Two Precious Scroll Narratives of Guanyin and Her ... - Khamkoo

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Introduction 9 tation of Guanyin was the White-robed Guanyin (Baiyi Guanyin). Images of the White-robed Guanyin started to appear from the tenth century onward in Sichuan and Hangzhou. In Hangzhou it was especially the Upper Tianzhu Monastery that was linked to the cult of the White-robed Guanyin. The monastery would in later centuries develop into a major site of Guanyin pilgrimage. 31 In prints of the Ming and Qing dynasties the Guanyin of the Southern Sea (Nanhai Guanyin) is also usually depicted as being dressed in white. 32 The most popular legend to explain the female appearance of the bodhisattva was, however, that of Princess Miaoshan. We can trace the origin of this legend to a very precise time and place. In 1100, Jiang Zhiqi, the prefect of Ruzhou (in modern Henan province), visited the local Incense Mountain Monastery (Xiangshan si). This monastery was famous for its grand statue of Avalokiteśvara with a Thousand Arms and a Thousand Eyes. While Jiang was there, the abbot Huaizhou recounted to him the tale of Princess Miaoshan, which he claimed to have heard from a mysterious monk who had recently visited his monastery. This monk, the abbot claimed, had shown him a book that had been revealed to the monk Daoxuan (596–667), who was famous for his visions. According to this tale, Princess Miaoshan is the youngest daughter of King Miaozhuang of the country of Raised Forest (Xinglin) in the far west (that is, a mythical India). As the king has no sons, he wants his daughters to marry and bear him grandsons to succeed him on the throne. While her two elder sisters are only too eager to marry, Miaoshan stubbornly refuses as she wants to devote herself to spiritual cultivation and escape from saṁsāra. When even the physical hardships she has to endure as a novice at the nearby White Sparrow Convent fail to change her mind, her father has her executed, but she is miraculously saved to pursue a life of religious austerities on Incense Mountain. After this, the king falls ill, afflicted by a foul disease that none of his doctors is able to cure. He is then informed that only the arms and eyes of someone without anger will cure him. When his two eldest daughters refuse to donate their limbs, the king is informed that only the hermit of Incense Mountain would be willing to make such an extreme donation. The king thereupon eats these body parts and is subsequently cured. He then visits Incense Mountain to express his gratitude to the hermit, only to discover that she is none other than his youngest daughter. Overcome
10 Introduction by remorse, he falls to her feet, whereupon she manifests herself as the Avalokiteśvara with a Thousand Arms and a Thousand Eyes, whose statue is venerated in this very monastery. Upon his return, Jiang Zhiqi wrote an account of his visit to the monastery, including a lengthy account of the legend as told to him by the abbot. This account was subsequently inscribed in stone and erected at the monastery. 33 Glen Dudbridge sees this story as a ploy on the part of the local abbot to revive the fortune of his monastery as a pilgrimage site (which may well have suffered from a growing popularity of the cult of the female Guanyin). If that was the abbot’s intention, his ploy was successful: the monastery has survived all the vicissitudes of nearly a thousand years and is still in existence, although in an ironic twist of events, it has been taken over by the nuns of the White Sparrow Convent and turned into a convent. While the abbot invoked the authority of the early-Tang monk Daoxuan, we have no reference whatsoever to the tale of Miaoshan from the eleventh century or earlier. The tale would appear to have been concocted from whole cloth by the abbot, who drew heavily from the Lotus Sutra for names and motifs. 34 When Jiang Zhiqi was appointed as prefect of Hangzhou in 1102, he also had his account inscribed in stone at the local Upper Tianzhu Monastery (famous for its White-robed Guanyin statue), contributing further to the rapid popularization of this legend over many areas of China. Soon the legend was enriched with a description of a visit of Guanyin to the hells following her own execution. 35 From later centuries we have many adaptations for the stage and as novels. However, by far the most popular adaptation was The Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain. The Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain: Authorship and Editions The first reference to The Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain probably is found in an early-sixteenth-century list of precious scrolls, which mentions a Scroll of Incense Mountain (Xiangshan zhuan). 36 The text must have been in circulation in some form or another by the middle of the sixteenth century as it would appear that the adaptation of the legend as a short vernacular novel of the late sixteenth century was based on the precious scroll version. The earliest
Page 1 and 2: PERSONAL SALVATION and FILIAL PIETY
Page 4 and 5: CLASSICS IN EAST ASIAN BUDDHISM Per
Page 6: Kuroda Institute Classics in East A
Page 10: Acknowledgments My interest in the
Page 13 and 14: 2 Introduction twelfth century. As
Page 15 and 16: 4 Introduction Guanzizai (The lord
Page 17 and 18: 6 Introduction of these bodhisattva
Page 19: 8 Introduction the Lotus Sutra is c
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The Precious Scroll of Incense Moun
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The Precious Scroll of Good-in-Tale
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192 Notes to Pages 4-5 association
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194 Notes to Pages 8-10 Mountain an
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196 Notes to Pages 12-13 teenth and
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198 Notes to Pages 18-21 66. Ibid.,
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Glossary ao 鰲 Baiyi Guanyin 白
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Glossary 219 Yao Shouzhong 姚守
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222 Bibliography ———. 1973. T
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224 Bibliography Karetzky, Patricia
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226 Bibliography Ahern and Hill Gat
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About the Author Wilt L. Idema (Ph.
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Tsung-mi and the Sinification of Bu
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Two Precious Scroll Narratives of Guanyin and Her ... - Khamkoo

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