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The Origin of the Term pien-wen: An Alternative Hypothesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2009

T.H. Barrett
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Extract

No one has done more over recent years to promote the study of the genre of Chinese literature known as pien-wen in the English-speaking world than Victor Mair of the University of Pennsylvania. Since the discovery of this type of T'ang popular tale among the Tun-huang manuscripts which were recovered at the start of this century, a considerable body of scholarship has been produced to explain its origins and affiliations. The results of all this academic effort are now surveyed in three volumes by Mair: one a selection of translations, one a survey of comparable phenomena outside China, and one (dealt with here) addressed to the main problems raised by the Chinese materials.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , July 1992 , pp. 241 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1992

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References

1 Respectively, Mair, Victor, Tun-huang Popular Narratives, (Cambridge, 1983);Google Scholar Painting and Performance: Chinese Picture Recitation, its Indian Genesis, and Analogues Elsewhere, (Honolulu, 1988);Google Scholar T'ang Transformation Texts: a Study of the Buddhist Contribution to the Rise of Vernacular Fiction and Drama in China. (Harvard- Yenching Institute Monograph Series 28.) pp. xxi, 286. Cambridge, Mass., Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University. Distrib. by Harvard University Press, 1989.Google Scholar £21.50.

2 Cf. the clearer though much more summary treatment of the matter by Kanaoka Shōkō on pp. 195–7 of his Tonkō shutsudo kanbun bungaku bunken bunrui mokuroku (Tokyo, 1971):Google Scholar for some reason Mair chooses to refer (p. 36) his readers to shorter studies of this type for a recapitulation of existing theories rather than provide a clear restatement of his own before proceeding to elaboration and commentary.

3 Noted e.g. by Ch'eng I-chung, “Kuan-yü pien-wen ti chi-tien t'an-so”, p. 373 as reprinted in Tun-huang pien-wen hun-wen lu, eds. Shao-liang, Chou and Hua-wen, Pai (Shanghai, 1982), pp. 373–6;Google Scholar originally published 1963. For some reason Mair does not discuss the passages dealt with below.

4 Fa-hsien, , Kao-seng Fa-hsien chuan, in Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, vol. 51, no. 2085, p. 856b,Google Scholar col. 3.

5 Sun, Cf. Chang, Fa-hsien chuan chiao-chu (Shanghai, 1985), p. 154,Google Scholar and n. 38, pp. 157–8.

6 The reasons for this dating are briefly presented in Jenner, W.F., Memories of Loyang (Oxford, 1981), p. 275,Google Scholar though his translation of the passage in question (p. 270; cf. additional note, below) glosses over the point of interest here. This passage was first noted, as far as I am aware, by Wang Chung-min, “Tun-huang pien-wen yen-chiu”, p. 287, as reprinted in Chou and Pai, Tun-huang pien-wen lun-wen lu, pp. 273–326.

7 As is noted by both recent Chinese editors of the text, viz. Tsu-mo, Chou, Lo-yang ch'ieh-lan chi chiao-shih 5 (Hong Kong, 1976 reprint), p. 220;Google Scholar Hsiang-yung, Fan, Lo-yang ch'ieh-lan chi chiao-chu 5 (Shanghai, 1978), p. 239Google Scholar and n. 20, p. 340.

8 The conjunction of Lao-tzu and the Buddha in Han religion from the first century A.D. is mentioned in Zürcher, Erik, The Buddhist Conquest of China (Leiden, 1959), pp. 26,Google Scholar 37; for coalescence of the two figures (without polemical intent until some time after the Han), see pp. 291–3.

9 The phrase “nine transformations in one day” is found in an inscription by Pien Shao, for which a variorum text has been established by Haruki, Kusuyama in his Rōshi densetsu no kenkyū (Tokyo, 1979), p. 305;Google Scholar pp. 303–16 constitute a study of this source.

10 Note that already in Ko Hung's Pao-p'u-tzu of 320 “nine transformations” can be used with reference to an alchemical substance or a person: see Pao-p'u-tzu nei-p'ien chiao-shih, ed. Ming, Wang (Revised ed., Peking, 1985), 4, p. 72, and 18, p. 324Google Scholar.

11 Cf. pp. 360–1 of Schipper, K.M., “The Taoist Body”, History of Religions 17.3, 4 (02/05, 1978), pp.355–81,CrossRefGoogle Scholar but note the somewhat disparate dates of the materials cited. The correspondence of macrocosm and microcosm, as this sample of Schipper's writing shows (among others), is of course basic to Taoist thought.

