Lowell Skar

Administering Thunder: A Thirteenth-Century MemorialDeliberating the Thunder RitesIn: Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie, Vol. 9, 1996. pp. 159-202.

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Skar Lowell. Administering Thunder: A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites. In: Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie,Vol. 9, 1996. pp. 159-202.

doi : 10.3406/asie.1996.1115

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/asie_0766-1177_1996_num_9_1_1115

RésuméVers le XIIIe siècle, les idées et pratiques ayant cours dans la Chine ancienne vis-à-vis des puissancesdu tonnerre se maintenaient dans la majorité de la population. Elle y voyait des signes des pouvoirsrétributifs et générateurs du ciel. Cependant un nombre grandissant d'individus percevaient cespuissances au sein de systèmes plus élaborés de Rituel du Tonnerre (leifa) transmis via des filiationstextuelles localisées. D'une sophistication pouvant varier considérablement, ces Rituels du Tonnerreattiraient des personnes d'origines sociales et de niveaux d'éducation fort divers. Ces rituelsappartenaient souvent à des traditions mises en avant par des lignées taoïstes parmi lesquelles il yavait aussi bien celles nanties de la généalogie la plus antique que celles qui ne s'étaient signalées quedurant les trois siècles antérieurs. Une abondante variété de ces systèmes de Rituel du Tonnerresurvivent à l 'état de résidus textuels dans le Canon taoïste des Ming.La recherche de ces vingt dernières années a fait des Rituels du Tonnerre un élément de mieux enmieux connu du paysage religieux des Song et des Yuan. Cependant, leurs relations avec les autrestraditions religieuses et avec la société médiévale sont moins bien comprises. Tout en maîtrisant destraditions rituelles qui dérivaient de situations locales avec patronage local, de nombreux exorcistes etprêtres itinérants, parmi lesquels il y avait des experts du Rituel du Tonnerre, faisaient appel aupatronage de la cour impériale des Song. En se faisant accepter par les lignées taoïstes établies etmises au défi, ils pouvaient promouvoir leurs pratiques avec plus de légitimité et sur une plus vasteéchelle. Certaines lignées parvinrent à altérer les degrés d'initiation des prêtres taoïstes à la fin de l'époque des Song, mais la prolifération continue et la transmission de traditions d 'exorcisme en dehorsde ces grades rituels taoïstes modifiés témoignent de l'impossibilité qu'il y eut d'imposer les grades enquestion à tous les pratiquants des rites du tonnerre.Les pratiquants de cette époque étaient conscients de la confusion régnant dans les rites du tonnerre etquelques prêtres taoïstes tentèrent d'imposer un certain ordre parmi les divers systèmes. Ces mises enordre révèlent non seulement les aspects du Rituel du Tonnerre que ces prêtres connaissaient, maisleurs préférences individuelles dévoilent aussi à quel ordre ils voulaient se rattacher. Cependant plusque les anciennes traditions liturgiques taoïstes et que les lignées plus récentes d 'exorcistes, ce quiimporte sont les noms modifiés et les formes d'une large variété de dieux, de cultes et d'idées intégrésdans les Rituels du Tonnerre auxquels adhérait un public laïc. Une analyse plus détaillée de ceséléments intégrés aidera à déterminer le contexte d'où sont sortis les systèmes du Rituel du Tonnerre.La pétition rituelle traduite ci-dessous fut adressée en 1216 au Bureau du Tonnerre céleste par unprêtre taoïste nommé Bai [ou Bo] Yuchan qui était depuis peu arrivé dans les Monts Wuyi du Fujian dunord-ouest. Durant l'hiver 1215, l'exécution couronnée de succès d'un exorcisme en faveur d'uneinfluente famille locale lui gagna le patronage de cette famille et marqua pour lui le début d'unedécennie de remarquable activité religieuse. Peu après, il fit une grande impression sur les autorités dela montagne proche du Longhu shan. Il aida à y diffuser les enseignements qu'il avait reçus de sonmaître Chen Nan pendant un stage d'étude de neuf ans commencé en 1205.La pétition-mémorial fait plus qu'exposer la diversité des traditions du Rituel du Tonnerre connues parBai en son temps. Elle introduit aussi un certain ordre parmi celles-ci et promeut à un rang supérieurcertaines divinités qui y sont incluses. Discussion et dispute sur la validité de plusieurs aspects dessystèmes de Rituel du Tonnere connus de Bai lui fournissent le contexte au travers duquel il peutesquisser un système qui dérivait de son maître et qu 'il considérait comme plus vrai et plus correct.Il est clair qu'une grande part du caractère correct attribué à ce système dérive du système Shenxiaoalors âgé d'un siècle et au rituel duquel Bai avait souvent recours. Cependant sa source immédiate estChen Nan qui reçut des révélations d'une importante figure au Ministère du Tonnerre. Néanmoins, lastructure du mémorial et sa destination font appel à d'anciennes formes rituelles établies par les MaîtresCélestes et les traditions de la Suprême Pureté. Tandis que Bai exerçait sa pratique comme un JoyauNumineux avec formation dans le système Shenxiao, ses disciples et lui ont sans doute contribué àinstiller leur variété de Rituels du Tonnerre à l'intérieur de la synthèse taoïste plus vaste lancée par desmaîtres se proclamant représentants du mouvement de la Pure Ténuité (qingwei), mouvement qui étaitaussi actif dans le nord-ouest du Fujian durant la seconde moitié du XIIIe siècle.

ADMINISTERING THUNDER: A THIRTEENTH-CENTURY MEMORIAL DELIBERATING THE THUNDER RITES1

Lowell SKAR

Vers le XII f siècle, les idées et pratiques ayant cours dans la Chine ancienne vis-à-vis des puissances du tonnerre se maintenaient dans la majorité de la population. Elle y voyait des signes des pouvoirs rétributifs et générateurs du ciel. Cependant un nombre grandissant d'individus percevaient ces puissances au sein de systèmes plus élaborés de Rituel du Tonnerre (leifa) transmis via des filiations textuelles localisées. D 'une sophistication pouvant varier considérablement, ces Rituels du Tonnerre attiraient des personnes d'origines sociales et de niveaux d'éducation fort divers. Ces rituels appartenaient souvent à dès traditions mises en avant par des lignées taoïstes parmi lesquelles il y avait aussi bien celles nanties de la généalogie la plus antique que celles qui ne s 'étaient signalées que durant les trois siècles antérieurs. Une abondante variété de ces systèmes de Rituel du Tonnerre survivent à l 'état de résidus textuels dans le Canon taoïste des Ming.

La recherche de ces vingt dernières années a fait des Rituels du Tonnerre un élément de mieux en mieux connu du paysage religieux des Song et des Yuan. Cependant, leurs relations avec les autres traditions religieuses et avec la société médiévale sont moins bien comprises. Tout en maîtrisant des traditions rituelles qui dérivaient de situations locales avec patronage local, de nombreux exorcistes et prêtres itinérants, parmi

Our understanding of Chinese religion advances, to a definite but unknown degree, thanks to the "hidden virtue" (yinde Psfê) secretly accumulated for us by earlier scholars. Latter-day scholars reap unknown benefits sown and nurtured by their forebears. This is not unique to the study of China's religious practices, but in this case it is poignant. I offer this essay in gratitude to Anna Seidel, whose virtues, energy, and work in the bright world continue to benefit many other scholars besides myself, despite her premature passage to the other side. My thanks should be evident in the choice of this ritual petition that expands upon Anna's pioneering research on China's long involvement with the divine hierarchies of the "dark world," which Daoist ritual dispensations repeatedly attempted to co-opt and supersede through various bureaucratic and meditative means throughout China's long history. I would also like to thank the more mundane, but more sustaining, individuals, institutions and funding which contributed to the production of this essay. Kristofer Schipper was very giving of his time and assistance during my stay in Paris from 1990 to 1991 as a research student with an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship. Between 1991 and 1993 I was fortunate to be at the Research Institute in the Humanities of Kyoto University as a research student under the guidance of Dr. Tanaka Tan funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education. From 1993 to 1995 I was at the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge, England, with support from the National Science Foundation. Many friends and colleagues at these places provided much help and kindness, making my research more productive and more enjoyable, and I would like to thank them, collectively, here.

Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie 9 (1996-1997) : 159-202.

160 Lowell Skar

lesquels il y avait des experts du Rituel du Tonnerre, faisaient appel au patronage de la cour impériale des Song. En se faisant accepter par les lignées taoïstes établies et mises au défi, ils pouvaient promouvoir leurs pratiques avec plus de légitimité et sur une plus vaste échelle. Certaines lignées parvinrent à altérer les degrés d'initiation des prêtres taoïstes à la fin de l 'époque des Song, mais la prolifération continue et la transmission de traditions d 'exorcisme en dehors de ces grades rituels taoïstes modifiés témoignent de l'impossibilité qu'il y eut d'imposer les grades en question à tous les pratiquants des rites du tonnerre.

Les pratiquants de cette époque étaient conscients de la confusion régnant dans les rites du tonnerre et quelques prêtres taoïstes tentèrent d'imposer un certain ordre parmi les divers systèmes. Ces mises en ordre révèlent non seulement les aspects du Rituel du Tonnerre que ces prêtres connaissaient, mais leurs préférences individuelles dévoilent aussi à quel ordre ils voulaient se rattacher. Cependant plus que les anciennes traditions liturgiques taoïstes et que les lignées plus récentes d 'exorcistes, ce qui importe sont les noms modifiés et les formes d'une large variété de dieux, de cultes et d'idées intégrés dans les Rituels du Tonnerre auxquels adhérait un public laïc. Une analyse plus détaillée de ces éléments intégrés aidera à déterminer le contexte d'où sont sortis les systèmes du Rituel du Tonnerre.

La pétition rituelle traduite ci-dessous fut adressée en 1216 au Bureau du Tonnerre céleste par un prêtre taoïste nommé Bai [ou BoJ Yuchan qui était depuis peu arrivé dans les Monts Wuyi du Fujian du nord-ouest. Durant l'hiver 1215, l'exécution couronnée de succès d'un exorcisme en faveur d'une influente famille locale lui gagna le patronage de cette famille et marqua pour lui le début d'une décennie de remarquable activité religieuse. Peu après, il fit une grande impression sur les autorités de la montagne proche du Longhu shan. Il aida à y diffuser les enseignements qu'il avait reçus de son maître Chen Nan pendant un stage d'étude de neuf ans commencé en 1205.

La pétition-mémorial fait plus qu 'exposer la diversité des traditions du Rituel du Tonnerre connues par Bai en son temps. Elle introduit aussi un certain ordre parmi celles-ci et promeut à un rang supérieur certaines divinités qui y sont incluses. Discussion et dispute sur la validité de plusieurs aspects des systèmes de Rituel du Tonnere connus de Bai lui fournissent le contexte au travers duquel il peut esquisser un système qui dérivait de son maître et qu 'il considérait comme plus vrai et plus correct.

Il est clair qu 'une grande part du caractère correct attribué à ce système dérive du système Shenxiao alors âgé d'un siècle et au rituel duquel Bai avait souvent recours. Cependant sa source immédiate est Chen Nan qui reçut des révélations d'une importante figure au Ministère du Tonnerre. Néanmoins, la structure du mémorial et sa destination font appel à d'anciennes formes rituelles établies par les Maîtres Célestes et les traditions de la Suprême Pureté. Tandis que Bai exerçait sa pratique comme un Joyau Numineux avec formation dans le système Shenxiao, ses disciples et lui ont sans doute contribué à instiller leur variété de Rituels du Tonnerre à l'intérieur de la synthèse taoïste plus vaste lancée par des maîtres se proclamant représentants du mouvement de la Pure Ténuité (qingwei), mouvement qui était aussi actif dans le nord-ouest du Fujian durant la seconde moitié du XIIIe siècle.

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 161

To not lose your place is to last long To die without perishing — that's true long life.

Laozi (Xiang'er Edition), section 33

Introduction

By the thirteenth century, many literate Chinese recognized the Thunder Court (leifu ifR-f) as an elaborate astral headquarters — complete with bureaucratic staffs and administrative buildings — whose powerful thunder dignities had been charged by heaven to oversee both the productive capacities of the cosmos and the punishment of deviant inferiors. Some of these educated men mastered the administrative protocols, forms of meditation, and bureaucratic culture of a Thunder Ritual system (le if a 1ff£) that derived from the Thunder Court as part of their training in classical Daoist liturgies. These Gentlemen of the Way (daoshi jt±) joined the divine thunder hierarchies and vowed to use their newly acquired thunder authority to supplement the powers granted them from their appointments in the imperial or Daoist hierarchies. More frequently, trainees in the various Thunder Ritual systems — many of them itinerant, and less literate and less sophisticated in their approach — were called Masters or the Officials of a Ritual System (fashi ££eift or faguan fil") or bore no special title. In their search for patrons and disciples (mainly in southeast China), these itinerant ritual masters often performed and taught their Thunder Rituals within ritual programmes based on the exorcistic traditions that had begun circulating in the human realm with greater frequency from the tenth century onward. The interaction of these new localized exorcistic lineages (of which the Thunder Rites were a part) with more popular cults, classical clerical (i.e., Buddhist and Daoist) traditions, and state institutions in the changing Song society generated much of the period's religious dynamism which helped to reshape the Chinese people's interactions with the divine realm. Beyond the newer and more involved articulations of thunder circulated within the new ritual traditions were less elaborate yet more enduring interpretations of thunder as harbinger of seasonal fertility and sign of heavenly displeasure, which had long been passed down within the classical canon, a range of local cults, and traditions of astrology, magic and divination. Moreover, from the mid-Tang period, the thunder god advanced his position within the imperial system of sacrifices. All this forms the basic background against which a balanced historical assessment of the emergence of the Thunder Rituals will have to be made. Here I will focus on a Southern Song document taken from the largest storehouse of medieval material pertaining to thunder: the Ming Daoist Canon, printed 1444-1445.

Although a quick glance through the major extant sources of Thunder Ritual systems in this storehouse may be confusing, it should not discourage repeated visitation. Ritual compendia compiled between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries

1 62 Lowell Skar

contain tangled webs of obscure gods, talismans, charts, genealogies, incantations, ritual protocols, and seals. By turning these embedded elements into sites for further investigation, the local and empire-wide bases of the medieval China's social and religious life can be better specified. The most recent fruitful investigations into the Daoist Canon have patiently grounded its various textual traditions in specific historical circumstances, thereby disentangling some of their complexity into local, regional and court-centered historical works, and connected some of their abstraction to competing traditions. To this way of approaching ritual lineages, textual complexity and variety suggest multiple local traditions vying for wider patronage and transmission.

Today, many Chinese communities in Taiwan and southeast China still rely on Daoist priests to administer thunder-power on their behalf, often employing the same spiritual resources to dispense thunder known in southeast China from the Song. This continuity is less remarkable than the endurance of traditions that have survived in short narratives on the retributive strikes of thunder upon individuals (thereby signalling their unworthiness) or on the powers of local thunder gods to bring precipitation and ensure good harvests. People living in imperial China often considered thunder as a celestial phenomenon with direct visible and audible terrestrial consequences which — whether linked to cosmic processes or to various thunder divinities — always derived from the inscrutable activities of heaven. Thunder, in other words, was a particularly potent form of astral precipitation which some discussed in relation to the subtle processes (yinyang wuxing li^PlfSff) of the cosmos (tiandi :^:iÉ), while others claimed it as the evidential miracles (lingyan fi iœ) of the supermundane realm (fangwai ~}j*J\-) and still others claimed it was a "natural" sign of heavenly displeasure with someone's activity. Whether marking the seasonal patterns of growth (signalling accord with heaven) or punctuating the normal course of things as sudden strokes of punishment (signalling heavenly displeasure), thunder and its consequences were ultimately dispensed by the cosmic

2 For a recent look at the retributive motif in several collections of "jottings" {biji ^sE) of the Qing period (with some reference to earlier times), see Charles E. Hammond, "Waiting for a Thunderbolt," Asian Folklore Studies 51 (1992), pp. 25-49. Terry Kleeman's study of the origins of the Wenchang deity shows that it arose from a Sichuan cult to a local Viper deity "who lived in a cave high atop the mountain and spoke through the thunderclap" which dispatched both rain and tektites ("thunder-stones" [leishi US]) to the local faithful. See A God's Own Tale (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), p. 1. Edward Schafer has made some perceptive remarks on these deities in Pacing the Void (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 103-104. Also see Edward Schafer, The Vermilion Bird (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 105-106. Wolfram Eberhard, The Local Cultures of South and East China, trans. Alide Eberhard, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967), pp. 253-261, discusses many stories about local thunder deities in China. Further research on these local cults to thunder deities, prevalent in many parts of south China and mainland Southeast Asia as well as in Sichuan, will undoubtedly help specify some of the background of the various Thunder Ritual systems and the Thunder Ministry.

