Le Taoïsme (Le Tao Te King t. 2) (French Edition)

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Another, strangely neglected, source for the study of Taoism is epigraphy. Sung collections of transcribed stone inscriptions contain very ancient Taoist. For the study of nineteenth and twentieth-century Taoism, there are now a number of collections of Taoist manuscripts assembled by scholars in the course of their field-work: Ofuchi has published the most important collection of ritual manuscripts used in Lagerwey b. Lagerwey has a complete collection of northern Taiwan liturgical manuscripts.

In , Dean a returned from Fukien with photocopies of books and manuscripts collected in the course of his field-work in the Amoy region. These more recent sources "provide new material on the evolution of local cults, sectarian religion, and Taoist and Buddhist ritual traditions" Dean a. A history of Taoism from the Han period to the present remains to be written.

The first general presentation of Taoism, attempted by Welch on the basis of Maspero's work, became a best seller in the s but is now largely outdated. After Welch, only Kaltenmark had the courage to write a book-length description of Taoist mysticism and religious history the latter limited in scope.

For the lay reader, there is an elegantly written presentation of Taoism by Robinet , a very general one by Schipper and a short monograph in German by Seidel A forthcoming history of Taoism by Robinet starts with the fourth century BGE philosophy, deals extensively with the medieval period and concludes with the currents of inner alchemy in the Yuan period.

Without much historical or social context, this French work will provide a magistral overview of the evolution of Taoist concepts, ritual and longevity practices. During the s we approached what Barrett The numerous entries in this encyclopaedia on Taoism and on Taoist terms, names and book titles are, together with the articles on Taoism in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the best introductory reading for students of Taoism available today — and will continue to be until one of the few specialists writes the long overdue book- length history of Taoism.

The organised Taoist religion came into being toward the end of the Han dynasty as a challenge and an alternative to the established social order. Its immediate antecedent is not Taoist philosophy but the political thought of the Han period and the disastrous social conditions of its waning years. During four centuries of Han rule, Taoist thought had developed into something quite different from the small philosophers' circles that had produced and transmitted the Tao-te ching and the Chuang-tzu.

Early Han Taoists were ignorant of or indifferent to the Chuang-tzu and gave a political and Legalist interpretation both to the Tao-te ching see II and to several similar scriptures that circulated under the name of the Yellow Emperor Huang- ti j! Under Emperor Wu r. Thus it came about that, throughout Chinese history, the examinations giving access to government office dealt, with few exceptions, only with Confucian texts and poetry.

This fateful relegation away from the governmental sphere oriented the Taoist traditions toward the peasant base of Chinese society and was, at least in part, responsible for the split that henceforth developed between Taoism and the official Confucian doctrine. From recently discovered inscriptions in Han tombs we know today that many beliefs and practices of the early Taoist church e.

Nevertheless, the divinisation of Lao-tzu cannot be explained as popular superstition. Rather, it signified the elevation of the. Balazs , for an excellent description of this period. Central to the new religion were its methods of faith-healing Strickmann and its reform of popular cults Stein Eventually these ideas spread among the people and became an alternative to the discredited ideology of the regime Kandel ; Michaud T'ai-p'ing is not a revolutionary egalitarianism but an ideal social hierarchy in which everyone has a place appropriate to his birth and calling.

The T'ai-p'ing rebellion was the first major manifestation of a Taoist messianism that was to play a great role during the troubled period of disunity CE. The leaders of numerous uprisings were hailed by the rebels as the divine emissary of the God Lao-chun, i. Mather ; Seidel a , but also in the T'ai-. Ziircher and Strickmann a have shown that the Taoist messianic tradition in the Six Dynasties was strong enough to transform some basic tenets of Buddhist eschatology see VII.

Maitreya and several other bodhisattvas became messiah figures, and their followers carried out revolts that mirrored other rebellions in the name of the Taoist Lord of Great Peace. However, a recent study by Petersen seems to argue that the most voluminous textual layer of the T'ai-p'ing ching denies the need for a messianic saviour who is to launch the age of Great Peace — thus reducing Taoist messianism to a millenarianism less threatening to the powers that be.

In all kinds of virulent or conciliatory versions, throughout the period of disunity, Taoist messianism kept awake a nostalgia for the lost empire and eventually furnished the ideological underpinnings for the reunification of China under the T'ang Seidel ; Bokenkamp a. The messianic promises not only attracted the classes of have-nots but also inspired a new Taoist movement among the southern aristocracy in Chiang- nan.

When, after the fall of Lo-yang in , the court moved south, some great families of Chiang-nan compensated for their loss of political power by creating on Mt. T'ao Hung-ching's scholarly and religious achievements were momentous, yet one would never know it from his biography in the dynastic histories.

This discrepancy serves as a prime example of the need to study Taoism first from the primary Taoist sources, not from the official histories. It shows that the anti-Taoist policies. The Shang-ch'ing documents collected into the Chen-kao are revelations dictated by the deities of the Shang-ch'ing Heavens in an exquisite literary style that sets them apart from the popular mediumistic practices of planchette writing Hyland ; Russell Their exemplary calligraphy prompted T'ao's patient search for the original fourth-century manuscripts see V.