12 The evidence most often adduced for this is the well-known Lao-tzu pien-hua clung, a text presented in Seidel, Anna, La divinisation de Lao tseu dans le Taoisme des Han (Paris, 1969),Google Scholar but first commented on by Yoshitoyo, Yoshioka, Dōkyō to Bukkyō, i (Tokyo, 1980 revision of 1959 ed.), pp. 8–15.Google Scholar Kusuyama hesitates to ascribe this text in the form in which we have it entirely to the Han, but does point to materials suggesting that the notion of successive incarnations was known outside Buddhist circles in the second century A.D., or even the first: see Rōshi densetsu no kenkyū, pp. 333–4, 357– It may be that the notion of rebirths here is independent of Buddhist influence: cf. the remarks of A. Piatigorsky on pp. 221–2 of “Buddhism in Tuva: Preliminary Observations on Religious Syncretism”, in The Buddhist Heritage, ed., Skorupski, T. (Tring, 1989), pp. 219–28.Google Scholar

13 Some examples of this may be found in Yoshioka, , Dōkyō to Bukkyō, i, p. 26,Google Scholar which are clearly of Han date, though the most striking parallels (dealt with by Yoshioka on pp. 32–53, a section which also notes on p. 48 a good example from the third century A.D.) concern the Mou-tzu, which may date to the fourth century A.D.

14 E.g. T'ang Transformation Texts, p. 43Google Scholar.

15 This possibility is alluded to by Ch'eng I-chung, “Kuan-yü pien-wen…”, p. 374, in citing examples from the Li-tai ming-hua chi.

16 shu, Liang, comp. Yao Ch'a and Yao Ssu-lien (Peking, 1973), p. 793.Google Scholar

17 McMullen, David, State and Scholars in T'ang China (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 166–7.Google Scholar

18 Even here the talk of birthplace and parents would seem to be allegorical; his father is the Sea, his mother the Yangtse: cf. Wang Hsüan-ho, San-tung chu-nang 8.2a (Tao-tsang, Harvard-Yenching texts no. 1131), and note also the nine macro-transformations described at 8.13b–14a. For this compilation, see Reiter, Florian, “Das Selbstverständnis des Taoismus zur frühen T'ang-Zeit in der Darstellung Wang Hsüan-ho's”, Saeculum 33.3–4 (1982), pp. 240–57,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and also pp. 1–6 of his Der Perlenbeutel aus den drei Hö'hlen (San-tung chu-rung): Arbeitsmaterialen zum Taoismus der frühen T'ang Zeit (Weisbaden, 1990), and p. 130Google Scholar for the passage in question.

19 See the chart in Yoshioka, , Dōkyō to Bukkyō, i, pp. 89–90,Google Scholar and cf. K. M. Schipper's remarks on p. 360 of “The Taoist Body”, at n. 23, and in n. 22.

20 Accounts of successive reincarnations of Taoist figures other than Lao-tzu do occur in Taoist texts from about Fa-hsien's time onwards, but these seem from a rapid check to conform to the linguistic usages established by Buddhism: one such account is summarized on pp. 129–30 of Bokenkamp, Stephen R., “Stages of transcendence: the bhūmi concept in Taoist scripture”, in Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha, ed. Buswell, Robert E. Jr. (Honolulu, 1990), pp. 119–47.Google Scholar

21 Note that this Ming passage is already adduced by Ta, Hsiang in his T'ang-tai Ch'ang-an yü Hsi-yü wen-ming (Peking, 1957), p. 317,Google Scholar n. 24, in drawing attention to the performance aspects of pien-wen. Since Mair also makes use of this Ming source elsewhere (in Painting and Performance) I should stress that the point I am making is purely linguistic. Thus I might well (to take a further, hypothetical analogy) describe a bunraku or wayang performance as a “puppet show”—using a term more often associated in English with the humble arts of the Punch and Judy man rather than with any respected cultural form—simply faute de mieux. This would imply no detailed correspondence between the British and the foreign arts forms; yet perhaps only an encounter with bunraku or wayang would even elicit my reference to “puppet shows” and betray the fact that I, too, in my time have been entertained by the exploits of Mr Punch.

22 Wang, , A Record of Buddhist Monasteries in Loyang (Princeton, 1984), p. 243;Google Scholar Jenner, , Memories of Loyang, p. 270Google Scholar.

23 Lo-yang ch'ieh-lan chi 5, pp. 299, 326, 327, 341 in Fan's editionGoogle Scholar.

24 Chang, , Fa-hsien chuan chiao-chu, pp. 35, 36, 38Google Scholar.

25 Ta-T'ang Hsi-yü chi chiao-chu 3, ed. Hsien-lin, Chi, et al. (Peking, 1985), pp. 253, 274, 304, 317Google Scholar.

26 The editorial notes to the passages cited in the preceding nn. 23, 25 give some idea of the range of literary sources through which these stories have been transmitted.

27 Cummings, Mary, The Lives of the Buddha in the Art and Literature of Asia (Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia, 20. Ann Arbor, 1982), pp. 75–93,Google Scholar devotes most of her survey to the two best-known stories, in which the Bodhisattva sacrifices his own flesh to save a dove, and feeds himself to a hungry tigress, but also (p. 77) mentions the sacrifice of his eyes as a theme in Buddhist art; Chi, Hsi-yü chi, p. 305, comments on the common occurrence in Buddhist art of the Bodhisattva's surrendering his head also.