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

200 Notes to Pages 24–26
88. Cole 1998, p. 74.
89. For an English translation and detailed discussion of the Blood-Bowl
Sutra, see Cole 1998, pp. 197–217.
90. In precious scrolls on pious women, the heroine often immediately renounces
all worldly desires as soon as she is informed of the inherent sinfulness
of her female body. See Dudbridge 2004, pp. 103–105, quoting from The
Precious Scroll of Liu Xiang (Liu Xiang baojuan). The Blood-Bowl Sutra also
enjoyed considerable popularity in Japan. See, for instance, D. Max Moerman,
Localizing Paradise: Kunabo Pilgrimage and the Religious Landscape of Premodern
Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005), pp. 221–231.
91. Discussions of Miaoshan’s refusal to marry usually relate this to the
fact that women resent being forced to leave their family, feeling abandoned by
their parents. P. Steven Sangren, ‘‘Separations, Autonomy, and Recognition in
the Production of Gender Differences: Reflections from Considerations of Myths
and Laments,’’ in Charles Stafford, ed., Living with Separation in China: Anthropological
Accounts (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), pp. 60–61, argues that
Miaoshan desires recognition by her father as an autonomous human being.
However, The Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain stresses King Miaozhuang’s
love for his daughter, who is offered all the pleasures of marriage without
having to leave the family. No wonder her sisters eagerly take up this exceptional
offer. Miaoshan’s opposition, however, is not to an eventual transferral
to another family, but to the human condition as such, especially the female
condition.
92. Yü 2001, pp. 333–338.
93. In canonical stories of bodhisattvas sacrificing all or part of their body
for the benefit of others, this usually prefigures the gift of the Dharma by the
Buddha to a later reincarnation of the beneficiaries. The body of the bodhisattva
in these tales stands as a metaphor for the body of the Dharma. See Ohnuma
1998, pp. 323–359. In The Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain, enlightenment
follows in the same existence upon the ingestion of the medicine of the body
parts of the bodhisattva: Guanyin is bodhisattva and Buddha at the same time.
94. Yu Junfang 1994 argues that the legend of Miaoshan changes the Buddhist
theme of sacrificing one’s body for the sake of the Dharma, for the sake of
all living beings, or for the sake of a stranger or even an animal into the Chinese
theme of sacrificing one’s body for the sake of a parent or parent-in-law.
95. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 54 (1996): 268–
295.
96. Henricks 1996, p. 283. Henricks’s article is only one of the many attempts
to reconstruct and interpret the original myth of Shun. The Chinese
scholar Yuan Ke has stressed the antagonism between Shun and his younger
brother Xiang (Elephant), and has seen in the legend of Shun a reflection of earlier
southern myths on the taming of elephants. Whalen Lai, in his ‘‘Unmasking
the Filial Sage-King Shun: Oedipus at Anyang,’’ History of Religions 35 (1995):
163–184, also focuses on the conflict between Shun and his brother and notes
that Xiang tries to make Shun’s wives his own. ‘‘The major incest taboo is not
mother and son . . . but brother and sister-in-law’’ (p. 174). He also points out
that at this stage Shun’s mother is ‘‘not a central figure’’ (p. 167).