Taoism and Chinese Religion

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“It is largely thanks to [Maspero’s] pioneer work in the fields of Chinese religion, anthropology, linguistics and history that China’s contribution to the achievement of man could first be reviewed on terms of parity with those of other civilizations.

“To the question whether his discoveries, opinions and interpretations have been outdated by the subsequent thirty years’ research, it may be answered that leading scholars still rely with the utmost confidence on his writings as a framework whose validity has outdated their most recent findings, and whose detail has in many cases not been bettered.” — Michael Loewe, University of Cambridge (from the sleeve notes to the original 1981 edition.)

Taoism and Chinese Religion

Revised Edition

Henri Maspero

Translated by Frank A. Kierman, Jr.

Price for pb & E-book: $ 96.56 USD | €74.00 EUR | £ 58.40 GBP | $ 99.99 AUD Publication date: Sep. 2014 Paperback (Sep. 2015 E-book)

Size: xli + 689 pages | 6 x 9 in. / 234 x 156 mm. | 2.339 lb / 1060 gm Formats available: Perfect Bound (pb) & E-book

Series: Quirin Pinyin Updated Editions (QPUE)

ISBN 13: 978-1-922169-04-4 Paper | 978-1-922169-05-1 E-book (Sep 2015)

… one of the greatest attractions of Maspero’s writings in this volume (and one that will endure even when our own researches eventually make us better informed than he was on every topic upon which he touched), is the invaluable picture disclosed to us of a mature sinologist remarkable for his broad erudition and penetrating insight confronting a field of research completely untouched by earlier scholars.

From the introduction by T. H. Barrett

About this book

This book is a translation of Le Taoisme et les Religions Chinoises, which was posthumously published in France in 1971. It is the first English translation of most of the seminal works on Chinese religion of the great sinologist Henri Maspero. First released by The University of Massachusetts Press in 1981, this Quirin Press Revised Edition brings back into print this classic of Western sinology and offers the full original text with the following features:

Older Wade-Giles transliteration fully updated and revised to the current Pinyin standard. Fully re-typeset and proofed for typographical errors and inconsistencies Expanded index including Chinese characters

Keywords: Daoism | China – China | Religion

Maspero (1883-1945) was the first Western scholar to study the vast and recondite compendium of Daoist writing, the Daozang, and explore its historic meaning.

The first part of the book closely examines Chinese society, religion, and folk-myth; the second part specifically focuses on the practice and form of Daoism and includes an extensive investigation of yoga-like procedures of nutrition, breathing exercises, and sexual techniques—all designed to ensure personal immortality in ancient Daoism. The titles of the nine “books” comprising this study give an indication of its breadth and variety: Chinese Religion in Its Historical Development; The Mythology of Modern China; The Society and Religion of the Ancient Chinese and of the Modern Tai; How Was Buddhism Introduced into China?; Daoism in Chinese Religious Beliefs of the Six Dynasties Period; The Poet Xi Kang and the Club of Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove; An Essay on Daoism in the First Centuries CE; How to Communicate with the Daoist Gods; Methods of “Nourishing the Vital Principle” in the Ancient Daoist Religion.

About the Author: The late Henri Maspero (1883–1945) was Professor of Chinese at the Collège de France, Paris. He died in Buchenwald.

Related titles by Henri Maspero: China in Antiquity, Revised Edition Quirin Press (Forthcoming Mid 2015) www.quirinpress.com QP @QuirinPress

Quirin Pinyin Updated Editions (QPUE)

New editions that update and revise classics of Western sinology in line with current scholarship and practices (e.g. the older Wade-Giles transliteration of Chinese words updated to the current Pinyin standard). All QPUE titles are published in both paperback and E-book formats.

Series titles include the following Revised Editions:

The Poetry of the Early Tang, by Stephen Owen

The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High Tang, by Stephen Owen

Taoism and Chinese Religion, by Henri Maspero

China in Antiquity, by Henri Maspero

Zen Dust: The History of the Koan and Koan Study in Rinzai (Linji) Zen, by Isshu Miura and Ruth Fuller Sasaki

Lunheng: The Complete Essays of Wang Chong, Translated & annotated by Alfred Forke

For further details visit: www.quirinpress.com Twitter: @quirinpress blank page Taoism and Chinese Religion blank page Taoism and Chinese Religion

Revised Edition

Henri Maspero

Translated by Frank A. Kierman, Jr.

Quirin Press Melbourne & Basel 2014 Published by Quirin Press P.O. Box 4226, Melbourne University, Vic. 3052, Australia E-mail: [email protected] http://www.quirinpress.com

This work is a translation of Henri Maspero: Le Taoïsme et les religions chinoises © 1971 by Gallimard. Copyright © 1981 by The University of Massachusetts Press. Copyright © 2014 by Quirin Press for this second revised edition.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

The National Library of Australia Cataloging-in-Publication entry: Maspero, Henri, 1883-1945, author. Taoism and Chinese religion / Henri Maspero; Frank A. Kierman, Jr. (translator). Revised edition. ISBN: 9781922169044 (paperback) Quirin Pinyin Updated Editions (QPUE) Includes bibliographical references and index. Taoism—China. | China—Religion. Kierman, Frank A. (Frank Algerton), 1914- translator. 299.5140951

ISBN: 978-1-922169-04-4(pbk.) ISBN: 978-1-922169-05-1(E-book)

⑧ Printed on acid-free paper

The notes by Yoshio Kawakatsu, from Dōkyō, the 1966 translation of Maspero’s work into Japanese, published by Tōkai Daigaku Shuppankai (Tōkai University Press), Tokyo, appear in English translation by kind permission of Yoshio Kawakatsu. Publisher’s Note To The Quirin Press Revised Edition

The present publication in the Quirin Pinyin Updated Editions (QPUE) series updates and revises Taoism and Chinese Religion by Henri Maspero, which was originally published by The University of Massachusetts Press in 1981. The revisions bring this title in line with current scholarship and practices. Apart from updating the older Wade-Giles transliteration of Chinese words to the current pinyin standard, the text has been fully re-set and any inconsistencies and typographical errors corrected. Given that the term taoism is generally accepted and recognized as a word in the English language, the older Wade-Giles transliteration is retained for the title of the book; within the text, however, the pinyin daoism is used. For the sake of consistency Chinese names in bibliographic entries have been updated to pinyin, even though any Wade-Giles translitera- tions in English language titles have been retained. The index has been fully revised and expanded to include Chinese characters where appropriate. Chinese characters have also been added to the text where appropriate, save for any characters that could not be established from original sources with absolute certainty. For the parts they have played in the production and publication of this revised edition of Henri Maspero's unique work, we are indebted to a number of people and organizations. Our thanks go to Yvonne Crevier of The University of Massachusetts Press for permission to re-issue this title; to Professor Barrett for the update to his introduction; and to Cheryl Hutty for proofing the work and implementing the extensive pinyin updating and checking of all the Chinese characters.