In , less than a generation after the Shang-ch'ing revelations and no doubt inspired by their success , Ko Ch'ao-fu JUHfl circulated the Ling-pao Sff Numinous Treasure scriptures, a new corpus of revelations. Most likely Ko had composed these texts himself, drawing on the library of his famous relative Ko Hung and on already highly sinicised Buddhist texts see VII.

The heavy input of Chiang-nan traditions i. Kaltenmark 1 has traced the history of the term ling-pao and has shown that one of the sources of this new sect was the lore surrounding the "Text of the Five Talismans of Ling-pao" Ling-pao wu-fu hsii gffSlfJfs Kaltenmark ; Bokenkamp a.

This text originally formed part of the esoteric speculations ch'an-wei W. Ngo ; Robinet a; Yamada Although emanating from the same southern. The ritual tradition of Ling-pao built on the Celestial Master codes of formalised dealings with the gods, enriched by some elements of a southern tradition e.

To this day, the Ling-pao liturgy has remained the basic structure of all Taoist ritual see V. The gods addressed in this liturgy are part of a new Ling-pao pantheon headed by abstract divinities of a completely new type: The Ling-pao clergy of the fifth century was the first to perceive — probably in response to Buddhism — a unity in all Taoist traditions and to devise a classification system for all Taoist scriptures. Since the first and highest "Cavern" contains not the Ling-pao but the Shang-ch'ing scriptures, this system might in fact antedate Lu Hsiu-ching and his catalogue Boltz , ; see III.

The fifth and sixth centuries were an extremely creative period in the history of Chinese culture and religion. Most of the texts of this northern Taoism, however, disappeared very early, and it was the southern Taoist traditions that endeared themselves to the founders of the T'ang. The resulting fusion of Taoism with the cult of the imperial ancestors accounts for the solid foundation of state support that Taoism enjoyed throughout the three centuries of T'ang rule Bokenkamp a.

The fact that scholars speak of T'ang Taoism, whereas earlier phases of Taoist history are named after the new movements they produced, reflects. Since the rivalry between Buddhism and Taoism in China was almost always exclusively prompted by competition for imperial sponsorship, this was the heyday of apologetic Buddhist writings against the Taoists. Now part of the Buddhist Canon, these invectives are all the more interesting for their critical descriptions of contemporaneous Taoism. The T'ang empire was soon dotted with a flourishing network of state- sponsored Taoist abbeys and monasteries, and more and more rites were performed in these centres for the prosperity of the state e.

Conversely, imperial cults were appropriated by the Taoist clergy, as in when the imperially sponsored sanctuaries at the Five Sacred Mountains were brought under Taoist control. Such communal and organisational developments have been well summarised by Lagerwey and by Hendrischke The political and institutional role of Taoism at the T'ang court has been studied in detail by Benn in a dissertation , summarised and evaluated by Hendrischke that deals mainly with the official sources also Benn Hsiian-tsang became annoyed when they persistently explained Lao-tzu's concepts to him in terms of Buddhist philosophy Pelliot It appears that T'ang state ideology was neither very marked nor significantly enriched by Taoist ideas, since the Taoist contribution was mostly limited to philosophical and quietist classics, such as the writings of the "four disciples of Lao-tzu canonised by Hsiian-tsung in The Wen-tzu was a pre-Han text, of which the repeatedly reworked extant version [HT ; largely based on the Huai-nan tzu contains only a faint echo chapters 7 and 9; cf.

The K'ang-ts'ang tzu HT is an elaboration of Chuang- tzu, chapter 23, fabricated at the time of Hsuan-tsung. Both texts are unoriginal treatises on the Taoist art of government. Taoism was represented at court and in the lettered elite by a number of patriarchs of the Shang-ch'ing lineage. For a caricature of a late T'ang "court Taoist,". Some of these patriarchs produced extensive writings, among which collections and compilations of commentaries on scriptures and rituals outnumber original work.

Rather, the creative spirit of T'ang Taoism unfolded in literature see VI. One important consequence of imperial sponsorship was the spread of Taoist abbeys to all parts of the empire, which brought Taoism into even greater contact with local cults. This "missionary" influence was to lead, in the Sung, to the upgrading of regional cult organisations see VI. Taoist History after the T'ang. Under the Sung, Taoism continued to enjoy state support.

Eichhorn has translated the officiai regulations governing the Buddhist and Taoist clergy. The meaning of the emperor impersonating a Taoist deity, surrounded by his court transformed into a Shen-hsiao pantheon, also should be reexamined in the light of Taoist sources, and decanted from the official historians' stereotypes of the "corrupted last emperor who lost a dynasty" Strickmann a. An extensive corpus of Shen-hsiao rituals is preserved in the Taoist Canon Boltz a.

A whole spectrum of new ritual traditions was created in the Sung: These cults share an emphasis on healing and an acceptance of local cult traditions. In particular, the very popular T'ien-hsin cult seems to have been propagated by itinerant "grass roots. Much of the religious fervour of these new movements stemmed from the integration of local gods and the upgrading of their cult centres Boltz a; see VI. Behind all these movements were, of course, the profound changes taking place in Sung society, especially the rise of an urban culture, the spread of printing, and the new mercantile and monetary economy.