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 1 63

moral order of the Heavens (however that order was conceived). Recent authors who have begun to analyze the literary remains of these Thunder

Ritual traditions have suggested their relation to such areas as diverse as popular religious beliefs and practices, classical ideas, governmental organization, social change, new forms of exorcism, Tantric Buddhism, interaction with non-assimilated peoples, pyrotechniques, and Daoist traditions. 3 To this diversity can be added star-

Many important articles have appeared in the last two decades on the Thunder Rites. Michel Strickmann's brief "Sôdai no raigi: Shinshô undo to Dôka nanshû ni tsuite no ryakusetsu Sfcftcoif^ • ftffjlS) t jt^S^^ov^tOH&i^ (Thunder Rites in the Song: A Brief Account of the Divine Empyrean Movement and the Southern Lineage of Daoism)," Tôhô shùkyô MJî^ffi. 46 (1975), pp. 15-28, was one of the first and, although it deals mainly with Bai Yuchan and the Divine Empyrean order and not directly with the Thunder Rites, is seminal. The article by Liu Zhiwan i!lfôH, "Raijin shinkô to raihô no tenkai HfWaffl] t tfiÉ <7)%kFM (Belief in the Thunder God and the Development of the Thunder Rites)," Tôhô shùkyô 67 (1986), pp. 1-21, considers the long view of Chinese thunder beliefs using some standard sources. Matsumoto Kôichi fè^fê— , "Sôdai no raihô %\X<^>%\^ (The Thunder Rites of the Song Dynasty)," Shakai bunka shigaku tt#;S:fl;&P 17 (1979), pp. 45-65, is the broadest- based account of the Thunder Rites in the Song dynasty published to date. Timothy Barrett's perceptive review of Michael Saso's The Teachings of Master Chuang (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978) shows that some late Tang dynasty (618-907) and Five Dynasties writers knew of thunder gods and had rituals to deal with them. See T.H. Barrett, "Taoist Ritual and the Development of Chinese Magic," Modern Asian Studies 14.1 (1980), pp. 164- 169, where he musters some evidence to suggest looking toward the thunder cults of China's southern minority peoples which may have been subordinated within the various thunder ritual systems just as the people were subordinated to the southern expansion of the Chinese empire after the demise of the Tang. His arguments on the date of an important text also contribute to investigating Tang material. See "Towards a Date for the Chin-so liu-chu yin," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 53.2 (1990), pp. 292-294. A related argument is also made by Chan Wing-hoi, who. notes some parallels between a list of deities made by Bai Yuchan and the deities in contemporary Hakka, Yao, She, and Punti genealogies, where they are used to provide initiates more spiritual control and social prestige in their communities. See "Ordination Names in Hakka Genealogies," in Down to Earth, David Faure and Helen F. Siu, eds. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), pp. 65-82. Judith M. Boltz has provided readers with the most extensive and detailed introduction to the Thunder Rites of the Song period, especially on the "ritual rearmament" of officials who chose to train themselves in the new exorcistic systems of the Song. See especially her contribution entitled "Not by the Seal of Office Alone," in Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Peter N. Gregory, eds., Religion and Society in T'ang and Sung China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993), pp. 241-305. Most recently, Edward L. Davis has included a section on the Thunder Rites in his important dissertation on the tensions of religious life in the Song period and contributed broad-based and subtle analyses of their contexts. See his excellent dissertation entitled "Society and the Supernatural in Song China," University of California at Berkeley, 1994, esp. pp. 55-66. Most recently Victor Xiong's article in T'oung Pao 82 (1996): 258-316, entitled "Ritual Innovations and Taoism under Tang Xuanzong," discusses the elevation of the Thunder Master (leishi If Bip) to a middle-level of imperial worship in 746 by Tang Xuanzong, undoubtedly enhancing the importance of thunder power to China's officialdom and helping to legitimize its national credibility.

164 Lowell Skar

worship and traditions related to the stars as well as changing imperial sacrificial systems which have been rather more neglected. The relations suggested by these hypotheses on the origins of the Thunder Rites show that the Thunder Rites involved all strata of Song Chinese society and all manner of religious activities, but they also make plain how much more we still need to understand the religious experiences and expectations of people in imperial China. The fanfare surrounding the elaborate Thunder Ritual writings from the twelfth century onward suggests a long period of development prior to the discovery of their written codifications in remote grottoes and through heavenly revelations. Close scrutiny of the Thunder Ritual manuals suggests that we need to better understand both the literate and the non-literate traditions in medieval China to appreciate their significance. I will focus in this paper on a memorial sent to the Thunder Department in 1216 by a self- proclaimed ordained Daoist priest writing in mountainous rural Fujian, most remembered as an important center for the new moral philosophy called Daoxue iS ^ (Studies of the Way) centered around Zhu Xi fcM (1 130-1200). As a context for this, I will briefly look at three pertinent moments in the development of Chinese ways to administer thunder.

These three moments appear in three different texts of the Ming Daoist Canon, and they help to introduce some of the relevant approaches to thunder taken several centuries before the writing of the memorial translated below. The first passage is from a Daoist text (composed, most likely, in early Tang times, but containing earlier material) and discusses the powers of a Thunder Divinity (leishen If |$) — assimilated here with Sire Thunder (leigong Ifi2r) — to punish a demon at the root of a popular cult at the frontier of Chinese civilization. A local spirit of the Rong (ï£) mountains became a man and, having won many myriad followers with his programme of extreme austerities and eschatological ideas, held a fire- ritual — presumably in preparation for the final cosmic conflagration — which resulted in severely burning its participants. The cult leader brashly chided his followers for their spiritual weakness, after which all but he entered into the waters and perished. They were then punished after death for their misguided activity while alive. There follows an account of what happened to the demon (cult leader):

At that time, the elemental apparition (Jing It) of the Rong mountains, who had induced the ordinary folk to their destruction, recognized his own culpability (youzui ^W) and, being highly afraid of the great might [of Heaven], hid deep in the rocks. With the approach of spring, a Thunder Divinity forced him out with [a stroke of] his thunderbolt, driving him to attend to the dragons, where he labored hard day and night, without any freedom. Similarly, methods (fa £fc) for handling stubborn elemental apparitions (jing II) may employ the Thunder Sire to behead them and rend them asunder. Without bothering the powers of the superior mighty deities of the Heavenly Office, without troubling the Qi #t [pneuma, dynamic life- breath] of the Great Way's perfect subtlety, and without employing the might

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 1 65

of the Great Way's vital divinity, perversity ends up destroying itself. Taishang dadao yuqing jing :fe_h:fciË:Ê7ft$M [The Jade Purity (Realm's) Scripture of the Most High (Lord Lao's) Great Way]4 CT 1312, juan 9.9b

This is but one of many tales found in chapter nine (constituting section 19 of the original text) of the work which deals with the brilliant powers ridding the world of demon-caused evils, most relating to those of the Perfected Mingwei {ty^WL). This chapter and others, it is interesting to note, emphasize exploits in non-assimilated areas of China, although often set in archaic periods of China's past.

The passage, while mentioning "methods" (fa H) of the Thunder Sire (Leigong lf^) to punish the "culpable" (youzui WP) leaders of (non-Chinese?) cults who are actually spirits disguised as humans, does not yet display the fully developed Thunder Rite systems (leifa !??£) that constitute the ritual codes from the twelfth century and are in the background of the early thirteenth-century petition translated below. Nonetheless, it suggests what may be a common background with later more systematized exorcistic lineages of the Song that circulated powerful techniques (fa £fe) aiming to incorporate and manipulate the powers of thunder both to punish the world's baleful powers and to promote the world's forces of life — the two chief powers associated with thunder by Chinese people. The passage makes plain that appeals to the highest Daoist powers to deal with the evil ways of pernicious cults are unnecessary. Unsanctioned cults, it seems, self-destruct under the normal operation of the cosmos, which responds to their evil with heavenly retribution. More research on the pre-Song period will provide a larger corpus of material on thunder and its uses, which will not only help to locate this passage in a wider context of the workings of the thunder power but also clarify the background

4 All titles cited from the Ming Daoist Canon (printed 1444-1445) and its supplement (appended in 1607) will be assigned numbers according to those given in K.M. Schipper, Concordance du Tao-tsang (Paris: Publications de l'Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient, 1975), abbreviated throughout as "CT". Dating this scripture is difficult, and the Tang dating is tentative. Several Japanese scholars have proposed evidence that suggests a date anywhere from the Six Dynasties to the mid-Tang. Since a text fragment of the scripture recovered from the Dunhuang Caves is dated 753 (P. no. 2257, with P. no. 2385, 2341, 2405, 2467 and S. no. 5507 also citing from it), it pre-existed the mid-Tang. See Ôfuchi Ninji ~fcM32M, Tonkô dôkyô — Mokuroku hen îSdâîIM @ MM [Dunhuang Daoist Scriptures: A Catalogue] (Tokyo: Fukutake shoten, 1978), pp. 304-310. Also suggestive of a Tang date for the final completion of the text is the use of the term Great Tang [Empire?] (Da Tang ~fcM) on juan 8, p. lb of the existing text. Its many references to doctrines important to the Lingbao revelations, moreover, point to a composition date after the late fifth century, when many of these scriptures emerged. Michel Strickmann and Yoshioka Yoshitoyo both assert it is a sixth-century text, without providing specific reasons for this dating. See Michel Strickmann, "Liang Wu Ti's Suppression of Taoism," Journal of the American Oriental Society 98.4 (1978), p. 472, and Yoshioka Yoshitoyo ^Wï^Ë:, Dôkyô to Bukkyô itifc t \%%n [Daoism and Buddhism] (Tôkyô: Nihon Gakujutsu Shinkôkai, 1976), vol. 3, p. 37.

1 66 Lowell Skar

for understanding the manipulation of the powers of thunder deities typical in later times.5

A short three-page scripture composed several centuries after the above text provides a closer (and more tangled) focus for the Thunder Ritual memorial translated below. Although unattributed and undated, the Taishang taiqing huanglao dijun Yunlei tiantong yinfan xianjing ±±.mnÈ.%;nrMM'ÊJim.mi£iMl (CT 633)6 cannot be earlier than 1014. A rough translation of this scripture's title is: The

5 The connections of the dragon-tending deity discussed above also suggest affinities in some local cults between mountains, thunder, tektites, retribution, and rain. The literate cosmological tradition of classically trained scholars had, at least since Han times, its own set of ideas about thunder, amplified in some of the writings of Wang Chong and other scholars. Only more detailed study will improve our understanding of the now obscure links between these strains and strata of what could be called China's "thunder complex."

6 This is one of three recensions of the scripture in the Ming Daoist Canon and is most pertinent to the Thunder Rituals. Although not composed before 1014, given its reference to the titles of four protector deities given only in that year, it could have been done only a few years after that date. The other two shorter versions appended with commentaries (CT 632 and CT 762) provide, respectively, a more polished text and commentary dated by a 1144 preface by Fu Xiao 1## (fl. 1144-1150), and a shorter recension and commentary by Hou Shanyuanfl^ (fl. 1189-1192). See Judith Boltz,^ Survey of Taoist Literature (1987), pp. 104, 134, n263, n329, who also points out the existence of another version of the Tiantong jing in the Yijian zhi ^H,* [Record of the Listener] by Hong Mai (1123-1202), (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980), pp. 1784-5. See the earlier remarks of Michel Strickmann in his Le Taoïsme du Mao Shan, chronique d'une révélation (Paris: Mémoires de l'Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, 1981), pp. 46-47. The guardians of the Song, one of whom was the "Perfected Lord {zhenjun Re) who Protects Sageliness" received that title only in 1014.

7 The emperor Zhenzong m^ (r. 997-1022) graced a similarly titled work — the Taiqing tiantong huming miaojing JZ.'in^im.Wk'apb'Pfti — with a preface dated 1014 (of which there are several later recensions). See the collection of established — mainly Tang — texts pertaining to Daoism compiled for Emperor Zhenzong, Yunji qiqian flS-fc^H, for this preface (CT 1032, juan 122, p. 16a- 16b) and the following "evidential miracle" (lingyan MM) tale on the same scripture that includes a date of 892 (Juan 122, pp. 16b- 18b). Thus, while it is possible that the Tiantong yinfan xianjing recension (CT 633) was completed around the year 1014, it may have been based on a late Tang version. A tentative dating for the text would have to fall from the late ninth to the early eleventh century with refinements into the twelfth century. Furthermore, the four main deities invoked suggests that this scripture is related to the Tongchu Mfy exorcistic lineage, some of whose texts are extant in the Daofa huiyuan (CT \220, juan 171- 178). This lineage claims a Mao Shan beginning in the early twelfth century. The strong Mao Shan connections to the Tiantong jing, especially from the early twelfth century, suggest further investigation in the Huizong era, and the arrival to court of the 25th Highest Purity master Liu Hunkang WM.M (1035-1108) from Maoshan. The strong presence of Tantric Buddhist mantras, deities, and thunder imagery in the short Tiantong yinfan xianjing (CT 633) may have derived from emperor Zhenzong's era. For all his Daoist leanings (see Suzanne Cahill, "Taoism at the Sung Court: The Heavenly Text Affair of 1008," Bulletin of Sung-Yuan Studies 16 [1980], pp. 23-44), this emperor also oversaw the last great phase of Buddhist translations in China, many of which were Tantric and most of which had been translated by the 1017 death of Danapâla (Shihu MIÏ). For a brief assessment of this

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 1 67

Heavenly Youth's Concealed Sanskrit [Mantra] Transcendence Scripture for Controlling the Thunder [Deities], from the Most High Supreme Purity s Illustrious Lao, Divinized Lord. This long scriptural incantation contains numerous pseudo- Sanskrit syllables, as well as invocations to a host of thunder deities. Reciting it enables ritual practitioners to become the deities they invoke. After intoning the "uncovering the head and letting down the hair," the reciter reveals the true fierce forms of four mighty guardian deities of the Song8 — Marshals Tianpeng ^;2I and Tianyou ^<$M, Perfected Lord Yisheng SU, and Zhenwu JCb£ of the Mysterious Heavens. Making an oath with heaven gives way to the summoning of a host of destructive thunder deities to do the reciter's bidding. The fusion of Tantric elements with a range of popular deities exalted is a common feature of many Thunder Rites manuals of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. Furthermore, the framing appeals made to the Most High in the title and interspersed throughout clearly indicate the adaptation of the core form-changing incantation of this scripture to older forms of Daoist ritual practice and tradition, perhaps that of the Heavenly Masters.

A more immediate context for the text translated below appears in a text most likely of the later Southern Song period linking the powers of exorcistic experts to coordinated astral administrative centers, which dispense their spiritual powers to properly initiated Daoist priests according to strict administrative guidelines. Included within the massive Daofa huiyuan it'/è#7C [Compendium of Daoist Ritual Systems] (CT 1220), juan 249-250, the Jade Regulations for the Most High [Lord Lao's] Heavenly Altar (Taishang tiantan yuge ic±.^t]ïï£fé)9 contain many rules governing the relationship of ordained Daoists to various hierarchically ranked celestial authorities, as well as the ordination ranks for the four most important authorities that rose to prominence from the tenth century onward. The text makes

episode in English, see Richard Bowring, "Brief Note: Buddhist Translations in the Northern Sung," Asia Major 3rd ser. 5.2 (1992), pp. 79-93.

8 The first two emperors of the Song dynasty oversaw the construction of a temple complex honoring these deities as part of their general worship of the powerful Purple Tenuity (Ziwei ^W) section of the heavens, imagined as the southern residence of the astral emperor. Zhenzong granted them more advanced titles during his reign to ensure their help in protecting the Song state. The Tiantong yinfan xianjing (CT 633) repeatedly refers to the "Black Killer" Heisha Hf£, who is an avatar of the Perfected Lord Yisheng, and part of the select trio that included Xuanwu and Tianpeng, who were likewise central to many exorcistic lineages during the Song, especially the widely popular "Correct Ritual system of the Heavenly Heart" (Tianxin zhengfa ^î'kïEvÈ). See Poul Andersen, "Taoist Ritual Texts and Traditions with Special Reference to Bugang, the Cosmic Dance" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. Copenhagen, 1991), pp. 81-96, 125-126, for a look at many of the relevant texts, and Edward L. Davis, "Society and the Supernatural in the Sung," pp. 50-55, 140-179, for analysis of their significance in the Song polity and society.

9 This important massive compendium of Daoist ritual texts was first discussed in the trenchant overview of the Daofa huiyuan by Piet van der Loon. See his "A Taoist Collection of the Fourteenth Century," Studia Sinica-Mongolica (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1979), pp. 401-405. He suggests that the Jade Regulations date from the Song.

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a basic distinction between the adept's ordination into the "Military" (wu $:) and into the "Civilian" (wen jt) hierarchies, as in the statement that "The Two Southern and Northern Offices [most likely the Northern offices of the Culmen and the Supreme Tenuity asterisms (beiji :jfc|É and taiwei i:0)] are known as the Civilian [ritual] hierarchy, and the Thunder administration is known as the Military [ritual] hierarchy. Beginning perfected [initiates] should first master the Civilian [ritual hierarchy]. Moving from Civilian into the Military is easy, but transferring from the Military to the Civilian is difficult." The administrative parlance used here reminds one of a point explicitly mentioned by several compilers of important Song ritual codes: namely, that codiflers of the statutes and regulations applicable to the divine world achieved their job by close comparisons with the statutes and regulations used to administer the mundane empire. The Civilian-Military distinction was one example of the result of this comparison. The important point to note here is that ritual titles with either the Five Thunders (wulei ïf) or the Thunderclap (letting If S) in them appear only in the upper (i.e., Military) strata of the ritual hierarchy. Since Daoist priests received ranks and responsibilities in these divine hierarchies, they had to understand their organization and learn the appropriate methods to deal ritually with their holy roles. Many of the deities that priests summoned and transformed themselves into in the course of their basically exorcistic ritual activity were fierce and martial, making such classifications of Thunder Ritual under the Military bureaucracy not so strange. More systematic research will indicate the precise similarities and differences between the divine and mundane administrative hierarchies, and the relations between the divine "Civilian" and "Military" hierarchies. The unknown author of the Jade Regulations stresses the importance of first becoming familiar with the civil order of ritual practice before approaching the exorcistic rituals of the martial orders. This regulation doubtless helped those who sought to preserve ritual traditions that had become part of the trunk of Daoist liturgies and onto which newer exorcistic traditions were grafted with greater frequency from the eleventh century. These four administration centers, while

10 See for instance the preface by Deng Yougong fB#5!j (fl. late eleventh century) in Shangqing gusui lingwen guilii (CT 461, preface, p. 2b), which says that after critically examining the laws and rules (falii ?£#) of the empire, Rao Dongtian ^MJi (fl. 994) fixed the system of punishments and institutions (xingxian MM) that would be effective in the spirit-realm. See also the conservative ritualist Jin Yunzhong ^icP (fl. 1224-1225) for his criticisms of this type of practice in Shangqing lingbao dqfa (CT 1223), juan 43, p. 17a.

