Goddess on the Frontier: Religion, Ethnicity, and Gender in Southwest China by Megan Bryson (review)

Since the time of the Dali 大理 kingdom (937–1253), the goddess Baijie 白姐 (lit. White sister) has been worshipped in the Dali region of western Yunnan and nowhere else. Megan Bryson had the happy idea to make the history of this goddess "a case study of how people craft local identities out of multiple possibilities and how these local identities transform over time" (p. 2). As Dali came first under Buddhist and then Chinese cultural and political influence, Baijie assumed successive names and forms, evolving—like her worshippers—"through encounters between local and translocal forces" (p. 3). Baijie, Bryson demonstrates, is not a fixed entity but successive "constellations" (p. 16) of representations that include other deities.

In chapter 1, "Baijie's Background: Religion and Representation in the Nanzhao [南詔; 649–903] and Dali Kingdoms," Bryson argues that local elites deliberately positioned themselves between India and China. Dali elites sought legitimation partly by asserting their closeness to the Indian source of Buddhism, even after Song (960–1279) elites ceased to associate Buddhism with India (pp. 46, 60). This identification does not correspond to actual cultural influence: the regional tradition of Dali Buddhism in fact derived largely from Tang (618–907) and Song sources, continuing a receptivity to Chinese influence that went back to Han times (202 BCE–220 CE) (pp. 23–31).

The ensuing chapters focus in turn on Baijie's three principal historical identities: the Buddhist goddess Baijie Shengfei 白姐聖妃 (Holy consort of white purity), royal ancestress Baijie Amei 白姐阿妹 (Little white sister), and widowed martyr Baijie Furen 柏潔夫人 (Lady of cypress chastity). Each appeared together with social and political change, but their names and stories linger in local forms in and around the Dali basin up to the recent past (the subject of chap. 5). The sources vary greatly in character and include ritual manuals, scriptures, illustrations of deities, inscriptions, and local histories, as well as Bryson's field observations and interviews. In this long-term study, Bryson seems at home in every period, meticulously discussing her material and expertly translating relevant texts.

Originating probably as a dragon goddess and worshipped as a rain deity, Baijie followed the trope of local gods converted by Buddhist monks and became a distinctive part of Dali Buddhism (chap. 2; pp. 61, 82, 97). Identified as Baijie Shengfei or Fude Longnü 福德龍女, she is paired in both text and image with Mahākāla (colloquially Dahei 大黑; Big black), a wrathful, multiarmed, half-naked Buddhist god far more popular in South Asia (and looking far more South Asian) than his representations in Song China (p. 63). The pairing of Big Black and White Sister is not sexual: Baijie follows Chinese models of feminine restraint, her iconography combining Indian and Southeast Asian influence with decorous Song robes, and she is linked with the Chinese moon goddess as well as the Buddhist figures Sri Lakshmi and Hārītī (p. 18). Baijie joins the male outsider Mahākāla to form a hybrid deity emblematic of the frontier culture.

Baijie Amei first appears in inscriptions in the fifteenth century when she is linked with the historical Duan 段 surname of the contemporaneous Yang 楊 family of Xizhou 喜洲, a small town that is still the cult center (chap. 3). Baijie Amei derives supernatural power from a miraculous legend of origin: she emerges from a fruit on a plum tree near the house of the childless Yang family, who raises her. As a young woman, she draws the attention of the Nanzhao prime minister, and he marries her. In one version, she is impregnated by contact with a section (duan 段) of wood (which is understood to be a dragon) and gives birth to two sons, one of them being the future Duan Siping 段思平, founder of the Dali kingdom. In another version of mysterious birth, the Duan sons take the initial form of two magnolia (yulan 玉蘭) trees (pp. 89–92). (Magnolia signifies gratitude, here for...