Cole, Alan 1998 Mothers and Sons in Chinese Buddhism

3801
Mothers and Sons in

Chinese Buddhism
Alan Cole
t
I
Siriologisch lnstituut
Rijksuniversiteit Leiden
Arsenaalstraat 1, P'O. Box 9515

23oO RA LEIDEN, Holland
Stanford Univers ity Press

Stanford, California
1998
Acknowledgments
Ghost Festival in Medieval China. A generous grant from the American

Council of Learned Societies allowed me to spend the fall of 1993 in
Paris perusing Dun Huang documents at the quipe de Dunhuang, where
Contents
benefited from the patient assistance of Professor Jean-Pierre Drge.

Earlier, I hadthe good fortune of winning a Rackham graduate fellowship
and a predoctoral writing grant from the University of Michigan.
Since taking a job at Leivis & Clark College I have learned much from
interactions with my students, many of whom have offered trenchant critiques of my writing and methodology. Discussions with colleagues in
history and anthropology have also been fruitful-Susan Glosser and Diane Nelson gave me much to think about as I sought to finalize this
manuscript. David Savage, Dean of Arts and Humanities, has been particularly supportive, especially in his decision to procrre the Chinese
Buddhist canon for our library. Numerous friends, family members, and
scholars have read versions of this book, and I would like to thank them
for their comments, many of which I incorporated: Zeff Bjerken, Hank
Glassman, Karen Kelsky, John Kieschnick, Elizabeth Morrison, Erin
Odell, Buzzy Teiser, Brook Ziporyn, and my mother, who seems to enjoy
reading my attempts to make sense of mothers and sons. Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank Victoria Scott for her thoughtful editing, the staff at SUP for their help in bringing this book through the
press, and Jenna Rice for her helpful
proofreading.
A.C.
Note on Transliterations and Abbreviations

Texts Analyzed in This Yolume
x111
xv
1. BuddhistPropaganda
2. Confucian Complexes
14
3.
Nascent Buddhist Filial Piety
41
4.
Mothers and Sons in the Beginning
56
5.
Mothers and Sons in the Ghost Festival
80
6.
The Buddhist Elite Talk About Mothers and Sons
7. The Sutra on the Profound Kindness

8. Mu Lian and the Ten Kindnesses
9.
of Parents
t32
of the Mother
159
Buddhist Biology
10. Bifurcated Mothers
103
192
and Other Conclusions
226
Notes
239
Bibliography
280
Character List
293
Index
295
Note on Transliterations and

Abbreviations
In this book, though I used the standard pin yin system of transliteration
for Chinese words, I decided not to follow the norm of running characters
together. This is for one simple reason: non-Chinese speakers often are
ieft without a clue about where to divide a binome. For example, how
would one lmow lhat yunan was to be broken after the u or after the first
n? Both are phonetic possibilities, and the reader likely will be left in a
quandary. Writing binomes as a unit is usually defended on the basis that
since characters are paired into binomic units in spoken Chinese, orthography should follow suit. This argument, while valid for the transliteration ofprose or dialogue (that is, language in use), does not seem equally
applicable to the transliteration of Chinese characters embedded in English text. In the latter, the purpose is simply to identify technical terms in
the clearest manner possible-a purpose best served, in my opinion, by
separating characters.
There are three source abbreviations in this book:
Taish shinsh[t daizlqt.100 vols. Takakusu Junjir and Watanabe Kaigyoku, eds. (Tokyo: Daizkykai,1924-34). This modern
Japanese edition
of the Chinese Buddhist canon contains sutras,
commentaries, histories, hymns, genealogical charts, and arfwork.

I cite it by volume number, page number, folio, and line when appropriate. Thus "T.54.328a.5" refers to Taish vol. 54, p. 328, fol.
a (the
first out of tbree), fifth line from the right. Except for the list
xiv
Transliterations and Abbreviations
of primary sources in the Bibliography, I have not included the

Taishntmbers for texts, as the serial numbering of the texts is not
so helpful for locating passages in the canon.
Pelliot Pelliot collection
Texts Analyzed in This Volume
of Dun Huang texts held in the Bibliothque Na-
tionale, Paris.
Stein
Stein collection of Dun Huang texts held in the British Museum,

London.
Texts are listed in the order in which they appear in the text.
Dfficulty of Repaying the Kindness of parents (Fu mu

en nan bao jing), apocryphal, prior to the early sixth century; listed in
Seng You's catalogue of 518 C.E. with the note that it is a work ex_
The sutra on the
tracted from the Madhyamgama (Chapter 3)

The sutra on Bathing [a Buddha ImgeJ and Making offerings (Guan ra
jing [Ban ni yuan
hou guan Ia
jingfl,
apocryphal, prior to the early

sixth cenrury (Chapter 3)
"The Story of Na She" (Na She yin yun), apocryphal, prior to the early
sixth century; included in chapter 11 of a collection of texts known as
The consecration sutra (Guan ding jing), which Michel strickmann
dates to 457 (Chapter 3)
uttara's Mother Falls into the Ghost Realm (you Duo Luo mu duo e gui
yuan), number 46 in the One Hundred Avaddnas (Avaddnaataka), a
collection of stories translated into Chinese (as Zhuan ji bai yuan jing)
in the fourth century (Chapter 3)
Bao Chang's version of Uttara's Mother Falls into the Ghost Realm, in
Bao Chang's compendium of 516 entitled Details on Sutras nd Vinaya (Jing l yi xiang) (Chapter 4)
The Buddha Goes to Heaven to Teach Dharma to His Mother (generic title Fo sheng Dao Li Tian wei mu shuo fa); there are various versions
of this text, some translations, some adaptations (Chapter 4)
Filial Son (Xiao zi jing), apocryphal, pre-sixth century
The Sutrs on the

(Chapter 4)
l*.-
xvl
Texts Analyzed
Texts
The Sutra on Repaying the Kindness by Making Offerings (Bao en feng

pen jing), apocryphal, early sixth century (Chapter 5)
The Ghost Festival Sutra (Yu lan pen jing), apocryphal, middle to late
sixth century; an expanded version of The Bao enfeng pen jng,wntten
about 80 years after that work is known to have been in circulation
Analyzed xvii
Dfficult
to Repay (Fu mu en zhong nan bao jing), apocryphal, a com_

posite work probably put together in the Song period (960-1279) or
slightly later; contains Tang-period passages and remains a favorite
statement of Buddhist family values today in Taiwan (chapters g and
e)
"Homily on the Profound Kindness of parents" (Fu mu en zhong zan
(Chapter 5)
The Pure Land Ghost Festival Sutra (Jing tu yu lan pen
jing), apocryphal,
wen),by FaZhao (d.772),

The Public Teachings of
seventh century, probably in circulation by 664 (Chapter 5)
a middle-Tang-period hymn (Chapter 9)
[HuiJ yuan of Mt. Lu (Lu shan yuan gong hua),
Eulogy on the Ghost Festival Sutra (Yu lan pen jing zan shu),by Hui Jing
(578-ca. 645), written sometime between 630 and 640 (Chapter 6)
The Dhqrma Treqsure Grove (Fa yuan zhu lin), by Dao Shi (d. 683), sev-
a late-Tang-period text found at Dun Huang; purports to be a discourse

by the famous monk-scholar Hui yuan (33H\6)(Chapter 9)
The Blood Bowl sutra (xue pen jing), apocryphal, probably a twelfth-
enth century; an encyclopedic source book (Chapter 6)

Essentials of the Various Sutras (Zhu jing yao ji), by Dao Shi (d. 683),
century Song-period text; printed by 1437 in the imperial canon and

imbedded in chinese culrure by the Ming period (1347-1644) (chapter 9)
seventh century; Dao Shi's other encyclopedia (Chapter 6)

Commentary on the Sutra on Contemplating the Buddha of Limitless Life
(Guan wu liang shou fo jing shu), by Shan Dao (613-681), seventh

century; a commentary on the Pure Land classic, the Guan wu liang
shou fo
jing
(Chapter 6)
The Sutra on the Profound Kindness of Parents (Fu mu en zhong
seventh century; first mentioned

zhong
jing),
in the catalogue Da zhou kan ding
jing mu lu of 695 (Chapter 7)
Commentary on the Ghost Festival Sutra (Yu lan pen jing shu),by Zong
Mi, mid-ninth century (Chapter 7)
The Story of Mu Lian (Mu Lian yuan qi), apocryphal, ninth- or tenthcentury text discovered at Dun Huang (Chapter 8)
The Illustrated Tale of Mu Lian Saving His Mother from the Netherworld
(Da Mu Jian Lian ming jian jiu mu bian wen), apocryphal, ninth- or
tenth-century text discovered at Dun Huang (Chapter 8)
The Ten Kindnesses (Shi en de), nrnth- or tenth-century text discovered at
Dun Huang; simple list only (Chapter 8)
Rpaying the Ten Kindnesses of the Loving Mother (Bao ci mu shi en de),
apocryphal, ninth-tenth century text discovered at Dun Huang; a fuller
version of the iist of ten kindnesses (Chapter 8)
The Sutra [Explaining That] the Kindness of Parents is Profound and
Titles of the Tang-period lecture-note texts iang jing wen) discussed in

chapters 8 and 9 are lost and disputed, and thus they are not included
here. For their locations, see the Bibliography,p.2g9.
CHAPTER ONE
Buddhist Prop aganda
trturs rs A sruDy of Buddhist family propaganda

as it evorved in
r medieval china from the fourth to the thirteenth century.
aganda, written primarily in apocryphar

sutras, scripted
This prop-
rr"* rror-. for the
family and, in particurar, sought to bind

the family to the monastery in a
symbiotic relationship. I refer to these
texts as propaganda because .ropaganda," with its root in the Latin propages
(..offspring,,), hints at the
parallel between the reproduction
of ideolgies una tiotogi"ar reproduction, both of which proper definitive
modes of life forward in time. This
connection is particularly germane
because Buddhist propagandists became intensely interested in reproduction
in all its aspe"is..
At the core of Buddhist family propaganda
are the notions of sin and
the threat of other-worldry punishm.nt--"orr..pts
not prominent in chinese literature prior to the arrival
of Buddhism. Although pre-Buddhist
texts suggest vague beliefs in post-mortem
retribution, therawas no pre_
cisely punitive moral system, as is found
in Buddhist cosmology.r China
also lacked a monastic tradition and
the correrate ethic of supporting a
public religious institution. Thus for
Buddhism to take root in china, the
chinese had to be convinced of a circle
of meaning based on the reality
of sin, its tortuous effects, and the monasteries,
craim to be the only ave_
nue available for overcoming those sins.
what has not been noted thus far is that
much of the Buddhist riterature
on sin came to focus on the family and
its principal function-reproduction' Buddhist authors drew on nearly all
aspects of reproduction-including conception, pregnancy, childbirth,
brealt-feeding, and child care_to
Buddhist Propaganda
Buddhist Propaganda
construct theories of reproduction that sought to problematiLe and even de-
monize biology for Buddhist ends. These intrusive family ideologies, like
bandit sluice-gates on an irrigation canal, cut into traditional societal pattems of exchange to draw off life-giving waters for use in the new "fields
of Buddhism."'
ual services, the main one being the recitation of Buddhist texts, a practice believed to produce the merit that would counteract the effects of sin.
Put schematically, the Buddhist version of filial piety describes a threestep circuit that moves from the private to the public and then back to the
private again. At the beginning there is (1) the son's sense of indebtedness
From the outset, Buddhist authors sought to shift the meaning of filial
piety (xiao), which was the essential moral dictum of traditional China.
The traditional version of filial piety, as found in the Confucian curon,
took the father-son dyad as the primary relationship in the family. While
the son owed a debt of care and respect to both parents, his identity and
his primary allegiances were to be formed around his father. Thus, for the
Confucians, a son's sense of self-origin was tied to his father and his pat-
to the mother, which needs to be repaid by (2) the son patronizing the Buddhist establishment, which claims to have (3) the means to save mothers
rilineal ancestors, with little mention of his connection to his mother.

Buddhist writers challenged this arrangement by redefining filial piety so
that it reflected the importance of the mother-son relationship. Extended
joining these two spheres, public and private. In other words, Buddhists
gradually won support for the belief that men could be good sons only by
being good Buddhists-that is, by supporting Buddhist monasteries in the
textual discussions stressed the deep emotional ties between mother and
son and identified the mother, not the father, as the primary source of a
hope of bettering their mothers' fates.
son's being.
This Buddhist version of frlial piety also introduced a ne'vr complex of

sin, guilt, and indebtedness into the family. Buddhist texts increasingly
asked sons to feel indebted to their mothers for a range of kindnesses (en)
received in infancy,3 including the kindness of giving birth (huai en) and
the kindness of breast-feedng (ru bu zhi en). Sons were also threatened
with the possibility that their mothers, presented as such loving souls,
were actually sinners who would languish in a hell or purgatory after
death.o Thus the Buddhist mother-son discourse, as
it took form in the
frfth and sixth centuries, first intensified the son's arxiety about repaying
his mother and then raised the stakes by suggesting that she was suffering
miserably in a hell realm for as-yet-unspecified sinful conduct. This
meant, in essence, that the mother had been kidnapped and that the son
was asked to either pay her ransom or face the guilt of reneging on the
relationship that had given him his very being. In every case, paying the
ransom-or "repaying the kindness" (bao en), as it was formally
known-included making donations to the Buddhist establishment for rit-
from hell and resolve the "debt-crisis" in the family. While the motivation,
or debt side of this equation, was constructed purely from the private world
of the family, the repayment side led the son to support the public Buddhist
establishment-i.e., the monasteries. Thus the Buddhist organization of
family values was set up so that the situation could be resolved only by
In this three-step loop, the son's emotions axe pivotal. The degree to
which he can be made to feel indebted to his mother determines the extent to which he will be inclined to patronize Buddhist monasteries.
While the son's retroactive gratitude for his mother's love is especially
crucial to the working of the system, in fact all three steps must be fortified with Buddhist texts written to legitimize the arrangement. It is these
texts that I examine in trying to understand the role that family ideologies
played in the development of Buddhism in China.
Finding abundant evidence that Buddhists scripted a new discourse on
the family that was determined to mine the feelings between mother and
son, I asked, why? Why did the Buddhists choose to seize upon this relationship in an apparent effort to secure regular benefits for themselves in
the life cycle of Chinese families? To lay the groundwork for addressing
this question, Chapter 2 takes up two routes of investigation that shed
light on the structure of Chinese families.
The first route leads through a reading of the Confucian classics. Contrary to the common assumption that Confucian family values were airtight and unbeleaguered, careful reading reveals fault lines in the Confu-
Buddhist Propganda
Buddhist Propaganda
cian version of filial piety that suggest systemic weaknesses. These fault
lines-and the tensions they indicate-are of particular importance because they are found in the very areas later targeted by the architects of
Buddhist family values. Pointing out the fissures and contradictions in the
confucian discussion thus allows us to better imagine what prompted
Buddhist authors to build their family ideology as they did.
The second route considers modem ethnography on chinese families.
using modern ethnography to imagine medieval family situations is defensible because over this long period of history several key parameters
of Chinese family life seem to have remained fairly constant, such as exogamous mantage,patrilineal inheritance, and restrictions on female jural
rights. More convincing is the fact that medieval Buddhist texts offer rather explicit depictions of family dynamics that jibe well with anthropo-
logical accounts of traditional chinese family life in the twentieth century. Thus there is reason to suspect a kind of "family resemblance" between the modern and medieval periods. Drawing on modern anthropology to write about the history of Chinese Buddhism is particularly appropnate in this case because many of the medieval texts thatl analyze ate
still published and read in more traditional Chinese communities. In fact,
it was after finding a number of these texts offered free of charge in Taiwanese monasteries and bus stations that
I first considered writing
a his-
tory of Buddhist family values.
Clearly, the evolution of Buddhist family ideology was gradual and

multivocal. As evidence of this tangled history, Chapters 3 and 4 consider
six pre-sixth-century Buddhist texts on the family to show the range of
experimentation in this early period. These pilot texts give the impression
that it was only with the success of the ghost festival (yu lan pen hui) in
the late fifth and sixth centuries that Buddhist family ideology took a decisive tum toward a mother-son focus. It seems to have been at this time
that Buddhist authors became convinced that drawing on the mottrer-son
connection was the best way to tap into the powerful emotions nested in
Chinese families. Chapter 5 analyzes three versions of the ghost festival
to draw out the implications of the very popular "Mu Lian saves his moth-
er" motif and to situate this burgeoning mythology within the triangular
economy of mother, son, and monastery.
The next level of analysis moves from asking why the Buddhists developed a mother-son form of frlial piety to trying to understand how
these doctrines affected Chinese notions of selfhood. Nearly all my readings question the form and structure of Buddhist selfhood in China, but
Chapter 6 brings these concerns to the surface with an analysis of the
writings of Hui Jing, Dao Shi, and Shan Dao, three elite Buddhists from
the seventh century. Their comments on a son's debts to his mother demonstrate a trend in defrning selfhood quite new to the Chinese cultural
landscape.
Chapter 7 extends this exploration into Buddhist structures of selftrood
with a close reading of the nostalgia evoked by a popular seventh-century
text, The Sutrq on the Pround Kindness of Parents, which, despite its
title, is primarily about debts to the mother. This chapter concludes with a
discussion of the complicated remarks made by the famous ninth-century
monk-scholar Zongl|l4i (780-841), who explicitly defined Buddhist conceptions of self as mother-based, even as he made other statements that
reasserted the Confucian structure of patrilineal descent. Zong Mi's vision of Buddhist sonship, like that found in The Sutra on the profound
Kindness of Parents, draws heavily on mother-son feelings but, surprisingly, ends up using these emotions to support the patrilineal model, albeit via a circuitous route that requires support for the Buddhist monasteries. By this period it is clear that the Buddhists had found an ideological formation that drew adroitly on the mother-son connection to buttress
the family and the monastery, linking them in a symbiotic relationship.
Chapter 8 considers evidence from texts taken from the Dun Huang
caves, texts that had been sealed in the oasis monasteries of western
china in the late tenth century or shortly thereafter. In this cache of manuscripts, excavated at the beginning of the twentieth century, there is
abundant evidence from several genres of Buddhist writings that allows
for a thicker description of how mother-focused Buddhist family ideology
was constructed during this period. This stratum of texts is particularly in-
Buddhist Propaganda
Buddhist Propaganda 7
tent on explaining the sinfulness of the mother, dramatizing her nefarious

deeds and lingering over the sadistic details of her post-mortem punish-
sider most important are the statements that encourage and legitimize exchanges between family and monastery.s with Buddhist selfhood occu-
ments.
pying a central place in my analysis, I fiy to explain the connections between a particular form'of ideology and the u,ay it "hails" the subjectthe way the text induces the subject to see itself in a certain manner and
then calls that newly emerging subject to action. For this perspective on
ideology and religion, I am indebted to a tradition of social critics that includes Feuerbach, Mam, Nietzsche, Freud, and Foucault. For discussion
of self formation, I am particularly indebted to Louis Althusser,s essay,
"Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.,'6
The evolution of Buddhist family values in china took place within
Chapter 9 analyzes two Song-period (960-1279) texts that were particularly influential in defining a son's debt to his sinful mother: The Su-
tra [Explaining ThatJ the Kindness of Parents is Pround and Dfficult

to Repay (Fu mu en zhong nan bao jing), and The Blood Bowl Sutra (Xue
pen jing). While the latter is particularly important because it explicitly
damns all women for their role in reproduction, both texts can be seen as
the culmination of the centuries of writing that went into elaborating a
Buddhist theory of reproduction. These "mature" statements appear to
have been quite successful in defining monastic-family arrangements, and
they have remained part of the Buddhist tradition up to the present day.
After a detailed genealogy of the ideas in these texts, I take issue with
several anthropologists who have not appreciated how Buddhist theories
of reproduction fit into the history of Chinese Buddhism.
This study of Buddhist family values follows a recent trend in Buddhist studies which seeks to add a richer societal dimension to our reconstructions of Buddhism. Valuable monographs by Bemard Faure, Richard
Gombrich, Helen Hardacre, Gregory Schopen, Melford Spiro, Stanley
Tambiah, and Stephen F. Teiser on topics of Buddhism and society have
done much to breathe life into descriptions of Buddhism. This approach
moves away from the uncontextualized studies of Buddhist philosophy
that were characteristic of the field until the 1980's, and dovetails nicely
with recent cultural histories of Christianity that track the evolution of
key concepts such as sin, guilt, and purgatory in the West. From precedents in both fields I have learned much.
am especially indebted to his-
torians such as Philippe Aris, Jean Louis Flandrin, and Philip Greven
who have worked to make the investigation of family topics acceptable in
academia.
My reading of these Chinese texts on the family assumes that religion

is a form of ideology; thus my interpretations focus on how the texts are
constructing motivation for action in this world. In particular, what I con-
the broader outlines of Buddhist monastic ideology, an ideology that can

best be described as a kind of metaphoric farming. According to Buddhist
rules (vinay), monastics were forbidden to farm, so to secure a food

source professional Buddhists had to find other means of entering the
agrarian economies where Buddhism took hold. one tried-and-tne technique for accessing the world of real food lay in convincing farmers that
the crops coming out of the ground were actuary derivative of past moral
actions, and that the future availability of food (and happiness, for that
matter) could be secured only by exchanging a portion of this food for
Buddhist merit-that invisible and rather magical product that the Buddhists specialized in. Thus Buddhists made merit appear to be the underlying currency, or "gold standard," that floated the various economies of
the world:
All felicity
and fertility would dry up should one's stock
of
merit collapse.
To naturalize the logic of this arrangement, the Buddhists regularly
claimed to be "fields of merit," which, when sown with the seed of gifts,
would bear rich yields for their donors both here and in the next world.'
By calling donations "seeds," Buddhist discourse added a step to the normal cycle of production. Buddhists argued that the production of usable
items such as food and clothing was not an endpoint; indeed, because
such goods ultimately derived from prior merit, they ought to be in some
measure reinserted into the larger cycle of merit-fertility that arced into
those unseen realms where donations to Buddhist monasteries served as
Buddhist propaganda
Buddhist propaganda g
the geminating force that wourd

usher in subsequent cycres
of production' In a word, the Buddhists
made it appear that they were
in
contror of
food production, thus making
it logical io, ar-"r, to enter into ..ration_
a
alized economy', based on ex"hanging
food and goods for merit.s
The irony here is that the Buddhists
"farmed,, the farmers by convinc_
ing them that farmers needed to
farm the Buddhists. This *";;;;;;
seem overly cynicar to those
used to more rarefieu
* Buddhist
thought and practice, but it is
"l""rl,to portray
in fact simply an attempt
how
Buddhism's theorogical claims
connected to the economic
order, so as to
show more clearly what was being
transacted and on what grounds.
If we think of Buddhist propugandu as a kind
of farming based on
textual dissemination, then the
ideorogical seed that set this
cycle in mo_
tion is a Buddhist se11 ofin (zui).
Snappearc in these texts as regularly
as does the borrowed confucian
dictate ,o ."puy one,s parents,
and sin, as
the problem at hand, is what
holds the discourse together. Thes
sins fa'
into three categories: (i) the sins
of the mother, and of women in generar,
Q) the sins of the son who fa's in his filiar duties,
and (3) the sins of not
supporting the Buddhists. Ail sins
brought with them the specter of
terri_
fying punishments.
Though western discussions of
Buddhism tend to ignore the role
of
sin in Buddhist culture, it seems
that notions of sin are centrar to
Bud_
dhism in most of its manifestations.
sin terrified chinese audiences be_
cause, in the Buddhist worldview,
death did not bring nothin*"r.
o,,lr"
gradual dispersion ofthe sour(s)
but retribution in a rebirth that reflected
one's balance of sins and merits.
The potentiar for terror increased
as
standards of Buddhist morality
expande the category of evil
conduct
to
include even pedestrian acts such
as sraughtering farm animars, acts
wich were deemed serious enough to
wafrant
helrish punishments that

could last for eons. Thus Buddhist
discussions of sin not only threatened
everyone with a murtitude of unsavory
fates but also made Buddhist
"subjects" dependent on Buddhist
ritual intercession, which was obtain_
able only at the monasteries.
This Buddhist notion of sin, with

its attendant threat of future punishment' necessitates an expanded view
of the serf. contrary to what
-o"-
Buddhist enthusiasts-repeat about

the importance of ,.no serf, in Buddhist
doctrine, the rogic of the Buddhist
karma system requires a strong sense
of self in which one takes oneself as
an object of ethicar evaruation and
then'projects that evaluation onto
one,s future existences in an unbroken
stream of curpability. Although
serf-reflective moral evaluation had
been
part of the earrier confucian
tradition, the Buddhist version i,
.u.i, .or"
disturbing' Nothing is taken for granted,
and until one is a buddha there is
a permanent downward pulr-a
kind of Buddhist gravity that can suck
the unwary under in an unguarded
moment. Arthough one,s family courd
transfer merit to the deceased in
the beyond, the threat of personar
dam_
nation roomed large in the Buddhist
lvorrdview in a way that was incon_
ceivable in pre-Buddhisr China.,
Buddhism's expansion of the bounds
of culpability, accompanied by
the new insistence on individual
responsibility, invites comparison with
the christian conversion of Europe.
what has impeded this comparison is
an odd western pride in supposedry
being the culture especialry sensitive
to the anxieties of sin' For example
in
, sn and Fear: The Emergence of a
western Guirt curture, Jean Delumeau
writes that during the eighteenth
century, "more than ever before, did
'west's
the
religion oi,**i", diff",

from the Eastern religions of 'tranquility':
Hinduism and Buddhism.',,0 A
closer look ar the hisrorical record
shows thar g.Jdhir- 1,"*
wouldnotbe Buddhism.
"*,.r,
while coming to believe in helr is not that

unusual, what is striking
is
the way many Buddhist authors sent
their mothers to these new heils. In
assessing the import of this deveropment,
it must be emphasized that al_
though the mother is sent to he', she
is always released from hen by her
loving son. Therein lies the heart of the
complex: Helr for mothers is onry
a precursor to the sarvation provided
by their loving sons and the Bud_
dhist establishment. By understanding,
text uy tex"rro*,n"J""" ornamics of damnation and salvation
feed off each other, we wilr fashion
a
skeleton key for understanding the
Buddhist discourse on the fam'y.
The appeal of the "son saves mother
from helr,, motif reries on a
distinct polarity in the Buddhist worrdview.

In standard Buddhist cosmol_
ogy, there is a basic divide between good
and bad rebirths. Bad rebirths
10
Buddhist Propganda
Buddhist Propaganda
place one in the lower three realms: the animal world, the hungry-ghost
realm, and, at rock bottom, the truly Dantean hell realms. Good rebirths
place one in the cleaner and more orderly spaces of the human and divine
realms. ln Chinese Buddhism, the cleavage between good and bad rebirths often follows a gender divide: sin and its consequences are foisted
onto mothers and women in general, with particular emphasis put on the
sins of sex and reproduction. On a basic level, texts making these claims
about.sin and gender ask men (their primary readers) to enter into a twostep maneuver: (1) identiff themselves as pure and their mothers as impure, and (2) engage professional Buddhists, who occupy the highest stations of purity, to render their mothers' "female evil" innocuous. This
professional moral cleansing of one's mottrer also produces for the son
the cosmic status granted to "good" men.
Complicating matters are texts in which the mother is simultaneously

charactenzed as the only woman without sin and as the most sinful of
women. These discussions urge that she be loved for her pure mothering
but despised for her sinful sexuality. Without jumping to conclusions
about a madonna/whore complex in China, let me add that the texts that
it
clear that, on a deeper level, the

Her goodness is a result
are
interlocked:
mother's contradictory identities
of her mothering, which is itself soaked in dubious desires and polluting
fluids. How this tension is resolved varies from text to text, but the ambivalent feelings for the mother are always resolved with the son's devotion winning out, leading him to aange for her redemption with Buddhist rituals. Arguably, this triangle of relationship articulates something
like original sin. For the Buddhists, reproduction automatically begets
debts for the son and sins for the mother. These two conditions of uncomfortable incompletion then need restitution and absolution through Budemploy this dynamic tension make
dhist ritual.
In trying to understand why this mythic complex v/as so successful in

China, I can only suspect that each player in this triangle of relationship-son, mother, and Buddhist establishment-was engaged and satisfied in some enduring \/ay. Mothers, though saddled with the complex
roles of nurturer and sinner, secured their sons' devotion and the promise
of post-mortem Buddhist care to alleviate that sinful condition.
11
Sons,
though burdened with the responsibility of repaying their mothers, would

have been huppy to see themselves in the role of Buddhist saints, pure
and powerful, with a clear way to resolve feelings of indebtedness to their
mothers. Finally, the Buddhist establishment found in this arrangement a
reliable source of income as adult men paid for services dedicated to
saving their mothers.
crucial for convincing the populace of these interlocking economies of
sin, sex, and donations was a sustained literary campaign. For the first
time in the history of china, religious propaganda circulated in short pamphlets written in simple, direct terms and aimed at all who courd read. un-
like confucian literature, which maintained a certain exclusivity,
these
Buddhist tracts were intended to reach as wide an audience as possible

part of a class-blind effort to maximize support.
as
In fact, the Buddhist program to gain popular support can accurately

be described as an advertising campaign.t' Authors qua advertisers tried
to create seductive scenarios that would speak to the contents of their pa-
trons' lives, even as they repackaged those contents so as to lead consumers' desires toward specific economic actions. Thus, like a history of
twentieth-century advertisement, one can read these Buddhist familyvalue texts as symptoms-symptoms that reveal much about the development of medieval notions of the family, gender, purity, and culpability,
notions which persist, to some degree, in Chinese culture today.
In thinking about Chinese Buddhism as an ideology purveyed in a
manner akin to advertisement, special attention must be paid to levels of
self-awareness in the authors. can we convict the Buddhistpropagandizers of bad faith? I think not. successful ideologies draw all levels of participants under their sway, so it is likely that most, if not all, of the Buddhist authors of such tracts were as convinced of their message as their
readers were. On balance, it seems that ideologies can be crafted, over
time, in particularly exploitative forms without a clearly defined oppressor standing cynically behind the scenes, writing the script and acting as a
master puppeteer.l2 As always, confrrsion over agency enters when the
dialectical nature of social processes is obscured. Ideologies produce ide-
12
Buddhist Propaganda
ologues, who, not surprisingly, produce more ideology. Thus it does not
rnake sense to seek an unfettered individual-the proverbial "bad ap-
ple"-who
Though
is responsible for these historical developments.'.
do not believe that the authors of these texts saw their proit should not be forgotten that quite a few Buddhist
authors felt no compunction about forging texts and covertly inventing
new doctrines.'o crafting original works in the guise of teachings given
by the Buddha, they knowingly wrote lies, but their deeper motivations
remain unknown. Did they see their works as pious fictions or as simple
propaganda for the masses, to keep them keen on Buddhist models of
servitude? while there is evidence suggesting that elite Buddhists could
distance themselves from the Buddhist values they endorsed, especially
when dealing with their slaves and serfs,'s I must conclude that seeking
gram as a hoax,
"final motivations" is a lost cause, especially since we lack intimate literature like diaries.
In deciding on an approach to this material, I gleaned much about
writing the history of a religious organization from Mayer Zard's intriguing Organizational Change: The Political Economy of the yMCA.In
this work; Zald shows how flexible the YMCA was in adapting its ideology and practices to suit the changing economic, cultural, and political
environments in which it found itself. He details how the YMCA consistently evolved in an effort to maintain a niche for itself in American culture. Most striking was the shift away from the spiritual activities of evangelical christianity toward a new focus after the 1870's on physical activities, like swimming and basketball.
Like monastic Buddhism in china, the yMCA was a religious organization highly successfill in adapting to new conditions in order to secure
and maintain its institutional viability. unlike Buddhism, however, the
YMCA did not have the cultural clout to mold the desires and demands of
the public. Its ideological maneuvering was adaptive in the limited sense
of being responsive to the changing cultural climes-the yMCA's ideorogy never reached the level of power necessary to create new demands
for its own functions. The Buddhist discourse on mothers and sons, in
contrast, succeeded in reshaping public demands by sculpting new perso-
Buddhist Propaganda l3
nae for mothers and sons that contained kernels of dependency
calring for
Buddhist intervention. It is Buddhism's success in this higher

level of adaptation that makes the history of Buddhist family values
in china par-
ticularly fascinating.
Despite this crucial difference between the yMCA and chinese
Bud_
dhism, the political-economy perspective offers two advantages:
(1)
it
remains sensitive to the adaptability of institutions, and (2)

it wisely locates the history of that adaptation on a wider field
of competitive interaction with other institutions. This perspective urges us to remember
that,
whatever else Buddhism was in china, it was an institutional
presence.
Buddhism in china relied on the existence of a rarge number
of monas-
teries that functioned as a loose group of independent economic

entities
which owned properry, soricited donations, and established themselves
as
cultural and religious centers. Thus Buddhist monasteries found
themselves competing with other erements of chinese society in
the struggle
to control a share of the cultural, economic, and political pie. In
this competitive milieu, Buddhism had to continue to change and sharpen
its
competitiveness if it wanted to survive. Thus we can profitably
look at
the fluctuation in Buddhist ideology legitimating the exchanges
between
the monastery and the family as reflecting the ongoing need for Buddhism to reposition itself in Chinese society.
It is my hope that this history will barance other accounts of chinese
Buddhism that have glossed over the economic and reproductive
aspects
ofBuddhist ideology. I pursue this tack because these issues clearly concerned Buddhists in china, and because the history of a religion
is hollow
as long as its position on food and family remains obscure.
Confucian Complexes
CHAPTER TWO
Confucian Complexes
Now, filial iety is the root of virtue and [the stem] out of which grows
[all
morall teaching. Sit down again, and I will explain the subject to you. Our
bodies-to every hair
and bit of skin-are received by us from our parents,

and we must not presume to injure or wound them: this is the beginning of
filial piety. Establishing our character by the practice ofthe [filial] course,
so as to make our name famous in future ages, and thereby glorify our parents: this is the end of filial piety. Filial piety commences with the service
ofparents; it proceeds to the service ofthe ruler; it is completed by the establishment of the
characte''
-rh,
classic of Fitar piety (xiao jing)
MUCH Or the twentieth century, research on Confucianism

IIJo*sought to present confilcian thought in a bright and attractive man-
in the confucian lexicon, like benevoTence (ren) and

r), were accepted without suspicion, as though it was fair
ner. Key words

righteousness
to assume that textual ideals were realities. In these gentle studies, little
thought was given to Confucianism as an ideology, and as such, a system
struggling to organize life practices for specific goals. It is the task ofthis
chapter to reconsider confucianism-to uncover some of its insecurities
and to clarifu the structures of time, selftrood, and reproduction on which
it relied in defining permissible attitudes and actions. As an overview,
and as an introduction to issues in the chinese family, this discussion is
necessarily general and somewhat ahistorical in a way that later chapters
will, however, support with details and more careful analysis.
Confucian texts were written by men for men. When modern academics write that the Confucian view of human nature is .,x,,, they often forget to qualify that statement by adding that the whole confucian discus-
15
sion is focused s ,,l' so that .,male

nature,, is a more appropriate
translation than "human nature."r 'women
were not the expected readers
of these texts and in most cases could not have
read them had they
wanted to' confucian texts give us
the idearized,male world-the world
that men wished for and sought to
deliver to their male descendants.
Even granting this one-sided presentation
of chinese rife, there is a
striking absence of women in the discussion.
Most of the confucian discussion is about male-male rerations;
with respect to the worrd of women,
and the complex world of men and *o_".r,
the texts *. ,*rrrr"*r,
mute. The fact that, until recently, western
scholars glided over this steep
gradient in confucian textuarity
has stunted r"."*.h o'a number of
key
issues' In her 1972 monograph, vomen
and the Family
Margery
wolf clearly identified this uneven
,n
iuioirorron,
treatrnent of china:
when the topic is china, the perspective

has nearly always been male.
When the other half of Chinese hf
is the focus, the ,,reality,, of Chinese
social life looks different. . . .
In summary, my thesis contends . . . that because
we have heretofore
focused on men when examining the
Chinese family_a
reasonable ap_
proach to a patrilineal system_we
have missed not only ,om" of th" sys_
tem's subtleties but also its near_fatal
weaknesses.2
Paying attention to the "subtleties"

of the chinese family system and its
"weaknesses" yields a very different
picture of confucianism. In particular, Margery wolfs study points to the
tensions surrounding the confucian practice of taking an out-group wife
into the in-group patriline. This
style of "wife-taking" produces a weak
bulge in the lineage that wotf
terms the "uterine famiiy." The uterine
family is defined uy tt ut nexus of
feelings and devotions which results from
the newly incruded wife,s prokacted attempt to make her ch'dren royal
primarily to her, rather than to
the members of her husband's family,
so that she can secure for herserf a
sympathetic group in the new and often
hostile environment of that fam_
MareeV Wolf argues, and many concur, that
the structurally ,,trou_
1lV
bled" reality of the chinese family is due
to this friction between patrilineal interests and the uterine family's.3
16
Confucian Complexes
These tensions have been discussed at length in modern ethnographic

studies, but this complex also seems to have a long history trailing behind
it-a history that shows up clearly in the Confucian and Buddhist debates
Confucian Complexes I7
ous statements about it in the confircian classics. It is more useful to
imagine that each writer had his own vision of filial piety and identified it
in a potentially idiosyncratic marrer. The point is that there was flexibility in assigning meanings to the term and that there were changes in its
over filial piety. To begin charting these debates, I first outline the semantic space that the term "filial piety" (x,iao) occupied in pre-Buddhist
China with reference to three root thematics: (1) repayment, (2) obedience, and (3) the merging of familial and political authority. Then I consider filial piety in terms of the basic facts of Chinese family practice, to
the extent that it is known to us. Finally, I consider how this style of filial
piety served as a seedbed for the Buddhists' mother-son-focused discourse, and the alternative visions of time and identity that the Buddhists
As a point of textual history, the confucian classics referred to hereFiliat Piety, the Mencius, and The Book of
Rites-all have complicated and in most cases unknowable pasts. Here I
treat these texts as products of Han editing, with no concem for whether
or not they reflect confucius's views or the beliefs of any other, earlier
strata of chinese thought. The texts as we have them can only be read as
cultivated therein.
statements of Han editors, redactors and compilers.
Several facts need to be kept at the forefront of this analysis. First, the
daTa are all textual, which brings with it the anxiety of being unable to se-
cure the always-elusive links between normative doctrines and actual

practices. This usual gap between doctrine and practice is acceptable as
long as arguments remain at the level of analyzing what was said and
never slip into assuming that ideological statements are descriptive. A related concern is the fact that these texts were the moutpieces of the privileged and the few, whose ways of life likely were radically different
from those of their more average compatriots. This concem needs to be
treated with care because there is evidence that ancestral practices often
originated at the elite level and only slowly trickled down to the masses.
However, the elite bias may not be as obstructing as it first appears because when Buddhism came to China, interaction with this elite literary
level appears to have been particularly important for China as a whole. In
other words, it is precisely this lite formation of pre-Buddhist Chinese
family values that needs to be considered as we try to imagine the early
sinification of Buddhism.a
In trying to describe pre-Buddhist filial piety, any analytical framework will be overly rigid because most of the thematics surrounding filial
piety (repayment, obedience, etc.) are found not in isolation but wrapped
completely around one another. Also, it would be a mistake to assume
that there is one unitary style of filial piety that stands behind all the vari-
semantic import over time.

The Analects, The classic of
Repayment/Service
As several scholars have noticed, the concept of repayment (ao) is essential for understanding chinese culture.s Indeed, if Marcel Mauss is
right, practices of repayment may be linchpins in ail cultural systems,

whether or not they display a logic and terminorogy as transparent as
those the chinese came to use.6 In The classic of Filial piety it appears
that filial piety is construed as the son's responsibility to serve his parents
and maintain their well-being in this life and the next. For instance, the
following passage lists a set of services due to parents:
confucius said, "The service which a filial son does to his parents is as
follows: In his general conduct to them, he manifests the utmost reverence; in his nourishing of them, his endeavor is to give them the utrnost
pleasure; when they are ill, he feels the greatest arxiety; in mourning for
them, he exhibits every demonstration of grief; in sacrificing to them, he
displays the utrnost solemnity. when a son is complete in these five
things, [he may be pronounced] able to serve his parents."T
The demands of confucian filial piety require a son to engage in a lifetime of service for his parents-service which is, of course, to be undertaken with an attitude of reverence. A son is to keep his parents fed and
18
Confucian Complexes
happy in this life as well as satisfied in the next through the solemn performance of memorial sacrifices. Thus the requirement to feed parents is
apparent central in both this-worldly and other-worldly care. In fact,
in The Classic of Filial Piety
claim that frlial piety

means to feed your parents. Food is to be supplied to them forever: they
are not to want or to suffer in this life, nor should they go hungry in the
next world. In Book Two of The Analects there is a similar statement
about conjoining reverence with concern for parents' physical well-being:
several passages
ZiYoaasked what frlial piety was. The master said, "Nowadays, filial piety is known as the support [ofone's parents]. But even dogs and horses
are all flikewise] cared for-so if [humans perform this task] without
showing respect [to their elders], what is the difference [between caring
for parents and animalsl?" ZiXia asked what frlial piety was. The master
said, "The diffrcu is with the countenance. Ii when their elders have
any troublesome affairs, the young take up the burden of the labor, and if
when the young have wine and food, they set them before their elders, is
this not filial piety?"8
With this passage attempting to extend filial piety beyond mere nutrition4l care for parents, it is likely that the baseline or vulgar form of filial
piety was conceived of as an insurance policy: sons \/ere produced, in
part, with the simple expectation that they would feed their parents later
on. Parents wanted sons so that in their old age, or when they \ryere "having troublesome affairs," there would be help on hand. On occasion the
tradition was nearly explicit in explaining filial piety in this manner. For
instance, in the earliest surviving dictionary, the second-cenitry Shuo
Wen, the character for frlial piety (xiao) is etymologized as "a son bearing
up an old man."e Presumably, in the context of starvation, the Confucian
concem with "countenance" would have been decidedly secondary. Still,
we must see it as an attempt to encourage a performative morality that
would both "civilize" the exchange and introduce grounds for the parents' further domination of the son. A parent could demand not just food
but displays of tespect as well.
lnthese fr\iat imperatives, theTe s no thrreat of hell lot the unfrlial. The
Confucian Complexes
19
focus of filial practice and its effects remain rooted in this world. Although it is clear that the Confucians, and the Chinese in general, accepted the continuity of the individual after death, the post-mortem locale
of the dead remained obscure. Even less clear is a notion of definitive retribution. As implied in the passage just quoted from The Analects, failure
to be filial only amounted to the loss of one's humanity, i.e., the distinctive marker of not being an animal. Other passages in the Confucian canon (considered below) threaten early death and exclusion from the group,
but nothing like eons of suffering in a tortuous hell. Apparently at this
stage Chinese moralizers had very few ideological weapons with which
to browbeat sons into serving their elders. This changed radically when
the Buddhists entered the discussion in the next few centuries.
Incidentally, Confucius's requirement that the young care for their elders represents an inversion of biological time. In fact, it could be argued
that filial piety is unnatural not because it involves altruistic care for others but because it is care and nutrition directed backward in biological
time (i.e., to those who have already reproduced) instead of forward to
those who have yet to reproduce, which is the usual direction in the animal kingdom. The character translated as "support" (yarg) in the passage
from The Analects qtoted above has the basic meaning of raising children
and domesticated animals. Using this term to mean caring for parents implies that children are to learn to "parent their parents"-a theme that the
Buddhists picked up on in the centuries that followed. Confucius's allusion to caring for animals like dogs and horses, then, is particularly interesting because he seems to acknowledge the normal semantic field of this
term even as he insists that it needs to be extended.
In the two passages just cited, and in the numerous others that identify
feeding parents as central to Confucian filial piety, we do not find explicit
terms for repaiment, such as bao or bao en. These terms show up later,
but their scarcity in this Han stratum of literature is noteworthy.to Though
short on this terminology, it is clear that there is a repayment motif at
work in justifying care for parents. Evidence of this can be seen in the
opening passage of The Classic of Filial Piety that appears as the epigraph to this chapter. This passage explains that a son's body and being
20
Confucian Complexes
are given to him by his parents, and that he should therefore embark on a
life of filial practice using this body to serve and glorifu them. Another
passage reminds a son that he must treat his father like a sovereign because the father gave the son life "and no greater gift could possibly be
transmitted."rr Defining the son's existence as a kind gift from his parents, and prescribing a life course for him designed to glori tfrem, certainly implies that filial piety relies on the perception that sons live to repay what their parents have given them. The Book of Rites puts this debt
to the past in no uncertain terms:
The superior man, going back to his ancient fathers, and returning to the
authors of his being, does not forget those to whom he owes his life, and
therefore he calls forth all his reverence, gives free vent to his feelings,
and exhausts his strength in discharging the above services-as a tribute
of gratitude to his parents he dares not but do his utmost.r2
Elsewhere in The Book of Rites, themes of repayment appear closely

connected with dictates for mourning. The Book of Rites argues that sons
should want to mourn their fathers for three years out of a sense of gratitude (e) for the three years of care received in their infancy.l3 In this
three-year period of mourning, the son is to deny himself all pleasures
(such as good food, clothing, and music) while performing a schedule of
oblations and offerings, apparently in the hope that the offered items will
satisfy the hunger of his father in the beyond. This required mouming period is also discussed in a passage in The Analects in which confucius
explains why filial sons ought to perform the three years of mourning for
their fathers, and why a questioner named You was unfilial when, a moment earlier, he had claimed that one year of mourning was enough:
[Confucius said,] "This shows You's want of virtue. It is not until a child
is three years old that he is allowed to leave the bosom of his parents (/a
mu zhi huai). And the three years' mourning is universally observed

through the empire. Did You enjoy the three years of love of his parents
(you san nian zhi a yu qifu mu hu)?"ta
Confucius seems to be saying that if you received three years of care as

an infant, you must be prepared to return the favor when your caregivers
Confucian Complexes 2I
are in need'
I have revised Legge's translation by replacing ,.arms] with
"bosom," which is what the character huai more likely means_and

be_
sides, what does a baby do in his first three years of rife if not
suckle?
This passage is critical both because it is oft-cited and therefore
arguably central to the confucian agenda, and because it contains the tension
that Buddhist writers picked up on and attempted to overcome.
Note that
since child care in the first three years is mainly the mother's job,
her
contribution to the son's life is being co-opted by the father, who is
demanding to be repaid based on her efforts rather than his own.rs
Further
evidence of a mismatch in the repayment equation can be seen
in the fact
that the father is always to receive three years of mourning, whereas
the
mother receives them only if she dies after the father-and then only
at a
secondary grade''6 Thus it would seem that, in confucian filiar
piety, the
father arrogates to himself the repayment for giving birth to and
nurturing
a son. The mother's contribution is not fulry recognized, and the ..colrection" of her repayment may not take place should she die before the father.
This passage also sets a precedent for connecting obrigations for mortuary rites with debts incurred at birth. A cycle of obligation encompasses
the tumover of generations to such an extent that one can onry
die properly after having produced an heir, who can only live properly by burying
and mourning his parents properly. put another rvay, one's birth
begets
half of the equation that needs to be repaid with three years of mouming
to the "birth-giver," who, more likely than not, is identified as the
father.
As the last line of The classc of Fitiar piel puts it, ..The services
of love
and reverence to parents when alive, and those of grief and sorro,/
to
them when dead-these completely discharge the fundamental duty

of
living men. The righteous claims of life and death are all satisf,red, and
filial son's service to his parents is completed.,,rT

There are several other places in the confucian classics that lean
toward explaining biological reproduction in a male-centered way. A passage from The Book of songs (shi jing) declares that fathers produce
the
(sheng) children and mothers nurture them.rs while both parn

are
identified as necessary causes, the father is decrared to be the pnmary
22
Confucian Complexes
Confucian Complexes 23
with the mother's contribution counted as secondary in time

and importance. This overvaluation of the fathef's role in reproduction is
mirrored in the belief that only women could be infertile. A wife who did
not produce children within three years could be legally retumed to her
natal family, since it was believed that she alone could be culpable for the
failure of conception. Apparently it was inconceivable that fathers could
fail in this regard.
This weighty evaluation of the male contribution to conception appears, too, in the standard practice of not mouming divorced mothers. A
son owes his mother the mouming repayment only provided that she remains his father's wife.re Should she break this allegiance, she can expect
nothing from her son. Her contribution to her son's being is nullified
when she breaks with the father, who is recognized as the source of the
son's being no matter what, and who is therefore unquestionably owed
cause of life,
the three years of mouming as recompense.
filial obedience that requires the son to satis$r his parents' needs, a deeper layer ofobedience is required. This is contained in
the expression of the son "carrying out the father's will," which is usually
explained'as his continuing whatever projects the father had underway,
Besides the simple
For an elite family this could refer to specific activities, but for more ordinary households it more likely meant following basic confucian deco-
rum and morality so as not to disgrace the father's name or his other ancestors. In either case, by making good sonship dependent on submission
to patemal authority, there is no question of the son becoming a man
apart from his father. on the contrary, he becomes a man precisely by accepting his father's dictates, whatever they may be. This submission to
the father's will is of particular concem after the father's death, when,
presumably, the father is unable to enforce his demands. rn The Analects
the son isjudged to be filial or unfilial based on his acceptance ofhis father's will during his life and on his unswerving allegiance to that will
after his father has passed on:
Obedience
Closely related to the attempt to bind birttr and death with the bonds of
obedience. Obedience, it
tums out, has several layers of meaning in the Confucian classics. On the
most basic level, obedience is the foundation of filial piety simply because, to be filial, a son must serve and submit to his parents' wishes, especially his father's. In fact, several passages verge on making obedience
filial responsibility is the Confucian call for
filial piety. In Book Two of The Anlects, Confucius explains how filial piety is about submission to parents and the fulfillment
the keystone of
of the rites owed to them both when they are alive and when dead:
Yi
asked what frlial piety was. The master said, "It is not disobeyas Fan Chi was driving him, the master told hirn, saying,
"Meng Sun asked me what filial piety was, and I answered him, 'Not be-
Meng
ing." Soon after,
ing disobedient."' Fan Chi said, "'What did you mean?" The master replied, "That parents, when alive, should be served according to propriety
(/l); when dead, should be buried according to propriety and sacrificed to
according to propriety."2o
The master said, "'While a man's father is alive, look at his will (zi),
when the father is dead, look at his actions, and if after three years there is
no change in the way of the father, then you can call that man filial.,'2r
Perhaps the most salient and inviolable
of the dictates handed down

from father to son is that the son become a father himself. As Mencius
put it, "Of the three unfilial acts, to die without descendants is the
worst."22 In other words, to be a good son one must become a father. Sonship is predicated on being a filial servant to one's father, but also on the
of this relationship with one's own son. Thus, on a deep

level, the logic underlying obedience is one of replication. In the confureenactrnent
cian system, reproduction as replication is seen as the way to maintain the

status quo, as the patriline seeks to keep abreast of the flux of time by
extending itself forward, generation by generation. Despite its forward
motion, this impetus to reproduce is profoundly conservative in the sense
that the new is created only to maintain the old. Ironically, personal iden-
tity is generated only by relinquishing one's uniqueness: one can be oneself only by being one's father's son. At each link in the chain of being,
24
Confucian Complexes
every man is no more or less than the son of his father and the father of
his son. To seek grounds of identity beyond this lineal progression is to
slight the beings who gave you being.23
The role of obedience in this fusion of biological and cultral repro-
vant to the greater concerns of the patriline. His potential for reproduction
was to be controlled and directed toward assuring the patriline's goals of
continuity and aggrandizement. His manhood was to be a tool, quite literally, of their agnatic enterprise. In spatial terms, though marriage is osten-
duction is even more vividly displayed in the way marriage is discussed.