See the arguments and evidence assembled by Kristofer Schipper on contemporary Daoist ritual in Southern Taiwan, and his references to the remarks made a century earlier on southern Fujian Daoist ritual by de Groot. Kristofer Schipper, "Vernacular and Classical Ritual in Taoism," Journal of Asian Studies 45.1 (1985), pp. 21-24. He makes many suggestive hypotheses for the medieval period as well. John Lagerwey, Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History (New York: Macmillan Publishers, 1987), pp. 68-69, discusses one aspect of the "ritual restructuring" attributed to the "Correct Ritual System of the Heavenly Heart" (on which see below).

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 1 69

linked in this text with a heavenly hierarchy, emerged from distinct and often obscure terrestrial circumstances and attracted many ritual practitioners available at the time. Together, they represent the most influential of the new Song ritual systems in southeast China.

The opening section of the Jade Regulations lists, in ascending order, the nine ranks (Jiupin A,pp) and two classes — first (zheng IE) and second (cong fit) — of initiation for each of the four astral administrative offices, each of which developed as a local ritual tradition before being integrated within this larger administrative structure. The four hierarchies, moving from lowest level to highest, consist of: the Office of the Heavenly Pivot (tianshu yuan ^fllfêc), the Office of the Northern Culmen for Expelling Perversities (beiji quxie yuan iVtÊ^fflfâc), the Jade Court {yufu 3£J#), and finally the Divine Empyrean (shenxiao ^ft).13 A note identifies the top two classes of the first rank of the Jade Pivot and the Divine Empyrean hierarchies with the top two ranks of the highest Heavenly Pivot class (and are quite similar to the top ranks of the Northern Culmen). This document assigns a degree of ritual (and perhaps historical) priority to the Heavenly Pivot and Heavenly Heart ritual systems, while regarding the Jade Court and Divine Empyrean Orders as superior (and perhaps more recent). The Civilian hierarchies include the Offices of the Heavenly Pivot and the Heavenly Heart, while the Military encompassed the Jade Court and the Divine Empyrean. This important document also coordinates these four astral agencies, along with their divine staffs and the ritual means of dealing with them, and includes rules for practitioners to hold jointly positions in each of the four offices. Each of the four traditions, here integrated within a unified system for Daoist priests, had local mundane origins that are not yet clearly understood.

Low-level adepts who received ranks in the first two "Civilian" hierarchies, while permitted by the Jade Instructions to practice various types of exorcism,

The Chinese term used is yuan fêc ("office" or "court"), which imperial China's administrative parlance subdivided into five shiyuan fëfêc ("Commissioners Offices" or "Military Inspectorate" or "Police Office"). 13 Note the parallels with the rankings found in the "History of Taoism" composed by southern Fujianese Daoist masters and widely circulating in manuscript form in Taiwan as the Daojiao yuanliu ittWS»!. Kristofer Schipper dates the current version of this text to the Ming dynasty ("Vernacular and Classical Ritual in Taoism," p. 40, n. 71). Michael Saso lists the ordination ranks (which he lists from highest to lowest) from a copy of this text as: 1) Jade Capital, 2) Heavenly Pivot [which he identified with the Pure Tenuity synthesis], 3) Northern Culmen, 4) Jade Court, and 5) Divine Empyrean, the bottom four of which are the inverse of those listed in the Jade Regulations. See Michael Saso, The Teachings of Master Chuang (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), pp. 58, 268, n. 175, where he dates the text to the Yuan period. His efforts to use these rankings and the teachings his master preferred to impose as an "orthodoxy" on Taiwanese Daoist ritual traditions, along with his historical accounts of their origins, have been thoroughly reviewed in Michel Strickmann, "History, Anthropology, and Chinese Religion," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 40 (1980), pp. 201-248.

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were not yet eligible for the Thunder Rites. The textual tradition deriving its authority from the Heavenly Pivot has been most thoroughly investigated by Akizuki Kan'ei, who has shown that it clearly intertwines with the Xu Xun ïïfM (239-292/374?) cult based in Yuzhang jf ̂ (north central Jiangxi).14 Initiates in this tradition envisioned the might of their order as flowing from its headquarters in the Grand Tenuity asterism (taiwei jçffî), which is the symbolic southern palace of the emperor.15 A large corpus of texts survives from this order, interspersed with other ritual manuals of the Pure and Perspicacious (Jingming ffî-^M) tradition, which grew from the cult worshiping Xu Xun. The author of the petition below, Bai Yuchan, lived at this cult center for much of the year 1218 and contributed to preserving its history and activities.

The Northern Culmen (the astral configuration extending out from the bowl of our Little Dipper) heavenly headquarters dispensed its authority on earth through the Correct Rites of the Celestial Heart {Tianxin zhengfa 5Ç'kIE?:è), which, according to the Jade Regulations, is the "ancestor of all the myriad ritual systems."17 Poul Andersen has shown that although this movement came to be strongly associated with Linchuan Ë&JII (central Jiangxi), it likely emerged from a transmission first made in Quanzhou ^.ffl (southern Fujian), after which its chief interpreter — Tan Zixiao fl^ff (fl. 935-939)— fled to Lushan Iftllj (northern Jiangxi) from the collapsing Min kingdom in 944, teaching many students, including one Rao Dongtian iiMX (fl. 994) from Linchuan, who became the lineage's next patriarch. Numerous texts survive from this, perhaps the most influential and popular of the Song dynasty dispensations.18 The writings of Bai Yuchan also indicate that he was quite familiar with this ritual tradition.

The Jade Instructions permit adepts initiated into the upper two "Military" hierarchies to practice the Thunder Rites. Those practicing the rituals of the Jade Court emerged in obscure terrestrial circumstances. Some extant texts, however,

14 See the broadest overview to date of this movement by Akizuki Kan'ei Chùgoku kinsei dôkyô no keisei ^Hi&ifrjli^co^^ [The Formation of Modern Daoism in the History of China] (Tokyo: Sôbunshà, 1978).

15 See Edward Schafer, Pacing the Void, p. 52, where he points out that the designation "southern" derived from the fact that the center of its enclosing wall (in our Virgo and Leo) was at the exact point of the autumnal equinox, and part of the Red Bird of the South designation. This Supreme Tenuity asterism was likewise important to the development of the Xu Xun cult. See Akizuki Kan'ei, Chugoku kinsei dôkyô no keisei, pp. 217-246.

16 The relevant texts in the Ming Daoist Canon are CT 549, 550, 551, 552, 553, and 619. 17 See Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220),ywa« 249, p. 13b. 18 See especially CT 451, 566, 567, 1220 juan 156-168, 1227. Judith Boltz, A Survey of

Taoist Literature, pp. 33-38, has discussed the corpus, as has Edward Davis, "Society and the Supernatural in Song China," (1994), pp. 50-55, largely basing himself on the work of Poul Andersen, "Taoist Ritual Texts and Traditions with Special Reference to Bugang, The Cosmic Dance," (1991), pp. 49-130.

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 1 7 1

associate it with the influential Five Thunders (wulei 2lH) ritual lineage.19 While practices of the Five Thunders ritual were popular throughout southern China during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, some early accounts associate it with Xinzhou fit ;H1 and Jizhou ïÊf ffi (northeastern and central Jiangxi, respectively). Xinzhou was also home of the Heavenly Master tradition, which had reestablished itself there by the ninth century. Some citations from the main scripture of the Five Thunders movement are still extant. It later became part of the Heavenly Heart and Divine Empyrean movements and is also visible in Bai Yuchan's teachings.20

The Divine Empyrean, while being the best understood Song dynasty Daoist movement, still has not been fully examined.21 It is the highest of nine Empyrea, in the center of the cosmos, claimed to hold the supreme inhabitants of the cosmos. Therefore, bearers of the register and ritual titles from this center may hold concurrent appointments in other administrative units. The thunder ritual manuals associated with this authority frequently carry the word Thunderclap {letting US) in their title. This supreme authority reached its peak in the Song court when a practitioner from Wenzhou im'J'H in southern Zhejiang named Lin Lingsu #S^ (1076-1120) reminded the Song Emperor Huizong WCM (r. 1100-1125) sometime after 1116 of his identity as the Great Thearch of Eternal Life (Changsheng dadi H Q£.~kffi) incarnate, and therefore both supreme ruler of the Song Empire and Divine Empyrean. Lin's obscure demise in 1119 led to the installation of Wang Wenqing

(1093-1153, a native of Linchuan, Jiangxi) in his place. This figure

19 See citations of the scripture included in CT 1220 Daofa huiyuanjuan 57, p. 15a; 58, p. 4b, and several other places. This section (juan 57-60), called the Shangqing yufu dafa, iiyff ïflï^ti [Great Rites of the Highest Purity Jade Court], is an important source for the Five Thunders tradition and is also clearly integrated with the Jade Court. These traditions are strongly linked with northern Jiangxi, as is seen in the hagiography of the late Tang itinerant exorcist Ye Qianzhao ^SbS in Shenxian xianyou juan (CT 592), juan 1 , pp. 3a-4a, who received a revelation for making use of the five thunder deities. He is discussed by many early scholars, such as Doré, in Researches into Chinese Superstitions, part 2: The Chinese Pantheon, vol. 10: Boards of Heavenly Administration, trans. D.J. Finn, (Shanghai: T'usewei Printing Press, 1918 [French original, 1911]), p. 12. Most recently Edward L. Davis, "Society and the Supernatural in Song China," (1994), p. 57, discusses him. This association with Jiangxi may be strengthened when considering the numerous references to Five Thunder adepts in the Yijian zhi [Record of the Listener] compiled by the Jiangxi native Hong Mai Wi il (1123-1202). See Judith Boltz, "Not By the Seal of Office Alone," and Edward Davis (1994) for more details.

20 See, for instance, Gaoshang shenxiao yuqing zhenwang zishu dafa (CT \2\9),juan 9. 21 Michel Strickmann has two important exploratory essays on the twelfth-century history

of this movement at the court of the emperor Huizong and in the local traditions of the Southern Song period: "Sôdai no raigi," Tôhô shûkyô 46 (1975), pp. 15-28, and "The Longest Taoist Scripture," History of Religions 17.3 & 4 (1978), pp. 331-354. Judith Boltz has placed her translation of a meditation manual from this tradition in a historical and liturgical context in her "Opening the Gates of Purgatory," Tantric and Taoist Studies in Honour ofR. A. Stein, vol. II, Michel Strickmann, éd., Mélanges chinois et bouddhiques, vol. 21 (Brussels: Institut belge des hautes études chinoises, 1983), pp. 488-510.

1 72 Lowell Skar

frequently appears in both the anecdotal and ritual literature as a powerful proponent of the Divine Empyrean order in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. An important extant scripture, perhaps dating from the twelfth century, encapsulates the thunder ritual system of this movement. Bai Yuchan practiced many of his rituals as a clerk authorized by the Divine Empyrean administration.

The Southern Song Jade Regulations text shows that thunder ritual systems had become integral to the ordination ranks of Daoist priests and were identified by many with a spiritual institution in charge of both the retributive and the generative powers of a well-ordered universe. The thunder ritual systems had become embedded in an complex theoretical, organizational, and ritual structure inherited by Daoist initiates who granted the authority to act on behalf of heaven itself.23 Their ordination ranks formed part of the wave of new exorcistic ritual traditions that emerged from the ninth century onward to restructure the ordination ranks of Daoist priests known during the Tang period.24 An important early fourteenth-century ritual compendium includes detailed accounts on how rituals of the Thunderclap fit within the overall ceremonial architecture of an important variety of classical Daoist ritual.25 Those familiar with

22 The scripture is abbreviated as the Letting yujing BIIEEIS and comprises CT 15. The Haiqiong Bai zhenren yulu (CT 1307), juan 4, pp. 19b, or the Recorded Verbal Exchanges of Bai Yuchan mentions the printing and distribution of ten copies of this work to Jiangxi gentlemen (shi ±). Many ritual compendia of Divine Empyrean thunder rites exist in the Ming Daoist Canon, including those found in the Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220), juan 198-205. Wang Wenqing is also credited with many writings related to the Thunderclap (leiting US). Some explanations regard leiting as two things parallel to yin and yang, good and bad, etc. A cognate corpus is that which claims to derive from the Fire Master (huoshi iAiSrp) Wang Zihua tET-^, believed to have lived in the Tang; it is found in a loosely coordinated section of the Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220), filling juan 56-100.

23 See the ordination memorial for Bai Yuchan 's disciples, which charges the new initiates to "enact the transformations by embodying Heaven" {titian xinghhua ffjlfîf L), Haiqiong Bai zhenren yulu (CT 1307), juan l,p. 17a.

24 For the levels of initiation of the Tang period, see Kristofer Schipper, "Taoist Ordination Ranks in the Tun-huang Manuscripts," in Religion und Philosophie in Ostasien, Festschrift fur Hans Steininger, Gert Naundorf et al., eds. (Kônigshausen, Neumann, 1985), pp. 127-148. Jade Regulations is one of several texts that present the new ordination ranks for the Song, indicating a time of flux and the lack of sufficiently powerful institutions to impose them on adepts throughout the empire.

25 Further evidence of the integration of the Thunderclap (i.e., Divine Empyrean) rituals into Daoist ritual programmes is in the massive compendium of teachings claiming to follow the teachings of the renowned Ning Quanzhen $^:H (1101-1181), whose compilation was finalized early in the fourteenth century by the Wenzhou fi'J'H (Zhejiang) disciple named Lin Tianren #^fî (fl. 1303) or Lin Lingzhen ifrztM (1239-1302). Ning is said to have synthesized northern traditions (i.e., Three Caverns and a form of alchemy) with the southern traditions (i.e., Youthful Incipience and Numinous Jewel). See the Lingbao lingjiao jidu jinshu (CT 466), juan 2.33a-34a; 7.18a-20b; 274.11a-24b; 285.15a-17a; 318.11b-23a for material pertaining to the Thunderclap ritual system within the overall structure of Daoist ritual, located in the last half of the compendium on "prayers and exorcisms" (qirang for the living.

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 1 73

the procedures for manipulating the powers of this institution and who had been recruited into its hierarchies learned how to absorb and refine the dynamic energies of thunder, and could be called upon no longer simply to punish recalcitrant deities or wrongdoing humans nor to call for the spring rains marking the rebirth of the cosmos, but to dispense cosmic justice and promote cosmic welfare in the place of the celestial order. Thunder ritual manuals instructed initiates in the duties, powers, regulations and responsibilities granted them by their divine superiors, as well as informing them of the organizational structure of the Thunder Bureau, but most importantly teaching them the various required forms of paperwork, meditation, and comportment that would empower adepts in their positions as functionaries of the Thunder Ministry (leibu It p|5). By coordinating traditional Chinese cults and ideas related to the powers of thunder to punish and produce, and ramifying their effectiveness through forms of divine organization coordinating the administrative structures of the terrestrial empire with those of the divine one, the various thunder ritual traditions became new sources of authority for initiated Daoist priests. A further innovation was the ritual adaptation and the elaboration of internal alchemy traditions widely known at the time.

A final quotation from the Jade Regulations will help tie together the above passages and introduce the petition: "In practicing Thunder Rites, be sure to first receive the Scripture of the Heavenly Youth {Tiantong jing t^mIS) of the Thunder Ministry... This is the fundamental scripture of the Thunder Ritual systems. Its 68 lines emerged from the Han [period] Heavenly Master's Thunder Lockbox." The scripture mentioned here may well be the Tantric-infused recension mentioned above (the Tiantong yinfan xianjing [CT 633]). Some Song practitioners of the Thunder Rites saw the Tiantong scripture as central to the relatively recent addition to canonical Daoist literature. Bai Yuchan Éï^t (1194-ca. 1227) expressed this opinion, quoting a statement he heard from his master Chen Niwan Wfii% (i.e., M. fi, d. 1213) that the Tiantong jing (and other recent scriptures), although deriving from the Jade Emperor, were nonetheless in accord with the distinctive scriptures revealed earlier by the Heavenly Worthy of Primordial Commencement and the Most High Lord Lao.28 More compelling evidence is the inclusion, in a compendium of Thunder Rites — whose postface dates to 1 296 and which claims to derive from the teachings of Bai Yuchan — of a Thunder Scripture (Leijing HIM)

See the essay by Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein in this issue. 27 See Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220) Juan 250, pp. 14b-15a.

See Haiqiong Bai zhenren yulu (CT 1307), juan 1, p. lia: "Formerly, the scriptures uttered by the Heavenly Worthy of Primordial Origins and the Most High Lord Lao, when collected and edited, made up their own unique canon. Now, the Northern Dipper, Southern Dipper, Dissolving Disasters, Eternal Tranquility, Heavenly Lad, Numinous Jewel Salvation of Men as the Scriptures of the Heavenly Worthy of Jade Illustriousness, all claim to be in accord with the above matters, and are all genuinely verified by them."

