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Book Reviews Emperor Wu Zhao and Her Pantheon of Devis, Divinities _full_journalsubtitle: International Journal of Chinese Studies/Revue Internationale de Sinologie _full_abbrevjournaltitle: TPAO _full_ppubnumber: ISSN 0082-5433 (print version) _full_epubnumber: ISSN 1568-5322 (online version) _full_issue: 5-6 _full_issuetitle: 0 _full_alt_author_running_head (neem stramien J2 voor dit article en vul alleen 0 in hierna): Book Reviews _full_alt_articletitle_running_head (rechter kopregel - mag alles zijn): Book Reviews _full_is_advance_article: 0 _full_article_language: en indien anders: engelse articletitle: 0 T’oung Pao 104 (2018) 680-687 680 Book Reviews Emperor Wu Zhao and Her Pantheon of Devis, Divinities, and Dynastic Mothers. By N. Harry Rothschild. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2015. xxii + 357 pp. This elegant volume is the fifth in the budding Sheng Yen Series in Chinese Bud- dhist Studies at Columbia Univ. Press, whose aim is to host pioneering research “in the field of Chinese Buddhism.”1 N. Harry Rothschild, however, has no doubt far exceeded such a brief. His extensive exploration of the female ideological models of Wu Zhao 武曌 (posthumously Wu Zetian 武則天, r. 690-705), the only woman to successfully claim the imperial dignity in China’s long history, does pause to con- sider the well-known role Buddhism had in this remarkable feat, but only at the end of a long gallery of feminine paragons, drawn from a much wider spectrum of traditions. The book’s four parts roughly match the conventional rubrics of China’s elusive religion as a whole: thus the shapeless realm of myth and folklore in Part 1 is fol- lowed by Confucianism with its exemplary mothers in Part 2, and before the final section on the devīs of Buddhism, Part 3 deals with Taoism and its goddesses. No less than fifteen characters populate this line-up, the pursued symmetry of which should justify Rothschild’s repeated reference to them as a “pantheon.” What un- folds through the chapters, however, is probably more of a fluid repertoire, to which Wu Zhao and the literary talents in her service resorted in different forms and degrees, ostensibly to lend the legitimacy of precedent to one woman’s unique foray into a world of male power, and at successive stages of her long political ca- reer: first as the capably meddling consort of the Tang 唐 emperor Gaozong 高宗 (655-683), then as empress dowager and regent (684-690), and eventually as em- peror (huangdi 皇帝) of her own Zhou 周 dynasty (690-705). Rothschild’s first model is the mythical Nüwa 女媧, primeval goddess and sover- eign in highest antiquity, a serpentine figure tangled in intertwining coils to her male counterpart Fuxi 伏羲, as Wu Zhao would have been to her spouse Gaozong in the nearly three decades of their joint exercise of power. But references to Wu Zhao as Nüwa lingered in poetry, inscriptions, and memorials even after her solo enthronement as emperor, revealing more to this archetype than the female half of a connubial rulership. Evoking the goddess of the Luo 洛 River and Leizu 嫘祖, the First Sericulturist (chapters 2 and 3), seems instead to have responded to narrower political expediency. A hitherto rare weaving ritual worshipping the latter, conven- iently offering a ceremonial spotlight to the empress, was revived between 656 and 675, but shelved once Wu Zhao “started to play a more significant role in the outer, male political realm” (p. 71). The fortunes of the Luo River goddess were even short- er, and linked to the elevation of Luoyang as capital in the 680s. The section on dynastic and exemplary mothers features a longer parade of characters that were mostly dear to the Confucian tradition. The Mother of Qi 啟, née Tushan 塗山氏, had been known chiefly as the forsaken wife of flood-queller 1) See the series blurb on the first verso page of the book under review. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 T’oungDOI: 10.1163/15685322-10456P08Pao 104 (2018) 680-687 _full_journalsubtitle: International Journal of Chinese Studies/Revue Internationale de Sinologie _full_abbrevjournaltitle: TPAO _full_ppubnumber: ISSN 0082-5433 (print version) _full_epubnumber: ISSN 1568-5322 (online version) _full_issue: 5-6 _full_issuetitle: 0 _full_alt_author_running_head (neem stramien J2 voor dit article en vul alleen 0 in hierna): Book Reviews _full_alt_articletitle_running_head (rechter kopregel - mag alles zijn): Book Reviews _full_is_advance_article: 0 _full_article_language: en indien anders: engelse articletitle: 0 Book Reviews 681 Yu 禹 the Great, but her association with Mount Song 嵩 earned her fresh prestige under Wu Zhao, whose own special connection with the holy peak of the center may have had deeper reasons than those discussed here. A more obviously political reference was Jiang Yuan 姜嫄 (chapter 5), mother of the founder of the Zhou 周 lineage, whom Wu Zhao could claim as ancestress to her replica of that venerated dynasty. A similar program can be read in the empress’s references to Wenmu 文母, the spouse of King Wen 文 of Zhou. Chapter 7, the volume’s longest, is a perceptive account of the political recast of exemplary women from the Lienü zhuan 列女傳 (a much enlarged version of which was compiled at Wu Zhao’s behest) into the Chen gui 臣軌. These ‘Guidelines for Ministers’ and other officials, compiled in 685 and included in the examination syllabus in 693, proclaimed a notion of absolute loyalty to the ruler as a cardinal political virtue, expressly posited as superior to filial piety and family obligations. To buttress this message, the ‘Guidelines’ made room for biographical clips of im- peccable mothers such as those of Mencius, of the Warring States generals Zifa 子 發 and Kuo 括 of Zhao 趙, and Lady Ji 季 of Lu 魯, who had embodied stern alle- giance to public values by reprimanding or even denouncing their own sons. Roth- schild reads these narratives as part of a construction of political motherhood, advancing Wu Zhao’s image from stopgap leader of the imperial household during her regency to rightful head of empire. Wu Zhao’s relationship with Taoism and its goddesses was by comparison a far more personal matter. There may well have lain the woman’s innermost faith, and she is likely to have been a decisive influence behind the momentous rise in Taoist worship with which Gaozong is usually credited. Yet, fewer characters enter this aisle of the gallery, and less prominently: neither the awesome Xiwang mu 西王母, to whom the she-emperor was often compared in court literature especially in the years of her crepuscular dalliance with the Zhang 張 brothers, nor certainly the Lady of the Southern Peak Wei Huacun 魏華存, whose flourishing cult she appears to have dismissed, played any major role, although Rothschild is willing to ascribe ideological substance to the former. A remarkable exception was the mother of Laozi 老子, a god the Li 李 clan of the Tang claimed as ancestor: after the death of Gaozong, Wu Zhao ennobled this Taoist goddess with a title—Xiantian taihou 先 天太后 or ‘Grand Dowager of the Anterior Heaven’—that matched and exalted her own earthly position as the mother and tutoress of Laozi’s progeny. But once again this would have been playing on contingencies, which the removal of the Tang with their dynastic cults would soon supersede. For it was Buddhism that sealed Wu Zhao’s apotheosis, and this may well justify the book’s inclusion in the Sheng Yen series, although the final section is in fact somewhat less rich than the previous ones. One of its only two models is the Bud- dha’s mother Māyā, but the evidence Rothschild marshals here is no more than suggestive, and does not really seem to warrant his claim of “a substantial role in the ornate construction of Wu Zhao’s political authority” for this figure (p. 208). It is quite otherwise with the last chapter, addressing the spectacular Buddhist T’oung Pao 104 (2018) 680-687.
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