A son was apparent not free to choose his mate.2a His biological destiny
was in the hands of his parents, who selected a wife for him based on
their calculations about the prospective bride's family status, ability to
work, and, of course, potential to produce sons. The Book of Rites is ex-
plicit in explaining marriage not as a love affair between two persons or

as the fulfillment of desire, but rather as a family affair. While the opening phrase of the following passage rnentions love, this is not given as the
sibly a horizontal affair, focused as it is on a bride and groom who belong

to the sarne generation, in the view of Confucian filial piety, marriage is
actually about vertical relations. The son's marriage was defined as the
means to beget the next son in order to satisfy those forefathers who had
preceded him. The potential for love and satisfaction on the horizontal
plane, defined by the son and his wife, was to be squelched under the
staid control of the vertical. A son was not to fall for a romantic situation
that might take him away. from the ancestral axis and nulli$ the whole
reason for the marriage:
purpose of marriage, which was a matter of reproducing, not of love.
[Marriage] is the union of two different surnames in friendship and love,

n order to continue the posterity of the former sages, and to furnish those
who shall preside at the sacrifices to heaven and earth, at those in the ancestral temple, and at those at the altars to the spirits of the land and grain.
. . . If there were not the united action of heaven and earth, the world of
things would not grow. By means of the grand rite of marriage, the generations of men are continued through myriads of ages'25
This passage is a clear statement of the utility of marriage: Marriage exists to continue the lineage of ancestral sages who require that there be
someone to perform sacrifices for them. Another statement in The Book
of Rites verifies that the institution of marriage and the expected lawful
reproduction of sons was the joint where past and future were fused-the
place where the past was secured by the promise of the future, and the
future secured by the dictates of the past:
The ceremony of marriage was intended to be a bond of love between two
[families of different] surnames, with a view, in its retospective character,
to secure the services in the ancestral temple, and in its prospective character, to secure the continuance of the family line.26
Theoretically, the son's desire for a particular marriage partner was irrele-
The wife's situation in the marriage can appear bleak as well. She is
brought (one could argue that she is "bought") into the family for her
productivity and can be sent back to her family if she does not produce
children.2T In fact, marriage is so much a question of pleasing the parents
and not the son that one of the grounds for divorce is that the parents are
not satisfied with her.28
The metaphor suggested in The Book of Rites for this kind of reproduction is that of a tree. The son's being is nothing but an extension of his
parents and all his other ancestors. His selfhood and the basis for his selfrespect are defined entirely in reference to his predecessors:
He is in his person a branch from his parents; can any son but have this
self-respect? If he is not able to respect his own person, he is wounding
his parents. If he wounds his parents, he is wounding his own root; and
when the root is wounded the branches will follow it in the dying.2e
With this sketch and brief analysis of the role of obedience in the Confucian discourse on filial piety, the depth of submission required by the ancestral system and its potential costs to the individual son's psychology
begin to stand out as a demanding form of family practice.
26
Confucian Complexes
The Merging of Familial and Political Realms
regal, imperial, and heavenly authority. The Classic of Filial
relationship imagined between the familial and the juraVpolitical. Many

passages make it clear that the stck of male dyads was to extend without
break from the highest level of government down to the family level.
Not surprisingly, each of these male dyads is defined by the submission of the younger to the elder, who is rightful in demanding the services
of his underling. Though these dyads form a vertical series ascending the
social ladder, it appears that a son owes loyalty first to his father and second to those in the political realm. A passage from Book One of The
Analects suggests this prioritization of submission:3r "If a man withdraws
his mind from the love of the sensual and serves his father and mother
with all his might and then serves his prince with all his being. . . ." Not
only is there a movement from the familial to the political, but in each
case the son's service is predicated on the renunciation of his private desires.
The implications of setting the familial and the political in analogic

relation extend in several directions. After drawing such explicit connections between the two spheres, one might expect there to be a tendency to
allow the two to collapse into each other, at least rhetorically-i.e., for
emperors to become as fathers, and fathers as empelors. lndeed, quotes
attesting
to this borrowing of identities are abundant: the emperor is
regularly called the father of the people, and the father is regularly given
says:
of all the actions of man, there is none greater than filial piety. In filial piety, there is nothing greater than the reverential awe shown to one's father. In th reverential awe shown to one's father, there is nothing greater
than making him the correlate of heaven.32
A corollary to the depth of obedience required by Confucian filial piety is the fusion of familial and political realms. The Confucian classics
declare on many occasions that the rigorous protocol required between
male superiors and their inferiors within the family is to be extended to
the political realm, where filial piety is to serve as the defining metaphor
for all hierarchical encounters. As Confucius says in The Classic of Filial
Piety, "The filial piety with which the superior man serves his parents
may be transferred as loyalty to the ruler; the fratemal duty with which he
serves his elder brother may be transferred as submissive deference to elders."3o This merger of the two spheres, well noted in most modern discussions of Confucian state ideology, meant that there was an analogic
piefl
In this
passage filial piety is, ideally, a relationship based on fear and

awe, analogous to one's response to heaven, the ultimate ruler. The passage also shows a marked tendency in the confucian discourse to focus
exclusively on the father-son dyad. The passages which claim that filial
piety is due to both parents are regularly overshadowed by counter-claims

that the father-son unit is the central and defining relationship. In the focus on the father-son unit, daughters are almost entirely ignored, presumably because daughters leave their natal families at marriage and are
inconsequential to the continuity of their natal family lines. Daughters
only come to the attention of the reproduction-conscious patrilines when

they become wives and potential son-bearers in their husbands' families.
As daughters in their natal families, they draw little literary attention to
themselves.
Although there are mrmerous passages stating that sons are required to
filial to their fathers and their mothers, there is an observable tendency

to move from mentioning both parents to speaking only of the father, his
authority and his expectations. For instanc e, in The classic of Filial piety,
though the word "parent" appears in the passage below, the main focus is
clearly on the father:
be
The relation and duties between father and son [thus belonging to] the
heaven-conferred nature [contain in them the principle of] righteousness
between ruler and subject. The son derives his life from his parents, and
no greater gift could possibly be transmitted; his ruler and parent [in one],
his father deals with him accordingly, and no generosity could be gteater
than this.33
In addition to passages like this, which seem to slide over into a fatherfocus, others differentiate the exact quality of filial piety due to each par-
28
Confucian Complexes
it clear that the father is considered the more important parent. For example, in the following passage from The Classic of Filial Piety, the father-son model is taken to define the services rendered both to
ent, making
the mother and to the ruler, emphasizing the template-nature of the fatherson relationship. The passage concludes by spelling out the dues owed to
each of the tlree: the mother is to get love from the son; the ruler is to get
reverence; and the father is to get both:
As they serve their fathers, so they serve their mothers, and they love them
equally. As they serve their fathers, so they serve their rulers, and they
reverence them equally. Hence love is what is chiefly rendered to the
mother, and reverence is what is chiefly rendered to the ruler, while both
of these things are given to the father.3a
While the simplicity of using the father-son unit to define the familial and
political realms did offer a certain coherency, it ended up generating a
male discourse so thoroughly involved with power relations and hierarchical structures that it must have left much unaddressed in the lives of
men. Certainly, a man had recourse to his friends, and there are many indications that male friendship was expected to play a crucial role in the
life of the Confucian gentleman. Still, given the nearly ubiquitous ordering of men into hierarchical relations defined in terms of filial obligation-biological or cultural-there was little room for "communitas" in
the Victor Turner sense of the word. Ideally, men v/ere ordered and always in place, with fear of shame and punishment never far away. Their
relationships with sisters, wives, daughters or daughters-inlaw appear to
have been valued little, if at all, in the official ideology.
Conclusions About Confucian
Filial Piety
This sketch of Confucian filial piety porfays Confucianism as preoccupied with securing male power and extending it forward in time. This
effort to secure and transmit male prerogatives involved several
spheres---ontic, nuptial, biological, and political. The world as it appears
in the dictates of Confucian filial piety is almost completely male and is,
accordingly, packed with a preponderance of male-oriented topics that

regulate male behavior. Although it is male power that is to be extended
and expanded upon through time, individual men seem never to escape
their subservient status: regardless of how powerful they become, there
are always other men above them in time and status. Thus the system as a
whole glorifies maleness but ends up shackling each man to his superiors
by exalting'the authority of tradition.
Before addressing the noticeable absence of the mother in confucian
filial piety, let me repeat that there are numerous passages from the classics claiming that she, too, is to be served with filial piety. The catch is
that she appears only as an adjunct to the father (i.e., she is almost always
mentioned as the other half of the parental unit, as in the common binome
, mu).certainly she is included in some discussions of filial piety, but
never as a unique figure, much less as the central player.3s when specific
practices are mentioned, there is a similar devaluation of her status. For
instance, in addition to being granted three years of mourning only under
certain circumstances, The Book of Rites explains that the funeral gear
wom during this period is to be of a lighter grade, emphasizing that

mourning for the mother is less significant than mouming for the father.
Another point that suggests her peripheral status is the frequency with
which confucian disciples ask what etiquette and propriety are required
in funerals for mothers, indicating that the topic was not deemed important enough to warrant a traditional legislation, even if some sons wished
to have instruction on the matter. rn The Book of Rites there are at least
two dialogues in which the discussants try to determine which procedures
for mothers' funerals are in accordance with the rites.36
When a woman is spoken of in her specific capacity as a mother, however, she is identified as the loving parent.37 In the passage quoted above
from The classic of Filial Piety which explains the emotions to be directed toward each parent, the mother is the one who can be loved without fear entering into the relationship. The passage specifies that the father is to be loved as well as reverenced, but while it is pcssible to love
and revere the same person, there is every likelihood that the filial submission required of the son would generate conflicting emotions toward
30 Confucian Complexes
the father, with a strong component
of hostility likely present. At every
tum the son must submit to his father's
wishes, which restrict and define
his own. This is most striking in wife
selection, when the son,s desires
are overridden by family concems.r,
Whether or not the ,,hostility hlpothesis,,
holds water, many passages
note that the reverence demanded
by filial piety is to incrude fear of the
father. How a son is to love and be
emotio;atr,
ni'rir"torrg
disciplinarian remains unaddressed
in the texts. It"n".rr"o"
appears that, in an ef_
fort to maintain the father's authority,
some stock was put in keeping the
father-son relationship distant. For
instance , in The Anarects chen
Kang
says,3n "I have arso heard that
the superior man maintains a distant
reserve
toward his son." chen Kang makes
this comment after confucius,s son,
Bo Yu, tells chen Kang that confucius
would not tark to him until he had
read and learned the classics. Besides
the chilr of etiquette recounted in
this passage, it wourd seem that a
son is not to be seen as a son until
he
has been tempered by the submission
learned from studying the classics.
Judging by the way The Anarects
depicts Bo yu srinking around the
compound, scurrying to avoid his father,
this added inculcattn may we,
have amounted to overkill.ao
Thus, although the son is required
to love both his father and mother,
he has more reason to love his mother.
confucian firiar piety wants trre
father to be the focal point of the
son's life, but the extent to which the
father has contror over his son impedes
the deveropment of an affectionate bond between them' Evidence
of the father's failure to secure his
son's love is displayed in the crucial period
of generational transition. As
abeady noted, the son's trrree-year
-u-irrg for his father is justified by
recalling the three years of love "that
he reclived at his parents, bosom.,,
The problem is that, thlugh serving
to explain a repayment to the father,
these first three years of life in alr
likelihood draw on kindness shown by
the mother.
Thus there is a certain irony in the way

confircian firial piefy, which is
so intent on defining a male world

for
itself must turn to the love of the

mother-son connection to provide the
affective force to carry a son
through the crisis that occurs when
the center of that male world_his
'ietv 47
father-passes on. Confucian filial piety seems to
v\c
can somehow expand or redirect the son,s love

his father, whose death might otherwise be a j
tlre
The co-opting and redirection of mother-son lov

lineage is not overtly admitted but is nevertheles
passage from The Analects justifuing three years' repa.rx'.--..-ther.
Daoist Perspectves on Filal piety

In the confucian texts, mother-son love in chinese culture just peeks
around the "skirts" of a discourse that is focused on fathers and sons. For
a more boldly articulated discussion of mother-son love, one can
turn to
contemporaneous Daoist texts. A full treatment of the mother image in
early Daoism is beyond the scope of this book, but even a casual reading
of the Dao de jing turns up the following points. For Lao zi, the putative
author of this work, the great Dao that precedes all existence is feminine.
The Dao is the mother of the ten thousand things who continues to nurture the beings she has produced.ar For Lao zi, perfection is achieved
through the harmonious relationship between the child and the motherDao, a relationship that ultimately leads to their union. since we must assume that Lao Zi was writing for an all-male audience-and his abundant
advice for running a govement leaves little doubt about this-Daoist
perfection is envisioned as the consummation, or reconsurnmation,
of the
mother-son relationship.
Furthermore,Lao zi makes it clear that male perfection is regressive in

nature. In other words, one becomes complete through a retum to the
Dao, which is characterized as a return to the mother and to one's ,,baby
days'" For instance, in chapter 20, after exalting his childlike ignorance,
Lao Zi writes:
Formless am
Shapeless am
Mike
the ocean;
Ms though I have nothing in which I can rest.
The masses have their reasons ffor acting];

I alone am stupid and obstinate like a rustic.
30
Confucian Complexes
the father, with a strong component of hostility likely present. At every

turn the son must submit to his father's wishes, which restrict and define
his own. This is most striking in wife selection, when the son's desires
are overridden by family concerns.38
Whether or not the "hostility hypothesis" holds water, many passages
note that the reverence demanded by filial piety is to include fear of the
father. How a son is to love and be emotionally attached to his lifelong
disciplinarian remains unaddressed in the texts. It appears that, in an effort to maintain the father's authority, some stock was put in keeping the
father-son relationship distant. For instance, in The Analects Chen Kang
"I
have also heard that the superior man maintains a distant reserye
toward his son." Chen Kang makes this comment after Confucius's son,
Bo Yu, tells Chen Kang that Confucius would not talk to him until he had
says,'n
read and learned the classics. Besides the chill of etiquette recounted in
this passage, it would seem that a son is not to be seen as a son until he
has been tempered by the submission leamed from studying the classics.
Judging by the way The Analects depicts Bo Yu slinking around the
compound, scurrying to avoid his father, this added inculcation may well
have amounted to overkill.ao
Thus, although the son is required to love both his father and mother,
he has more reason to love his mother. Confucian filial piety wants the
father to be the focal point of the son's life, but the extent to which the
father has control over his son impedes the development of an affectionate bond between them. Evidence of the father's failure to secure his
son's love is displayed in the crucial period of generational transition. As
already noted, the son's three-year mourning for his father is justified by
recalling the three years of love "that he received at his parents' bosom."
The problem is that, though serving to explain a repayment to the father,

these first three years of life in all likelihood draw on kindness shown by
the mother.
Thus there is a certain irony in the way Con_fircian
filial piety, which is

so intent on defining a male world for itself must turn to the love of the
mother-son connection to provide the affective force to carry a son
through the crisis that occurs when the center of that male world-his
(
Confucian Complexes
31
father-passes on. Confucian filial piety seems to work only insofar as it

can somehow expand or redirect the son's love for his mother to include
his father, whose death might otherwise be a joyous liberation for the son.
The co-opting and redirection of mother-son love for the use of the male
lineage is not overtly admitted but is nevertheless detectable in the crucial
passage from The Analects justifying three years' repayment for the father.
Daoist Perspectives on Filal Piety

In the Confucian texts, mother-son love in Chinese culture just peeks
around the "skirts"
ofa
discourse that is focused on fathers and sons. For
a more boldly articulated discussion of mother-son love, one can turn to

contemporaneous Daoist texts. A full treatrnent of the mother image in
early Daoism is beyond the scope of this book, but even a casual reading
of fhe Dao de jing tums up the following points. For Lao Zi, the putative
author of this work, the great Dao that precedes all existence is feminine.
The Dao is the mother of the ten thousand things who continues to nurture the beings she has produced.ar For Lao Zi, perfeclion is achieved
through the harmonious relationship between the child and the motherDao, a relationship that ultimately leads to their union. Since we must assume that Lao Ziwas writing for an all-male audience-and his abundant
advice for running a goverment leaves little doubt about this-Daoist
perfection is envisioned as the consummation, or reconsummation, of the
mother-son relationship.
Furthermore,Lao Zi makes it clear that male perfection is regressive in
nature. In other words, one becomes complete through a return to the
Dao, which is characterized as a retum to the mother and to one's "baby
days." For instance, in Chapter 20, after exalting his childlike ignorance,
Lao Zi writes:
Formless am
Mike
Ms
the ocean;
though I have nothing in which I can rest.

The masses have their reasons [for acting];
I alone am stupid and obstinate like a rustic.
Shapeless am
But my desires alone differ from those of othersFor I value drawing sustenance from the Mother
[it., "cherish eating the mother'].42
In assessing this passage and others like it, it is important to note that nowhere is rejoining the Dao considered under a copulative metaphor, i.e.,
in reference to two adult lovers. Rather, descent into the Dao appears as
the sloughing off of manhood in the hope of regaining the childlike state,
innocent of adult male identity.a3 This passage further suggests that the
reunion with the Dao is akin to returning to feeding at the mother's
breast. More than anything, retum to the Dao is marked by an escape
from the male world of Confucian ethics and an embrace of the precultural, whether in the form of pure nature, the mother, or Lao Zi's romanticized view of the stupid but contented peasant.
Four themes appear central for Lao Zi's program. The first is a general
nostalgia for childhood: there is a retrograde impulse in the text that
moves from current male adulthood back to the complete satisfaction of
childhood. Second, motherhood comes to stand against and outside of
culture: culture is male, political, historical, and linguistic, whereas the
Dao is feminine, anti-culture, faceless, timeless, and prelinguistic. Third,
a man finds his resting place in womanhood, which is defined exclusively
in terms of motherhood and a woman's maternal capabilities. Fourth, this
mother-son reunion occurs apart from the patriline: the Daoist man-child
finds his roots in the mother, completely away from his lineage identity
and the corresponding strictures of linear male time. Though Lao Zi
claims in several passages that filial piety and benevolence, as well as the
other Confucian ethics, are only truly attainable via this retum to the
Dao,aa his text is rather free of patrilineal concerns.
This set of images is not idiosyncratic to the author of the Dao de jing,
for similar tropes appeff in the Zhuang Zi as well Zh:uang Zi, the paradigmatic iconoclast of China, has the anti-Confrrcian Robber Zhi evoke
an idyllic time of human perfection, when humans lived naturally and in
harmony with one another and all living creatures. IVhat stands out in this
description is the line that asserts that in this paradise one is free of the
father. Robber Zhi describes it as follows:
In the age of shen Nong, the people lay down in simple innocence and
rose up in quiet security. They lew their mothers but did not know their
fathers. They dwelt among the elk and deer. They ploughed and ate; they
wove and made clothes; they had no idea of injuring one another: this was
the grand time of perfect virflre.4s
Finding in Daoist works this utopian imagery of father-free times suggests that the confucian system was judged to be overly demanding. It
also implies that, long before Buddhism a:rived, chinese men had begun
pining for a mother-world in response to the world of male-dominated
confucian family values. A more detailed account of familial metaphors

in Daoism is beyond the scope of this work, but a fruitful avenue to explore is the parallelism between Daoist and Buddhist responses to the patrilineal structure, as officially formulated in the confucian classics. For
now, it suffices to say that the four Daoist themes just mentioned reappear in Buddhist writings on a massive scale.
Thus far I have porlrayed the contents and intents of confucian filial
piety without reference to the realities of family practice, even though the
family arena is their primary field of application. yet consideration of the

actual application of patrilineal family values supports the literary interpretations presented above and, more importantly, reveals that the son's
relationships with his mother and father were constructed under the influence of widely differing impulses. clarifying these divergent paternal and
maternal structures goes a long way toward explaining Daoist and Buddhist responses to the Confucian/traditional system.
Patrilocal Marrage and Other Elements

of Chnese Famly Practce
In reconstructing an image of Chinese family life in the Han period,
the most important element is patrilocal marriage. If wives were normally
brought into the family from beyond the village, then confucian filial pi-
ety most likely faced many of the same problematic dynamics during the
34
Confucian Complexes
it
does in the modem context. The place of tension regularly

pointed to in the modem Chinese family is associated with what Margery
Wolf calls "the uterine family," that pocket of resistance which the "outsider wife" musters in an attempt to wrest control of her economic well-
homes upon reaching maturity, they were not counted as kin by their
blood relatives or included in their fathers' ancestral groups. Moreover, a
woman's status in her new family was secured only by producing a child,
preferably a son. Should she fail to have children, her membership in the
being from the family lineage structure. If a general correspondence between modem and ancient family practice obtains, then we can with some
limitations apply to Han China insights about this inner-family struggle
documented in twentieth-century ethnography.
I make this assumption fully aware of Patricia Ebrey's critique of the
maneuver. In her 1981 article, "'Women and the Kinship System of the
Southem Song Upper Class," Ebrey argues that modem family structures
are likely more oppressive for women and more fully dominated by patrilineal ideology than at other times in Chinese history.tr Yet her argument is not that there are not significant parallels, but rather that restraint
needs to be exercised in making the leap back in history. I feel well
within the bounds of "the likely" in interpolating a basic parallelism between modem and Han marriage practices as long as the discussion sticks
to general "structures of interest" that were in all probability present. To
offer another slice of confidence to the wary reader, I should add that the
basic dynamic between mothers and sons that I am seeking in the Han
family appears in apocryphal Buddhist texts dating to the seventh century-which is admittedly four hundred years after the Han, but which
nevertheless mitigates to some degree the pitfalls of glossing over two
thousand years of history.a7
Fortunately, there are numerous passages from the Confucian classics
that clearly describe a woman leaving her natal home to marry into her
husband's family.o8 Of course, the fact that patrilocal marriage is described as the ideal pattern in a ritual text does not preclude the possibility
that uxorilocal or other forms of mariage were more common than was
admitted in the official discourse. Still, we must assume that a significant
portion of the population practiced patrilocal ma:riage and faced the complex of problems inherent in that situation.
Of these problems, the first was that women in traditional China were,
from birth, somewhat homeless. Because they ma:ried out of their natal
family could be canceled and she could be asked to leave. To gain a secure identity in any lineage, she thus had to pass a trial by sex. Only
through intercourse and successful reproduction could she achieve the
"belongingness" that males inherited as a birthright. In other words, only
by satisfuing the male requirements for progenylfanily could a \/oman
gain admittance to any family at all. Given these conditions, it would
seem that a \/oman would want sons just as badly as her husband and his
family, albeit for different reasons. A husband and his family wanted a
son to perpetuate their agnatic identity and secure their economic future;
his wife was not likely to have strong feelings about her new lineage, and
most likely cared about the arrival of a son only as the ticket to her own
economic and emotional well-being, with little thought for the meta-
Han that
temporal concems of the men of the family.ae

Thus a mother's economic interest in a son was identical to that of her
husband's family, in that both hoped he would grow up strong and productive so as to support them in their old age. But his mother had other
interests in him, both due to her outsider status and because, as a womaq
she probably had little voice in family matters. Her position of weakness
was compounded by traditional Chinese law, which by and large does not
allow women to own or inherit their husbands' property directly: property
is to be divided by sons. Should her husband die before her, a woman

needs a son if she is to gain control over any property or wealth her husband had.
Adding urgency to a woman's wishes for a son is the likelihood that

will have only a modicum of success in controlling her husband, who
for the time being is her only available family spokesperson. Her route to
influence over family affairs through her husband is tenuous; living under
the roof of his watchful parents, and perhaps grandparents, he is under
great pressure to prove his allegiance to them, not to his wife. Thus, given
that she needs an "inside man" to speak and act for her, a woman can
she
only hope to bear a son and then bind him to her so that he will be loyal
to her interests when he comes of age and can adjudicate family matters
in her favor.
It is precisely because both the mother and her husband's family look
to the new son as the condition for their future happiness that there is the
fear that, if the mother can split her new husband from the clan, she will
have unobstructed access to the expected productivity of the son. But to
steal her son a\/ay from her husband's family, she must steal her husband, too. If successful in this coup, then the family who thought they
were "hiring" the young woman to add to their prosperity, spiritual and
economic, will lose all: their son (the husband), his future children, and
the bride price they paid for their son's wife.
Looked at from another perspective, moving the family line forward in
time is complicated by the need to tum a son into a father who still acts
like a son. The system seeks to generate men who, though they father descendants, are still primarily sons themselves, and hence obedient to their
fathers and mothers. The two roles of father and son are not to be seen as
exclusive, since they need to be held concurrently. The difficulty lies in
the fact that, in order to generate these two merged identities, a nonfamily \/oman is needed, and the desires and passions of a nonvertical relationship must be relied on. That the vertical must rely on the horizontal
in this manner creates the crucible of the Chinese family.
eign family." But she has biological grounds for claiming a son, regardless of how Confucian ideology wants to porhay conception, and she has
him for all his most tender years, during which she works to secure his
love and devotion. Thus, for a r/oman to lose her son amounts to an economic and emotional disaster.
'/ith the son's marriage, not only does he have a new intimate female
in his life, but this new female has every reason to try to take him away
from his mother and the plans she has for him. It is these tense struggles
for the loyalty of the son that breed the animosity between generations of
women so characteristic of Chinese culture. As adjuncts to the male power axis, women have no way to construct or reproduce a lineage and must
suffer being inserted like vertebrae along the spine of the lineage, rubbing
and chafing against the vertebrae above and below. Never herself becoming a jural adult, a mother can only jealously guard her son against the encroaching aspirations of his new wife, who can in tum only have identical
intentions when she becomes a mother-in-law and stands to lose the son
who is her main support. Arthur wolf clearly describes the deleterious effects this system has on intergenerational relations between v/omen:
The source of the tension between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law is
of a distant and unemotional relationship between husband and wife recognizes the danger of a mother's jealously. . . . A woman's son is too important in Chinese society for her to accept an intimacy from which she is
The weak link in the system is the possibility that the son will fail his
parents and be "captured" by his wife and taken out of the orbit of his
family line. While the son's whole family worries about this, the son's
mother, who has been counting on his assistance ever since he was bom,
is particularly vulnerable to this type of coup by her son's new wife.

When we back up a generation to look at how the son's marriage looks to
his own mother, it is even clearer how endemic this anxiety over losing
the son must have been. If a mother loses her son to his new wife, she
loses the one chance she has to really possess a man. Her own marriage
may have amounted to little in the way of love and security in her "for-
competition for the loyalty and affection of the young man who is the
older woman's son and the younger woman's husband. The Chinese ideal
excluded. Mothers do resent a son's relationship with his wife and express
this resentrnent by abusing their authority over the daughter-in-law. Citicized, scolded, and not uncommonly beaten by her husband's mother, the
daughter-in-law responds in the only way she can. She tries to win over
her husband in the hope of talking him into leaving the extended family,
thereby freeing her forever of her mother-in-law. . . . The result is a conflagration fed on its own flames.so
Another passage from Arthur 'Wolf sums up this agony of Chinese women:
To bear sons is a woman's first great trial in life; to maintain their loya
and affection is the second and more diffrcult tial. As one village mother
put it to me, "you raise your children and then when they grow up they are
always someone else's. Your daughter belongs to her husband, and your
son belongs to his wife. Especially those men who always listen to what
their wives say. If you say more than two words to your daughter-in-law,
they'll get mad and move out of the family, 'you can give birth to a son's
body, but you can never know a son's heart."'sr
past and future, but as a contemporary group that comes into existence insofar as she has the stength to do so, or for that matter, the need to do so.
After her death the uterine family survives only in the mind of her son and
is symbolized by the special attention he gives her earthly remains and her
ancestral tablet. The rites themselves are demanded by the ideology of the
patriliny, but the meaning they hold for most sons is formed in the uterine
family. The uterine family has no ideologt, na formal structure, and no
public existence.It is built out of sentiments and loyalties that die with its
members, but it is no less real for all that. The descent lines of men are
born and nourished in the uterine families of women, and it is here that a
male ideology that excludes women makes its accommodation with real-
With this problematic underlying reproduction in the Chinese family, it is

not surprising that alternatives such as child marriages were sought to
avoid the strife expected in moving the family line over generational
humps. In the child marriage, the wife is brought in as an infant or child
and raised by the family as a daughter. Then, when she and her brotherlhusband come of age, they are forcibly married. Despite the couple's
usual reluctance to this somewhat incestuous union, the family requires it
as a strategic means for overcoming its most critical weakness. By making the son's parbrer his sibling, there is little chance that she will draw
his interests away from his vertical family because she too counts herself
as a member of that vertical axis. In fact, she likely has no other sense of
self apart from her adoptive family. Thus the threat of losing the son to
temptafions located on the plane of the horizontal is nullified.
In sum, the family line is always in need of women to serve as sonproducers. But to gain access to the biological reproduction they so desire, the boy's family must take the risk of inviting a strange woman into
their confines. The implications of this fight over the son(s) and the potential for failing to tum a foreigrr \/oman into a putative daughter are
many. Besides economic concerns, this fight between the wife and the
son's fami is based on differing visions of time. Margery Wolf points
this out in an evocative way:
ity.t'
According to Confucian frlial piety, the son is to see that his identity is
gained and confirmed through belonging to a lineage of men. In contrast,
his mother's view of time, which she will likely try to impress upon him,
is essentially dyadic, romantic, and nonrepeating. As a stranger to the lineage, the mother's connection with the future is mainly through her son,
and this relationship is exclusive and owes nothing to any other larger
group. I call it "romantic" in the sense that it reflects the wishes of individual persons over corporate entities.
Key to this romantic time frame is the obvious need for collusion between mother and son. It would seem that in Chinese society, romantic
time is most likely to develop between mother and son because the husband/wife dyad is so carefully policed by the lineage. Extramarital affairs
could provide a similar space for this anti-lineage sense of time and self,
but it is not simply a matter of finding a space away from the male lineage where romantic visions can blossom. Rather, the pressures endemic
to the Confucian lineage system favor a mother-son collusion even as
they dictate the preeminence of the father-son relationship. It is my contention that the Confucian system allows the mother-son tie to strengttren
because the male lineage can make use of mother-son love in two related
ways. First, mother-son love can buttress the demands of allegiance to the
see the Chinese family as a line of descent, bulging

to encompass all the members of a man's household and spreading out
through his descendants. With a female focus, however, we see the Chinese family not as a continuous line stretching between vague horizons of
With a male focus we
family line,
as seen
explanation of a
I
I
I
in the definition of three years of mourning and in the
filial son's more affective relationship with his mother.
Second, and only by inference, mother-son love can bind the son to the
CHAPTER THREE
lineage by tuming his romantic feelings upward in time, back to his

mother, and parallel with vertical lineage demands, so that marriage is not
such a traumatic occasion fraught with the possibility that horizontal de-
Nascent Buddhist Filial Piety
sires might take precedence over vertical obligations.
In the following chapters I advance the thesis that the uterine family
mother and son found a voice with the emergence of the Buddhist style
of
of
filial piety. Like Lao Zi's nostalgia for the mother Dao, Buddhist filial piety developed a mother-son ideology, but unlike the Dao de jing, the
Buddhists provided this vision with the formal and public structures necessary to hamess the powers therein.
tTluRNINc FRoM
the Confucian classics to leaf through the centuI ries of Chinese Buddhist literature on the family, it is not hard to see
that the Buddhists in China developed a style of filial piety that was preoccupied with the mother.r This focus on the mother as the more interesting person in the parental unit, together with the fact that the Buddhists
aimed their filial piety discourse at sons and not daughters, meant that a
mother-son dyad came to headline Buddhist family values. "Headline" is
perhaps too soft a word. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the
Buddhists became obsessed with writing about mothers and sons.2
To begin to account for the complexities of Buddhist filial piety, Chapters 3 and 4 consider several apocryphal texts on the family written prior
to the early sixth century.3 These pioneering texts contain a variety of
family ideologies that were advanced in the period right after Buddhism
came to China. Despite the range of statements about Buddhism and the
family in these early works, their authors all worked from the assumption
that the younger male generation must care for its elders. The word "repayment" (bo) figures in many of the texts' titles, and even when it does
not, it is the central idiom fusing Buddhism with the family. In this critical formative period, the Buddhists apparently could not imagine surviving in China without announcing their own family-values project as a
means of repaying parents and other ancestors.a
Apocryphal texts are particularly revealing documents.s These "homespun" sutras present and develop Chinese desires for an altered style of
Buddhism. Should the deviant aspect of this writing be doubted, just re-
42
Nascent Buddhist
Filial Piety
member that had such texts not diverged from received tradition, there
would have been no reason to write them and insert them into tradition.
There were, however, limits to what could be said in forged sutras. We
can assume that there was tension between the creative desires that
wished to rework Buddhism and a restrictive censorship that would reject
improvisations deemed beyond the pale of the Buddhist tradition as it was
known at the time. In imagining this dialectic of desire and censorship, it
should not be forgotten that the boundaries defining traditional Buddhism
v/ere very flexible and seem to have expanded century by century. Once
an apocryphal text was accepted as legitimate by a significant body of

readers, the frontiers it opened up could then be counted as "authentically
Buddhist," making it easier for other authors to further stretch this new
boundary. As we will see, the tracks of the Buddhist discussion of mothers and sons kept expanding into graphic and disturbing material that
could only be accepted in the wake of earlier texts which had pushed in
the same direction.6
The Sutra on the
Dfficulty of Repayng
the Kindness of Parents

One of the most conservative early apocryphal texts is a short, onefolio work entitled The Sutra on the Dfficulty of Repaying the Kindness
of Parents (Fu mu en nan bo jing), which is listed in Seng You's catalogue of 518 c.E. with the note that it is a work extracted fromthe Madamgama.7 Though calling an apocryphal sutra an "extract" (chao)
was often a way of claiming an Indian pedigree for a Chinese creation, in
this case the claim could be ffue in a general sense, because the elements
that make up the sutra are very much like those found in Indian Buddhist
texts. In fact, the introductory section matches the Pltrnavadna as found
in the Divyvadana,8 and the middle section matches a section from the
Mlasarvstivadavinaya,which itself has elements shared with the Pn.tvadana text.e Though these pieces have been borrowed, they have been
rea:ranged in a creative manner to constitute a new set of meanings. The
text seems to have been fairly successful in addressing Chinese concerns
Nascent Buddhist
Filial Piety
43
it continued to be quoted in seventh-century encyclopedias, even

though it defines no ritual application or cultic context for itself. The inbecause
troduction is brief, stating that the Buddha was once at Srvastl and gave
this teaching:
At this time the Buddha said to the monks, "Father and mother have been
of immense benefrt to their sons (zl') by breast-feeding and nurturing them,
and educating Qiang yu) them in accordance with their development. So
when the four elements have become complete [in the son's person] then,
if he were to carry his father on his right shoulder and his mother on his
left shoulder for one thousand years without any resennent, even while
making them comfortable on his back,ro then he still would not have done
enough to repay the kindness (ez) of his father and mother."rr
This passage establishes the problematic of the text: monks, as sons, are
to recognize what their parents did for them and realize the depth of what
is owed. I translated z, as "son" because it often means only "son" and
not "child," and because in the introduction and conclusion it is clear that
the Buddha is talking only to monks, with no provision made to include
women.
The debts mentioned appear to be derivative of actions involving both
parents. Though breast-feeding is clearly the mother's contribution, the
"educating" might include the father.r2 At any rate, there is no glaring
mismatch between the origin of debt and the inclusion of both parents in
its repayment. In fact, the analogy of the son carrying a parent on each of
his shoulders presents a literally balanced image of the two parents,
equally entitled to his care.
The next section of text explains the action to take in order to repay
this debt:
If parents do not believe [in Buddhism], make them believe so that they
may achieve a safe and secret state (huo an yin chu). If parents are without
[the Buddhist] precepts, make them believe so that they may achieve
safe and secret state.
The gist of this middle section is that sons should convert their parents to
44
Nascent Buddhist
Filial Pety
Nascent Buddhist
Filial Piety
45
the Buddhist way of life to ensure their happiness, which, in the ambiguous phrase "achieve a safe and secret place," has distinct post-mortem
connotations. There then follows a short exaltation of the Buddha and the
Sangha that emphasizes their qualifications to be objects of veneration.
one more point needs to be addressed. lvhen the text says, "All monks
have two children/disciples (zi): the child/disciple that produced (sheng)
them and the child/disciple that nurtured them," it is left vague as to who
The text closes with an interesting pun:
birth" here, but rather "beget," with a meaning that has more in common
with older confucian ideas of reproduction already discussed in chapter
2. If so, then the father is being identified as the first cause and the mother as the nurhrrer. otherwise, the character sheng would have to mean
"give birth," clearly signaling the mother's contribution, with the father
left being the nurturer, a role that never seems to have been assigned to
him in filial formations that precede or follow this one.
In sum, this text has taken filial repayment as its axis: it is in the title
and is the central idiom setting up the text's problematic by reminding the
monks/sons of their indebtedness. The resolution of this indebtedness is
achieved by the monks converting their parents and instructing them in
[Therefore,] everyone should respect, honor, and trust in this merit field
Qfu tian)t3 which is without peer in the world. Thus all sons must teach
their fathers and mothers to practice compassion. All monks have two
children/disciples (zr): the child/disciple that produced (sheng) them and
the child/disciple that nurtured (yang) them, therefore they are called
"monks who have two children/disciples." Hence every monk must imitafe (xue) those who produced (sheng) him by speaking of the Dharma essence [in order to turn them into Buddhist "adults"]. It is in this way that
all monks should consider [Buddhist] practice (xue). At this time all the
monks, having heard what the Buddha taught, were happy and respect-
fully carried out
these practices.
'I'hrs closing passage puts

a beguiling twist on the filial theme. Monks,
having been reminded of their sonship and the debts incurred in their infancy, are told that their monkhood is to be dedicated to parenting their
parents. The monk's biological parents are to be his spiritual children. He
must exchange the biological clock in favor of the cultural one, so that in
his Buddhist role he becomes a parentlike figure who will nurture his
parents with Buddhism in order to give them the security and happiness
which they gave him years ago. This transmogrification of filial piety
subverts confucian-style patemal authority without threatening the basic
lineage structure, since sons are still instructed to serve their elders,
though now their filial duties are defined in Buddhist terms. Even though
the text is addressed to monks, I believe that the intended audience included all males. Clearly, this model of sonship could have been practiced by the layman as well as the monk, and the proximity of the monk
to his parents suggests that the target reader is still at home, not in the
monastery. Many later texts merge the categories of men and monks in a
more obvious manner.
did what. My suspicion is that the character sheng does not mean "give
basic Buddhism. Buddhism as a spiritual discipline has been inserted into

the generational equation as sonship and monkhood are joined. To be a
good Buddhist is to be a good son who repays what his parents have
given him. The flip side of the equation is true, too: to be a good son is to
be a good Buddhist and convert parents to Buddhism. Not to be overlooked is the underlying critique of non-Buddhist care for parents. To
spend one's existence slavishly serving them-carrying them about on
one's shoulders for a thousand years---{omes to naught. only a spiritual
caring for them, based on Buddhism, gives them what they reaily need.
Of course, in China this would have appeared as an attack on the Confucian dictate to feed and serve parents.
In comparison with other early apocryphal works, this text is strikingly
simple. There are no rituals or festivals mentioned, no funeral concems or
specific techniques that can be employed to make merit for parents. Nor
is the debt aspect of the text worked up in a dramatic way. The debts of
childhood are listed and passed over without any to-do. There are no
nostalgic breast-feeding scenes, ecstatic reunions, or bloody descriptions
of birth. Equally absent are threats of hellfire should the monk-son fail in
this enterprise. A further simplicity is that ancestors are not mentioned:
46
Nascent Buddhist
Filial Piety
the text speaks only of debts and obligations owed to immediate parents,
suggesting that full consideration of the ancestral line has yet to be

worked into this new form of filial piety.
As one of the earliest Buddhist treatises on family values, The Sutra on
the Dfficulty of Repaying the Kindness of Parents presents an example of
"extraction and insertion" in which Indian textual chunks are extracted,
pasted together, and made relevant to Chinese concerns with a minimum
of development and embroidery.ra There is no mythology here and no
narrative-just simple requirements with simple solutions.

The Sutra on Bathing [a Buddha ImageJ
and Making Offerings
The Sutra on Bathing
[a Buddha ImageJ and Making Offerings (Guan

jing)
la
is a bit messier than The Sutra on the Dfficutty of Repaying the
Kindness of Parents. It also is a short text, but it is jumbled and poorly
edited. Though it does not explicitly mention repaying parents, it presents
two Buddhist rituals, one of which is explicitly advertised as a technique
for saving ancestors. Historically, this text is important because it shows a
half-baked attempt to establish a public offering to the Buddhist establishment on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, the day on
which the stupendously popular "ghost festival" (1tu lan hui) wouldlater
settle.r6 Paying close attention to what is and is not in this proto-ghostfestival text gives a rich backdrop for interpreting later developments in
the cycle of ghost-festival myths.
It is the second half of text which attempts to fuse offerings to the
Buddhist establishment with the wish to save one's ancestors and relations. The tension is heightened by mention of awful rebirths in hell and
other places where one's ancestors might undergo unspeakable sufferings
should this offering not be made to the Buddhists. Despite disclosing this
harrowing possibility, the dramatic setting for the teaching is only slightly
fuller than it is in The Sutra on the Dfficulty of Repaying the Kindness of
Prents, with the opening question set forth as follows:
Nascent Buddhist
Filial piety 47
Ananda stood in front, kneering and crasping

his hands, and asked the
Buddha, "I want to request that the Buddha explain
what we, your lay and
monastic disciples, should use to make the
offerings on the dates of 4/g
andTl|S, [in the time] after the Buddha has passed
into nirvana.,,r7
The Buddha ans\ers, explaining the effectiveness
of making offerings to
the Buddha and how these offerings are to
be given to the monasteries
after the Buddha'is no longer on earth:
The Buddha said to nanda, ,.As for bathing
[an image] and making o
ferings to the Buddha, it is the merit for a person's
crossing over. Each is
to tithe money and jewels, and to give up
cherished
tfrrrrgJi' seeking the
merit that liberates. [These tithes] shourd be given

to th monastery [for
procuring] lamps and incense, and to make
sutras and images. otherwise,

you can make offerings to a teacher or
to a poor person, or hold vegetarian
feasts."
After this general explanation based on the exchange

of worldry goods
for other-worldly merit, there is a short description
of how to perform the
ceremony of bathing a Buddha image on the
eighth day of the fourth ru_
nar month.rs Following this is a description
of the evil fates that await
sinners, which then moves into a pitch for
the 7/r5 offering, with the
contingencies explained as follows:
On 7/15, with the merit from paying homage (zuo
ii)to the Buddha, you
can liberate from pain and suffering those parents
and five kinds of rerativesre back seven generations, those pitifuones
who have fallen into the
realms of suffering.
The logic of the 7/r5 offering, as it is explained
in The sutra on Bathing [a Buddha ImageJ and Making Offerings, appea
to be based on a
triangular relationship between donors, professionar
Buddhists, and the
dead' The donors are to make offerings to
the Buddhist estabrishment
with the understanding that gifts of material goods

will translate into merit that can be directed to those dead souls irrthe
beyond who are in need
of redemption. Interestingly, this Buddhist vision
of ancestors imagines
them to be, en masse, in great jeopardy
after dying. The wording of the
48
Nascent Buddhist
Filial Piety
Nqscent Buddhist
passage puts the phrase "those parents and five kinds of relatives back
seven generations" in apposition with the phrase "those pitiful ones who
have fallen into the realms of suffering," thereby suggesting that all ancestors are in hellish realms. As we will see, this becomes the standard
Buddhist take on ancestors: they are assumed to be gui and in need of
the ancestors need liberating, using the term la allows the reader to continue to believe that the fundamental problem is not the sinfulness of the
ancestors but a more traditional post-mortem hunger. This is supported by
the fact that the rite is to be repeated annually; if liberation were the goal,
once should be enough. These clues suggest that the Buddhists wished to
keep Confucian expectations about feeding ancestors in place, even as
they altered various aspects of the practice in order to draw support to
their monasteries.
Like the preceding text,
it is what is not found
here that is perhaps
most important for charting a history of Buddhist family values' Here

there is no explicit bao en equation of repayment, mothers figure nowhere in the discussion, and the term "ghost festival" (yu lan hui) is not
used for the 7ll5 offering. Mu Lian, who will come to be the patron saint
of the 7ll5 offering, is nowhere to be seen. As early as 594, catalogers
would lmp The Sutra on Bathing [a Buddha Image] and Making Off"rlngs with other sutras using the yu lan terminology and Mu Lian themes,
but at this early stage we see divergent traditions that have yet to be conflated.21
Another piece of evidence about the formation of the ghost festival can
be adduced from this little work. Though the advertisement for The 7ll5
ritual is more extensive than for the 4/8 offering, including them both in a
49
discussion of calendrical Buddhist offerings gives the impression that the

7/15 offering had yet to gain the singular popularity it would begin to
display in the sixth century. There is no overt prioritization of the two offerings, which instead seem to stand balanced as spring and fall offerings.
redemption.
The term /a is also worth consideration. This character was used in

pre-Buddhist eras to refer to the annual animal offering made to ancestors
in the winter.'o Its use here probably still suggested to readers a kind of
food offering, and though there is little likelihood that Buddhists accepted
animal sacrifices, there is the lingering implication that these offerings to
the Buddhists will, in a roundabout manner, satisfy ancestors, just as
choice cuts of meat did in pre-Buddhist times. Though the text says that
Filial Piety
"The Story of Na Slte"

"The Story of Na She" (Na She yin yuan) also shows that Buddhist
\/as not necessarily mother-focused in the early period.22 In
fact, the text advertises a 7/I5 offering day with an Indian story that has
filial piety
been rewritten to exclude mother-son issues. Interestingly, the mother-son
focus that is expurgated in "The Story of Na She" is the same piece of

narrative that is later grafted onto the Mu Lian myths written in the seventh century. Investigating the editing qua censorship of the apocryphal
"Story of Na She" provides solid evidence that what was unwanted narrative material in a fifttr-century attempt to advertise the 7115 offering day
was epossessed several centuries later in the cycle of "Mu Lian saves his
mother" myths for exactly the same purpose-namely, convincing people
to make offerings to the Buddhist establishment on this date. This documentable shift from non-interest in mothers and sons in the Buddhist
portrayal of family values to a vivid glorification of mothers and sons in
the later centuries shows that Buddhism in China began with a set of ex-
perimental family values and only gradually became committed to the

mother-son focus.
Luckily, we can date "The Story of Na She" with some precision because it was included in a collection of texts known as The Consecration
Sutra (Guan ding jing), which Michel Strickmann dates to 457.2t That it
was part of a collection by that time suggests that it already had independent status and was popular enough that the compiler wanted to include it in his collection. Thus we can surmise that this text was being
read at least by'the early fifth century-and that it is likely that, at that
time, a mother-focused filial piety had yet to become prominent.
"The Story of Na She" is included in Chapter ll of The Consecration

Sutra, the chapter dedicated to discussing Buddhist funerals.2a It fits well
50
Nascent Buddhist Flil Piety
there because it na:rates the fials and hibulations of the filial son Na she
as he tries to secure the redemption of his parents. The story opens with
Na She described as a pragon of Buddhist generosity, a son who gives
"unstintingly to iramanas and monks." His parents, however, are stingy

and greedy. The action begins when Na She must make a business trip
that will take him away from his parents' compound. Before he leaves, he
divides his money into three parts: one for his parents' expenses, one for
his own expenses, and the last for making offerings to monks and beggars." He explicitly asks his parents to use the third sum to fte those
who might come begging so that they themselves may accumulate merit.
He leaves, but in his absence his parents make no offerings. To trick
him, they strew food remains around the courtyard to give the impression
that many guests have dined there. when Na she returns they declare that
they have fed the monks and beggars. Looking around at the mess, Na
She is convinced and greatly pleased. Not long after, both parents die,
apparently in unison, and Na She gives them a top-notch Buddhist funeral.
Shortly thereafter, Na She dies too, whereupon a friendly god greets

him and takes him to visit hell, where he sees his parents languishing. He
is overcome with grief and laments his helplessness to save them. He is
further distraught thinking that with all the merit he made for them-with
the Buddhist funerals and the merit he had his parents make in fting the
monks and beggars-they definitely should have been reborn in a good
place. Magically, Na She returns to life and goes to see the Buddha, recounting everything and begging the Buddha to tell him what merit is
necessary to set his parents free from their hellish suffering. The Buddha
first explains the trick Na She's parents played on him-an explanation
that Na She cannot accept. He instead blames himself but the Buddha
gives him the divine eye to see for himself the karmic causes of his parents' fall. Na She realizes he has been duped by his loved ones and laments again. The Buddha consoles him and explains how to make an offering to the Buddhist establishment at the end of the surnmer retreat. No
date is given, but we can assume that the date is either 7115 or 8/15, the
two accepted dates for ending the retreat. The Buddha further explains
Nascent Buddhst Fitiat
piety 5t
that even though Na she did his utmost

for his parents during their firnerals, the dead only get one seventh
of this merit, and upp*"rry it was not
enough' However, the Buddha promises
that they can be completely freed
with the summer offering to the Sangha.
This story has two main themes, besides

being a basic ,roof story,, of
karmic effects. First and foremost, it
explains that funerar rites need to be
supplemented.2. Buddhist funeral rites
are mandatory and appear to be efficacious up to a point, but if they
are not conjoined with a yearly offering-and should parents have even slight sins-then
one,s father and
mother may st'l end-un in helr or in
a hungry-ghost realm. Thus the story
affempts to extend funeral procedures
from personal, .,one_time only,,
rites to public, group offerings that
need to be performed annually. Besides giving the Buddhists more regular
income, this arso provides a
Buddhist counterpart to the usual s"aronal
offerings made t deceased
parents according to the Confucian
model.27
The second theme appears to be directed
toward planting seeds of suspicion about parents. Na she is such
a nice son, and though the term .,firial" is never used, the text goes out of its
way to add Confucian touches
to the description of his deporfment,
such as the way he piously greets his
parents in the moming. His filial
emotions are even clearer in the way he
misses them so much when they die
and cries so hard when he discovers
they have been reborn in helr. similarry,
once back on earth, he turns first
to his family elders for advice. Finalry,
and most tellingry, when the Buddha explains to him that his parents
are cheats, Na She will not believe it
and instead blames himself.
In short' Na She is always doing the filiat
thing but is rooked by his
stingy, treacherous, anti-Buddhist parents.
A fifth-century reader might
naturally draw the conclusion that no
matter how filially you treat your
parents, you should always suspect
that they are up to something and may
not be fulfilling the Buddhist dictates you
gave them. The par-adigmatic
example of this treachery is found at
the beginning of the sto-ry, when Na
She gives his parents a Buddhist
task that he carurot oversee. As soon as
he is out of sight, his parents disobey
him and make the karmic causes
that will land them in the ghost rearm
after their deaths. The apparent so-
52
Nascent Buddhist
Nascent Buddhist
Filial PietY
lution to parents'potential trickery is to regularly perform the fall offering, which-as a short commentarial passage at the end of the story assend them to heaven regardless of what they have
done.28 Thus in this text the fall offering seems to function as a kind of
"catch-all" filial prophylactic that protects pafents against themselves and
sures the
reader-will
ensures that sons have the means to repay them in
full.
This text sets up a basic paradigm in which traditional frlial devotion is

relied on to motivate sons to save pafents qua sinners with new Buddhist
techniques. Na She's filial piety, Confucian as it is, provides the motivation for saving parents who are, from a Buddhist perspective, far from deserving. The author of this story damns Na She's parents with Buddhist
sins but provides them with redemption by drawing on the son's Confu-
cian motivations, which are fulfilled in Buddhist practices. Thus the

author piggybacks Buddhist patronage on Confucian concems for parents.
The narrative of Na She being tricked by his parents is most likely a
takeoff from an vadana called (Jttara's Mother Falls into the Ghost
Realm, found in the collection of One Hundred Avaddnas Q4vadnaiataka).2e This collection of stories was translated into Chinese in the
fourth century, so it is likely that the author of "The Story of Na She" had
access to it if he was working between this date and the appearance of
The consecration sutra in 457. Certainty with regard to the connection
between "The Story of Na She" and (Jttara's Mother is based on the
similarity in plots. Both narratives are based on the parent(s) defying the
son,s orders to fte monks after he leaves on a business trip, having divided his funds into three parts. This is followed by the trick of strewing
food about in a deceptive ploy to convince the son otherwise. In both
is followed immediately by the parent(s) dying and

the son's honible discovery that, contrary to his hopes, his parent(s) are
suffering in ghost realms. Both stories resolve with the son turning to the
Buddhist establishment to right the wrongs of his devious parent(s)'
The main difference is that tn (Jttara's Mother Falls into the Ghost
Realm it is not pafents who are devious but only the mother who is evil.
uttara's father dies at the beginning of the story and is not involved in the
cases this treachery
Filial Piety
53
plot development. His mother appears as an "anti-Buddha" figurestingy, morally dubious, and sharp{ongued. The father's absence frames
the originatr story as a mother-son conflict arising from the fact that Uttara
wants to be,a monk and his mother will not let him, fearing that she will
be left with no means of support. These dramatic elements have been edited out of the Na She rendition, but I remain convinced of the borrowing.
The switch rn dramatis personae from mother to parents is apparent in
the way that the parents in the Na She version act as a unit. They do everything together: they cheat, lie, and die in perfect unison. Never does one
or the other act or speak alone. In short, they still are one person. Turning
this single person, the duplicitous mother, into a faceless parental dyad,
and removing the family tension over Na She's monkish aspirations,

hides all the mother-son angst so central to the tale in its original form.
What is left is a story not of a sinful mother and her virtuous Buddhist
son, but ofa filial Buddhist son and his treacherous parents. The difference is significant and is but one of the ways the Na She version takes the
original story and makes it into an advertisement for funeral supplements
in the form of tbe 7ll5 offering. This kind of advertisement is not found
in the original, which ends with an admonition from the Buddha to the
monks to give up greed. Concern for parents in general is completely
lacking. In fact, the mother never gets saved in the Sanskrit version,
which seems more interested in displaying how bad things can get once
one caves in to stingy, non-Buddhist impulses.
"The Story of Na She," llke The Sutra on Bthing [a Buddha Image]

and Making Offerings, suggests much about the emergence of the ghost
festival. "The Story of Na She" makes its pitch for the 7/15 offering by
presenting itself as a funeral supplement for ensuring the post-mortem
well-being of both parents. This suggests that, when it was written, people were already performing Buddhist funerals with some frequency, and
that the Buddhist author of this apocryphal text could take the chance of
discouraging potential patrons of Buddhist funeral services by admitting
that Buddhist funerals were less than fail-safe. Also, llke The Sutra on the
Dfficulty of Repaying the Kindness of Prents, there is a strict focus on
54
Nascent Buddhist
Nascent Buddhist
Filial Piety
the nuclear family. There is no mention of ancestors or a wider body of

relatives who can be succored with offerings, as The Sutra on Bathing [a
Buddha ImageJ and Making Offerings claims. The term yu lan is not
found to designate the offering day, and Mu Lian and his mother are
again absent.
That two texts eschewed these connections makes it likely that there
was some attempt to construct a7lt5 mythology independent of the Mu
Lian cycle and the mother-focus contained therein' In the case of "The
Story of Na She," it would seem that the author, though drawn to the account of sin and deception in the story of Uttara's mother, specifically did
not want the mother-son focus of the original and easily got rid of it by
adding the character fu ("father") each time the original only said "mother." In making this choice he wrote a text that, like the other two consid-
In all three texts, the

scripting of the son's familial responsibilities requires him to bring the
family's well-being under the supervision of the Buddhist church, but
ered in this chapter, gives parents equal attention.
none argues that he has a special obligation to his mother'