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divided into three parts and which is nearly identical with the Tantric version of the Tiantongjing (CT 633). 29

The complexities of the Thunder Ritual systems encountered in the Jade Regulations seem simple in comparison with the variety appearing in the translated memorial petition below, which in turn simplifies the tangle of Thunder Ritual traditions surviving in the Daoist Canon. Besides his skepticism of many contemporary ritual systems used to deal with the Thunder Court (many more than those sketched out above), the petition's author, Bai Yuchan, sketches another system he considers more legitimate but which overlaps with the systems he criticizes. Not surprisingly, this system was that taught him by his teacher before his death in 1213. Composed by Bai in early 1216 for a ritual at the Chongyou Temple M'fôHI in the Wuyi Mountains jt^lll of northwestern Fujian, it came from the heart of the southeastern region of China which produced most of the new ritual movements circulating in Song society from the eleventh century onward that have survived in the Ming Daoist Canon.

Bai Yuchan has been the subject of several studies of late and thanks to them we know more about this elusive figure born in 1194 in Qiongzhou i%f\\ (Hainan), trained in Huizhou "MJM (Guangdong) from 1205 until his master's death in 1213, who set up a base in Jianzhou ]Ê'M (Fujian) in 1215 at the start of a remarkable decade of ritual and teaching activity at various religious centers in southeast China, and who ended his earthly life early with an uncertain entrance into transcendence.30 Although today's scholars who have perpetuated elite contemplative traditions of late imperial China remember him mostly for his Golden Elixir (Jindan #:Pr) teachings, for several centuries after his demise he was equally well-known for his Daoist liturgical teachings and his remarkable brushwork. Although Song initiates into Daoist ritual traditions valued contemplative abilities and calligraphic skills, those with access to the highest emanations of the Great Dao had no monopoly on Inner

See Daofa huiyuan (CT \220), juan 152, pp. 12b- 15b, which calls it simply a "Thunder Scripture." This is part of the Dongxuan yushu leiting dqfa îlâJSïfllilïi^vi [Great Rites of the Jade Pivot's Thunderclap of the Mystery Cavern], juan 147-153. Another version of this scripture, called the Controlling Thunder Scripture (Yunlei jing jIHIM), is also basically the same scripture and appears in the Fahai yizhu (CT 1168), juan 12, pp. 13a-15b, in the chapter called Leiji xuanmi HfilSfi; [Mysterious Secrets of the Thunder Powers], which also quotes from the Leiting yujing (CT 1 5).

0 The most important and thorough study on his life is by Miyakawa Hisayuki H'JHfô/ë, "Nansô no dôshi Haku Gyokusen no jiseki [%^<7)ji±ÊiE$t<7)#J9 (The Circumstances of the Southern Song Daoist Bai Yuchan)," in Uchida Gimpû Hakase shdju kinen Tôyôshi ronshu ftfflP^Iltf ±£f#3C#£f&* (Kyoto: Dôhôsha, 1979), pp. 499-517. This essay forms the basis of Judith Berling's essay, "Channels of Connection in Sung Religion: The Case of Pai Yu-chan," in Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Peter N. Gregory, eds., Religion and Society in T'ang and Sung China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993), pp. 307-333. I relate what I have found out about him and his disciples in my forthcoming dissertation, tentatively titled "A Genealogy of the Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir."

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 175

Alchemy (neidan F*3^) practice or proficiency with a brush. Excellence in calligraphy and meditation comprised part of the cultural credentials which some used to gain entrance to the circles of Song high society, just as entrance into the divine hierarchies via initiation become an important supplement to the powers of office for many literati given posts in the imperial Song administrative hierarchies.31

The last half-century of historical and anthropological research has shown the futility of earlier attempts to place religious writings, activities, and beliefs under vaguely defined rubrics of Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, and folk religion. Recognizing that Chinese religion emerges from localized spiritual traditions and cults has been central to this ongoing re-evaluation. The translation below of a thirteenth-century memorial, although by an ordained Daoist priest in a rural community, contributes to recent re-assessment of Tang, Song and Yuan religious life by scholars in the last decade. For these scholars, Chinese people not only engaged the dynamic spiritual realm in more diverse and complex ways than previously assumed, but did so as part of a more complicated society than previously imagined.

The Ming Daoist Canon contains many such textual traditions that can be traced to locales between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, such as those discussed in the Jade Regulations of the Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220). These traditions passed on various powerful procedures (fa fê) for engaging some sector of the spiritual realm by those trained in them (usually called Masters of the Ritual System, fashi &W, or Officers of the Ritual System, faguan £fc1f) by legitimate heirs to their legacy. Many of these traditions entered the human realm through various forms of revelation, such as written communiqués (shu #), which manifested the deities (Generals, jiangjun MW-, Commandants, yuanshuai "kM, or Divinized Lords dijun 'rfffj) of the holy department, bureau or court over which they had control. The texts of these exorcistic or therapeutic lineages sometimes explicitly distinguish their deities — more commonly referred to by their administrative titles — from the divinities (shen #) at the core of popular cults, who typically have human names and histories, even though many of these more elevated deities have clearly been promoted from these popular cults. Some of these local divinities appear to have been "recruited" or "promoted" from their cults into the Daoist exorcistic hierarchies, in a manner parallel to the more open

31 For some intelligent and challenging remarks on a recent book that has expanded our view of religion in medieval Chinese society, with some subtle suggestions for future studies, see Edward Davis' review of Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Peter N. Gregory, eds., Religion and Society in Tang and Sung China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993) in China Review International 1.2 (Fall 1994), pp. 34-43.

32 See, for the early period, the work of Peter Nickerson, "Shamans, Demons, Diviners, and Taoists," Taoist Resources 5.1 (1994), pp. 41-66, and for contemporary China, Kenneth Dean, Taoist Ritual and Popular Cults in Southeast China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). Edward Davis, "Society and the Supernatural in Song China" (1994) makes these tensions much better known for the Song period.

176 Lowell Skar

recruitment procedures in the terrestrial administration. This permitted more ancient Daoist lineages to incorporate local powers into their divine ritual hierarchies through a process that Kristofer Schipper has called "upgrading."33 Traces of the cults often remain embedded in their reconfiguration and reorganization, and the relations between the cults and the lineages are still not clearly understood. The lack of coordination and the strong local character of these communiqués and their deities during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries suggests that the itinerant practitioners who practiced and promoted the new ritual systems often did so with relative independence from the wider forms of ritual organization available from the state or the ancient Daoist centers. The memorial presented below can be read as an attempt to both organize the various Thunder Ritual systems familiar to one Daoist priest and to promote the variety (and the gods) he had learned from his master among the highest emanations of the Way. Many of these ritual lineages also promoted various intricate meditative techniques to empower adepts' ritual, imagine the transmission of their petitions, and various forms of ritual role-playing by initiates. Possessing the correct talismans, incantations, registers, and seals — together with the right master's training — enabled worthy initiates not simply to call upon but also to become the fierce deities assisting them in dispelling disorder and restoring order to the world around them.34

While the precise relations of many of these new exorcistic lineages to the established Song Daoist lineages are still unclear, their practitioners seem to have challenged the authorities of the main Daoist lineages centered at the mountain centers of Maoshan IP 111 (Jiangsu, associated with the Highest Clarity Shangqing tradition), Longhu shan fllËIll (Jiangxi, associated with the Heavenly Master Tianshi tradition), and Gezao shan Hl^lllj (Jiangxi, linked to the Numinous Treasure Lingbao tradition).35 These lineages responded in varying way to the new lineages.

See Kristofer Schipper, "Taoist Ritual and Local Cults of the T'ang Dynasty," in Proceedings of the International Conference on Sinology: Section on Folklore and Culture, Academia Sinica, Nankang, August 1980 (Taipei, 1981), pp. 101-115.

34 There is some evidence that inland Fujianese society during the first half of the thirteenth century was less ordered and stable than many had previously assumed. Part of this may have had to do with its precarious economic security and susceptibility to bandit raids. The study of the more comprehensive Ming edition by Brian McKnight and others of the diverse legal anthology abbreviated as the Qingmingji im^MM [Anthology for Clarifying and Illuminating] (preface dated 1261) is contributing to this reassessment. Read together, for instance, the book by Gudula Linck, Zur Sozialgeschichte de Chinesischen Familie im 13. Jahrhundert: Untersuchung am "Ming-gong shu-pan Qing-ming jT (Wiesbaden/ Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1986), which is based on the less complete edition that was the only one available until 1984, and Bettine Birge's lengthy review of it in Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 24 (1994), pp. 269-285. Both authors point out that supposed ideals of unified family life were often little more than salutary fictions, especially during times of change in the family, i.e., marriage, death, and family division.

35 A frustrated contemporary of Bai Yuchan named Jin Yunzhong skjù^ (fl. 1223-1225) remains determined to combat what he finds to be the deteriorating practices of Daoist priests

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 1 77

Some new lineages, such as the highly influential Correct System of the Heavenly Heart (Tianxin zhengfa ^'lMEi£) arose as new revelations or mysterious means of textual creation and transmission among individual magicians during the late Tang or Five Dynasties, but soon became understood as part of the renewing Heavenly Master tradition.36 Others, such as the Five Thunders tradition, although emerging in much murkier circumstances, also seem to have been promoted by the Heavenly Masters on Longhu shan during the Song period.

These localized exorcistic lineages had similarly ambivalent relations to the variety of new meditative traditions collectively called Inner Alchemy (neidan 1*0 fl-), to a variety of local mediumistic cults, and to Tantric practices. Far from simply absorbing or rejecting the deities and activities of popular cults, these lineages display a range of responses to them, from non-committal incorporation to sharp criticism. Although difficult to trace at present, the fact that some forms of the spirit Generals (jiangjun 9&W), Divinized Lords (dijun ffîM) of the new exorcistic lineages have also been worshipped within both local and Buddhist pantheons, indicates that more research should be conducted on the precise relations that particular deities had to their varied proponents— including the patrons of popular cults, initiates in established Daoist and Buddhist lineages, and those trained in the newer exorcistic lineages.

Daoist movements and masters (such as Bai Yuchan's) that passed on teachings which incorporated local or Buddhist deities into Daoist ritual hierarchies — whether mediated by the new exorcistic lineages or not — came to regard these incorporated

in his Mao Shan area and southern China generally, insists on following "what my masters transmitted to me, adding only from my studies of other manuals what harmonizes with the rituals of old." Perhaps his key distinction emerges when he expressly states that "I am not someone who has received a revelation from Heaven" (CT 1223), preface 9a, and will only recognize the three older imperially recognized ordination centers mentioned above which correspond for him to the sacred literature of Three Caverns: Longhu shan Zhengyi Celestial Masters was linked to the Dongshen section, Gezao shan was linked to the Lingbao section, and San Mao shan was linked to the Dadong section of the Canon (see CT 1223, juan 10.8a; also 25. la-lb, 1.5a, 22.16a, and 40.24a-b). Nonetheless, Jin Yunzhong was an ordained master in the Tongchu (Youthful Incipience) movement associated with Mao shan. (See

above, and Daofa huiyuan, CT 1220, juan 178.3a-6a, for his introduction to these rites.) 36 The best studied examples of this phenomenon are by Poul Andersen, in his Ph.D.

dissertation from the University of Copenhagen, entitled "Taoist Ritual Texts and Traditions with Special Reference to Bugang, The Cosmic Dance," (1991), pp. 49-130. Dr. Andersen also suggests the importance of the Heavenly Masters' tradition in legitimating the new traditions during the Song period. Kristofer Schipper makes this point in the summary to his seminar entitled "Les Maîtres Célestes à l'époque Song," Annuaire. Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Ve Section - Sciences religieuses 91 (1982-1983), pp. 133-137. 37 Edward Davis' dissertation, "Society and the Supernatural in Song China" (1994),

interprets the topics outlined above in much greater detail, but also see Ursula-Angelika Cedzich, "The Cult of the Wu-t'ung / Wu-hsien in History and Fiction," Ritual and Scripture in Chinese Popular Religion, David Johnson, éd., Publications of the Chinese Popular Culture Project, 3 (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies Publications, 1995), pp. 137-218.

1 78 Lowell Skar

elements more fundamentally as "transformations of Qi" (qihua M.it), whose particular hagiographies and miracles were not important to their ritual practice.38 This explanation became part of Daoist practice in two ways. First, Daoist ritual helped to legitimate the presence of local cults and their divinities by ritually subordinating them in ceremonies aimed at the highest emanations of the Great Way, and also by locating them within a legitimating hierarchical organization. Second, Daoist ritual also used internal alchemy as a means of linking these local divinities to the highest emanations of the Way through systems of meditation based on refining jing (IS), qi (IK), and shen (It) and recycling them to a state of purity identified with that known as the Primordial Qi phase of cosmic generation.

Most people in Song times, however, were not privy to this "cosmic," "purist," or "esoteric" perspective on the gods as "transformations of Qi" like Bai Yuchan, or into the more or less refined but widely distributed exorcistic lineages circulating in the world. They therefore held more mundane, messy, contradictory, and personal relations to gods and their miracles. The memorial translated below includes the names and positions of many deities and celestial rankings whose respect most likely derived from the cult offerings made by their local supporters. Thus, although written by an initiated Daoist priest for the highest emanations of the Great Dao, some sense of the tensions among the cults, exorcistic traditions, and Daoist hierarchies appears in the memorial translated below.

38 Bai Yuchan states this clearly in his Record of Verbal Exchanges (yulu ëll#), Haichan Bai zhenren yulu (CT 1307), juan 1, p. 2a. "The human person holds three treasures: jing (ffi), qi (H), and shen (If). I am the host. The Golden Lads and Jade Maidens are the guests. What are said to be the 3600 Divine Maidens and the 36,000 divinities (shen) are in all cases transformations of jing and <?/." Wang Weiyi 3Effi— (fl. 1264-1304), in a text with a 1294 preface, the Daofa xinchuan àli&'L/fil (CT 1253), p. 28a, makes the same point more succinctly: "Inside is the Golden Elixir, outside are the Generals and Subfunctionaries." A very general statement related to the Thunder Rites is found in Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220), juan 61, Gaoshang shenxiao yushu zhankan wulei dafa, p. la, which states, "The Five Thunders are transformations of the Ancestral Qi of Primordial Origination." Qi M, is the ultimate constituent of everything according to Chinese cosmology, varying from the coarse (earth and stone) to the highly refined (more subtle, spiritual, and mysterious aspects of experience). The Qi in this petition are among the most refined available in the cosmos. Rather than contribute another English rendering of this untranslatable word, I follow the practice increasingly common in general works and leave it in its transliterated form. It connotes the vital vapors and energies comprising everything in the universe. The vital energies emanating from the spiritual headquarters of the universe are tranquil.

39 See Valerie Hansen's substantial and general work, Changing Gods in Medieval China : 1127-1276 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), for some arguments and evidence for this diversity during Song times. More subtle and nuanced analyses of these processes may be found in the dissertation of Edward Davis, "Society and the Supernatural in Song China."

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 1 79

Structure of the Text

The memorial text40 translated below may be divided into three main parts, which I indicate in the translation by the letters A, B, and C. Part A contains Bai Yuchan's questions and doubts (yi i§) about the variety of communiqués (shu #), legalistic systems (fa £fe), and divinities (shen ffi) associated with the Thunder Court and its administrative structure. Part B counters the multiple dubious Thunder authorities of part A with the sketch of a Thunder ritual system which Bai regarded as "true and correct"

(zheng IE) and which he pledges to uphold. Part C dispatches the deities under his control from this thunder "system" (fa &) to ascend to the supreme heavens with this memorial and request advancement in the spiritual hierarchies from the Heavenly Personnel Evaluation Section (Tiancao ^W) which contains the secret files and cosmic rankings of all humans and gods.

After providing the name and record of the author's spiritual qualifications, the memorial proper begins. It closes with the time and place of the dispatch of this memorial, along with the name of the petitioner. Like many "memorial- announcement" traditions of the Song period, this one is quite complicated in comparison with those used in contemporary Chinese communities, as well as differing from earlier traditions.42 The memorial was held at the start of a ceremony which would last seventy days (from 17 Jan. to 26 Mar., 1216, in our reckoning), but whose main moments consisted of activities done to insure that the (appropriate) thunder deities would receive advancement and rewards due them during the review of their records. Further clarifications will also likely come when the ritual titles and activities of ceremonies like the one encountered here are compared with the complicated Song patterns and processes of recruitment, personnel review, and advancement. Advancement in Daoist ritual hierarchies derives in part from participation in rituals to help and save people (whether living or dead), but also from holding a position for a certain length of time. Besides being too numerous to meaningfully discuss their provenance, the lists of deities contain names that I do not understand at present. Nonetheless, I have provided very tentative translations of their titles and names. More investigation of the Daoist and Buddhist Canons, scholarly jottings, local histories, and comparison with contemporary field work will help to elucidate the background of not

40 Judith Boltz has briefly discussed this memorial in her writings on Bai Yuchan and the Thunder Rites of the Song. See Judith M. Boltz, A Survey ofTaoist Literature, p. 179; and Judith M. Boltz, "Not by the Seal of Office Alone," p. 273 and p. 297, n. 114.

41 For a recent discussion of this bureau of records, see Terry F. Kleeman, A God's Own Tale (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), pp. 290-292.

See e.g. John Lagerwey, Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987), pp. 68-69. For a thorough overview of early modes of presenting memorials in Zhengyi Daoist traditions, see Maruyama Hiroshi, "Jôshô girei yori mitaru Sei'ichi dôkyô no tokushoku _L$HIIcfc *) H£&îE— jHfc^#fe," Tôhô shûkyô 30.2 (1987), pp. 56-84.

43 See the Jade Regulations (CT \220),juan 249, p. 1 Ob- lia, for an outline of these.

1 80 Lowell Skar

only the thunder rites, but also their relation to the religious experience and practice of medieval Chinese people. The memorial also includes an apparent description of the necessary preliminary connections to the highest orders of the Way to transfer, by contemplative means, the memorial to the appropriate authorities through the means of the spirit officials under Bai Yuchan's control.

