The Literary Lives of Nuns: Poems Inscribed on a Memorial Niche for the Tang Nun Benxing

This article introduces two poems inscribed on a memorial niche dedicated to the seventh century Buddhist nun Benxing 本行 at a site known as Bao shan 寶山, located near Anyang in Henan Province. I suggest that the poems were written either by Benxing herself or by one of the nuns who contributed to the memorial, and thus significantly augment the corpus of extant poems ascribable to Tang Buddhist nuns. I introduce the poems in the context of the style of soteriology and ritual practice associated with Bao shan and explore further intersections between devotional and poetic practice in the Tang. In the second half of the article I explore notions of subjectivity, “literature of the beyond,” and the gendered voice. In conclusion, I suggest that although the Benxing poems deploy literary conventions of various kinds they stand out in the context of the Bao shan nuns’ communal devotional practices. They give us a glimpse into the concerns and aspirations of a practitioner within a gendered Buddhist community, providing a singular grounding for conventional images of what it meant to be Buddhist, a poet, and a woman in the Tang.