Quirin Press Melbourne, 2014 blank page Contents

Publisher’s Note to the Quirin Press Revised Edition vii Contents ix Introduction by T. H. Barrett xiii Translator’s Preface xxxiii Original Preface by Max Kaltenmark xxxvii

BOOK I Chinese Religion in Its Historical Development

1. Ancient Religion 3 2. The Religious Crisis of the Warring States Period 19 3. Daoism 28 4. Buddhism 42 5. Confucianism 59

BOOK II The Mythology of Modern China

1. Popular Religion and the Three Religions 87 2. The Supreme Gods 99 A. The Jade Emperor, Yuhuang 玉皇 99 B. The Family and Court of the Jade Emperor 102 C. Celestial Administration and Ministries 103 D. Heaven and the Supreme Emperor in Imperial Worship 105 3. The Gods of Nature 108 A. The Sun and the Moon 108 B. The Old Woman Who Sweeps Heaven Clear 109 C. Sire Thunder and the Mother of Lightning 110 D. The Rain and the Wind 111 E. The Dragon-Kings, Longwang 龍王 112 x Contents

4. The Gods in Charge of Administrative Bodies 115 A. The Grand Emperor of the Eastern Peak 115 B. The Gods of Administrative Districts 119 C. Family Gods 126 5. Gods of Professions, Trades, and Guilds 147 A. Civil Mandarins 147 B. Military Mandarins 157 C. The Peasants 158 D. Sailors: The Empress of Heaven (Tianhou 天后) 165 E. Tradesmen and Artisans 168 6. Gods Charged with Looking After Men Individually 171 A. Guandi 關帝 171 B. The Supreme Lord of Dark Heaven (Xuantian Shangdi 玄天上帝) 178 C. The Mother of the Bushel (Doumu 斗母) 179 D. The Three Agents (Sanguan三官 ) 180 E. The Three Stars (Gods of Happiness) 182 F. The Eighteen Arhats and the Eight Immortals 184 G. Daoist and Buddhist Gods Who Protect Women 187 H. Immortal Zhang 張 Who Gives Male Children 196 I. Gods of Illnesses and Healing Gods 198 7. Gods of the Other World 201 A. The Ten Hells and Their Kings 201 B. The Life of Souls in the Hells 208 C. The Bodhisattva Dizang 地藏 (Kshitigarbha) 214 D. The Paradise of Amitābha 218 E. The Immortals and the Queen Mother of the West, Xiwangmu 西王母 222

BOOK III The Society and Religion of the Ancient Chinese and of the Modern Tai

1. Peasant Life 227 2. Spring Festivals 236 3. Official Religion 248 4. Mythology 258 5. Funeral Customs Among the Black Tai of Upper Tonkin 273 Contents xi

BOOK IV

How Was Buddhism Introduced into China? 285

BOOK V Daoism in Chinese Religious Beliefs of the Six Dynasties Period

1. Daoist Adepts and the Search for Immortality: Bodily Techniques 301 2. Spiritual Techniques: Inner Vision, Meditation, and Mystical Union 309 3. The Daoist Church and the Salvation of the Faithful: Institutions and Ceremonies 324

BOOK VI

The Poet Xi Kang 嵆康 and the Club of Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove 341

BOOK VII An Essay on Daoism in the First Centuries CE

Preface by Paul Demiéville 353 Bibliographical Introduction 354 1. Individual Religious Life and the Search for Immortality 360 A. Outer Religious Life: Practises and Exercises 362 B. Inner Religious Life: Gods and the Adept’s Relations to Them 387 2. Daoist Communities and Public Worship 414 A. Organization of Communities in the Yellow Turbans Period 415 B. Collective Festivals and Ceremonies 420 C. Ceremonies for the Dead 430 D. Collective Daoism and Individual Daoism: The Evolution of the Conception of the Gods 431 E. Additional Note on the Celestial Masters of the Zhang 張 Family 438 3. Daoism and the Beginnings of Buddhism in China 442 xii Contents

4. Appendix: Historical Notes on the Origins and Development of the Daoist Religion up to the Han 漢 Period 455 A. Techniques of Immortality and Mystical Life in the Daoist School of Zhuangzi’s 莊子 Time 455 B. Daoism Under the Qin 秦 and the Han 漢 469

BOOK VIII

How to Communicate with the Daoist Gods 475

BOOK IX Methods of “Nourishing the Vital Principle” in the Ancient Daoist Religion

Introduction 487 1. First Part: Breathing Techniques 498 A. Embryonic Respiration 499 B. Breathing Procedures Other than Embryonic Respiration 536 2. Second Part: Methods of Uniting Yin 陰 and Yang 陽 to Nourish the Vital Principle 545 3. Third Part: Gymnastics, Daoyin 道引 561

Reference Matter:

Notes to the Text 575 Key to Sources Maspero Used 657 Index 665 Introduction

The translation into English of Henri Maspero’s writings on Daoism and Chinese religion underlines the enduring value of a most remarkable achievement in the history of the study of religion, a classic of sinological scholarship that in its own day constituted an unprecedented advance, and, in many ways, remains unsurpassed even now. By the time the Gestapo took Maspero to his eventual death in Buchenwald in 1945, he had spent a quarter of a century investigating Daoism and, based upon study of the texts from its most creative period, had arrived at an understanding of that religion’s beliefs and practices such as no non-Chinese or even Chinese had attained before him and few have attained since. His perception of the problems involved in understanding the nature of Daoism has influenced a whole generation of scholarship both in East and West, and his presentation of Daoism as a religious system remains a synthesis unique to this day, incorporating research on topics untouched as yet by any successor. This book, in fact, represents the most remarkable work of a very remarkable man.1 Henri Maspero was the son of an Egyptologist, Gaston Maspero (1846–1916),2 reputedly the last and certainly the greatest in his day of those who maintained a complete mastery of all the various disciplines relevant to the subject. Henri Maspero was himself part of a like era of giants in the study of China. This was the first era to produce completely professional scholars capable of holding their own in terms of erudition with their Chinese and Japanese contemporaries, xiv Introduction yet the last era in which a scholar was expected to display the breadth of learning of Maspero’s father’s generation. In East Asia too a new age was dawning during Maspero’s lifetime, which was to bring to academic life another unique transitional generation, armed with a complete traditional education yet eager to take advantage of the modern Western approach to history. Small wonder that we are now beginning to look back to this period with renewed interest. Maspero was not the first grand master of French sinology: his teacher Édouard Chavannes by the time of his death already had done much to assure the high standards maintained by his pupils through his insistence on accuracy in translation and his broad treatment not only of political history but also of religion and of China’s foreign contacts. Maspero’s slightly older fellow pupil Paul Pelliot extended his erudition to these areas and others besides, laying particular stress on a sound knowledge of bibliographical problems and displaying an almost superhuman breadth of reading in primary and secondary sources. But Chavannes died before he could complete many of the major tasks in which he was engaged, while Pelliot, whatever the boldness of his deeds in China under the declining Qing 清 dynasty, appears always to have quailed in the face of his own erudition and rarely succeeded in marshaling his knowledge into any major inter- pretative study. However disparate Maspero’s own publications may seem, his urge towards a synthesis of his findings was always much stronger. He saw linguistic history, textual criticism, art, mythology, epigraphy, and the history of science as contributing to the total picture of Chi- nese history. Even his extensive studies in the history of Annam and particularly his many years of ethnographic research in Indo-China provided comparative materials suggesting to him new ways of view- ing the ancient society of China. While still in his forties he wrote a comprehensive history of the pre-imperial age and thereafter was engaged upon research towards a subsequent volume on the period up until the Sui 隨 dynasty. This involved him in groundbreaking work in such areas as economic history and led directly to the studies of the Daoist religion translated here. Yet a full appreciation of the place of Maspero’s work in the history of Daoist studies requires some understanding of the way in which Daoist literature was disseminated in traditional China and the direc- tion that research into this literature has taken up until the present. Introduction xv