Translation

The translation is offered as a preliminary and tentative survey of some Southern Song Thunder Ritual traditions. It is based on a comparison of three readily available versions of the Chinese text. Much of it is offered provisionally until the Thunder Ritual systems are more fully examined. The main text used for this translation has been that found in the Zhengtong daozang lEI^jiiS [Daoist Canon of the Zhengtong (Reign Period of the Ming Dynasty, 1436-1449, printed 1444-1445)], in H Y 263, Xiuzhen shishu ft?Jt+lr [Ten Writings on Cultivating Perfection] juan 47, pp. 10al0-17bl0. Another similar version is that found in the Bai zhenrenji ÙM AM juan 5, pp. 34b-39b of the Daozang jiyao jËHÈ$t^ (vol. 14, pp. 6325-6328). This second version has been imperfectly set in new type and punctuated, and forms part of the Song Bai zhenren Yuchan quanji ^cÉ HÀïÊ^î^ll [Complete Writings of the Song Dynasty Perfected One, Bai Yuchan] (Taipei, 1976), pp. 407-41 1 .

I have decided to translate the entire text, even the long lists of deities' names and titles, both to give readers a better sense of the complexities and basic elements of a medieval ritual memorial and to promote future studies of these divine powers designated by each of their complicated titles. Each of them undoubtedly will be clarified by future research, and more careful examination of their particular configurations will help to locate them within the religious lives of Song and Yuan people.

A Vermilion Petition Memorializing the Thunder Court on the Matter of Deliberating

Merit-Titles45

Disciple of the Supreme Mystery Metropolis'46 (taixuan du #if|5)

44 See Anna Seidel's summary and review of Ursula-Angelika Cedzich's Ph.D. dissertation on the earliest forms of memorial petitioning in Daoism {Cahiers d'Extrême- Asie 4 (1988), pp. 199-204, esp. p. 201 and 203) for more on this point. Also see several of Poul Andersen's essays on the Pace of Yu and the flight of the priest to heaven during the submission of the memorial, especially "The Transformation of the Body in Taoist Ritual," in Religious Reflections on the Human Body, Jane Marie Law, ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 186-208.

45 A Vermilion Petition (danzhang f}-$ or zhuzhang ^M) is a strictly regulated administrative document written on vermilion paper which: 1) states the specific circumstances of the ritual (the chief officiant, time and place of its performance), 2) states the purpose of the ritual to the highest gods, and 3) usually asks for blessings from the highest

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 181

Correct Unity Pacifying Qi1 (zhengyi pingqi JE—^wL), and of the Clarified

gods. Complete forms used today in Taiwan include lists of other ritual participants and of the liturgical programme and therefore help it to mark the boundaries of the supporting ritual community that expects protection and blessing from the gods in return for its service. The rituals in which these memorial texts are embedded vary considerably in their elaboration and length and changed considerably from the earliest forms in the Six Dynasties to the present, reaching a high degree of complexity during the Song period. During the Song period, various forms of the basic ritual petition for the particular ritual were sent up to the appropriate deities over a sometimes long period of time (three months). Submissions of the memorial to the gods are effected through the visualization and meditation of the head priest. After summoning a coterie of officials from his own body, the priest hands the memorial petition over to them for delivery to the correct divine agencies. Written petitions have been part of Daoist ritual activity from its origins, while eschewing the bloody sacrifices typically rendered them. (See Anna Seidel's review of Ursula-Angelika Cedzich's Ph.D. dissertation entitled, "Early Taoist Ritual," CEA 4 [1988], pp. 199-204.) Modern Daoist priests in Southern Taiwan who perform this ritual do so inside the ritual area, lying still on the floor while performing a complicated internal meditation sequence representing delivery of the memorial to the loftiest deities. (See Poul Andersen, "The Practice of Bugang" CEA 5 [1989-1990], pp. 41, 45.) This ritual memorial is of a type more common in the Song period which is announced up to 100 days before the announcement proper. (See the discussion by John Lagerwey, Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History, pp. 68-69.) Several other memorial petitions penned by Bai Yuchan survive in his collected writings. The Thunder Court (leifu %M) is the astral administrative center for the thunder powers. Similar to the administrative parlance of imperial China, a Court (fu) refers both to the work places and to the personnel of (in this case) the chief dignitaries and official headquarters of the retributory and vivifying powers of thunder. Merit-Titles (xun $h) in Song administration referred to the "honors awarded to both civil and military officers, nominally for meritorious service but usually earned simply by seniority; graded in accordance with recipients' regular ranks, but ordinarily extending only through the top 5 or 7 ranks," Charles O. Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University, 1985), p. 253. Merit-Titles have a similar role for the gods, who are also divided into civilian and military sections, and who are recommended, promoted, demoted, and punished. As noted above, Thunder Rituals were a part of the Military celestial bureaucracy during Song times. Note that several large sections of this memorial are nearly identical with the commentary to the Jade Pivot Scripture (Yushu jing EÊflSiKS) attributed to Bai Yuchan, CT 99 (with a 1333 postface by its compiler, the 39th Celestial Master Zhang Sicheng ^Sraël^Ê [d. 1343]). See especially the first several pages of the commentary text ascribed to Bai Yuchan, which describe the production of thunder and identical lists of the same 10 and 36 Thunders as given in this memorial petition. It is difficult to tell whether this shows that the commentary was compressed from Bai Yuchan's writings (which had been circulating in print for nearly a century by this time) or was part of the general lore available to Thunder Ritual trainees.

46 The use of an alternate character undoubtedly refers to the Taixuan du ^:5f|5, which is, in Daoist spiritual cosmology, the administrative center in the northern quadrant of the heavens and home of the most powerful Daoist deities, or more precisely, emanations of the Great Dao. Set atop Jade Capital Mountain (Yujing shan 3EîrCllj) in the Great Enveloping Heaven (Daluo tian ^fi^), beyond the mundane Three Realms {sanjie H#) of Heaven, Water, and Earth, adepts enter it through the Golden Pylons (jinque 1kW). It is charged with governing the transcendents and the perfecteds who interact with the human realm.

The opening phrase of this petition has ancient precedents in liturgical Daoism. It is

182 Lowell Skar

Tenuity Heaven's48 (Qingwei tian Wii&Ji) Transforming Qi of the Heavenly Master (Tianshi ^60) [Zhang Daoling jBtjiilit], and of the Elder Master of Heavenly Prisons50 (tianyu ^#) and of the Perfected Scarlet Thearch's51 Grand Cavern of Highest Purity (Shangqing dadong ±Jin^M) Precious Register,52 Bai so-and-so, lowers his head and bows repeatedly, respectfully offering up these words: Your Humble Servant, as an Assistant Clerk for

found in the early fifth-century Canon of the Inner Explanations of the Three Heavens (Santian neijie jing H^I*lfi¥IS), CT \205,juan 1, p. 5b-6a, which teaches that the Newly Revealed Most High Lord Lao (xinchu taishang Laojun IfftB^ii^;©) appointed Zhang Daoling to become master of the Three Heavens and to oppose sacrificial offerings to minor deities, encouraging them to worship the Perfectly Correct gods, giving him the above title and the Way of the Correctly Unified Sworn Alliance (Zhengyi mengwei JE— SIgSt) with the gods.

48 The Clarified Tenuity Heaven in the loftiest of the three heavens and home to the Celestial Venerable of Primordial Commencement (Yuanshi tianzun jtfâHM-), the highest manifestation of the cosmic Way for Daoist initiates. It is also known as the Jade Purity Jurisdiction {Yuqingjing Befit) and is associated with the color bice.

49 The first Celestial Master and presumed founder of Daoism, still acknowledged as such in this thirteenth-century memorial, was Zhang Daoling, who is said to have received his revelation from Lord Lao in the troubled times at the end of the Han dynasty, in 142. See the above note 47. 50 The Zhengtong Daozang recension has tianyu ^.W. (Heavenly Prisons?) while the other two versions of the text have the term nanyue ft -{5 (Southern Marchmount). The latter term is also used in other memorial texts by Bai in Xiuzhen shishu, (CT 263), e.g. juan 47, p. 7a2, which also gives the same title for Bai. The former is the name of a star within the shen ("Triaster" similar to our Orion) asterism, which is in charge of slaughtering demons. It was part of the spiritual organization of the Divine Empyrean movement, which understood there to be 36 Heavenly Prisons located behind the Jade Department, each headed by a Numinous Official and 120 clerks and soldiers, and in charge of fate (ming np). See Gaoshang shenxiao yuqing zhenwang zishu dafa (CT 1219), juan 9, p. la. The latter is the name of the great mountain (Hengshan ftrlll, in central Hunan) which is most strongly linked to the "Scarlet Thearch" to follow, and makes the most sense in this context, since this was the major ritual site of the Scarlet Thearch. This name is a variant of the more common epithet for Wei Huazun $$M~& (252-334), the Dame of the Southern Marchmount (Nanyue furen I^-Ê^À), who was the otherworldly preceptress of Yang Xi, recipient of numerous Highest Clarity scriptures from the Great Cavern (Dadong jing ^CplM).

51 The Scarlet Thearch (chidi ^"Sr) was an ancient tutelary deity of the Chu state sometimes associated with the deity Shennong, incorporated into the Han dynastic pantheon, and then into the Daoist pantheon during the early movements of the Six Dynasties. His main temple was found, during Song times, on the Southern Marchmount (Hengshan, Hunan). For historical sources on this temple, see Judith Boltz, A Survey of Taoist Literature, China Research Monograph No. 32 (Berkeley: Institute for East Asian Studies, 1987), pp. 109-110. He was also closely linked to some thunder ritual systems during Song and Yuan times.

52 A tenth-century text places this title at the top of the seven-tiered ordination scheme. See Sandong xiudao yi HM^jIH; (CT 1237), pp. 7a-8a. This high level of initiation provided successful candidates a register of the most powerful deities available to initiates and was based on the central scripture of the lofty Shangqing textual tradition. Bai Yuchan also uses this title in other ritual memorials.

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 183

Administering the Thunder of the Divine Empyrean [Heaven] (Shenxiao dianlei xiaoli Wïfjft-if/hJê), is generally aware of the activities administered by the Thunderclap (leiting ftl!), well-versed in the communiqués transmitted by the Thunderclap, and fully familiar with the systems practiced by the Thunderclap. However, among them transcriptions are sometimes wrong and transmissions are sometimes vague. Therefore, [your Servant] will point out mistakes in the complex parts and correct the errors. [Since] secret hand gestures (Jue f&) are in the murky spots and incantations (zhou /l) in the inscrutable places, the [mistakes] are hard to recognize yet easy to do, and hard to pass on but easy to learn. Whatever Your Humble Servant has learned, down to the finest details, he will completely address Your Majesty at the Unapproachable Throne. Your Humble Servant has heard that

[A. Some Doubts about Thunder] the Two [Phases of] Yin and Yang Qi mingle to make Thunder, and after the Thunderclap,54 [this Qi] is immediately distributed among [Thunder] ministry personnel. The Thunder Ancestor of the Ninefold Heavens55

53 This title indicates that Bai Yuchan considered himself an initiate in the Divine Empyrean ritual system. The Jade Regulations in Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220), juan 249-250, gives this as the highest order for practitioners of the new ritual systems of the Song, especially the Thunder Rites. This heaven is the loftiest of the Ninefold Heavens and the source of revelations that became a renowned ritual dispensation after efforts by a Wenzhou jmJM Daoist named Lin Lingsu #S^ (1076-1 120) helped to elevate it to the top of Emperor Huizong's (r. 1100-1125) religious hierarchy between 1116 and 1119. Among the most renowned of later Divine Empyrean practitioners is the successor to Lin Lingsu, Wang Wenqing ïiffip (1093-1153). See J. Boltz, A Survey of Taoist Literature, pp. 26-37, 47-48 for a succinct overview.

54 This bears comparison with another more elaborate and more renowned account of the origin and effects of thunder, namely the Huainanzi jfltîï^ account that John Major has recently called "natural alchemy." His translation is as follows: "the beating together of yin and yang makes thunder; their rising to a crescendo makes lightning." See John S. Major, Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), p. 212. The Thunderclap mentioned here was the core of the type of thunder ritual practiced by Divine Empyrean initiates. Their main scripture survives as the Leiting yujing SS3£IM (CT 15). Bai Yuchan wrote notes to it, calling it the "occult directives of the Thunder Ministry" (leibu yinzhi Hcfôlt a1). He claims to have seen the corrected version of the text dispatched by the son of a meritorious family in the Wuyi shan region, whose father, named Zhang Yuanrui tfkxM distributed Thunder Communiqués (Song Bai zhenren Yuchan quanjijuan 5, p. 13 [p. 391]). Bai and his disciples also printed and distributed the scripture to Jiangxi gentlemen (±) (See Haiqiong Bai zhenren yulu CT 1308,ywa« 4, p. 1 9b).

55 In later times this was the ordinary name reserved for the supreme ruler of the Thunder formally known as Jiutian yingyuan leisheng puhua tianzun JLJiMït'mWr^i^C^.W- [Heavenly Venerable of Universal Transformation with a Thundrous Voice who Responds to the Primordial of the Ninefold Heavens]. This supreme deity and ruler of the Thunder Bureau has left an important scripture known as the Jade Pivot Scripture (Yushu jing 3EtiS£M) and

1 84 Lowell Skar

(Jiutian leizu JV%Mj&) uses it to discriminate among the Five Subordinate [Heavenly Offices (?)],56 and the Perfected King of the Divine Empyrean57 (Shenxiao zhenwang flîf JCïE) relies on it to rule over the Three Realms.58 Examining the Golden Portfolio (jinji &%) and checking the Jade Register59 (yulu 3Eifi) has raised doubts about what are deemed the Five Thunders.60

several Repentances (chan fil), with one edition of a scripture (dated 1333) in the Ming Daoist Canon (CT 99) containing a commentary attributed to Bai Yuchan. Its contents appear to be a refinement, or at least a close cognate, of the Letting yujing. This commentary says (CT 99, juan 1, p. 5a-b) that the Heavenly Venerable of Primordial Origination (Yuanshi tianzun jttfa'KW-) produced nine sons, of whom the Perfected Prince of Jade Purity (Yuqing zhenwang S# Jtï.) transformed into the Heavenly Venerable of Universal Transformation. These ethereal connections to the origins of the Daoist cosmogony entitle him to rule over the Ninefold Empyrean, but further research will likely suggest other (perhaps Tantric) relations of the god, who says of himself that he is the Great Sage of Brilliance of the Ninefold Heaven (Jiutian zhenming dasheng ih%^Mi<.M).

56 This term, wushu HWb, has an unclear meaning in this context, but it may refer to the Five Offices (wufu HM). I take it to refer to the five subordinated militia offices of thunder ruled by the Ancestor of Thunder. This reading is a striking parallel to a description noted by Poul Andersen in a Weft Text (weishu Ulr) that upon receiving the Heavenly essence distributed by the rotating Big Dipper he "establishes the Five Offices (wufu Sffr) in order to honor Heaven's repeated simulacra." (See Suishu Pf ̂ juan 68 [Beijing: Zhonghua shuju éd., 1973], p. 1539, and Poul Andersen, "The Practice of Bugang," CEA 5 [1989-1990], p. 24.) Such a reading suggests a comparison with the Five Offices articulated in the section of the Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220) on the Youthful Incipience (tongchu mlr) rites (juan 171-178). See juan 171, p. 2b for a reference to the ritual materials for the Five Offices. In Tang administrative parlance the term referred to the various militiamen of the Garrison Militia in the capital, derived from the base areas they were quartered in. See Charles Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles, p. 570.

57 The Letting yujing (CT 15), pp. 5a, 1 la, makes this deity the eldest son of the Heavenly Venerable Without Beginning (Wushi tianzun). The cognate Yushu jing commentary cited above (CT 99, juan 1, p. 3a) places this deity in the Jade Court of the Divine Empyrean (Shenxiao yufu ffiWEEfff). He is said to have transformed out of the Heavenly Venerable of Primordial Origination, becoming the Shenxiao yuqing zhenwang, who was identified during Huizong's reign with the emperor and called the Grand Sovereign of Eternal Life (Changsheng dadi Ht^fi?). The Letting yujing (CT 15) describes the deity's religious

system and provenance. 5S The Three Realms (sanjie =LW) refers to the spirits of the heavenly, earthly, and water (tian di shut ^ ife tK) realms, which are subject to the control of the higher divine powers available to the initiates in Daoist cosmology. The passage on the origin of thunder and its uses by high deities is repeated verbatim in the commentary on the Yushu jing 3Effi»IM attributed to Bai Yuchan (CT 99), juan 1, p. 3a. Following that exegesis is a discussion of the administrative organization of the Thunder Court, much like what appears below.

"9 The Jade Register is in the Highest Purity (Shangqing) Heaven, as is the Golden Portfolio. They contain the lists of rankings of legitimate deities and where they belong in the celestial bureaucracy. The implication is that Bai checked the Thunder offices and deities with the highest available authorities.

60 Although the "Five Thunders" are called many things (the dippers asterisms, marchmounts, offices, deities of the five directions, etc.) in different Thunder Ritual systems,

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 1 85

• The Thunder Communiqué (leishu Wit) of the Jade Pivot61 (yushu lEftl) calls them the Thunders of the Heavens, Divine Empyrean, Water Office, Dragons, and Soil-Gods. • The Thunder Communiqué of the Divine Empyrean63 calls them the Thunders of the Winds, Fires, Mountains, Waters, and Earth.

a preface attributed to Wang Wenqing (1093-1156) asserts that "they are all actually transformations of Qi." (See Daofa huiyuan [CT 1220], juan 61, p. la.) The following list of ten thunder communiqués (minus the five thunder offices attached to each) is also found in the commentary to the Yushujing BEffiill attributed to Bai Yuchan, see CT 99, juan 1, p. 4a.