The patterns of Chinese society set in the Sung continued until the twentieth century. This is underscored by the fact that it is also during the Sung that the netherworld of the dead acquires its final shape see V. During the late twelfth century, several Taoist movements originated in war-torn north China. A delightful study by Hawkes shows how Ch'uan-chen legends and beliefs entered the popular imagination through Yuan drama and suggests that the imagery of the famous Eight Immortals pa-hsien Af i] may have been influenced by some folk memory of the Ch'uan-chen founder Wang Che EEH and his seven apostles, one of whom was a woman see also Yao a.

At a time of cultural disintegration, the founder's personal crisis led him to a new spirituality that combined traditional elements taken frcim.

Taoist scriptures, Buddhist sutras and Confucian classics. Taoist influence in the Ming world of letters has been treated in several studies that show — despite the author's clear predilection for the officials and scholars who opposed Taoism — that the spiritual life at all levels of society was permeated by Taoism in one form or another Liu, , , , , a. The various Taoist centres and traditions in Ming and Ch'ing times still await study.

The genealogy of the Chang family has many doubtful sections between the first Celestial Master Chang Tao-ling second century CE and the twelfth century. Living among the people, the married Cheng-i priests, with their family traditions of ritual knowledge, exerted a deeper influence on Chinese religious life than the celibate Ch'iian-chen monks. However, they also inflated the importance of their lineage by attributing to their founder Chang Tao-ling many scriptures of different origin Boltz a: Source material on the Chang family since the Sung has been collected by Reiter whose evaluations are subject to caution.

The Cheng-i tradition survives today in many regions of south China cf. Lagerwey's editorial in this volume and is the strand of contemporary Taoism that we have been able to see in action in Taiwan Welch ; Saso ; ; Schipper , , , , ; Lagerwey b, , The S hang- ch'ing lineage continued on Mount Mao until the devastations of the T'ai-p'ing rebels in the nineteenth century.

Chronicle of Taoist Studies in the West 1950-1990

A student of any of these lineages will find a thorough resume of the source materials in the excellent Survey of Taoist Literature by Boltz a. Although Taoism continued to flourish under the Ming, with priests holding appointments at court, a new Canon printed see III. Starting in the fourteenth century, new forms of religion that had adapted to changed social conditions came to.

Overmyer describes this type of "voluntary association or sect that could be joined by individuals from different families and villages" So far, only the Buddhist strands of this literature mostly the White Lotus tradition have received attention Overmyer , , , , ; Naquin The study of these popular texts is also important for Taoism, because it is mainly through this vernacular literature that Taoist beliefs, myths and values reached the growing educated middle section of Chinese society situated between the scholar-official class and the illiterate people.

Overmyer proposes a limited and more strictly defined use of the term and recommends, moreover, a moratorium on its use, one reason being that it is a concept brought in from outside. I would add that the always slightly pejorative label of syncretism explains nothing in a culture where no religion claims extra ecclesiam nulla salus and where the urge to unify and synthesize beliefs has always been stronger than the urge to find exclusive formulations of universal Truth.

In the Chinese religious world, those who show too much attachment to one particular doctrine are criticised for their neglect of Unity and for preferring words to reality Robinet T'ang emperors used the formula to express their impartial favour toward that is, their hegemony and control over the three traditions e. And, last but not least, there is a certain hypocrisy in the allegedly all-embracing harmony of the "Three religions," since many clerics of all three persuasions subscribed to this refined and antiseptic Chinese ecumenism the better to exclude the omnipresent popular religion see VI.

The Immortals and their Mythology. Definitions and short characterisations of immortals hsien , the "Perfected". Kaltenmark's copious annotations to each hagiography contain detailed studies of the major legendary themes the affinity with birds, solar myths, fire and cremation, grottoes, potters and metal-workers, medicinal plants and mushrooms, the gourd, jade, etc. Mythical imagery that describes the immortals has also been examined by Robinet b. Often this revelatory lineage served to integrate the methods and famous saints of previous traditions into the Shang-ch'ing order.

The translation and study by Porkert is so flawed that it should not be used without recourse to the extensive critical review by Robinet It has been translated and its main theme — the ancient legend of the visit of the Queen Mother of the West Hsi-wang-mu HIE M to Emperor Wu — has been explained in its original mythological and ritual context Schipper The mythology of the ancient goddess Hsi-wang-mu, later queen of the immortals, antedates Taoism Fracasso ; cf.

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Although she is omnipresent in Chinese religion, no early texts deal with her explicitly. Immortal women, their role in Taoism, their legends and their specific practices of inner alchemy are a rich field of study awaiting the attention of intelligent feminist scholars.

Despeux's study presents a wealth of sources that need much further reflection and interpretation. The female immortals, water goddesses, river nymphs, dragon ladies and rain maidens in T'ang poetry and prose seduced Schafer into devoting a book to them Many immortals owe their popularity to their role as a prophet who legitimises a new dynasty.

The birth of a legend and its historical core in the case. Another such figure is Chang San-feng 3RE: Hawkes — perhaps because we have not yet adequately grasped the significance and the social function of the entire phenomenon of the lore of immortals. This phenomenon may help us not to extend the very helpful insight into the bureaucratic character of the Chinese supernatural world beyond its proper limits see V.