For the Daoism that managed to perpetuate itself throughout Chinese history was not a great evangelizing movement proclaiming a new message to all mankind but rather a graded hierarchy of initiates dis- pensing occult knowledge to disciples persistent enough to learn and wealthy enough to pay initiation fees. The tendency to preserve eso- teric secrecy in Daoism was and is strong and, had not countervailing forces also been present, it is doubtful whether modern scholarship would have been left with much in the way of materials to study. It is fortunate that almost from its inception Daoism had to com- pete with Buddhism, a universal religion organized along very different lines. Not the least of the results of this was that various Daoist groups which had originally maintained separate scriptural traditions came to conceive of themselves as belonging to a single hierarchy of teachings opposed to Buddhism, just as the diverse Mahayana and Hinayana doctrines were all seen as the teaching of the Buddha. This conception further led to the practice of ranging the various Daoist scriptures together in a single canon after the Buddhist model, probably by the middle of the fifth century CE.3 It was an act of religious merit to copy out Buddhist scriptures, especially the whole canon, so perhaps it is not surprising that we find the Daoist canon also copied out under imperial auspices during the seventh century.4 Under the Northern Song 宋 dynasty in 1116 or 1117 such an imperially spon- sored compilation was printed for the first time: the title of the collection included the word Daozang 道藏, now the normal term for the Daoist canon.5 Though this edition and two others that were produced under the Qin 秦 and Yuan 元 dynasties have completely disappeared, a further, final edition in 5,305 fascicles, compiled and published by the Ming明 dynasty in 1445 has survived, together with a supplement in 180 fascicles produced in 1607. Maspero used a photolithographic reproduction of both the main canon and supplement based on a copy formerly kept in the Baiyun guan 白雲觀, Beijing 北京; this reproduction was made in Shanghai 上海 in 1926. There is a faint chance that Maspero’s one or two apparent mis- readings indicate occasional use of another source. As noted by M. Kaltenmark, Maspero erred in believing that 1445 marked the last time that the Daozang was actually printed. The date 1598 may be found on one of the two fragmentary copies of the Daozang in Paris, and this date, and even 1524, is found on such a copy in Tokyo; we hear of the xvi Introduction imperial donation of copies of the canon (presumably printed ad hoc) to Daoist establishments at several other dates during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Since one copy in Tokyo—more complete than most and apparently deriving for the most part from the 1445 printing— manifests a small number of minor textual variants when compared with the photolithographic edition, it may be that the printing blocks, which were eventually destroyed during the Boxer uprising, were par- tially or totally recut on one or more occasions. The Baiyun guan copy itself is usually taken as deriving from the 1445 printing, apart from a few portions repaired in 1845, so whether Beijing, Tokyo, or Paris possesses the oldest copy would in any case seem to be open to question.6 At all events the Daoist canon remained a rare work prior to 1926, which must in part explain why Maspero found himself confronting a vast body of literature almost totally untouched by traditional Chinese scholarship. The contrast with Buddhism is marked: not only do we have surviving editions of the Buddhist canon produced in China dating back to the Song, Qin, and Yuan dynasties, but Korean and Japanese editions besides. The earliest collated edition with movable type had already been produced in Japan by 1885. What is more, many of these editions were financed solely by private subscription and specifically destined for wide circulation, quite unlike the Daoist canon, which seems to have been mainly used as a symbol of imperial munificence. Perhaps it is because of the occult nature of its contents, as much as because of its value as a rarity, that access to the Baiyun guan copy— in recent times at least—was often restricted; only a sister institution in Shanghai possessed a copy equally complete and it was apparently even less accessible.7 It is true that a Qing dynasty anthology of the canon, the Daozang jiyao 道藏輯要, did enjoy a wider circulation, particularly after 1906, when a thoroughly collated edition was produced in Sichuan 四川, but this collection reflects the contemporary interests of its compilers and contains less than a third of the works Maspero used to reconstruct the earlier history of Daoism.8 It is also true that a handful of the more indefatigable Qing scholars did gain access to the Daozang and copied from it works of particular value, but here an even more marked contrast with Bud- dhism becomes apparent. For without exception the works extracted manifest a strictly Confucian bibliographic or historiographic interest in texts devoted to early philosophy or to biography rather than Introduction xvii any curiosity concerning the Daoist religion as such.9 We find no Daoist equivalent of the devoutly Buddhist scholar Peng Shaosheng 彭紹升 (1740–1796) or of Gong Zizhen 龔自珍 (1792–1841), who carried out bibliographic research into the Buddhist sutras using the Chinese version of the canon. During the same period Japan, less dominated by Confucian values, maintained even stronger Buddhist intellectual traditions which produced scholars such as Nanjio and Takakusu who had by the end of the nineteenth century added a European Indologi- cal training to their erudition. Buddhism, indeed, constantly forced as it was to defend itself as an alien intrusion into East Asian culture, could look back on a long tradition of apologetic scholarship but Dao- ism, more securely rooted in the Chinese tradition, felt no impetus to challenge the overtly disdainful attitudes towards religion of the Confucian literati. It was not until 1911 that Liu Shipei 劉師培, apparently the first Chinese scholar with the opportunity and inclination to sit down and read through the Baiyun guan copy of the canon, published some notices on select works that had interested him, by which time Cha- vannes and Pelliot had already removed to Paris two partial copies of the Daozang and Father Léon Wieger, S. J., was preparing a complete if unreliable catalogue of it in French.10 The writings of Chavannes and Pelliot soon showed that their acquisitions were being used to good purpose and the former had, by the time of his death in 1918, prepared the first translation directly from the Daozang into a European language in his superbly documented study of a Daoist ritual, “Le jet des dragons.”11 Thus when Maspero succeeded Chavannes at the Collège de France in 1920 he had before him both academic precedents and indeed materials unavailable to any Chinese who might have taken up the study of Daoism. In fact Maspero’s efforts during the early 1920s were largely directed towards the synthesis of the history of preimperial China that became La Chine Antique (China in Antiquity). Though this contains a section on the early Daoist philosophers Laozi 老子 and Zhuangzi 莊子, there is no evidence that Maspero had read any portion of the Dao- zang prior to its publication in 1927.12 Thus his distinctive interpretation of these early writers may be attributed to the earliest stages of his research on Daoism, while his yet more controversial ideas stressing the continuity of these works with the Daoism of the Han and of subsequent centuries emerge by 1935, the year in which he first revealed xviii Introduction an extensive reading of the Daozang in his published work. 13 In this way he pushed forward from the reinterpretation of a period already well studied in East and West through areas of Chinese intellectual history less well known into the total terra incognita of post-Han Dao- ism. It is noteworthy that none of his critics has pursued this strictly chronological approach to research in Daoism but, whatever bias this process may have involved him in by concentrating his thoughts from the outset on notions of unilinear development, he certainly cannot be accused of reading the results of his research in the Daozang back into texts of an earlier historical epoch. With this sole proviso, that Maspero approached later Daoism from a markedly historical perspective, it may truly be said that his lack of preconceptions concerning his work was almost total. Indeed one of the greatest attractions of Maspero’s writings in this volume (and one that will endure even when our own researches eventually make us better informed than he was on every topic upon which he touched), is the invaluable picture disclosed to us of a mature sinologist remarkable for his broad erudition and penetrating insight confronting a field of research completely untouched by earlier scholars. For apart from occasional mention of the researches of Chavannes and Pelliot, which were in any case concerned with matters peripheral to the period and literature that he made his major study, the only other secondary scholarship on Daoism to which he makes reference is that of James Ware, and this evidently taught him little he did not know by the time of its publication.14 Of course by the time of his death several Chinese scholars had availed themselves of the 1926 reprinting of the Daozang to produce articles on Daoism of a high quality.15 It may be that Maspero read these, and that the lack of any reference to them in the writings included in this volume simply illustrates the sad fact that nearly all the findings of his researches in this area were published posthumously. We may only guess at the appearance of the study that might have resulted had he been spared to produce a synthesis as well wrought as China in Antiquity, and it would reflect no discredit on his editor had notes on Chinese publications been overlooked in the course of the Herculean task of assembling the profusion of fragments left behind in 1945 into the seamless narrative that appeared as Mélanges posthumes in 1950. It should further be admitted that Chinese researchers at this stage were mainly concerned with