As a group, these texts demonstrate the groping efforts
of the early
Buddhist writers as they sought to establish a doctrine of Buddhist family

values and practice. All three authors chose to make their rendering of the
Buddhist system parallel with the Confucian axis of repayment to parents,
but they tilted this axis over until it pointed to a ner/ set of Buddhist concerns about parents' potential bad rebirttrs and the awful results reaped
from anti-Buddhist behavior. coupled with these recently discovered filial fears about the fate of non-Buddhist parents re assurances that the
Buddhists have the power to resolve these new "nightrnares." In short,
Buddhist problems with Buddhist solutions have been packed into a confucian framework. More specifically, in The Sutra on Bathing fa Buddha
Imagel and Making Offerings and "The Story ofNa She," these Buddhist
solutions to Buddhist problems are articulated within a triangular system
that inserts the Buddhist establishment as a conduit between the living
and the dead. This triangular system remained in force throughout the
history of Buddhism in china, though the motivations invoked for caring
for the dead changed.
Filial Piety
55
Although these texts do not evince a mother-focus, they nevertheless

move in that direction inasmuch as they do not display a father-focus like
the confucian texts do. chapter 4 considers three other contemporary

texts that do show a mother-focus, rounding out the claim that, at this
early stage, efforts to write Buddhist family values were dispersed in a
number of directions
Mothers and Sons in the Beginning 57
CHAPTER FOUR
Bao Chang's Version of ,(htara's Mother,

Bao chang's version of the story of uttara's mother reveals two
important trends. First, it is a fine example of how chinese Buddhists
rewrote selected Indian naratives to more vividly display mother-son
is-
sues.' second, it presents the son as a pure and powerful Buddhist

and his
mother as a subhuman sinner who begs him for deliverance from her
su
rf.lHIS
cHAPTER considers three more pre-sixth-century texts, texts

I that articulate mother-son issues and the growing notion of sin that
Buddhist writers associated with reproduction. The first is another reworking of the story of lJttaa's mother (see Chapter 3) found in Bao
Chang's compendium of 516 entitled Details on Sutras and Vinaya (Jing
l yi xiang). Whereas the author of "The Story of Na She" removed the
mother-focus in the original Uttara's Mother Falls into the Ghost Realm,
Bao Chang's version highlights the mother-son connection and emphasizes her sinfulness.
The second text is the Chinese rendering of the Indian story of the
Buddha going to heaven to save his mother. As in the story of Uttara and
his mother, this narrative recounts how a still living son, the Buddha, rejoins his deceased mother in a meeting that seeks to solve both of their
problems through Buddhist techniques. Although the Buddha's mother is
not described as sinful per se, like Uttara's mother she finds herself beyond this world and still in need of Buddhist rituals.t
The third text is The Sutra on the Filial Son (Xiao zi jing), which belongs to this group of early mother-son apocryphal works because it links
a son's debts to his mother with a condemnation of his sexual desires.
The mother-son bliss of infancy is romantically portrayed, while male
eros in the adult world is vilified. The text makes it abundantly clear that
men who indulge their passions and seek satisfaction in women, even
their wives, do so at the express risk of destroying the whole social order
and forfeiting their own humanity.
fering' with these roles clearly defined, mother and son are magically
brought together after the mother's death, whereupon they find mutual
fulfillment in a Buddhist ritual that cancels his debt to her and erases her
sins. The typecasting of mother and son in this encounter seems to
have
been particularly attractive to the chinese, for it reappears in almost
all
later mother-son stories.
The text opens with uttara being described as an unsurpassed Buddhist saint and stalwart Confucian gentleman:
once there was a p're believer named uttara who respected the Buddha, delighted in the Dharma, and revered the Sangha. Each month
he per-
formed the six vegetarian offerings (zhai), took the eight precepts,
re_
nounced violence and practiced benevolence. All living beings protected
his life and he was called Zhen Zhong
pl_i'gl, ffr4yy_ Ong). Fame and
glory could not turn his mind. Votulwomen and state finds could
not disturb his will. He was chaste, honorable, and hard to sway. He did
not drink, and he was filial and obedient with regard to his obligations.
He
would not eat after the [proper] time and, with his mind empty, was en_
dowed with the way. He did not adom his body with fragrant flowers
or
[decorative] pastes. Soldiers with violent weapons could not smash his
virtue. He was distant from stupidness and close to rectitude.3
After this flattering profile it is said that uttara, through the agency of
Buddhist magical powers, has come to learn of his mother,s sinfulness. It
seems that she believed in non-Buddhist heterodox teachings and was
stingy and greedy. No more is said about her sins or her relationship with
her son, other than a sentence noting that he became a monk after her
death. The scene then shifts ahead twenty years or more, when uttara
is
58
described-much like the Buddha-as sitting under a tree surveying the

ten directions and training his mind on nirvana. While he is in this typically Buddhist pose, we are told that he is thinking about his deceased
mother and the kindnesses she showed in bearing and raising him:
With his mind on nirvana, he sat upright under a tree scanning the ten
directions, always thinking to himsel{ "My mother has been dead more
than twenty years now; I should try to find where she is because I want to
repay the kindness she showed in giving birth to me and raising me (yu
bao sheng yang zhi en)."4
That the text says "always thinking to himself" suggests that Uttara has
long been preoccupied with the problem of finding and repaying his
mother, even though the repayment ritual, soon to be described, only occurs twenty years after her death. While he is in the midst of his apparently regular search for his mother, she suddenly appears to him:
At that moment a hungry ghost showed up, looking hideous, black, and
really disgusting. Her hair was long and tangled about her body; it twisted
around her feet, which were draggittg dirt. Squatting and staggering forward and back, crying inconsolably, she came to the iramaqa and said, ,,I
took up with stupid, evil people and did not believe in Buddhism. With a
licentious tongue I said whatever I wanted, and now I am a hungry ghost.
For twenty-five yers I have not seen a irama4. Today we have met.
Since I died, I am stoicken with hunger and thirst. Oh, that heaven would
moisten me, mercifully give me some water. Save me, what,s left of my
life!"
In this initial encounter, the history of the hungry ghost's relationship to
the monk is not revealed, although the parallel of twenty-some years implies that the ghost could be the monk's dead mother. As she grovels before him, begging for the simplest of things, he says to her, ,,The great
oceans have pure r/ater, why isn't that enough for you to drink?"s She
explains that water tums to blood and pus before she can drink it, and that
food turns into flaming coals before she can get it into her mouth. Hence
she contaminates whatever she wants to ingest. She also complains about
evil ghosts who come to beat and skewer her in wanton acts
of violence.
Answering Ler, uttara gives a diagnosis of her past karma
to exprain
why she is suffering so. The ghost admits everything
but adds that she
had a son who was a perfect Buddhist in every way.
She begins to wail,
and uttara t'ies to console her by asking what merit
needs to be made to
end her suffering. Most interestingly, it is she who
knows what needs to
be done, even though she is the heretic and he the keen

Buddhist:
"with a jar fuil of water that has a poprar twig set in the
middle,6 or with Dharma robes, make offerings to
the monks. Arso offe.
The ghost said,
them food and use my name in the dedication of merit, making

lthe
monks] say, 'May she have clothes and food, and soon end
her life
as a
done accordingly . . . and she was reborn
where there was a great lotus pond, and she had five hundred
attendants.T
h*gry ghost."'Everything was
This is a short but complex vignette. It seems to work from

a repayment
motif, for it is stated that although the monk is in the midst
of hi, gu_
dhist career his thoughts are always on his dead mother,

to whom he feels
indebted' He wishes to find and repay her for giving
him life and personhood. Apparently his longing for her is reciprocated,
for she comes to
him when he is in the midst of this contemplation. More
importantly, by
announcing that he is the only monk she has seen in her purgatorial
wanderings, she seems to be saying that she has been looking
for Buddhist
monks and that he is the onry one she can find. The imprication
is that she
has access only to the monk who is her son.
why the ghost needs a monk at all
becomes crearer when she states

that her suffering can be ended onry by means of an
offering to the Buddhist sangha made on her behalf. No doubt she would arreaJy
have made
this magical offering had she been able to do so. But since
her sinful con_
dition prevents her from feeding even herself, presumably she
is also unable to make an honorable offering to Buddhist monks.
consequentry, as
soon as she finds uttara, she asks him to make the offering
that will circle
around the merit loop and end up satissing her. He
is to be her proxy or
agent who can make. contact with the requisite Buddhist
powers. The os-
tracizing effect of her impurity is overcome via his purity

and status,
60
Mothers and Sons in the Begnning
which allow him to access the Sangha's purity and thus bring her the food
and drink that members of the sangha hold under their sway. simply put,
the logic of the story suggests that the mother's post-mortem satiety depends on producing a son who will save her.
There remains, however, the cool manner in which rlttara answers his
mother's questions. I think I am not wong in sensing a narcissistic element in the depiction of uttara that echoes his mother's dependence on
him. He sits there complacently, unmoved by this pitiful, hellish creature-and he even asks her why she cannot drink what the rest of us
drink. She is groveling before him, but he first investigates her past and
then, in a punitive voice, explains how sinful and un-Buddhist she has
been:
He said, "Previously, when you were a human, you perversely
dis_
obeyed Buddhist teachings, took the [morally] deaf and blind for a group
[of fends], and stupidly followed them, taking calamity for merit. Holding to stinginess, you did not give. Greedily you took and did not share."
Part of this accusation might simply be
etiological-an effort to diagnose

condition-but uttara nevertheless seems a bit hash with her. In fact,
the ghost only moves him to help her after explaining that, despite her
her
own sinful conduct, she had given birth to a perfect Buddhist boy, whom
we, the readers, know from the story's title to be Uttara. As soon as she
says this, Uttara becomes pliant and even comforting:
The ghost sobbed, saying, "In faith, it is as you say. But also when I
was in the world, I had a son who revered the Buddha and upheld the five
precepts, carefully keeping to the ten good [practices] in order to be a pure
believer . . . and frlial, etc. But I was without correct wisdom, believing
the crooked and stupid, speaking witchedly-thus it is that I have earned

this disaster. . . . Oh monk, have pity on me, save me.', He said, .,Why
must you cry? What merit is needed to drive away this disaster?"
The hungry ghost's claim to having "mothered" (as opposed to ,,fathered") a perfect Buddhist boy puts her in a complicated relationship
with Buddhism. she admits to her own sinfulness but claims to have
61
given life to a perfect Buddhist saint, in

effect claiming entitlement to
Buddhist ritual power based on her reproductive
power.
Thus her moral-
ity has been deplorable by Buddhist standards, yet

she has produced what
Buddhism needs: good monks. I detect, too, an
ambivalence toward Buddhism on her part. uttara's mother did not
care for Buddhist teachings
while alive, but since then has been looking for
a monk; she both despises
and needs Buddhism. In another sense, by admitting
her sins and seeking
redemption through Buddhist ritual, she is a
sinner varidating the system
that damned her. This motif is repeated in
later works.
Another perspective on this mother-son encounter
invorves the dichotomy of purity and impurity. These erements are
clear
enough in the enun_

ciation of the mother's and son's respective identities,
but there is more
encoded in the text than perhaps meets the
eye. uttara,s mother represents origins---origins that are connected to
female powers. uttara,s father is conspicuously absent, so she is accorded
the accomplishment of
single-handedly producing and raising uttara.
Even though-or perhaps
because-she is the font of physical life, she is a
being in sin. Ths is attested to by her bodily fitth and animalistic
movements as she comes
crawling and staggering toward uttara, trailing
dirt (which is, of course,
most representative of a chthonic being) and

clad only in her dishevered
hair' Her uncultured, passionate nature is reemphasized
when we are told
that she was greedy as a human, and as punishment
in the ghost rearm her
desires are magnified as she forever wants the
stuff of rife--namely, food
and water' Finally, the repeated comment about
her lascivious tulL i-plies sexual immorality. Thus uttara's mother
is clearly depicted as her
son's antipode: she is a perfect specimen of depraved,
uncivilized subhumanity.
uttara, in contrast, is exemprary in every way, and particurarry

in his
lack of involvement with sex, money, and food.
He is not a consumer of
anything but, rather, is a Buddha-like figure whose
main activity is clair_
voyantly seeking his mother in the ten directions
while sitting immobile
under a tree. The tree is an appropriate embrem
for his identiry in that it is
an upright object on an otherwise flat fierd,
thus heightening uttara,s im-
62
age as a saint who is present on two planes. He is in the world but actually of another world, or at least on his way there.
All the problems surrounding his mother's impurity are resolved when,
after their encounter, uttara performs the Buddhist service and his mother
finds a new home in a Pure Land frlled with lotus blossoms and hundreds
of attendants, signifuing her new state of sanctity. presumably she is to be
forever happy and free of suffering, filth, and greed. Uttara, too, will be
content, and his brooding on past debts to her will cease. The need for
meeting, discussion, and exchange has been fulfilled, their respective
troubles have been alleviated, and the rocal monks have been well cared
for in the resolution of the quandary.
uttara's relationship with the other monks seems ambiguous. He is a

great monk but seems to live apart from the Buddhist institution. As
already noted, he does not know the procedure for taking care ofa hungry
ghost, a standard Buddhist service, and even during the offering he is
on
the donor side of the giving, not lined up with the other monks receiving
gifts. we know that it was normal for monks and nuns to make donations
to the monasteries,s but this does not resolve the complexities of uttara,s
monkhood. Although lauded as a perfect monk, it is not his monkly skills

but the simple act of making a donation that brings forth the desired result. That the chosen remedy is an activity available to any son suggests
that Uttara's solution to the "hung4r-mother problem,' is being offered to
all men. The introductory comments about his spiritual virtuosity heighten
his appeal as a role model but in no way put him in an exclusive category
where others cannot emulate his behavior. In fact, the opposite seems true:
all sons can emulate uttara and, tlrough that replication, assume that they
are like him in other ways. This multifaceted role of monk-as-son is amply
repeated later in the myths that feature Mu Lian (see chapters 5, g, and 9
below).
The last piece of interpretation involves time. The story makes it clear
that much time has passed since uttara lived as his mother's son. And
even though she has died, she is very much on his mind in the middle of
his most Buddhist activity-meditating on nirvana. Depicting uttara as a
monk looking back in time to the source of his being gives the impression

that progress on the Buddhist path is made
onry by completing an otherwise unfinished past. Though his mother has
died and remained invisible
for twenty-odd years, there still is a tie between
mother and son that extends beyond the grave and that must be
resolved. IJttara,s mother has a
rightful claim to his time and his po\/er. Likewise,
he feels obligated to
serve her in some manner. The resolution
of their needs is found n feeding the Buddhist community of monks, an action
which initiates the cycre
of merit, both giving her what she needs in
the beyond and granting him
freedom from any lingering doubts about repaying
her.
More could be said about other issues in the narrative,
such as the exclusive focus on two family members, the punishments
that are imagined
to be inflicted on the mother, and so forth,
but these points will emerge in
other, similar stories. Readers familiar with the
Mu Lian myths wilr no
doubt recognize tnany shared motifs here: the
monk recogn izing adebt to
his greedy and sinful mother, her hunger and
suffering as a hun ghost,
the need to petition the Buddhist establishment,
and so on. Noticeably
lacking in this story are milk-debts and a prescription
for a repeatable ritual. unlike the twist that was put on the Na
she version of this narrative
(see chapter 3), Bao chang's version
shows no attempt to tum a one-time
offering into a seasonal festivar by mandating
that the offering be made
annually on the 7/15 date or at some other time.
There are three editings in Bao chang's version
which significantry
change the narrative as it appeared in ths
chinese rendering lt n" on"
Hundred Avadnas (Avadnaataka; see Chapter
3). First,
Bao Chang
did not feel it necessary to include the passage
explaining how uttara,s
mother faked an offering to the monks. Also absent
is the conflict over
uttara's wish to become a monk. In the original,
as
it
does because uttara's mother
the whore drama unfolds
will not consent to her son,s
aban_
doning her for the Buddhist order, leaving the

two deepry at odds over
what she can rightfully expect from him. As in
"The Story of Na she,,,
this mother-son tension is expunged in Bao
chang's
version, with the

only hint of their conflict being the phrase that
mentions that uttara be_
came a monk only after his mother died.
The third change is much more significant. Near

the end of the Indian
64
story, after Uttara's mother has made it to the heavenly Pure Land, she
wants to retum to repay the kindness shown her. There is no mention of
Uttara wishing to repay his mother for the kindnesses she showed him,
nor is his indebtedness to her invoked to explain their encounter. In the
original version repayment occurs only after the mother's salvation, when
she wants to express her gratitude to the Buddha and the monks. In other
words, Bao Chang takes the original's mention of the mother wishing to
repay the monks and transforms it into the son's wish to repay his mother.
Bao Chang then places this motif at the beginning of the narrative so that
it drives the whole sequence of events.
Thus the story of Uttara's mother, in the form that it came to China,
was about a son and his mother but did not carry any ideology about a
son's debts to his mother for bearing and raising him. In Bao Chang's version this was added in order to cast the whole story as a tale of fulfrllment
of the mother-son relationship, which, even after death, needs to be adjudicated by the powers held by the Buddhist establishment. This reframing
ofthe story sets it in a different key and renders it parallel to all the other
Buddhist filial-piety texts that make use of an "axis of repayment" to engender obligations which need to be paid off with Buddhist activities.
That both Bao Chang and the author of "The Story of Na She" were
drawn to the Indian story of Uttara and his mother suggests that this story
had a certain appeal for Chinese Buddhists. Both authors selected the
story and rewrote it into accounts of a filial son repaying his parents. The
repayment motif in both rewritings makes it clear that Buddhist filial piety is being modeled on Confucian filial piety; however, the differing
treatrnent of the mother shows uncertainty over making her the figurehead of this new style of family values.
The Buddha Goes to Heaven to Teach
Dharma to Hs Mother
The Chinese account of the Buddha going to heaven to preach the
Dharma to his mother was a story regularly cited to prove the filial quality of Buddhist teachings.e It was included in the early apocryphal work,
Mothers nd Sons in the Beginnng 65

The Mahyn sutra on the skittfut Means
for Repaying the Kindness
the Buddha (Dafong bianfo bao en jing). where a version of the
is cited to answer charges that the Buddha was unfilial
of
episode
because his
mother died seven days after childbirth.to Another version of it appeared

in a chinese compilation called The sutra on the storehouse of sundry
valuables (za bao zang jing), where it is set in the first two chapters that
filial motifs.rr Fa Xian, the famous chinese monk who traveled

to India, gave an account of this story in his A Record of Buddhistic
Kingdoms.t2 Bao chang also included a version of it in his compendium,
Details on sutras and vinaya.tr 4d in the seventh centurSz, Dao shi included quotes from Bao chang's retelring of it in his chapter on filial
deal with
practice in his encyclopedia, The Dharma Treasure Grove (Fa yuan zhu
/in, discussed in chapter 6 below).ta Apparently it was recognized that
this account of the Buddha lavishing attention on his mother made for
good press among the doubting traditionalists.
Though the chinese Buddhists found many uses for this story, they did
not make it up, for it is well attested to in Indian literature. This is a case
in which an Indian narrative was available that satisfied, to some extent, a

pressing need in the arena of chinese polemics. The implications of using
this particular story to prove the filial content of Buddhist teachings are
many. First, though the story is a case of a son caring for a parent, it is
unabashedly concerned with the mother. second, breast milk is prominent
in the exchange. Breast milk was not a part of confucian filial piety, and
its prominence here, with erotic overtones, represents a radical expansion
of what discussions of filial piety were supposed to be about. Third, the
timing of the story, which culminates in a grand offering to the sangha on
7/15, suggests that this narrative may also have fed into the ghost-festival
complex.
In Bao chang's version, the story opens with the Buddha about to go
up to heaven during the ninety-day summer retreat.rs He sends out rays of
light from his hair follicles, and Maya, his mother, feels the rays and
"If this is my son, siddhrtha,

may my milk enter his mouth."'u The milk leaves her breasts, travels
across the distance between them, and enters his mouth. when Maya sees
spontaneously begins to lactate. she says,
66
that she is again suckling her dear son, she goes into raptures of delight
that "shake heaven and earth," and various flowers and fruits bloom and
flourish out of season. Then she says to MajuSri that since her son is
coming to see her she is happy and delighted as never before.rT The Buddha then addresses her from a distance, informing her of the transitory
nature of the body and of the nature of suffering, and tells her that she
must seek nirvana and escape from samsara. She pays him homage with a
full body prostration, quickly comprehends the teaching, and achieves the
level of "stream-enterer," which means she will never fall back into the
evil realms. With the sunmer retreat coming to a close, the Buddha retums to earth via a magical ladder, accompanied by an immense retinue.rs
Though the term "repaying the kindness" (bao en), so visible in other
Buddhist texts, is not found in this story, we can still assume that this narrative was seen as an example of "repaying the kindness." Support for
this interpretation comes from the fact that the editor/author of The Mahayana Sutra on the Skillful Means for Repayment used this story as proof
that Buddhism does have teachings on repaying debts to parents. This

trend continued in the seventh century, when Dao Shi included the story
in Chapter 50 of his Dharma Treasure Grove, which is itself entitled
"Repaying the Kindnesp" (bao ez). This evidence is solid insofar as it
shows how editors wished to interpret the story, but as far as I know the
story itself was never amended to say that the Buddha was repaying a
"milk-debt" or a "birth-debt." Perhaps statig this too boldly would have
belittled the Buddha, implying that he was a being with debts and therefore as human as anyone.re However, even without this explicit vocabulary, it is easy to see why editors saw the story as an example of repayment.
Reading the story just in terms of exchange, the interaction between

mother and son is predicated on a trade of milk for Dharma. Maya,
though long dead, has been rebom in heaven, where she remains a young
mother with full breasts, waiting to continue the feeding that was interrupted by her sudden post;partum death. In heaven she is frozen in the
state of youthful motherhood, and it only takes the news of her son's imminent arrival to activate her body, which responds immediately and "in-
voluntarily" (zi liu) by putting out the milk that she seems so delighted to
give. when she sees her milk actually enter the Buddha's mouth, she
goes into raptures. Meeting after these many years, they reenact the primal mother-son bliss they had shared for such a short time on earth. He
takes her love and milk again, but in exchange he is now able to give her
something: Buddhist teachings. while Maya is cast only in the role of
mother, the Buddha plays a double role. He appears as the suckling son
and also as the savior, for he takes her milk yet gives her Dharma lessons
that will lead to her salvation.
Reading from a wider frame of narative timing, the account shows
that, like Bao chang's uttara, the Buddha is thinking about his mother in
the midst of his Buddhist activities. All the other monks are hunkering
down to pass the sumer retreat in intensive meditation and rigorous
seldiscipline. The Buddha, however, is thinking back to his childhood
and wants to take care of a looming problem. If he does not give his
mother Dharma instruction, she will sooner or later fall into the evil
realms. There is only one thing to do, so he goes to her and gives her
what she needs. That he again takes nourishment from her might be seen
as a gratuitous milk-fetish, but in another way it reaffirms their bond.
Mother and son are held together both by her irrepressible passion to
mother him and by his continuing willingness to accept this love and milk
even as an adult. That this mother-son passion is left unblunted in the
story suggests that it was seen as a natural continuation of their earlier
relationship, which had from the beginning engendered in the son a feeling of responsibility and indebtedness toward his mother.
If this continuity between childhood and manhood did not hold, the
Buddha would not have felt moved to save his mother in the first place.
Apparently it does hold because she, unlike all the other sentient beings
of the universe, is imagined to play a special role in his psyche, making
him feel that he cannot leave the world until he has ensured that she will
be saved, too. In fact, the structure of the narrative hightights her salvation by setting at its climax the announcement of her attainment of the
stage of "stream-enterer." The arc of the Buddha's ascension to heaven
and retum to earth peaks with his mother's attainment of spiritual secu-
68
rity. As soon as she has been established in this state of safety, the Buddha returns to earth, presumably because she has been taken care of.
The Buddha is the omnipotent person in the Buddhist system, and unlike Uttara does not need to employ Buddhist rituals or request cormunity actions to facilitate the salvation of his mother. However, by staging
the Buddha's triumphant return to earth as part of the festivities at the end
of the summer retreat, the text implies that the act of repaying the mother
is consummated in a public festival on 7/15. This, of course, makes the
Buddha's voyage to save his mother parallel in many ways to Mu Lian's
(discussed in Chapter 5 below).
More needs to be said about milk in Buddhist literature. There is no
question that, in India, milk was fetishized as both the stuff of life and as
an erotic element essential to feminine mystique. In China, the Buddhists
developed extensive discussions of milk and its role in defining Buddhist
filial piety. Milk came to be
seen as that which gives life to men and also

as that which holds them fast to their mothers. Like the Buddha in this
story, no matter how old a son may be, he still remembers the milk from
his baby days, and this shapes his self-perception and directs his activities.
To sum :up, The Buddha Goes to Heqven to Save His Mother is another
case of a Buddhist son seeking to save his non-Buddhist mother, predicated on remembering their close physical relationship. The main difference between this story and that of Uttara's mother is that the Buddha's
mother is not portrayed as sinful. But in both cases a kind of Buddhist
filial piety connects mothers nd se5- filial piety in which mothering

is to be requited with Buddhist teachings and rituals.
The Sutra on the
Flial
Son
The Sutra on the Filial Son (Xiao zi jing) also involves milk-debts but
gives more clues about how filial piety is being used in Buddhist ideology. Though replicating Confucian themes of repayment2o and alluding to
the Confucian Classic of Filial Piety (Xiao jing) with its simila title, the
author of this text goes out of his way to present the Buddhist version of
filial piety as superior to the confucian form. Though short on narrative-there are no dramatic mother-son encounters-this text is unique
among the earlier apocrypha for nrerging Buddhist asceticism with filial
practice to generate a ne\/ vision of the good monk-son at home. rn The
sutra on the Filial son the ideal discipline and devotion of the Buddhist
monk is offered to the family, as the author tailors his discussion of Bud-
dhist filial piety so that it will buttress the demands of the chinese famLlv."
Another odd thing about this work is that the author does little to make
the text look like a typical Buddhist sutra. Most Buddhist sutras open
with a stylized introduction that explains the occasion of the teaching and
the audience in attendanc e. rn The sutra on the Fitial son the introduction
is skipped and we are plunged right into the problem of debts. In the list
of debts, the mother's contribution is emphasized and there is a fairly

evocative description of infantile pleasures :
The Buddha said to the monks, "when your parents gave birth to you,
[your mother] was pregnant fo ten months, her body was as though it had
a severe sickness. on the day ofyour birth, she was scared and your father
was terrified. These emotions are hard to describe. After you were born
she put you in the dty places and slept in the damp ones.22 She was so
completely sincere [in her caring for you] that she even turned her blood
into milk lfor youl. [Then] you were petted, fed, bathed, and given
clothes, food, and instruction [on the need] to pay respect to teachers and
friends, and to offer support to the worthy and the elderly
Qun chang).
When the son's face was happy his parents were happy. When the son
was sad, his parents' heart burned. When you went out, they missed you.
And when you returned, they looked after you. They were so concerned
that you not do something bad. With your parents giving you so much
(en), how are you going to repay it?"23
Though the mother is mentioned more often than the father, the father is
included in this recollection of birttr and infancy. He is worried about the
boy and the mother, and later he is presumably involved in giving instruction to the boy. Still, most of the actions are focused on what the
70
mother did for the boy, giving the sense that the father's role was secondary.
To make sense of the range of Buddhist statements on mothering, I

suggest that the mother's contributions be divided into two groups: (1)
her sacrifices-the pain and suffering that she takes upon herself to give
life to him, and (2) her love-those tender acts of love that she lavishes
on him. In this sutra, the acts of sacrifice predominate. Reproduction is
depicted as preeminently costly to the mother: pregnancy is a burden
comparable to a severe sickness, she has to sleep in the wetted bed, and
breast-feeding involves the sacrifice of her own blood, which is transformed into nutrients for the boy. This piece of ideology on lactation is
significant because this is one of the first apocryphal texts to describe
breast milk as a blood-derivative. This topic became particularly important in later Buddhist discussions of mother's sacrifices.
The explanation of lactation as a transformation of the mother's blood
is probably an import from India, since several texts in PAli and Sanskrit
mention it.24 But once again, in the transmission of an Indian idea to the
Chinese context, an important change is made. The spin that the Chinese
author puts on this borrowed concept is packed in the phrase, "She was so
completely sincere [in her caring for you] that she even turned her blood
into milk [for you]." With this framing, the physiological fact of lactation
is construed as an intentional sacrifice on the mottrer's part. None of the
passages in Indian literature that I have found explains lactation as evidence of the mother's willed kindness.
The final section of this part of the text describes the early period of
the boy's life and focuses on the close reciprocal relationship between
'Whatever
son and parents.
he does and feels affects them. Evidently this
intense parent-child bond is to be a model for him to emulate in his adult
years. Reading the text and becoming aware of the first half of the repayment equation, as defined by his parents' kindness, the (male) reader
is subtly asked to complete his side of the equation by retuming a similitude of the kindness he long ago received from them.
Having established the magnitude of the debt, ttre text moves to its po-
7l
lemical position. Leaving little to the imagination, the Buddha asks whether giving parents physical satisfaction is enough:
The V/orld-Honored One said, "As for a son caring (yang) for parents,
if he should supply them with ambrosia of a hundred flavors to satisfy
their tastes, heavenly orchestras for them to listen to, and first-rate clothes
that make their bodies resplendent, or, again, if a son carried his parents
around on his shoulders throughout the world until the end of his life-to
match the benevolence and nurturing [they showed him]-could that be
called filial piety?"
All the ramanas said, "There is no greater frlial piety than this.,'
These monks are obviously playing the role of straw men so that the
Buddha can straighten out wrong views about how to repay one's parents.
The author repeats the trope of the son carrying his parents around on his
in The Sutra on the Dfficulty of Repaying

the Kindness of Parents (see Chapter 3). Here, again, the Buddha denounces this kind of filial piety as superficial and moves on to discuss
shoulders that was dismissed
what parents really need:

The Buddha said, "It is not to be considered filial piety. As long as
's parents are ignorant and do not worship (feng) the Three Jewels
(zun) and are cruel and vicious, deceitful and dishonest, lecherous and
adulterous, lying, drunken, and rowdy, with their backs tumed against the
Way in this manner, then a son must do everything possible to enlighten
them. If they are so deluded, then in order to convert them, you should
present them with a similitude [of their fate] by showing them the em_
peror's prisons. [Explain to them that] all the prisoners' punishments are
due to their own waywardness. Their bodies covered with various poisons,
they summon their own deaths. At the end of their lives, their spirits
(shen) are tethered to Mt. Tai. There they are scalded and burned, suffering thousands of tortures, and one is alone with no way to escape. fTell
theml it is because of their evil ways that they will meet this awfur fate. If,
after this instruction, they still do not reform [their evil ways], then you
must cry and lament and go on a hunger strike. your parents, even though
they do not understand, will, from the pain of love (i en zhi tong) and.
one
72
fearing that their son will die, fully admit their [errors], get control over
their minds, and worship the Way (chong dao)."
Knowing the seriousness of the situation, a son must awaken his wayward parents with the threat of future torture.2s He is to take them to the
imperial torture fields where they can witness analogs of what will befall
them if they do not convert. Failing this direct assault on their nonBuddhist beliefs, the son is to start a hunger strike, threatening that his
parents will lose him should they not obey his commands to convert. Regardless of the techniques recommended, converting parents to Buddhism
is vaunted as the sole means to repay them, and thus the axis of this text
has much in common with that
of The Sutra on the Dfficulty of Repaying

the Kindness of Parents. The difference is that The Sutra on the Filial
,Son presents a more radical and high-strung rhetoric;
The Sutra on the
Dfficulty of Repaying the Kindness of Parents. parents were never described in this derogatory maffier.
Following this is more discussion of the boons of conversion:
If your
will make a resolution to uphold the five Buddhist precepts to (l) be benevolent and not kill, (2) be pure and yielding and not
steal, (3) be chaste and not lascivious (yin), (4) be trustworthy and not lie
or cheat, and (5) be frlial and not get drunk, then in the lineage (zong) parents will be benevolent and childrer/sons will be fi1ia1.26 The husband will
be upright and the mother will be chaste, and the nine generations2T of the
clan will be harmonious and the servants will be obedient. The benefit will
spread far and wide, and [all] those who have blood2s will be grateful
parents
(shou en). And among all the Buddhas of the ten directions, along with the
heavenly nagas, the ghosts and gods, the upright princes, the loyal offi-
cials and the vast commoners, there will be none who do not respect and
cherish [your family] or protect it and make it peaceful. Even if there are
perverted [government] policies, with the machinations of deceitful concubines, wicked sons, and witchy wives [making] everything weird and
depraved, there is nothing they could do [to this household]. And thus
both your parents would while alive always be at ease, and at death their
spirits (gi ling) wouJd be reborn in heaven, [where] they would be with
all the Buddhas and get to hear the Dharma and

achieve the Way, and
thereby transcend this world and be forever

free of suffering.
The suta would make perfect sense if it stopped

here. The benefits of
converting to Buddhism are wefl portrayed,
the obstacles faced are mentioned, and the final resolution is promised-namely,
transcending the
world' In the next section, which is probably
an afterthought or an inter_
polation by a later author, the Buddha oddly
returns to the
initial prob_
lematic of debts to parents, but this time he sums

up the Buddhist repayment project by pointing out only a milk-debt:
Then the Buddha said to the iramaryas, "when

I look at the world, I do
not see any who are filial. Only the practice of causing
your parents to
leave evil and turn toward the good is truly filial.
They must be made to
uphold the five precepts and to maintain the three
refuges from
dawn to
dusk' The profound kindness (en) or ptarents

[shown in] the nurhrring of
breast-feeding (ru bu) is
[a case of] limitless benevolence. so if you
are
unable, with the thee honorables

[Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha], to con_
vert your parents, then though you take care of
them (xiao yaig)'wrth filialness it still is as though you are unfilial.,,
In this part of the text, milk-debts are the lead

item in defining Buddhist
filial piety. Breast-feeding is the one kindness which
sums up and overshadows all the other gifts bestowed on the young
boy as listed in the first
section. with this statement, the hook dangled
in front of the son is baited
solely with the remembrance of what his mother
did in the act of breastfeeding him. The father's love is not manipulated
in this way and receives
no special mention.
v/hat follows is a rengthy discussion of the chinese

gentreman. This
ii is poorly integrated with the opening section, repeats
themes already covered, and
switches to a rhetoric that is much more confircian
in tone. of the trials
and temptations of these elite power-holding men,
the most feared is a
desire for women-a desire that can ruin the
system and cause them to be
unfilial to their parents (as already been pointed out in
section, too, is probably part of a rater addition
because
Chapter 2):
74
You must not fall under the spell of your wife/wives, who might cause
you to separate from wise men and avoid them, and you must not [in-
The sutra on the Filial son concludes with a passage in which Buddhist filial piety is presented as the ticket to family and national happi-
dulge] in your desire for girls, which might be so intense and indefatigable
that it breaches filialness even to the point of killing your parents, making
a mess of the national government, and causing the masses to flee for thei
ness:
"Thus, ramans, stay single and do not pair. To be pure in this intention [to study] the v/ay, that is your responsibility. offe these enlightened
teachings to the ministers so that they may protect the four oceans, and to
officials that they may be loyal [in their efforts to] nurture the people with
benevolence. only when the father understands Dharma will the son be
frlial and benevolent. only when the husband is trustworthy will the wife
be chaste. when male and female householders are able to maintain practice like this, then lifetime after lifetime they will meet rhe Buddha, see the
Dharma and attain the way." Buddha taught it thus, and the disciples were
lives. Your basic intention must be to serve with kindness, follow etiquette, and monitor yourself to make sure you are revering benevolence.
Be vigorous in your quest for morality! Thus with a deep and silent intention, study/practice [according to] your ideals (zhi) and you will arrive at
sagacity. Then your fame will move all of heaven, and [your example]
will illuminate all virtues. Hence when all those polluted wives get together, or those sexy women crazed with desire and intent on bewitching,
or those goblin [women] with innumerable provocative poses, then men

short on wisdom and officials short on insight who see such things will
not see signs [of trouble] and will gradually be seduced and led away until
their intention [to follow the Way] is lost. By the evil magical words of
these goblinesses, [these men] may endanger their relatives and may
feven] kill lords. With a poker face [on the outside] but with roiling emo-
overjoyed.
This passage finally ends the sutra, putting to rest its disturbing images of
marauding women wreaking havoc on ordered confucian society in a
paragraph that clearly seeks to fuse Buddhist discipline with ordinary life
in the family and in govemment. The opening rine is addressed to monks
(sha men), although reminding them to remain chaste is obviously redun-
tions [on the inside], they are angry and arrogant, minds a mess, and blind,
their actions resembling [those of] beasts.
This long digression on what women can do to men strongly suggests that
Buddhist filial piety, like its Confucian counterpart, was to be a restraining leash holding back a man's desires.2e In both Buddhism and Confucianism, being filial meant not giving in to the passions. The family, the
govemment, and the religious quest would

chaos
if
all explode in
dant and suggests instead that the term sha men is being extended to include any male Buddhist, albeit in a very particular way.
i
debauched
a man were to give free rein to his desires. But as the text makes
clear, a man is not really to blame for his desires because he is the victim
of sexual predation. It is the goblinesses, themselves consumed by desire,
who try to lure men av/ay from their duties as well as from their parents
and the obligations owed to them. Thus, though this presentation is significantly different from the story of Uttara's mother, Buddhist men are
again cast as pure, upright types who are in charge of culture, while
women are dangerous non-human beings who are outside the system and
intent on ruining both it and the men who dominate it.
Indeed, it seems that a Buddhist form of asceticism is being used here

in precisely those places that celibate Buddhists are supposed to avoid:
family and govemment positions. Renunciation and seldiscipline are redefined in this text in such a way that ordinary sons are asked to repress
their sexuali8 and yet continue to fulfill their social obligations.3. It is
even claimed that successful participation in society is predicated on this
Buddhist style of renunciation, which implies that good sons and good officials ought to act like chaste monks, self-disciplined in their nonegoistic
service of the group. Thus The sutra on the Filial son more than hints at
an interesting tum of events: though the Buddhist institutions are mining
the resources of chinese society, the chinese are mining Buddhist morals
in order to shore up their own institutions with reinforced dictates for

male discipline, backed by the authority of the Buddha and the threat of
76
hell. This mutual borrowing and symbiotic collusion between the family
and the monastery is the hallmark of later, fully developed Buddhist fam-
ily ideology.
The image of women in this Buddho-Confucian asceticism is a complicated one. Although women are vilified in the section quoted earlier,
the sutra opens by glorifying mother love. Thus it would seem that there
are two distinct types of women: mothers and lovers. Mothers are infi-
nitely good and tireless in their efforts to fulfiII their sons' wishes,
whereas lovers, whether legal spouses or not, are dangerous goblinesses
out to derail sons from their dutiful obligations. Implicit is the claim that,
among vr'omen, only the mother is a suitable love-object.
This dual image of \ilomen in the text retums us to Margery Wolfs
analysis of uterine family dynamics. In this sutra there is a clear attempt
to keep the son loyal to his parents by invoking in him a retroactive love
for his mother. The mother appears in the form she had when she was
most attentive to his needs; the text then asks the son to relive his infancy
and focus on this idealized vision of his mother. With this nostalgia for
the past established in the opening part of the sutra, the second section
tries to deter him from forming any significant relationships with other
v/omen, including his wife.
Apparently the hope is that, by concentrating his vision on idealized
mother-son love, a man will remain loyal to vertical relationships in his
natal family and not run amuck. If this works as it is supposed to, he remains "Mommy's little boy" even after marriage. Failing to keep him under "house arrest" represents the breakdown of all order. Thus the Buddhist tack makes use of mother-son rather than father-son relations but is
otherwise strikingly similar to the Confucian norm. In both Buddhism
and Confucianism, filial piety means staying true to one's vertical obligations by sacrificing other love-objects.
Thus the question arises of whether The Sutra on the Filial Son is
more committed to trying to solve a Chinese family problem by means of
a creative Buddhist solution, or trying to solve a Buddhist problem-the
acceptance of Buddhism in China-by manipulating the Chinese family.
It seems to be doing both, but in what measures?
If the second part of the text is a later addition, then a second

author
wanted the Buddhist discussion of fitial piety to
focus more on the
mother, and hence sought to apply this styre of
Buddhist filiar piety specifically to deter the son's potential treason after
his *a.riuge. The first
section
does mention that women can be a problem (,.with

the machinations of deceitful concubines, wicked sons, and
witchy wives fmaking]
everything weird and depraved"), but this
one sentence hardly compares
to the diatribe against women in the second section.
rhough the first
author is more concerned with getting sons to
convert their parents to
Buddhism, the mention of deceitfur women
proves that he, too,
is concerned about female sexuality, even if it is not

his bte noire.
In contrast, the hypothetical second author is primarily
concerned with
sexual temptation ruining the son's natal family.
He does encourage sons
to convert their parents, but his bugbear is the problem
of male desire and
his solution is that Buddhist filial piety shourd be

deployed to keep the
boy restrained, thus maintaining order in the family.
Assuming a rapse in
time between the composition of the first and
second
sections, this sutra

may show that, as Buddhists gradualry figured
out how to engage the
chinese family, champions of the chinese family (who
courd *1ll huu"
been Buddhist monks) also figured out how
to shape Buddhist filial piety
into arr effective stablizer at home. Though the two
harves of tho text
certainly advance both causes, the second half pushes
more for making
Buddhism a tool of the chinese family. Thus the
text remains an admixture of these two intents, with its two harves showing
different gradients
of concem about these two issues. presumably the
Buddhists alrowed this
development, and even encouraged it, because without

a strong family
basis they could not expect reliable economic
support.
By comparing the vision of mothers in The sutra on the Firiar
son
with that in the story of uttara's mother discussed earlier
in this chapter,
another interesting perspective comes to right.
In Bao chang,s version of
uttara's Mother Falrs into the Ghost Rearm,IJttara,s mother
is not only
the loving mother who bore him and to whom
he has a debt but also the
dirry hungry ghost who shows up when he is sitting
in meditation. Thus
in that narrative the two images of womanhood are
combined in one per-
78
son, albeit in different time frames. In The Sutra on the Filial Son, the
two categories of women do not overlap: there is one's mother and then
there are all other womeq who are to be avoided. This division is neater
and remains unproblematic as long as one continues to look at women
from the point of view of the son. But if we switch to the father's perspective, then the son's mother is a dangerous wife to be treated circumspectly. Thus the designation of good woman/bad woman cannot refer to
the essence of a woman but rather to her particular relationship to the

man making the judgment. Like the quip that "one man's ancestors are
another man's ghosts," here one man's witchy wife is another man's
loving mother: it just depends on their structural relationship. This relational definition of the "feminine theat" supports my contention that the
text is interested in shoring up vertical relations within the family. In
other words, the text sets up a reading experience in which all men can be
made to remember their loving mothers and disassociate them from the
demonesses who reside on the plane of the horizontal.
If it is true that Buddhist filial piety was used as a bulwark against

centrifugal male desire, then we ought to rethink Bao Chang's version of
(Jttara's Mother.If Uttara is really being presented as a kind of hybrid
lay-monk, then perhaps his celibacy and service to his mother actually
work in tandem toward resolving the Chinese problem of male desire that
The Sutra on the Filial Son is so open about. Monkhood dedicated to the
service of the mother then becomes the ideal image for the son in the
family. Though The Sutra on the Filial Son does not ask the son to leave
his home, it offers him this ideal: The best sons renounce pleasure and
serve only their mothers and Buddhism.3'
The early texts discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 present a range of state.

ments on Buddhist filial piety, bringing to the fore a spectrum of ideological positions spoken in different voices and presented in various literary formats. The era was marked by experimentation that, though already
evincing a set of dominating concerns, had yet to find its orienting North
Star.
In general, Buddhists sought to construct a style of filial piety that in-

serted Buddhism as the item of repayrnent to parents. The particular aspect of Buddhism inserted in the equation could (1) be simple conversion,
as
in The sutra on the Filiql son and The sutra on the Dfficutty of
Re-
paying the Kindness of Parents; (2) involve rituars such as funerals and
7/L5 offeings, as in "The Story of Na She" and rhe sutra on Bathing
[a
Buddha ImageJ and Making Offerings; or (3) focus exclusively on a
mother-son encounter where Buddhist doctrine and ritral are exchanged,
as in Bao chang's version of (Jttara's Mother and his account of The
Buddha Goes to Heaven to sve His Mother. In an these cases, recompense of elders is the
task-a task clearly modeled on the confucian dictate that sons must care for their parents. But the way the Buddhists
adopted this equation reveals that, even in this early stratum ofliterature,
they were quite willing to give the mother figure a degree of importance
lacking in confucian discussions of filial piety. Not only do the Buddhists seem comfortable exploring mother-son dynamics, but they are
also quick to try their hands at solving presumably endemic chinese family problems,
as seen
in The Sutra on the Filial Son.
Mothers and Sons in the Ghost Festival gl
CHAPTER FIVE
Mothers and Sons in the

Ghost Festival
THE FIFTH, sixth, and seventh centuries, three apocryphal sutras

appeared that reformulated the mythology justifying the offerings to be
TN
made to Buddhist monasteries on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar

month. These texts have much in common with the texts considered in
3 and 4, but they represent a noticeable intensification of rhetoric and a new level of sophistication in the Buddhist effort to legitimize
narrative materiar, but within this group

there is a noticeable division
between texts with and without ,rurrurirr".,
as we' as a tendency for the
narrative texts to rack specific ritual
instructions. For in tu,,"-,'uttoro,,
Moiher
and' The Buddha Goes to Heaven

to save his Motherpresent engaging narratives but do not exprain
how the drama,s
-"rrug" is to be
applied in the life of the ristenerkeader,
wh,e The sutra on thi Dfficutty
of Repaying The Kindness of parents
and The sutra on the Fitiat son
have rituar inskuctions but no narrative.2
The sutra on n"poying *r"
Kindness by Makng offerings overcame
this divide uy ru.iog severar
ideological claims with specific ritual
instructions and then working the
package into a pit drama far creverer
than those in the other texts.
sutra opens with a standard introduction
that identifies the teaching as given by the Buddha at srvastr;
it then immediatery sets the srage
with a repayment imperative:
Chapters
family-monastery commerce.
The first part of this chapter analyzes The Sutra on Repaying the Kindness by Making Offerings (Bao en feng pen jing), which is the oldest narrative that fed directly into what would come to be called the "ghost festival" (yu lan hui).l The second part details how, in the subsequent two rewritings of the work-The Ghost Festival Sutra (Yu lan pen jing) and The
Pure Land Ghost Festival Sutra (Jing tu yu lan pen jing)-the early form
was extended, with greater emphasis put on three thematics: (1) Mu
Lian's filial devotion, (2) his intimacy with his mother, and (3) her sinfulness.
The Sutra on Repaying the Kindnests

by Making Offerings
The Sutra on Repaying the Kindness by Making Offerings certainly be-
longs to the family of Buddhist apocrypha on filial piety, yet in many

ways surpasses its brothers and sisters (see Chapters 3 and 4). Texts
forged in the same period present parallel dynamics and even use similar
The great Mu Qian Lian, as soon as

he aftained the six magical polvers,
wished to liberate his parents in
order to repay tt. tino.rr'ffiey,,
iraa
shown in] breast-feeding him. When
he used his ..eye of the Wuy; to ."u.,
the cosmos, he saw that his deceased
mothe had.been reborn in the hun_
gry-ghost realm where she never
saw food: [she was so badry off that]
her
skin hung from her bones. Mu Lian
was griefstricken anJ immediately
took up his bowl, filled it with rice, and
sent it off to his mother.i
In this opening scene, Mu Lian appears

like Uttara and the Buddha in the
narratives discussed in Chapter 4. All
three are Buddhist virtuosos moved
to consider their mothers in the midst
of their Buddhist activities. Interest_
ingly, whereas the other two narratives
are forthright in depicting the
centrality of the mother, the author
or The sutra on Repayrng the
ness by Making
Kind-
oferings croaks that mother-focus by rrrr"otirrg

the character "father" next to "mothe'" in
the opening phrase, making it appear
that Mu Lian wanted to repay the
kindness shown by both hs parents.
Two facts in the story make it clear that this
is a rather superfi"iu
(1) the only kindness mentioned
is "breast-feeding" (ru bi zhi en), "or"r,
which
naturally excludes the father; and, (2)
Mu Lian searches only for
mother.a
his
82
Mothers and Sons in the Ghost
The title of the work-which is, more literally, "The Sutra on Repaying the Kindness by Offering Bowls [of Gifts]"-promises that repayment willbe its main theme. What needs to be repaid is defined solely as
a "breast-feeding kindness." Although other contemporary Buddhist filial-piety texts would appeal to a variety of kindnesses, including giving
birth and the more general task of "upbringing," the author of this text felt
that one kindness was sufficient to drive the narrative. The narrowing of
kindnesses remembered to breast-feeding alone implies a mythic cycle of
nutrients as well as the sensualization of the mother-son relationship.
Before exploring the nutrition motif, it is important to clarifl' the timing of the narrative action: Mu Lian is repaying his mother only after she
has died. The text gives us no information about her life or his efforts to
either convert her or make merit for her before her death. Only the fate
of
the mother's soul is at issue here.

Parallel with pushing the required repa).rnent into the post-mortem pe-
riod is a lack of concem over parents sinning in this life. Whereas Ze

Sutra on the Filial,Son spent most of its narrative space explaining how a
son was to reform his decadent, non-Buddhist parents, this text shows no
such concem. It is not even clear whether or not Mu Lian's mother was
Buddhist. It seems not to matter, and this appears related to the fact that
her sins, whatever she did that resulted in her being rebom as a hungry
ghost, are left unexplained. The Buddha's cryptic comment later on that
"the roots of your mother's sins are deep and complicated" sheds no light
on the matter. Apparently this lack of explanation was felt to be unsatisfactory, since the seventh-century rewriting of the work, The Pure Land
Ghost Festival Sutra, goes out of its way to have the Buddha explain the
mother's sins in detail.
As for the nutrient motif, Mu Lian's first reaction to seeing his starving
mother is to prepare a bowl of rice and send it to her. None of the other
mother-son encounters mentions the son trying to feed his starving
mother directly. Though the opening line of the text states that Mu Lian
wants to liberate his parents-a statement heavy with Buddhist soteriology-his first attempt at rescuing his mother is a simple feeding.s He
thinks that with a bowl of rice he can give her what she needs' She, too,
thinks that rice from the world

the situation:
will
solve her hunger, but
Festival
83
it only inflames
When she got the bowl of rice, she quickly used her left hand to ward
off [any other hungry ghosts] and then used her right hand to gather up
some rice. But the food had not yet entered her mouth when it tumed into
flaming coals, and she could not eat any of it.
This failed feeding marks the nadir of the narrative. Not only is Mu Lian's
loving mother starving in ghost land, but she suffers the more for his at-
tempt to feed her. In this introductory section there is only a hint of a

food-loop as Mu Lian tries to repay with white food the one who fed him
with white food. However, in the next section it seems that all the parties
are relating to each other via nutrition, since the feeding of Mu Lian's
mother is achieved by feeding Buddhist monks, who
in turn magically
cause his mother and all other ancestors to attain "liberation from the
three evil realms and to then be naturally clothed ndfed as required."
After failing to directly feed his mother, Mu Lian runs to the Buddha
for an explanation. The Buddha minces no words when he says:
There is nothing you can do about it with your flimited] individual
power. You must rely on the mighty magical powers of the Buddhist
Sangha to gain her liberation. I will now tell you the technique for saving
her, the one that causes all those in difficulty to leave their sadness and
pain.
For those familiar with the Buddhist tradition, this expected dependence
on the Buddhist institution might seem unnoteworthy. But in China,
where care for the dead, especially one's own family members, was by
definition an "in-house" matter, this dependence on the Buddhist establishment may have seemed intrusive and alienating, or at least odd. That
it is the magically powerful Mu Lian who has failed in his private attempt
to feed his deceased mother implies that all sons need the Buddhist establishment, since even the mighty hero Mu Lian has to submit to the Buddha's instructions.6
Another point to appreciate in this depiction of Mu Lian is his relation-
84
ship with the Buddhist institution. Like Uttara, he is outside the monastic
goup. This is evident in three ways. First, in this sutra he seems not to
know anything about hungry ghosts and how futile it is to try to feed
them directly-a knowledge with which he is credited in Indian texts and
in contemporary Chinese apocrypha.T Second, when Mu Lian asks the
Buddha for help, he is told to make offerings to the Sangha, suggesting
that he will be on the donor side of such a transaction. Third, the Buddha
even sees fit to explain to him the basics of monasticism, including the
statement that "these holy monks keep the pure precepts, and their merit
ffrom practicing] the Way is expansive like the ocean." One would think
that, with his supematural powers, Mu Lian would know these basics already.
In short, except for Mu Lian's magical ability to discover the location

of his deceased mother, there is nothing in his behavior, in the way he is
spoken to, or in the action he is told to take that reflects his monastic
status or sets him apart from a layman. Thus I believe that in this account
Mu Lian is scripted as a double figure: though a monk, he acts like a layperson, and, more importantly, a layperson can act like him. Any man can
and should do what Mu Lian does to take care of his mother.
By pushing the time of repayment back until it is a post-mortem exchange, the Buddhists set up the 7/15 offering so that it parallels traditional Chinese offerings to the dead. The narrative builds from Mu Lian's
desire to feed his deceased mother, a wish that we can assume to be consonant with traditional Chinese ancestor-worship. But Mu Lian's effort is
thwarted by his mother's sinfulness, a sinfulness which Mu Lian-and,
by extension, other Chinese men-cannot understand, and which ruptures
the possibility of their interaction. The Buddha's remarks to Mu Lian artnounce the properties of sin and explain to the Chinese reader that direct
feeding of hungry ancestors is impossible because their state of sin prevents their acceptance of the offering. The solution to this impasse is an
"end run" in which the food is routed through a completely pure channel-namely, the Buddhist establishment, which advertises its ability to
take in this-worldly goods and put out nether-worldly goods that can be
consumed by the dead, even those presently in a state of sin. This is not,
Festival
g5
however, merely a simple rerouting, for the offering to monks

supposedly
accomplishes three things: (1) it erases the mother's
sins, (2) it ses her
up out of the "three evil realms" where she has been unable
to receive
food, and (3) it sets her in a liberated state where she can get
food
and
clothing spontaneously as she needs them.

