The Sinister Way: The Divine and the Demonic in Chinese Religious Culture

3. Shanxiao: Mountain Goblins

chapter 3 Shanxiao Mountain Goblins Spirits of the dead figured as the primary agents of demonic affliction in the Chinese religious imagination. But other malefic forces were at work as well. Among them was a class of petty demons known as shanxiao, changeling spirits inhabiting the wild mountains and forests. As such, the shanxiao were akin to the goblins and fairies of pagan Europe, or the forest-dwelling leshii in Russian folklore.1 But the shanxiao also betokened a greater divide in human affairs: the contested and shifting frontier between civilization and barbarism. Belief in shanxiao reflected fundamental human fears of the hidden dangers of the unknown wilderness. Chinese, like most peoples, envisioned strange lands beyond the pale of civilization rife with all types of bizarre and misshapen creatures. After the loss of northern China to foreign conquerors in 317, the Chinese rulers themselves were displaced to a new and unfamiliar landscape in the south. The humid monsoon climate, dense subtropical forests, and rugged mountain terrain of theYangzi River valley and beyond contrasted sharply with the arid, flat plains of the temperate north. Moreover, the native peoples of the south, chiefly hill tribes alien to the culture of the Yellow River valley, appeared no less bestial and savage than the land they inhabited. Indeed, in Chinese eyes, the “barbaric” peoples of the south were kindred to the demonic spirits that lurked among them. Throughout the Era of Disunion, and even long after, the forested mountains of the south evoked images of demonic creatures like the shanxiao, ever ready to prey upon interlopers from the civilized world. In their earliest incarnation, 78 the Wutong spirits were categorized as a species of shanxiao. Ultimately, the Wutong were rehabilitated and transformed into proper gods, but their sinister origins among the shanxiao goblins were never fully effaced. Since at least the early Zhou period, Chinese perceived the world as an arena of relentless struggle between civilization and barbarism. The enlightened monarch, anointed by Heaven, used his authority to fashion a world of symmetry, regularity, and tranquility. But this ideal state was perpetually besieged by the entropic forces of disorder. Anomaly and deviation posed grave challenges to a civilization predicated on deference and hierarchy. Not surprisingly, then, the Zhou portrayed the sagekings above all as civilizers triumphant over the wilderness landscape and its denizens. Political philosophers of the Warring States era viewed both barbarian lands and mountain wildernesses within the royal domain as terra incognita, and hence beyond the reach of the monarch’s benign influence. At the same time they affirmed that the task of classifying and recording strange flora and fauna, mountains and rivers, and gods and peoples was an integral part of sage governance. Omniscience conferred power over not only the mortal domain, but also the unseen realm of gods, ghosts, and demons. By extension, writing served apotropaic purposes : the actualization of knowledge in the written word exposed the true nature of demonic entities and thereby rendered them impotent. This apotropaic function of writing was enhanced by the emergence of correlative cosmology, which assimilated all strange and uncanny phenomena to disruptions of the moral and political order.2 From the perspective of correlative cosmology, nothing in the cosmos was truly abnormal. Yet anomalies foreshadowed fissures in the organic unity of heaven and earth. The yin/yang and Five Phases cosmographies elaborated from the fourth century b.c.e. onward subsumed the vagaries and complexities of the immense natural world within regular and predictable patterns that the human mind could apprehend, and thus control. Alongside this burgeoning literature of cosmographic science we find a complementary body of anomaly lore that sought to explain the appearance of human, animal, and natural prodigies in terms of disturbances in cosmic matter and energy that produced deviant life forms. The metaphysicians and soothsayers known collectively as fangshi, or “masters of occult arts,” assiduously courted ambitious monarchs, offering to place their profound knowledge of the world and its creatures at the ruler’s disposal. In particular , the fangshi laid claim to knowledge of the distant past and remote territories beyond the mortal horizons of time and space, wisdom Shanxiao: Mountain Goblins 79 that would enable the ruler to cope with any untoward contingency or strange encounter. The mythologies that coalesced around the figures of ancient sagekings during the Warring States period depicted them as civilizers who tamed the hostile wilderness...