bibliographic and histori- Introduction xix cal questions, thus preserving the emphases of Qing scholarship even while elevating Daoist literature to equal status with more traditional sources.16 The only attempt to describe Daoism as a religion, the well- known Daojiao shi 道教史 of Fu Qinjia 傅勤家, is conspicuous in its failure to make use of the full range of materials available in the Dao- zang.17 Curiously enough, much the best Chinese work on Daoism to appear to date was produced under the same sort of difficult war- time circumstances that formed the backdrop to Maspero’s last years. A copy of the 1926 Daozang from Beijing was billeted in 1942 in Longquan Zhen 龍泉鎮, near Kunming 昆明 in Yunnan 雲南, and it was here that Chen Guofu 陳國符, a Western-trained expert on the history of Chinese chemistry, occupied his time in reading through the work in order to discover the origins and transmission of what was to him a particularly valuable collection of source materials.18 Chen had already made some attempt to assemble information on Daoist literature even prior to his return to China, and was to continue his thor- oughgoing investigation of all relevant historical literature throughout the troubled period that followed the defeat of the Japanese. The final result of his endeavors, the masterly Daozang yuanliu kao 道藏源流考, appeared in 1949 and presented not only a well-documented account of the history of the Daoist scriptures but also a number of valuable notes on aspects of the Daoist religion and its history that he had un- covered in passing.19 Research in Daoism published in Chinese since the war has contin- ued to show a concern primarily with historical and textual questions. Scholars in the People’s Republic have rendered the cause of Daoist studies useful service in the latter field in particular, and the publication in Beijing at the end of 1979 of a revised edition of Wang Ming’s 王明 Taiping jing hejiao 太平經合校 and at the beginning of 1980 of a new work from the same editor, the Baopuzi neipian jiaoshi 抱樸子內篇校釋, augurs well for the future. So, too, does the reactivation of the Zhongguo Daojiao Xiehui 中国道教協會, a Daoist association first formed in 1957 which published four issues of an academic periodical prior to the Cultural Revolution and which once again is contemplat- ing major research projects.20 But, at least in terms of sheer volume, Chinese research on Daoism has always been outstripped by the productions of Japanese scholarship. The publication of the 1926 Daozang soon prompted one or two xx Introduction established scholars of Chinese religion such as Koyanagi Shigeta to embark upon an investigation of the same bibliographic problems that attracted the concern of their Chinese contemporaries.21 These men were shortly joined by a younger scholar with a Buddhist background, Fukui Kōjun, who was to become the first of a number of Japanese experts on Daoism having similar antecedents.22 For Japan, as noted above, though heir to religious traditions deriving from or deeply influenced by China, was less encumbered with the somewhat negative attitudes towards the study of religion prevailing in China both before and during this century. Japanese scholarship on Chinese religion in general has therefore been both informed and sensitive, though it has risked an overemphasis on the importance of Buddhist influences on native Chinese beliefs.23 Of particular value to Daoist studies was the postwar return to Japan of scholars such as Yoshioka Yoshitoyo and Kubo Noritada who had observed Daoism in China at first hand, though it should be remembered that they were primarily familiar with the monastic Dao- ism that had arisen in North China in the Song dynasty. One of the chief achievements of postwar Japanese research has been the refine- ment of techniques for dating the composition of early Daoist works— precisely the same techniques, in fact, that Maspero had used, though in a somewhat ad hoc fashion. In 1955 Yoshioka published in Tokyo a survey of the history of the Daozang, his Dōkyō keiten shiron, to which is appended a full list of Daoist works mentioned or quoted in Buddhist polemics or Daoist compilations of known date. Investiga- tion of the Daoist manuscripts, mainly of Tang 唐 date, discovered at Dunhuang 敦煌 in the first decade of this century and occasion- ally used by Maspero has proceeded more slowly. Both Yoshioka and Ōfuchi Ninji published partial catalogues of these materials, but now the latter has published a comprehensive catalogue accompanied by a volume of facsimile reproductions, thus completing the work of his father Ōfuchi Eshin, who started research on these materials even earlier than Maspero.24 Nor has the history of Daoism been neglected: the Six Dynasties period upon which Maspero concentrated his research has been the subject of two volumes by Miyakawa Hisayuki covering all aspects of religious development,25 and two general surveys of Daoism have also been addressed to the nonspecialist reader. The earlier of these, Yoshioka’s Eisei e no negai: Dōkyō, published in Kyoto in 1970, consists Introduction xxi of a concise outline of the development of Daoism up to the present,26 followed by an account of the organization and daily life of the Daoists Yoshioka had observed thirty years earlier in China. The inclusion of an extensive bibliography of monographs in Chinese and Japanese is a particularly useful feature of the work. In 1977 Kubo published his Dōkyōshi in Tokyo, which though more strictly confined to a chronological framework offers a fuller picture than Yoshioka had. The criti- cal bibliography appended to Kubo’s work is shorter than Yoshioka’s and confined to monographs in Japanese, but is also valuable in that it indicates the main lines of disagreement between Japanese scholars. The reader will have noted that, despite the initial benefits conferred by a brief opportunity to study contemporary Daoist life in the 1940s, Japanese research also has tended to concentrate on the traditional priorities of history and bibliography. In general it must be conceded that the Buddhist inclinations of most researchers in the field may have inhibited the depiction of what had traditionally been for their continental co-religionists a rival mode of religious experience. For this reason the work on Daoism produced in Paris since Maspero’s death is of considerable interest. Though it should be remembered that the postwar tradition of French scholarship on native Chinese religion owes much to Maspero’s contemporary Marcel Granet,27 the writings contained in this volume at the very least established a precedent in the exploitation of the Daozang at a time when the Anglophone world regarded it with indifference or dread. The roll call of scholars, by no means all of French origin, who have fallen heir to this rich legacy is long and still growing: to M. Kaltenmark, M. Soymié, and R.-A. Stein have been added the names of K. Schipper and A. Seidel, and, more recently, I. Robinet and M. Strickmann. All of these have produced work rivaling that of their Chinese and Japanese colleagues in attention to historical and bibliographic problems yet displaying an imaginative awareness of the religious problems at the heart of Daoist studies.28 Though it may be invidious to single out one name from this list, the career of K. Schip- per calls for special comment, since to a thorough training in Paris he has added firsthand experience of an invaluable kind by becoming an initiated priest of Taiwanese Daoism. Firsthand experience is indeed the only element missing from Maspero’s approach to Daoist studies. Though throughout his long years in China and Indo-China he exploited with avidity any oppor- xxii Introduction tunities to witness religious occasions directly (as the earlier studies in this volume demonstrate) and though his readiness to interview Buddhist monks on doctrinal questions suggests that he would have welcomed guidance from Daoist priests also, his researches into the Daozang were alas carried out after his last visit to the Far East.29 Even more unfortunate, the bulk of Western fieldwork in Taiwan has been carried out by researchers from the English-speaking world less well grounded in Daoist studies.30 The main contribution of English-language scholarship to Daoist studies has until recently lain in the area of the history of science.31 Whether Daoism has any particular and exceptional connection with science is a somewhat contentious question; it might be truer to say that, since the history of science was not a traditional historiographic category, researchers in this area have been able to elude the prejudices inherited from traditional scholarship and have therefore been much more open to the value of Daoist source materials. Such an interpretation would indeed apply also to the remarkable work of Chen Guofu mentioned above, though his readiness to comment on the purely religious aspects of Daoism is still exceptional. Curiously enough, what is probably the most important development in Daoist studies during the past two decades may be traced back to the English-speaking world, despite or indeed even because of its lack of strong academic traditions in the field. In the United States, in 1962, Derk Bodde first suggested the need for an international conference on Daoism. This eventually took place in Bellagio, Italy, in 1968 under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies and involved participants from eight different countries. The papers given were published in the journal History of Religions together with a summary of the proceedings. A further conference in Tateshina, Ja- pan, in 1972 eventually produced the volume Facets of Taoism.32 The increasing importance of Daoist studies in American universities as a result of these international efforts may be gauged by such indicators as the production of bibliographical surveys of the state of the field,33 to say nothing of the appearance of studies of Chinese literature which take full cognizance of the imagery of the Daoist religion.34 Anyone embarking on a career of research in Daoism today is thus confronted with a situation very different from that obtained when Maspero first ventured alone and unaided into the unchart- ed mysteries of the Daozang. To name but one obvious example, a Introduction xxiii