Although it is true that the Buddhist notion of sin denies the efficacy
of
traditional post-mortem offerings, it is also crucial to
note that it does not
pass beyond the hunger idiom. This is not surprising
because Buddhist
mythology in general never separates food and morality: sin

begets hunger, while virtue begets food and other comforts
in higher rearms. The
natural world is part of the spiritual worrd, and as a result,
food does not
simply exist, waiting to be harvested by the normar labor of
farming, but
actually comes to sentient beings in accordance with their
morality. By
asserti'g that access to food is a function of Buddhist morarity,
the Buddhists claim to control the very basis of rife: food. The
monastery
then
appeafs as a sort of great cosmic bank and trading
house. only with this
logic in place can the Buddhists gamely argue that their monasteries
must
be patronized to secure nutrients both for the living and

for quasi-living
ancestors who might be in need of sustenance. This
logic tying morarity

to food is the basis of the Buddhist effort to "farm farmers,,,
as discussed
in Chapter 1.
Intersecting this morality-food connection is another linked pair

of
concerns: debts and food. understanding how these two

complex", fit together opens up several issues in ghost-festival ideology.
The debts-food
complex is organized around Mu Lian owing a debt to the

one who has
fed him. Mu Lian's mother has done him a great service,
and her kindness must be retumed- He cannot just drink her milk and
forget about her
but must think of this debt even, or especiaily, when she is gone,
and then
seek the means to repay her.
This Buddhist position again takes a natural phenomenon-breastfeeding-and commodifies it in such a way as to turn it into a lifelong
consideration for the son in evaluating his relationship with his
mother.
This problematization of breast-feeding is consonant with the Buddhist
claim that food is a derivative of morality, for if this feeding were
left as a
86
universal boon in an otherwise strictly mathematical system of merit and

nutrients, then the Buddhist system would have an unexplainable glitch in
it. However, the opposite is being asserted: the Buddhists are saying that
there is no free lunch and that the scales must be balanced----or else.
This is troubling enough, but on a deeper level the myth implies that
by taking her milk Mu Lian has inadvertently cast his mother into a state
of hunger. His suckling, in this reading, is actually a kind of thievery.
This is evident in the fact that her rescue is his job. Since the son is the
cause of his mother's depletion, he is responsible for restoring her to
health-by "feeding her back,"
so to speak.
Going one step farther, the myth suggests that the flow of generations
is not a smooth system of reproduction because birth makes sons indebted,
and mothers hungry and damned. "Son-production" itself is ultimately

implicated in the etiology of Mu Lian's mother's sad fate. Reproduction
is congenitally uncomfortable for both of them, and can be resolved only
after the mother's death, when the son settles the imbalance occasioned
by his birth. This he does by making offerings to Buddhist monks,

thereby escaping from his state of indebtedness and freeing his mother
from her purgatorial state of sinful hunger. In poetic terms, she presides
over his entrance into being, and he over her exit from being. The two
moments, though separated in time, are coffiected by the son's enduring
sense ofindebtedness. Besides hooking the past to the present and future,
this narrative requires two intimate persons to negotiate their relationship
via a public institution, the Buddhist monastery, which claims to be able
to settle this very private affair.
Several threads are left hanging. First,
it would seem that the impera-
tive for the son to liberate his mother could have been intensified by emphasizing the love and devotion between them. If this were the nature of
their relationship, then the debt to her would be less a millstone and more
a reciprocal affair, with fewer overtones of obligation. However, The Sutra on Repaying the Kindness by Making Offerings contains minimal
mother-son emotions: Mu Lian is distraught to see his suffering mother
and upset enough to race back to the Buddha to recount his vision, but
Mothers and Sons in the Ghost Festival g7

there are no other clues about mother-son intimacy. Moreover, unlike the
narrative in uttara's Mother, mother and son never really meet, and they
remain separated and incommunicative to the end of the sutra.
Second, though the first part of the story is only about Mu Lian saving
his mother, the second part extends Mu Lian's duties until they encompass rescuing a long chain of deceased relatives. As the Buddha explains,
this offering, which Mu Lian originally made in lieu of directly feeding
his mother, has efficacy for a wider set of ancestors:
on the fifteenth of the seventh month, you must, for the seven generations of parents, who ae in dire straits, gather together grains, rice, and
the five fruits, and pour (guan) them into bowls,
[and collect] incense, oil,
candles, beddings and mathesses-in short, all the prettiest and sweetest
things in the world, to offer (gong yang) to the Sangha.
what began solely as Mu Lian's concem for his mother has expanded to
include care for seven generations of parents. Mu Lian,s concern for his
mother's fate serves as a hook by which to pull him into taking care of a
much wider group of ancestors.
If we take the opening sentence of the sutra at face value, Mu Lian
v/ants to take care of both parents, even if he seems preoccupied with his
mother; nevertheless, the Buddha's extension of this concem to seven
generations is far beyond Mu Lian's stated motivations. Hence the text
encourages sons to use Buddhist techniques for saving ancestors by appealing to their concern for, and fears about, their mothers.
In this formulation, the will to care for the dead is not derived from
anything that the father may have given to the son, as in confucian filial
piety. For the Buddhists, the will to reciprocate is invoked strictly by referring to what comes from the mother-a "milk-kindness," to be exact.
This mother-focus, however, does not imply the opening up of a matriline,
since it appears that the group of ancestors to be cared for remains patrilineal. This is essential to Buddhist filial piety: mother-son love is relied
on to support patrilineal concems, even as mother-son love links those
patrilineal concerns to Buddhist patronage. with this admittedly involved
reading of the first ghost-festival text behind us, we can profitably tum to
88
Mothers and Sons in the Ghost Fesrival 89
later versions to see how the dynamics of this narrative were manipulated
and rearranged.
The Ghost Festval Sutra

Approximately eighty years after the The Sutra on Repaying the Kindin circulation, there is evidence that it was substantially rewritten and retitled as The Ghost Festival
Sutra.s Noting the connection between these two texts and the changes in
their contents provides some indication of how sixth-century Buddhist
editors wished to direct their ideology.n Because these two texts have not
been read this way before, I will briefly document how I see their history.
The Ghost Festival Sutra is twice as long as Repaying the Kindness.Its
first part replicates almost all of Repaying the Kindness, the only difference being the interpolation of a number of phrases and commentarial
statements. The second part shows no organic relationship either to the
first part or Io Repaying the Kindness and is poorly connected to the first
part, with an awkward transition which gives the feeling, as the Chinese
phrase puts it, of someone "painting legs on sls"-i.e., of being a
gratuitous afterthought that does nothing to enhance the beauty or design
ness by Making Offerings was known to be
of the original.lo Reading closely, I detect a sameness between the second

section and the commentarial passages in the first part, and thus the inter-
polations in the first part were probably done by the same editor who
added the second section.
in the first few lines of The Ghost Festival Sutra, the revising editor
changed very little, copying Repaying the Kindness nearly verbatim. Besides single-character changes and a few passages where characters are
placed in a slightly different order, there are only two significant alterations. The first is an added seven-character phrase explaining Mu Lian's
reaction to his failure to feed his mother: "Mu Lian cried out loudly in
sorrow and wept." The second interpolation is longer and more revealing.
In explaining to Mu Lian the causes of his failure, the Buddha adds:

"Even [you cannot achieve this feeding] though your filial submission resounds [everywhere], shaking heaven and earth. Neither the gods of
heaven nor the gods
of earth, nor the evil
demons of the heterodox

[sects], nor the Daoist masters, nor the four heavenly kings can achieve
ttris either."lr
while the first addendum does little more than play up Mu Lian's reaction to his mother's suffering, the second emphasizes Mu Lian's filial
devotion more directly-the Buddha bequeaths to him the honor of being
one "whose filial piety shakes heaven and earth," suggesting that Mu
Lian is to be seen as the epitome of filiality. The second half of this added
passage also provides a more direct attack on competing religious specialists and altemative non-Buddhist avenues of power in the cosmos. By
including all other gods and Daoist practitioners in the list of useless
routes for dealing with the dead, the editor has the Buddha stake out his
territory and make it understood that the Buddhist institution has exclusive rights to perform this religious function. This rider is sensible given
that soon after the Buddhists developed this ritual, Daoist versions of the
ghost festival were crafted, complemented by several texts on debts to
mothers. Thus this added disclaimer may reflect the growing competition
between the Buddhists and Daoists over performing these rites.12
In the first section, The Ghost Festival sutra adds several other passages worth noticing. It is twice mentioned that the recipients of this offering include the donor's parents of this lifetime. In the tacked-on second
half of the sutra, this added boon is mentioned five more times, so the
editor seems determined to ensure that the reader not get the idea that
somehow this offering will benefit only those ancestors prior to, but not
including, one's current parents. one added passage even alows that the
of this lifetime need not have died in order to expect benefits

from this offering, since "present parents will be wealthy, happy, and live
a hundred years." This explicit inclusion of current parents and the promise of their obtaining worldly boons presumably adds to the attractiveness
of the offering. clearly the additions in this section advertise a wider
range of incentives for the offering, in that, whether dead or alive, the donor's parents are definitely going to benefit.
Another set of nev/ passages in The Ghost Festival sutra has to do
with the Buddhist establishment. Twice a phrase gratuitously adds that
parents
90
lu[others and Sons in the Ghost
the offering is "for the monks of the ten directions," suggesting that the
editor saw a need for drawing donors to the larger, public monasteries as
opposed to the smaller, privately run ones.l3 Of interest, too, is the dele-
Festival gl
being a good Buddhist as seen

in Mu Lian,s question to the Buddha
that
sets the tone for this tacked-on
section: ..Are those suht
those who practice
isciples,
filial
submission . . . also to make this

offering?,,
Three other passages underline
the conviction that Buddhists are
being
filial when they make the ghost-festival
offering. The filial theme is also
supported by the declaration
that this 7/r5 0ffenngis to be made
to ..re_
pay parents for the kindness
they showed in raising and loving
us.,, with
this statement the repayment logic
of Mu Lian's motivation in the first
section is expricitry transposed
onto the repeatable public offering
in a
way onry hinted at in Repaying the
Kindness. In fact, after its title and
the
opening passage about Mu Lian
wishing to repay the kindness of breast_
feeding, Repaying the Kndness
tion of a passage in Repaying the Kindness that had monk-adepts flying

around in the sky. Why did this have to go? Perhaps it made the Buddhists look too unbelievable, or too similar to other magicians.ra Another
added passage explains that the monks are to place donors' offerings in
front of a stupa before partaking of the food themselves. This passage,
besides suggesting a slight refinement in the ritual sequence, also points
to the likelihood that stupa worship was gaining headway in monasteries
and that the ghost-festival ritual could be consummated only by appealing
to the power and sanctity of a stupa.rs Finally, at the end of the first par-t
or The Ghost Festival sutra, there is a garbled expansion of the conclusion of Repaying the Kindness. This badly reworked section explains that
satisfies the filial requirement

to recompense parents.
Mu Lian finally stopped weeping and that his mother was liberated that
same day from the pain of being a hungry ghost. So despite the awkward
wording, the drama is more neatly resolved than in Repaying the Kind-
are
several explanations that hint
at the way the ghost-festival offerirrg
and its
ideology were working their way
into chinese culture. For one thing,
the
term "ghost festival" (1,,u tan)
finally appears in the teaching. As
rr",n"r',"ir"rutes that the 7/15 0ffering
Also in the tacked-on section of Tie

Ghost Festivar sutra,there
men_
tioned above, this term never
appear s in Repaying the Kindnesr,
even
though the text is referred to as
the yu lan jingin Bao chang,s compendium of 516''6 Debates over the
zess, which never confirmed this huppy ending.
These additions in The Ghost Festival Sutrq are clumsily stuffed

around the original Repaying the Kindness, and most of them complicate
matters, sometimes to the extent of rendering passages ungrammatical.
The editor of The Ghost Festival sutra seems to have felt constrained to
keep Repying the Kindness relatively intact, and yet to have been equally desirous of beefing up sections here and there. The result is a piece of
literature that is a near disaster, repetitive and awkward in a way that Repaying the Kindness never is. Nevertheless, as a historical document The
Ghost Festival Sutra suggests quite a bit about what was in the air in the
sixth century as the Buddhists drew up their own versions of family val-
meaning or
rn" *rm yu lan
have
been
extensive in twentieth-century
discussions of the ghost festivar,
but I see
no reason not to understand it the
way the chinese did-as a transritera_
tion of the Sanskrit avalamban,

,,'"unirrg ..hanging upside down.,, The
term avarambqna was used in
India to refer to the state of hungry ghosts
and was presumably brought over
with other doctrin", uboit- hungry
ghosts'r7 The Buddhist,view
was that hungry ghosts are purgatorial
beings "hanging upside down" in
rimbo, *t""." they suffer for their
mis_
deeds and wait to be freed
from their torment
by reratives or fends
making offerings to the Sangha.rs
The popurarization of the transliteration
of this Sanskrit term for purgatorial
rurr".ing
ues and ancestor care.
As already mentioned, the second half of The Ghost Festval Sutra is

not integrally related to anything in Repaying the Kindness and advances
several new positions. First, it makes it clear that the 7/15 offering is a
ritual to be performed yearly. This is implied in Repaying the Kindness
strongly suggests
both the
nelless of this concept to chinese religion
and its powerful attraction.
This punitive depiction of ghosthoo
sheds right on a strange interpolation in The Ghost Festivar sutra.In
the middre of the second, tacked-on
section, a phrase unconnectedly
adds that 7/r5 is a day on which ..the
but never explicitly stated. Second, filial piety is clearly equated with
I
92
Buddha is happy, and the day on which the monks let themselves go."te
In both China and India this is the traditional day on which monks released themselves from a summer of hard practice, but the editor adds
that it is also a day on which the Buddha is happy. I suspect that the editor added this line to more clearly present this day as the time best suited
for securing the Buddhist establishment's indulgences. The message
seems to be that a larperson, seeking to succor his lineage of ancestors
with Buddhist offerings, is wisest to choose the day of the year when the
monks and their leader are likely to be in their best spirits.
The implications of this view are tantalizins. For one thing, the Buddhists are presenting themselves as the keepers and guardians of the hell
and hungry-ghost realms, and holding out the 7/15 date as a jubilee when
the Buddhist institution will more readily grant pardons to sinners hung
up in purgatory.'o The likelihood that the Buddha is being scripted as a
figure in charge of discipline and punishment is bolstered when we remember that, two centuries later, other leading Buddhist figures such as
Yama are explicitly identified as hell wardens and the controllers of sinners' fates.2r Even more suggestive is the way ninth-century illustrated
versions of the ghost festival declare that it is now Yama, the king of the
underworld, rather than the Buddha, who is huppy on this day.22 Seeing
the peculiar happiness on this special day pass from the Buddha to Yama
as Yama gains notoriety for being the ruler of the underworld puts some
bite into the claim that the editor's odd note about the Buddha's happiness on this day is, from the beginning, intended to convey the idea that
Mothers and Sons in the Ghost Festival 93

ment players, there is nothing in this statement particularly
suggestive of
political theory or of the wish to extend Buddhist filial piety
inio politicat
culture; it merely places significant chinese family relations
unde, th" .rrisdiction of the Buddhist establishment.
Summing up, The Ghost Festival Sutra's rewriting of

Repaying the
Kindness attempts to frame the text not just as an advertisement
for the
7/15 offering but also as a statement of Buddhist filial piety.
This is done
in th first section by making Mu Lian more filial in
his actions and more
demonstrative of his emotional attachment to his mother

than he is in Repaying the Kindness. Then, in the tacked-on section, explicit
connections
are drawn between making the offering and being
filial. If you are to be
filial, you perform this 7 /r5 Buddhist offering, regardless of who you
are
in chinese society. Thus in The Ghost Festival sutra the
7/15 date is the
locus of a discussion on Buddhist filiality defined by
the concern with
saving one's mother and the imperative of making offerings
to the Buddhists. Although this conjunction implies an effort to
work a new style of
filial piety deeper into chinese society, The Ghost Festival sutra
is not
nearly as mother-obsessed as later versions. Actually, as
the filial-piety
rhetoric is intensified by the sutra's repeated urgings to save
both one,s
parents of this lifetime, the mother-focus is
somewhat diluted. However,
the mother-focus still elicits the original action, and
the added confirmation of the mother's salvation lets us know that the son,s care
of her is
still a buming issue, but in the tacked-on section no new mother_son
doc_
tnnes are advanced.
on 7 115 the cosmic rulers relax their vigilance.23
A final passage in the tacked-on
section of the sutra sums up the

wished-for relationship between the ghost festival and Chinese society:
"All
monks and nuns, emperors and princes, great ministers, counselors,

officials of the top three ranks and below, as well as all the corrunoners[in short,] all those that practice filial compassion" are to make this offering.2a Here the Buddhists are claiming that their version of filial piety
is good for everyone-and, indeed, that Buddhist filial piety is obligatory
for everyone, from the highest of the high to the lowest of the cormoners. However, despite its inclusivity and specific mention of the govern-
The Pure Land Ghost Festival Sutra

The Pure Land version of the ghost festival was probably
in circulation
by 664, since two long passages from it are quoted by Dao Shi in
his
Dharma Treasure Grove completed in that year.tt This version

of the
"Mu Lian saves his mother" motif is a much freer rewriti ng than The
Ghost Festival sutra was. Though working from the same
core narrative,
it expands and alters the contents in radical ways. In fact, these changes
are so drastic that the text admits that it is no longer
a sutra but an avadd-
94
na (yin yuan), that is, a story about karmic connections. This rewriting is
significant because it fuses the ghost-festival narrative with the narrative
of Uttarq's Mother Falls into the Ghost Realm.26 With these two plots
combined, the groundwork is laid for the illustrated versions (bian wen)
of Mu Lian saving his mother that were famously popular in the ninth and
tenth centuries.
in an unusual way. The

grand
introduction depicts a
setting typical of many Mahyna sutras, and
the promise is made that during this summer retreat the Buddha will exThe Pure Land Ghost Festival Sutra begins
plain Mu Lian's karmic history. The narrative then abruptly cuts to a

near-vaudeville-style conversation between the Buddha and .nanda.
Since the title of the text has the two characters "Pure Land" in it, it is not
too incongruous that the Buddha and nanda are talking about mental
purity and its relationship to the future state of abiding in the Pure Land.
nanda, however, is made to play the fool, spinning a long paragraph of
tangled logic about the Pure Land.21 Finally, apparently in exasperation,
the Buddha tells him, "All right, enough nanda! I will first teach you the
limitless suffering of Mu Lian and then afterward fully explain [this Pure
Land philosophy]." In fact, he never does; and we are left with the sense
that the use of "Pure Land" in the title and this convoluted dialogue are
little more than a foil.
Indeed, the text seems to use these hallmark Mahayana doctrinal concems to associate the ghost festival with Mahyna prestige. The two
earlier ghost-festival texts were always listed in the H-rnayna section of
catalogues, probably because Mu Lian regularly appears in other texts
designated as Hnayna works. Even when he appears in Mahyna texts
such as the Vimalan-trtinirdeia Sutra,he is scripted as a Hr-nayna traditionalist who is no match for the great bodhisattva Vimalaktrti.2s Thus by
giving this third version of the text a Pure Land framework, Mu Lian and
his teachings are graduated to the sphere of Mahyna things. Roughly
during the same period, The Ghost Festival Sutra was "posthumously"
given the translator Dharmaraksa, who was known for his translation of
Mahyna texts.2e Put together, these two maneuvers suggests that elite
Buddhists in the seventh and eighth centuries wanted to glorify the ghost
Mothers and Sons in the Ghost Festival 95

festival by associating it vith Dharmaraksa and the doctrines of
the Manayana.
If
H-rnayana and Mahyna rabers were important during this period,
then Dao shi's comments
in his Dharma Treasure Grove make more

In discussing whether or not lavish gifts should be offered on the
7ll5 date, he says that although the "Little Ghost Festival Sutra,, says x,
the "Big Ghost Festival sutra" says y.'o The passages that he cites
for x
and y make it clear that the "little" text referred to is The Ghost
Festival
sutra and the "big" text, The pure Land Ghost Festival sutra. previous
sense.
scholars have offered the less than convincing explanation that the ,,big,,
"little" tags refer to the size of the bowl offered during the ritual.3r
and
However, putting the chaacter "big" or "little" at the front of a sutra title
was a standard way of marking it a Mahyna or H-rnayna work,
respectively, and thus the size terms designate incrusion in the so-called Greater
or Lesser vehicle. In the mid-seventh century, when Dao shi was writing, he still considered The Ghost Festival sutra to be a H-rnayna text,
as
did his teacher, Dao Xuan.32 euite interestingly, Dao shi takes the Mahyna Pure Land version of the festival as more authoritative
than the more
conservative Ghost Festival sutra. This, too, shows a trend towad the
"Mahynization" of the festival.
The Pure Lnd Ghost Festival sutra begins with Mu Lian mouming
his mother. The passage is difficult to parse, but it is clear that she has
just passed away and he is performing a fast or a feast for
her. In a no-
ticeable departure from earlier versions of the story; here Mu Lian's

search for his mother is not occasioned by his attainment of the six supernatural powers. Rather, the sequence is reversed so that her death occasions his attainment of these powers: Mu Lian, "for the sake of his
[de-
ceased] mother, held the first of the [seven?] week-long feasts/fasts, and
then attained the magical powers and entered into the eighteen kings,
samadhi." The timing of the opening problematic has shifted: Mu Lian's
mother's death is the occasion that sparks Mu Lian's progess on the
Buddhist path, apparently through the intensity with which he moums
her. In other words, Mu Lian becomes
great Buddhist clairvoyant not
96
Mothers and Sons in tlte Ghost

Festival
due to Buddhist practices,

as the earlier texts assume,
but due to his grief
over l0sing his mother. The
10ss of his mother not
onry serves as the font
for Mu Lian's Buddhist achievement,
but ul.o opens up and drives
the
rest of the narrative. In the

earlier
versions the timing of her

death re_
mains unspecified and unelated
to the narrative structure.
Also in contrast to the earrier

versions,
Mu Lian cannot find his

mother' The glorious magical powers
he achieves come to naught,
for the
location of his mother erudes
hirn. This efeat of his magicar
acumen
shows that Mu Lian is being
scripted as afa'ed superman
*to."
inability
to find his mother precludes the
possibity or unyone,s success.
In this
story, his failure breaks his
hearr and he goes to rhe Buddha
Iji:i**e
He sobbed and
wen*o,h"B"ddh;J"ti1:iiJli'','"li,:iJ:.1ff#J:;
asked the Buddha, "worrd-Horior"
or,", hu, my mother been reborn
in
heaven' or among humans,
or in one of the eightee nherl
fnarakal realms?
I wish only that
the v/orrd-Honor" on", t'"

Great compassionate one,
would explain the ka11c
urrd .nlight"n his disciple
and free his
:ii:",
please world-Honor"
o.r, I want to know, I wanr
ro
i$ot""te,
It is rare in Buddhist literature

to hear a respected monk carry
on rike this.
Mu Lian is nearly out ofhis mind
with er;'i* cares not a whit whether
or not the Buddha sees his

deep attachm-ent to his mother.
when the Bud_
dha repries, he does not chastise
Mu Lian for his sentimentality

but only
tells him to relax, for he has
an answer: Mu Lian's mother
has gone to the
hungry-ghost rearm' upon hearing
this, uu ri* roses his mind.
In a fit
of despair, he loses co
the
Buddha's
exhortation to srop
.o:i:#3.i'J,i:il:J-t
The Buddha said to Mu Lian, ,.you

should not be crying and sobbing
so; rather' you shourd make
merit [for her]. since now the
Buddha is
holding the three-month retreat,
tou .rroui on the fifteenth day of the final month [of the refreat]
make the yu tonio*lby filling
[up a bowl] with
one hundred and one things
including staffs and toottrpicks,
and one hun-
Festival
97
dred and one flavored beverages and

eatabres. These should be offered to
the Buddha and sangha, and
will
reave the hungry-ghost rearm and
[she]
the suffering of three kalpas, and manifest
herself as a human with a we'fed body. Mother and son will meet.,,
The Buddha, as in the previous versions,
is teaching Mu Lian the way to
take care of his awful probrem. But a
new promise is tacked onto the end
of this teaching: "Mother and son will
meet.',
This version of the story develops this

new twist in two ways. First,
the description of the mother and son

meeting indulges in hyperbore ravished on nothing else:
At this time Mu Lian saw his mother and was

overjoyed in the exfreme.
Mu Lian's joy was like [when one] searches for
a piece of gold among the
sands of the Ganges and suddenly finds
it. or like a filial son
hearing
news that his deceased mother has come

back to rife. or, again, it was rike
a congenitally blind person suddenly
opening his eyes. lt .,iu, lit"
[the joy
of] a dead person coming back to life.
Then Mu Lian manifested the eighteen

magical transformations: as he
sat there, tongues of fire stood up and
rainwater came out. when
the trans_
formations were over, he accepted the Buddha's

holy teachings and set
out to teach the masses.
The intensity of joy in this reunion scene

matches the anguish that Mu
I-ian displayed in separation from
his mother, which he ha thought was
final. In the space of a single paragraph, Mu
Lian manically passes be_
tween self-destructive so''ow and nearly unbearable
cases the emotions evoked by his mother
cause
pl"ur*. In
him
both
a near ross
of self and
also bring about Buddhist revelations: his
sorrow at her loss leads to the
attainment of his magical powers, and the joy
of reuniting with her generates in him the eighteen magical transformations.i3
The joys of reunion with one's mother are
highrighted again in the
middle section of the sutra, when various kings
rnounce their reaction
the teaching:
to
At this time the kings of the sixteen counhies heard that

the Buddha
had taught Mu Lian how to see his mother

alive again, to rescue her from
98
the three kalpas of sin in the hungry-ghost realms by getting her reborn rn
the human realm so that mother and son could meet, and they felt that this
truly was
very rare and marvelous thing.
In fact, this reunion is so highly valued that the narrative stops once Mu
Lian's mother has made it back to the world, where she is reborn as a
human in the company of her son. There is no mention of her entering a
glorious heaven, as in The Ghost Festival Sutra; it is apparently enough
for son and mother to be together again.
After the reunion scene and the discussion of the various kings' reactions, the narrative moves into flashback mode as nanda and five hundred other arhats stand up and ask the Buddha to explain the karmic circumstances that propelled Mu Lian and his mother into this situation:
'World-Honored
One, what karmic deeds did monk Mu Lian's mother

perform while alive and what sins did she commit that caused her to get
the suffering of three kalpas in the ghost realm? And by what karmic connection (yin yuan) was it that Mu Lian took rebirth in this household to
receive this fate and become a saint? We only wish that the WorldHonored One would explain to all of us the karmic causes of Mu Lian's
mother so that we may all hear.
This discussion of the sins of Mu Lian's mother marks an important expansion of the content of ghost-festival mythology. The author has the
Buddha answer with the story of Uttara's mother, except that now it is
Mu Lian's mother. The sins of Uttara's mother are transposed onto Mu
Lian's, thereby fusing what had been two distinct currents of ideology
about mothers and sons.
As already noted, (Jttara's Mother and Repaying the Kindness by

Making Offerings present mothers and sons in almost identical relationships. Both accounts are built around a pure Buddhist son saving his deceased sinful mother by making offerings to the Buddhist establishrnent
with the expressed intent of repaying her for producing him. Apparently
the author of The Pure Land Ghost Festival Sutra also saw a connection
between the two stories and merged their narratives. He joined Uttara's biography with Mu Lian's exploits by first pushing the whole scenario back
Festival
gg
into some previous age, hundreds of kalpas ago. perhaps

the author felt
that, by invoking the vagaries of eons, he gained
some poetic license
and
made his transposition less obvious. once back in
this remote period, he
switched names and tied the biographies up as

one: '.At that time Mu
Lian was bom into a Brahman househord with the name
Luo 8u.,, Then,
as Luo Bu, Mu Lian experiences what uttara experienced

as the son of
his stingy mother.3o Although the chinese characters
for Luo Bu resemble
the chinese transliteration of the sanskrit name ,,IJttara,,,
this is not as
crucial for establishing the borrowing as are the actual
details of the story.

The sin of the mother of Mu Lian qua Luo Bu is the
same stinginess
manifest in the grandly faked offering that charactenzed
rJttara,s mother's deeds. The Pure Land Ghost Festival Sutraexplains:
His mother's name was eing Ti. This boy loved to make
offerings, but
his mother was very stingy and never wanted to make
offerings. Now ths
son was about to traver to a distant place, so he told his
mother, ..In the
morning there will be many guests arriving, Mom (A po),
so you should
respectfully present each of them with food and make
them happy.,, Now
when this mother's son had gone and many guests came,
she had no intention of giving anything to anyone. Rather, she schemed
to make it look
as if she had made offerings by scattering food, vegetables,
etc. every_
where on the ground, making it look as though someone
had eaten there.
As in the case of uttara's mother, this evil trick causes Luo

Bo,s mother
rebirth in the ghost realm, except that it happens in an .,eternal
return,,
fashion, five hundred lifetimes in a row, right up to the
time of this version of the story.35
Fusing the narrative taken from (Jttara's Mother with the

account of
Mu Lian in the two earlier ghost-festival texts achieved two things.
Most
basically, it brought together two attractive mother-son texts and
com_
bined them in a single narrative that, though as yet poorly
sewn together,
is successful on a logical lever. Second, it combined the strengths
of each
narrative to supplement their respective weaknesses. (Jttar,s
Mother has
no provisions for the listener/reader to reenact the mother-son
drama presented therein. This was overcome by fusing it to the prescription
for per-
i00
forming the arrual 7/15 ghost festival. In contrast, the ghost-festival texts
relied on dogmatic statements about the mother's guilt without providing
any details. If nanda and the five hundred arhats are representative of
anything, then there probably was some desire in seventh-century China
to explain the sinfulness of Mu Lian's mother in a more explicit way'

That this sutra takes as its raison d'tre an explication of these sins suggests that its author was aware of this wish and sought to satisfy it with
his new version ofthe ghost festival.
The Pure Land version of the ghost festival is another text exclusively
focused on mother and son, with the son nearly maniacal in his concem
for his mother. However, in this rewriting Mu Lian, as Uttara, is framed
with his mother in a way that more distinctly suggests an appeal to the
emotions nested in the uterine family. Mu Lian's father is permanently
absent, so Mu Lian is left running a house in which he is the only man
around, with the only woman present being his mother. He has no wife
and no lover. His only concern is his mother. When she dies, mourning
responsibilities fall on him and he is pictured alone, placing offerings on
her funeral bier. Thus mother and son are shown to be quite involved
with each other-and with no one else, save the Buddhist establishment'
This exclusive treatment of mother and son suggests that the narrative
spoke to a powerful cultural dynamic that could be counted on to hold
readers'/listeners' attention and draw them into identifying with Mu Lian
and his mother and their pro-Buddhist solutions.
The emphasis on his mother's sinfulness draws attention to the fact
that Mu Lian is devoted to a sinner----or, more accurately, to someone
whose morality is ambiguous. In Mu Lian's eyes she is a flawlessly loving mother, but in the Buddha's eyes, and in those of the narrator, she is a
stingy, duplicitous creature, so unmannered that she even sits on rice (see
below). But though the Buddha and the narrator see only her dark side,
they do not criticize Mu Lian for his devotion to her' Thus, as in The Su-
tra on the Filial Son, the mother's morality is dependent on perspective.

When read closely, it is clear that this text puts itself in an awkward
position. It is advertising that mother-son reunion is the best thing imag-
101
inable but uses the example of a reaily hideous,

non-Buddhist mother. If
Mu Lian's mother is really as evil as she is made out
to be here, why
would anyone want to be reunited with her? This problem
is not allevi_
ated by recourse to the repayrnent logic prominent
both in the earlier ver_
sions of the story and in (Jttara's Mother.In
the pure Land version, Mu
Lian is from beginning to end simply obsessed with
his mother without
mention of his debts to her. originally she is
alr good in his eyes, but after
encountering the Buddhist estabrishment he
is told that she is ail bad,
though it is never clear that he berieves this. Thus
the polarized appraisar
of Mu Lian's mother is never resolved, and this
is act'alry u rra,,airr" advantage because the story only works when
both images of the mother are
preserved. The action revolves around
saving
a deserving sinner-a
complexity considered more closely in Chapter g.

on a more general level, the obvious desire to rewrite the .,Mu
Lian
his mother" narrative suggests that Buddhist text production

in
china worked under a kind of evolutionary pressure.
Aware of the problems of applying biorogical explanations to
cultural phenomena, I must
make it very clear that all I want to borrow from
evolutionary theory is an
idiom for selection processes. In a biosphere, species
compete for access
to the limited supply of nutrients. Those species
that cannot
saves
secure these
needed items pass away. Similarly, in any
culture there are limited resources for producing and circurating written
material, and even when
that is not a pressing consideration, there is always

rimited access to readers, who are only willing to read so much.
when a text is not chosen for
production or, once produced, no longer attracts
readers, it tends, espe_
cially in premodern societies, to die off. In an encyclopedic
culture like
china, these texts simply disappear into thick archival
collections, where
they may or may not be resuscitated at a later date.
In medieval china, production and circulation of texts

was limited be_
writing materiars were costry, copyists were expensive
to hire, and
few people were edircated enough to read them.
with a range of experimental Buddhist apocrypha appearing, it was impossible
that alr texts
cause
could be regularly circulated, read, and acted upon.

Thus there was probably a rather vicious winnowing process at work: a text
would soon be re_
I02
tired
if it failed to catch the eye of the reading public
and then draw its
CHAPTER SIX
readers into the orbit of Buddhist concems. Under these social constraints,
Buddhist authors and editors had powerful incentives for fine-tuning a

text's message or, when greater adaptation was desired, for recasting it
under a different title so that new contents could be more freely explored.
The imperative driving this rewriting was to keep the engine of life-the
production and reproduction of material and human resources-yoked, so
that the monasteries could continue to receive support from society.
The evolutionary perspective on intertextual competition brings with it
another view useful in reconstructing histories of ideologies. As Stephen
Jay Gould argues,'u there are often points in the history of evolution when
environmental conditions suddenly change, and, in response, the gridlock
The Buddhist Elire Talk About

Mothers and Sons
analyzed in Chapters 3, 4, and 5 are all apocryphal

Tt"
-TEXTS
I works,
written and circulated by unknown chinese authors. In con-
of previous life formations may be shaken loose, allowing spaces to open

up. These openings invite new developments-i.e., new species of animals or, in my scenario, new ideologies set in new textual formulations.
This "punctuated" description of evolution helps to describe particularly
creative periods, such as the arrival of Buddhism or democracy in China.
During both these "hot periods," one can find a proliferation of new
ideological formations being advanced, like so many new species setting
trast, this chapter surveys the writings of three welr-known

Buddhist
writers of the seventh century, Hui Jing, Dao Shi, and
Shan Dao. In their
most famous and most read works, these authors addressed
and eraborated on the question of Buddhist filiar piety. Thus their
writings complement the clandestinely produced apocrypha
and provid" e*apl"s
out to compete under the revised rules of a new environment. Following a

short period of species-proliferation and experimentation, most of the
There is a striking concordance in what these three writers

say about
"milk-debts" and "birth-debts" in their framing of
Buddhist filial piety.
new text-species are quickly decimated by discourse forces analogically

related to natural selection. The few survivors then move on through quieter times, providing the basis of future development.
In the evolution of Chinese Buddhism, the ghost-festival narrative was
selected from among other narratives as one that stirred Chinese sentiments
to an unusual degree. Mu Lian came to be one of the bestloved figures in

Chinese religion, and there is no question that the Mu Lian of the ghost
festival galvanized Chinese support for Buddhist monasteries in an unprecedented way. Proof of this potency can be seen in the way the ghostfestival narrative generated a multitude of variant versions in several later
geffes of Buddhist literature, such as the illustrated texts (bian wen) of ihe
Tangperiod, the early dramas of the Song, the "Precious Scroll" (bao juan)
texts of the Ming and Qing, and even modem films made in Hong Kong'
of
an above-board attempt to define and situate a Buddhist

style of f,rrial piety in the Chinese family.
Moreover, they often draw on the same sutras (apocryphal

and translated)
to cite exactly the same passages. Thus it wourd
seem that the threc were
part of the same "reading group," familiar with
the same sources and perhaps even reading one another's work. This notable confluence
ofshared
source material suggests that in the seventh century
a form of mother_son
Buddhist
filial piety was becoming well
shared opinions on Buddhist
established. And since these

filial piety appear in the works of these thee
sophisticates, we can be sure that the topic was deemed

important and respectable by the Buddhist elite.
commentarial literature was written in a register different from

that of
apocryphal sutras. writing in their own voices, authors of
commentaries
could not pretend that their words were the Buddha's.
Rather, they deveroped their arguments by piecing together choice quotations
from sutras to
104
The Buddhist
Etite Talk About Mothers and

Sons
form and fortify new positions-a

style of writing that amounted
to a re_
interpretation of Buddhism,
since it essentiarized certain
aspects
of the
tradition and ignored others.
Thus their writings are particularry
varuable
rhe lines of thought atong which
Buddhism aetoped in
ff**-
Although authors of commentarial

literatrre rver rra^ +^ gether quotarions from sutras
to make
less racked the inscrutability
of the .ut u f"*". In forging an
apocryphar
sutra' an author made his views
issue fro tne Buddha,s
mouth,
lending
to them a guise of the supernaturar
that covered up embarrassing
or
inex_
plrcable leaps in logic. The
commentariar author, however,
wrote in the
naked right of personal responsib'ity,
which required him to defend
his
more claritv than was emanded
of the stytists of apocry-
""i',i:,l# "*rl_
ffii ilJJtt
This clarity is especialry useful

to the historian when such exegetes
took up apocryphal texts' In explaining
the apocryphal sutras to themselves and their readers, they
offere u-tin of second-order
sinification
of Buddhism' In the apocryphal
texts, chinese authors made
the
Buddha
say what they wanted him to
say, thus initiating one level
of sinification.
A second lever then emerged in the
commentaries on these texts,
which
further sinified them-first by
authorizing certain apocrypha
as legitimate
Buddhist texts, and thn bv reworking
tei,
into solid positions
that could be defended and
handed orrlo tut", "ontents
generations.
Metaphorically speaking, if we
compare the writing of apocryphal
su_
tras to dreamwork, then commentarial
riterature is like the daytime
expla
nation of a dream' The style is
analytic and defensive, as the
commentator
seeks to negotiate between
the literary desires manifest in
the apocrypha
themselves and the rearity principre
upheld by the criticar public. presumably' the urge to write a commentary
was in many cases based on the
judgment that an apocryphal
text was an incomplete publication
that
needed to be further harmonized
with the worrd or perhaps doveta'ed
with current issues. To effect this,
apocryphal texts had to be rationalized
and positioned just so, in order
to maximire their acceptability
and their
contribution to the Buddhist propaganda
effort. These rationalizations are
The Buddhist Erite Tark About

Mothers
and sons
105
valuable to the historian because

they are prismrike: they present
the
apocryphar text in a new light
and simultaneously revear someihing
about
the prism
through which they are seen-nalnery,

the exegete himself.
valuing commentaries for these attributes
is akin to r."ua,.rgh estima_
tion of his patients' attempts to rework
their dreams in hopes of present_
ing him with a more acceptable
version of their nighttime imaginations.
Exploring the elite's contributions
to the Buddhist discussion of moth_
ers
and sons also shows that well-schooled

Buddhists were just as inter_
ested in these doctrines as anyone
erse. Reading the work
of such elite
corrmentators not only chips
away at the overcon cretized,.,big
tradi_
tion"/"little tradition" distinctions
ut arso r"r*";-h"*".J.J"r rn.."
doctrines were formurated. In
severar instances the fusion of
disparate
statements about mothers and
sons courd have been accomplished
onry
by authors werl acquainted with
Buddhist literature. rrrur, uiorrgride
the
apocryphal writings, which developed
as an ongoing ,,creative writing
execise" on the fringes of Buddhist
respectability, there was a schorastic
tradition moving in a similar direction,
which had at its disposal a wealth
of literary precedent to fire the imagination.
The two writing styres seem
to have regularry intersected
and crss-porlinated each other.
Apocryphal
texts advanced new positions,
which commentaries then exprained
and
while adding beguiling elements drawn
1ert1fied
from the archives of
Buddhist literature, which in tu
extended the rimits of the ..writabre,,
in
the realm of apocryphal texts
themselves. with this two-man saw
for
ideol0gy engaged, the discourse
on mothers flourished in china
:riting
in the seventh, eighth, and ninth
centuries.
Hui Jing's
'Eulog1,, on the Ghost
Festival Sutra,
Sometime between 630 and 640,

Hui Jing (57g-ca. 645) wrote the first
commentary on The Ghost Festivar
sutra. Hui Jing \Mas a well-respected
Buddhist exegete from the capital
at chang
An and was known for his

scholarly treatment of Buddhist philosophicar
tracts. A prolific writer
with at reast fwelve works to his
credit,' h" upprou ched, The Ghost Festi_
val sutra with schorastic vigor
and used an outrine format typicar
of the
106
The Buddhist
Elite TaIk About Mothers and
Sons
Buddhist commentarial style. Each section of his commentary was given

a heading under which various divisions were listed, which were in tum
subdivided and labeled when necessary. This was the rationalizing apparatus that Hui Jing relied on to explain, defend, and promote the ghost
festival.
Hui Jing's commentary begins with a long and detailed explanation of
the sutra's title. Unforfunately, the front page of the manuscript recovered
from Dun Huang has been damaged and several lines obliterated.2 Still, it
is clear that Hui Jing categorized The Ghost Festival Sutra as a text that
teaches the way to save beings who are "hanging upside down" (dao
xuan) n a purgatorial state. This shows that, at a time when Chinese
Buddhist scholars could still ask foreign monks about terminological
problems, they chose to explain the term yu lan as a phonetic translation
of the Sanskrit avalambana,meaning "hanging upside dovr'n."3
In the next section, Hui Jing gives an in-depth explanation of the term
"sutra," citing its various Sanskrit etymologies and meanings. This discussion affirms in no uncertain terms that The Ghost Festival Sutra is lo
be accepted as a bona fide Buddhist text spoken by the Buddha. The
timing of this claim is important. lf The Ghost Festival Sutra was indeed
written nearly a century after its predecessor, The Sutra on Repaying the
Kindness by Making Offerings (see Chapter 5), then Hui Jing is claiming
canonical status for it a scant few decades after it went into circulation.
Hui Jing's choice of this sutra as worthy of commentary on such short
notice points to the powerful attraction of this recently revised form of the
ghost-festival story. Interestingly, he never mentions the earlier Repaying
the Kindness, suggesting that he preferred The Ghost Festivql Sutra's
formulation and did not wish to call attention to an earlier and, in his
eyes, less complete account of the festival. Moreover, Hui Jing's discussion of filial piety matches The Ghost Festival Sutra's expansion of Repaying the Kindness (see Chapter 5). Thus both the author who forged the
apocryphal Ghost Festival Sutra and the legitimizing exegete Hui Jing, in
turn and in their respective styles, took up the recent version of the Mu
Lian myth to more carefully craft it into a prescriptive statement of Buddhist filial piety.
The Buddhist
Elite Talk About Mothers and Sons
107
After arguing for the authenticity of The Ghost Festivar

sutra, Hui
Jing devotes a long section to describing

Mu Lian as the most filiar of all
Buddhist disciples. He explains that the Buddha
chose to give this teaching to Mu Lian because he was the paragon
of filial piefy:
Mu Lian is the best at two things. The first is magical powers,

since
with the heavenly eye he was abre to see his mother.

The second is loving
filialness (ci xiao), since, upon having achieved
the fruit [of Buddhist

practice], he thought to repay the milk:debt
owed to his parents. This is
similar to confucius explaining firial practice by
saying that ,.from the
Son of Heaven on down to comon people, alr
should practice firialness,,,
and then singling out zeng zrs firiar and sincere
nature as a [particularly
illuminating] example.a The same
fexemprary device] is being used here
[with the Buddhists]. while ail Buddhist discipres must practice firiarness,
still [the Buddha] chose Mu Lian to be the initiator of
the teaching.s
In Indian literature, Mu Lian was known for his
magical prowess but not
for his filial piety. Now, in china, his association
*ith iir" mytt, of saving
his mother bestowed upon him the additional
honor of being cited as the
embodiment of filial piety.
outside of the ghost-festival mythorogy, there is only
one other piece
of literature that depicts Mu Lian as an especialry fiiial

disciple-the
story in which he and the Buddha fly off to
another land to save Mu
Lian's mother.6 As far as I know this story is not
referred to by chinese
authors, so its influence cannot be determined.
In Bao chang,s influential
compendium of 516, the biographical snippets
no mention of his fliar achievements.r Thus
listed for Mu Lian make
I suspect that Mu Lian got
filial reputation from his role in the chinese construction

of the ghostfestival narrative, and that Hui Jing's cornments
are circular in
his
naturefolow because he is
by the narrative itself.
i'e., Mu Lian is chosen to initiate the teachings that

the most filial discipte, a fact only "confirmed"
Had there been more biographicar material on

Mu Lian available to Hui
Jing, presumably he would have cited it.

In the passage just quoted, F{ui Jing juxtaposes the sentence
that ex-
plains
how Mu Lian is so filiar for wanting to repay the kindness

of
108
The Buddhist
breast-feeding with a line from Confucius urging everyone to practice

filial piety. Clearly Hui Jing is equating the Buddhist milk-debt discussion with Confucius' nonspecific comment about filial piety. Also, by
setting them in such close proximity, Mu Lian is implicitly given status
equal to that of Confucius himself.
After devoting nearly a folio to Mu Lian as the epitome of filial piety,
Hui Jing allows someone to question why Mu Lian first attained Buddhist
magical powers and only then sought to save his mother. Apparently the
questioner sees this order of action as somehow indicative of a slight
against the mother, whose well-being should have preceded all else:
Someone might ask, "Why didn't Mu Lian first save his mother instead
of ffirst] achieving the magical powers and then subsequently saving his
mother?" We answer, "As long as the fruits fof practice] have not been
achieved and the afflictions have not been exhausted, there are obstructions such that one is unable to save [others] from suffering. Therefore a
sutra says, 'One who is bound can never free another from bondage.' It is
also said that 'It is like a sinking person being unable to save a drowning
person.' Therefore, you must have merit and means (defang) to save your
mother from suffering."s
For Hui Jing, the question is not one of putting Buddhist practice before
responsibility to one's mother; rather, it is a matter of ability. Mu Lian
had to develop the magical means to save his mother, which required that
Buddhist practice precede saving her. But here there is a fallacy in Hui
Jing's rebuttal, because though Mu Lian's magical powers are what allow
him to see her suffering in the realm of the hungry ghosts, it is his actions
as an ordinary Buddhist donor that actually save her. Hui Jing's comments seem to derive from a tradition in Indian Buddhism which explains
that bodhisattvas are supposed to achieve buddhahood before tuming
their attention to saving all sentient beings. Mu Lian's actions as an ordinary donor in the ghost-festival narrative make Hui Jing's use of this
technical argument appeff somewhat incongruent.
i
I
Hui Jing's effort to clarify the priority of Buddhist practice versus filial
responsibiliry revea\s a key facet in the development of the ghost festival.
The Buddhist
Elite Tatk About Mothers qnd Sons
109
This is the onry place in the text

where Hui Jing alrows a debate,
and thus
t.nd.n"y in current Buddhist
mythology' In fact, there is a parailer ,between
this disputation and the
subtle shift in narrative timing
in The pure Land Ghost Festivar sutra
(see chapter 5), which
fo,ows the order suggested by
Hui Jing,s disputant and has Mu Lian attainsupematurar
pori".. only after he moums his
motherhe is probably pushing against
some distinct
Because
of the inexactitude of the dates of these

texts, we cannot as_
sume that Hui Jing was fam'iar
with The pure Land Ghost Festivar
su_
tra, aTthough the energy he put
into squashing this ordering does
suggest
that he was aware of a concerte
desire to make concern for
the mother
precede the son's invorvement
with Buddhist practice. Thus it would
,n" Hui
did not want morher_son tropes_so
useful for draw_
:_":T
linS
mg
support to the monasteries-to grow
to such an extent that they might
encroach on the prerogatives
of more traditionar
practice.
Buddhist ,rrorr, ,o
Hui Jing's efforts at thwarting this

deveropment were partialry
successful' for the record shows that a compromise

was struck. In the next rewriting of the ghost festival, The
lilu^strated Tare of Mu Lian saving
His
Motherfrom the Netherworrd (see
chapter g), Mu Lian first mourns
his
mother and then enters the Buddhist
where rr" g"i". ,"
".rublirhn,"nt,
magical powers necessary to save
her. This rewriting allows Mu Lian,s
motivation and the timing of his
Buddhist career to flow out of a passion_
ate concem for his mother,
but it arso preserves the logic of Buddhist
saving power' which, as Hui Jing
argued, must be gained first
before it can be extended to others.
for oneself
Following this discussion of filial piety,

Hui Jing moves into
a long
discussion of milk-debts. At
times his handling of the term ,,milk
-debt"
seems to recognize it as emblematic
of the mother-focus in Buddhist filial
prety, but in other passages
he shies away from this position
and retums
to a language that urges repayment
to both parents. As an example
of the
first impulse, he somewhat
oddly announces in a personal aside
that,
"Years ago, my mother exhausted
herself in giving birth to me, thus
the
110
The Buddhist
The Buddhist Elte Talk About Mothers
only remember that in the first version of the ghost

festival, The sutra on
Repaying the Kindness by Making Offerings
(discussed in Chapter 5), Mu
Lian is nowhere declared to be filiar for his
service to his mother. In fact,
the term "filial". only entered the lexicon
of the ghost-festivar narrative
with The Ghost Festivar sutra, when the important
filial theme was added
ad nauseam. Hui Jing's remarks extend
this
birth-kindness (huai en) is extremely profound. One should realize the

need to repay this kindness."e From this rather overt focus on the gifts
from one's mother, he turns to supply three quotes from Buddhist literature on the topic of filial piety, only one of which argues for recognizing
debts to the mother. Hui Jing writes:
Therefore The gma Sutra says, "The Buddha told all the monks,
'Always think of being filial and obedient, and [always] care fot (gong
yang) your parents."' The Nirvana Sutra says, "It would be better to get
stabbed three hundred times a day with an iron spear than to think one evil
thought toward one's parents. Why is this so? Because the kindness of
parents is profound (fu *u en zhong)." Based on The Sutra on King
Malla,to [we know that] "The mother carries the child for ten months and
it is a burden as heavy as Mt. Tai, and she breast-feeds him for three
years. Thus the repayment of the kindness for being raised is called as vast
trend to the point that Mu

Lian is vaunted as the spokesperson for a Buddhist
filial pi"ty *t i"t i,
becoming less shy about announcing its preoccupation
with the mother.
Besides Hui Jing's use of Buddhist sources
in spinning a riterary
web
that supprt a mother-son style of Buddhist
filiar piety, it is interesting to
note that the line in his third quote, about
the filial debt being .,as vast as
the horizon of heaven," is not in The
sutra on King Maila and closery
echoes apassage from the Chinese classic,
The Book ofSongs (Shijing):
My father begot me,

My mother fed me,
ifyou
collected prejewels
ground
to
the
twnty-eighth
up
from
the
and stacked them
cious
heaven and then gave them away, the merit you would make is still not
equal to even a part of the merit gained from caring for your parents."rr
as the horizon ofheaven (hao tian wang bao). Even
and Sons l l l
Led me, bred me,

Brought me up, reared me,
Kept her eye on me, tended me,
At every turn aided me.
How could I repay their good deeds,
Vast as the horizon of heaven (hao tian wang ji)?t2
These three quotations from sutras provide a set of images that reappear
in the Buddhist discussion of mothers and filial piety in the following

centuries: (1) the merging of Buddhist discipline with filial devotion and
indebtedness is evinced in the first quote; (2) the image of being stabbed
three hundred times a day rather than be unfilial foreshadows gory pun-
Book of songs and set it in his citation

of the passage from The sutra on
King Malla' but there is the distinct possibility
that he did. At any rate, in
ishments for the unfilial in the hell realms-punishments that are imagined more completely in the Tang and Song periods; and (3) the passage
on the agony of reproduction from The Sutra on King Malla (Mo luo
wang jing) is regularly repeated in later texts on Buddhist fi1ial piety. By
selecting these quotes as authoritative and joining them with a discussion
of Mu Lian and the ghost festival, Hui Jing sketched a wider sphere of
meaning that connected filial piety in the extracted quotations with the
mother-emphasis in the Mu Lian narrative.
In retrospect, it is easy to overlook the significance of Hui Jing's casting Mu Lian as a paragon of Buddhist filial piety. To avoid this, we need
cannot prove that Hui Jing lifted the final

rine
of this poem ftom The
a culture where classics were memorized rine

by line, welr-educated
readers would have noticed the reference
. zongMi, for instance, saw the
connection and, in his ninth-cenfiiry commentary
on the Ghost Festivr
'lufra (discussed in chapter 7), quoted this rine and then suppried nearly
the whole passage from The Book
of songs to which it berngs.', I suspect that this passage drew the attention
it did because it is one ofthe few
places in classical chinese literature
that speaks of the mother,s kindnesses' Not surprisingly, then, the Buddhists
used this passage as a tenuous link to make their mother-focused
firial piety rook tradiiionaily chi-
ll2
The Buddhist
nese, even though
it actually diverged sharply from the Confucian kadi-
tion.
The next section in Hui Jing's commentary takes up the question of

milk. The first quote therein is from the huge, apocryphal Da zhi du lun
(often referred to in Westem scholarship by the imputed Sanskrit title
Mahaprajpramitdstra), a text that circulated by at least the fifth
century and that was much revered in China thereafte.ra This quote explains breast-feeding as a three-year undertaking in which the mother
shows kindness to her son by giving her nutritious milk to him and keeping him in the dry places of the bed.'s The next quote is said to be from
the Ekottardgama and gives a fairly long explanation of the quantity of
milk drunk during these three years, stating that the milk is made from the
mother's blood and the nutrients she consumes. Hui Jing writes:
Now, with regard to "breast-feeding" the Da zhi du lun says, "By
breast-feeding for three years, all mothers nurhe and raise [their children] until they gradually grow bigger. During those three years nursing at
his mother's breast, she pushes him to the dry placesr6 and goes to the wet
places [in the bed], and due to her love for her child [something] is turned
into milk with which to nurtwe him." In the Ekottaragama Sutra it says,
"'In the world, sons are born and fall to the grounci, then up to the third
year they are at their mother's breasts. How much milk do they drink in
that time?'Maitreya answered, 'They drink 180 pecks of milk from the
mother's abdomen that is vacated from a portion of the food she ate and
[her] blood. [But] a boy named Dong Fu Bo Ti ate 1,800 pecks of milk in
his first three years. A boy named Xi Ju Ye Ni ate 880 pecks of milk in his
first three years."'r7

