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

196 Notes to Pages 12–13
teenth and seventeenth centuries make it clear, however, that pious Buddhist
tales continued to be performed by nuns, either at the house of their female patrons
or at their own convents. By the nineteenth century, ‘‘precious scroll’’ had
become the general designation for relatively short prosimetric renditions of religious
tales, whether Buddhist or Daoist in origin. These nineteenth-century
texts are often divided into two juan (‘‘scrolls’’ or chapters). The shorter version
of The Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain follows this convention. One of the
most important Chinese scholars in baojuan studies is Che Xilun. He has collected
most of his articles on precious scrolls in his Zhongguo baojuan yanjiu
lunji (Taibei: Xuehai chubanshe, 1997) and Xinyang, jiaohua, yule: Zhongguo
baojuan yanjiu ji qita (Taibei: Xuesheng shuju, 2002). All contemporary scholarship
on precious scrolls is heavily indebted to the pioneering work of Sawada
Mizuho, Hōken no kenkyū, rev. ed. (Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai, 1975).
41. Neil Schmid, ‘‘Yuanqi: Medieval Buddhist Narratives from Dunhuang’’
(Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2002); Neil Schmid, ‘‘Tun-huang Literature,’’
in Victor Mair, ed., The Columbia History of Chinese Literature (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2001), pp. 982–987.
42. Meng Yuanlao, Dongjing meng Hua lu (wai sizhong) (Beijing: Zhonghua
shuju, 1962), p. 459. The names of the eleven performers listed in this category
suggest they claimed a religious status of some kind.
43. Riben Lunwangsi micang Shuihu, ann. Sheng Ruiyu (Wuhan: Wuhan
daxue chubanshe, 1994), p. 34.
44. Wilt L. Idema, ‘‘Evil Parents and Filial Offspring: Some Comments on
the Xiangshan Baojuan and Related Texts,’’ Studies in Central and East-Asian Religions
12–13 (2001–2002): 7–8. For the shihua characteristics of the Lushan
Yuangong hua, see my ‘‘Emperor and General: Some Comments on the Formal
and Thematic Continuities between the Vernacular Stories from Dunhuang and
the Vernacular Stories from Later Dynasties,’’ in The Harmony and Prosperity of
Civilizations: Selected Papers of the Beijing Forum (2004) (Beijing: Beijing daxue
chubanshe, 2005), pp. 124–125. Lushan Yuangong hua has been translated into
English by Tansen Sen and Victor Mair as ‘‘The Tale of Master Yuan of Mount
Lu,’’ in Victor Mair, Nancy S. Steinhard, and Paul R. Goldin, eds., Hawai‘i
Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press,
2005), pp. 304–339. Da Tang Sanzang qujing shihua has been translated into
English by Charles J. Wivell as ‘‘The Story of How the Monk Tripitaka of the
Great Country of the T’ang Brought Back the Sutras,’’ in Victor Mair, ed., The
Columbia Book of Traditional Chinese Literature (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1994), pp. 1181–1207.
45. Quanzhen (Complete Truth) Daoism originated in twelfth-century
northern China, becoming a widespread movement in the thirteenth century.
Eventually it would become the major form of monastic Daoism. Early Quanzhen
teaching stressed the ephemerality of life and the need for an immediate
conversion. Those who had not yet been ‘‘reborn’’ were called ‘‘walking skeletons.’’
When Miaoshan is brought back to the capital from the White Sparrow
Convent to be executed and the palace ladies try to talk sense into her, she too
compares unenlightened people to walking skeletons (Guanshiyin pusa benxing
jing, pp. 62b–63a, in Yoshioka 1989). For the popularity of the theme of the