Taiwanese Daoist priest has recently provided the research aid for which Maspero must often have felt the need: the first comprehensive (although also distinctly sketchy) dictionary of Daoism.35 The cultural background to the origin of the Shangqing 上淸 scriptures, the chief source materials for Maspero’s studies, has now been deftly pinpointed by M. Strickmann,36 and even the complex problem, which he found so intriguing, of the relations between early Buddhism and Daoism has been considerably illuminated by a recent study by E. Zürcher.37 Almost everyone who has touched upon topics treated by Maspero has been able to offer corrections or improvements to his work in matters of detail,38 so it may legitimately be asked whether the present volume serves any purpose save to satisfy curiosity concerning the scholarship of an earlier era. If it is realized however that this translation marks but the latest stage in the international dissemination of Maspero’s work, the very compelling reasons for bringing it to a wider audience become more readily apparent. For Maspero’s posthumous writings on Daoism were first introduced to the Japanese academic community a full quarter of a century ago, and within a year of this event Japanese scholars, notably Miyakawa Hisayuki, had organized regular sessions for translating and discussing them.39 Eventually responsibility for translation passed to Kawakatsu Yoshio, who published in 1962 a summary of Maspero’s views on Daoism.40 In particular Kawakatsu drew attention to Maspero’s interpretation of early Daoist philosophy as a form of mysticism and his emphasis on the continuities between this early philosophy and the later Daoist religion. In 1966 Kawakatsu produced a complete translation of the writings on Daoism published in 1950, together with a translation of the piece which is Book VIII in the present volume. A slightly revised second edition of this appeared in 1968, and yet further revisions were incorporated in a new edition that was included in a popularizing series in 1978.41 Though some inferences as to the continuing worth of Maspero’s work may be drawn from the successive reprintings of this translation in a land (as M. Kaltenmark observes) not lacking in experts on Daoism, a better indication of the esteem which it holds in Japan is available in the lengthy review of Kawakatsu’s first edition published by Ōfuchi Ninji in 1967.42 This in fact constitutes the most detailed and well-informed critique of Maspero to appear to date, so it may be of interest to note some of Ōfuchi’s comments. A major part of the xxiv Introduction review is devoted to a deft summary of Maspero’s research, but this is interspersed with several pertinent observations. Thus Ōfuchi points out that though Maspero’s picture of Daoist belief during the Six Dynasties is in some measure a comprehensive one, he himself warned that it was based much more on what we would term the Shangqing scriptures than on those of the Lingbao 靈寶 (Sacred Jewel) tradition. Ōfuchi also cautions that Maspero’s reconstruction of Daoist physiological ideas is arrived at inductively from passages scattered through a variety of texts, and registers his reservations about Maspero’s arguments concerning the evolution of the conception of the gods in Daoism. In Ōfuchi’s opinion there is no proof that the highest god of the Yellow Turbans was Huanglao Jun 黃老君, nor that this figure had any connection with Laozi. Since furthermore we are now in the happy position of knowing that the Lingbao scriptures originated in much the same aristocratic social circles as the Shangqing revela- tions, Ōfuchi also doubts that the advent of the divinities known as Tianzun 天尊 could have had much to do with mass religion. He also comments in passing on Maspero’s somewhat subjective fashion of quoting Zhuangzi, already noted in Kawakatsu’s translation. The main thrust of Ōfuchi’s criticism is reserved for those same features of Maspero’s understanding of Daoism already remarked upon by Kawakatsu in his earlier survey of Maspero’s work. Thus Maspero sees the thought of Zhuangzi as representing but the most mystical tendency among a number of contemporary groups. But if these groups are to be understood as corresponding to those that were later known for their pursuit of immortality, it should be pointed out that this pursuit of immortality would (in Ōfuchi’s view) amount to no more than a method of preserving health or a body of medical knowledge were it not for the involvement of gods in the process. Yet there is no evidence for the presence of this religious element in such a pursuit at the time of Zhuangzi. To Ōfuchi, Maspero’s treatment of the Han also involves problems. References to Huanglao at this time indicate to him a strain of political thought rather than Daoism as understood by Maspero, while he doubts that the popular movements of the late Han offered their adherents salvation in the form of immortality. As for the idea of union with the Dao in later religious Daoism, it would seem to occur but once, in the passage from the Zuowang lun 坐忘論 quoted by Maspero. For these reasons Ōfuchi concurs with “the commonly Introduction xxv accepted view” in Japan that the early Daoist philosophers and the later Daoist religion are not aspects of the same thing but were, originally at least, separate phenomena. This criticism of Maspero indeed reflects the commonly accepted opinion in Japan, and has been more recently reiterated by Kubo Noritada.43 It is also fair to say that it reflects a substantial body of opinion in the West as well. European sinology accepted Maspero’s views with alacrity,44 but dissenting voices were soon heard from across the Atlantic. The resultant controversy has been the subject of an extensive review article.45 More recently Western students of Daoism have tended towards a much more carefully circumscribed and indeed circum- spect use of the word “Daoist,” partly no doubt to avoid provoking the continuation of sterile polemics.46 Yet it should not be imagined that Maspero’s interpretations are now outmoded: they have for instance inspired K. M. Schipper’s most recent work on the Zhuangzi 莊子.47 Perhaps one major reason for the sharp division of opinion over this question has been the paucity and frequent ambiguity of the materials used by Maspero in dealing with the period prior to the end of the Han. Recent archaeological discoveries in China have now caused the previous controversy over this obscure era in religious history to give way to a period of constructive research. The finding of a Han funerary banner near Changsha 長沙, for instance, has already prompted the writing of studies in English, French, and Japanese.48 In the meantime Maspero’s bold hypotheses may yet prove of heuristic value. But criticisms of Maspero have been confined to the points out- lined above: the value of the bulk of the writings contained in this volume has not been a matter of controversy. Ōfuchi, for example, roundly declares Maspero’s work a major advance over both Chi- nese and Japanese studies, which at the time he wrote his review (and indeed since) had approached Daoism only through the history of its texts or of its church organization or of its contacts with Buddhism, at least for the period Maspero dealt with. To Ōfuchi the systematic study of Daoism as a religion in its own right appears as a truly original contribution; indeed Maspero’s treatment of Daoism throughout shows marked originality in his eyes. Yet if Kawakatsu’s translation seemed to touch upon a blind spot (to use Ōfuchi’s term) in Japanese research, one might have expected Maspero’s successors in Paris to produce a work rendering this xxvi Introduction volume obsolete. The reason that this has not happened may perhaps be gleaned from the closing sentence of M. Kaltenmark’s preface. French scholarship has tended to communicate its findings either in extremely technical monographs on narrow topics or in broad surveys aimed at a maximum of popularization. The writings contained here, since they reflect a posthumous compilation of all Maspero’s surviving fragments concerned with Daoism, include both types of presentation; but, since Maspero was both a scholar with a fine grasp of detail chary of over-simplification and a pioneer attempting to provide a comprehensive summary of a vast new area of research, the tendency is for his writings to converge (not without detectable overlaps) on an interme- diate standard of technicality more familiar to the English-speaking world. The most technical study included here is Book IX, a masterpiece alas not translated into Japanese for Ōfuchi to comment on: the fact that this was the only major study of Daoism Maspero himself produced during his lifetime shows how much he could have achieved under more fortunate circumstances. For this particularly thorough piece of work remains every bit as important as the day it was first published, unrivaled by any later book or article. Yet it too is no narrow monograph but a surprisingly wide-ranging survey. By comparison, a recent publication by I. Robinet, which comes closest to the work of Maspero in that it presents a general readership with a thorough anal- ysis of the religion as seen in a corpus of Daoist texts, confines itself deliberately to meditation, which is but one aspect of Daoist religious practice.49 Thus this volume serves even now as a good general introduction to Daoism and as a source of information on Daoist practices unavailable elsewhere. One day no doubt it will be replaced by fresh surveys and by more detailed monographs incorporating the results of research in the fields of history and bibliography over the past generation. But even then we will always have to test our own understanding of Daoism against Maspero’s initial intuitions and measure our own insight against his. As the tragic events of 1944 and 1945 have receded deeper into history the constant reprinting and translation of Maspero’s work from then until now has inevitably elicited ever more encomiastic tributes to the durability of his scholarship. But perhaps the highest praise for his understanding of Daoism has come not from a fellow scholar but from someone simultaneously an outsider and an insider Introduction xxvii in an unrivaled position to judge his achievements. Some ten years ago a copy of Kawakatsu’s translation was brought to the attention of a Daoist priest of many years standing in Taiwan. It is reported that he was delighted with Maspero’s work and amazed that a foreigner could derive so much from the Daoist canon.50 Surely no student of Chinese religion ever received, or deserved, a finer epitaph on his work.