These quotes provide a richness for talking and thinking about mother's
milk that is absent in The Ghost Festival Sutra. Thus Hui Jing moves
from the four-character phrase in The Ghosl Festival Sutra, "the kindness
of breast-feeding" (ru bu zhi en), into a wide discussion of indebtedness
and mother-son biology.
By citing these passages to explain the phrase "the kindness of breastfeeding," Hui Jing opens up three lines of thought. First, like the author
The Buddhist
113
of The sutra on the Fitial,son (see chapter 4), he argues that Mu Lian's
milk-debt to his mother is due in part to the great kindness she shows
in
tuming her red blood into white milk.rs clearly, Hui Jing is in
favor of
treating milk production as the willful act of the mother and then
factor_
ing that act of kindness into the son's debts. Moreover, his indebtedness
is deepened because what was a milk-debt is now a blood-debt.
Blood
taken from her innermost being is now the item of transaction
that holds
Mu Lian to his mother.
The second theme is Hui Jing's universalization of the condition
of indebtedness' By quoting passages that begin with phrases like ..all
moth-
ers" and "in the world," the emphasis shifts away from personal
events in
Mu Lian's life and toward a normative perspective on all mothers and

It is not just Mu Lian's mother but all mothers who do this, and presumably all sons should, like Mu Lian, recognizetheimplications.
The third theme is the quantification of milk drunk. Though several
numbers are mentioned in the passage that Hui Jing quotes, in
later texts
the amount of milk drunk is usually pegged at lg0 pecks, with peck
a
being equivalent to a third of a bushel.'e The introduction
of numerical
quantities demonstrates a fascination with the process
of breast-feeding,
as well as an attempt to control it by figuratively pouring
the mother's
milk into a publicly acknowledged measuring standard, the peck. Since
the mother's production of breast milk is explained as a direct
consequence of her intense feelings for her son, this calculation
of the amount
of milk drunk by the boy serves to further commodify what his mother
has done for him and to render their rerationship in a form
that is susceptible to economic logic. This numerical reckoning of feelings on the
debt
side of the equation sets the precedent for a similar procedure
on the resons.
payment side: the son's feelings of indebtedness to his mother

can be paid
off with gifts and other commodities presented to the monasteries. on
both sides of the kansaction, feelings are invoked which are then trans-
lated into things, which are
in turn circulated around the mother-son-
monastery triangle.
rnhis Details on sutras and vinaya, Bao chang quotes this same pasof milk, in a section that has nothing to do with
sage about the 180 pecks
II4
The Buddhist
It simply appears as part of a description of Buddhist cosmology and the various types of birth in differ-
debts to mothers or the ghost festival.2o
ent realms of the universe. 'Writing in the early sixth century, Bao Chang
apparent had no particular use for this quantification of milk drunk,

even though we know, from his rewriting of Uttara's Mother (discussed
in Chapter 4), that he had some interest in mother-son issues. A century

later, however, Hui Jing took this stray comment on lactation and plugged
it into his discussion of mothers and sons. In drawing this passage into a
discussion of the son's indebtedness, Hui Jing wrought a new and powerfully suggestive link in the literary development of the mother-son relationship.
Structurally, Hui Jing's text shows an interesting imbalance. There are
two topics drawn from The Ghost Festival Sutra that receive an inordinate amount of attention simply in terms of the number of words devoted
to them: Mu Lian's filialness, and milk-debts. It would seem that Hui Jing
thought these two topics especially important and in need of extended explanation. Also, he only provided sutra quotes in selective places, and
again only for these two topics. Presumably he saw filial piety and milkdebts as potentially conhoversial and so sought to head off any possible
objections. To this end, Hui Jing provided a number of Buddhist sutra
quotes that, when stripped of their original context, appear to give legitimacy to the Chinese construction of Buddhist filial piety. Other topics in
The Ghost Festival Sutra, such as the purity and power of the Buddhist
establishment and the reality of hungry ghosts, did not warrant scriptural
verification.
In sum, Hui Jing was an important player in the emerging discussion
of mothers and sons in Chinese Buddhism. His commentary on The
Ghost Festival Sutra pulled the text farther in the direction of fusing
Buddhist filial piety with mother-son issues. He took the narrative of Mu
Lian and the ghost festival and deepened its filial message in a way that
emphasizes the son's indebtedness and complicates the grounds of that
indebtedness by introducing Buddhist explanations of lactation. Furthermore, as a member of the Buddhist elite, Hui Jing certified these apocryphal motifs as authentically Buddhist and at the same time carved out a
The Buddhist Erite Tark About Mothers
and sons
115
wider space for discussing a son's indebtedness

to his mother. with his
to a vast literary ffadition, Buddhist and pre-Buddhist,
Hui Jing
drove the discussion in a direction nearly parallel
to that found in contemporaneous apocrypha rike The pure Land
Ghost Festivr sutra (see
chapter 5) and The sutra on the pround Kindness parenrs
of
(treated in
access
Chapter 7).
Dao Shi's 'Dharma Treasure Grove,

(Fa yuan zhu ln)
Hui Jing's writings on firial piety centered on explicating
the contents
of The Ghost Festivar sutra. A different set of parameters
informed the
scope of Dao shi's writing. His Dharma Treqsure
Grove is encycropedic
in nature, with only sparse cornmentary set between
the quotations. This
mammoth work was designed as a source book
of Buddhist riterature in
which the reader could find relevant Buddhist
statements on the hundred
topics that make up its chapter headings. To
apply a farming metaphor
that characterizes the growth of a discourse
itself intent uponlmploying
farming metaphors (see chapter r), Dao shi's
entries were seedbeds of
thinking about mothers and filial piety that produced
a harvest of ideological formations in the following centuries. Three
chapters in particular-those on "Filial Piety," "Repaying the Kindness,,,
and ,.Taking Rebirth"-seem to have germinated new theories of mother-son
filial piety.
Though designed as a source book, The Dharma Treasure
Grove is
also a commentary on the Buddhist tradition.
By juxtaposing previously
unrelated sutra passages, whether from apocrypha
or from bona fide
translations, Dao Shi generated a position on a given
topic and asked the
reader to accept it as exemprary and even
definitive of the Buddhist tradition' The encyclopedia format, with its neat chapter
divisions, acted as a
corral-like device, collecting stray sutra elements
and roping them into a
single herd of comments that would otherwise have
fallen away into the
obscurity of over-produced and under-read Buddhist
literature. on another level, Dao Shi's encyclopedia is akin to
apocryphal writing. As
mentioned in Chapter 3, one common form of apocryphal
writing simply
116
The Buddhist
extracted several passages from a text or texts and wove them into a
whole that, though dependent on the original(s), had been reformulated in
accordance with the author's desires. Dao Shi did a similar "cut and
paste" job, but he was honest about the origins of his pieces and footnoted his sources.
The Buddhist
Elite Tatk About Morhers and Sons
ll7
ate state independently. Second, both authors took milk passages from
Buddhist sources and turned them into mitk-debt passages. Thus Hui Jing
and Dao Shi appear to have been equally attracted to the project of constructing milk-debt scenarios from loose items in the Buddhist canon that
had previously lacked this orientation.
However, Dao shi's writing on the family is not exclusively mother-
In "Repaying the Kindness," Chapter 50 of The Dharma Treasure

Grove, Dao Shi includes the account of Buddha going to heaven to
preach the Dharma to his mother.2r The actual quote he provides is nearly
identical to Bao Chang's citation, with an unabashed description of abundant milk flowing from Maya's lotuslike breasts into the Buddha's
mouth. Although the passage contains no mention of repayment, by including it in his chapter on the subject Dao Shi presents the story as an
exemplary case of repaying a kindness that is clearly identified with
breast-feeding and motherly love. This is the sort of manipulation that
The Dhrma Treasure Grove evinces.
Two passages before this one, Dao Shi cites the same passage that Hui
Jing used in explaining the 180 pecks of milk a son drinks in the first
three years of 1ife.22 Interestingly, Dao Shi cites another source for the
quote, The Sutra on the Intermediate State [Between Death and Rebirth]
(Zhong yin jing).23 lts context in this sutra is most apropos because that
section of the sutra explains conception, pregnancy, and other related issues. But again there is no hint of a repayment motif surrounding this Indian explanation of the quantity of milk a son drinks. In the Indian
source, the milk quantification is but alarger piece of a medical-style explanation of birth and child development.
These two examples confirm two things. First, another elite writer
formulated a milk-debt equation from factors similar or identical to those
used by Hui Jing. Dao Shi thought milk-debts were an important aspect
of Buddhist ideas on repayment and chose to include them in his collection. The idea that milk-debts were quantifiable appealed to him as much
as
it did to Hui Jing,
and the fact that he cited a different source for this
quantification of milk drunk in infancy suggests that he did not borrow it

from Hui Jing but extracted the passage from The Sutra on the Intermedi-
focused since it also includes quotations concerning the father. For example, the first text he cites in chapter 49 on "Filial piety" is The sutra on
King Malla, which Hui Jing also used. The context of this passage has the
Buddha magically lifting heavy rocks that an overworked group of plebeians are being forced to mine for King Malra. when they asked the
Buddha how he managed such a marvelous feat, he explained that his
magical powers were derivative of four types of practice, one of them
being caring for one's parents:
Someone asked the Buddha, ,,How is [magical] power
fgained] from
serving parents?" The Buddha replied, "There is something called the debt
owed to your parents for giving you this body, breast-feeding it, and rais_
ing it Qiao yang).If you stacked up jewels from the ground up to the
twenty-eighth heaven and gave them to someone, it would not compare
with caring for your parents. Therefore, there is the power of caring for
your parents."2a
This construction of debts to parents mentions breast-feeding but also includes giving the child his body and raising it-kindnesses that are not
necessarily restricted to the mother. The next passage that Dao Shi quotes
is equally generic in its scope of concern:25
The Ekottaragama says, "At that time the Buddha said to the monks,
'There are two ways that ordinary people can make a lot of merit and get a
big [karmic] effect. The first is by taking care of parents, and the second is
by nurturing a bodhisattva. If someone makes offerings to these two types
of people, he will get a lot of rnerit and a big result. Again, if there was
someone who carried his father on his left shoulder and his mother on his
right for ten million years, fgiving them] clothes to wear, food to
eat,
mathesses and bedding, medicine when they were sick, and

[letting them]
118
The Buddhist
The Buddhist Elite'Talk About Mothers and Sons
drop excrement on his shoulders, still he would not be able to repay the
kindness. You should know that the kindness of parents is profound (/
mu en zhong)."'
This passage evokes no mother-focus and presents passages found in The

Sutra on the Dfficulty of Repaying the Kindness of Parents and The Sutra
on the Fitial Son which also rely on this image of carrying parents around
on one's shoulders. It also includes the four-character phrase "the kindness of parents is profound," which is used as the title of a famous apocryphal text written in the seventh century (and analyzed in Chapter 7 below). Moreover, this passage is interesting in the way it equates care of
parents with donations to Buddhists. Dao Shi's use of this passage in his
chapter on filial piety again shows chinese Buddhists seeking a balance
in family values that recommends devotion to the home and the monasteries in equal measure.
Other short quotations follow, after which Dao Shi provides two lengthy stories exemplifying Buddhist frlial piety. Neither pushes a motherfocus very far, and I suggest that they represent a minimally motherfocused wing of Buddhist filial piety. The hrst story is drawn ftom The
Mahyna Sutra on the Skillful Means for Repaying the Kindness of the
Buddha26 and recounts how, in a previous life, the Buddha was Tai Zi, a
filial prince who would sacrifice everything, even his eyes, for his father.
The second story is about Shan Zi, The filial son who cares for his parents in the jungle.27 In an effort to procure food for them, he disguises
himself by donning a deerskin. In a tragicomic way his get-up is too convincing, and he is accidentally shot by a hunter who mistakes him for a
real deer. The story reaches its climax when Shan Zi lies dying from the
affow wound. His father grasps his feet and his mother holds his head.28
His mother wails and then tries to suck the poison out of his chest, wishing that it would kill her instead of him. She gladly offers to replace his
death with hers, reasoning that her own life is nearly worthless because
she is old and blind. A god sees this drama unfolding and brings shan Zi
back to life in response to his filial virtues. Though both Shan Zl's par-
II9
ents figure prominently in this story, the climax of the tale highlights the
mother-son connection.
This story, like the narrative of Mu Lian saving his mother, was made
into an "illustrated tale" (bian wen) in the late Tang period. The continuation and expansion of this nanative into another gerre suggests that
it was valued for broadcasting a message about Buddhist filial piety. In
Dao shi's citation there is a slight emphasis on the mother-son connection, but only insofar as the na:rative presents the mother as more loving
and willing to sacrifice herself for her son. when it was rewritten for the
illustrated version, shan zi is described as trying to feed his parents milk
that he extracts from wild deer on his hunting expeditions. This suggests
a "milk for milk" exchange, but with the notable difference that, to make
the loop complete, the son must heroically go out into the world to gather,
in a very unnatural way (albeit from a natural source), a facsimile of the
fluid that was so naturally given to him by his mother.2e
The message in the illustrated version of the late Tang period is that
filial devotion and the will to return one's mother's milk ultimately triumph, since one can expect heavenly intervention when the going gets
tough. Despite this elaboration of the idea of mili exchange, the story
seerns to have remained peripheral to the set of texts that generated reasons for solving mother-son relationships by supporting the Buddhist
monasteries. It remained popular, however, and was included in The
Twenty-Four [ParagonsJ of Filial Piety (Er shi si xiao), a collection of
filial tales compiled in the same period.
Although Dao Shi is comparatively evenhanded in his discussion of
debts to parents, he includes a number of odd mother-son stories under
the rubric of filial piety. one such story, drawn from The sutra on the
ofsundry Valuables (Za bao zangjing), is about the Buddha

in a previous lifetime, when, as a son living in India, his father died,
leaving him to run the family business.3. The Buddha, as this son, gives
his mother all the income he makes but then wants to leave on a trip to
Storehouse
retrieve jewels from the ocean. she cries and holds him, wishing that he
I20
The Buddhist
The Buddhist E\ite Talk About Mothers
would not go, but he persists and even takes a swipe at her that pulls out
ten strands of her hair. Later, after his death, he is recompensed with
beautiful women in heaven in numbers that accord with the quantity of
money he gave his mother,3r but then goes to a hell realm where he is to
suffer torture for his atlack, however slight, on her. This torture involves
a sharpened steel cap rotating on his head and tearing up his skul1.32 This
gory detail in this seventh-century text is important because it seems that
eighth- and ninth-century authors read it and included this specific torture
in new texts that specify punishments for unfilial sons.
In Dao Shi's text the story is built around the mother and son, and relies on their mutual tendemess but does not develop any of the other
themes that become standard in Chinese Buddhist filial piety. The tale
stays true to its introduction, which declares it to be about the enormity of
post-mortem effects generated by how one treats one's parents. Presumably Dao shi included it in his chapter on filial piety because it is a good
example of the severity that can be expected from the Buddhist retribution system for even minor lapses in filialness'
Another story, taken from the One Hundred Avaddnas (Avaddnaiata-
ka), againpits mother against son." This time the mother wants to make
offerings to Buddhist monks; the son will not allow it, locks her up for
seven days, and she dies. In time, when the son dies, he goes to suffer in
Avci, the deepest hell. Later he is rebom as a human, but his unfilial past
is revealed by his ugliness, his stench, and the way he turns the milk he
suckles sour, ruining his new mother's breasts as well as those of the wet
nurses who are called in. He is saved by surviving on honey and later
joins the Buddhist Order, where he redeems himself. This story shows
what can happen when a son is unfilial. The sour-milk theme symbolizes
the broken bond between mother and son: the son cannot connect with
the mother of his next lifetime because of his evilness toward his last
mother. By starving his mother in the past, he nearly starves himself in
the present, in addition to suffering in the bowels of Avci Hell. Despite
the mother-son elements in this tale, I have not seen it drawn into other
formulations.
Besides these Buddhist stories of milk and mothers, Dao Shi's collec'
and Sons 121
tion of filial exampres incrudes severar

non-Buddhist forktares about filial
piefy, a good number of which are
about mothers and sons. Dao Shi dury
notes his non-Buddhist sources for
these stories, yet obviously counts
them as relevant to the Buddhist discussion
of filial piety. The ,tori". of

Guo Ju and Ding Lan dispray mother-son
issues with unabashed boldness'34 Perhaps it is not surprising,
then, that these two sons who perform
extravagantly filial deeds for their mothers
are also mentioned
in the
contemporaneous sutra on the profound

Kindness of parents (discussed
in Chapter 7 below) and in two later Tang
works, ZongMl,s Commen_
tary on the Ghost Festivar sutra and,

The story of Mu Lian (discussed in
chapters 7 and 8).35 In all cases, Guo
Ju and Ding Lan are cited as exam_
ples of the way Buddhist sons ought
to take care of their mothers.
The story of Guo Ju evokes a painful situation.36

Guo Ju is living on
ofpoverty, yet is ardent in his desire to care for and
feed (gong
yang) his mother. with his mother and
his wife, he moves to an abandoned house, but matters take a tum
for the worse when his wife gives
birth to a son. Guo Ju is afraid that, with
this new mouth to feed, there
will not be enough food to give to his mother,
so he orders
the edge
his wife to
She obeys, but as she is
digging the hole she finds a golden pot
on which is written, ..Granted to
the filial son, Guo Ju.,,
This narrative works within the triangle
of mother-son-wife. Alr three
players are put in one house and provided
with limited means; their unhappy condition reaches its nadir with
the arrival of a new generation, Guo
Ju's son, whose presence threatens the
mother,s access to nutrition. This
fact is registered by Guo Ju, who "is worried
that to
take the boy and
kill him by burying him alive.
will
r,rri,
feed the baby
prevent him from feeding his mother."37

His solution to the tension
"zero-sum'l situation is to do away with

his progeny. Forced
to choose
between his son and his mother, Guo

Ju would rather have his mother:
this is his great filiarness. Thus
Guo Ju's attachment
to his mothe,
"ur.i".
his son or the wishes of his wife,
and
the murder: intent on being filial, he
apparently does not mind giving his poor
wife the murderous task that
will establish his own exemplary filialness.
Then, in a scene reminiscent
more weight than either the life of

he commands his wife to commit
122
The Buddhist
of Abraham and Isaac, the infanticide is averted at the last moment with
the magical appearance of the expensive bowl that offers reprieve to the
stricken family.
This story works well as a microdrama of uterine family struggles.
With stark clarity the son is shown stuck between his live-in mother and
his wife with child. There are no other father figures or lineage members
in view. The action is bi-planar, with the son negotiating between his
identity as son and his identities as father and husband. The tension over
which level will dominate is resolved when Guo Ju chooses to be a son to
his mother before all else. Faced with an either-or dilemma, he forgoes
reproduction and the building of a new family with his wife. He remains
bound by his mother's uterine farnily and does not sacrifice her to generate a rival uterine family, as defined by his wife and child. Ironically, no
one actually needs to be sacrificed once the will to sacrifice has been established, for although the dictates of filial piety demand these outrageous
acts of devotion, a benevolent cosmic system of retribution remains in
place so that filial piety is always rewarded. Overall, the moral seems to
be that a son has the right to a wife and progeny only on the condition
that he is willing to continue to care for his mother.
The story of Ding Lan presents an even clearer picture of a son trying
to negotiate his dual roles as son and husband, with tensions between his
mother and his wife reaching outrageous 1evels.38 Ding Lan loses his
mother at the tender age of fifteen, so he carves a statue in her likeness
and "feeds it as though it were alive." One night Ding Lan's wife burns
the statue's face, whether accidentally or otherwise, and it shows a
wound. Two days later the wife's hair suddenly falls out "as though it had
been cut with a knife."3e Ding Lan moves the statue to a main road and
makes his wife pay reverence to it for three years. Then one night, during
a sudden storm, the mother-statue magically retums home. The final line
explains how the statue, reinstalled in the home, smiles or frowns to signal her approval or disapproval about the lending out of household items.
Dao Shi also gives an altemative version of the story in small print. In
this second scenario the wife accidentally burns the face of the motherstatue and then dreams that this has actually hurt her mother-in-law's
The Buddhist
Elite Tatk About Mothers and
sons
r23
face' A neighbor then comes to borrow

something from the fam'y and
does not first ask permission of

the statue. Apparently asked to make
this
request, the neighbor sneers, "How

could a dry wooden statue know
anything?" The neighbor then srashes
the statue with a knife, whereupon
blood flows and Ding Lan ca's out

in grief. Fo'owing this violence,
Ding Lan mourns his mother, in the form
f her statue, urlhough she had
just been murdered,
Both stories work from Ding Lan,s deep
devotion to his mother, who,
though deceased, remains in his housetrot.
ny carving an image of her,
he can continue to rive as though
she is stilr with him.bing La,s devotion to his mother in statue form, which
at first seems obsessive, is justified by events which "prove" that
she is actually alive in the carving.
The
first version focuses on a wife/mother-in-law
conflict. The wife, acci.
dentally or otherwise, inflicts a wound
on the statue, which brings about
real-world retribution in the form
of her hair fa'ing
out. Though perhaps

accidental and already punished by
hair_loss, the wife,s aeeJis
;uaged
severe enough to require a three-year
penance. Somehow the successful
completion of this penance revives
the mother, who retums to an active
role in deciding househord affairs,

albeit stilr in the form of the statue.
Throughout the story, the son treats
the wooden statue of his mother better than he does his living wife.
Furthefinore, since the burn given to
the
mother-statue by Ding Lan's wife
is never decrared to have been intentional, the impression is that wives
will inflict pain on their mother_in_
laws dead or arive, and that this
aggression must
for.
be punished and atoned
The second version of the story portrays

the mother as the decisionmaker in the home' Even though
she is present onry as a stafue, all
family
fransactions must be approved by
her. when that right is questioned and
a
neighbor attempts to destroy the image,
it bleeds, proving that it is more
than an image and is in fact
a living double of the mother.
In both versions, Ding Lan's mother will

not die and he cannot live
without her' And-both versions seem
to( be saying-if even a motherstatue is rightfully accorded the
respect given it in this tare, so much
more
ought a living mother be respected
an obeyed. The first version also
124
The Buddhist
Elite TaIk About Mothers and Sons
works to resolve the specific tension between wives and mother-in-laws:

in it, the potential for violence is demonstrated and is overcome only by
of the
the wife's complete submission to the mother-in-law at the urging
Ding Lan,
son, whose emotions remain mother-focused. Thus the Story of
when
waver
like that of Guo Ju, teaches that mother-son love should not
wives are brought in. The moral of both stories is that mother-son love
will triumph regardless of the complications that may occur as life moves
forward.
In two other chapters of The Dharma Treasure Grove, Dao Shi cites
the
passages about pregnancy and birth which are also crucial for tracing
"Taking
evolution of the Buddhist discourse on mothers. Chapter 59, on
Rebirth," provides detailed accounts of intercourse, impregnation' and
later
gestation.ao Of the quotes Dao Shi selected that arc also used in
(Xiu
xing
writings, a long passage ftom Practicing the Stages of the Path
brings
desire
how
of
a
description
with
dao di jing) stands out.ar It begins
childmale and female together for happy intercourse, and of how their
to-be appears from the intermediate realm and enters the womb in the
of
midst of their lovemaking. Then there is a week-by-week description
does not
the fetus's development in the womb: in the first week, the fetus
soft
change size, but in the second week it begins to grow and is like
seventh
the
By
so
on.'2
curds, in the third week it is like ripe curds, and
imweek the limbs and head are distinguishable. By the fourteenth week
portant organs are formed. Development of body parts continues apace;
womb
then in the thirty-seventh week a "dry wind" blows in the mother's
wind is
and stimulates the sense faculties of the fetus.o3 The quality of this
was virtuous,
dependent on the fetus's previous karmic record. If s/he
the fetus's
orders
correctly
then this wind blows a fragtant bteeze which
development.Shouldslhehavebeenevilinthepast,thewindisrotten
this explaand leaves the developing body ill-formed or retarded. After
in the
nation of birth deformities, the text adds that sons are located
are on
daughters
mother's womb on the left side, facing inward, whereas
painful and
the right, facing outward.aa Life in the womb is described as
The Buddhist
Elite Talk About Mothers and Sons 125
defiled with blood and other impurities. However, based on

one,s karmic
past, the subjective experience of the fetus is either pleasant
or awful.
when the time for birth comes, a wind blows in the wombas and
turns
the child so that he is "hanging upside down" (dao xuan)

above his
mother's birth canal.au Then birth occurs. with a good karmic
background, coming out of the womb is pleasant, rike failing
in a river and
floating along, but with evil deeds behind one, it is rike a tortuous
hell
experience.oT Regardless of past karma, the
child ries on the ground in a

pool of "filthy, stinking blood" while a horde of various
kinds of ghosts
come to fight over the afterbirth.'8 In this quote, female pollution
is mentioned in conjunction with pregnancy and birth but remains
undeveloped
and unattached to any larger ideological program. Dao
shi then cites several other passages that give artemative discussions of pregnancy
and
birth' one of which is a short extract that quantifies the amount of
milk
sons drink in their first three years.on The quote also
notes that this milk
derives from the mother's blood and from the food she has
eaten. Apparently Dao shi was interested enough in this explanation
of lactation to
cite a passage on the topic here as weil as in his chapter
on filiar piety.
In a shorter explanation of parturition in Dao Shi's other encyclopedia,
Essentials of the various sutras (zhu jing yao ji), he
arso sets birth explanations and milk-debts in close proximity. There
chapter 20, entitled
"various Important Points," begins with a long quote from The
Madhyamagama that relentlessly tries to evoke in the reader the
Buddhist vision of samsara and its endless progression of life forms.s.
The first section explains how we sentient beings have had a limitless number
of parents as we have trekked through cyclic existence. Despite
this lead-in
about both parents, what follows is confined to a discussion
of the milk
drunk in each of one's prior existences. Fathers disappear, and
the Buddha asks the monks to think the following:
All of you, in transmigrating through birth and death, have drunk your
mothes' milk. [what you have drunk] is greater than the water of
the
Ganges or the four seas. why? Alr of you born in the dark night
[of ignorance in samsara], whether you were born as an elephant,
a mule, a horse,
726
The Buddhist
a cow, a donkey, or as various kinds of birds and beasts, have drunk lim-
itless and innumerable amounts of your mother's milk.sr
Leaving aside the small technicality that birds do not suckle their young,
the Buddha is arguing that sentient beings have, in a sense, been drinking
their way through eons of cyclic existence from irurumerable mothers'
breasts. In each existence they draw from her their sustenance, and if all
this milk were gathered together, it truly would be a lot.
This passage is followed by others that quantify the amount of pus and
blood that flow out of each of one's discarded bodies in innumerable past
lives, thus setting the milk discussion within a wider context of general
fluid intake and expulsion. The quote, presumably authentic to its Indian
source, nevertheless reveals something of a mother-focus.t2 Monks are
asked to remember that each of their lives involved the ingestion of
mother's milk; the contributions of fathers are not part of this reminiscence. This quote shows how suggestive the Indian material was in supplying a stockpile of statements about mothers, milk, and pregnancystatements which, with a little ingenuity and a strong enough stomach for
the topic, could be worked into a powerful ideology about mothers and
sons.t'
Two quotes later in this chapter of Essentials of Various Sutras, Dao

Shi provides almost all of the teaching section of The Sutra on the Five
Kings (Wu wang jing), a work on the subject of the eight sufferings that
make cyclic existence unbearable. The first of the eight is the suffering of
birth. I cite the passage in its entirety because it includes a description of
pregnancy that is a forerunner of the "Buddhist biology" included in most
Buddhist texts on filial piety from the late Tang period on (as discussed in
Chapter 9 below):
Why is it called the suffering of birth? Because when you die, you do
not know on which path your spnit ing shen) is going, and as long as it
has not gotten a birthplace it is in the form of an intermediate being. It will
remain [in the intermediate state] for up to three weeks,sa until [it finds its
future] parents having intercourse, whereupon it arrives and is taken into
the womb. In the first week it is like a thin paste. In the second week it is
The Buddhist
127
like thick paste. In the third week it is like something coagulated and
crispy. In the fourth week it is like some kind of meat. In the fth week
the limbs take form. Then a special wind enters the womb, and when this
wind blows the six sense consciousnesses open.
In the mother's womb [the fetus] sits between the digestive organs, and
when the mother swallows a cup of something hot, it pours over
[the fetus'sl body fand makes the fetus feel] like it is entering a boiling cauldron.
when the mother has a cup of something cold, it is just like freezing cold
ice cutting the body. when the mother is full, it is like being squashedthe suffering is indescribable. when the mother is hungry, in the womb it
is very obvious [to the fetus], and is just rike hanging upside down in purgatory (dao xuan)ss and the suffering is limitless. when the mother comes
due and it is time to deliver, the ffetus's] head faces the vagina, which is
like a craggy mountain pass. At the time of birth the mother is in danger
and the father is terrified. one is born out onto straw, and since one,s
body is thin and soft the straw jabs the body like daggers and swords.
Then all of the sudden you start crying. Isn't this suffering? Everyone
[gathered there] agreed and said it was great suffering.56
This passage is highly characteristic of a Buddhist view of life. The text

moves the reader away from his curent status as the son of his parents
in
this lifetime and thrusts him backward in time through the craggy mountain pass of his mother's vagina, back into a soupy pre-self state where
he
relives a set of infernal sufferings, and then back even farther to when
the
self in the vaguest form of an intermediate being, appeared at the primal
sex scene that brought him into this world from the gaseous state
of the
bardo- As a spirit in the intermediate state, the self is shown to be tempo-
rally prior and ontologically superior to its later corporeal state. In a Manichaean manner, the free-floating consciousness appears entrapped
by the
womb, where it is gradually encumbered with a body that brings only suffering.
The processes imagined in this passage, and the language used to describe pregnancy and birth, later became formulaic in explanations of
a
son's debts to his mother. Here, however, the passage is unconnected to a
wider discourse on indebtedness, and though the
"filth" inside women,s
128
The Buddhist
The Buddhist
mother is pregnant for ten months, during which time walking, standing,
sitting, and lying down are painful [for her]. She is also worried about the
birthing, which might be excruciating and perhaps even deadry. Then, after she has given birth, for three years she is always sleeping in a shitted
bed and on a pissed-on mathess. Her clothes also are ali soiled. In time the
son gro\/s up and falls in love with his wife and his
[new] sons, then rebels and comes to hate his parents. This is not practicing benevolent filial
piety (en xiao) and is no different from what animals do.58
bodies is mentioned, the text is innocent of tying this pollution to a wider

body of ideology involving the triangle of mother-son-monastery.
In sum, the quotes and stories Dao Shi chose for inclusion show that
he was another Buddhist author huppy to associate himself with the
emerging Buddhist discourse on mothers and sons. Like Hui Jing' Dao
Shi made an effort to bring quantifled milk-debts into the discussion of
filial piety. His interest in pregnancy and birth was, however, maverick
and presaged a radical expansion in Buddhist family ideology' The
Dharma Treasure Grove mentions birth-debts in its chapters on filial piety and repayment of kindnesS, but only in the abstract; they are not yet
connected to the gory Buddhist biology of pregnancy, which is found
only in the chapter on rebirth. Thus, in the mid-seventh century, although
Buddhist biological theories of reproduction and female pollution resided
in a book that also explored a son's indebtedness to his mother, these
topics were not yet explicitly linked in the Buddhist writing on mothers
and sons.
Elite Talk About Mothers and Sons lZ9
This passage is classic in its movement from a topic sentence arurouncing

that "the kindness ofparents is profound" to a discussion restricted to the
mother's involvement ',vith the son.se pregnancy, childbirth, and the

messy pre-toilet-training years are all the mother's burden. The father is
completely absent. Moreover, the fact that "wife-taking" is the only
hauma mentioned shows that sons, not daughters, are the target audience
of Buddhist frlial piety at this stage.

This passage,llke The sutra on the
Filial
^son (see
chapter 4 above),
expresses apprehension over losing the son after his marriage. The worry
Shan
Dao's 'Commentary on the Sutra
on Contemplating the Buddha of Limitless
Life'
shan Dao (i3-681) presented his perspective on mothers and sons in

a tightly worded section of his commentary on the Pure Land classic, The
sutra on contemplating the Buddha of Limitless Life (Guan wu liang

shou fo jirg).t' He states his views so directly that, despite being short,
his discussion provides a rather important refraction of the content and
function of Buddhist frlial piety in the seventh century. Dao Shi gave us a
poorly focused but panoramic view of birth-debts and mother-son issues,
whereas Shan Dao speaks very directly to the rle of birth-debts in de-
fining Buddhist filial piety. Furthernore, he explicitly uses this style of

Buddhist filial piety as grounds for condemning sons who desert their
natal families after marrying. After discussing technical Buddhist theories
of conception, Shan Dao states:
Because ofthe fact that parents provided the final cause for [producing
this body], the kindness of parents is profound (fu mu en zhong)' The
is that, having taken what was given to him in childhood, he
wil
not in
his adult years return the favors bestowed upon him. Shan Dao even goes
so far as to say that the son may come to hate his parents. This presumably happens either through the machinations of his wife (a tbreatthat The
sutra on the Filial,son hammered on) or due to his feeling that his parents are burdensome (a possibility voiced in the contemporary sutra on
the
Pround Kindness of Parents, discussed in Chapter 7).

vy'hatever the reason for this expected treason toward his family, Shan
Dao wants to prevent the son from biting the hand that has fed him by
reminding him of his deep indebtedness to his "parents." once again, the
tethering function of Buddhist frlial piety derives from its creating in the
son a feeling
of indebtedness that comes from "remembering" a set of

kindnesses that his mother has bestowed upon him. Like confucius's remark that the unfilial son is no better than an animal, Shan Dao drives his
point home with the final remark that only a subhuman, animal-rike son
could turn his back on his parents.
In a passage that follows, Shan Dao writes:
130
The Buddhist
Also, seven days after Maya gave birttr to the Buddha, she died and
was reborn in heaven. The Buddha later achieved the Way and during one
summer retreat, beginning on 4115, he went to heaven to teach the Dharma
to his mother in order to repay the kindness of her ten months of pregnancy. So since the Buddha, on receiving kindneds (en), repaid it by frlially caring for (x.iao yang) his parents, how could it be that ordinary persons do not filially care for (xiao yang) their parents? Therefore you
should know that the kindness of parents is exceedingly profound and
weighty.60
This passage offers additional evidence that the story of the Buddha
teaching the Dharma to his mother in heaven (discussed in Chapter 4)
was relied on as a crucial element in the construction of Buddhist filial
piety. Like Dao Shi, Shan Dao sees this piece of the Buddha's biography
as an example of filial piety and repayment. And like Hui Jing, Shan Dao
cites a textual example and universalizes it at the same time, arguing that
all sons should repay their mothers because even the Buddha did so.6t
Most remarkable in Shan Dao's version of Buddhist filial piety is the
explicitness with which he applies mother-son "love" as a brake on the
potentiai disintegration of the patrilocal family after the son's marriage.
The urgency of this obligatory mother-son love parallels the stories that
Dao Shi retold of Guo Ju and Ding Lan, who sacrificed everything to
their mothers while treating their wives high-handedly and certainly
without love. When first presenting Dao Shi's interest in Guo Ju and
Ding Lan earlier in this chapter, I could only speculate about what their
narratives implied about stress in family reproduction. But considering
the fact that Shan Dao wrote so boldly during the same decade about the
role of Buddhist filial piety in keeping a son loyal to his parents after his
marnage, it becomes likely that Dao Shi wished to use the stories of Guo
Ju and Ding Lan to illustrate this same point.
It is precisely because Shan Dao is so direct in locating the son's marriage as the weak link in the chinese family that I am convinced that
uterine family politics were present in seventh-century China in a form
comparable to the twentieth-century arxieties described in anthropological accounts. Further confirmation of the relationship between seventh-
The Buddhist
century Buddhist
Chapter 7 below.
Elite TalkAbout fuIothers and

Sons
fitial piety and post-marriage strife

is
131
presented in
The evidence gathered in this

chapter shows all three elite
authors
spinning out new mother-son
doctrines. Each of these scholars
used
his
familiarity with the Buddhist
riterary ouirron to intensify
the
discussion
of mothers and sons. Thus the
that forged the Buddhist mother_
"*"ibr"
son ideology was at times
in the
hands of the most educated
Buddhist
writers. These autho:.
together previously unrelated
dochines
.g* *ork.
culled from obscure Buddhist
and'then used their literary
talents,
leisure time, and authority
to craft new forms of Buddhist
fam'y values.
'The Sutra on the profound

Kindness of
parents,
133
there would be no rearing (bu yu). Therefore

it depends i tuo) on the
mother who carries fthe baby] in her womb for
ten months until the time
when it is fully formed and she gives birth,
and the child drops onto the
grass [mat?].4
CHAPTER SEVEN
'The Sutra on the Profound

Kindness of Parents'
This opening passage rocates the discussion

ofreproduction on a knife,s
edge, with the knife's two faces being confucianism
and Buddhism. The
line about the father being the cause of birth
and the mother doing the
nurturing echoes the oft-repeated rine from The
Book of songs (cited in
chapter 2 above), while the line about being
in the womb for ten months
of
THE sEVENTH-cENruRY Sutra on the Pround Kindness
apocryrevealing
jing)
most
the
is one of
L Parents (Fu mu en zhong
phal texts in the Buddhist discussion of filial piety.' It is also, arguably,
one of the most famous Buddhist texts in China, and therefore deserves
special treatment if we are to discover what it was about Buddhist filial
piety that was so gripping for the chinese.2 At the core of this text is the
denunciation of a heartlessly unfilial son who neglects and abuses his

parents after his marriage. The denunciation comes after the first part of
the text sensualizes the mother-son bond with a brashness not found in
earlier apocrypha on the subject. Like Shan Dao's Commentry on the
sutra on contemplating the Buddha of Lmitless Life (see chapter 6
above) and The Sutra on the Fitiat Soz (see Chapter 4), Buddhist filial piety here sanctions "mother love" aS safe and pro-family, while denouncing "other-woman love" as dangerously anti-family and anti-society'
The four characters fu *u en zhong, which make up the title of this
sutra, had by the seventh century become a stock phrase in Buddhist
wntings about frlial piety.' Here the expression provides the usual veneer
of generic parental concern overlaying a mother-focused discussion of
filial piety. The text begins with a fairly standard sutra introduction, but
then the Buddha starts explaining the facts of life, or at least the facts
of
reproduction:
People are born into the world with father and mother as parents. Without
the father there would be no birth (bu sheng), and without the mother
and then dropping onto the grass paralrels

the passage from The Ekottard-
gama cited in Hui Jing's Eurogy on the Ghost

Festivar sutra as well as
the passages cited by Dao Shi inhis Dharma
Treasure Grove (discussed
in chapter 6). Having drawn on stock phrases
from both camps to define
conception and birth, our author has the Buddha
lead the reader through a
set of childhood scenes. Some of the passages
are new, others are wellwom phrases found in other Buddhist apocrypha,
but never before has
child rearing been depicted with such flair and
density of imagery. The
Buddha evokes nostalgia for one,s nursery

days, saying to nanda:
"[Then, after the baby is born,] the father and

mother nurture him (yang
yu). when he is lying [asleep,] they put him
in a crib, or otherwise they
hold him and make harmonious noises for him; he
smiles, not yet abre to
speak' Now when he is hungry he needs
food, and without the mother he
could not eat. 'when he is thirsty he needs drink,
and without the mother
he could not suckle- His mother swallows the
bitter food and givess the
sweet things to him when he is hungry, and
[in bed] she puts tiim in the
dry places and accepts the wet places. without
[furfilring] this responsibility (yi), they wourd not be parents. witrrout the mother,
the child courd
not be raised. [But] the loving mother does raise the
son (er), and when
she takes him out ofthe stroler there is food under
his fingernails(?) and
the child is unclean. Each fchild] requires g4 pecks
of min<1.u iti, l,
what is reckoned and spoken of as the kindness of the mother

(mu en), and
itis as vast as the horizon of heaven (hao tian wng ji)." Exclaiming
about
the loving mother, the Buddha asked, ,.How can we repay
[her]?,,
134
'The Sutra on the Pround Kindness of Parents'
Jostling between a phrase or two that blandly include the father, the passage moves quickly to an exclusive concern with the mother and her
loving care of the infant. In earlier texts, such as The Sutra on the Dfficulty of Repaying the Kindness of Prents (discussed in Chapter 3), there
was a general outline of the care given to an infant, but here these activities are dramatized in more colorful and evocative ways.
The new items not seen before are the nursery details-the stroller, the
baby noises, and so on. Linked with these quaint descriptions are several
unequivocal statements about the importance of the mother in raising the
child. Though the binome "parents" appears once and the father is mentioned as a cause of birth, the mother is declared the more important of
the two. Raising the child "depends on her," and the debt to her is so expansive that the Buddha finds himself exclaiming publicly about the almost inconceivable task of repaying her. The Buddha's exclamation, followed by his question, "How can u/e repay [her]?" marks the first time a
Chinese Buddhist writer included only the mother in a plea for repayment. The three ghost-festival texts seen up to this date are never so direct, even though their narratives are determined to evoke the same sense
of indebtedness to the mother.

Having been asked by the Buddha how to repay the "loving mother,"
nanda is a bit taken aback. Retuming the question, he asks for a teaching on the topic:
"The World-Honored One has asked, 'How can we repay this debt?' but
this is just what I want [you] to explain." Then the Buddha said to
nanda, "You listen well and think hard about this while I analyze and
explain it for you. The kindness of our parents is said to be as vast as the
horizon of heaven. [But] if a filial, obedient, and loving son (zr) is able,
for the sake of his parents, to make merit, produce sutras, or perform the
ghost-festival offering (yu lan pen) on the fifteenth [day] of the seventh
month, then by offering [in this marurer] to the Buddha and the Sangha,
the results gained are limitless and he is able to repay his parents. Or
again, if there is someone who is able to copy this sutra and distribute it
among the people, fmaking them] accept it, praise it, and recite it, then
'The Sutra on the Pround Kindness of Parents
'
135
this person is known to have repaid his debt to his parents even though his
parents [might] say, 'How could it be repaid?"'
This passage is critical. The Buddha's answer defines the Buddhist actions that resolve the problem of repaying one's mother's kindness. As
usual, this call to action moves from motivations that derive from remembering one's mother to actions that benefit both parents. Apparently the
remembered love of one's mother serves to fuel Buddhist activities dedicated to both mother and father. However, though both parents are named
as beneficiaries of the son's engagement in Buddhist ritual and propaganda, in this text the father is dangerously close to being left out of both
sides
of the repayment equation. Were the Buddha to remark, for in-
stance, that the mother's love actually cannot exist without the father's
support, it would be more certain that the father is being included in a vi-
tal way. As it stands, the father is largely out of the picture, although he
does reap some benefit, in a splash-over fashion, from the attention that
the son is encouraged to lavish on his mother.
Despite his use of Confucian terms like xiao shun ("filial and obedient") and ci xiao ("loving and filial"), the author of The Sutra on the Profound Kindness of Parenls charts a path of repayment that is essentially
Buddhist in orientation. He also seems to acknowledge that this Buddhist
rendering of the repayment equation might surprise and disappoint parents, for at the end ofthe passage just quoted he has the Buddha add that
this type of repayment is complete even though the son's parents may respond, "How could it be repaid?"
This text's effusive description of the son's debt to his mother shows
the intensity and ingenuity that could be brought to bear in reformulating
filial piety. The debt side of the frlial equation was more liable to
elaborated than the repayment side, since
be
it was the fuel that energized
the whole equation in the first place. Moreover, the debt side of the filial
equation was unmoored in two ways. First, the discourse on indebtedness
to one's mother lacked a definite historical precedent, textual or otherwise, to predetermine it: as a new cultural item in the field of chinese re-
ligion, it was thus not
as restrained
by tradition as other ideological pack-
136
to one's mother \/as a particularly unstable

ideological element due to being the part of the equation closest to the
motivations of the author writing the text. The author's desire to rewrite
the filial-repayment equation and present it anew in The sutra on the
Pround Kindness of Prents was, no doubt, the result of his living and
reading in seventh-century China, when the emerging discussion of indebtedness to mothers was gathering force. The success of earlier works
presumably urged him to push the discussion further, which he did by
giving us this revised version of Buddhist filial piety, complete with an
ages. Second, indebtedness
even more pronounced emphasis on the mother.
However, this particular author's contribution to the discourse on

mothers does not conclude the textual evolution on the subject. We can
imagine that his formulation encouraged readers to feel this indebtedness
in an enhanced way and perhaps even drove a few of them to write new
texts expressing, incorporating, or manipulating this motif. Thus the degree of success with which any text convinced its readers of a son's indebtedness to his mother increased the likelihood that the text would give
rise to more expansive discussions that could, in the end, replace it. In
short, these texts made feelings, which made texts which in turn made
feelings, and so on.
Other complexities conceming the filial-repayment equation appear in
The Sutra on the Pround Kindness of Parents.In the passage quoted
above and in two other places in the text, the author has the Buddha say
that the production and circulation of this text itself also counts as repaying one,s parents. Thus the author allows for a second displacement of
actions dedicated to parents: besides donating to monasteries' one can repay parents by preparing and circulating the text that teaches the need to
repay them in Buddhist ways.' The traditional provision of food and

clothing for one,s pafents thus shifts (1) to caring in the same way for
Buddhist monks, and then (2) to caring for both Buddhists and one's parents by disseminating rhetoric that justifres the first displacement. This
layering of sanctified action is confirmed in the final lines of the sutra, in
which the Buddha declares:
'The Sutra on the Pround Kindness of
Parents'
131
nanda, this sutra is to be caTled The Sutra an the Profound Kindness of

Parents. For the sake of their parents, all sentient beings fshould], if they
can, make met (zuo fu), reproduce this sutra, burn incense, petition the
Buddha, worship and make offerings to the Three Jewels, or give food and
drink to the Sangha. [If a person does this,] then let it be known that this
person has repaid his debt to his father and mother.s
Skipping to the end of the sutra to make this point about repaying parents by propagandizing Buddhist family values avoided the meaty middle
section. Exploring the differences between this middle section, which
believe is an interpolation, and the sections that flank it reveals a fascinating dynamic in the construction of Buddhist filial piety. 'Without the
middle section, the message of the sutra is very Buddhist in what it requires of the son. There is no mention of food or care being given to aging parents, as the Confucians required. Though on the debt side of the
equation the sutra certainly made much of the mother's feeding of the
son, the repayment side is noticeably lacking in material care. Parents are
just to get Buddhist items in return. Presumably that is what they real1y
need-merit, not rice.e

The middle section of The Sutra on the Pround Kindness of Parents
appears to be an interpolation because the section ending with the Buddha
asking how to repay the loving mother dovetails nicely with the final
paragfaph of the sutra just quoted, where the issue of repaying parents
with Buddhist ritual action is explained and leads to a logical conclusion.
Skipping the middle section, the sutra reads as a simple question-andanswer dialogue that is complete and selsufficient. The debt is announced and the repayment prescribed-end of text. What sits in between
these two sections is a long, poorly written section, itself divided into two
parts. The first part redundantly expands on the theme of mother-son
love; the second explains how unfilial sons disrespect and ignore their
parents after marriage. The insertion of more rnother-debts breaks the
flow of the text because the first section had finished describing the debts
to the mother and had already moved on to consider repayment.
Besides the havoc this interpolation wreaks on the flow of the discus-
138
sion, the middle section of the sutra switches perspectives so that the
mother's and son's concems are aired in the first person, while the
flanking sections discuss the mother and son in the third person only. The
switch in perspectives is clearly announced early on in the interpolation,
with the words, "my son." In other places the interpolation is so garbled
that it is hard to tell in whose voice it is speaking, but it is clear that we
have left the Buddha and nanda and the supposed teaching site in India
and have been taken inside the house of a Chinese family to bear wibress
to the love and affection between mother and son:
When parents leave to go somewhere in the neighborhood, to the well, the
stove, or to grind [some grain] and do not come back for a while, my son
(wo er) cries at home because he wants me to return to the house right
away. As I come back, my son watches me from a distance. Or, [if we go
out] and he is in the stroller (lan che),I cuddle his head and tickle him as
we go along.to If he is calling out for his mother, the mother, for the sake
of the son, bends over for a long time, extending her arms to wipe up the
"dust." Cooing sweetly with her mouth, she opens her blouse and takes
out her breasts and gives him milk.
When the mother sees the son, she is happy. When the son sees the
mother, he is happy. The two feel kindness (en), compassion, intimacy,
and love [for each other]. There is nothing stronger than this kind of love
(cl). At about two or three years the boy starts to think and begins to walk.
. . .rr When the mother returns from being out, she goes immediately to
where he is seated, and sometimes she has gotten cakes or meat which she
does not eat or suck the flavor from. Instead, nine times out of ten she
brings them back for him, which always make him huppy; otherwise he
would cry and sob. Children who cry are not frlial. They must have the
five obediences.r2 Filial children do not cry; rather, they are loving and
obedient.r3
Besides the shift in voice, locale, and perspective here, there are a number
of new statements about mother-son love in this reiteration of what the

mother gives her son. In fact, in this middle section of the sutra the
mother-son connection is expanded and sensualizedin a way not seen be-
'The Sutra on the profound Kindness of
parents,
139
fore, either in the first section of The sutra on the pround

Kindness
Parents or in any other previous Buddhist text.
of
Though milk-debts and milk had already figured prominently

in both
apocryphal and commentarial statements about Buddhist filial piety,
never before had we actuaily been asked to watch the mother
lovingly
open her shirt, bare her breasts, and satisfy her youngster. There
were explicit descriptions of the Buddha's mother, Maya, and her fulr, lotuslike
breasts sending out streams of milk into the Buddha's mouth,
but distance
was maintained in that story in two respects. First, the scene is
set in
heaven and not on the plane of life that the reader occupies,
though this in
no u/ay belittles its power to excite the fantasies of the reader.