Most of the immortals except, and for good reason, the Shang-ch'ing "Perfected" do not fit the bureaucratic model: One evident reason for their quixotic behaviour is that the immortals took on the role of anti-hero, demonstrating the relative worthlessness of learning and fame, of institutionalised saintliness and high position in this and even in the other world. These figures and themes have a long and rich tradition in China, mostly unexplored except for famous examples among the lettered classes, such as the "banished immortal," Tung Fang-shuo 'M'jjM, the court jester of Emperor Wu of the Han.

Religious geography as an interdisciplinary field of study is comparatively new, but the study of Taoist sacred sites and mountains started long before the current interest in this field. Some adventurous student should explore the region of T'ai Shan today with Chavannes' book in hand, and note the changes since — in the same way that Dean , b has recently done field-work in Amoy, comparing his data with de Groot's 1 description of the same region.

Sacred geography was a familiar theme to medieval Taoists who covered the whole empire with a network of sacred sites, the terrestrial paradises of the immortals. This system of homologues underlies all ritual or magic; by manipulating one of these realities, the adept can reach and influence an analogous reality in another realm. Inspired by miniature gardens in Vietnam which he traces back all the way to Han dynasty hill censers, po-shan lu Hjt[il' i; see V.

The Chinese had similar grottoes but did not develop renaissance symbolism and ritual around them. Important for the study of sacred geography is Stein's conclusion that this imagery and practice are never automatically derived from the site: What the Chinese saw in grottoes were labyrinths leading to sacred chambers, where the successful adept could find divine revelations, talismans and heavenly scriptures Kaltenmark ; Bokenkamp a.

The representation of the true shape of sacred mountains as labyrinthine diagrams is analysed in a forthcoming study by Boltz see V. Two other mountains have been thoroughly investigated: A Taoist sacred writ is not, in the first analysis, an expression of religious doctrine in writing. Rather, the graphic configuration and the object bronze, jade tablets, bamboo, silk, paper on which it appears are themselves sacred. Like the pao, a sacred text legitimises the person who possesses it.

This is also the rationale for later imperial collections of art; cf. Rightfully acquired through revelation or transmission, a Taoist scripture has for the adept or the priest the same rank-conferring value as the imperial regalia for the ruler Seidel , Unauthorised appropriation of scriptures is not only ineffective but punished by the gods Strickmann ; Lagerwey In Ling-pao Taoism they became the archetype and essence of all sacred scriptures.

They contained, mainly, the names of divinities and instructions on how to communicate with them through meditation. However, recitation or even mere possession of the scriptures was in itself already sufficient to gain immortality. The best descriptions of this "cosmogony of script" have been contributed by Robinet The milieu of the Shang-ch'ing visionaries was first described by Strickmann , and their inspired calligraphy by Ledderose ; see also VI.

Every scripture has its attendant spirits who protect the owner, can be summoned in ritual, consulted about the future, etc. Another line of research has traced the roots of the Taoist concepts and rituals of scriptural transmission This investigation has led Stein , to the Chou M period rites of oath-taking and feudal enfeoffment. In keeping with their talismanic character, Taoist scriptures were hidden treasures not to be divulged lightly.

A disciple judged worthy of receiving initiation into a scripture went through elaborate preparations, furnished costly pledges of gold and silk, and gained access, through the transmission, to a higher rank corresponding to the rank of the scriptures, in both the celestial and communal hierarchies. To deepen their understanding of sacred scriptures, specialists of Taoism can also profit from recent studies dealing with the basic concepts underlying Chinese script.

A specialist of calligraphy has recently pointed out the difference between script in the West and in China. Ideographic and phonetic writing in the West has never been more than a technique of noting down spoken languages. Therefore, in the Western mind, script is included in the divine curse that divided mankind and separated it from its origins according to the Tower of Babel myth of the confusion of languages. In Chinese mythology, on the other hand, the written sign precedes the spoken word and has always kept its entirely positive cosmogonie power of unfolding and arranging reality Billeter Script is a revelation of the deeper structure of the universe.

This is illustrated by the legends of its creation by the sages, who were able to decipher the signs of nature Seidel Whether one wants to follow Lagerwey in his semiotic and psychological, Judaic and Christian comparisons or not, his views on Chinese writing, on the science of patterns which leads to a science of appropriate action i. These insights build on the work of Vandermeersch , esp.

Chronicle of Taoist Studies in the West - Persée

According to Vandermeersch, wen-yen is an ideographic script that, even in its initial phase, was not intended to reproduce a spoken language, but was conceived as a completely independent "graphic language" cf. An "ideogram" does not represent an idea but a word. However, this graphically represented word has less to do with any word of the spoken language than with the entire range of the other ideograms, making the graphic language a self-contained system.

This graphic language was developed by the specialists of divination and used to record ritual actions concerning the spirits, sometimes even exclusively for the eyes of the spirits as, e. This is not the place to develop the full range of Vandermeersch' s argument, but it might be useful to mention some of its implications for Taoism. Taoism is inconceivable without literacy, without reference to the scribal tradition of the diviner" Lagerwey As such they reveal the invisible forces underlying reality and permit acting upon them Robinet The origin of the fu in pre-Han feudal customs is well known through the studies of Kaltenmark and Stein Fu were the tablets on which contracts were written, then they were split and one half was kept by each partner.