61 This administrative center is a variant of the Divine Empyrean system that later Thunder Ritual practitioners regarded as the astral source of the system promoted by Bai Yuchan and his disciples (see below). The Taishang tiantan yuge (;fe±^ijLEfê), found in Daofa huiyuan (CT \220, juan 249, p. 13b), names the Five Thunder Offices identical to those given here (although in a slightly different order), giving them charge over the Office of the Jade Emperor's Imperial Guard (for both Heaven and Divine), Protectorate of the Ocean Dragon- Hoards (Dragon), rains and earth-fertility (Water), and the spirits of the renowned mountains, great rivers, purely loyal, and recipients of blood-sacrifices (Earth-God Territories), respectively. On the next page of the same document it states that the Five Thunder Offices of the Jade Pivot "actually reduplicate" those of the Jade Court. This apparent usurpation of authority by Bai's followers claims the loftiest and most valuable of the sources for the thunder communiqués, taking top place in Bai Yuchan's lists on the varieties of thunder systems and texts. The Yushujing (CT 16, 99) is the chief revelation of this powerful source of cosmic authority. The compilation of a form of Jade Pivot Thunder rites found in Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220), juan 56, p. 2a, also confirms the five thunder offices listed here. The commentary mentioned (CT 99) in the above note locates the Commissioners' Offices of the Five Thunders there, situating them to the left (i.e., senior) of the Jade Court. A version of Jade Pivot Thunder Rites comprise yuan 57-64 of the Daofa huiyuan. Note, however, their close link with the Divine Empyrean rites listed here in second place, as in Daofa huiyuan, juan 63, pp. la-8a, which lists the five "Thunder Generals" in this order (Wind, Fire, Mountain, Water, and Earth), i.e., the same as the Divine Empyrean thunders. Also see the same workman 60, pp. 4b-5a, and the roster of deities associated with this Court in Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220), juan 65, pp. 12a- 13a, which include Yang Xiong and Tao Hongjing P^slAjp:. There are also some parallels to the Heavenly Pivot (Tianshu ^M) rituals.

62 The commentary by Bai Yuchan to the Yushujing (CT 99), juan 1, p. 4a, lists the Five Thunders in this order, with the exception that Divine Empyrean Thunder is replaced with Earth Thunder in that text.

63 The Divine Empyrean was the central and uppermost of the Ninefold Empyrean (jiuxiao Aff), lorded over by the Grand Sovereign of Eternal Life (Changsheng dadi ft^^c ^). An earthly dispensation from this authority gained renown under emperor Huizong's patronage in the Song dynasty, but it continued to attract disciples long afterward. See Michel Strickmann, "The Longest Taoist Scripture," pp. 331-354, for more on this cult at the end of the Northern Song period. The Taishang tiantan yuge (CT1220), found m juan 249 on p. 1 3b, and juan 250, p. 20a, requires practitioners of the Thunder Rites to first obtain the "Register of the Lofty Superior Divine Empyrean" (Gaoshang shenxiao lu rEJ±?$ ftH). Several Divine Empyrean ritual compendia containing material on Thunder Ritual exist, for instance see the twelfth-century Gaoshang shenxiao zishu dafa (CT 1219) compilation, and juan 198-206 and 220-221 in the Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220). The Fahai yizhu (CT 1168), juan 25, p. la, lists the Five Thunders using the same order of the five phases as here

186 Lowell Skar

• The Thunder Communiqué of the Great Cavern (dadong :fc?|ëj)64 calls them the Sagely-Radiant Powerful Quaking Thunder, the Tremulous- Lightning Shrieking-Flash Thunder, the Eight Numinous and Eight Savage Shaoyang66 (p|5^r) Thunder, the Wave-Calming Water Thunder, and the Instantaneous Thunderbolt and Lightning-Flash Great Cavern Thunder. • The Thunder Communiqué of the Transcendent Metropolis67 (xiandu #] £15) calls them the Thunders of the Heavens, Earth, Winds, Mountains, and Waters. • The Thunder Communiqué of the Northern Culmen (beiji 4fc#t) calls them the Thunders of Dragons, Earth, Divinities, Soil-Gods, and Supernatural. • The Thunder Communiqué of the Supreme Monad (taiyi JS.ZS) calls

(linking them to the directions: East, South, West, North and Center), as does the same work in juan 28, p. 12b.

64 The Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220), juan 65, p. lia, lists the titles included here under the "Great Cavern" rubric and classifies them under directional headings as envoys. Later in the same compendium, juan 114, p. 3a, lists the five thunders with the names and order given here, albeit under the heading "The Five Regional Thunders of the Man Southern Barbarians," associating them all with the Thunderbolt Ministry (pili bu WMM). They appear at the start of a major corpus of thunder ritual (juan 1 14-120) called the Taiji dutian yinshu i^MM'^M # [Occult Communiqué of the Supreme Culmen for Controlling Thunder], which shows many parallels and contains many elements of the Tianxin zhengfa system.

65 Reading guang % for chong 5Ë based on the corpus above and other places. There exists in the Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220) a late version of thunder rites which

includes the Shaoyang deities, in juan 122-123, called the Taishang sanwu Shaoyang tiemian huoche wulei dafa t_hH£a|5fêiffi^c$ï'|^ê, saying that the Thunder Lord of Shaoyang (Hubei), with an Iron-Face and Fire-Chariot, received thunder rites from the Thearch and Lord of the Six Pàramitâ Heavens on the Southern Marchmount Hengshan (in Hubei). Much of its ritual is based on ritually modelling the Five Marchmounts (wuyue Se). The system appears to be quite late and well aware of rival traditions of ritual practice.

67 The Fahai yizhu (CT 1168), juan 24, contains what may be this variety, the Dadong feijie wulei dafa ^MfftSiiif^i, although it does not provide the five thunders in the order given here.

68 This is an asterism of five stars emanating out of what we see as the bowl of the Little Dipper in the northern skies. Until the tenth century one of its terminal stars (= E 1694 of Camelopardalis) was near the true pivotal center of the skies. (See Edward Schafer, Pacing the Void [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977], pp. 44-45.) It undoubtedly refers to the Office in the Northern Culmen for Expelling Perversities (Beiji quxie yuan 4fcSI@^ I>te), one of the most popular of the Song dynasty ritual dispensations and the main source of authority for practitioners of the Tianxin zhengfa.

69 This star corresponds with /? Ursae minoris (Kochab) and is the brightest of the Northern Culmen (beiji) asterism. As the visible form of the powerful astral Thearch (di îÇ) deity, it is one of the two greatest polar deities, and the source of the primordial essences and energies of the cosmos that emerge to be showered on the earth. Collections of this version of thunder ritual survive in the Fahai yizhu î&Miè^ (CT \\66),juan 3-5, and in the Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220), juan 133-145 (see juan 133, pp. 3a-5a for the various correlations given here).

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 1 87

them the Thunders of the Wood of the Eastern Quarter's Green Qi, Fire of the Southern Quarter's Crimson Qi, Metal of the Western Quarter's White Qi, Water of the Northern Quarter's Black Qi, and Earth of the Central Region's Yellow Qi. • The Thunder Communiqué of the Purple Court70 (zifu %ztft) calls them the Thunders of Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Chariot-Pole (xuanyuan ffiâ)71 [i.e., heavenly centrality, the medial season, variously distributed in Chinese calendars]. • The Thunder Communiqué of the Jade Dawn (yuchen EÉ/8) calls them the Thunders of Purple Tenuity,73 Fengdu fftifô74 [Netherworld], Mulberry Tree, Marchmount Palace, and City-wall-and-Moats. • The Thunder Communiqué of the Supreme Empyrean75 (taixiao icft) calls them the Thunders of the Jiayi ¥^ — First and Second [i.e., spring], Bingding WT — Third and Fourth [i.e., summer], Wuji îXûL — Fifth and Sixth [i.e., the end of summer], Gengxin JH$ — Seventh and Eighth [i.e., autumn], and Rengui 3r§| — Ninth and Tenth [i.e., winter].

70 The Purple Court {zifu ^Ht) is an alternate abbreviation for the Supreme Palace of Purple Tenuity (ziwei shangfu ^$Lhtff) and refers to the same circumpolar region as Purple Tenuity and the divine powers radiating from this center of super-celestial administration.

The xuanyuan is, according to the researches of Edward Schafer "roughly our Leo, and usually thought of as representing a fructifying rain-dragon. In antiquity it harbored the god of rain and thunder." Pacing the Void, p. 138.

72 Some of the ritual material related to this source of thunder authority has left some texts in the Daofa huiyuan (CT \220), juan 13-17 and 19-23, within the section for Pure Tenuity (Qingwei ?#ffi) ritual, suggesting its absorption into this important synthesis of Daoist traditions.

Purple Tenuity (ziwei W$C) refers to the heavenly polar palace and especially the palatial wall around the northern celestial pole, which is the residence of the great divinities of the Little Dipper. It is sometimes used to refer to the entire northern quadrant of the sky stretching from the horizon to the Purple Palace.

74 Fengdu ffêflS is associated in some thunder ritual texts with the Western Terrace (xitai ffi S) but more typically with the northern guardian deity Guan Yu (1133). See Fahai yizhu (CT 1166), juan 39 & 43, and the Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220), juan 261-268. Michel Strickmann, "On the Alchemy of T'ao Hung-ching," Facets of Taoism, H. Welch and A. Seidel, eds. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), p. 180, makes some references to this remote isle (also known as the Supreme Yin [taiyin isz^È]), often placed far to the north, which serves as "the administrative headquarters of the unhallowed dead." Housing the Three Offices (sanguan H'g) responsible for interrogating all dead souls in early medieval texts, this center governs several other abodes of the dead hidden within the landscape of China (especially in its mountains and rivers).

I have not been able to relate this system to extant Thunder Ritual codes. But see Marc Kalinowski's translation of the Wuxing dayi Eff^il by Xiao Ji U cf, Cosmologie et divination dans la Chine ancienne (Paris: Publications de l'Ecole Française d'Extrême- Orient, 1991), p. 148.

188 Lowell Skar

• The Thunder Communiqué of the Supreme Culmen76 (taiji icH) calls them the Thunders of the Divine Empyrean, Earth Court, Water Office, Nine Territories, and the Village Wall and Soil-God Shrines. The Thunder Communiqués transmitted by Most High [Lord Lao] contain discrepancies with each of the ten types recorded above. If the Five [Thunder] Communiqués of antiquity do not acknowledge them, how can they be correct? There may even be doubts and deliberations over the Thirty-six Thunders transmitted in our time.77

1 . Jade Pivot Thunder 2. Jade Court78 Thunder 3. Jade Pivot of Celestial Divination79 Thunder 4. Highest Purity Great Cavern80 Thunder 5. Fire Wheel81 Thunder 6. Dipper-Dispensing Thunder 7. Wind Fire Thunder 8. Instantaneous Flying Thunder 9. Northern Culmen Thunder

10. Purple Tenuity Jade-Cog Pivot Thunder 1 1 . Divine Empyrean Thunder 12. Transcendent Metropolis Thunder 13. Supreme Monad Rumbling Heavenly Thunder 14. Purple Court Thunder 15. Iron Armor Thunder 16. Shaoyang Thunder 17. Crackling Fire83 Thunder 18. Southern Man S [Aboriginal] Soil-God84 Territory Thunder

Thunder Rites from this astral administrative center may be found in Fahai yizhu (CT 1 ] 66), juan 9, and in Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220), juan 1 14-120, Taiji dulei yinshu ±M& HHU [Hidden Communiqué for Controlling Thunder from the Supreme Culmen].

This list of 36 Thunders is replicated in the commentary attributed to Bai Yuchan on the Yushujing, see CT 99, juan 1, pp. 4a-5a.

Ritual texts related to this court may be found in the Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220), juan 56. 79 Mentioned in Daofa huiyuan, juan 66, p. 8a. 80 See Daofa huiyuan (CT \220), juan 65, pp. 10a- 12a. 81 The Fire- Wheel divinity recurs in the Daofa huiyuan CT 1220, but see juan 115, esp.

pp. 27a-29a, for a discussion of the talisman of this great deity. See the secret rites of this thunder ritual system associated with the Six Stalwarts

(liuding aT) in Fahai yizhu (CT \\66), juan 40. A variant of this form of thunder is found in Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220), juan 66, p. 8a.

This powerhouse is associated with Commandant Deng Bowen (fMÊ?m7nêltl) credited with an important talisman discussed in the Daofa huiyuan CT 1220, juan 56, pp. 22a-23a, and in Fahai zhuyi (CT \220), juan 23.

See the Daofa huiyuan (CT \220), juan 1 14, p. 3a, and the above note for more on these.

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 1 89

19. Fire Crow of the Earth God Thunder 20. Three Realms Thunder 2 1 . Decapitating and Smashing Thunder 22. Great Prestigious Virtue [i.e., Yamàntaka]85 Thunder 23. Six Pàramità [Heavens']86 (liubo A$E) Thunder 24. Green Grasses Thunder 25. Eight Tri grams Thunder 26. Chaotic Primordial Goshawk and Dog87 Thunder 27. Fate-Screaming (xiaoming "H^p) Wind-Thunderclap 28. Fire Cloud Thunder 29. Pace of Yu's Great Imperial Control Thunder 30. Supreme Culmen Thunder 3 1 . Swordblade and Spearpoint Thunder 32. Internal Mirror Thunder 33. External Mirror Thunder 34. Divine Court's Heavenly Pivot Thunder 35. Grand Brahmâ [Heaven's] Dipper Pivot Thunder 36. Jade Dawn Thunder

Is it right or wrong to deem these the Thirty-Six Thunders? How the Thunder Ritual systems exceed what are deemed the Five Thunders! Now, the Divine Transcendents, Ultimate Ones, and Appointed Envoys [of the Thunder systems] are extraordinarily inscrutable! Moreover, the Scriptures and Registers, the Writs and Communiqués, the Records and Chronicles [of the Thunder systems] are incoherent! Regarded as the divinities of the — Heavenly Cavern and Heavenly Perfected, Completed-Fire and Completed-Perfected, Heavenly Crow and Heavenly Garrison, Wei Meng and Ding Xin, Ice- Wheel and Water Basin, Light-Radiating Fire Wheel, Dixi and Hejia, Grand Monad's Primordial Illustrious, Yanggang and Queshe,88 Heavenly Thunder's Windy Leader, Fire Pig and Black Dog, Fire Goshawk's Rank Smoke, Thunderbolt's Celestial Pass, Iron Armor's Flying Lightning, Transcendent Metropolis' Fire Thunder, Mountain Thunder's Fire Cloud,

Five regional thunders are listed in the Gaoshang shenxiao yuqing zhenwang zishu dafa (CT 1219), juan 4, p. 1 6, under this title. Those familiar with Buddhism understood this martial and conjuring deity as Yamàntaka (~X$MM1E), "Brilliant King of Great Virtue," closely linked to Yamàri, Bhairava, and Manjusri. See Robert Duquenne's fine essay on this figure in Hôbôgirin VI (1983), "Daiitoku Myôô," pp. 652-670.

H6 This refers to the Six Pàramità Heavens {liudu tian Aïlt[S]^), which appear regularly in thunder rites manuals. See for instance Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220), juan 3, p. 2a.

Reading quan it for da j\, based on the Daozang jiyao version. x8 The martial deities up to this point in the list are classed under the rubric "The Ranks of

the Victorious Divine Sagely and Numinous Thunder of the Great Cavern's Three Yang" in Daofa huiyuan (CT \220), juan 65, pp. 10a- 12a.

190 Lowell Skar

Wind Fire's Primordial Brilliance, Fire Patrician's Windy-Thunderclap, Hooked Harvester's Prosperity, Weaving Maiden's Four Songs, Jade Thunder's Gleaming Master, Light-Pervading and Dark Specters, Four Brilliances' Honorable Ambassador, Fire Radiances' Essence-Spewing, Barrens' Vehicle's Supreme Florescence, Gold Essence's Rapid Contemplation, Razor-Fanged and Iron-Helmeted, Gloomy Smoke and Thunderbolt Swarthy, Thunder Ruler's Blocking-Patrician, Wood Lord's Straddler Radiance, Crackling Fire's Rules and Regulations, Shaoyang's Fire-Chariot, Wolf-Fanged Soldier, Six Perfections' Water-Quelling, Flying Goshawk and Running Dog, Gold-Spewing Fire-Bell — 89 these Thirty-Six Divinities90 are sometimes said to be the [same as] the Thirty-Six Thunder [Deities], without admitting that there is anything dubious about them.

[B. The "Correct" System] Now, picking up from the Thunder Communiqué from the Phosphor Empyrean91 (Jingxiao leishu jftfffïiÉr) [one finds that]

In the Dongzhen taishang zidu yanguang shenyuan bianjing (CT 1332, p. 8a) of the Highest Purity corpus, this potent clarion is called the "essence of the [Dipper's] nine stars" and it shines above the Lord of the Way, who uses it to chase away the vile encroachments of the Six Heavens and begin the salvation of the Three Heavens. It later becomes a talisman to help those on earth in their efforts to do the same. See Isabelle Robinet, Taoist Meditation, Julian F. Pas and Norman J. Girardot, trans., (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), p. 32. The named counterpart of this divinity is Heavenly Lord Liu Xf�U (see Daofa huiyuan, juan 3, p. 12). 90 Using the Daozang reading (shen f$); the other two editions have ren A ("figures" or "humans").