The sutra
on the Pround Kindness of parents, by moving the suckring scene
into
this world, more boldly asks or tempts the reader to put himself
back into
the crib of his infancy and relive what it was like to look up at a
loving
mother.
Second, the accounts
of Maya breast-feeding the adult Buddha occur
across space, with no physical contact between them as the

milk seems to
loop across the cosmos and pour magically into the Buddha's mouth
er-
haps to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, since the

Buddhist z
naya forbids touching women). In this seventh-century apocryphal
sutra,s
rendering of the primal milk scene, however, contact and physical
sensation are paramunt. The boy's eyes are fiiled with a view of his
roving
mother. His ears meet with her soft cooing. His body is cuddred
and
wiped clean. His mouth is fed sweet foods half-digested by the mottrer,s
chewing, and there are also, of course, her breasts, which she unstintingly
offers. The rich tactile connection between mother and son is apparently
part of a larger, almost magical bond that ties them so closely
together
that she has a sixth sense about his needs. Their closeness and their
happiness are the stuff of legend. As the text puts it, "There
is nothing
stronger than this kind of love (cz)."
Immediately following this pristine vision of mother-son love and
their
magical happiness, a shift in the text begins to chronicre the son's
march
to adulthood and his imminent marriage, which spells the end
of the moth-
I40
'The Sutra on the Profound Kindness of Parents'
er and son's special connection. The split begins as the boy matures and
starts to take care of his own body without his mother's help. Then, as he
becomes more mobile, he makes fends and traipses about, so that his
parents are worried sick. This movement away from parental care is finalized with the arnval of the wife, whereupon the son and parents separate. But the real agony is yet to come:
In time the child grows up and makes friends with whom he goes about.
He combs his head and rubs his hair and wishes to get nice clothes to
cover his body. Low-qual cloth will not do, so the father and mother
take whatever nice cloth they have and give it to the child. With regard to
his coming and going, they are publicly and privately worried sick. They
look north and south and follow the son east and west, [trying to keep]
abreast of his lead. Then they find him a wife who will give him children.
Then the parents gradually become distant, with their own rooms where
they live happily, talking to each other. When the parents get older, their
strength weakens and they age, but from morning to night he does not
come to ask how they are doing. Or again, the father or mother might be
lonely, having lost his or her spouse and living in an empty room, like a
traveler stopping at someone else's place. Always without dutiful love (en
ai) and without soft blankets, they are cold. Suffering, they meet with
danger and misforhrne. When they are really old, they lose their color and
have lots of lice. They cannot sleep at night and are always sighing, "What
crime or past error [have we committed] to have produced this unfilial
son?" Sometimes [they] call out [for him] and glare with surprising anger,
but wifera and son scold them, lowering their heads and smirking. His wife
is also unfilial. They [the young couple] overhrn the five obediences and
jointly engage in the five perversions (wu ni).ts Sometimes the parents call
for him when they are very sick and could use his help, but they will call
ten times and he will disobey nine times.r6 He simply is not obedient.
Scolding and swearing at them wrathfully, he says, "It would be better if
you died early but you stubbornly stay alive." When his parents hear this,
they cry miserably and are deeply disturbed. Tears pour forth from their
eyes, and they cry until their eyes are swollen. [They say to him,] "When
you were small, if it had not been for us you would not have grown, but it
would have been better if we had never given birth to you at all."t1
Parents'
141
This passage, packed with pathos as it is, reveals something about the
tensions and anxieties in Chinese families. The son, so lovingly raised,
turns out to be an ungrateful monster. This horrific transformation is
presaged by his gradual drifting away from the love and attention of his
mother as he makes his way into childhood and adolescence. But the real
trouble does not occur until his marriage, when, after his parents have
procured a wife for him, he turns on them with a savagery that they cannot understand.
The son's ma:riage brings parent-son antagonism to the point that both
parties broach the subject of each other's nonexistence: the son wishes his
parents would die early, and they announce that they regret creating him
in the first place.r8 What has happened? Although not explicitly stated in
the text, we know from the timing that all this occurs after the son takes a
wife. She is a lot trouble, too, it seems: she is "unfilial," and together the
two engage in the "five perversions" and completely overtum the expected "five rules of marital harmony."
It is not hard to see that, in narrating the son's married life, the text describes the son moving into a new sphere: he separates from his parents
and takes up residence with his wife. Whether his new living center is in
the same compound as his parents we cannot know, but the text makes it
clear that he comes to his parents from the world of his wife and of the
family they are presumably building. He is preoccupied with his wife, ig-
noring his parents' deteriorating condition and their many pleas for assistance and love. When he does come to them, he expresses only anger
and the wish that they soon be out of his life altogether.
After the parents' last jab at their son, the text suddenly switches back
to the final passage (already quoted) in which the Buddha tells nanda
"this sutra is to be called The Sutra on the Profound Kindness of Parents"

and reaffirms the efficacy of various means of making merit for parents.
What this awkward juxtaposition of voices reveals is a shift of generational perspective. The discussion between the Buddha and nanda is in
what I refer to as "youth pitch," meaning that it requires the listener/reader to consider his role vis--vis his parents-i.e., to accept the
sutra and act in a Buddhistically frlial way toward his parents. In the
I42
'The Sutra on the Profound Kindness of
apocryphal texts discussed in Chapters 3, 4, and 5, this youth pitch was

standard and could even be accompanied by a surprisingly blunt disdain
for parents and their stubbom, sinful ways. In the register of youth pitch,
a discussion about filial piety is always about the responsible young con-
verting their parents to Buddhist ways-not about failed sons who despise their parents.
The middle, interpolated section of this sutra, however, is spoken primarily from the parents' point of view. This is especially true in the section that describes the son's unfilialness and chronicles the hardships of
being a parent. It is further suggested in the framing of the encounters in
which the son's behavior is described from the parents' point of view. Finally, it is clearly evident in the lament that the parents offer up, "'What
crime or past error [have we committed] to have produced this unfilial

son?" This is a perspective that looks down the line of reproduction and
wonders what went wrong. It is the complete opposite of what follows
immediately on its heels-namely, the final section of the sutra, in which
the Buddha tells nanda what men and women should do for their parents, a perspective in which readers are asked to look up the line of reproduction and act filially in order to repay any debts they have accrued.
Thus, as a whole, The Sutra on the Pround Kindness of Parents presents a very interesting fusion of two ideologies. Considered on its own,
the middle section is strikingly non-Buddhist, insofar as it contains no
mention of Buddhist action or ideology but an abundance of traditional
family concerns. None of these concerns is even hinted at in the flanking
sections; thus the text as a whole is sandwich-shaped. The bread of Buddhist filial piety-in the form of the discussion between the Buddha and
nanda-surrounds the meat of another style of filial piety, which,
though not Confucian per se, is very traditional. Even more clearly than
Shan Dao's Commentary on the Sutrq on Contemplating the Buddha of
Limitless Life (see Chapter 6), this hybrid text marks the way Buddhist
filial piety is to be applied to ease the problem of reproducing the patriline in the Chinese family. By inserting an extensive complaint about
unfilial adult sons into the budding form of Buddhist mother-son filial piety, the second author/editor of The Sutra on the Profound Kindness of
Parents'
143
Parents presents Buddhist
filial piety as the stabilizing force that can

overcome the inevitable tension surrounding the act of wife-taking.
Perhaps this text reveals an equitable solution to the problem of Bud-
in China. On the one hand, Buddhism was to be granted high

status and its institutions were to be patronized. on the other hand, the
concerns of family were to be offered the power of the new Buddhist fildhism
ial piety, which would assist in solving a long-standing problem in Chilife. In the interpolated middle section, only two items are
added: more mother-son love, and the discussion of the failure to inculnese family
cate sons
with a strong enough sense of indebtedness to keep them loyal
to their parents after their own ma:riages. The second author/editor of this
text apparently cares about nothing else. He wants only to strengthen the
mother-son connection and then apply
it to the problem of the unfilial
son.
To switch to Margery Wolfs language, this formulation of Buddhist

frlial piety attaches itself to the nexus of feelings in the uterine family
both to get the son involved in Buddhist rituals and to keep him loyal to
his parents through the crucial period of generational tumover. Thus,
contrary to wolfls opinion that uterine family dynamics were completely
outside of the realm of chinese ideology and ritual,le it appears that Buddhist filial piety took hold of those dynamics and forged them into an
ideological program that served patriarchal interests even as it urged support for Buddhist rituals.
This conjunction of ideologies is not without its problems. Although it
is clear that the second author/editor of The sutra on the pround Kindness of Parents is assuming a traditional style of patrilocal family practice
and, presumably, related patrilineal concems, the text contains no discussion of ancestors but only of parents and children. Though the mention of
the ghost festival brings with it the goal of saving the seven generations
ofancestors, there is nothing in the text itselfto signal that ancestral concems are important or even welcome in this discussion. Why?
The absence of any mention of ancestors may be due to the influence
of the Buddhist explanation that the self flies into this world from somewhere completely foreign. In this scenario the axis of identity does not
144
'The Sutra on the profound

Kindness of parents,
stretch up the line of male pahiarchs

of this worrd, since in one,s previous
exisrence one might have been
a frog or
u _ul.
human being on this pranet thus
rellts more from merit accumulated
during former lifetimes than from
the painstaking work of previous
generations of ancestors. Dao shi's
citations implied this perspective,
as
did
Shan Daols explanation of b'th.
Actua'y, tensions in fusing wider Bud-
what;;;;;;;:';,.
dhist cosmorogical principres to

the chinese concern for ancestors
were
already announced more specifically
in Hui Jing,s Eulog1,, on the Ghost
Festival sutra (see chapter
6), where he tries to fuse the two
systems by
distinguishing between debts
to parents, which he deems to be
primary,
to the patriline and other relatives,
which are middling
and
lrrlirot.
Another reason is also possible.

Buddhist filiar piety is being crafted
so
that it motivates action based
on the emotions nested in the
mother_son
connection, which by definition
appears u, u ,*"tuf-;*
d the fa_
ther and from patr'inear demands.
To tie the rhetoric of this extra_linear
romance too tightly to wider patriarchal
intents would lessen its appeal.
The romance of mother and son
would falr apart tf il;;;;ers
roo
baldly announced its practical application.
Another interesting aspect of this
formuration of Buddhist f ial piety
is
the absence of he' rhetoric. In
earlier strata of Buddhist riterature
in
china, one finds numerous apocryphal
texts on hells for the unfilial, but
apparently those threats were yet
to be grafted onto this discourse.
The
radical unfilialness of the son, u.
pr".".rr""d in the middre section
of
rhe
sutra on the profound Kindness ) parents,
is left unpunished. we are
not told what happens next, and
there is no clue about what the (second)
author wourd like us to imagine
his fate to be. The scenario, so boldly
described' is cut off suddenly when
the Buddha reappears to telr nanda
how good sons and daughters are
supposed to repay parents.
A final element missing in The Sutra on

the profound Kindness of
Parents is the image of the dark,
evil mother so prominent in earlier
descriptions of Buddhist firial piety.
unlike the ghost-festival cycle of my-
thology or the story
of (Jttara\ Mother, the onry image of the

mother
pur. in h., f""ir* O.r*"" ,"
here is that of a young woman

completely
Parents'
145
her son, only to be heartbroken later on by his unfilial behavior. Moreover, this sutra frames the mother-son relationship in this world alone,
with no mention of post-mortem conditions. We never catch a glimpse of
the mother as ,a hungry ghost making demands on her still-living son.
And, though she feeds him, there is no "nutrition connection" linking the
debt and the repayment. It is not even implied that the son must retum
something that he ate, or that something he ate depleted his mother. Thus
The Sutra on the Pround Kindness of Parents expands the porfrayal of
the loving mother and relies exclusively on this depiction to motivate the
son. The more troubled version of Buddhist filial piety, which works with
the mother's sinfulness, is nowhere alluded to, although we know it was
gaining popularity with the rise of the ghost festival. By focusing exclusively on this-worldly conditions, this text remains silent on what a son
owes his mother, or his father, after their deaths.
Thus it would seem that in the seventh century there were two distinct
mother-son complexes. The first, as found in the ghost festival and, Ut-
tara's Mother, builds pressure on the son to repay the mother based on
what he took from her. His relationship with her is fixated on the act of
consumption, which is encapsulated in the milk-debt rhetoric. The milkdebt must be repaid because what the son consumed left the mother hungry and wanting. This scenario rides on the logic of a zero-sum system in
which something gained by one person means a loss to someone else.

The second complex works differently. It applies pressure on the son
by emphasizing what the mother gave him, not what he took. Her love in
all its forms is described as flowing down on him, and the deep emotional
relationship between mother and son is emphasized. Hence if the son
tums his back on his mother he breaches a love affair of unfathomable
depth. The love the mother showers on him is not, however, presented as
a loss to her well-being, and the logic of a zero-sum system is not overt.
By the late Tang period, these two complexes merged and overlapped to
the extent that they were often no longer distinguishable.
The awkward insertion of the "agony of having an unfilial son" section
n The sutra on the Pround Kindness of Parents needs to be further explored. whereas earlier versions of Buddhist filial piety relied on the fil-
146
make
ial-repayment motif to convince sons to convert their parents or
merit for them, this sutra suggests that the Buddhist discourse on mothers
has a use much closer to home: it can keep the son under his parents'
control after his marriage. while this seems to be the intent of the hypohe
thetical second author who inserted this middle section into the sutra,
fails to link it explicit to the rest of the discussion. Nowhere is it directly said that a good Buddhist filial sqn does not tum a'/ay from his
parents after his marriage. This gap or lack of correction between the
problem that the second author wants Buddhist filial piety to solve and
the Buddha's discussion of frlial devotion is presumably overcome by
proximity. That is to say, a son who remembers the love of his
their
mother, and who feels moved to perform Buddhist rituals on her behalf,
will not be a son who neglects or abuses either her or his father. The filial
devotion the son feels for his mother, generated by images of childhood
bliss, presumably carries over and manifests itself in easing the inevitable
post-marriage stress. once made aware of his indebtedness, the son will
gratinever fail in treating his mother-and father, it is hoped-with the
tude and propriety they deserve, regardless ofa new love in his life.
Parents'
147
he creates a new ethic of family values by merging these categories and

saying clearly: If you want to be like these filial paragons of days pastand you should want to be-just practice this new style of Buddhist filial
piety and all will be well.
Modern corffnentators, both East and'West, concur that The Sutr on

the Profound Kindness of Parents was written to spread Buddhist filial
piety to the masses-i.e., to extend the Buddhist perspective on family

values to the lower tiers of chinese society.23 The reason given for interpreting the text in this way is that the mother-son scenes are so rustic. The
mother is seen attending to domestic chores herself; she goes to grind her
own flour and otherwise seems to lack the domestic servants typically
found in a family of means. The very fact that she breast-feeds and cares
for the child herself, instead of hiring a wet nurse and nanny, suggests the
same. Thus, certain that the vision of the mother is replete with low-class
markers, scholars have assumed that the target audience of the sutra consisted of families of that social standing.
There are three problems with this assumption. First, more thought
The analysis thus far is based on the simplest Dun Huang version of
text. However, the earliest version includes a discussion of Ding Lan,
needs to be given to how a textual formulation of Buddhist filial piety

was to be communicated to a largely illiterate public. '/riting a text for a
Guo Ju, and Dong Yan,rt all known for their extreme devotion to their
shows
mothers.22 The invocation of these "local" maternally filial sons
interbe
piety
to
more precisely how Buddhist authors wanted their filial
preted. By concluding the "agony of having an unfilial son" discourse
known
interpolated into the middle of the sutra with stories of filial sons
hypothetical
to be fanatic mother-lovers little interested in their wives, the
of filial pisecond author states his case quite clearly: this Buddhist form
Yan demety is to be employed in the way Guo Ju, Ding Lan, and Dong
populace that cannot read seems like a poor way to proselytize them.
Later, when a sutra with very similar contents was given a lecture-note
companion text iang jing wen),24 v/e can be sure that these topics were
being directed at the populace via media that made its contents available
to the illiterate. But no such supplement was available when the text is
first known to have been in circulation. In fact, the very appearance of
the
and motheronstrated. one lives to support one's mother before all else,
but especially
son love is to triumph over any other kind of attachment,
over the invasive influence of the son's wife'
on another level, by invoking these filial pafagons, the author/editor of
aspect of this
the middle section of the sutra ties together the next-worldly
word'
Buddhist doctrine and the mundane concems of the folktales. In a
supplementary methods over the next few centuries suggests that the sutra
needed assistance in moving downward and outward to the masses.
Second, when we do have historical evidence about who was using
The Sutra on the Pround Kindness of Parents, there is no suggestion
that the elite shunned this text or felt it to be beneath them. Zong Mi ap-
parently was taken with the sutra, for he quotes half of it inhis Commentary on the Ghost Festival Sutra (discussed below). Similarly, colophons
from Dun Huang manuscripts show that monks and official types fre-
148
quently requested it. Thus it is not the case that the elite were not moved
by it-rustic details do not prove anything about the sutra's actual appeal
to different segments of society.
Third, the main theme of the text is nostalgia. The author(s) have done
all they can to cast the (male) reader back to his baby days to relive those
precious moments in detail. The attention given to describing that scene
allows for a very tactile re-creation of the time when, as a beloved child,
the reader was the center of the world. But this retroactive appreciation of
the infantile state is idealized and sculpted into a perfect form in which
the reality of the past, with all its pain and discomfort, has been erased.
Thus the reader is not reliving his own past experience per se but the
author(s)' idealized image of it, now purified and presented in pristine
form.
That thse forces of nostalgia are at work in the text, supplanting the
individual reader's memory of his past with a perfected, generic vision of
childhood, implies that the vision presented may not have anything to do
with the realities of the reader's past. In fact, I suspect that we have here
what I dub the "Country Roads effect." John Denver's immensely popu-
lar song, "Country Roads," glorified rural life in West Virginia, and like
this sutra, it is a song of longing for a lost home. The lyrics, which played
and continue to play on urban radio stations, conjure up a scene of rural
bliss. Taking us down country roads to the place where Denver was supposedly bom, we are given the details needed to relive, with borrowed
tactile certainty, the beauty of his lost Eden that "gathers 'round him" as
he reimagines his "mountain momma" with "a tear drop in her eye."
Few, if any of us, have had the experiences listed in the song, but we
long for them nonetheless and wish to hear the song over and over. We
want to enter this image of the past, and believe for a minute that it is
both real and our own. This idealized and sanitized view of rural life, extractd from the West Virginia of trailer homes and coal mines, has been
made irresistibly attractive to a large group of Americans (and the rest of
the world, too). That they may never have left the city does not matter.
The song's appeal is actually strengthened by this distance between the
Parents' l4g
listener's own memory of his childhood experience and the idealized version offered him by the text.
Since the Buddhist form of filial piety is based on the mother-son relationship, which,is removed from and uninvolved with the male world of
politics, power, and money, it makes sense that a vision which seeks to
conjure up the beauties of that relationship would situate itself away from
the realm of politics and the anxieties bom of that male world. Thus it is
even possible that The Sutra on the Profound Kindness of Parents was
particularly appealing to the powerful elite men who ran the state. In
reading this homily on rural mother-love, they could delight in temporarily moving out of the strictures of their urban life and into the waiting
arms of the "mountain momma" who gives love and satisfaction in a
pastoral hut where one is free of all the complications of upper-class life
in the ci1y. This desire of the elite to jettison their worries and "return" to
a rural bliss they had never known is apparent in the earlier Daoist literature (touched on in Chapter 2 above), suggesting that this literary technique is a persistent Chinese trope.
But who is this mother in the sutra? She is a generic figure, certainly,
remaining nameless and faceless. All we can surmise is that she is young
and loving. She is supposed to be the reader's mother, but by the time one
reaches the age needed to read this text or to be concerned with the issues
it
contains, at least fifteen years will have elapsed and one's mother
will no longer fit the young image presented here. She will
have lost that beauty, if she is still alive, and the vision conjured up ofher
in the past and the perception of her in the present will compare poorly.
This expected split between the vision of her youthful body and her present form is yet another aspect of the nostalgia on which this text relies.
The Sutra on the Pround Kindness of Parenls does not encourage the
reader to fall in love with his mother as she is in the present, but only
with this younger, idealized version of her. It is precisely the nostalgic
history of her body and of her love for her infant son that allows for the
intensification of their bond in the present. If their history were considered more realistically, it might not evoke the same wish to repay her, and
doubtless
150
the sutra would fail in its stated intentions. Because the text is shifting
from a real mother to an imaginary mother, it is also likely that the appearance of this "new woman" in the reader's past brings with it greater
potential for eroticizing the mother-son relationship. This woman is both
one's mother and not one?s mother. With the usual "double-think" of
myths, dreams, and jokes, we have a mother who is identifred with the
label "mother" but who manifests herself as "not-mother," appearing to
her adult son as a youthful woman who is more like a lover than
mother.
Paying attention to the potential for erotic nostalgia in this text takes us
closer to understanding how the discourse fit into chinese culture. If, as
argued earlier, the Buddhists were crafting a blended form of ascetic filial
piety that could be practiced by laymen, then I believe we have an interesting variation on the theme of what Wendy Doniger O'Flaherfy calls
the "erotic ascetic."25 The Buddha, Mu Lian, and all the other Buddhistically filial sons are being scripted as erotic ascetics, for they are erotically
of the word "s65"-1ryj1h their mothers,

while remaining ascetic toward their wives and all other women. Conjugal intercourse will presumably continue apace in the household, but under the shadow of filial contracts both with one's pafents and with the
involved-in the widest
sense
Buddhist establishment. chapter 8 considers this point in more detail.
Zong
Mi's
'Commentary on the
Ghost Festival Sutra'

In the mid-ninth century, roughly a century and a half after the appearance of The Sutra on the Pround Kindness of Parents,ZongMi wrote a
commentary on The Ghost Festival Sutra. A prolific Buddhist monkscholar of the Tang period, Zong Mi is an interesting figure representative
of the ease with which Buddhists belonged to different spheres of textu-
ality and practice. He grew up preparing for the state examinations and
was therefore well schooled in the Confucian classics. After a Buddhist
conversion experience in his twenties, he became a monk and devoted his
life to studying Buddhist literature.26 Among his many works, hs Com-
'
151
mentary on the Ghost Festival Sutra is remarkable for addressing the role
of Buddhism in Chinese society.2T
In his lengthy discussion of the ghost festival,
ZongMi draws together

almost all the themes already explored in Chapters 4, 5, and 6: the
mother-son focus, milk-debts, and birth-debts. In making his case for
Buddhist filial piety, he quotes many of the texts considered thus far, including The Sutrq on the Dfficulty of Repaying the Kindness of Parents,2s
The Pure Land Ghost Festival Sutra,2e and The Sutra on the Pround
Kindness of Parents.so Besides citing long sections of favored Buddhist
apocrypha, Zong Mi includes favorable mention of the three filial boys
Guo Ju, Ding Lan, and Dong Yan,tt as well as that passage from The
Book of Songs alluded to in so many of the earlier apocryphal texts.32 In
short, Zong Mi had his finger on the pulse of the major trends of his time
in the Buddhist discussion of family values.
Zong Mi begins his explanation of the ghost festival with a discussion
of filial piety. By this time, associating the ghost festival with filial piety-and with its key player, Mu Lian-must have seemed natural, despite the fact that the conjunction had been achieved only gradually, by
means of the multiple rewritings discussed in previous chapters. Though
a direct heir to this burgeoning discourse, Zong Mi himself was unconcemed with the complicated history of its development. Thus Buddhist
filial piety, like most successful ideologies, overcame the fragmented
history of its construction and, in the hands of an able spokesperson like
Zong lrli, became the naturalizing lens through which that history was
read as a seamless and self-confirming whole.
In other words, though the form of Buddhist filial piety thaf Zong Mi
of the history of Buddhism in China,
Zong Mi uses it as a useful hermeneutic for organizing and interpreting
earlier events in Indian Buddhism. When he identifies the Buddha as the
"Great Filial Sakyamuni" and then explains the Buddha's career as an
attempt to repay his parents, Zong Mi is putting the cart before the
horse-i.e., making frlial piety the effective cause in producing Buddhism, even as this Buddhism clearly was causal in producing Zong Mi's
version of filial piety. Put metaphorically, the union of Buddhism and
supported was a peculiar product
I52
Chinese culture gave rise to Buddhist
filial piety, which then claimed to
be its own father's father. ZongMi writes:

The prince Siddhrtha did not seek the throne and instead renounced his
kin and left the counr, primarily to practice and attain the Way in order
to repay the kindness (en) of his father and mother. Thus, with bodhisattva
intentions and not intent only on his own [needs], he established this
ghost-festival (yu lan) Dharma gathering to benefit both his and others'
parents. The sutra and its basic meaning are thus.33
After noting the Buddha's filial motivations that supposedly gave rise to
Buddhism, Zong Mi claims that Mu Lian's involvement with the Buddhist life was similarly timed. However, the two earlier texts describing
the ghost festival do not make this claim but actually imply the opposite.
As noted in Chapter 5, this sequence of motivation and action is reversed
in The Pure Land Ghost Festival Sutra in order to make Mu Lian's devotion to the memory of his deceased mother the impetus for his career as
monk and mother-savior. Despite Hui Jing's commentary rejecting this
ordering, ZongMi accepts it wholeheartedly and allows that Mu Lian's
career grew out of his wish to repay his "parents."
ZongMi wants, more than anything, to universalize filial piety and to

argue that, although filial piety is at the heart of both Confucianism and
Buddhism, the Buddhist version of frlial piety is better. He puts filial piety at the origin of the universe:
Beginning from cosmic chaos (hun tun), that which filled up heaven and
earth, connected men and gods, coursed through the rich and poor, and
was the essence of all the teachings of Buddhism and Confucianism-this
was no more than the V/ay of filial piety (xiao dao). And for teaching the
responsive sincerity of the filial son, fwhich effects] the salvation of both
parents from suffering and danger, and repays the vast kindness (hao tian
en de),there is only the ghost festival which is complete.3a
Zong Mi then adds the personal note that both his parents died when he
was young, which he humbly interprets as evidence that he is an unfrlial
son. Apparently he is asserting that parents' health and longevity are in-
'The Sutra on the Profound Kindness of Parents
'
153
dicative of their son's sincerity in filial practices, since their well-being is

his responsibility. He adds that since his parents' deaths he has nevertheless been most faithful in providing annual offerings to the Buddhist establishment during the ghost-festival period. Thus we see in a touching
way how seriously these doctrines were taken to heart even by a highly
educated and refined Buddhist exegete like Zong Mi.
Moving into a comparison of the two styles of filial piety, Zong Mi

first establishes that filial piety is the heart of Confucianism:
As is [well] known, Confucianism is a teaching that takes frlial piety as
the root. It can be said that, from the Son of Heaven to the commoners and
throughout the fentire] country, [the teachings of filial piety] are transmitted generation by generation, with everyone sefting up ancestral temples (zong miao).35
Next, he argues that filial piety is also at the root of Buddhist teachings.
in addition to his comments about the role of filial piety in the biographies of the Buddha and Mu Lian, he makes the crucial claim that filial
piety is a kind of Buddhist discipline-and vice versa. Citing different
passages, Zong Mi argues that all sentient beings must be filial to their
parents, their teachers, and the Three Jewels, and concludes that the word
"ftlial" actually just means "precept, control, and restraint," terms with a
distinctive Buddhist connotation.36 It was in part this bold statement collapsing filial piety and Buddhist discipline that led me to suspect that
other, earlier authors were also intent on making Mu Lian's monkly discipline applicable to family practice.
Although ZongMi allows for a hierarchy of discipline that begins with
submission to one's parents and then extends to one's Dharma teacher
and, ultimately, to the Buddha, he is intent on arguing that discipline in
both the private and public spheres can be understood under the single
rubric of frlial piety. This tendency to set up tracks of discipline that
move from private to public spheres is as old as Confucianism itself (as
already noted in Chapter 2), but Zong Mi uses this motif in a Buddhist
way, with the Buddha instead of the emperor located at the peak of the
pyramid of expected obedience.3' This conjunction of hierarchy and dis-
I54
cipline supports earlier arguments about the imperial role that the Buddha
plays in ghost-festival mythology.
Further complicating this new rendering of systemic discipline is the
role that ZongMi reserves for devotion to the mother. He wraps up his
case for a blended Buddho-Confucian discipline by citing that well-wom
passage from The Nirvana Sutrq which has obvious leanings toward a
mother-son connection:
Now your parents, when they had you and raised you, suffered great pain
and hardship. There was the full ten months [that it took to] carry you to
term, and then after giving birth, they put you in dry places and took the
wet places [in the bed], and got rid of the filth of your pissing and shitting,
breast-fed you and long nurtured you, and protected your body, so therefore it is right that you must return this debt (bao en) and be obedient and
make offerings (gong yang). The above makes it clear that the two teachings [Buddhist and Confucian] take filial piety to be the root.38
Following this discussion of filial piety is a detailed comparison of

Buddhist and Confucian funerary practices. Here Zong Mi makes it clear
that the Confucians, with their animal sacrifices, have got it all wrong,
whereas the Buddhists, with their sutra readings, Dharma lectures, and
donations, do it right. This passage is interesting for the details it gives
about Buddhist funeral rites, especially the preferred ritual actions mentioned here, which reoccur in later texts on Buddhist filial piety. The basic continuity in Buddhist services (sutra readings, Dharma lectures, donations to the Sangha, etc.), set within an ever-changing formulation of
the son's debts to the mother, supports my claim that it was filial debt that
was the unstable entity in the Buddhist adoption of the repayment equation.
Zong }l4;i, like Hui Jing, lavishes attention on the phrase "milk-debt."
His explanation of what milk-debts mean in Buddhism is the most articulate and self-conscious explanation of the role this concept plays in
Chinese Buddhism:
In the phrase, "wishing to ferry across his father and mother to repay the
debt of breast-feeding," "ferrying across" (du) means to take across and
'
155
liberate. Now the two characters "repay the debt" are widely known but
only vaguely understood. Liberation is really the recompense owed them.
Now "breast" means the mother's breast, and "feed" means eating. Theefore, [we can discuss the topic in the following three ways]: (1) the intimacy of parents [in comparison with other relatives], (2) debts that are
light and heavy, and (3) compensation that is partial or total.
As for distant [debts], they extend up to the seventh generation and
even farther. Near debts are to those who gave birth to this body. As for
the "seven generations," in the tenet system of the non-Buddhists, since
[they believe that] the essence of humanity is material (xing zh) and is
physically passed on from generation to generation via the father's lineage, they lay emphasis on the father. Buddhism's tenet is that the essence
of a person is spirit consciousness (ling si), with [the material aspect being] the fow elements on which the spirit consciousness depends. Generation after generation, birth after birth, all sentient beings have mothers and
fathers to give birttr to them and to raise them. But the pivot (lit., .,place of
reliance," ji tuo zhi chu) of all the generations of mothers and fathers up to
the seventh generation is just the mother's womb. Childbirth, breast-
feeding, and also holding/cuddling are mostly the mother's [job]. Therefore [Buddhism] emphasizes the mother (pian zhong mu). T\us it is that
this sutra only says, "repaying the debt ofbreast-feeditrg."'n
Zong Mi is admitting that the Buddhist discussion of filial piety favors

the mother while the Confucian favors the father. On the surface, things
seem fine. ZongMi says ttrat, since the Buddhists explain birth as the arrival of the "spirit-consciousness" from another existence, their sense of
lineage is different from that of the Confucians, who view the child as
standing in a line of paternity reaching back to his ancestors. Since the
Buddhists concede neither that the root of identity is material nor that it is
passed on from generation to generation, they are naturally not bound by
the lineage position.
However, it is not hard to see that the Buddhist position has a tendency
to break the lineage's claims to "own" the individual person, since the
older generation can no longer identir the newborn as that part of themselves which has been passed on. Clearly this position could subvert lineage interests, which understood reproduction as a form ofreplication that
156
,The
Sutra on the profound
Kindness of parents,
'Ihe Sutra on the profound Kindness of parents,
157
workable pair: parallel to Hui Jing's tack, he argues

that the debts to
one's immediate parents are heavy while those to
more distant ancestors
are light.a3
Though it does soften the glare of inconsistency, this

distinction does not alleviate the basic illogic of his position,
which is summed
up in the sentence, "But the pivot of all the generations
of mothers and
fathers up to the seventh generation is just the mother's
womb.,, If the
mother's womb is the place of reliance, as it is in
the Buddhist view of
conception and birth, then the stack of ancestors back
to the seventh gen-
eration is irrelevant. If Mu Lian were to trace his ancesry

according to
Buddhist ideology, he would have to consider who his
father and mother
were in his previous lifetime in some other world, where
they might have
been animals, gods, or what have you.aa
why did zongMi force the cohabitation of these two opposing views
of reproduction? Perhaps a fusion had been effected in chinese
curtural
logic which allowed both the confucian and the Buddhist paradigm
to be
true, despite this not being possibre in a rogicar sense.
If so, then the
problem of conflicting paradigms would appear
onry when an author like
zong Mi tried to articulate the hybrid Buddhist position in
an exegetical
manner. Faced with the contradictions, Zong Mi would
nevertheless have
been forced to affirm their compatibility on a deeper,
gut rever where
both systems were a nonnegotiable part of himself and
his cultural milieu.
Hui Jing had run into the same problem, so Zong Mi had a
clear precedent for embracing this philosophic failure.
This may well be part of the expranation, but it is not
arl that lies behind Zong Mi's maneuvering. Remember that zong Mi quotes
extensively from The sutra on the pround Kindness of parents
to explain
milk-debts and mother-son love, and to give the exampre
of the postmarriage depravity of the unfilial son. This formation of
Buddhist filial
piety, as explained earlier in this chapter, was unabashed
in showing how
a good Buddhist son v/as also to be filial in a very
confucian way, particularly in the sense of continuing to support his parents after
his own
marriage. Although lacking any mention of ancestors, this
sutra certainly
seems ro apply Buddhtst firiar pieg in an effott
to maintain the status quo
of the chinese fam, even as the son is
also asked to pay his dues to the
158
Buddhist establishment. The same seems to be true of Zong Mi's position: he wants to expand the son's concems to include this intense
mother-son complex, but only insofar as it will cause the son to both support the Buddhist establishment and uphold the traditional family.
This explanation is supported by the fact that, of all the authors discussed thus far, ZongMi is the one who was most enamored of Confucian ideas of filial piety, even though he wanted to supplement them with
Buddhist ones that he felt were superior. He quoted Confucian sources as
no other Buddhist exegete had, and from the beginning of his commentary was at pains to show the parallel tracks of Buddhist and Confucian
filial piety. zongMi admitted that there were many differences between
the two but opened his commentary by stating their deep equivalence.
The closeness with which he was willing to associate the two styles of
frlial piety suggests that he wanted to affirm a Buddhist version of frlial

piety yet hoped to keep it imbedded in the structures of confucian filial
piety, which he seems rather taken with.
One more point needs mentioning. Zong Mi's confirmation of the
leading role that mothers play in Buddhist filial piety could have led him
to elevate the figure of the mother in other ways. However, the text he
was working from had built into it an image of the mother as evil, greedy,
and subhuman. Thus Zong Mi had another dilemma on his hands: he
wanted the mother to appear loving and entitled to repayment for the care
she had given the son, but could not deny that The Ghost Festivql sutra
cast her as a sinner. And although he never addresses these contradictory
images of the mother, his effort to maintain her sinfulness and her lovability simultaneously is reflected in the fact that he quotes ftomboth The
Pure Land Ghost Festival Sutra and The Sutra on the Pround Kindness
of Parents,for the former explains her sinfulness while the latter revels in
her lovability and is devoid of "evil mother" images. Though logically incompatible, Zong}y'Ii wanted both kinds of images-just as he wanted
both Buddhist and confucian theories of reproduction-and carefully
worked these disparate elements into a complex, potent statement of
family values.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mu Lian and the Ten Kindnesses

of the Mother
Hls cHAITER
fr the
considers Buddhist texts on the family dating from

ninth and tenth centuries. Some time before the eleventh century,
manuscripts of these texts were sealed in caves in the oasis town of Dun
Huang, in northwestern china, to be excavated only at the turn of the
twentieth century. This allows these texts to be confidently dated to the
ninth and tenth centuries. since Dun Huang is on the periphery of the
chinese heartland, the texts found there are not necessarily representative
of Buddhist communities in other locales; nevertheless, it is not wildly
improbable to assume that the large number of Dun Huang texts on mothers and sons is indicative of a general trend in chinese Buddhism at the
time. Dun Huang texts of all types discuss mothers and sons: there are
apocryphal sutras in various styles, popular songs, hymns, detailed lecture
notes, and, of course, illustrated texts (bian wen) with their long, dramatic
naratives. Despite differences in presentation, the content of these texts

gives the impression that by this time there was a fairly compact discourse on mothers and sons.
This layer of writing, like others before it, further developed the theme
of the mother's sinfulness and intensified the son,s obligation to repay
her, A prime example of this trend is The Story of Mu Lian (Mu Lian
yuan qi). This text,like The Pure Land Ghost Festival sutra (see chapter
5 above), presents itself as an explanation of karmic relations-i.e., as
something like a biography. In many ways the na:rative follows the final
section on uttara in The Pure Land Ghost Festival sutra, but there are
significant changes that reveal shifts in Buddhist family ideology:
160
Mu Lian and the Ten Kindnesses of the Mother
once upon a time, in the western region, rived Mu Lian's loving mother,
who was called Qing Ti. Her home was very rich_mo.r"y urrJprop"rty
without limit, and she had many cattle and horses. She was very greedy
and loved to kill [sentient beings for sacrifices]. But after her husband
died, she was poor and only had one son nicknamed Luo Bu. Though
the
loving mother was bad, the son was unusually pious. He had great sym_
pathy for the orphaned and poor, and he revered the Three Jewels
and
made offerings to them. Every day he would hold a feast for the
monks,
and in the night he would recite Mahyna sutras without break. Then
one
day he had to go abroad on a business trip.r
what follows is a repeat of the deception scene first seen in ,,The Story of
Na She" (discussed in chapter 3). Just like uttara-and like Luo Bu in
the parallel scene from The pure Land Ghost Festival sutra (see chapter
s)-this Luo Bu, alias Mu Lian, commands his mother to fte the monks
with one third of the funds he diwies up prior to his departure. But things
take a drastic tum for the worse once he is out the door:
As soon as he left, she cut loose and every morning slaughtered animals,
and day in and day out stir-fried
[the meat]. She did not think of her son,
forget about differentiating right from wrong! once when the monks
came, she sent the servant boy to beat them with a stick, and when
she
saw the orphaned and old, she set a dog on them to bite them.
Luckily for the neighbors, not more than ten days of this antisocial behavior pass before Luo Bu concludes his business trip and turns homeward.
Looking forward to seeing his mother, he sends word ahead to announce
his arrival' Hearing of his imminent retum, she quickly hangs up banners
and flowers in a typical display of Buddhist piety and then strews the
ground with the remains of a meal. As soon as the two meet, Luo Bu
kneels
down in front of Qing Ti to ask about her health. she is happy to see him
and responds that since he has been gone she has been at home doing good
deeds
all the time. However, sometime later Luo Bu is at a neighbor's
house and hears that she "has not done a single good deed, but rather,
day
in and day out, has been slaughtering animals and offering them to ghosts
and gods, and reviling the Three Jewels when they come.",
Mu Lian and the Ten

Kindnesses of the
Mother
161
saddened to hear this,

he returns home and
asks his mother what
hind it all. She is furious
is be_
rying she
w'r
;";i"_;
i, ""d
a*"i H"i
be rebo_
i#"fr:f Ji::i:,
wishing she had not

taken that vow.
Rearm (ming dao) soon
hears of this vow and
in ress than seven days
Qing Ti dies ui ur. inro
Avci Hell' Luo
i. o*t
Bu.is "uuroi.-iy-ii,
,nott"r,s death and for

years is very firiar
three
to her memo.y. rr"
.o holds the weekry funeral
for her and, in thinking
feasts
of
her kindness"* gooan"..,
decides that to reave
home un becorrre'a
monk
is the best way. He does
so and immediately.
how;";;;"0",
attains
*p"*u-r*t
,#
p-o]ers, .urpurrirrg
everyone
,,Great
Mu Lian,,,and think_
ing ro repay the ,rojould
";;;rre
kird";.;, ;; en en)of his parents,
the cosmos rooking
he scans
for them. H" i..Ju"r,
that wh'e his roving
has been rebom in
father
heaven,
else. Ar this time
he is given
been reborn in
Avlci Het,
_h"r;;;;uppy *a content, his

where**rning but sufferingmother has
The following secrion

each day.
on Av-rci H" ;;"rg"s
from both The pure Land
Ghost Festivar surra
and, (Jttara's Mother.In
both earlier versions,
mother simply ends.p
the
in the ghost reuuo n",
in
this
most
horrific
evil rebirths' Avlci
of alr
Helr, rrrri"i*"u.r, li"i,
*r*out intemrption,,because
one suffers there without
the slightes, ,"*,
preceding texr
mentions that the farher
is .afe d ,"*o',iilr"T.neirher
Besides these cha
narrative''"
uiof
i,, rilii".T'l ;:i,: #:

;;;,
a much smoother
Story of itlu Lian open,.n"^._roo,

that binds the mother's
sinr,l
ptor line
natur"
death to an explanation
how her son carne to
"r0""*r,
of
be a monk intent
oi*.u.rirrg his mother.
ganization is an improvement
This reorover The pure Land
Ghost Festivar sutra,
which aruounces that
it wilr exprain M; ;;*,, probrematic
r"rutiorr.rrrp
with his sintut mothel,.g*
,h"i;d*;;;racks
ruothlr"i" *o
tails borrowed from (htura's

grating this mother-son
sketch with the
on the biographicat de_

of the rexr without inte_
ntive of the ghost festivar. Al_

so' The pure Land Ghost
Festiva, t*-"1"r reaty
joins the two char_
acters: Luo Bu and
Mu. Lian remain ."0**",
insofar
as Luo Bu is explained to be an earlier
incamation
"f
M;;"r.
rn The story of Mu Lian
162
Mu Lian and the Ten Kindnesses of the
Mother
163
they are one and the same person, since "Mu Lian' is just the religious
name given to Luo Bu. Thus in several ways this Dun Huang version of
the story presents a more polished account of Mu Lian's identity---one
that seamlessly joins the ghost-festival complex with the borrowed biog-
tures the mother is suffering, including lying on a buming steel bed and
being beaten. The torture of the burning bed alludes to punishment for
raphy of Uttara/Luo Bu.

Another dynamic also pushes its way forward in The Story of Mu Lian'
Even in the snippet translated above, there seems to be a more visible duality in the mother's character than in The Pure Land Ghost Festival sutra. The narrator refers to her as a "loving mother" but then describes her
as stingy, duplicitous, and above all non-Buddhist. Clearly part of this is
the trope of "good son, bad mother," but the degtee of ambiguity in the
ered below.o Mu Lian sees all this with his supernatural pov/ers and tearfully asks the Buddha why, if his mother performed the good deeds he
mother's character is heightened. Mu Lian unfailingly loves Qing Ti'

even though we, the audience, have been shown what she does behind his
back. when our outside perspective is given to Mu Lian via a neighbor,
he still loves her. Thus his love for her and his wish to repay her transcend normal morality. His very private connection to her by birth takes
precedent over any other kind of public moral consideration. The kindness and goodness (en de) that she showed him, as invoked in the phrase
,.loving mother," exist on another plane of morality, impervious to public
criticism of her actual misconduct. The implications of this arrangement

are considered in more detail below.
The ninth- or tenth-century account of the mother's sinfulness has also

changed from seventh-century accounts. In the earlier versions of the
story, the mother merely fakes an offering and then lies about it.In The
story of Mu Lian, however, she not only fakes the offering but abuses
monks and orphans, and then-in what seems to be taken as the height of
her evilness-slaughters animals to make offerings to ghosts and gods.
The mistreatment of monks is mentioned in the original Uttara's Mother
(see Chapter 3 above),' suggesting that the author of The Story of Mu
Lian went back to this source, but the non-Buddhist sacrificial acts are
new. The mother is, it would seem, "playing the whore for the gods of
vJ"-d with an intensity that suggests something demonic or obsessive about it.
The next section of the text is in verse and briefly describes the tor-
sexual misconduct, a connotation more clearly discemible n The lllustrated Tale of Mu Lian Saving H Motherfrom the Netherworld, consid-
thinks she did, she is suffering this. The verse adds, apologetically, that
though Mu Lian is the best at clairvoyance and other supernatural powers, his wisdom is still not complete and he does not know the sins of his
mother. This is a nice touch, and one that shows some reflection on a
problem in the myth: If Mu Lian is adept at clairvoyance, how can he
miss what happens in his own house? In this version, the irony is doubled
because we know that a neighbor has recently told him directly what his
mother \/as up to while he was gone. Mu Lian's obtuseness is actually a

key part of the mythic complex. Even though he knows more than the rest
of us, Mu Lian still needs to be told repeatedly by the Buddha, and by the
Buddhist hell bureaucracy, that the woman he thinks is so wonderful is
actually a devious sinner.
To sum up the rest of the narrative, Mu Lian, as usual, is distraught
when the Buddha gives him the bad news that "Your mother, while alive,
did not have one iota of a virtuous heart." He weeps and faints and finally
asks the Buddha if he can see her, having realized that his own magical
por/ers are "hatefully insufficient to take him to hell and save her." He
begs the Buddha repeatedly to transfer some of his power to him. The
compassionate if reluctant Buddha finally consents after Mu Lian makes
him an offering. He gives Mu Lian his own "power bowl," which allows
Mu Lian to fly off to hell with a lot of food and drink for his mother. This
trip to the underworld is an occasion for more gory descriptions of hells
and tortures.s
Quite unlike the plot of The Illustrated Tale of Mu Lian Saving His
Mother from the Netherworld, here Mu Lian finds his mother immediately. Sure enough, she is in AvTci Hell, suffering in what is identified as
a "'Women Only' hell." Such hells are hinted at in Indian literature,6 but I
suspect that their introduction at this point in the evolution of the Mu
164
Lian narrative in china was an important step in developing the "sin of

sex" or "sin of reproduction" and visiting it exclusively on women'
At the gate to this hell, Mu Lian throws a tantrum in an attempt to be
allowed inside. His mother hears him and raises her body from the iron
bed, fearless of the torturerc around her. Mu Lian catches sight of her
and, drowning in his tears, asks again what on earth she did to get rebom
there. She then confesses that she used to do a lot of slaughtering, with a
penchant for evil and no good deeds to her credit. She laments that now
there is no food or water and then cries, "Mu Lian, come closer, Mu Lian,
Mu Lian."
Noticing how badly his mother looks, aged and beaten up as she is,
Mu Lian is much distressed. He offers her the food and drink he has
brought, but as usual it all erupts into fire due to her greedy character, and
this sparks in him the realization that his mother's sins really are deep.
She is returned to her place in hell, and Mu Lian goes back to the Buddha
to get more supematural power. The Buddha first compliments Mu Lian,
saying that it is really rare to find a son as filial as he is-that is, a filial
son who ",wants to repay the kindness of suckling." Then the Buddha explains to Mu Lian about the offering to the Sangha on7lI5. Here, finally,
the ghost festival is mentioned. The Buddha teaches that, once offerings
are made on this day, all the compassion of the various buddhas will be
dispensed in full to free Mu Lian's mother from Avrci Hell.
Mu Lian makes a resplendent offering on 7115, but somehow it is not
enough: even with all this buddha-power directed her way, she is not reborn as a human but as a pig rooting around and eating filth.? Again distressed at her bad condition, Mu Lian rushes back to the Buddha and demands that he intercede and free her so that she may go to heaven. The
Buddha tells Mu Lian that he must go to a monastery and fte forfy-nine
monks for a week, setting up a ritual site (dao chang) complete with banners and lamps where lectures are to be held, sutras recited, and living
animals released. It is this second ritual, a post-ghost-festival offering,
that finally does the trick. Mu Lian's mother is released by the offering,
by Mu Lian's filial piety, and by a blast of the Buddha's imperial light.
The narrative concludes by reinforcing the filial message, saying that one
Mother
165
must repay the kindness of suckling like this, and then cites filial examples from folk literature-Dong Yong, who sold himself into slavery to
buy coffins for his parents; MengZong, who cried on the ground to get
certain type of bamboo for his mother; Wang Xiang, who lay on the ice to
melt a hole so that he could catch a fish for his mother; and, of course,
Guo Ju, with his attempted infanticide, planned on account of his devotion to his mother.s
In this narrative in The story of Mu Lian, the ghost-festival offering is

thus demoted to a half-measure. It gets Mu Lian's mother out of Avici
Hell, but the life as a pig that it grants her certainly leaves much to be desired. Though this failure is blamed on the deep sinfulness of Mu Lian's
mother, the implication remains that the ghost-festival offering is not
enough but needs to be supplemented with a long, expensive public offering to the Buddhist establishment. This second offering looks very
much like the funeral offerings described by zongMi in his commentary
on the Ghost Festival Sutrae (see Chapter 7) and, much earlier, in the
apocryphal "Story of Na She" (see Chapter 3). If the second ritual is funerary, then we have come full circle from "The Story of Na She,,, which
taught that Buddhist funerals were effective but needed to be supplemented by the ghost-festival offering. Here the message is that the ghostfestival offering is effective but needs to be followed by funerary rites of
no small caliber. In either case, the Buddhists are arguing that the family
ought to provide an extra offering.
The funerary nature of this offering seems a bit incongruous here,

since the beginning of the narrative points out that Mu Lian has already
held the weekly feasts after his mother's death and engaged in some kind
of filial reverence for three years. Thus it is unclear into what category
this post-ghost-festival offering falls. Nevertheless, The Story of Mu Lian
probably presages the twelfth-century Blood Bowl sutra (discussed in
Chapter 9 below), in which the "Mu Lian saves his mother,, thematic
breaks free of the ghost-festival connection completely. In The Blood
Bowl sutra, the means prescribed to save the sinful mother rely exclusively on a ritual procedure that looks much like the second one presented
in The Story of Mu Lian.
166
In Chapter 5, I argued that the odd phrase in The Ghost Festival Sutra
about the Buddha being hapy on the 7ll5 day was added to designate
this day as the best time for donors to beseech him to release family
members from their suffering (since it was the day of the year when the
Buddha and Buddhist monks were likely to be in their best spirits). This
interpretation is particularly attractive when, in these later Mu Lian
myths, the bureaucratization of hell is quite pronounced. In The Story of
Mu Lian, the role of the Buddha as intercessor is undeniable. Although he
presumably has the power to free Mu Lian's mother, as well as all the
other sinners, at arLy time, the Buddha does so only when Mu Lian makes
offerings to him and his institution. There is a distinct sense of a quid pro
quo exchange when Mu Lian makes an offering to the Buddha, who in
turn gives him his supernatural power. Also, the way Mu Lian must obsequiously and repeatedly beg the Buddha for help lends credence to the
interpretation that Mu Lian is seeking an indulgence for his mother. The
Buddha appears to be holding her hostage, after a fashion, until Mu Lian
makes all the right offerings.
The Story of Mu Lan presents some of the themes of the Dun Huang
stratum of Mu Lian myths but does not match the complexity of The Il-
lustrated Tale of Mu Lian saving His Mother from the Netherworld,

which is longer and more involved by far than other Buddhist narratives
on the family. In The Illustrated Tale lhere is also a romantic quality to
the narrative. We are asked to witness heartbreaking scenes, one after the
other, in which mother and son are brought briefly together only to be
tearfully wrenched apart. Everything is in the way of their happiness: the
courts of the hell bureaucracy stand between them; the demons of hell
obstruct them; Qing Ti's complex, sinful nature is a constant problem;
and even the Buddha's power is less than trustworthy.'o These narrative
ploys that tease and Tantalize are enhanced by a rich, sensuous vocabulary
that draws one into nostalgic scenes of beauty, despair, and longing.
Unlike The Story of Mu Lian, The lllustrated TaIe begins with an unconnected introduction stating that what follows will explain the founding
of
the
7ll5 ghost-festival offering. This seems like an afterthought-an
Mother 167
attempt to rein in a narrative whose preoccupations lie elsewhere. After

this header comes a short biographical clip that gives the standard explanation of Mu Lian and his mother as uttara and his mother. As usual, the
son commands his mother to feed the monks in his absence, but she deceives him and then suddenly dies. This biographical section is very short
and lacks the recent additives seen in The story of Mu Lian (the mother's
vow, her abuse of the monks, and the way a neighbor informs Mu Lian of
his mother's evil deeds).
whereas the author of The story of Mu Lian chose to develop these
themes, the author of The lllustrated rale moves quickly past this frame.
Nonetheless, The lllustrated rale still follows the standard pattern of
eing
Ti's death inducing Mu Lian to become a monk after he performs the req-
uisite three years of mourning. Interestingly, it also includes a "parenfal

covering" over ttre mother-son narrative. After only a brief mention of
Qing Ti, her relationship to Mu Lian, her death, and her disastrous fate, it is
suddenly nnounced |hat both Mu Lian's parents have recently passed
away." At first this addition appears gratuitous, but it is worked into the
narrative by the later inclusion of a brief encounter between father and son.
After Qing Ti's death, there is a florid description of Mu Lian's induction into the Buddhist order and his asceticism at a mountain retreat. The
account of his meditation portrays'him as an ascetic Zen-lDaoist-like frg-
ure living alone in the vast beauty of nature. Our author does not hold
back in describing how, "under the pines on the green hills, he sat meditating, the lake air on the horizon like colored clouds." But all this scen-
ery is merely a backdrop for Mu Lian's pressing desire to rejoin his

mother. Finally, his meditation succeeds:
Mu Lian awoke from abstact meditation,
Then swiftly exercised his supernatural power;
His coming was quick as a thunderclap,
His going seemed like a gust of wind.
Wild geese honked at the hunters' darts,
Grey hawks escaped from nets and cages.
The mist in the center of the pond was greenish,
The sky was clear, the distant road was red.''
168
After this magical meditative experience deep in the glorious mountainous terrain, Mu Lian hurls up his magic begging bowl and leaps up to the
heaven called "Brahma."'' There he expects to find both parents enjoying
the fruits of their virtuous Buddhist practices, but finds only his father.
After establishing each other's identity, father and son cordially exchange
greetings, and Mu Lian immediately asks where his mother is. His father
explains that whereas he himself was mqral and practiced the ten Buddhist virtues, Mu Lian's mother "committed a latge number of sins and,
at the end of her days, fell into hell."'o Mu Lian hears this and quickly
takes leave of his father.
This meeting expresses a number of dynamics. First, it makes it clear

that, although Mu Lian respects his father, he has no great feeling for
him. The author spends no time telling us of their deep emotional connection or evoking the joy that a son might feel upon seeing his deceased
father in heaven. Presumably these feelings are either nonexistent or unimportant, in contrast to Mu Lian's desire to save and be reunited with his
mother. Moreover, in terms of narrative logic, it would not work to have
Mu Lian intent on repaying a parent who is not in need.
The father's account of Qing Ti's sins contradicts the introduction,
which states that her fall into hell was the result of her primal deception
of Mu Lian. Here, Mu Lian's father explains that his rnother's character
was dubious throughout-that her life was filled with sin and completely
different from his own life, which he counts as flawlessly Buddhist. Interestingly, although Mu Lian's father knows what has happened to his
wife, he does not care but simply states that she is in hell for her sins. He
seems content to let the Buddhist system punish his wife as it sees fit.
Thus the love and compulsion to repay that will resolve the crisis cannot
be drawn from a marital bond, but only from the mother-son connection.
After this visit to heaven, Mu Lian dives into hell, and here the author
begins a long description of the landscape and bureaucracy there. The
scenes that unfold have a nightmarish quality in which one never gets
where one wants to go. After being told by many persons that his mother
is just up ahead, Mu Lian still cannot find her. Throughout this agony of
repeated disappointment '/e are made privy to several aspects of hell.
Mother
169
This is the earliest of the Mu Lian nalratives to give so many gruesome

details of the hell realms. None of the earlier versions did more than announce the suffering of Mu Lian's mother as she lived in the form of a
hungry ghost. The contemporary Story of Mu Lian gives some sense of
the tortures in hell, but here we get a panoramic view of all kinds of disastrous fates. Besides the gore factor, it is made clear that these Dantean
scenes of suffering are part of a well-orchestrated government. This adds
to the terror by encasing the sufferings of hell in a police system much

like that of the Chinese imperial government. Both bureaucracies are run
by "organization men" who supposedly do things either "by the book" or
not at all. But despite this love of formality, it turns out that there are often bureaucratic errorsrs that make justice a hit-or-miss affair and thus inject a Kafkaesque angst into the imprecise exercise of power.
Another repeating motif relayed to us via Mu Lian's experiences in
hell is that Confucian-style funeral offerings are useless. The sinners in
hell all agree that the only thing that helps is Buddhist-style offerings.
They also make it plain that they want this message delivered back to the
human realm. One of the hell-beings tells Mu Lian:
Inform those sons and grandsons of ours who are still at home
That it is ururecessary to make coffins and caskets of white jade,
And that gold is spent in vain when it is buried in the grave.
Endless sorrow and sighs of resentment[?] are ultimately of no avail,
For we hear neither the sacred drum-music nor the songs to string
accompaniment;
If they wish to obliterate the sufferings of the dead,

Nothing is better than making merit to save these souls from darkness.r6
This passage and others like it show fhat The lllustrated Tale is trying to
drive home the point that only Buddhist funeral rites work. This position
contradicts the opening line which declares that Mu Lian moumed his
mother for the three years (as stipulated by the Confucian classics), and
also the line about how he did not enjoy food or music during this period
(which contains definite allusions to The Analects).|1 Although this uneasy conjunction of Buddhist and traditional Chinese practices is apparent
170

Mother I71
everywhere in the text, the author holds that the Buddhist establishment is
the more powerful provider for the dead and needs to be supported accordingly.
After seeing so many tortured sinners, Mu Lian still cannot find Qing
Ti.t8 This failure climaxes in a conversation with a general who is guarding Avci Hell and who will not let him pass even after Mu Lian has
pleaded with him:
How pathetic is my dear mother whose name is Qing Ti;
After she passed away, her souls[?] descended into this place.
I have now come from inspecting, in order, all the other hells.
Everyone whom I asked said, "No, this is the wrong place-"
But lately they've been saying that she was taken into Avci.
Surely, Great General, you are aware of this matter.
Do not hesitate to tell me truthfully whether she is here or not,
For the most profound human kindness is that of suckling one's child.
When I hear talk of my mother, it pains me to the marrow of my bones,
Yet there is no one who can readily understand this poor monk's
heart.re
After this lament, there is a fold in the story
as
Mu Lian retums to earth to
beseech the Buddha to give him more power to take on the adversities
of
hell. He tells the Buddha of his trials and tribulations and asks, "How will
I be able to see my dear mother again?" As is standard in these exchanges, the Buddha first answers, "Great Mu Lian, do not be so moumful that you cry yourself heart-broken." But then, in a new development,
he gives Mu Lian his metal-ringed staff, which will magically dispel all
the obstacles in hell as long as Mu Lian also recites the Buddha's name.2o
Mu Lian retums to hell and makes quick progress with this new po\/er
tool, cutting his way through squadrons of ghosts and demons. Approaching Avrci Hell the narrative thickens with graphic torture scenes.
Then Mu Lian opens the gates and demands that the guardians go to see
whether his mother is within. Indeed she is: she is in the seventh compartment, nailed down to a steel bed with forfy-nine spikes. She is let up
and comes out dragging her chains, closely guarded on both sides. Mu
Lian sees her and tearfully embraces her.