In general, the written characters of a Chinese name contain more of che person's essence than his picture or statue Gernet The boundary between names or titles written or engraved on seals in normal characters and those written in the more complicated talismanic scripts is fluid. A typical fu diagram is a rather baroque conglomerate of scriptural elements in which certain forms often the characters for stars and for demons predominate examples in Legeza Attested in tomb inscriptions since at least the Han dynasty, fu diagrams predate organised Taoism.

Second- century "celestial ordinance" inscriptions addressed to the gods of the netherworld and deposited in tombs contain written fu in place of the seal imprint. The only serious study of talismans is Strickmann's a wide-ranging investigation of talismanic seals and their apotropaic and therapeutic use in Taoism and Buddhism in China and Japan. The functions of the fu characters or diagrams are to give efficacy to rites and validate petitions addressed to the deities and orders given to the spirits.

These and other uses of the fu can perhaps best be understood in the general context of the supernatural bureaucracy see V. Nobody has yet tried to make sense of the scripts themselves. The religious concepts expressed in the graphs and their functions could be studied in the ritual manuals in the Taoist Canon, where the different components of the diagrams are, albeit cryptically, explained examples in Legeza At this point in the first version of this chronicle, I launched into a lament that these fascinating materials had not yet been investigated.

Taoïsme, Tao Te King

That was before I received Boltz's rather technical but masterly study of cartography in the Taoist Canon forthcoming. Boltz presents and analyses 1 the labyrinthine Charts of the Five Sacred Peaks and charts of celestial and infernal regions, 2 nonary charts of space depicted on the grid of a magic square of nine compartments, and 3 star maps, floor plans of altars and oratory chambers, and depictions of the human body as microcosmic landscape.

Their sinuous convolutions also look like bowels, suggesting that they might represent rather the inside of the mountain. Nevertheless, the Taoists do not seem to have engaged in scientific topographical surveys of the surface or the bowels of mountains ; the same instructions indicate the visual aspect of the deities to be encountered. Moreover, these contour maps also exist for sites outside the physical world.

Equipped with the chart, the adept can undertake the journey to the site either in the flesh or in meditation. In this sense, charts are essentially re-creations of landscapes in miniature. The hermit designs the true shape of a sacred site on the floor of his hut, freely wanders in it and makes it disappear with the appropriate formula Stein Put in terms of one of Boltz's well formulated conclusions, "maps in short defined the boundaries to be transcended.

They give the priest legitimate authority over the spirit realms and permit ritual action in them. Feng-tu, the mythical mountain in the far northeast of China, provided personal protection against the demonic forces emanating from this unholy land that houses the administration of the dead. Charts of Feng-tu could also be ritually manipulated to open the netherworld and bring about the salvation of the dead.

Here, Boltz's findings match Billeter's notions of the cosmogonie power of the written sign. The sign connects with the physical or spiritual reality of the signified. Boltz writes about the generative force inherent in the "true form" of the paradigmatic paradise mountain: Creation is perceived in China as proceeding from the primordial ch'i manifested first in the sacred sign.

The theocratic organisation of the first Taoist movements has been mentioned above IV. In Maspero published a complete panorama of modern Chinese mythology that included the Taoist pantheon and immortals galore. He was the first to note the bureaucratic structure of the modern Chinese pantheon with ministries of rain, of thunder, etc. When he discovered the same phenomenon in early Celestial Master Taoism, Maspero and succeeding French scholars, including myself interpreted it as a projection of the imperial administration of the Han dynasty 1 The fourth- century Shang-ch'ing revelations are similarly replete with official appointments, vacancies and advancements in celestial offices.

The recipients of these revelations, as Strickmann has shown , compensated for their loss of status in this world with lofty official honours in the supernatural world as well as in the imminent messianic empire of Great Peace. This seemed to confirm Maspero's interpretation that the social world is projected onto the supernatural.

His "Tables of the Ranks and Functions of the Perfected and the Gods" Chen-ling wei-ye t'u jRIEffclilil was the clearest formulation of the supernatural bureaucracy the text we have today, HT , is only a garbled residue, reworked in the tenth century. Recent finds of pre-Taoist Han tomb inscriptions, by the way, show that the netherworldly bureaucracy of T'ai-shan was not invented by the Celestial Masters but was already a feature of Han religion, which they adopted Seidel In a further article, Stein showed that the Taoist priests of the Six Dynasties tried to curb or abolish popular cults by converting their "deluded" adherents to the "pure gods" of the Tao see VI.

In as much as the priests understood themselves to be celestial office holders invested with power over the popular "demons," their social role was little different from that of the imperial officials who did the same, but on the authority of the terrestrial government. They also had power to summon and to exorcise local nature deities, to destroy temples and abolish cults — not as agnostic secular notables, but as representatives of a rival and superior religious authority, that of the emperor, Son of Heaven. Their weapon was the official decree, the administrative document, which could contain orders addressed not only to human subjects but to recalcitrant and noxious deities.

Stein found late Han Confucians who, by the recitation of. In other words, the official was to prevent all communication with the gods outside the proper channels and by unauthorised people. Only the Son of Heaven and his representatives, the officials, had jurisdiction over the gods and possessed the proper rituals to deal with them in the imperial cult see VI.

At this point it became clear that our projection theory was wrong. The Chinese supernatural bureaucracy does not, after all, seem to be a copy of social conditions ; it is the other way around. The Han administrative structure was itself based on a preexisting religious model and, so, no sooner cleared of Marxist leanings we incur the no less embarrassing odium of being Eliadean epigones.