T. H. Barrett

Update to the Quirin Press Edition

The foregoing remarks, written thirty years ago by a younger and no doubt wiser version of myself, seem in retrospect both relatively prescient about Henri Maspero’s place in the development of the study of Daoism and distinctly lacking in foresight as to major devel- opments that were already under way. It was clear at the start of the 1980s that the religious tradition that Maspero did so much to put on the academic map would no longer remain the preserve mainly of scholars working in the Japanese and French languages. Though the most famous popularising works, such as Benjamin Hoff’s The Tao of Pooh of 1982, lay as yet in the future, it took no great degree of insight to appreciate that the cultural changes on North American campuses that had started a couple of decades earlier were bound to create a market for Anglophone expertise in the field. Accordingly associating the translation of Maspero’s writings with the beginning of this shift still seems entirely appropriate. For if scholars of Daoism are taken seriously in English-speaking departments studying religion today, this is in many ways due to the efforts made by a small but exceptionally significant group of pioneers whose work on the religion of East Asia linked together Europe and North America. Several of these pioneers, already mentioned above, picked up the legacy of Maspero’s work through study in Paris but unfortunately have not lived long enough to see the full success of xxviii Introduction their endeavours in passing that legacy on to the twenty-first century. The most senior of these was Isabelle Robinet (1932–2000), whose 1992 volume, translated in 1997 as Taoism: Growth of a Religion, provided for the first time in English a summary of the historical development of the tradition based on the rigorous academic approach to the texts of Daoism first exemplified by Maspero, thus rendering the task of assign- ing a reliable overview to Anglophone students no longer problematic.51 Less well known to undergraduate readers, but a great inspiration to researchers, was Anna Seidel (1938–1991), one of the number of German speakers attracted to Paris by Maspero’s legacy, and later a long-term resident of Kyoto, where the journal she founded, Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie, continues to foster links between Japanese, Europe- an, and North American scholars.52 But perhaps one of the most significant influences on the development of Anglophone Daoist studies came from an American with strong European ties who also studied in Paris and Tokyo before teaching for some time in California, Mi- chel Strickmann (1942–1994).53 It has been his students, such as Steven Bokenkamp, Judith Boltz, Edward L. Davis, Kenneth Dean, Donald Harper, and Terry Kleeman, who have shouldered the main burden of establishing scholarship on Daoism in the Anglophone academic world. By contrast the students of a somewhat younger European scholar active in North America, the prolific Livia Kohn, while also engag- ing like her in conventional publishing, have helped to establish the academic presence of Daoist Studies in English on the internet. James Miller is responsible for a site named Daoist Studies (www.daoiststud- ies.org), and Louis Komjathy for one named the Center for Daoist Studies (www.daoistcenter.org). A third site, the Golden Elixir (www. goldenelixir.com) was first established by the Italian scholar Fabrizio Pregadio in Europe, but he also has now taught in North America for some time. Both Livia Kohn and Fabrizio Pregadio have been responsible besides for editing major syntheses of scholarship on Daoism in English, namely the Daoism Handbook (Leiden: Brill, 2000) and the Encyclopedia of Taoism (London: Routledge, 2008), respectively. These substantial works of reference, though published in English, draw on a broad range of international expertise, whereas a third vitally important reference work, K. M. Schipper and Franciscus Verellen, eds, The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang (Chica- go: University of Chicago Press, 2005), though eventually published in Introduction xxix

America, is the outcome of a longstanding collaborative project originally based in Europe. K. M. Schipper’s work, which was eventually to see his career culminate in professorships in Leiden and in Paris, has already been mentioned above. Franciscus Verellen, currently the head of the École Française d’Extrême-Orient, is also co-director of the most recent periodical in the field, Daoism, Religion, History and Society, a new (2009) bilingual venture in English and Chinese based in Hong Kong. For the one element scarcely glimpsed in my earlier remarks reprinted above was the emergence during the past three decades of the Chinese-speaking world as a major factor in the study of Daoism. Within that world, of course, due regard must be paid to the contribution of overseas Chinese academics: the development of Daoist Stud- ies in Australia, for example, would count for much less without the contributions of Liu Ts’un-yan 柳存仁 (1917–2009) and Ho Peng Yoke 何丙郁.54 Nor should the contributions of Taiwan and Hong Kong be neglected: the most compendious account of Daoist Studies in the Chinese world, and one that is readily available in English, is by Ding Huang 丁煌, a leading Taiwanese researcher.55 But his account, as it happens, begins with the appearance of Chen Guofu and Wang Ming at the 1979 international conference in Switzerland.56 For the change that took place in the public acceptability of religiosity in China in the 1980s was something so remarkable and so multifarious in its im- plications that scholars were soon obliged explicitly to recognise the fact.57 The revival of Daoist practice, for example, despite all the losses of the Cultural Revolution, has made fieldwork-based studies of the religion possible on the mainland of China virtually for the first time ever.58 The reprinting in thirty-six stout volumes of the Daoist Canon in 1988 as a governmental initiative placed the same resources that were from 1926 in the hands of Maspero and all too few others within reach of a whole new generation of scholars in Chinese universities and indeed of devotees in religious institutions, though the improvements on the reprint used by him were not exhaustive.59 As yet Daoist institutions in the Chinese world cannot compare with Buddhist ones for their impact on publishing and research, but organizations such as the Pengying Xianguan 蓬瀛仙館 in Hong Kong are now sponsoring an impressive range of monographs, in their case produced through the Religious Culture Press (Zongjiao wenhua chubanshe 宗教文化出版社) of Beijing. Such linkages are by no means rare: publications xxx Introduction such as the journal Daojia wenhua yanjiu 道家文化研究, for example, founded by Chen Guying 陳鼓應, are probably best thought of as international scholarly journals based in China, rather than as solely Chinese products. In short, the process of internationalizing or even globalizing the study of Daoism, so that the era of the lone scholar like Maspero has been replaced by a world in which research findings flow freely from continent to continent, often in electronic form, is now complete. This naturally raises the question as to why it should still be worth reading Maspero’s work. At least three answers spring to mind. First, the history of the encounter of the West with the religious traditions of Asia has become an issue of increased concern precisely because of the pace of globalization. The pioneers who founded the academic study of the texts of these traditions have in particular become the objects of renewed interest, since their writings appear in retrospect to provide benchmarks for our understanding—or, indeed, misunderstanding. In this connection one may point, for example, to the recent carefully annotated translation from French to English of a study more than a century older than that presented here, the 1844 volume of E. Burnouf on Indian Buddhism.60 But in fact Maspero’s scholarship on Daoism is not purely of historic value, since it still continues to be cited: all three of the major English-language reference works mentioned above list the first edition of the present translation in their bibliographies. One may even go further: some of Maspero’s contentions on specific points turn out to be more robust than subsequent scholarship has sometimes imagined—or so I would argue, after looking once more at his account of the apparent use of the Buddhist term for Nirvāna in the Daoist terminology of meditation.61 And if I may end on a personal note, three decades after first having been asked to take stock of Maspero’s scholarship and now approaching the age when his life was suddenly and brutally cut short, I cannot but say that with the passing of time I appreciate all the more deeply what he achieved. This achievement was not only a matter of quantity—for though he was productive, others have written more— but of the groundbreaking quality of his publications across a great diversity of different fields, spanning not simply East Asian but also (as made clear above) Southeast Asian Studies as well.62 Today we are obliged to know more and more about less and less. Even more firmly than before, I still believe that it can only do us good to look back Introduction xxxi on occasion to times when scholars, though they were lacking many of the advantages such as searchable digitized text that we now take for granted, were even so prepared to take on the task of understanding the heritage of other cultures in their totalities, not simply within the framework of the compartmentalization increasingly forced upon us by the academic cultures by which we are constrained. Perhaps Maspero on Daoism is unforgettable precisely because to Maspero there was more to be understood than Daoism alone. Beyond there was—there is—China in its entirety, and beyond that humanity, and the continuing concern of humanity with what lies further beyond us, even today, and no doubt tomorrow too. THB blank page Translator’s Preface