Reading here Jingxiao leishu fSft instead of what is given in the main texts as Danxiao jinghu f^FJMI. Most sources outside of this text term what is described below the Thunder Communiqué of the Divine Empyrean (Jingxiao leishu), claiming that it revealed the Great Thunder (dalei ~fcM) of the Phosphor Empyrean, another name for the Great Thunder for Administering the Heavens (dutian dalei UJiJZla), perhaps on the basis of the important seal of the Tianxin zhengfa tradition. Further evidence for this alteration is found in the fact that Bai Yuchan claimed to have obtained the name of the main tradition of thunder rituals from his teacher Chen Nan WM (d. 1213), according to writings compiled by Bai's disciples. Chen Nan, in turn, claimed that it was revealed to him by Xin $, Administrative Assistant of the Thunder Ministry. See, for instance, Unpolished Questions of Tranquil Remnants (Jingyu xuanwen %f t££Fni), CT 1252, p. 2a, and its cognate treatise, the Record of Exchanges with Perfected Bai of Haiqiong {Haiqiong Bai zhenren yulu ïfeïîÉ^ À !#££), CT 1307, juan 1, p. 13a-b. A version of this ritual system is extant in the Compendium of Daoist Ritual Systems (Daofa huiyuan jl/i#/c), CT 1 220, juan 141-148. In a summary of the order of practice given there, the five asterisms are listed in precisely the reverse order to that given here. References to the Five Thunder Ministries (bu aï) there are said to be in charge of Heaven, Earth, Water, Divine, and Earth-Gods (instead of Supernatural) just as above. All of the gods in the first three of these categories appear in the fuller Daofa huiyuan account, with near total correlation in the Divine category, and partial correlation in the Supernatural/Soil- God category. I analyze this system and some of its correlates in my forthcoming dissertation, "A Genealogy of the Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir."

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 191

the Winnower (Ji |Ë) asterism is in control of Heavenly Thunder; the Chamber (fang H) asterism is in control of Earthly Thunder; the Straddler (kui H) asterism is in control of the Water Thunder; the Ghost (gui M.) asterism is in control of Divine Thunder; the Harvester (lou M) asterism is in control of Supernatural (yao Wi) Thunder; [and] Heavenly Thunder is subordinated under the Winnower asterism, which is why there are the Heavenly Crow's Heavenly Garrison, and the Heavenly Cavern's Heavenly Perfected divinities; Earthly Thunder is subordinated under the Chamber asterism, which is why there are the Miao Aboriginal-Ruler's Blocking Patrician and Fire Patrician Wind Thunder divinities; Water Thunder is subordinated under the Straddler asterism, which is why there are the Wood Lord's Light-Pervading and the Golden Essence's Gleaming Master divinities; Divine Thunder is subordinated under the Ghost asterism, which is why there are the Crackling Fire's Statutes and Ordinances and the Shaoyang's Wolf- Fanged divinities; Supernatural Thunder is subordinate to the Harvester asterism, which is why there are Ding Xin, Di Xi, He Lou, and Jia Ye92 divinities.

Therefore, Your Humble Servant takes these alone to be correct and true (zheng IE). The Thunder Ritual systems transmitted from ancient times to the present have all had numerous hierarchical ranks [of initiation]. How resplendent and awe-inspiring their revelatory power and miraculous efficacy have been to the world's later generations! Now, since a Clap of Thunder is not something that may be concealed, what human being fails to recognize Thunder? A Clap of Thunder is the means to reveal Heaven's Might and issues the Way's Powers. If Heaven's Might is not revealed, then how will the extraordinary powers of the Occult and Bright [i.e., the worlds of the living and the dead] afflict and bless? If the Way's Powers are not issued, then how will the Two [Phases of] Yin and Yang Qi produce and destroy? Issuing the Way's Powers through the Two [Phases of] Yin and Yang Qi is able to reveal Heaven's Might. Revealing Heaven's Might through the extraordinary powers of the Occult and Bright is able to issue the Way's Powers. This is the [same] reasoning [whereby] a flaw in jade does not diminish its value and [a person's] cataracts fails to hide wrongdoing. As for all the sacrifices to the interconnected temples and constellations of earth- god shrines and [as for] all the spirits of the numinous sacred spaces and ancient miracle sites, there is bound to be the benign and the baleful among

92 These four are the names of the assistants to four Generals-in-Chief overlapping with the above list. See Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220), juan 65, p. 10b.

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them. [As for] all the competencies of wealthy gentlemen and lowly personnel, and [as for] all the noble orders of upright people and extraordinary scholars, there are bound to be good and bad among them. When spirits are culpable (youzui ^W), how can nobles complain about them? When the nobles are guilty93 (youxin ^ Jit), how can the spirits cry out "Alas!"? Illustrious Heaven has done each of the following — constructed the Thunder Wall and laid out the Thunder Prison, founded the Thunder Offices and assigned the Thunder Administration, propagated the Thunder Civil Norms and issued the Thunder Punishments, enlisted the Thunder Deities and commanded the Thunder Troops, deployed the Thunder Might and wielded the Thunder Instruments — through managing the levers of reward and punishment, and controlling the powers of generation and destruction. This permits [Heaven, acting through the Thunder institutions] to seal off mountains and break through caverns, decapitate supernatural [apparitions] and behead malicious [things] in the Yin-Dark Realm [of spirits], and also to destroy lethal [things] and exterminate deviants, attack the wicked and extirpate the vicious in the Yang-Bright Way [of the living]. It is clear that issuing the Way's Powers and revealing Heaven's Might are matters of adjusting to the Two [Phases of] Yin and Yang Qi, and of affecting the extraordinary powers of the Occult and Bright worlds. The Myriad Things standing upright in the realm of Heaven and Earth have never lacked the endowments generated by [the cycles of] Yin and Yang. Generative growth and vitality {sheng) is the means by which whatever has been formed or imagined becomes human and whatever is formless or unimagined becomes spiritual. Humans dwell in the Yang- [Bright realm] and spirits dwell in the Yin-[Dark realm], which is why they come and go [respectively] from the Four [modes of] Generation94 and circulate throughout the Six Ways.95 If Heaven did not have the Thunderclap, then how could it put forth the punishments and institutions for correcting the recalcitrant and criticizing the ignorant? Recalling that Your Humble Servant has been blessed in his past lives and has been graced by advancement into the Thunder Ranks, he swears to practice and uphold [this system], without the least hesitation.

93 This is most likely a pun. I present the most likely translation, given the parallelism. But the Chinese term also connotes "with blood-offerings" or "with bloody-festivals."

The sisheng (E9£) are the four means of entering life in this world which, for Buddhist cosmology, include birth by the womb (humans and animals), the egg (birds), dampness (shi ?!) (insects, fish, and turtles) and transformation (cicadas and butterflies).

" The liudao (/sjl) are the Six Ways of possible rebirth in the cosmos which, for Buddhist cosmology, included rebirth as a God, Human, Titan, Denizen of Hell, Hungry Ghost, and Animal. It had become part of the general Chinese imagination well before the Song dynasty.

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 1 93

[C. Advancing the System] At this favorable time, prostrate upon the ground and submitting a single memorial petition for an audience before the [Personnel Evaluation] Sections of the Three [Supreme] Heavens, Your Humble Servant will respectfully dispatch from this system96 the Wind and Fire Primordial Brilliant Lord, Fire Patrician and Windy Thunderclap Lord, Divine Thunder Ruler, Blocking-Patrician Lord, Heavenly Fire-Bell and Thunderbolt Transcendent, Great Razor- Toothed and Iron-Helmed Transcendent, Divine Dragon Thunder and Water- Quelling Lord, the Divine Wind-Thunder, Dragon-Striding, Quaking- Heaven, and Seething-Ocean Lord, the Divine Thunderbolt, Fire-Radiance, Silver-Fangcd, and Blazing-Eyed Lord, the Great Crackling-Fire and Statute and Regulation Divinity, the Thunder-Sire and Fire-Chariot Marshal, the Three-Five Iron-Helmed and Fire-Chariot General-in-Chief, the Three-Five Shaoyang in Lord-Commander and General, the Thunderbolt Fire-Chariot and Rank-Smokes Envoy, the Four Sagely Supervisory-Investigative and Chariot-Returning Envoy, the Free-floating-Cloud and Falling-Hail Strongman, the Vicious-Bodied and Flying-Cloud Envoy, the Mountain- Moving and Ocean-Churning Iron-Armored Envoy, the Moving- Wind and Booming Heavenly Power Crimson Script Envoy, the Wind and Hail Golden Bell and Fire Bell Envoy, the Five Thunder Direct Blitzkrieg Envoy, the Left and Right Thunder-Battalion Envoys, the Dark Cloud and Fire-Delivering Imperial Blaze Envoy, the Western Terrace and Thunder and Rain Clerk, the Heaven-Bearing and Stone-Crushing Supreme Tenuity Director, the Mighty Sword and Shuddering Numinous Clerk, the Four Seasons' Wind and Rain Director, the Superior Jade Radiance and Golden Essence Clerk, the Divine Demon-Swallowing and Apparition-Chewing Heavenly-Armored Clerk, the Chief Cinnabar-Primordial Ministry of Justice Clerk, the Divine Dragon-Arresting and Wicked-Capturing Mountain-Moving Lord, the Ocean Maelstrom and Wave-Smashing Numinous Florescent Soldier, the Divine Flying Cloud and Speeding Lightning Clerk, the Great Year Asterism [i.e., Jupiter] General, the Control of Epidemics and Plagues Envoy, the Five Regional Thunder-Sire General, the Heavenly Thunder and Dazzling Radiance General, the Six Thunder and

96 As can be seen from the notes to follow, many of these figures are identical to the "Holy Ranks of the Jade Court" (yufu shengwei EÈfôHfï), found in the Gaoshang shenxiao yuqing zhenwang zishu dafa (CT 1219), juan 9, pp. 22a-30b, showing that this system propounded by Bai Yuchan is basically in accord with the Divine Empyrean tradition of the Thunder Rites. A more comprehensive list including most of the same deities appears in Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220), juan 65, pp. 2a-22b, under the rubric "Holy Ranks of the Various Thunderclap Ministries of the Three Primal Qi," which is also basically a Divine Empyrean hierarchy.

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Lightning Radiance Dragons Generals, the Two Left and Right Divine Commanders beneath the Jade Pivot Hall, the Two Left and Right Divine Commanders beneath the Northern Culmen Hall, the Two Left and Right Divine Commanders of the Penglai MM Thunderclap Bureau, the Strongman of the Thirty-Six Thunder Drums, the Decree-Screaming Wind Thunder General-in-Chief, all the Generals and Commanders of Five Thunder Offices, all the Clerks and Soldiers of the Five Thunder Offices, and the Five Regional Thunder Envoys of the Southern-Aborigines — 97 will accompany the petition and join in an audience in the Administrative Palaces for a review and grading of merit titles and heroic [achievement awards], and an evaluation for reassignment of accomplishments and meritorious services. Promote the nominees and invest them with merit- ranks. Assign those commissioned and promote those chosen. [Your Humble Servant] pledges on this, the xingai day of the twelfth month of the present year [17 January 1216] to order the Officers and Sub functionaries, Generals and Army Troops of the Five Thunder [Offices] to depart for a meeting in the Supremely Illustrious Court that Responds to the Primordial to register merits and record accomplishments. Then, on the first day of the first month [21 January 1216], in the bingzi year [1216-17] at the time of Heavenly La fli, [Festival]98 they will forthwith ascend for an audience in the Jade Clarity [Realm] to plead for permission on the seventh day of the third month [26 March 1216] to partake in the Heavenly [Personnel Evaluation] Sections' assembly for the recruitment and selection of [meritorious] awards. On the first day of the first month, at the jiazi time [17 January 1216], on the day of the Grand Monad's evaluation of the divinities and earth-spirits, permit each of the Five Thunder [Offices'] Generals and Clerks to receive one [degree of] merit and await the Superior Prime [Day on the] fifteenth day of the first month" [4 February 1216], when the

97 These figures are specified in Daofa huiyuan (CT 1220), juan 65, p. 1 la-b, as part of the Great Cavern system.

98 Writings attributed to Bai Yuchan elsewhere (CT 1307, Haichan Bai zhenren yulu,juan 2, pp. 13a-b) respond to a disciple's question on the Five La Festivals (wula ill): "The first day of the first lunar month is for the Heavenly La. On this day the Five Thearchs assemble the Ninefold Qi ijiuqi ilm.) in the Eastern Quarter's Cyan Heaven. It is the day of the Tian Peng, the Chief Commanding Executive Divinity of the Supremely Illustrious Court that Responds to the Primordial... The above five days are for gathering the Five Thearchs together. The Five La are the origins of the Five Deities' Executive Commands."

99 This is the first full moon of the New Year, which has long been celebrated in China in various ways. Daoists hold a Lantern Festival in honor of the Heavenly Office {tianguan Ji If) and heavenly deities generally. In this sense it is the first of the three major annual festivals known collectively as the festival-days of the Three Primes (sanyuan ri H7ÉH), with the other two held on the fifteenth of the seventh lunar month (in honor of the Water Office tKI") and the fifteenth of the tenth lunar month (in honor of the Earth Office iÉlf).

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 1 95

Heavenly Department's Officials, at the Blessed hour, will all proceed to the Northern Culmen [Asterism's] Purple Tenuity [Court's] Jade-Cog Pivot Palace for the issuance of new duty-assignments and a change of official rank. Your Humble Servant vows here and now that the Ninefold Mysteries and Seven Ancestral Generations100 (Jiuxuan qizu A^-tlffi) will join in protecting, promoting, and transferring the spirits of the Three Realms and that he will devote himself to promoting prosperity and well-being. Thereafter, Your Humble Servant vows to [perform rituals to] pray for clear skies and plead for rain, summon snow and raise up clouds, gather up lightning and call out for thunder, chase away winds and send down hail, seal off mountains and destroy caverns, attack shrines and exorcize demons, execute krakens and dragons, control wolves and tigers, drive out water and fire, send away drought and locusts, drive away disasters on behalf of the people, chase away perversities and heal disorders, practice and deploy talismans and decrees, and materialize retributions. Your Humble Servant prostrates himself expectantly at the Your Majesty's Unapproachable Throne. Pour down a flood of Qi from the Purple Numina's Mysterious Unity, circulate [it] around inside the Triple Burner and Five Systems of Function of Your Humble Servant's person, flood the core of the Three Primordials' Nine Palaces. Let Your Humble Servant's heart-mind expand and his body enlarge, his spirit clarify and his Qi purify. [Let him] successfully master the Way and successfully attain transcendence. Your Humble Servant meekly and respectfully relies on all these pairs of officials, the Two Offices' Auxiliary Envoys, the Correctly Unified Personnel

100 The "Seven Generations" seems to refer to the whole sweep of one's ancestory. It was used in a warning phrase "bring disaster to the Ninefold Mysteries and Seven [Generations of] Ancestors" in an inner alchemy (neidan) text (the Dahuandan qi mitu i\Mf\M%M) in the Yunji qiqian (CT 1032), juan 72.9b and 16b. The "Ninefold Mystery" is a term typically used in close association with the Ninefold Heavens (Jiutian il^.), which was also the collective name for Daoist deities who became popular in the Six Dynasties. They are the highest heavens, located outside the Three Realms (sanjie H#) of the Heaven, Earth, and Water Bureaus, and home to the most lofty deities.

The Nine Palaces of the Three Primordials (sanyuan jiugong HteA.'b') refers to the perceived division of an adept's head into nine sections, each one lorded over by a deity which must be visualized in a precise way by the adept. Isabelle Robinet points out that in early traditions this tradition seems to have been independent from the tradition of the Three Cinnabar Fields {san dantian Hfl-ffl) known from the Dadong zhenjing and elsewhere, promoted instead in the Suling jing ^MIS, which became part of the Highest Purity tradition. The deities inhabiting the Nine Palaces only appear if the adept visualizes them during breathing exercises. The deities simultaneously occupy a part of the adept's body and a divine realm and are concerned with the originating production of the universe, just as the Three Primordials are. See Isabelle Robinet, Taoist Meditation, pp. 128-131. Here, Bai Yuchan employs this ancient tradition to effect a meditational transfer of the petition to the purest realms.

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Officers: the Left and Right Official Envoys, the Yin and Yang Divine- Acroama Clerks, the Regularly-Recruited Chariot and Scarlet Talisman Clerks, the [Dipper-JGuideline and Wind-Riding Deployed Clerks, the Postal-Horse and Petition-Submitting Clerks, and the Flying Dragon- Striding Clerks to depart under the orders of Your Humble Servant. At the present time, a single brief, the Vermilion Petition Memorializing the Thunder Court on the Deliberation of Merit-Titles, is respectfully sent up for review to the Three Heavenly [Administrative] Sections, [with the] request that it be advanced to the Palace of the Most High Empty Void Nobleman's Palace in charge of pending [administrative] business and governing the Supreme White [i.e., Venus] Palace. Prostrating himself and imploring his vow, Your Humble Servant, with genuine fear and trepidation, lowers his head and bows repeatedly, reporting to103 the Supreme Purity Mysterious Primordial and Most High Unbounded Great Way, the Most High Lord of the Way and Nobleman of the Void, the Most High Lord Lao and the Most High Nobleman, the Lord of the Heavenly Thearch and the Heavenly Thearch's Nobleman, and the Nine Elder Transcendent Metropolis Lords and the Nine Qi Noblemen, who multiply the Way's Qi by the hundreds, thousands, myriads, and millions to the One Thousand Two Hundred Official Lords at the Unapproachable Jade Throne in the Supreme Clarity [Heaven].