Keightley arrived at similar conclusions from his study of completely different and much more ancient materials. He found that "the generational, hierarchical, and jurisdictional taxonomy by which the Shang kings classified their ancestors and the bureaucratic, contractual way" in which the kings dealt with their ancestors served as models for secular institutions and relationships.

He suggested that there is a relationship between Shang religious beliefs and later bureaucratic conceptions. And they did this not only for utilitarian, ideological reasons of control and dominance — as adepts of Michel Foucault would tend to see such measures — but "for reasons of ultimate, religious significance" Keightley Why is this objection wrong? Perhaps because the bureaucratic mentality in China was never completely severed from its religious roots. The bureaucratic model was not created as an ideological tool to strengthen political power, although it could serve this purpose ; it is the Chinese "charter.

One important function of the supernatural bureaucracy was the record- keeping and periodic inspection of human conduct. The Buddhists had their own reasons for adopting this system. In Buddhist terms, the records of destiny represented the karmic balance sheet that determines one's next existence.

Teiser's book on the history of this important festival discusses its Taoist antecedents. In pre-T'ang Taoist texts, the tribunal of King Yama already appears as a minor feature in the Taoist world of the dead Thompson The definitive shape of the netherworld administration emerged during the T'ang-Sung transition. Between the tenth and fourteenth centuries there evolved the system of ten courts presided over by the "Ten Kings of Hell" who judge the souls of the dead.

The entirely bureaucratic scenery of these ten tribunals seemed Taoist to early scholars its iconographical expression has been studied by Ledderose We now know that the belief in the "Ten Kings" appears first in a Buddhist context Teiser , Its bureaucratic features are due not to the Taoists but probably to the contemporary formation of the popular pantheon and to developments similar to those that created the city gods see VI.

The Taoists made a belated and unsuccessful attempt to transform these popular Ten Kings into Taoist "Per-. Even today Taoist priests officiate at funerals surrounded by scrolls depicting the Ten Kings. An efficient centralised administration controlling human conduct and determining human fate in this world and the next might seem to be a night- marishly suffocating vision worse than any FBI dream of complete and top-secret files on all citizens — worse because inescapable even in death.

In fact, the system was very "human": Moreover, there is an entire class of beings whose "opting out of the system" we have already noted above V. Perhaps one function of the immortals was to counterbalance this obsession with rank and all-inclusive hierarchies. Scholars have, in fact, begun to challenge the validity of the bureaucratic model in connection with immortals' cults involving local elite worship in the Southern Sung Hymes, in McRae et al.

Further research therefore might look into the ways and the periods in which the immortals and non-"officialised" popular gods in general were linked with local cult centres, and how they escaped becoming respectable divinities ranked in official pantheons see VI. The Human Body and Longevity Practices. The human body, which is at the center of so much Taoist practice, imagery and theory, is not the material object studied and manipulated by Western medicine.

The Taoist goal of physical immortality is not eternal life in the kind of body a physician can see through his CT scanner. An article by Staal on Indian concepts of the body provides a good comparative introduction to these questions. For China, it is of course Needham who has done the most penetrating studies on the conceptual preconditions that made the idea and pursuit of material immortality possible in China and not in the West Needham , II: The basic physiological and philosophical vocabulary that the Chinese use to speak about the body-mind continuum, about matter, energy, vitality, life, spirit, soul, etc.

To leave these terms untranslated, as many scholars do, only postpones the problem until we have a better idea of what we are talking about. Andersen definitions for many of these terms in medical contexts, and tentative definitions can, of course, be found in many studies of Taoist cosmology,. In the pan- Chinese system of correspondences, the body is a microcosm, a map of the universe, each point of which is related to corresponding points in other domains of reality.

The physiological practices of the Taoists function on the basis of a rich and ancient symbolism of the microcosmic body in relation to celestial spheres, social entities and sites of sacred geography Schipper ; , chap.

The Taoist definition of life, moreover, is the presence in the body of divinities who also exist in their stellar palaces or terrestrial paradises, and the goal is to prevent the departure of these divine spirits by furthering the communication of these "interior gods" with their celestial counterparts Maspero Texts dealing with physiological practices present quite a number of difficulties: The first, and classic, study in this domain was by Maspero , who deciphered the esoteric terminology of a group of physiological manuals in the Taoist Canon.

For the more practical problems presented by alchemical and medical terminology, see Sivin , appendix 1. Two recent collections of articles on physical and mental practices are reviewed in this issue Pregadio b. The complete translation of the most important text on all early Taoist immortality techniques Ko Hung's Pao-p'u tzu nei-p'ien was somewhat disappointing when it finally appeared, because it is barely annotated and tackles none of the problems of interpretation Ware However, much of this work has since been done by Needham , II; , V.

The Taoist notions of longevity and immortality practices have been so extensively studied by Needham and his collaborators in SCC that it will suffice here to point out some recent monographs and articles on specific topics, texts and techniques. Several studies on gymnastics and respiration have profited from training with a contemporary master, as these Taoist practices are very much alive today. On the history of respiration and gymnastic exercises, cf.