Translating Le Taoïsme et les religions chinoises is perhaps a logical step after La Chine antique (China in Antiquity, 1978). Le Taoïsme is indeed the only book-length trace, other than La Chine antique, of Henri Maspero’s remarkable, tragically abbreviated career. Like the earlier book it is part and parcel of Maspero’s effort to write a popular but scientifically respectable history of China within the framework of Cavaignac’s Histoire du Monde. Once La Chine antique had been completed, Maspero found that he could not proceed with confidence into imperial times because neither he nor any other Westerner knew enough about Daoism: so he spent most of his last two decades breaking his way into that hermetic, and then almost trackless, tradition. On the other hand, Le Taoïsme is not a work totally shaped by Maspero’s own hand, nor therefore one that is designed as a symmetri- cal whole. The pieces of various lengths which make it up were com- posed for various purposes and for audiences of widely different kinds, and since introductory material is necessary for each audience, there is some more or less marginal duplication. Editing has been necessary, and this has inevitably altered what Maspero himself might finally have said if he had been spared to recast those notes. More particularly, from my own viewpoint, Daoism and Chinese religion do not by any means lie at the center of my own competence, whereas the history of ancient China has been my professional focus for over three decades. Nevertheless, Taoism and Chinese Religion displays Henri Maspe- xxxiv Translator’s Preface ro’s unique combination of talents—as ground-breaking scholar and as popularizer—magnificently. I allowed myself to be persuaded and, with the help of many people, the book is now available to English- speaking readers. Inevitably, in view of my own limitations, I must acknowledge the help of a good many people, and of some published material. Three segments of Le Taoïsme had been translated into English before I began. The largest single portion is what has become Book II. That Book was reprinted from Joseph Hackin and others, Mythologie asiatique illustrée (see bibliographic note to Book II), and Maspero’s chapter on “Mythologie de la Chine moderne” was translated with the rest of that volume as Asiatic Mythology, Crowell, 1963, the translator being F. M. Atkinson. Unfortunately, this workmanlike translation did not invade my consciousness until two years after I had finished translating Book II, but it has been very useful for checking doubtful points. There is also an abridged and edited translation of Book I, Chapter 3 (“Daoism”) in Laurence G. Thompson’sThe Chinese Way in Religion, translated by Dr. Thompson, and this too has helped as a reference. The most directly valuable block of translation is from a Uni- versity of Vermont master’s thesis done by Mr. James Marett under the guidance of Professor Gerald Swanson, through whose kindness I had access to it. This was a rendering of Book IX, or rather of the original as published in Journal asiatique for 1937: “Les procédés de ‘nourrir le principe vital’ dans la religion Taoïste ancienne.” Since that book is the most technically difficult of the nine and represents Maspero’s most extensive unique contribution to Daoist studies, it was extremely handy to have an English version of the text and footnotes available, even though it had to be thoroughly reworked. Direct aid from several individuals must also be acknowledged. Some of them deserve to be called collaborators, since they have spent a great deal of time on the usually untidy draft versions. First in point of time, certainly, is Professor Denis C. Twitchett of Cambridge University, who urged me to undertake the task, read the various drafts through with great care, provided detailed suggestions, and supported the enter- prise throughout. Most basic is surely M. Frédéric O’Brady, sometime Lecturer in French at Princeton University, whose expertise saved me from innumerable lapses into Franglais. Mr. Stephen Jones, a former student of Professor Twitchett’s, read the draft through meticulously, offered many valuable emendations, and prepared the index. Profes- Translator’s Preface xxxv sor Kristofer Schipper of the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Sec- tion des Sciences Religieuses, spent two days from his frenetic sched- ule working over two extensive segments of the manuscript, and on the second day Dr. John Lagariwey joined him in that onerous task. It was also Dr. Schipper who persuaded me that Taoism and Chinese Religion is a better title than the more literal Taoism and the Religions of China. Professor Max Kaltenmark graciously read and corrected my translation of his original preface. Mme. Maspero and Professor Paul Demiéville, Maspero’s longtime literary executor and shaper of the Mélanges posthumes which constitutes the skeleton of Le Taoïsme, read the first four draft chapters of Book I and made detailed criticisms which both set me on the track and persuaded me that I could in fact do the work. I have also received indispensable detailed help from professors Jerry Norman of the University of Washington and Robert Henricks of Dartmouth, from Mr. Tang Haitao of Princeton, and from the staff of the Gest Memorial Research Library at Princeton Univer- sity. As must always be said, of course, none of these kind people bears any responsibility for whatever errors, inconsistencies, or infelicities may remain in the book. Those are my unique contribution. A special note of appreciation is due to Professor Kawakatsu Yoshio, who translated Mélanges posthumes, Volume II (Le Taoïsme), into Japanese (Dōkyō, reprinted 1979 by Heibonsha Publishers) and provided copious footnotes. During the last year of his life Professor Demiéville had suggested that many of these amplifying and explica- tory notes would add considerably to the usefulness of the translated work. Professor Kawakatsu kindly agreed to let us use such footnotes to Books V, VI, and VII, and at his request we are happy to acknowledge also the contribution of his original publisher, Tōkai University Press. An even more special debt of gratitude is owed to Dr. T. H. Barrett of Cambridge. He read through Dōkyō, translated the relevant notes for me, suggested which of them are especially useful, read through the manuscript to make general recommendations, and finally—when circumstances prevented Prof. Twitchett from supplying an introduction—produced a learned and graceful one at short notice. [Publisher's note to this Quirin Press Edition: Although the following paragraph on the use of Wade-Giles transliteration is no longer relevant, it has been kept in order to maintain the integrity of the Translator's preface.] The current translation uses Wade-Giles romanization, rather xxxvi Translator’s Preface than the standard French academic romanization which Maspero used or the pinyin which the editors of Le Taoïsme rather gratuitously decided to adopt. Since Wade-Giles is the best-known system in Eng- lish Sinological works, especially those dealing with the traditional period, I have not thought it necessary to supply a key to its pronun- ciation. A key is available in China in Antiquity, pages 489–90, or, for those who wish a three-way concordance, one keyed to pinyin is in Le Taoïsme, pages 601–08. I have myself made use of Ireneus Laszlo Legeza’s Guide to Transliterated Chinese in the Modern Peking Dialect (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968), since juggling names and terms in Wade- Giles, French academic, and pinyin is a mind-bending exercise. Le Taoïsme has a Chronologie sommaire du cadre dynastique on pages 593–97. This has been omitted in the English version, since comparable charts are readily available (e.g., the inside back cover of Fairbank, Reischauer and Craig, East Asia: Tradition and Transforma- tion, Houghton Mifflin, 1973, or Charles O. Hucker, China’s Imperial Past, Stanford, 1975, Appendix A on pages 434–35).