The first thing he says is, .,It
was because I am unfirial
you,
dear
[that]
mother, were innocent caused
to drop into the triple mire of hell.,,2r
Mu Lian is particurarry upset to see what
a tot hell has taken on his
mother's beauty' This dreadful fate
of hers he cannot understand, especially since he claims twice to have
made sacrifices at her grave.22 she
clarifies this by confessing her sinful
conduct on earth. Interestingly, she
makes no mention of faking the offering'in
Mu Lian,s absence. Instead,
supporting the account given by Mu
Lian's father, she paints a picture of
herself as a sensual being who committed
"plenty of the ten ev' crimes,,
and seems to blame her retribution
in hell on a rife of indulgence. she
says, "In the old days, I used to
live quite extravagantly, surrounded by
fine silk draperies and embroid"r"d
s"r"ens." A rittr; later she expands on
this theme, admitting to the sacrifices
she used to make and explaining
them as part ofher love ofpreasure:
"I slaughtered pigs und gout. on u
grand scale to sacrifice to ghosts
and spirits. My only concern was for
the
pleasures of the moment. How
could I have know that on these infemal
paths they flog lost souls?,'23
In this statement Mu Lian's mother confesses
that during her life she
was interested in non-Buddhist pursuits
that ranged from acquiring s'k
draperies to sacrificing to gods and ghosts.
If we take her at her word, she
really did not commit any atrocious
crimes but simpry rived a life outside
of Buddhist concerns-which was enough
to get her reborn in Avrci Hell.
Now' obviously, she regets a' this and
makes the plea so fypical in alr
these "evil mother needs pure Buddhist
son,, encounters: ,,you, O
Teacher, are a disciple of the Buddha,
and are capable of understanding
the kindness of your parents; if one
day you should attain the enlightenment of a sage, do not forget your mother
who suffers ,o grr"rro,rty here
in hell."2o
Prevented by the helr warden from helping

her, Mu Lian,s response to
this plea is terrific: he fats to the groun,
p*-"ng himself,
trying to
destroy himself, and the battering
he gives iimself causes blood to flow
from all the aperfures ofhis head. In
the three earlier ghost-festival texts,
Mu Lian is shown responding with greater

and greater displays of grief,
Mu Lin and the Ten Kindnesses of the
l'72 Mu Lian and the Ten Kindnesses of the Mother

that compares to this
but even in The Story of Mu Lian there is nothing
demonstrationtnThelllustratedTale,whichmarksthefirsttimeMuLian
says that he wants to kill
actually engages in self-mutilation and openly
himselfbecauseofhisinabilitytohelphismother.Thisrecoursetoselfcommon enough theme in

destruction in the face of autocratic power-a
to hell'
literature-is of no avail, and the wardens take her back

Lian's mother turns and
Just before she is returned to her prison, Mu
good care of yourself' O precious
says, with a flair for melodrama, "Take
Chinese
darling of this sinful bodY,""
deep love for his

The crux of Mu Lian's agony derives from his
before this
moments
her' Just
mother and his absolute inability to rescue
him to take his mother's place
scene, he has begged the warden to allow
andsufferhertorturesinhellsothatshecangofree.Thewardenrespondsthatthisisimpossible,addingthattherulesofkarmicretribution
mustbeobeyedarrdthatheisjustdoingwhatthe..ImpartialKing,'tells
him to:
AllthedecisionscomefromthelmpartialKing.Ifyourmotherhas
for it' and if you' O Teacher' have

sirured, she will receive the punishment
iq the records of sins on the gold
sinned, you will bear the punishment for
washed away''u
tablets and jade tokens cannot be wiped or
Thispassageraisesalotofquestions.Itsuggeststhatthereisarigidbuas he is' cannot move'

,"uo"ru"y in place that Mu Lian, even empowered
one must suffer for one's sins
However, the statement by the warden that
isrefutedbythelogicofgveryghost-festivaltext,forthefinalsolutionto
allthesenarrativesisthatanofferingandritualwillerasethemother's
sins:"therecordsofsinsonthegoldtabletsandjadetokens"cnandwill
manipulating the bureaucracy in
be wiped away' It is just a question of
thecorrectwaytoachievethisresult.Thisrefusalbythewarden,likeall
heightens the reader's sense

the other obstacles in Mu Lian's way, simply
feels a[ this and pummels himself
of doom and failure. Mu Lian certainry
to death.
gradually comes back to

Following this unusual death scene' Mu Lian
in which he again retums to
life, and this leads to another fold in the story
Mother
173
earth to beg the Buddha for help. The staff the Buddha had given him the
first time allowed Mu Lian to enter hell and be reunited with his mother,
but apparently still more power is needed. Upon hearing Mu Lian's report, the Buddha decides to go down to hell-with a huge entourage of
attendants-to save Qing Ti himself. This procession of Buddhist splendor is described in flowery detail: the Buddha, as emperor, enters the
Dark Realm, and all along the way the bureaucrats cower and pay obeisance.
The next passage suggests again lhat the 7ll5 date was understood to
be a time to ask the Buddha for intercession: "On this day the Buddha's
mercy and compassion were aroused, and he destroyed hell, leaving it
completely in ruins."" It is on this particular day, and under the circumstances that Mu Lian has made come to light, that one can expect a favor-
able response from the Buddha, who ordinarily does not mind so much
that your mother or other ancestors are being tortured in hell. Though the
Buddha's visit completely transforms hell and allows Mu Lian and his
mother to meet again, it results in a condition simila to the one that existed before his visit, because of all the sinners in hell, only Mu Lian's
mother does not go to heaven. Instead, she is singled out as particularly
unworthy and raised only to the unenviable level of a hungry ghost.
Mu Lian, by her side in the ghost realm, is in a panic about her hunger
and thirst and says, "Mother, now you are so distressed by hunger that
your life is as though it were hanging by a thread. If your plight does not
I be called a filial son?""

will quickly rush off to Rjagha to beg some food for
her. What follows is a vignette new to the ghost-festival cycle. Mu Lian
goes to Rjagr.ha, but it is late in the day and the time for Buddhist monks
to beg has passed. A householder, well aware of the Buddhist rules, says
to Mu Lian, "The moming meal is already over, reverend sir. Since the
time for eating has already past, for what purpose do you intend to use
this food for which you are begging?"" Mu Lian explains that it is justiarouse in me compassion and mercy, how can
He tells her that he
fied "because it is to give my dear mother to feed her."'o

Having gotten some food, he retums to his mother and tries to feed her
himself with a spoon. This does not work, and with her greed kindled by
I74
the sight of the rice, she forgets her table manners and attacks the bowl of
food, which, as usual, immediately bursts into flame. Mu Lian is again
plunged into despair and retums to the Buddha to try once more to "learn
the way to extricate her"t' after his mother has told him in no uncertain
terms that she needs him to save her:
"My obedient son," Qing Ti called out to him, "I carutot discard this sinful
body by myself; if I am not favored by your exercise of filiality, O
Teacher, who would be willing to exert themselves to save your
mother?"32 fitalics mine]
This added piece shows two things. First, Mu Lian's begging out of
time is a perfect illustration of his situation vis--vis his mother. He himself is not hungry but seeks to use Buddhist practices to secure those
things that he must advance to his mother. The supplementary nature of
this effort, as well as its newness in the repertoire of Buddhist behavior,
are made clear in the way that he must go begging alone after hours. One
senses that Mu Lian may feel like someone who shows up at a cocktail
party only to realize that he has inadvertently wom nothing but his bathing suit. There he is, explaining to the public why he is completely outside of the Buddhist norm. At least, in this compromising position, he has
a compelling explanation for his behavior: he convinces the donor that
the rice is for his dear mother, and he and the donor go on to philosophize
about the nature of cyclic existence, so it turns out to be a "meaningful

exchange" for both of them.
The second notable theme in this vignette is the plain declaration that
is helpless to
Qing Ti,s fate is completely in Mu Lian's hands. she herself
escape her tortures, and there is no one else in the world "willing to exert
themselves" on her behalf, so it is up to her "obedient son" to come
through. Fathers, husbands, and bodhisattvas afe ultimately useless'
Likewise, all the women in the world are of no avail. For Qing Ti, and
presumably for all mothers, there is only one man in the world who can
save her soul: her son.
After the failed feeding with the rice he has begged, Mu Lian, back
with the Buddha, is told to prepare the 7ll5 offering to release his mother
Mother 175
from the hungry-ghost realm. He does this and she gets to eat a meal. but
he cannot find her and returns for the fourth time to ask the Buddha for
instructions. It turns out that Qing Ti has been rebom as a black dog eating fi1th.33 with the Buddha's directions Mu Lian finds her, takes her to a
Buddhist stupa, and there engages in seven days of Buddhist ritual, including recitation of Mahyna texts and confessions. Finally eing Ti
sheds her canine form and reassumes her womanly body. Mu Lian takes
her to the Buddha and asks him to review her karmic record to make sure
that her existence as a dog was her last rebirth in suffering. The Buddha
confirms her purity and she goes off to the Pure Land.
Although Victor Mair translates an ambiguous phrase to mean ,,Let us
go back,"'o there is some doubt about whether Mu Lian accompanies
Qing Ti to the Pure Land. The next passage mentions only that she is
welcomed there, and though I would like to be able to say that mother
and son retire to an eternal life of splendor and pleasure together, it is
equally likely that this does not happen-or that our author was not sure
that it should happen and thus left it open to doubt. At any rate, their final
huppy meeting is the end of the saga. The story is finished when both are
satisfied: the mother is finally pure and well-fed, and the son is freed of
the obligation to grant her these satisfactions.
In this porhayal of Mu Lian and his mother, it is their love that is cen-
tral. This is evident in the content of the story, its poetic style, and its
structure of repeated failures, which invoke a kind of hero's chivalric
march to his lover's arms. Mu Lian is the knight errant who, with a
twisted sense ofcourtly love, seeks his beloved through a gauntlet ofexciting if pathetic adventures." The first half of the narrative is the gradual
descent into hell, which reaches its place of "tumaround" when mother
and son finally meet. This "bottoming out" of the plot line is followed by
the second half of the story, which is marked by the mother's gradual asent as her son brings her step by step out of suffering and filth.
The romantic factor is enhanced by the tight framing of the story, in
which only mother and son are important. Ancestors are not mentioned as
benefactors of this salvation effort, nor do any other family members play
an important role save the father, who is notable only for his sangfroid.
176
The Buddha is the only other personage who stands out as a solid character, and he in many ways appears as the great facilitator of the motherto
son reunion: He holds the power and knowledge that Mu Lian needs
find his mother, he is the key to overcoming every obstacle, and he even
joins forces with Mu Lian to batter down hell in an effort to bring about
the reunion. It is also the Buddha who is in charge of the final consummation of the mother and son epic, for it is he who pronounces Qing Ti
pure and worthy of salvation, thereby concluding their trials and tribulations.
TheStoryofMuLianandThelllustratedTalebothworkfroma
culmother-son love that is primary and pre-Buddhist in terms of time,

ture, and cultivation. As The Illustrated Tale says, "The affection bejust naturally
tween a mother and son is innate."3u Qing Ti and Mu Lian
Budeach other, and this condition predates any involvement with
love
dhism. But the problem is that, outside of this blissful mother-son dyad,
a litthe mother has another identity: she is a sinner who is in many ways
tle ..anti-Buddha." whereas the father is securely within the Buddhist
purity.
fold, Qing Ti is from the beginning outside the Buddhist sphere of
The na:ratives develop by showing how Mu Lian, steadfast in his love
Mother
I77
unique event in Buddhist mythology and shows how far Chinese authors
went to invoke support for their program.
In the redemption of the mother, everything depends on the son. Mu

Lian-"the precious one produced from her sinful body," as his mother is
fond of calling him-is in charge of puriffing her sinful nature. The implication, as already mentioned in Chapter 5, is that it is her son's job
precisely because her sin is sexual, or at least reproductive. Mu Lian is
living evidence of his mother's sexuality, which may explain why he
blames himself for her condition, repeatedly stating that her sufferings are
his fault and that "Just because the sinful karma of my whole life was of
such enormity, it extended to my dear mother, causing her to enter the

gates of Hades."" Regardless of what is behind these statements, the
mother's sinful condition is the top priority of the only character in the
narrative who is the product of her sexual activity.
There are other reasons for exploring an implied sexual sin. The content of Qing Ti's sinfulness seems unstable in the text, suggesting that the
author or editors saw it as a delicate but interesting topic. In The lllustrated Tale, after the stuffy introduction that specifically defines her sin
as consisting of faking offerings, everything that follows points to a different order of sinfulness. On the numerous occasions when Qing Ti
for his mother, gradually awakens to her sinful side and responds with increasing efficacy. The accuracy of his reactions increases as the important
in
Buddhist men that he meets-his father, the Buddha, and the wardens
he
what
explain
and
sins
Ti's
the Buddhist hells-convince him of Qing
do about them' The narratives work by bringing innate' pre-
makes confessions, she reveals that her sins were sins against Buddhism
and sins of pleasure-that she loved sensuous things like silk and "lived
BudBuddhist mother-son love into the orbit of Buddhist practice so that

this love,
dhist rituals can redeem the mother. It is important to note that
as
stigmatized
never
is
though directed at someone of such low morals,
ity. That the text is uncertain and contradictory in identifying her sinfulness suggests either (1) that its author was reluctant to boldly announce a
sexual problematic, or (2) that the text is revealing a process of changei.e., a narrative bending toward pinning onto the mother a more sexual sin
than had previously been made explicit. This would not be too surprising
because even in Bao Chang's sixth-century Uttara's Mother (discussed in
Chapter 4) there are broad hints that she is a sensuous being who is
overinvolved with the world.
Besides these points, there is a detail in the plot that clinches the sex-
ought to
trivial or inappropriate. Never is it implied that a monk of Mu Lian's

this is
status is wasting his time chasing after his mother. on the contrary'
Illuswhat a great filial monk ought to be doing, and the Buddha in The
a
filial
such
find
to
rafe
trated Talecommends him for it, saying that it is
the greatest
son. Furthermore, Mu Lian manages to convince the Buddha'
This is a
mother'
his
of
monk of all time, to make a trip to hell on behalf
only for the moment." This is suggestive of a wanton character and implies that it was not just what she did during the one ten-day period when
Mu Lian v/as gone that got her into hell but a whole lifetime of sensual-
178
ual theme. For all the descriptions of sinners getting mutilated in hell,
there are only two places where their sins are actually identified. In one
case the text tells us that the sinners who Mu Lian is watching being tortured had damaged monastic property and not made offerings." The other
case is racier. Mu Lian sees awful punishments being visited upon both
men and women and is told that those nailed to burning beds have committed the sin of having sex in the \/r9ng place:" either they fornicated on
their parents' beds, on their teachers' beds, or, if they were slaves, on
their masters' beds.
These three examples of "sex in the trvrong place" are apparently
deemed heinous because they involve the subversion of a por/er relationship: the sex occurs on the presumably taboo beds of the sinners' superiors. Apparently sex and the passions are most punishable when they involve an assault of one kind or another on order and social hierarchy, be
it in the family or in the wider world of education. It is not so much sex
that is evil as its location. (Presumably the result would be much less se-
rious
if the couple went outdoors, say, instead of making a political
of their passions.) This focus on the tension between sex and

social order meshes well with the rhetoric in many of the works on Buddhist filial piety written earlier than, or about the same time as, The Illustrated Tale-rhetoric that v/arns men against choosing their personal passtatement
sions over societal obligations.
Because only these two sins and their punishments are identified, a
detail given later in the text weighs heavily-i.e., that Qing Ti is suffering
the same punishment that these "sexual deviants" receive: she is nailed
down on a hot iron bed with forty-nine spikes.oo This circumstantial evidence is suggestive in itself, but it is bolstered by the fact that in earlier
texts this punishment is also listed for sexually deviant women. So with
internal and external allusions in accord, the implication of this punishment would probably not have been lost on Tang audiences.o'
Moreover, this kind of sexual subversion of the social order is exactly
what a woman would be suspected of by her husband's family. They
would fear that she might seduce their son (her husband) and even lead
him to overtum the laws of the lineage, here signified by the desecration
Mother I79
of the holy space in the house reserved for his parents. Presumably sex on
the bed where the husband was conceived would rank as particularly
wife would thus have led her husband to confound vertical and horizontal affairs. Fomicating in his parents' bed implies that the son and his wife have replaced his parents in an untimely
manner that implies their murder, or at least the breaching of their rules of
conduct. By making this suggestion, however obliquely, in The Illustrated Tale, Qing Ti appears as a sexual creature who secretly drives her
way into the heart of the lineage structure and threatens the order and
treasonous because the
sanctity therein.
It is no wonder, then, that in the narrative of The Illustrated Tale it is

only the mother's child who trusts her implicitly and never suspects her
of engaging in devious conduct aimed at disrupting the patrilineal family
system. This gap between what her in-laws think and what her son thinks
might explain why everyone in the story, except Mu Lian, knows of his
mother's sins. He alone-her only progeny-needs to be taught that she
is a dubious and untrustworthy person. This split assessment of the
mother parallels the ideology of The Sutr on the Filial ^Son (see Chapter
4), where the mother is a beautiful, perfect being to her son while to everyone else in the family, including his father (her husband), she is a dangerous temptress trying to pull her husband away from his formal obligations. Thus, with this hint about the mother's sinfulness as a mixture of
sexuality and subversion, we are back again in the sphere of the tensions
surrounding patrilocal marriage.
The discordance between the pure love between mother and son and
the mother's otherwise sinful conduct seems to represent a woman's un-
comfortable position in her new family: to her son, the main member of
her "uterine family," she is innocent, but to everyone else she is under
suspicion. The narratives discussed here play the two perspectives off
each other to the benefrt of the Buddhist monasteries. The loving son is
responsible for saving his mother from damnation at the hurtful hands of
everyone outside of the uterine family, and the only techniques that will
accomplish this involve patronizing the Buddhists.
This interpretation opens up the logic of the narrative, although more
180
can be said about Buddhism's relationship to the family in these stories.

The mother's sins pile up as a mixture of anti-Buddhist and anti-patriline
transgressions: her subversive sensuality is combined
with sins of Buddhist heterodoxy-in particular, slaughtering animals for non-Buddhist

offerings. This package of misdeeds implies that Buddhist orthodoxy is
siding with the traditional family structure and even promising to punish
the mother for her assumed deviances, be they anti-Buddhist or anti-
Mother lgl
authors of new Mu Lian texts, and it would have been easy to throw in
juicy tidbits about the tender loving care that
eing Ti gave to baby Mu
Lian. It was during this period that zong Mi connected Mu Lian with the
milk-debt discourse of The sutra on the pround Kindness of parents,
explaining Mu Lian's indebtedness with breast-feeding scenes taken from
that sutra (see chapter 7). Thus with contemporary ghost-festival formulations accepting debtJists, I wonder why they were eschewed in the il-
patriline.n2
lustrated versions.
The added complication is that institutional Buddhism, which seems

eager to punish the mother in this mythic sense, also offers a practical
solution that will end her punishment-namely, regular offerings, made
on her behalf, to Buddhist monasteries. At first glance this appears to be
merely a technique for mining the family's resources, but it actually sets
in motion a more complicated cycle of events. By hanging the mother's
The lists of kindnesses from the mother, in their many forms, are summations and elaborations of nearly everything that had been cited in the
preceding four centuries as a reason for a son's indebtedness to his
mother. In the simplest set of ten, the kindnesses are not numbered and
redemption on the next generation, the Buddhist solution strengthens vertical relations in the family and also lays the foundation for a repetition of
this paradigm. Even as mother-son love redeems one generation of mothers, it will likely play a role in pulling sons from their wives and keeping
them concemed with their natal families and not their conjugal families.
This, we can suppose, sets up a repeating dynamic in which each new
mother will remain forever an outsider to her in-laws-under suspicion,
necessarily damned, and thereby requiring a rescue effort by her own son,
who is in tum caught up in the scenario. All this will generate the cycle
anew as each player figures out that, given this family strucre and its
attendant cosmology, his or her interests lie in preserving Buddhism and
the vertical allegiances in the family.
read as follows:
Giving birth to this [son's] body,

Swallowing the bitter and spitting out the sweet [for the
baby to eatl,
Cleaning up the flthShe is not afraid of the hard work.
Suffering hot and cold,
She never shrinks from hardship.
Putting the son in the dry places [in the bed]

And sleeping on the wet spots herself.
And, for three years,

[Giving] him her "white blood" to drink.a3
In this version, not only is the content drawn from earlier works but the
phrasing is often identical with familiar lines drawn from The sutra on
Filial son, The sutra on the Profound Kindness of parents, and the
of Hui Jing and Zong }r'4i. Thus this group of ten kind_
nesses looks like a compilation of those repeating passages in earlier
translations-passages that seem from early on to have become stock
phrases for invoking mother-son love, even if they were not grouped as a
set of ten or listed in chronological order. This version is found in two
lecture-note texts treated below, and I consider it the simplest because, as
the
These long narratives on Mu Lian lack any extensive discussion of

debts to the mother. While both texts clearly make use of the phrase in
numerous places, there does not appear to be an emphasis on the topic
and there certainly is no expansion of the discussion of indebtedness.
Neither The Story of Mu Lian nor The lllustrted Tale relies on that nostalgic return to the crib that marks the earlier works already discussed.
Since the seventh century there had been abundant material available to
commentaries
I82
the next version
will
show, much more could be packed into this structure
of ten kindnesses.
An example of a fuller version is entitled Repaying the Ten Kindnesses
of the Loving Mother (Bao ci mu shi en de).oo It lists each of the following
ten kindnesses as headings, but then adds a pangraph-long discussion to
explain each one. This version of the ten kindnesses is found much more
frequently than the simple one just given above, and most of the independent texts on the ten kindnesses follow its pattem. For the sake of
brevity, I cite only this list of ten and provide several key passages from
the explanatory paragraphs under the headings:
The first kindness [is the way she] protected [you in] pregnancy. She
was tired and the loving parent's body was heavy. Her strength was com-
pletely gone-to move or sit, she had to be supported by an adult. . . . Her

ruddy complexion gradually faded, [and she looked] haggard. . . .
The second is the kindness of the suffering right before giving birth. To
explain it, it is like your belly getting pierced with a knife, the pain is so
sharp that you could not bear to hear of it. It is like slaughtering-the
blood fills a bowl (xue cheng pen). . . .
The third kindness is that after bearing a son (zi), she forgets the sadNESS.
The fourth is the kindness of swallowing the bitter and spitting out the
sweet.
The frfth is the kindness of breast-feeding (ru bao) and ruisrng (yang
vu).
The sixth kindness [is the way] she gives the dry spots [in bed to him]
and takes the wet ones.
The seventh kindness is the way she cleans up impurities.

The eighth kindness is the way she will take the blame if son or
daughter commits crimes.
The ninth kindness is the way she misses him when he goes on long
trips.
The tenth kindness is her love.
While the simple version of ten kindnesses is light and relatively unimposing, this version is heavy-handed and even sinister, with its graphic
Mother
lg3
accounts of pregnancy, childbirth, and the rest. Life, death, blood, and
love are closely intertwined in a disturbing presentation. The debt side of
the equation appears with increasing vividness and terror. In chapter
6, I
argued that 'the rhetoric of indebtedness was likely to be particularly
susceptible to expansion, and this list of ten kindnesses demonstrates the
snowball effect that preceding texts on mothers and sons generated. Besides framing the contents in a very concentrated manner, the format
of a
ten-item list suggests a ritual application in which this text could be
regularly recited, thereby making one hear, over and over, what one,s
mother had gone through.
For now, three themes are worth noting in Repaying the Ten Kndnesses. First, there is mention that pregnancy weakens the mother and
drains her of her usual ruddy complexion until she is, literally, ,,dry
and
withered." Though in earlier texts it is repeated that the son drinks lg0 or
84 pecks of the mother's milk, there is no mention that this consumption
amounts to a loss on the mother's part. The passage just quoted begins
to
explore the "losses" to the mother that become an issue in later works.
The implication seems to be that pregnancy drains the mother's complexion of its red color as her blood is collected and made into the fetus.
Second, the pain of childbirth is richly described and is even assimilated to a hell experience. The cutting and piercing of organs, etc., are
reminiscent of tortures visited on mothers and other sinners in hell, as described in the two Dun Huang versions of the Mu Lian story discussed
earlier in this chapter. At the end of chapter 6, I speculated that the regu-
lar use ofthe term "hanging upside doriln" (dao xuan) for the agony of
being in the womb connected death experiences with birth experiences.
Here it is the mother rather than the baby who is temporarily cast into a
hell of pain. In other Dun Huang writings, the mother's experience of hell
at the moment of birth is made much more explicit.
The third theme combines the first two and concerns the phrase describing the mother's suffering during birth, which reads that ,,the blood
fills a bowl" (xue cheng pen). Abouttwo or three centuri es after Repaying
the Ten Kindnesses appeared, another apocryphal sutra was written that
uses the two main characters of this phrase in its title, the xue pen jing
184
1g5
(The Blood Bowl Sutra, discussed in Chapter 9), so I believe Michel Soy-
earth as she suffers the agony of being a sacrificed animal. The torfures
mie is right in asserting a connection.as The image of abundant birthing

blood spilling into a bowl was a favorite one and is found in a wide range
of Dun Huang texts. In most cases this powerful scene is evoked with descriptions of the unbearable pain one's mother felt while giving birth"as if she were being pierced with sharp instruments until she bled like an
visited on Mu Lian's mother-the stabbing and piercings, at least-are

here inflicted on the mother in the moments of giving birth. The son does
animal being slaughtered." This is doubtless another part of the guilt

inducing package meant to make sons feel even more deeply in debt for
all that their mothers endure to produce them, but the specifics of this image suggest a convoluted piece ofideology.
Packed into this picture of childbirth are the following connected
items: the punishments of hell, the Buddhist horror over animal sacrifice,
and taboos concerning blood and v/omen's impurities. The circle of connection begins to emerge when we remember that the current versions of
the Mu Lian myth explained that his sinful mother was in hell for her involvement in bloody animal sacrifices. Here, in this list of ten kindnesses,
every son is to understand his imperative to repay his mother by thinking
about her involvement in another bloody event-his own birth. The use
of the comparison, "it is like slaughtering" (ru tu), makes explicit the
connection between the horror of animal sacrifice and the horror of childbirth.
Thus the contemporary versions of Mu Lian's mother slaughtering

animals and the blood-letting in Repaying the Ten Kindnesses parallel
each other. First, both set up scenarios demanding repayment: the mother
is lacking something that the son needs to return. Then, both "dip" the
mother in blood to explain more clearly why a son must take action. And
because blood is the troubling substance it is, both texts also push the
mother farther into impurity, farther from the pristine Buddha-who, it
was well-known, abhorred animal sacrifice and came out of his mother's
side, not through the bloody birth canal. In both cases, spilt blood signifies a son's imperative to repay his mother.ou
Although these two mother-son scenes parallel each other with their
familiar "pure son saves impure mother" framing, in Repaying the Ten
Kindnesses there is no hell mentioned; rather, the mother
is in hell on
not have to repay a woman who has sinned and then gone to hell; instead,
he must repay a woman who has already been, metaphorically, in hell on
his account. Thus in Repaying the Ten Kindnesses the bloody sacrifice of
birth is both the mother's hell and also the reason why the son must repay
her, since he has been, in a weird way, her executioner. Repaying the Ten
Kindnesses transposes the mother's hidden involvement in bloody sacrifices from real butchering, as it had been depicted in The lllustrated rext
and The story of Mu Lian, to a metaphoric butchering in which the

mother herself is the slaughtered pig or sheep. In both cases she is a secretive participant in a blood-letting that has definite implications for how
the son should treat her after her death.aT
The Dun Huang versions of The Ten Kindnesses reveal that the Buddhists had no qualms about advertising their filial piety as mother-focused
and connected to women's blood. However, it is still colmon in Dun
Huang documents to find commentators refer to the list of ten kindnesses
as what 'arents" gave to sons.os None of the Dun Huang lists includes
specific debts to the father, and almost none of the kindnesses mentioned
could have been rendered by him. once again, "parental covering,, set on
top of a discussion completely dedicated to mothers suggests that the

Buddhists were using mother-son love to keep the traditional family
structure together.
Actually, by following the context of the ten kindnesses in different

texts, we can see that this is exactly what some Buddhist authors had in
mind: the use of Buddhist mother-focused filial piety to enforce standard
traditional modes of patrilineal family practice. Key evidence comes from
two different "lecture-note texts" iang jing wen) whose titles are lost
and much disputed. These texts were written to provide commentary and
to develop a sutra by rephrasing its contents, often in metered verse. The
first, in the Beijing Library, is a short fragment; the second is a more
complete explication of the first part of a sutra and is now in the pelliot
186
collection in Paris. Unfortunately, the surviving pages do not announce

the title of the root sutra, though the passages cited match the middle
section of The Sutra [Explaining That] the Kindness of Parents is Profound and
Dfficult
to Repay (Fu mu en zhong nan bao
jing),
a composite
work that was probably put together in the Song period or slightly later
and that remains a favorite statement of Buddhist family values today in
Taiwan.
Because The Sutra [Explaining ThatJ the Kindness of Parents is Profound and Difficult to Repay is a compilation text made up of four distinct
and poorly integrated sections, we cannot assume that the Tang lecturenote texts are referring to all of the Song text. The matching piece appears
within a section that has its own introduction and conclusion, so it is

likely that af an earlier date this section circulated independently and was
the subject of the lecture-note texts. Presumably this smaller text was
later joined with the other pieces of the Song text, which include the upgraded version ofthe ten kindnesses, a long introductory heading about
the Buddha bowing to a pile of ancestral bones, and a full discussion of
th ten months of pregnancy. (The sections added on last are considered
in Chapter 9 because they belong in the later stratum of writing on mothers and sons more relevant to what I call "Buddhist biology.")
Reading from the Pelliot manuscript, which preserves the beginning,
one of the lecture-note texts starts as follows:
The sutrq says: The Buddha said to nanda, "When I observe sentient
beings, though they are human, their thoughts and actions are stupid. They
do not think of their fathers and mothers who have [shown] them great
kindness (da en de). If they do not respect them, they are without human
benevolence."
These lecture notes sayt This assage] has the Buddha scolding [sentient beings]. Our parents have previously [shown] us ten types of kindness. All the nurnrring of parents, it is the effort of both our parents. The
World-Honored One said to nanda, "I see all sentient beings in this
world, though they look like people, if they do not know the great kindness shown by the father and mother, if they do not respond by repaying
it, and if they do not understand the repayment of the kindnesses, then at
Mother
1g7
the end of their lives they will fall into the three evil realms, and for long
kalpas of time not get out."ae
This passage makes it clear that there is a huge debt to be repaid. should
a son default on his debt, punishment will follow, and it wilt be rnerciless.
Following this quote, both lecture-note texts move on to discussions of
unfilial sons. Like the interpolated section of The sutra on the pround
Kindness of Parents discussed in chapter 7, these unfilial sons really only
start feeling their oats when they gow up enough to travel aound with
the local hooligans. The Beijing text notes that the mother is worried sick
about her son because he is out all the time and does not leave word of
his whereabouts. But what follows is a very revealing remark. The Beijing texts reads:
People save up grain to ward off hunger,
And they raise sons (yang zi) so that they will return [what was given]
when the parents are aged.so
But you can bet that when they grow up, they
will not be filial.sr
This passage, set as it is in the description of unfilial sons who forget to

repay their parents, makes it clear that at this point the Buddhist discussion of filial piety is, like the confucian discussion, intent on making sons
be filial so that they will take care of their aging parents. sons are like a
nest egg, in that they are insurance against hunger in their parents' old
age. The perennial problem is that, even after receiving so much in their
infancy, sons do not v/ant to be burdened in this way. This problematic is
exactly the same as that depicted in the seventh-century sutr on the
Pround Kindness of Parents with its interpolated section on the unfilial

son. Also, the way the opening passage argues that sons forfeit their humanity in disregarding their parents and their debts is a line in shan
Dao's discussion of debts (see Chapter 6).
Besides seeing in these passages continuity with earlier works, it is
crucial to notice that this is a definition of filial piety voiced from the
point of view of parents. centuries earlier, Buddhist filial piety was in the
"youth pitch," urging sons to convert their parents to Buddhism in order
188
to demonstrate their filiality and repay their debts. The Sutra on the Profound Kindness of Parenls showed a merging of the two voices, leaving a
ragged edge between the interpolated passages (see Chapter 7). Here
there is no conflict, there is only the voice of the parents and the Buddha.
Sons appear only through the eyes oftheir disappointed parents, and sons
are certainly not in a position of power, as in the early Buddhist texts on
filial piety.
The snippet about raising sons in preparation for,one's old age aligns
Buddhist filial piety with very Confucian goals. Both the lecture-note
texts continue to read from the parents' perspective, and the Pelliot version goes so far as to quote a passage from the Confucian classics in
which the Confucian paragon of filial piety, Zeng Zi, says, "Of all the
hundred practices, none surpasses filial piety. As for filial piety, it is the
essence of heaven and the righteousness of earth."t'This passage comes a
little before a discussion of how sons-and daughters-marry and leave
their parents alone and wretched. This close merging of a Confucian
homily on filial piety with the urgency surrounding the marriage crisis
suggests that the lecture-note texts are defining a form of Buddhist filial
piety that is becoming more and more Confucian, especially with regard
to the problem of family reproduction.
The rest of this sutra as it is preserved in the Song compilation is fascinating for its depiction of family life in medieval China.s' After several
passages depicting the disobedience displayed by the unfilial son toward
male authority in his family (i.e., father, uncles, and older brothers), the
text invokes a scene much like the interpolated section of The Sutra on
the Pround Kindness of Parents:
Or, again, the father might be widowed and the mother a widower, off
living alone in an empty room, like a traveler stopping at someone else's
place [and not feeling at home]. Hot or cold, hungry or thirsty, . . .
morning and night they are always weeping, sighing, and lamenting. But
[children] ought to give the best to their parents and take care (gong yang)
of them. If people of your parents' generation who might be conceited

find out that they are not served, then every day [the parents] will be
shamed and be afraid that they will be ridiculed.
Mother
189
Or, again, [there is the unfilial son] who takes all his food and money and
it to care (gong yang) for his wife and kids. He works till he drops
them]
without any sense of shame [at being unfilial to his parents].
[for
The wife is entrusted to decide everything and in every matter he relies on
her and obeys her. The elders glare, but they are completely without fear.
There are also some daughters who, before they are married, are compatible, easy to get along with, and filial. But then once they are married
their unfilialness increases. If the parents [her in-laws] express anger, it
just makes her more resentful. Her husband might beat and scold her,
which she might willingly accept [in persisting in her unfilialness] because
she still is very attached to another sumame and another clan [her natal
family] while she treats her own [new] home as though it were distant.
Or again, [there is the unfrlial woman who,] following her husband to
different villages, separates from her father and mother without love and
admiration and breaks off all contact, not even communicating one word.
This really upsets her natal parents [it., "suspends their intestines and
hangs their stomachs"] so that they just caffiot find peace-it is lke they
were suspended upside down (dao xuan).to In every thought they see her
face, like when you are thirsty and think only of liquid. So lovingly are
uses
they missing her that they get no relief.ss
This passage is quite explicit about where the family problems lie in
China. Simply put, adult children just cannot be trusted because they try
to live their lives as they wish, forgetting about the time and pain invested
in them by their parents. The sutra and its lecture notes pile up the kindnesses of the mother right next to the unfilialness of the son so as to make
his betrayal, or quest for personal freedom, all the worse. The passage
from the sutra also reveals the tension between the young married couple
and the son's parents. This can arise either from the son's overdevotion to
his wife or from her inability to count her new family s family. Another
notable item in the passage just quoted is the pain that parents feel over
losing their daughters in marriage. This pain is not mentioned in earlier
documents. Finally, here is a clear statement that parents expect to maintain fairly close ties with their daughters.
Also noteworthy in these lecture notes are the hells for the unfilial.
190
Both the sutra being commented on and the lecture notes make it clear
that unfilial conduct buys one a ticket to the tortuous hell realms of the
Buddhist underworld. The sutra adds an interesting detail. It notes that,
ninety-one kalpas before, there had been a sinner who was not filial to his
parents.'6 After he died he went to the great pit of hell where he suffered
the punishment of a spinning steel bowl carving his skull. This torture
matches the punishment mentioned in Dao Shl's Dharma Treasure
Grove, where the Buddha in a previous lifetime almost suffered the same
cranial drilling for taking a swing at his mother (see Chapter 6)' The description of the punishment is identical, with the same wording used, so
the author of this sutra probably just looked in his Buddhist encyclopedia
for sources on hells for the unfilial.

With hell opening up for unfilial sons, it is clear that the nostalgic plea
to save the mother is being supplemented by the threat of punishment.
Implicit, too, is the charge that the son, simply by existing, is guilty of
harming his mother, since he, though only a fetus, sacrificed her in a very
un-Buddhist manner. This development marks this era as a time of the
"hystericization" of Buddhist filial piety, in which a son's filial piety defined both his fate and the fate of his mother. Failure to conform to this
rigorous ideal excluded him from those who were counted as real humans, and then led to an eternity of damnation.
This chapter discussed two late-Tang styles of writing about mothers

and sons. The first, demonstrated by the two long naratives about Mu Lian
and his mother, shows an intensification of the son's responsibility to save
his mother. Of these ;wo, The Illustrated Tale is notable for its poetic and
romantic teatrnent of their saga. In both cases, it is the mother-son relationship that gets attention, not any other aspect of family life. This exclusive focus on the mother and son is heightened by the way both narratives
set themselves outside of time. In both The Story of Mu Lian and The lllustrated Tle, Mu Lian appears as a mythic figure separated in many ways
from the life styles of the filial sons who would like to emulate his model.
Sons of this world must worry about being filial to fathers, uncles, and
grandfathers, must go ahead with arranged marriage plans, and must get to
Mother
191
work producing the next generation of the family line. Mu Lian is free of
all this. His father is dead, there is no other male figure in his family, and he
never has to marry and face the hazards of negotiating between his new
family and his natal family. Mu Lian, as he appears here, is the opposite
of Guo Ju, who is so deeply mired in these real world problems that the
murder of his only son seems like a reasonable solution (see Chapter 6).
The mother-son values of these two versions of the Mu Lian story
seem warm and vibrant compared to those in the texts discussed in the
second part of this chapter. The simple version of The Ten Kindnesses
appears inviting enough, insofar as it paints a lifelong relationship of
harmony between mother and son. But the expanded Ten Kindnesses,
with its rhetoric of pain and blood, might have been hard to stomach.
Perhaps even more disturbing is the way these ten kindnesses are used in
the two lecture-note texts to reveal a harshness in the mother-son rhetoric
that borders on a Jonathan Edwards-style "unfilial sons in the hands of an
angry Buddha." To my knowledge, this is one of the few places in Buddhist literature where the Buddha is actually said to scold and threaten
sentient beings. What are we to make of this more repressive wing of the
Buddhist filial-piety movement, with its parental perspective and promise
ofdeep hells for unfilial sons?
The shrillness, certainly, is not altogether new. Shan Dao's tone is
similarly pitched, and quotes about hells for the unfilial are cited by both
Hui Jing and Zong Mi (see Chapters 6 and 7). In fact it seems that the
perspective of the middle, interpolated section in The Sutra on the Profound Kindness of Parents, which is so worried about the unfilial son's
treachery after marriage, has been expanded and is now giving voice to
those concerns with the aid of a well-stocked arsenal of Buddhist mythology. More specifically, what we saw in Chapter 7 as the parents' "agony
of having an unfilial son" has spawned a punishment scheme ensuring
the unfilial son" as a preemptive prophylactic.
I see no reason
to suspect that these two tones of mother-son discourses were really at
odds. In fact, if the more threatening style came into vogue during this
period, then the beatific Mu Lian, who so adroitly managed it all, no
"agony
doubt appeared even more appealing than before.
Buddhist
Biologt
CHAPTER NINE
Telling them that she is afraid that death is coming upon her.
Buddhist Biology
Childbkth really is arduous.

Her five organs feel as though they are being stabbed.
The neighbors come jostling in to watch.
193
When the time finally comes,
Then, as the baby is born on the grass [mat?],

When a bystander tells her it is a son2
She hears the news and, overjoyed, cries out,
And forgets immediately all the pain that had enveloped her body.
Then the mother takes the wet place [in the bed],
Putting the son in the dry places,
And with her blood-milk satisfies his hunger and thirst.
She wraps him in cloth to protect him from the cold wind
And she spits out the sweet things [into his mouth] without any regret,
Swallowing the bitter things without raising an eyebrow. . . . 3
"-- uDDHIST BIoLOGY" might sound like an oxymoron, but this

IA chapter presents ample evidence to defend this neologism and to
argue that Buddhist biology was a principal thematic in later strata of

Buddhist family ideologies. By the middle Tang period, Buddhist ideas
about gestation, birth, and breast-feeding had been combined and worked
into a composite framework defining what sons owed their mothers. Fa
zhao,s (d.772) hymn entitled "Homily on the Profound Kindness of Parents,' (F mu en zhong zan wen) is an early example of a text that joins
these tracks in Buddhist biologY:
The mass of kalpas all have their karmic causes'
The birth in this life depends (tuo) onthe mother's womb'
After about a month [in the womb] the frve limbs sprout out,
And then in seven weeks the six consciousnesses begin to function'

The fefus begins to get heavy like a small mountain'
When he moves, she is afraid that her body will be destroyed'
Her nice clothing now can no longer be worn,
And her vanity mirror is covered with dust.
When the pregnancy reaches the tenth month,
The difficulty of childbirth is imminent
And every mormng it is like she is seriously ill'
Day in and day out she hums to [comfort] herself
Because the fear she feels is diffrcult to imagine'
Sadness and hatred
fill her bosomt
Yet she swallows her tears and calls to her relatives
In this version of mother-son relations, fetal development is not particularly prominent. However, with the two lines mentioning the times
when the fetus takes shape and when cognitive functions begin, the hymn
veers into Buddhist biological theories that have not been included in the
mother-son discussion up to this point. Dao Shi's seventh-century

Dharma Treasure Grove (discussed in Chapter 6) contains both the
mother-son style of family values and Buddhist theories of fetal development, but they remain in separate chapters and are not explicitly connected. Presumably Fa Zhao and others in the eighth century were familiar with these sources in Dao Shi's work and saw that they could be effectively combined to enhance the Buddhist discourse on mothers and
SONS.
Fa Zhao's "Homily" contains another important marker for sketching

the history of Buddhist writing on mothers and sons. Though milk and
blood are assimilated in the line explaining how the mother satisfies her
son nutritionally, Fa Zhao never mentions that during childbirth her blood
flowed like that of a slaughtered animal, nor does he allude to other connections between childbirth and animal sacrifice. Perhaps these motifs
were in circulation in the mid-eighth century, when he wrote his homily,
194 Buddhist Biolog,t

and he chose not to include them. However, since his text expands the
debt that a son owes his mother, one would think that if these images
were au courant at the time he was writing he would have drawn on
them. lffhatever the case, his hymn shows that a popular text explaining
debts to the mother in the middle Tang period did not depict birth as a
bloody sacrifice, a motif which by the end of the Tang hadbecome de
rigueur in texts llke Repaying the Ten Kindnesses (see Chapter 8).
Another Tang text found at Dun Huang suggests more directly the role
that Dao Shi's encyclopedias likely played in pushing the mother-son
ideology in new directions. The Public Teachings of [HuiJ Yuan of Mt.
Lu (Lu Shan Yuan gong hua) purports to be a discourse by the famous
monk-scholar Hri Yuan (334416), who was influential during a much
earlier period in the sinification of Buddhism, when Chinese Buddhism
had yet to employ mother-son issues in a progfttm of family values. In
this late Tang text, Hui Yuan is presented as lecturing on the fundamental
Buddhist concept of suffering in cyclic existence, but when the sufferings
of birth are discussed it is clear that recently developed mother-son issues
have taken over, framing the discussion of suffering in a way that parallels Fa Zhao's "Homily" and the contemporary lecture-note texts considered in Chapter 8. The text opens with Hui Yuan explaining the first suffering in the list, the suffering of birth:a
Birth relies (tuo) on the elements (yin) ftakng form] inside the mother's
womb. During the ear months the fetus is like butter. After ninety days it
takes form. Sons are on the mother's left side while daughters are on the
mother's right side. Attached and stuck closely to the mother's heart and
liver, the fetus receives energy (qi) and takes form and egins] to suffer.
All persons, smart or dumb, rich or poor, have the same debt (en) to the
loving mother-there are no two t)?es of debts. When the mother eats
something hot, it is no different [for the fetus] than if his body was boiled
alive in a cauldron. If the mother drinks something cold, then it is just like
being in one of the ice hells. If the mother eats a lot, it is like being
squeezed between [character unreadable and not reprinted in lhe Taish
edition]. If she is hungry, then one gets the suffering of hanging upside
down (dao xuan). When the ten months are up and the time for birth
Buddhist
Biologlt
195
draws near, it is as though all her bones and sinews are sawed open, [and
the pain] is equal to having her four limbs cut off, and her five organs are
ill and suffering. It is not different from a knife attack or being killed with
In the [agony of what seems] like one thousand births and ten
unknown-it is as
though her life is hanging by a thread. But don't forget that she comes
back to life,s and in a little while, mother and child (zi) are separaled,, and
the blood [flort] like slaughtered sheep. The mother, though she is
swooning in and out of consciousness, asks if it is a boy or girl. If they say
it is a girl then the birth is an average good. But if it is a boy (er) then she
will immediately forget the pain and suffering in her hundred bones and
muscles, and in the middle of her swoon she will smite happily. This
swords.
thousand deaths, she loses consciousness and her fate is
[kind] of childbirt]r is called [the birth] of a frlial son.