A list of recent Japanese works on Chinese longevity techniques can be found in Sakade Sexual disciplines for health and longevity, already well explored by van Gulik , have received new impetus from the discovery among the Ma- wang-tui manuscripts of a number of sex manuals several sections of which have been admirably studied by Harper Kalinowski deciphered an early text on a specifically Taoist collective rite of sexual union that is of such symbolic and choreographic complexity that it does not invite emulation.

In the context of inner alchemy, after the late T'ang, it was thought that the male and female forces within the adept's own body must be brought to union in order to engender the embryo of immortality Robinet Reading the superb conclusion of Needham's historical account of sexual techniques, one should keep in mind the high degree of ritualisation of these techniques as well as the generally male-oriented benefits , V. A sixth-century Shang-ch'ing treatise on this technique HT has been studied by Andersen ; cf.

The Shang-ch'ing lineage transformed ancient southern techniques of trance into ritualised, repeatable exercises of visualisation. The texts describe com-. The fabulous imaginary universe of the Shang-ch'ing visualisations, and the adept's metamorphoses, ecstatic flights and stellar excursions in it, are a major contribution to Chinese imagery and literature, see VI. Robinet has described this universe, traced the ecstatic flight and stellar journeys of the visionary , , examined its textual tradition , and outlined the kind of perfected immortal the visionaries sought to become b; cf.

The more abstract and philosophical T'ang dynasty meditation manuals show considerable influence from Buddhism, something that has been briefly discussed by Robinet Needham has mapped out the kind of investigation that should be done on meditation , V. Unless we are dealing here simply with unlucky renderings of key terms into English, this mystical philosophy constitutes an amazing departure from the Taoist view of things in which man and the universe are one continuum of ch'i in various rougher or finer states.

It is true that, among the many attitudes toward physical death, indifference to the decay of the body is sometimes encountered, but scarcely among those who aspired to immortality in any form. Chuang-tzu's acceptance of death and Mo-tzu's Ir? One of these, a minister of the T'ang emperor Hsiian-tsung, explained his wish by saying that "the dead are unconscious and end up blending with earth" Gernet There is no mysticism here and no thought of life beyond death.

For most medieval Taoists aspiring to immortality, there was no mystical way around some kind of physical preservation or restoration of the body. Even in the elixir-poisoned, putrified corpse of a successful Shang-ch'ing alchemist, the elixir preserved a pilot-flame in the seat of life the all-important five viscera so that the adept could later reclaim his body in order to achieve immortality Strickmann In the more popular communities of Celestial Master and Ling-pao Taoism, where no one had the means or leisure to brew elixirs, the visible death of the parishioners had to be explained by a kind of post-mortem immortality: Five celestial lords of the five planets and the "five viscera will descend to take charge of the cadaver, bearing it to the Palace of Supreme Darkness where the Blue Spirit will rejuvenate it, refining its flesh and bones in alchemical fashion and preparing it for eternal life" Bokenkamp.

Disciples who later opened the tomb would invariably find an empty coffin Robinet b; Needham , V. The preservation of the body as proof of saintliness and enlightenment was also a wide-spread Buddhist belief in China Seidel a ; the most famous "empty coffin" is Bodhi- dharma's Faure It remains to be seen how T'ang Taoists like Ssu- ma Ch'eng-chen used Lao-Chuang and Buddhist ideas to obviate the Taoist dilemma that immortality was unthinkable without preserving the however sublimated body-mind continuum beyond death. The real difficulty here lies not with the Chinese texts but with our Western lack of a discourse apt to express what the Taoists mean by physical immortality.

Alchemy and its Interiorisation. Among the most advanced contemporary scientists in physics, astronomy and biology, we hear voices today saying that our twentieth-century perception and interpretation of the universe is conditioned by nineteenth century scientism — and is subject to changes occurring in our mental perception of the world. Despite its tangible achievements, today it seems that modern science is no more than one method among many for perceiving and classifying reality.

The ways of perceiving the world and man in the civilisations of the past, whether Western or non- Western, may reveal aspects of knowledge that remain hidden to the eyes of modern science. Such reflections have stimulated contemporary interest in the "sciences" of traditional civilisations, including alchemy, medicine and technology. Chinese alchemy has been extensively studied, not by specialists of Taoism but by historians of Chinese science whose contribution to our knowledge of Taoism is immense. The supposedly greater open-mindedness of Taoists to the observation and technological manipulation of nature has been much discussed Needham , II; in a critical way, Sivin Schafer ; see I V.

The goal of Chinese alchemy was physical immortality, and its texts are preserved thanks to their inclusion in the Taoist Canon. There was no alchemy in early Celestial Master Taoism. It is only in the milieu of the fourth-century Chiang-nan drug-culture studied by Wagner. Ko Hung firmly believed in the existence of elixirs that confer immortality and laments that he does not have the means to acquire the costly ingredients. Needham accords Ko Hung's Pao-p'u tzu an important place in the history of alchemy esp.

Studies of the alchemical activities of the Shang-ch'ing patriarch T'ao Hung-ching have shown their connection with eschatological beliefs i. It also appears that Shang-ch'ing alchemists were fully aware of the toxicity of their mercury-, lead- or arsenic- containing products and that some of them ascended to high rank in the stellar palaces of the Shang-ch'ing heavens through a kind of ritual suicide Strickmann ; on involuntary elixir poisoning, cf.

