the world and serve as the protector of women and children. She later was adopted as twenty-first patriarch into the Daoist lineage of Mt. Lü, an offshoot of the Lingbao (Numinous Treasure) school with connections to the Zhengyi (Orthodox Unity), Shenxiao (Divine Empyrean), and Jingming (Purity and Clarity) lines. She also inspired various shamanic spirit-medium cults and is still actively involved in trance sessions at popular temples, mostly in southeast China and Taiwan.

The book contains ten chapters plus an introduction and conclusion. The introduction surveys and translates the main accounts of Chen Jinggu's biography, culminating in a discussion of a lengthy popular written piece—the Linshui pingyao (Linshui Pacifies the Demons), a partially revealed, partially human-authored account from the seventeenth century, which became a television series in Taiwan and, until recently, was outlawed as "superstition" in the Peoples' Republic.

The ten chapters can be divided into three major parts: The first two present a detailed analysis of the myth as represented in the Linshui pingyao; Chapters three through six deal with related themes and divine figures; and Chapters seven through ten are based on fieldwork in Fujian and Taiwan, focusing on the myth's relevance in Chinese society, its importance for women and children, and its representation in Daoist ritual and spirit-mediumship.

The conclusion reinforces the book as a powerful, brilliantly presented, and immensely rich exploration of the myth of the goddess, combined with an effective examination of roles, practices, and symbolic connections in traditional China. The Lady of Linshui is a worthy heir to the myth studies of the great pioneers. It makes a major contribution to the study of East Asian divinity and may well lead to a new scholarship about Chinese mythology as an ongoing process that is as rich and varied as its counterparts in other countries.