Personal Salvation and Filial Piety: Two Precious Scroll Narratives of Guanyin and Her Acolytes trans. by Wilt L. Idema (review)

148 Journal of Chinese Religions Part of the value of Idema’s collection is that it demonstrates that contemporary published versions of oral literature may indeed yield interesting information. If some books suffer from heavy “re-ordering” (zhengli 整理) of oral material, that is less and less the case nowadays. The compiler of a Hexi Baojuan 河西寶卷 version, quoted by Idema, may congratulate himself for having found a version relatively free of “superstition.” But his text, which begins with a dream where the Qin emperor is visited by the spirits of the slaughtered lambs killed for his lavish banquets, which a court diviner mistakes as the heralds of a barbarian invasion, necessitating the building of the Great Wall, is not, as one may see, devoid of interesting supernatural elements. As a wall-destroying beauty, Meng Jiangnü belongs, literally, to the “wall topplers” (qingcheng 傾城) femmes fatales of Chinese history. Wielding the specifically feminine magic of tears,2 she is able to walk many paths between love and death. Idema’s beautiful small anthology is a splendid tribute to this figure. It is at the same time a highly commendable introduction to the richness and complexity of Chinese oral traditions. VINCENT DURAND-DASTES, Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales, Paris Personal Salvation and Filial Piety: Two Precious Scroll Narratives of Guanyin and Her Acolytes Translated and with an Introduction by WILT L. IDEMA. Honolulu: Kuroda Institute and University of Hawai‘i Press. xi, 227 pages. ISBN 978-0-8248-325 -5. US$50.00 hardcover. The bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara was first portrayed in China as a male figure, but from the tenth century on he was increasingly depicted in female form, and as such became very popular, especially among women devotees, who believed she had great power to heal illness, provide protection, and ensure the birth of children. In the following centuries images and shrines for her spread all over China. The chief vehicle of this transformation was the legend of the beautiful princess of a land far away and long ago, whose name was Miaoshan 妙善 (Marvelous Goodness), a legend that originated about 1100 at the Incense Mountain Monastery (Xiangshan si 香山寺) in Ruzhou 汝州 Prefecture in the area of modern Henan 河 南 Province. This legend was written down in an early sixteenth century popular Buddhist 2 On this topic, see the recent book by Anne McLaren, Performing Grief: Bridal Laments in Rural China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008). Book Reviews 149 scripture (baojuan 寶卷) called the Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain, the oldest extant copy of which was printed in 1773, with many other editions published later. The present book is a translation of an 1868 version by Professor Wilt Idema of Harvard University, a well-known scholar of Chinese literature, who also provides an extensive introduction. Glen Dudbridge published The Legend of Miaoshan in 1978, and I gave a detailed summary of the story in a book on baojuan published in 1999, but this is the first complete translation into English. The Miaoshan story is a fine statement of fundamental differences between the perspectives of Buddhism and traditional Chinese Confucian values. The princess has two older sisters, but no brother, so their father, the emperor, desperate for a male heir, orders them to marry men to be selected by his advisers, so as to continue his rule through his sonsin -law. The older sisters comply, but Miaoshan refuses because she wants to leave the palace to become a nun and devote herself to attaining enlightenment, saying “I will never allow my body to be taken by a man” (p. 63). At this the emperor becomes enraged, and replies, “You little hussy! ...Filial piety is all there is” (p. 65). He alternates cajoling and threatening her, and orders the queen, her sisters, and his court officials to do the same, but she remains adamant. First she is stripped, beaten, and banished to the palace gardens, where she simply enjoys herself in meditation; then she is sent off to a nunnery whose abbess has been ordered to force the girl to change her mind, so Miaoshan is required to do all the cooking and cleaning for 500 nuns, as well as haul firewood and water...