On this, the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth lunar month, in the winter of the eighth year of the Jiading reign period, in the yigai [period] of the Supreme Year [Cycle] of the August Song [Dynasty; i.e., 17 January, 1216], at the auspicious xingai time, in the southwest corner of Zhongyou Abbey ÏÏ?

in the Wuyi ^M Mountains,104 repeatedly bowing and offering this up,

102 The section in the early thirteenth-century ritual manual called the Lingbao yujian (CT 547), juan 11, p. lib, on aspects of sending memorials to the heavens assigns this palace and its deity to the first lunar month of the year.

103 This concluding passage is a nearly verbatim citation from several early texts related to the Heavenly Masters' movement, including Shangqing huangshu guodu yi (CT 1 294), pp. 7b- 8a; Santian neijiejing (CT 1205), juan 1, p. 2a-b; and Dengzhen yinjue (CT 421), juan 3, p. 8b. Kobayashi Masayoshi /M^ïEU argues that these texts do not date from before the end of the Liu-Song period (Rikuchô dôkyôshi kenkyû AfM$c£#f2S [Tôkyô: Sôbunsha, 1990], pp. 358, 397), i.e., the late fifth century. However, he argues that the Dengzhen yinjue quotes from the lost Qianerbai guan yi flÉfi [Protocols for the 1200 Officials], which he believes dates from the late Han period (late second century) and was a fundamental scripture of the earliest Heavenly Masters' movement. Tao Hongjing's Dengzhen yinjue, juan 3, p. 23b, says that "The Protocols of the Twelve Hundred Officials originated from Hanzhong [i.e., Sichuan, and so likely part of the earliest Heavenly Master's movement] and were transmitted in the world from there. So it is already an ancient book, [whose versions have] many discrepancies." See also the Tang compendium Zhiyan zong 3Ht$g (CT 1033), juan 1, p. 9a.

104 These mountains run along the boundary between the modern provinces of Fujian and Jiangxi in southeast China, and their most renowned northernmost section are now in the

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 197

Your Humble Servant, surnamed Bai, as one of the Chosen Elite of the Golden Pylons,105 presently sends up this petition to whatever awaits its fate.

Concluding Remarks

Although the above text is very much a document of the dynamic social and religious world of thirteenth-century Fujian, it also marks a moment in the longer history of Daoist ritual spanning from earlier centuries to modern times. Woven from many sources — some remote and some near at hand — the text hints at a time of religious continuity and innovation, of social accommodation and tension. While those familiar with Daoist liturgical practice in Taiwan and southeast China may find much that is familiar in the memorial, much else calls for comparison with the practices of earlier Daoist ritual movements. For those who wrote and sponsored the petition and its ritual, however, the significance of the petition was rooted in local circumstances, related to specific exorcistic traditions, cults, and local events. Comparing the petition with the other extant writings of Bai Yuchan, his disciples, and patrons indicates a confidence in the ritual traditions that they promoted, but one that was not immune from their ambivalent relations with the confusing array of competing ritual traditions, and one that provides more ambiguous glimpses of the cult figures and textual traditions which shaped their legacy. The memorial presented in this text also reveals such tensions among ranks of Daoist initiation, textual lineages with less clear relations to Daoist hierarchies, Buddhist and local divinities, and a divine administration with some parallels to the terrestrial one. More than simply revealing these religious tensions, however, the memorial — and the ritual encapsulated in it — aimed to resolve local social and religious tensions by deliberating them — not only for their author and his disciples, but also for the Fujianese ritual community which sponsored the ritual — before the highest emanations of the Great Way and the abstruse order they represented. The petition — by ordering the complex of traditions and sources claiming thunder authority known to Bai, and by presenting and promoting a "correct" variant (which partially overlapped with and did not reject out of hand the others) to the most primordial aspects of the cosmos — mediated the spiritual and social worlds of those performing and supporting the ritual, instituting order in the intertwined divine and mundane worlds.

northwestern part of Fujian. The Daoist Abbey had been established there during the Tang dynasty (in 748), presumably on the site of the temple to the tutelary god Lord Wuyi ii;££?q, about which see the essay by Delphine Ziegler in this issue.

105 This title is that of the Shangqing dadong dizi given above and corroborated by the early Song text, the Sandong xiudao yi (CT 1237), p. 7a-8a. The gateway marks the boundary between the ordinary world and the world of the purest emanations of the Way, and beyond the Three Realms, in the supreme heavens where the "chosen elite" are received by the Three Pure Ones (sanqing H/#). It marks an entrance to the source of the cosmos and occupies an important moment in most Daoist ritual activities.

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Framed by explicit appeals to the ancient tradition of the Heavenly Masters, whose history had surpassed a millennium by the late Song period, Bai Yuchan's petition also included his credentials as a disciple of the Great Cavern register of the Highest Purity tradition, which became known in the world more than seven centuries earlier, and which was a venerably high initiation rank for traditional Daoist priests in the tenth century. The more immediate and relevant liturgical tradition stressed by Bai in the memorial was the Divine Empyrean (shenxiao lift) order which, despite its scant century of renown, became part of the official structures of Daoist initiation. Bai, having trained with his master Chen Nan for nine years until Chen's death in 1213, learned from him the variety of the thunder rituals outlined in this memorial. This liturgical context forms a larger framework for the petition, but there is also a more local context.

At an unspecified time in the last quarter of 1215 (perhaps just prior to the above ritual petition), Bai had successfully become accepted by the local community in the Wuyi mountains. After a fire had razed the home of a local gentleman named Zhan Yanfu ft^fc^, he invited Bai to dispatch a ritual memorial to exorcise the cursed area of threats from fire. Bai complied and composed a large talisman in Mr. Zhan's courtyard. During the nocturnal performance of the ritual "the sound of a myriad horses" arose outside the courtyard and there was a cry that "the [threat of] calamitous fire has been transferred to someone else's house in Yanping jjjE^p [i.e., just to the south, in Nanpu jun i%iS?|$, Fujian]."107 It is tempting to claim, but difficult to prove, that the memorial translated above was part of this exorcistic ritual Bai performed on behalf of Mr. Zhan's misfortune. At any rate, Zhan Yanfu

106 Note the essay by Chen Zhichao M.^^. on the recently discovered Ming edition of the compendium of legal cases compiled late in the Song dynasty (Qingming ji îh^JH), most likely in the Chong'an region of Fujian. He suggests Zhan Yanfu as the possible editor of the collection before dropping it because of the 45-year gap between his mention here and the 1261 preface, and because of the Daoist leanings of Mr. Zhan. While Zhan's role in the compilation cannot be ruled out, the work plausibly was written in the Wuyi mountains. More compelling evidence may be the weakness that ties him to the compilation. More research into the social relations formed by the lineages and officials in this region during the late Southern Song period will help to clarify the provenance of the text. Brian McKnight is continuing the work he began with James T.C. Liu and Bettine Birge on this text to help to clarify the social history of this area of China. Chen Zhichao, "Ming keben <Minggong shupan Qingming ji> shulue ®MW ^^HtWf BJ§Jfc> i£B& [A Brief Account of the Ming Edition of the Minggong shupan Qingming ji]," in Zhongguoshi yanjiu ^M^M%, 1984.4, pp. 137-152. See also Bettine Birge's review of Gudula Linck's ambitious dissertation on the Qingming ji in "Review Article," Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 24 (1994), pp. 269-285. As Birge points out, the Qingming ji suggests greater tensions and uneasiness in Song social relations than many have imagined, indicating a time of at least as much change and uncertainty as that of our contemporary lives.

This and the following anecdote are part of the hagiography of Bai Yuchan by his chief disciple, Peng Si É2IB (fl. 1218-1251), who hailed from Fuzhou (Fujian). It is most readily available in Song Bai zhenren Yuchan quanji 5^Ë3JCÀ:E$ï^:ll (1976), pp. 716-717.

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 199

was deeply impressed by Bai and his performance of the ritual and became his patron. In the spring of 1216 Mr. Zhan had arranged for the rebuilding of a residence for Bai beside the Chongyou temple grounds. From the end of 1215 onward, Bai Yuchan attracted many followers and faithful, not only in the Wuyi mountains, but in many important regional religious centers. And in the decade or so after the delivery of the above petition, Bai's career of performing ritual services, preaching, and training disciples expanded and blossomed.

In the spring of 1216, the newly energized Bai visited the authorities at the Heavenly Masters headquarters on Longhu shan (in Jiangxi), deeply impressing them with his mastery of the Highest Purity register and talismanic scripts.108 His corrections and intoning of the important thunder ritual spell, the Mulang zhou TfcÊft %, brought the rains to the area to end the drought that many earlier Daoist priests had failed to remedy, causing some in attendance to claim Bai was the reincarnation of the thirtieth-generation Heavenly Master, Zhang Jixian $kM9à (1092-1126). Bai's base in the Wuyi mountains and his support from the Longhu shan authorities bolstered his ritual credentials and helped him attract many disciples in the next decade as he travelled to various sacred sites, often signing his non-ritual documents as the "Inactive Divine Empyrean Clerk" (shenxiao sanli WftffciÈ). Some partisan sources record what may have been the high point for this itinerant Daoist priest. In the last years of his life, Bai became known to several important officials and literati, and in the last years of Ningzong's reign (r. 1194-1224) the emperor summoned Bai to his court in Lin'an. These sources state that he resided in the Temple to the Great Monad (Taiyi gong i^Z^'s) before disappearing into the unknown, leaving his legacy within his disciples and the extant writings they dutifully compiled for publication. In short, the time and subject of the ritual memorial presented here show an important moment in Bai Yuchan's local ministry and ritual activity.

While the continuity of some Daoist ritual structures and elements from the early centuries A.D. until today is certainly impressive and to some extent acknowledged by learned clerics such as Bai Yuchan, these clerics showed greater concern over the more pervasively distributed competing exorcistic lineages, local cults, and their unstable social positions. During the thirteenth century, perpetuating the personal instruction of one's masters — whether divine or human — and their teachings remained essential activities for many like Bai, but the strengthening Heavenly

108 It is not clear who was impressed, however. After the 34th Heavenly Master Zhang Qingxian $tH7fc (conferred in 1201) died in 1209, the standard genealogies of the Heavenly Masters do not record a replacement until 1230, when the twelve-year-old Zhang Keda £I~0T jz (1218-1262) became the 35th in line, thus ending the section in this massive hagiography on the Heavenly Masters. See, e.g., the Lishi zhenxian tidao tongjian (CT 296) Juan 19, pp. 14b- 16b (whose final compilation date was the early fourteenth century).

109 Some of the Recorded Verbal Exchanges (yulu §§§&) of Bai Yuchan with his disciples (CT 1307) deal with these exegetical matters.

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Masters' establishment on Longhu shan (in Jiangxi) increasingly became more important in accrediting potential Daoist priests, and in ensuring a uniformity, continuity, and authority on Daoist ritual practice, as well as granting it state- sanctioned legitimacy during the Yuan and Ming dynasties. The growing authority of the Heavenly Masters headquarters during this time did not keep priests and ritual masters (many of them itinerant) from encountering a great variety of teachings, cults, and traditions. Nor did it save them from dealing with the inevitable discrepancies between these teachings and ritual activities and those they had inherited. Extant writings indicate that clerics and ritual masters showed a range of responses, from ignoring to deliberating to criticizing to absorbing these rival and cognate teachings.

The memorial translated above attempted to deliberate the many Thunder Ritual systems, to assign them some order, and to promote one particular variety. The formal similarities to the Song empire's administrative and juridical structures deserve more detailed scrutiny, but more important to the forms and character of the ritual activities of Bai and his followers were the particular mixes of local exorcistic lineages, cults, and clerical (Buddhist and Daoist) traditions they chose to criticize and to promote. Bai's renown and ritual endeavors in Fujian as a Divine Empyrean master caught the attention of the masters of a newly emerging synthetic. tradition called Purified Tenuity (qingwei 7#0), which also had an important center in northwestern Fujian during the last half of the thirteenth century. This comprehensive movement became very popular during the Yuan and Ming dynasties and is still highly respected by many contemporary Daoist priests. Although more inclusive than its forebears, much of its hierarchical and organizational structure warrant closer comparison with the Divine Empyrean order, from which it may have derived, perhaps through the mediation of local practitioners like Bai Yuchan's disciples.

Bai's self-styled adherence to the Divine Empyrean tradition did not prevent the use of his name by later exponents of the Clarified Tenuity ritual synthesis to promote their tradition.110 He also became associated with the Jade Pivot, which was the left-hand (i.e., senior) office in the Divine Empyrean, and the promotion of the chief deity of that office, the Heavenly Worthy of Universal Transformation (Puhua tianzun IHb^HO, to the head of the Thunder administration, as appeared in the Jade Pivot Scripture (Yushu jing EEfillS), whose earliest commentary bears the name of Bai Yuchan. Whether Bai or his disciples initiated these changes is still unclear, but some nascent forms of these modifications of the Divine Empyrean can be discerned in the memorial petition translated above and in other writings ascribed to Bai Yuchan. Besides being accredited for these innovations in the Divine Empyrean ritual, Bai inherited and attempted to administer what was, and was to

See Daofa huiyuan (CT \220),juan 1, pp. 12a- 19b, Daofa jiuyao j裑:7tl?, signed by Bai Yuchan.

A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites 201

remain, a complicated system of dealing with the powers of thunder including aspects from many current systems, but remaining basically part of the Divine Empyrean order.111

These links to newly widely practiced Daoist traditions seen in the ritual memorial are arguably more interesting and certainly more challenging links to less well-known popular cults and traditions in medieval Fujian. Bai Yuchan's criticisms of multiple thunder writings, sources of thunder authority, and deities in the memorial show that initiated Daoist priests in rural thirteenth-century China had great difficulty asserting their preferred modes of uniformity, continuity and authority over the profusion of competing religious and ritual traditions flourishing in their ritual catchment areas. Nonetheless, he and others like him did not reject the local traditions out of hand. Trained first at Luofu shan, an important ritual center in Guangdong, Bai did not simply inherit unmodified from his teacher a ladder of ritual traditions with varying degrees of antiquity and authority. Rather, he struggled to relate his inheritance to the competitive world of ritual practice, and strove to relate it to the wealth of other traditions he had encountered in his travels and in his new home in the Wuyi mountains. His recent approval from a local elite family on Wuyi shan for his ritual activity helped to cement his position in the local Wuyi shan community. The other traditions — in this case variants of the Thunder Rites — are embedded in documents such as the one translated above, in disguised and distorted forms whose significance will only be understood through comparison with a range of other contemporary writings. Bai's petition and the encompassing ritual strove to incorporate and to underscore the spiritual authority of the Wuyi mountains through the new ritual materials he had learned from another powerful outside source. The process of generating superior ritual orders by placing old local elements of the sacred within new ritual forms dispensed from higher holy authorities had been a hallmark of Daoist movements for nearly a millennium by the thirteenth century. With the rise of the Longhu shan Heavenly Masters' center as an increasingly effective legitimating authority for newly emerging local exorcistic traditions and cults by the twelfth century at the latest, itinerant clerics and exorcists could enhance their credentials among potential patrons and disciples.

Attempts to forge new traditions in changing circumstances do not guarantee their success, however. Bai and his disciples successfully transmitted their

111 This was the opinion of the 39th Heavenly Master Zhang Yuchu <&¥$} (1361-1410), who submitted his Daomen shigui [Ten Guidelines on the Approaches to the Way] (CT 1232) to Ming Taizu E^i^iL in late 1406. This work includes Bai in a discussion of the "Daoist ritual systems," placing him under a list of masters of the Divine Empyrean order, as opposed to the masters of the Pure Tenuity (p. 1 1 a). The former consists of "Heavenly Thunder and Feng ffl Purgatories" texts, while the latter consists of "talismans and petitions for managing the Way, fasting ritual, and thunder ritual" texts. He says that the perceived multiplicity and lack of uniformity of the ritual systems was only apparent, since all movements and traditions are fundamentally one.

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teachings through several generations of disciples, but by the early Ming period he and his predecessors had become part of spiritual genealogies which were more textual than social. Future studies will bear fruit by providing readers with access to the rich religious environment of various locales in southeastern Chinese society in the Song, an environment which included, but was not limited to, Daoist, Buddhist, exorcistic, and mediumistic traditions. These local environments, of which their cults and exorcistic traditions were an integral part, were embedded within larger economic and political forms which operated with constraints and concerns that were often quite different from those of their original communities. The newly consolidating Daoist ritual structures of the Song period similarly provided a way of placing — whether through incorporation, modification, or rejection — local traditions within larger forms of spiritual organization. Practitioners of Thunder Ritual traditions, like Bai Yuchan and his followers, helped to mediate — through their ritual and teaching activities — the spiritual, social, economic and political expectations and aspirations of the local (social and divine) communities they served with those having wider scope through their ritual activities. The memorial to the Thunder Court translated above thus marks a moment in the larger transformation from the earlier social and spiritual relations of Daoist traditions toward what we know of the workings of Daoist ritual in Chinese society today. Equally important, however, are the crystallized elements of contemporary and prior Chinese religious life contained within Daoist ritual manuals of the Song and Yuan period. Perhaps it is time to begin examining these crystals and use them as prisms to refract the surviving light of medieval Chinese religion into more compelling and lively historical spectra."2

Edward Davis' study of the Xu brothers' cult in Fujian is an good example of how this can be done. See his "Arms and the Tao: Hero Cult and Empire in Traditional China," in Sddai no shakai to shvtkyd 7JcftOtt# t mWi [The Society and Religion of Song China], Sôdaishi kenkyûkai hôkoku 2 (Tôkyô: Kyûko shoin â^lr/â, 1985), pp. 1-56.