Fragments of the oldest alchemical texts, mentioned by Ko Hung in the fourth century Needham , V. Needham's monumental work on alchemy needs no introduction. I shall only point out some of his findings that are particularly useful for students of Taoism. The "this-worldly and non-ethical" orientation of ancient Chinese thought is the basis of Taoist alchemy — before Buddhism introduced ethical polarisation and the ideal of transcending this world and moving to a more desirable existence in a non- material realm beyond physical death Needham , V.

The religious character of alchemy is borne out by the fact that participation in the highly ritualised processes of transmutation was generally considered more important than the ingestion of the resulting elixir , V. Need- ham's SCC V. The theoretical background of elixir alchemy is examined by Sivin in Needham 1 , V. This important study is summarised in an excellent article that, although published before SCC V. He focuses on the concept of time and its manipulation in the alchemist's procedure of "maturing minerals" by accelerating the natural time cycles.

Proposing that we should not restrict our attention "to those isolated accomplishments that entitle the alchemist to credit in the light of modern chemistry," Sivin concludes that alchemy was not "dedicated to the search for abstract knowledge" but was a means of self-perfection. By the late T'ang tenth century , Taoist meditation masters had sufficiently integrated Buddhist Madhyamika thought to produce a new and completely Taoist reaction to Buddhism, i. This new synthesis is called "inner alchemy," because the terminology it employs is that of laboratory alchemy wai-tan; e. An indication of Buddhist participation in the transformation of alchemy into mental practices is the fact that perhaps the first to use the term nei-tan was the Buddhist monk Hui-ssu WM ; cf.

Here again Needham's work is the most comprehensive and the first one should turn to , V. He reexamines much of the early history of physiological practices treated in , II from the novel perspective that these techniques were intended "to produce a physical enchymoma of salvation, as it were, within the body of the practitioner" , V. Needham describes the evolution of the various macrobiotic techniques up to their inclusion in the nei-tan synthesis, discusses the factual e.

Several specific studies on nei-tan have been published since Needham's survey. This text is illuminating because it not only tells about the speculative aspects but gives unusually clear indications of the actual physiological training. Tseng Ts'ao's theoretical discourse, however, is of such complexity yin inside the yang, inversions of the agents fire-water etc. The long and laborious physiological and mental training described by the Ling-pao pi-fa leads finally to a liberated state of spontaneity, which is, according to Baldrian-.

Hussein, the point where the nei-tan texts leave off and more mystical authors like Lao-tzu and Ghuang-tzu start their quest; in other words, it is the point at which the perfect mastery of body and mind allows one to enter mystical trance. Despeux has drawn attention to the scarce and mostly late treatises on nei-tan practices for women.

I don't knock them, as long as they are not too pretentious and absurdly pseudo-mystical, and as long as they entertain some readers and make others breathe more deeply. In contrast to recent authors, the great sinologist Wilhelm had the excuse of exploring completely uncharted territory. It is difficult, if not futile, to define Taoism by its doctrines because the essence of the religion lies in its methods, techniques, practices and ritual.

The rank of a priest is not determined by his doctrinal knowledge but by the extent of his initiation into the liturgy of his particular tradition. Ritual texts predominate in the Taoist Canon, but Chavannes is still the only scholar to have devoted an exhaustive study to any one Taoist ritual. Saso was the first to attempt a general description of contemporary Taoist ritual. Lagerwey c and Berthier have studied the ritual of the so-called red-headed priests of the Lu-shan tradition fsIU-lM in Taiwan and Fukien.

In the s, interest turned to the origins and history of ritual. A thorough examination of the rare traces of this early ritual has shown that the major innovation that distinguished it from earlier popular cults was the adoption of "bureaucratic" procedures to deal with the gods.

Prayers in the form of written memorials presented to the gods by an officiant in a visionary journey to the heavenly courts or by burning are still an essential part of Taoist ritual Schipper , Strickmann forthcoming I. The deep roots and extraordinary persistence of Taoist ritual can be gauged from the fact that Chinese writing probably was invented for use in written communication with the spirit world.

Prayers have always been offered in writing, and gods have answered — through legible cracks in oracle bones, through divine scriptures discovered in sacred mountains and through the writing brush of mediums and visionaries — in literary Chinese or in a variety of sacred talismanic scripts see V. The most recent studies of the basic conceptual patterns underlying Taoist ritual show that Taoism has perpetuated and elaborated a number of ancient concepts and practices going back at least as far as the Warring States period.

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His association with the Tao Te Ching has led him to be traditionally considered the founder of Taoism pronounced as " Lao Tzu Chinese: His association with the Tao Te Ching has led him to be traditionally considered the founder of Taoism pronounced as "Daoism". He is also revered as a deity in most religious forms of the Taoist religion, which often refers to Laozi as Taishang Laojun, or "One of the Three Pure Ones". Laozi translated literally from Chinese means "old master" or "old one", and is generally considered honorific.

Historians variously contend that Laozi is a synthesis of multiple historical figures, that he is a mythical figure, or that he actually lived in the 5th-4th century BCE, concurrent with the Hundred Schools of Thought and Warring States Period. As a result of being a a central figure in Chinese culture, both nobility and common people claim Lao Tzu in their lineage. Books by Lao Tzu.

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