Frank A. Kierman, Jr. Original Preface By Max Kaltenmark

When Henri Maspero was deported to Buchenwald, whence he was not to return, he left behind him an immense body of sinological work, only a portion of which had been published during his lifetime. Some of the numerous unpublished materials found among his papers were gathered into three volumes put out by the Bibliothèque de diffusion du Musée Guimet;1 others, of a more technical kind, were published separately.2 There is almost no area of Chinese studies which Maspero did not take up or to which he did not make important contributions,3 but it is in religious history that his works are most numerous. This is not due to arbitrary choice but is justified by the importance of religious factors which, in China as in all the old traditional civilizations, con- dition both social structures and individual behavior. But in China these factors happen to be peculiarly numerous, confusing, and varied in origin, so their study presents extraordinary difficulties. Although the articles reproduced in this volume are already old, they will give the reader quite a complete overview of Chinese religions. More recent work allows us to flesh out Maspero’s conclusions, but it never fundamentally invalidates those conclusions. What the first study says about the religion of antiquity remains valid for the classical period, which Maspero knew perfectly. We must now take xxxviii Original Preface By Max Kaltenmark archaeological and epigraphical data more and more into account. At the time when Maspero was writing, the decipherment of archaic Yin 殷 inscriptions had only begun and the Anyang 安陽 excavations had not yet yielded all the information available to us today. The same is true for excavations of more recent sites. But we must admit that all this new documentation has hardly been used thus far in Western language studies. The study on modern popular mythology and religion, here republished for the first time, remains one of the best that can be read on that subject. I fear that it does not give a very high opinion of Chinese imagination in this sphere nor, in general, of the religious worth of these popular beliefs. But we must beware of reaching a hasty judgment. We see only the outward appearance of this religion, which is for the most part playful. This is essentially a religion of festivals, and it was at the festivals celebrated during the year that divinities or demons from the immense pantheon took shape, as they were repre- sented by statues either pre-existing or made up for the occasion, or were played by professional or amateur actors. We must likewise bear in mind local differences, necessarily important in so vast a country. Aside from a minority, aware of belonging to a particular religion (Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Christianity), the religious needs of the Chinese were manifested on the one hand in festivals through which each local community somehow restored its cohesion and heightened its vitality and on the other in two more limited areas: domestic worship (of the ancestors, of the Kitchen God) and professional worship (of the patron divinities of occupational guilds). During his long stays in Indo-China, Maspero had the chance to study non-Vietnamese peoples, especially the Tai communities, and to gather a great body of documentation about them. Part of this material is used in the article comparing the religion of the ancient Chinese and that of the modern Tai. There we see how the village festivals of the latter allow us to understand those of the Chinese as they can be envi- sioned through the love-songs of the Shijing 詩經, confirming Marcel Granet’s interpretation, to which Maspero gives due credit here. But it is especially through his work on Daoism that Maspero showed himself a pioneer, attacking a practically unexplored realm. Before him, Édouard Chavannes alone had written the first serious study of a Daoist rite.4 Paul Pelliot, to be sure, had understood the importance of this doctrine very well, and had brought back numerous Original Preface By Max Kaltenmark xxxix manuscripts from Dunhuang 燉煌 concerning it. He also has important scholarly notes on this subject in several of his articles, in which, additionally, many questions arose which still await solution. Marcel Granet was likewise interested in this religion but, though he talked about it a great deal in his courses at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, he barely mentioned it in his writings. In fact, no serious study could be undertaken so long as the Dao- ist Canon (Daozang) remained unknown and almost inaccessible. Chavannes and Pelliot had brought back a number of volumes which they were able to obtain in China and which were deposited in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; but the two collections when brought together remained clearly incomplete. Only when a reproduction of the complete Beijing copy (one of the few, if not the only one, in existence) could researches in Daoism be considered. But it was necessary to begin almost at zero, for only a very few studies on the subject existed. Chinese scholars had scorned this religion and were hardly interested in more than the ancient philosophers, Laozi 老子 and Zhuangzi 莊子. But the Daozang represents a considerable mass of texts, since it includes no fewer than 1,120 volumes and 1,476 titled works. The majority of these were then unknown and many did not even bear the author’s name or a date. We may imagine the difficulties Maspero encountered when he launched into the examination of this enormous mass of documents. The persistence of his efforts in this area can be traced through his reports in his courses at the Collège de France. As early as 1921–22 one of his courses was entitled “The Origins of the Taoist Religion”. From 1926 to 1927 on he regularly gave his students the benefit of his research results. It should be noted that, during 1933–34, he studied the anti-Daoist Buddhist pamphlets, a source that was external, hostile, and prejudiced, but very valuable. It is largely through them that a number of events and writings concerning the history of Daoism can be dated. It was indeed necessary to seek out chronological benchmarks in order to orient oneself within this immensity of texts. A brief bibliographical introduction is to be found at the beginning of the “Essay on Daoism in the First Centuries CE” (Book VII). Here, as in the notes to several of the articles, corrections would now have to be made, since the history of the Daoist Canon has been the subject of many Chinese, and especially Japanese, works in these recent years. The problem has thus advanced somewhat beyond the time when no guide xl Original Preface By Max Kaltenmark existed except Father Wieger’s Catalogue (1911), or when the Index to the Tao-tsang appeared in the Harvard-Yenching Sinological Index Series (1935).5 In this short presentation there can be no question of giving the results of these labors, so I shall limit myself to a few important points. The Daozang which is available to us through the photo-mechanical edition of 1926 was indeed printed under the Ming 明 dynasty, but it is an error to say that there was only a single printing under that dynasty. In reality there was a first wood-block edition in 1445 and several new editions or reprintings with re-engraved plates. The main one of these re-editions was that of 1598 (some of the volumes in the Bibliothèque Nationale bear this date); and there was a supplement which was printed in 1607. Finally, under the Qing 淸 dynasty (1644–1911), there were other printings regarding which we do not have precise information. Another error which it is well to correct concerns the Taiping jing 太平經, which he dates from the fifth century in “Methods of ‘Nourishing the Vital Principle’” (Book IX, First Part, note 8 of the present edition) and from the sixth century in Book VII (page 379 of this edition). This book is extremely important since it is the first of the revealed texts of religious Daoism and the copy of it which exists in the Daozang goes back ultimately to the period of the Later Han 漢. It was the sacred text of the Yellow Turbans and the Celestial Masters and was simply reworked somewhat in the fifth and ninth centuries. For centuries China has appeared to the West as essentially Confucianist. The importance of Confucian doctrine in the official ideology of the imperial era, the necessity for Sinologists to acquaint themselves with the Classics (jing 經) and with the enormous scholarly literature which they inspired, explain this partial view. Among the “three religions,” Confucianism was the best known, even though the religious character of this system of thought could be questioned. Buddhism, the writings of which had been accessible for a long time, had been well studied, but the way it had entered China remained obscure. It is one of Maspero’s accomplishments to have demonstrated the legendary character of emperor Ming’s dream, which accord- ing to the old story had occasioned the introduction of the new religion.6 The problem of the reciprocal influences of the two religions is very thorny and remains much debated. To resolve that, it is clearly Original Preface By Max Kaltenmark xli necessary to know the history of Daoism better. Maspero’s great merit was to have posed the problem and to have opened the way towards a better comprehension of this highly hermetic body of doctrines. The fact that several of his articles, especially those which figure in the “Daoism” of the Oeuvres posthumes, have recently been translated into Japanese shows the importance which is attached to these works, even in a country which has the best specialists. Nowadays Daoism is arousing a growing interest, as much within orientalist circles as among the public at large. The present re-edition, which reassembles studies of a rather technical kind (such as that which sets forth so remarkably “the procedures for nourishing the vital principle,” Book ix) with articles easier to read, thus answers a double need, that of a general initiation to the subject and that of an introduction to more advanced researches.7 Max Kaltenmark