Now in the case of a child of the five perversions (wu ni), how is the
delivery? In his mother's abdomen he makes her uncomfortable by kicking and trampling, never taking a rest. [Bouncing around] suddenly from
her heart to her waist, there is no place he does not go among the five organs. When the ten months are up and it is time to deliver, this
[kind of
child] takes hold of his mother's organs and tramples on her groin bones
for tlree mornings and five days, not resting once. From this point on it is
clear that the mother's fate has been changed. When the mother looks
upon her death she cries out in a way that moves heaven and earth and
pierces one like a knife to the heart. The siblings and the mother know
what to expect. Someone who hated their household or who had a debt
against rhem(yuan jia zhai zhu) took her life to settle accounts, but the
mother first must suffer the childbirth before she dies. This is how [unfilial sons] are born.
Having finished, the laymen asked about the suffering of aging, the
suffering of sickness. 6
This passage opens up several ner/ perspectives. After augmenting descriptions of the suffering of birth with many hell images-sawing sinews
and the like-the last paragraph asserts that difficult births are due to the
child's unfilialness. A particularly evil child may even kill his mother
with his uterine rampaging, and this is explained as due to his being an
unfilial child with the "five perversions." This nomenclature is odd in that
196 Buddhist Biologt
Buddhist
Biologt
197
it fuses the worst Buddhist sins with the more-mundane evil of being unfilial, and is stranger still when applied to the "morality" of the fetus. That
a mother's death in childbirth is also explained as being the result of an
outstanding debt complicates the etiology of her death further, yet demonstrates how strong the sense of family unity is, since her tragic demise
is understood to be the result ofan act ofvengeance against "the house-
just another reason why sentient beings should avoid cyclic existence.
However, in The Public Teachings of [HuiJ yuan of Mt. Lu,Httiyuan is
presented as teaching how all this pain and tortue fit into a demanding
hold."7
hell motif is strengthened by the additional remark that the mother dies
and is revived thousands of times----exactly what happens in Avci Hell,
where Mu Lian's mother was sent. Thus The public Teachings establishes, beyond reasonable doubt, the homology between childbirth and
hell. Third, there is the added sentence that associates childbirth with
animal slaughter, saying that the mother's blood flows like that of a
slaughtered sheep. The blood of childbirth thus connects animal sacrifice,
hell experiences for women, and the son's imperative to repay his mother,
although it is not until the song-period Brood Bowl sutra (seebelow) that
these links are explicitly established.
Nothing found in the Dun Huang literature or art suggests that a Blood
Bowl sutra was known then and there.n The first textual evidence appears
ir.r an almanac of rites from 1194, which speaks of rites that turn bloody
hlls into lotus ponds and absolve mothers of all sin:
This explanation of pregnancy in The Public Teachings of [Hui] Yuan,

so intent on evoking the pain of both mother and child, discusses fetal
development with slightly more specificity than Fa Zhao did in his
"Homily." Besides the sentences, "during the early months the fetus is
like butter; after ninety days it takes form," there are descriptions of
where sons and daughters are located in the womb and of the sufferings
they undergo. Similar details are found in Dao Shi's encyclopedia, and it
is likely that the author ofr The Public Teachings of fHui] Yuan^ chose
these short phrases for stylistic reasons, rather than the long passages
cited in The Dharma Treasure Grove under the entry for rebirth.
Looking more closely at Dao Shi's citations on this topic shows that
one of his quotes in his.'ssentials of the Yarious Sutras is culled from a
text called The Sutra on the Five Kings (discussed and partially translated
in Chapter 6), which also presents a teaching on the "eight sufferings" in
cyclic existence. Comparing The Public Teachings of [HuiJ Yuan and
Dao Shi's Essentials, it seems very likely-based on the number of par-
allel passages-that the author of The Public Teachings lifted the .Flve
Kings teaching on the "eight sufferings" from The Essentials and then
enhanced it in certain ways before using it in his own work.' Thus identifuing how an early Tang text was reworked into a late Tang apocryphon
not only points again to how important Dao Shi's encyclopedias were in
providing material to Buddhist forgers, but also provides clues about
what interested the forgers in this period.
If I am right in tracing this borrowing, then the reworking of Dao Shi's
citation shows three principal changes. First, Dao Shi's passage did not
corrlrect the suffering of birttr to the debt problem between mother and
son; rather, the pain of pregnancy and birth, for child and mother, was
program for repaying mothers. second, the pain of birth had already been
described as a hell experience during which implements of torture are
imagined to be working their vengeance on the mother's body. Here this
The labor of the mother is hard to repay, [so after her death] be morally
upright (hou de) for thee years and spread the Great vehicle
[of Buddhisml by holding five pure feasts that will make good effects full and
complete. The commoners rely on the Dharma feast to express their confession (chan), humbly wishing that their mother's transgressions of one
thousand births and her ten evil sins will be wiped away. And
[they hope
that] the blood pool will tum into a lotus pool, that the karmic ocean will
tum into a Dharma ocean, and that we [her children] in this birth and this
life will avoid disasters and have lucky stars, and in other times leave this
human realm and return to the Buddha Way.'o
This passage leaves little doubt that, by the late twelfth century, a form of
funerary practice for the mother was in vogue that brought together the
following six pieces of ideology: (1) repayment to the mother for birth,
198
Buddhst Biologt
(2) funeral feasts for the Buddhists that effect her purification, (3) the
Confucian dictum to mourn parents for three years, (4) the deep sinfulness of the mother, (5) her expected post-mortem torture in a bloody hell,
and (6) the vague threat that if progeny do not perform these Buddhist
actions, ttrey, too, will be tortured in this life and the next. Save for the
bloody hell, these themes had been used in Dun Huang texts, but the
combination here is unusually coercive.
Despite this forwardness in announcing its program, the passage

makes no mention of a sutra with the title Blood Bowl, which leaves open
the question of whether that sutra had yet been written. In any case, by
the late twelfth century the ideological and ritual format fhat The Blood
Bowl Sutra now carries was well known. Shortly thereafter there is firm
evidence for the sufa, and by 1437 it was printed in the imperial canon."
Because it appears in several Ming novels,'' we can be sure that by the
Ming era (1347-1644) this sutra was imbedded in Chinese culture. It also
made its way to Japan in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, where it
flourished. Besides its prominence in the Buddhist context, there is abundant evidence that there were Daoist versions as well. Even by the thirteenth century, a Daoist version was in circulation and used as a funeral
text.l3 This was not the first time an important Buddhist tract on family
values also showed up in contemporary Daoist collections. The seventhcentury Sutra on the Pround Kindness of Parents (discussed in Chapter
7) is a similar case of a crucial Buddhist text appearing coterminally in
the Daoist repertoire.'o
of East Asian Buddhist and Daoist practice in the twentieth century. In Taiwan, in 1990, I
found numerous copies of it at local monasteries, and it is still prominent
The Blood Bowl Sutra remains an important part
enough on the mainland to draw criticism from the well-known Taiwanese Buddhist leader, Master Sheng Yen.t' But as the following piece of
ethnography suggests, it may not be that resistant to the post-World War

II cultural climate in which the younger generations are turning toward
Occidental values. It seems that Chinese women in Hong Kong perform
the services for themselves after they reach middle age, saying that because their sons have gone to 'merica to study engineering, there is little
Buddhist
Biology
199
chance that they will perform these rites for them after they die.r6 This
shows a tradition strong enough to keep hold of the older generation even
in the 1990's, but unable to reproduce itself among the younger generation. However, I suspect that the mythology surrounding the bloody hell
is still quite strong in places less cosmopolitan than Hong Kong.
Because the sutra is short, I
will analyze it paragraph by paragraph:
The Orthodox Canonical Blood Bowl Sutra Taught by the Buddha.tT
Once, some time ago, Venerable Mu Lian was traveling in yu Zhou

looking for Yang Province when he saw a blood bowr pool hell
[sic] (xrze
pen ch di yu) that was 84,000 leagues (yojanas) wide. In the pool were
120 implements of steel beams, steel pillars, steel yokes and steel chains.
He saw many u/omen from Jambudvipa [Earttr], their hair asunder, with
long cangues and fetters on their hands, suffering for their sins in this hell
(di yu). The ghost in charge of the punishments three times a day takes
blood and makes the sinners (zui ren) drink it. If the sirurers are not willing to submit to him and drink, then he takes his steel rod and beats them
as
they scream.
This first paragraph gives us a Mu Lian looking at victims in hell, which

is normal enough, but immediately several drastic revisions in the presentation of Mu Lian are apparent. First, this account is exceedingly
abrupt, with no preamble announcing what Mu Lian is seeking or what
the text is going to explain. Instead, in the opening sentence we are told
simply that Mu Lian was out on the road one day an$rstumbled upon this
"'Women Only" hell. This casual contact with hell is completely opposite
to the accounts in various late-Tang texts like The lllustrated rale of Mu
Lian Savng His Mother from the Netherworld (see Chapter g), whose
authors delighted in expanding Mu Lian's exasperating trek through hell
in search of Qing Ti. It is notable, too, that the hell is not located deep
underground but seems to have an earthly location. The localization of
hells and heavens on earthly geography is a long-standing trend in chinese cosmology, but this development stands in sharp contrast to the hiddenness of hell in all the other Mu Lian accounts.
The term used to identiff this hell is uncertain. what could ',blood
Buddhist
200 Buddhist Biologt

bowl pool hell" mean? The title only includes the characters for "blood
bowl" (xue pen),which both makes sense and echoes two precedents: (1)
it rhymes with the name for the ghost festival (yu lan pen), since both
phrases end with the character meaning "bowl"; and (2) it nearly matches
the phrase, popular in the late Tang, about blood spilling into a bowl at
birth (xue cheng pen). The author seems to want to make these allusions
in the title even if it means a bit of complication when the hell itself is defined. In the opening line of the text, the character meaning "pool" (chi)
is awkwardly added. Without this character, the hell would take on an air
of Alice in Wonderland, with many women swimming about in a container the size of a salad bowl. The next line, which defines the immense
dimensions of the hell, uses only the character 'ool," suggesting that the
author wants it to be a "blood pool" big enough to hold lots of women but
at the same time does not want to give up the image evoked by the term
.,blood bowl,,' which we can assume had powerful associations both with
slaughtering animals and with childbirth.'8
The only detail given about the women in this hell is that Yama, the
Lord of Death, is leading them by their hair, which is "asunder." This
detail is eye-catching because loose hair is an important signifier in chinese mythology sulounding death and fecundity. James watson has argued that, in modem funerals in southem China, women let down their
hair and rub it on the coffrn of a deceased agnate relative in order to recover some of the potency of that person.'' He suggests that women's
hair, when let down, signals sexuality and reproductive potential. A modern Taiwanese version of The Blood Bowl Sutra draws this connection a
little closer when it explains women's sins as follows: "They polluted the
three brilliant ones [the Three Jewels] and the public gods. They draped
therefore
[something on] their heads and let their hair down. Women
have sin (niang dang zui) because they all were disrespectful before giving birth."2o Exactly what this passage is pointing to remains unclear to
me, but at the very least, part of women's sins is being blamed on what
they did with their hair. Patricia Ebrey notes that in the song period the
image of .\/omen's hair was important for signaling a correctly consummated marriage.'' Thus hair in disarray would likely suggest the opposite:
Biology
201,
wanton womanhood. Finally, in Dao Shi's stories of Ding Lan (see Chapter 6), Ding Lan's wife suddenly loses all her hair-apparently as a punishment for injuring the statue of his mother-and is made to do three
years of penartce, a period of abstinence and mouming during which she
presumably would not have been available for sex. Clearly women's hair
is related to their sexuality, and our author relies on that link to further
imply female sexual sins.
The next detail about these hapless women is that the warden of hell
makes them drink the blood in which they are immersed. The origin of
this blood is not specified. Given the list of torture tools, it could be blood
let from their bodies as they undergo their punishments, but it could just
as easily be menses or blood from some other source. To be sure, there is
a long history of blood-drinking hells within the Buddhist tradition. In India it was normal to imagine that hell beings and hungry ghosts lived on
blood, pus, and filth. There is even a scene in The Mahvastu describing
Mu Lian finding a hell apparently peopled only by female ghosts, next to
which is a passage describing a hell in which people drink blood and
pus.22 This could be coincidence, but throughout this study there have
been numerous cases of textual items that are originally adjacent to each
other and then are later combined, when seen to be consonant in some
v/ay.
Another suggestive precedent is a passage from the late-seventhcentury translation of the Mulasarvastivadavinaya in which Mu Lian is
trying to repay his deceased mother; with the help of the Buddha, he finds
her and gets her out of cyclic existence. This is followed by a summary
that includes mention of drying up, with Buddhist wisdom and power, the
"bloody sea" and the "mountains of bones."" Thus the Mulasarvqstivadavinaya first gives us the "Mu Lian saves his mottler" motif and then
casually mentions the destruction of a bloody sea-clearly a metaphor for
the human condition. There is no apparent connection between the

bloody sea and womanhood, other than the fact that the image comes at
the end of a narrative about Mu Lian saving his mother. While it is not
critical to my project to argue that these vignettes necessarily played into
the formation of The Blood Bowl Sutra,l do find them suggestive.
202
Buddhist Biologt
The next paragraph of The Blood Bowl Sutra has Mu Lian asking the
hell keepers for an explanation of the suffering he is wiressing:
'When
Mu Lian saw this, he sadly asked the hell warden, "I do not see any
I only see r/omen
here receiving this cruel retribution?" The warden answered him, "Teacher, it is not something that involves men. It only has to do with women,
who every month leak menses or in childbirth release blood which seeps
down and pollutes the earth gods (di shen). And, more, they take their
filthy garments to the river to wash, thereby polluting the river water.
Later, an unsuspecting good man or wonuur draws some water from the
river, boils it for tea, and then offers it to the holy ones (zhu sheng), causing them to be impure. The Great General of heaven takes note of this and
marks it in his book of good and evil. After a hundred years, when their
lives are over, [the sinful women] undergo this retribution of suffering
[that you see before you]."
men from earth here suffering these torments. [Why] do
This short exchange makes several points clear. This is a "Women Only"
hell because only women can commit the sins that cause one to be
damned there; men simply are not involved. Women's sins are presented
as consisting of a twofold releasing of blood. First, their release of blood
during menstruation and childbirth is pointed to as grounds for their damnation. This blood flows out of their bodies and gets into the ground, presumably in such quantities, or maybe in such high levels of concentration,
that it spreads out into the cosmos and reaches the earth gods, who are
polluted by it.'o The second sin that the warden mentions is that v/omen
wash their soiled garments in the river. This action has the same effect of
carrying v/omen's impurities to the elite, pure figures of the universe.
Thus the two sins are identical in their introduction of women's vaginal/uterine substances into the cosmic order. The difference lies, I suppose, in the fact that the release of blood during menses and childbirth is
involuntary, whereas washing blood-stained clothes in the river suggests
more intention. But one has to wash one's clothes somewhere, so perhaps
it comes to the same thing.
The blood that women leak is different from men's blood; men could
Buddhist
Biologt
203
never make the kind of blood that gets women into this hell. Thus it is not
simply blood, oi even v/omen's blood, but specifically uterine blood that
is the problem. This blood, the author or The Btood Bowl sutra assumes,
is hard to control. It is released into the cosmos monthly through seeping

into the ground or via waterways. once loose in the cosmos, it has a pen-
chant for disturbing male power figures. These elite, pure figures are
polluted by such female discharge, and this is counted as a great sin
which the highest figure in the Departrnent of Records notes in his book
of good and evil deeds. when a woman's life is over, she is turned over
to an all-male hell bureaucracy that treats her with all the cruelty it can
think of.
what this passage states so boldly is that women go to hell for their
bodily functions-not for any great crimindrcts of violence or treachery,
but for the simple facts of menstruation and giving birth to children. The
passiveness of female sin is emphasized by the way the blood, once
loose, works its way to the gods completely on its own, without the
women willing it to arrive there. The offering of polluted tea by the unsuspecting but well-intentioned donor is a perfect symbol of the accidental nature of women's sins: the women do not want the gods to drink their
menses, it just happens. Moreover, it happens under the circumstances of
good will in which a "good man or woman" is trying to make a kind
gesture.
unlike uttara's mother, or Mu Lian's mother in the late-Tang
nura-
tives, both of whom ca:ried out animal sacrifices and practiced deception,
the women in The Blood Bowl sutra have not done anything out of the
ordinary to land in hell. The text makes no effort to construct an antiBuddhist identity for them, citing neither their involvement in heterodox
rites nor wayward lives lived outside of Buddhist rules. Instead, the fact
that they are \/omen is sufficient to put them beyond the pale of Buddhist
belongingness. Regardless of how pure their Buddhist practice is, their
female bodies require that they face retribution in a Buddhist hell, where
a rigorous Buddhist bureaucracy tortures them for upsetting its upperlevel bureaucrats. This is the lesson that the warden is trying to explain to
Mu Lian: women are not good Buddhists and do not fare weil in the Bud-
204
Buddhist Biologt
dhist cosmos because they have foul bodily functions that disturb the hierarchical order. This general assertion is then expanded to include all
womeq making it clear that the damnation of Mu Lian's mother extends
to all women. The warden speaks in generalities, saying, in effect, "Mu
Lian, your mother is here because she was a woman," and Mu Lian's
mother is no different than one's own mother.
Pregnancy and intimate fluids converge at the riverside in another vignette that I suspect influenced The Blood Bowl Sutra. Current in the late
Tang period was a story about a doe who gave birth by a stream. The tale
is fornd in the apocryphal Mahayana Sutra on the SkiW Means for Repaying the Kindness of the Buddha, a matmoth pre-sixth-century work
containing a multitude of stories on Buddhist filial piety.'zs There the story
is about the Buddha's mother in a previous lifetime, when she was a doe
living in the woods near the hermitage of a sage. He washes his clothes
on a flat rock by the stream in front of his cave and relieves himself there
well. The doe comes to drink from the stream and drinks the soiled
residue of his washing, and then, looking around to see if anyone is
watching, drinks from the place where he urinates. If that is not biza:re
enough, this makes her pregnant, and, "in accordance with the way that
does deliver," she retums to the place where she was impregnated in order to give birth there. She does so, and her crying during the birth alerts
the sage, who comes out, scaring her so that she runs off leaving her
newborn daughter there with him.
This is an interesting piece of mythology in itself, with the standard
idiom of male culture defining itself as pure and ascetic while giving
women the role of fecundity and bestiality. The two poles, thus identified,
are then "accidentally" brought together to give birth to new life. I suspect that this story may have influenced The Blood Bowl Sutra because it
is a narrative about fecundity, pregnancy, and pollution that unfolds by a
moving body of water. However, in this story it is the manls impurities
that are powerful. In leaving both the residue from his soiled clothes and
his urine by the stream, he casts an important part of himself into the
public world-a part that will have significant results for whomever ingests it later. Unlike the gods nThe Blood Bowl Sutra,who unknowingly
as
Buddhist
Biologt
205
drink tea brewed with water and menses, the doe seems eager
to ingest
the sage's fluids. By adding the detail that she looks around
before
drinking his urine, r/e can be sure that she knows she is doing
something
sinfil-and, sure enough, she gets pregnant. The ,,reason; given
for
bringing the doe back into contact with the sage-namely,
that all does
return to where they were impregnated to give birth-is a transparent

device to account for how the sage obtains possession ofhis
child.
Another reason I think this story influenced The Blood Bowl

sutra is
that the "sin" of women washing their soiled garments in
streams is redundant to the case made for women's damnation there.
The first reason-that women's menses and blood from childbirth seep into the
ground-is already stated to be a suffrcient crime in the text. Thus
the
second sin of clothes-washing seems gratuitous-unless
it was added to
allude to a piece of folklore already in circulation. I suspect
that the doesage narrative received a fair amount of attention in
the late Tang
because
it appears in at least one wall painting at Dun Huang3u and, according

to
Howard Levy, was still popular later in the yuan dynasty,
when it was
invoked to explain the attractiveness of boun d feet.zT
Although the two stories are different, they share a conmon
axis defined by fertility, pollution, and flowing water. The sage impregnates
the
doe with fertile pollution introduced into the water by
his washing his
soiled clothes and urinating. The opposite happens n ThgIood
Bowl
sutra, where women pollute the sages by washing their crothes,
soiled
with fertile fluids, in a stream. In one story, male pollution flows
downward from austere sagely heights and has the power of impregrrating
women, who are portrayed as beronging to the animal realm and

as desirous of this impregnation, even though they know it is sinful.
In the other
story, pollution flows upward from women to the male gods and
worthy
ones, with great harmful effect. Far from giving the gods the gift
of
beautiful child,
it pollutes
and disgusts them, requiring the system that
they govern to punish the women.

Thus the two stories show a shared interest in the effects and relative
value of bodily fluids traversing the distance between men and
women. I
see enough parallels to suspect a connection between
the fwo. Knowing
206
Buddhist Biologlt
Buddhist
Biology
207
while other Mu Lian narratives begin with a debt to the mother based on
the kindness she showed her son in his infancy, Ths Blood BowI sutra
starts with a sin and a punishment. Mu Lian is not reflecting on his bliss-
that the doe story is about the Buddha's mother and that it is found in a
source from which other na:rative material for the Buddhist discourse on
mothers was taken, I see every reason to hold out the possibility that the
doe story influenced the contents of The Blood Bowl Sutra.
After the hell warden in The Blood Bowl Sutra explains the women's
sins to Mu Lian, the text details how to absolve them of their sins. Like
all the other Buddhist texts on family valye{,,{fhe Blood Bowl Sutra is
constructed around a problem and a solution, with the problem being an
unpaid debt and the solution its repayment. The two paragraphs already
translated here narrated the discovery and identification of the problem;
Rather, it is the sudden vision of the sanguine hell before him that makes
Mu Lian understand their relationship as an unfinished exchange. Seeing
her suffering automatically signals to him that a debt for which he is responsible has been left unrepaid. Mu Lian's unprompted response to the
situation reveals that the Buddhist construction of family values has succeeded to such an extent that the author assumes his readers will make the
now comes the solution:
same connection.
When Mu Lian heard this, he was very sad and asked the warden, "How
can v/e repay (bao da) ovr moms ( ning) for the kindness of giving birth
to us in order that they may leave the blood-pool hell?"28 The hell warden
answered, "Teacher, you only need to carefully be a filial son or daughter,
respect the Three Jewels, and, for the sake of your mom, hold Blood Bowl
Feasts for three years, including organizing Blood Bowl Meetings (xe
pen sheng hui) to which you invite monks to recite this sua for a full day,
and have confessions (chan hui). Then there will be a praj boat to carry
the mothers across the River Nai He, and they will see five-colored lotuses
appeff in the blood pool, and the sinners will come out happy and contrite
and they will be able to take rebirth (chao sheng) in a Buddha Land."
The great bodhisatlvas and venerable Mu Lian understood this teaching
and accepted it, urging good sons and daughters ofour world to awaken at
once, to practice and uphold the great discrimination, and in the future not
to lose hold of it, as it could mean ten thousand kalpas of hardship.
The Buddha again told women, "As for The Blood Bowl Sutra, if you
copy and keep this suha with a believing mind, then you will be causing,
as far as possible, the mothers of the three worlds to gain rebirth in
heaven, where they will receive pleasures, clothes, and food naturally.
Also, their lives will be long, and they will be rich aristocrats."
Then the nagas and the eight classes [of gods?], the humans and nonhumans, etc., were all very happy, believed and accepted the teaching,
paid obeisances, and left.
The Great Canonical Blood Bowl Sutra taught by the Buddha.
ful past with his mother when she breast-fed him and cared for him.
rn The Blood Bowl sutra, reproduction produces sin and debt at
the
same moment. For the mother, Mu Lian's birth is her sin, and for him, his
birth engenders a birth-debt that he will cary as rong as they are both in
the world. The connection between sin and debt is revealed in how Mu
Lian unquestioningly understands his mother's existence in hell as
evidence of his indebtedness and obligation to repay her. when Mu
Lian's mother's sin was identified in more oblique ways in earlier narratives, I had to argue from scattered hints that there was a connection
between sin and debt. Now it is clear that birth-the ultimate connection
between mother and
repay.
son-is the origin of sin,
debt, and the obligation to
Birth occasions a mother and child's mutual state of incompletion,

which remains an open question throughout their lives, until she dies and
her son (or daughter) has the opportunity to repay her. This wraps their
fates together, and failure to recognize and,repay the debt imperils both
mother and child. The mother's fate is certainly already in jeopardy, but
.i
I
we can be sure that the child's fate is threatened, too, by the passage in
which Mu Lian announces that losing hold of this sutra "could mean ten
thousand kalpas of hardship" for "believing men and women of this
world." This threat parallels the passage from the twelfth-century almanac, discussed above, which states that sons and daughters who fail their
mothers may face bad fates. This idea that everyone's fate relies on the
performance of funerary rites for the mother is reasonable simply because
208
Buddhist Biologt
a son or daughter would be unfilial not to perform
Buddhist
them-and we know
from Ctfalter 8 what happens to unfilial children.

Besides this threatening aspect of the mythology, there is another piece
ofpathos added here. Regardless ofhow filial a son is or how quickly he
gets the Buddhists to do all the necessary rituals, The Blood Bowl Sutra
implies that these rites only correct a wrong. The mother is going to this
bloody hell no matter what. The addition of the word "then" after listing
the three years of rituals that save her is a broad hint that she will reside
in that hell for three years even under the best conditions.2e Thus every
child is made to understand that his (or her) coming into the world was a
great gift from his mother-who, knowing what it would cost her in the
next world, nevertheless decided to give birth to new life. She sacrificed
herself and accepted a dreadful fate, assuming that her time in hell would
be limited because her progeny would prompt repay the debt and free
her.
There is another new feature in Ihe Blood Bowl Sutra as well: daughters appear. It is quite surprising, actually, that in a millennium of Buddhist texts on filial piety there has been next to nothing said about daughters.'o The lecture notes discussed in Chapter 8 do mention the emotional
bond between daughters and their natal families, but here in The Blood
Bowl Sutra there seems to be a call to daughters to perform Buddhist
deeds based on the obligation to rcpay their mothers. Though the narrative is about Mu Lian saving his mother, twice we are told that "sons and
daughters" must respond. This inclusion of daughters appea to be more
than accidental because in the last paragraph of at least one version (Makita Tairy's) the Buddha addresses women directly, saying that if they
take it upon themselves to preserve and distribute this text and its contents, they
will be helping all mothers in the universe.
What can this expansion of the discourse on filial piety mean? Certainly everyone wants daughters to be filial, but there is an important distinction between sons and daughters, in that a daughter leaves home to
become part of the economy of another family. This means that, unlike
sons, daughters must take resources from their husbands' families to fulfi1l the required funerary repayment to their mothers. There is no reason
Biologt
209
this could not happen, but I have not seen supporting evidence ofthis development, which would be somewhat contradictory to other trends in the
Buddhist discussion.
Reading carefully what the Buddha is presented as sag to women at
the end of rhe Blood Bowl sutra,I suspect that something else is going
on. what the text actually says is not that women should fund frrnerary
rituals for their mothers but that they should accept and spread the ideol-
ogy of The Blood Bowl sutra. This level of involvement is certainly less
complicated in terms of family economics and loyalties, and tacking it
onto the end of the work shows that the author wanted to bring the
mother-daughter link into the domain of propagating Buddhist biological
theories. The passage makes it clear that women who pass on this information will take care of all mottrers, including, most certainly, their own.
Ironically, those women who accept the Buddhist damnation of women
and spread this ideology will help save all the mothers of the universe
from the very damnation that The Blood Bowl Sutra is teaching.
without becoming fixated on what looks from the outside like a piece
of double-think, I wonder whether the problem remains of who will save

of all mothers with
their proselizing activities, but who will save them? won't they need
post-mortem attention, too? could their daughters help after they themselves die, by more intently spreading The Blood Bowr sutra ideology in
some way? This is just speculation, but it does suggest that Buddhists
were beginning to develop a cyclical repayment scheme for mothers and
daughters in addition to the one for mothers and sons.
Further trying to imagine how the doctrines of rhe Brood Bowr sutra
fit into family life, I hypothesize that the mother will seek to make her
children loyal to her and supportive of Buddhism, so that when she dies
they will not fail her in providing these rituals of redemption. She is already a damned soul, with her children as proof of her imminent trip to
hell. If she accepts this mythology, she will be anxious to raise her children in a way that secures their lasting affection and their concem for
Buddhist matters. otherwise, she will not be able to avoid an eternal stay
in the very unsavory hell depicted here. Because the account ofdebts and
these proselytizing \ryomen. They may be taking care
210
Buddhist Biologt
sins is not closed until her life is over, this anxiety would give her good
reason to keep her sons and daughters on a short leash even when they
are adults. Threatening the mother in this way pushes her to raise children
who are filial and Buddhist in outlook.
Besides generating support for Buddhism, I suspect that the doctrine of
the blood-bowl hell ends up encouraging vertical alliances rvithin the pat-
rilineal family, just as Confucian filial piety demands. Once introduced to

the "Buddhist facts of life," the child will be reminded of the price of his
or her life and of the duty to submit and repay what has been given. Now,
however, these traditional demands of submission can be bolstered with
the threat of etemal suffering for intransigence.
The connections between Buddhist reproductive sins and patriarchal
power are evident in another way. In The Blood Bowl Sutra, as in the Mu
Lian texts found at Dun Huang (see Chapter 8), Qing Ti's sins are a combination of sexuality and the subversion of societal authority. In The
Blood Bowl Sutra, Qing Ti's uterine fluids leave her body and immediately set out to attack the hierarchy of deities in this world and beyond.
This hierarchy includes the "earth gods," who I suppose are more local,
and then, on high, the various "holy ones," which I assume refers to the
buddhas and bodhisattvas. In response to this pollution, the gods and holy
ones rely on their henchmen in the underworld to retliate by exacting
punishment on all women. This connection between r/omen and the deities is fascinating. Why did this author imagine that uterine blood climbs
up the ranks of the hierarchy right into the mouths of the most important
men in the Buddhist cosmos?
To begin with, we must retum to the arguments in Chapter 4 about
pure sons and impure mothers. The early na:ratives showed how sons, in
the midst of their Buddhist careers, were visited by their sinful, soiled,
ln a general sense
the construction of The Blood Bowl Sutra runs parallel to these stories,
but on closer inspection much is revised. In The Blood Bowl Sutra N.dtt
Lian is not pursuing a Buddhist cileer or meditating intensely but is out
on the road like any other fellow when all of a sudden he is faced with the
debt problem. Thus the Mu Lian in this version is not a high-powered
deceased mothers, who made urgent demands on them.
Buddhist
Biology
2ll
Buddhist thaumaturge but just an ordinary guy. The message for all is
that birth results in sin and debt, which need to be taken care of in the appropriate manner; then everything will be fine. And while the role of
saving one's mother thus appears to be a more ordinary part of everyone's life, a shift has occurred in the cycle defining her sin and salvation.
In previous texts, even though the mother's sins transgressed Buddhist
nons, they were neither an affront to elite Buddhist power-figures nor
did they direct affect them. In these early texts the mother's sins meant
nothing to the cosmic Buddhist hierarchy, which remained in the background, on call to help but not particularly involved. Here, however, the
mother's sins are portrayed as a direct provocation of the pure powersthat-be; she has inflicted damage on the ethereal Buddhist elite. The
Blood Bowl sutra thus makes her damnation punitive-the Buddhist hierarchy has been insulted and wants to avenge itself. The "Great General
of heaven" notes her evil deeds to make sure she is punished when she
dies. Later, with many offerings, the Buddhist penal system can be appeased and convinced to release the mother from her helVprison.
Hence this system is more distinctly triangular than before. In earlier

Buddhist writings on the mother-son-monastery connection, the sins of
the mother were simply absolved by the Buddhist establishment. Though
I argued that the ghost festival's mention of Buddha's or yama's happiness on the day of offering suggested that a bureaucratic system was
granting an indulgence, the sins of the mother were never portrayed as
having hurt or insulted the Buddhist institution. Here that is precisely the
case, with the mother's punishment being a kind of personal revenge on
the part of the Buddhist hierarchy, and the subsequent offerings by her
offspring a contrite appeal for forgiveness.

In the Dun Huang texts, the sinful Qing Ti admits to making bloody
sacrifices, and similarly, women in The Blood Bowl Sutra are charged
with offering blood to the gods and Buddhist worthies. This is especially
clear in the added line about someone unknowingly offering the Buddha
tea brewed with menses. Thus, in both cases, women go to hell for basically the same reason: blood offerings. Instead of making pure, bloodless
Buddhist offerings, the women in The Blood Bowl sutra continually offer
212
Buddhist
Buddhist Biologt
their blood to the Buddhist hierarchy, albeit inadvertent and indirectly.

Somewhat humorously, the fact that the v/omen are in hell proves that the
offerings are regularly accepted, albeit unknowingly. The key is that
these contaminated offerings are an unavoidable
sn
The Blood Bowl
are just a fact of life that cannot be helped.

In a nutshell, birth and the faculty for giving birth, as demonstrated in
menstruation, throw blood in the faces of the pure Buddhist deities. Human reproduction is depicted as an affront to the pure men of the universe. And, thus, it begins to look as though a split is being rent between
mortals and the pure cosmic ones. All of us down here came out from
blood and into a state of lifelong indebtedness that is controlled by the
Buddhist bureaucracy. Our very lives; mixed as they are with the polluted
blood that gathers in the womb, are an insult to the gods, an insult that
must be atoned for because the Buddhist system finds our production revolting and punishes our mothers for it. Moreover, if we do not beseech
the Buddhist po\/ers for mercy, our mothers will remain in hell and we
will be punished, too.
This emerging set of relations establishes the following polarity. Humans exist down here and the Buddhists po\ers up there. Everything is
basically fine until humans do what they must do to continue existing in
time-namely, reproduce. The act of reproduction, focused on the moment of giving birth, introduces that most earthy and life-giving of substances, blood from the mother's birth canal, into the mouths of those
pure ones above us who have died and moved beyond life and time but
who still watch us. This pollution of the pure ones is an upward movement that occasions punishment for the mother in a downward movement
to hell. Her son or daughter is left in between these two separate spaces,
with instructions from Mu Lian to send up a pure offering that will cancel
the impure, bloody one and thus raise the mother up out of hell.
Also, the punishment in hell of having to drink blood signals that this
blood should have been contained by women and not allowed out into the
world. But the fact is that it always does get out in the process of renewing life. In a sense, then, it is not just r/omen who are responsible for
polluting the gods, for each of us is guilty insofar as our births occasion
Sutra.They
Biolog,,
21,3
the spilling of the blood that gets into the Buddha's tea. This perspective
on the child's responsibility is buttressed by the Chinese practice, noted
in modern ethnography, of the son or daughter drinking a cup of red fluid
during the funerary seryices." I see in this act confirmation of the child's
partial guilt in the sin of birth: like his (or her) damned mother in hell, he
is trying to recover by ingestion the substance that so disturbed the cosmic order and thus set the whole drama in motion.
The centrality of blood points to something else as well. When compared with the sinfulness of the mother in Dun Huang texts, or in The
Pure Land Ghost Festival Sutr (discussed in Chapter 5), the mother's
sins have been transformed here from actions into substances. Apart from
the laundry issue, which is only mentioned once, the mother of The Blood
Bowl Sutra is basically innocent of everything save of being a women
and producing the fluids that women produce. Her sin is her natural biology. She is the crucible, the womb on which everything depends and in
which the stuff of life is mixed with consciousness and then delivered out
into the world. The Buddhists have come out and said that they do not
like this aspect of women, that they find it distinctly distasteful, even
threatening. But why?
By moving from the earlier concocted stories of Qing Ti's primal deception of Mu Lian to these later theories of biological sins, the Buddhist
discourse certainly reaches firmer ground. In one stroke it damns all
v/omen, regardless of their morality. Women have no grounds for appeal
and must accept their damnation just as they accept their womanly forms.
I also suspect that male authors are focusing on the aspect of women that
is most different from themselves and that arouses in them deep feelings
of anxiety and mortality."
I earlier showed that Buddhist filial piety sought to balance support for
the Buddhist establishment with support for the traditional Chinese family, and I think that the same can be said of The Blood Bowl Sutra. The
threat of the bloody hell that hangs over the mother's head in this text is a
strong incentive for her to make her children--specially hs ssns-g

obedient and as bound to her as possible, even when they are adults.
Similarly, aware of what she has sacrificed, children will carry a greater
214
Buddhist Biologlt
burden of indebtedness, which
Buddhist
will incline them toward
accepting the
mother's perspective. This sets up the pro-family side of the doctrine. The
solution to the debt side of the complex consists of tendering money and
respect to the Buddhists, thus satis$ring their needs as an institutional entity in China. Hanging all this mythology on the issue of (re)production
means that each new generation will be raised within structures that will
orient it toward supplying what both the institution of the family and the
Buddhist institution need to sustain themselves.
Moreover, by making the system of repayment a consequence of human impurity, the Buddhists strengthened their claim to be the conduit to
the pure realms of the universe, which are far above us mortals, even
though we can still contaminate them. Damage from continual contamination does not seem to threaten the pure hierarchy; rather, it creates, over
and over again, the need for mortals to puriff themselves by means of
large economic expenditures, thereby reaffirming the distinction and distance between these two realms and supporting the institution that claims
to adjudicate their relationship.
Emily [Ahern] Martin's work has led the field of Chinese anthropology, especially in the domains of funerals, lineage belongingness, and the
Chinese obsession with blood.33 Though my work is indebted to her pioneering research, I must register several points of disagreement with her
interpretation of the blood-bowl complex and the slightly later, Mingperiod "Precious Scroll" (bao juan) literature.3a Her orienting question,
"Are the ideology and practice of death in Chinese society different, dependent on one's gender?" is a fine one. But I am not convinced, as she
is, that the topics of blood and the ten kindnesses found in the Precious
Scroll literature take us out of a very male way of looking at the world
that includes the rejection and humiliation of women.
Citing Daniel Overmyer's work on the Precious Scrolls, Martin wonders if all the discussion about what mothers go through in raising children might not be evidence of a movement to establish a women's ideology of birth and death: "Further evidence comes from the sectarian literature known as pao-chuan (bao juan). The content of some of these
Biologt
21,5
tracts-which were often funded by women, recited by women, and listened to by women-related to the specific pains and axieties of pregnancy, the sufferings and dangers of childbirth, and the arduous labor of
caring for and breast-feeding an infant. They deal with these matters in
such a realistic and empathic way that the historian wonders whether they
might even have been written by women. If there is a particularly female

ideology of birth in China, perhaps it would stress, as against Bloch and
Parry, conjunction of the antithesis of life and death in the same events."3s
The position of Bloch and Parry is based on the view that many mythological systems identiff male substances as the enduring, pure items es-
sential to biological and cultural reproduction, with female items essential, too, but in a much more transient and dubious manner.36 My sources
on Buddhist theories of reproduction support a Bloch-and-Parry reading
of Buddhist biology for the following reasons.
First, the fact that birth and nursing are dealt with graphically in the
Precious Scroll literature does not necessarily signal either empathetic
treatrnent of women or the possibility that these pieces were written by
women. On the contrary, my survey of a millennium of Buddhist literature on mothers shows a fascination with these topics from a continuously
male perspective vis--vis mothers and women in general.
Second, though I know very little about the Ming period, during which
the Precious Scroll literature emerged, I doubt that these doctrines shifted
so quickly and radically from their previous place in the arsenal of Buddhist mythology, where tey supported the patrilineal family and the male
hierarchy of the Buddhist institution.
A shift in this ideology is certainly
possible, but much more evidence is needed to show that in the Ming pe-
riod the pieces of dogma in question played roles different fiom those
they played in earlier periods.
Third, although I agree that these dogmas work by combining life and
death, I see nothing pro-female or liberating about this conjunction. In
fact, my work on the history of Buddhist family values shows that the cycle of birth and death was constructed precisely to forge repressive ideas
about male and female identities and the need to submit to male authority.
Similarly,
doubt Daniel Overmyer's interpretation of the Precious
216
Buddhist Biologt
Scroll literature on mothers, which emphasizes that these texts presage

the arrival of a resistance-to-ma:riage movement.3t Overmyer argues that
announcing the hardships of pregnancy and birth opens the door for an
ideology that recognizes the subordination of women in the traditional
system and urges women to avoid it.In analyzing the Precious Scroll literature, he cites a text called the Liu xiang bao juan that apparently contains another text, called the "Pregnancy Precious Scroll," spoken by an
old nun. He comments: "Both sermon and text show a keen awareness of
the situation of women in late traditional China and give strong support to
refusing mar:riage."'s Again, theoretically this is possible. Perhaps by the
nineteenth century, when group houses for single v/omen did start to appear, this discourse on the pain of women was important in some new
way. But three things stand in the way of this assumption.
First, the long history that these doctrines trail behind them points, in
my analysis, in the opposite direction. The discussion of the pain of
lvomen had been, for the preceding millennium, worked into complicated
inter-generational repayment schemes detailed throughout this volume. I
it opened a door for avoiding malriage.

Second, the Precious Scroll literature continues the discussion of
women's pain in terms of "kindnesses" to be repaid-a discussion that
makes sense only when the normal Chinese family structure is in place.
When Overmyer concludes that "the explicit conclusion of this text is that
children should repay the suffering and pain their parents have gone
through by mainining a vegetarian diet and reciting the Buddhas'
names," it is clear that the discourse is parallel to the ones I have treated.3e
As long as pain is to be recompensed by means of the next generation
relying on Buddhist rituals, I suspect that the text is still securely in the
orbit of Buddhist propaganda, which urges support for the family and the
see no evidence that
monasteries.
Third, whatever happened in the nineteenth century surrounding a

movement to avoid ma:riage localized in several counties in the Guang
Zhouarea,many of the texts I have analyzed in this volume continue to circulate in Taiwan and in other Chinese communities in the present day. That
these dochines have remained constant in their discussion of mother-son
Buddhist
Biologt 2I7
relations argues again for continuify in the Buddhist configuration of family values. Thus I am doubtful of Overmyer's conclusion that the discourse
on the mother's sufferings contains "an implicit resistance to ma:riage and
all the toil and submission it requires . . . and the implication not far off that
it is better not to marry at all, as the nun herself had not."ao
In assessing the ideological impact of these doctrines about blood and
\/omen,
I find Gary Seaman's
anasis much more attractive because he

argues that these doctrines are misogynistic and seek to give men the upper hand, portraying women as the dirfy, unreligious half of humanity. He
opens his article with what I believe is a more likely evaluation: "I hope
to show that men do, indeed, encourage the perpetuation of negative beliefs surrounding women's sexuality, and that men are quite aware of the
need to rationalize the socially inferior position of women."o' Though I
agree with Seaman that these doctrines subordinate women, it is also true
that they give men trouble. Mu Lian is always horror-stricken and embittered to find out what has happened to his mother: indeed, the whole cycle of this mythology works only when both mother and son feel the pain
of the situation. Thus it is the perduring institutions which propagate such
myths that are the "victors," while the human beings who pass through
the institutions (in this case of the family and Buddhism) simply live
subject to these demanding "guiding principles."
Much more could be said about these issues of interpretation, but I

would like instead to conclude my argument by analyzrng a text that very
clearly displays the close links between the Buddhist establishment and
the traditional Chinese patrilineal structure. The Song/Yuan-penod Sutra
[Explaining ThatJ the Kindness of Parents is Pround and Dfficult to
Repay (Fu mu en zhong nan bao jing) demonstrates not only the fusion of
Buddhism with the patrilineal family model, but also how this fusion was
predicated on a shared appreciation of a "Bloch-and-Parry style" theory
of male and female substances at work in the universe (as described earlier in this chapter). This text was-and still is-a popular statement of
Buddhist family values; moreover, as a composite text, its contents are
indicative of the slow, intentional combination of various doctrines.a2
218
Buddhist Biologt
Buddhist
8,Ihe Sutra [Explaining That] the Kindness

Dfficult to Repay is made up of an introduc-
As mentioned in Chapter
of Parents is Pround and
tion, a long account of the ten months in the womb, a ten kindnesses section, and then a sutra on Buddhist filial piety whose title remains uncertain but which appeared, at least partially;.in the late Tang period. For the
sake of brevity I will treat only the infoduction,a3 which unhesitatingly
fuses Buddhist institutional aims with traditional "Confucian" theories of
family practice:
I heard. Once the Buddha was at Srvastr in Jetavana, in Anthapi$dika pleasure grove, with 2,500 great monks and 38,000 bodhiThus have
sattvas. One day the World-Honored One was leading the great assembly
due south when suddenly he saw next to the road a pile of bones. The
Tathgata [stopped] and performed a full-body prostration, respectfully
honoring these dry bones (ht gu).
nanda, with his hands clasped together, asked [the Buddha], "Vy'orldHonored One! Tathgata who is the great master of the thee worlds, who
is the compassionate father4 of the four types of beings, and who is the
most respected of all beings-for what reason are you honoring (li bai)
these parched bones?"
The Buddha said to nanda, "Though you and the others are the best
of my disciples, and have been monks for a long time, still your knowledge is not complete. This pile of dry bones might be [those of] my previous ancestors (wo qian shi zu xian), those parents of many [past] lives. It
is for this reason that I now am honoring them."
In general, the Buddha never bows to anybody, yet here he pays homage
to a pile of unidentified bones.o' This bowing shocks nanda and, presumably, the reader, too. Watching this odd spectacle, we all demand an
explanation. The text allows for this surprise, in view of what is presumably going to be a new revelation of Buddhist truth, and then comforts us with an affirmation of continuity: nanda and the others are good
monks who have practiced Buddhism for a long time, but there is just one
thing that they still do not know about.
The Buddha's explanation of his bowing to bones is tricky. Clearly, it
Biologt
219
takes us right back to the contradiction between ancestral concerns and re-
incarnation with which Hui Jing and Zong
Mi struggled (see Chapters 6

andT). The Buddha reveres the remains of ancestors out of fear that, should
he ignore them, he might slight his own ancestors. This means that the text
is forfeiting, if only forthe moment, the Buddha's claims to cosmicomnipotence. The Buddha is shown to be concerned, like other Chinese men,
with bones on this planet. His anxiety over unidentified bones suggests a
servile attitude. The Buddha, even when leading his full entourage, will
stop to pay homage to any pile of bones just to make sure that he does not
slight his ancestors-thus demonstrating the true filial spirit. rWhat a

slight of this kind might bring we do not know, but the author, at least,
thinks it serious enough that the Buddha should address such matters.
The next passage makes it even clearer how ancestral bones fit into the
Buddhist discussion:
The Buddha then said to nanda, "Now take this pile of dry bones and divide it into two parts: those that are male bones will be white and heavy,
those that are female bones
will be black and light."
nanda said, "World-Honored One, men in the world wear brightly

colored shoes and hats, adjusted just right-you take one look and you
know that they have men's bodies. Women in the world like to put on
rouge and powder, perfume themselves, and in this way dress up, so you
can know that it is a woman's body. But now, after they are dead, the
bones are all white, so teach us, your disciples, how to differentiate them."
The Buddha said, "If they are male, then when they were in the world,
they entered monasteries to hear lec[ires on sutas and the Vinaya, to

honor the Three Jewels, and to recite ttre names of the Buddha, so now
their bones are white and heavy. Womenfolk, while alive, are short on intellectual powers and easily swamped by emotions/desires. They give
birtlr and raise boys and girls, thinking it is their ordained occupation (tian
shi),but each time they bear a child, they must use their milk in raising the
[new child's] life. Now their milk is hansformed from blood (rz you xue
bian) and each child drinks so much as 84 pecks of their white milk, so
she becomes tired and haggard and her bones show a black color and become light in weight."
220
Buddhist Biolog,,
When nanda heard this he felt pain stab him in the heart, and wept
and lamented saying, "World-Honored One, how can we repay the kind_
ness (er de) of our mothers?"
This section is crucial because it reveals that men and women leave different kinds of bones: men's bones are heavy and white, while women's
are lightweight and black in color. Yet this appears to be mystical rather
than literal, since nanda cannot see it with his eyes and asks for clarification when the Buddha gives him the task of separating the bones by
gender.
The Buddha's subsequent explanation articulates a system in which

the efficacy of Buddhist practice reveals itself in physical remains. Men's
bones are white and heavy because men are naturally more involved in
Buddhist activities, which somehow produces presumably attractivelooking bones that are pure and substantial. Women, supposedly, have
more problems. They are not intellectually gifted, get involved in emotional and sexual activities, and appear not to frequent Buddhist centers of
worship and learning; moreover, based on their desires and natural duties,
they give birth to children and suckle them, which drains their bodies.
Again switching the number 180 for the more auspicious 84, the text asserts that a child drinks 84 pecks of white milk, which sucks the life out
of his or her mother. Most interesting is the idea that this loss of white
milk affects women's bones, which lose their whiteness, take on a brack
color, and also lose their weight.
What all this suggests is a unified, zero-sum system in which a fecund
substance circulates befween material and immaterial realms, as family
reproduction and monastic ritual are related via potent whiteness. Buddhist monasteries are the place where this substance is produced and
offered to the living and dead. conversely, non-Buddhist practice and the
natural process of reproduction blackens vomen's bones as white essences are lost in milk and parturition. Thus the text sketches a system
that includes morality, reproduction, and post-mortem status and that

locks public and private concerns n tandem. The monastery stands at the
center of this system, producing the substance that all beings need.
Buddhist
Biologt
221
surrounding the monastery are families from which this substance regularly leaks away in the course of the life cycles of women. sons are
identified as go-betweens who are asked to convey the white substance
from the monastery to their mothers (whether living or deceased) in order
to counteract the "natural" flow of this substance in the world of biology.
Considering this image, I wonder whether the monastery isn,t thereby
assigning itself a role that is breastlike in function: it is, after all, portrayed as the center of love and compassion from which the white substance so needed for life flows. This possibility is not as outlandish as it
sounds, given that Buddhist propaganda in china had implied all along
that Buddhism produced "the stuff of life." Monasteries, like mothers,
breasts that transform blood into milk, hansformed mundane food into
something more universal (merit) that could be "fed" to one's parents
(regardless of actual needs), thereby replacing more traditional provisions
of food and comfort. Also, in works such as The Sutra on the pround
Kindness of Parents, the text itself was clearly imagined as standing in
for nutrition and comfort offered to parents (see Chapter 7).
Making sense of this argument requires retuming to Chapter 2, where I
noted that even Confucius was interested in using the character yang (,,to
raise") in an extended way to suggest that what sons give their parents is
actually a kind of parenting or, more precisely, a kind of mothering. Then,
in The sutra on the Dfficulty of Repaying the Kindness of parents (discussed in chapter 3), we saw an author clearly playing with the inversion
of the parent-child relationship as he argued that "All monks have two
children/disciples: the child/disciple that produced (sheng) them and the
child/disciple that nurtured $tang) them, therefore they are called 'monks
who have two children/disciples."' Similar Buddhist care for parents is

most clearly identified as a kind of mothering in The lllustrated rle of
Mu Lian Saving His Mother (see Chapter 8) when Mu Lian attempts to
feed his mother with a spoon, implying a complete reversal of their roles.
And here, n The Sutra [Explaining That] the Kindness of parents is
Pround and Dfficult to Repay, the author implicit links breasts and
monasteries by identifying them as places for the production of this powerful white substance. The main difference lies in their respective values:
222
Buddhist Biologlt
the Buddhist monastery, as a transpersonal institution, represents a potentially endless source of sustenance, whereas a woman's body suffers
the ravages of time and is involved in inferior projects.a. Thus I suspect
that, in this Buddhist discourse, the function of real breasts has been appropriated in a two-step maneuver that simultaneously imagines the transfer of the natural powers of breasts to Buddhism and denigrates women's
actual breasts as a place where life ebbs away.aT
Everything in the discussion in The Sutra [Explaining ThatJ the Kindness of Parents is Pround and Dfficult to Repay points to a bad fate for
women. The separation of men's and women's bones in the passage

quoted above foretells their separate destinies. women leave ugly bones
that are not to be mingled with the universally white and heavy bones
men leave behind. As tn The Blood Bowl sutra and The lllustrated Tale,
this suggests that there is a fate reserved for "Women Only"-u fate that
is not a pleasant one. The tragedy of this system is noticed immediately
when nanda cries out, in deep pain, "Hou/ can v/e repay the kindness of
our mothers?" Like Mu Lian observing the tortures of women in hell,
nanda hears the bad news of women's exclusion from the boons of
Buddhism and demands a teaching from the Buddha that will resolve the
problem even as it maintains its reality.
Thus the introduction to The Sutra [Explaining ThatJ the Kindness of
Parents is Pround and Dfficult to Repay sets up a debt scheme, like all
the other versions of Buddhist filial piety. The debt here, however, is
quite intricately formed. The problem this time is that, in order to produce
men, v/omen must be sacrificed. nanda and all the other men in the audience are suddenly hearing how much their existence has cost their
mothers. Since women do not attend Buddhist functions, these monks apparently have not had much chance to hear their side of the story.o' The
Buddha fills them in, and they are thunderstruck at leaming how their
lives drained their mothers dry, even to the point that their very bones
suffered. Since it has been explained that morality makes for white, heavy
bones, it follows that black, lightweight ones are surely a sign of immor-
ality, which brings up, once again, not just the question of the mother's
fatigue but also the question of her sinfulness. Thus nanda's shocked
Buddhist
Biologt
223
response probably reflects a range ofanxieties, and the fact that the Buddha bows to the bones in the first paragraph puts the whole discussion of
bones in a rather serious light. If the Buddha takes such good care of
bones that may not even belong to his family, how much more should
every man worrr about the bones of his ancestors, not to mention those of
his mother?
To more clearly outline the system underlying this version of Buddhist

family values, I suggest that, as in the cases of the ghost-festival ritual
and the blood-bowl complex, there is a cycle of exchange here among
three sets of players: mothers, sons, and the Buddhist monasteries. What
is particularly evident in The Sutra [Explaining ThatJ the Kindness of
Parents is Pround and Dfficult to Repay is the parallel between nutritior^ and morality. In Chapter 5, I had to work to make the argument that
the ghost festival was built around a system that joined nutrients and morality, but here the cards are plain to see. The system in this text works as
follows: (1) The mother sacrifices her morality and her bodily substance
in giving her son life. Q) When he is grown and able, the son can and
should ask the Buddhist establishment what he can do for her in return.
(3) When the Buddhists tell the son to be pious, to make donations and
hold rituals, he will, as the holder of capital, presumably be able to carry
out these orders. By fting the monks and practicing Buddhist filial piety,
he will be able to retum to his mother the white substance he took from
her and thus recti$r her sacrificed morality. His filialness, with all its
Buddhist coloring, will repay the debt and resolve the problem of his relationship with his mother.
The Sutra [Explaining That] the Kindness of Parents is Profound and
Dfficult to Repay does not, however, dive right into explaining the exact
method of repayment. Rather, the author/editor chose to use the next section to intensi$ the debt side of the equation by describing the ten
months of pregnancy, giving a full version of the ten kindnesses, and finally adding the independent sutra (briefly treated in Chapter 8), which
explains the evils of unfilial children.
This composite text shows Buddhist concepts of pregnancy, indebtedness, and biology integrated more than ever in support of the normal re-
224
Buddhist Biologt
Buddhist
production of the traditional, patrilineal family system. The overall structure of the text is threefold:
First, the introduction makes it clear that everyone, from the Buddha
on down, is to worry about his or her ancestors. This opening theme leads
into a discussion of bones that shows how the Buddhists have reinterpreted and appropriated traditional Chinese ideas about the power of an-
cestral remains
of
225
unfilial son, locating it in between the "bread" of a Buddhist mother-son

discourse that announces the son's debt to the mother and then explains
the need to repay parents by supporting the Buddhist establishment.
Here, in the Song/Yuan-penod Sutra [Explaining ThatJ the Kindness
of Parents is Pround and Dfficult to Repay, many of the same motifs
are repeated but the emphasis is reversed. The twin demands to respect
ancestors and be obedient to parents after ma:riage do not overshadow
the command to support the Buddhists, but they do claim the position of
framing the Buddhist discussion of mothers and sons, which is what provides the logic and impetus for supporting the Buddhist establishment.
Thus the mother-son discourse still functions as the force that brings the
private world of the family to the doors of the Buddhist temple, but it
rests flanked by the commandments about how to be filial to the pahilineal system. The family and the Buddhist institution have negotiated a
solid merger that clearly takes into account their respective interests. It is
because of texts like this that I cannot accept Martin's and overmyer's
by making bones emblematic of the already well-
developed package of Buddhist biology, with its multiple topics
Biologt
the
depletion and sinfulness of the mother. The mother's depleted black

bones cry out in agony just as plaintively as Mu Lian's mother Qing Ti
did in hell.
Second, nanda and the other monks see the pain in these bones and
demand to learn how they can repair the damage to their mothers. Their
response as concemed sons cues in the mother-son topic, which is then
treated extensively in the middle parts of the text.
The third and final section consists of the independent sutra, which describes the "agony of having an unfilial son" (see Chapter 8). The discus-
positions as outlined above.
sion of unfilial conduct is focused on the possibility of losing one's son

when a wife is brought in for him. This focus reinforces the parental view
of the text, which iS emphasized by a long conclusion detailing the viciously long stay in hell that the son will suffer should he fail to uphold
the Buddhist command to be filial to his parents all his life.
The layering of concems n The Sutra [Explaining ThtJ the Kindness
of Parents is Pround nd Dfficult to Repay shows exactly what the
Buddhists ended up doing with the mother-son discourse. In this text,
Buddhist thinking on family values is set between two sections displaying
concern for the traditional Chinese family: the Buddha bows to ancestral
remains in the introduction, and he describes hell realms for the unfilial in
the conclusion. ln between are the mother-son romance, Buddhist biology, and the Buddhist appraisal of male and female bones. I find this
sandwich of doctrine provocative because its structure is the exact opposite of the "sandwich text" already treated in Chapter 7-namely, the
similarly entitled Sutra on the Pround Kindness of Parents. That seventh-century composite set out for the first time the agony of having an
Bifurcated Mothers and Other Conclusions 227
minor importance compared to their overriding concern of getting the

family to support the monasteries. There is little evidence that the Buddhists sought to initiate either a restructuring of the chinese family or a
CHAPTER TEN
Bifurcated Mothers and Other

Conclusions
moral campaign against particular aspects of its practice.r
THE TEXTS ANALYzED in Chapters 1 through 9leave little doubt

I ttrat the family was of paramount interest to Chinese Buddhists.
Buddhists evidently felt it imperative to construct an altemative form of
filial piety in order to bring the Chinese family under the sway of Buddhist ideology. They succeeded in this project and seem to have convinced family members to look to the Buddhist establishment for solutions to their problems in life. They did so without sacrificing their institutional prerogatives or other elemental aspects of the imported Buddhist
tradition. Thus the first conclusion of this study is that family values
served as an effective interface between the public monasteries and the
private world of the family, sealing their mutually dependent relationship.
The terms of the exchange between the Buddhists and the family were
always generous toward the Buddhists, who were, after all, writing the
contracts. However, the discourse that gradually made the family dependent on Buddhist monasteries was soon shaped so that Buddhist cosmology was put to work encouraging traditional family goals. This is the second basic conclusion: namely, that the Buddhist authors of texts on family values submitted to the preexisting Chinese structures of family reproduction and made near all their dictates supportive of----or at least consonant wittr-traditional forms of patrilineal family reproduction.
Together, these two conclusions mean that Buddhist authors were
content to legitimate and defend the traditional modes of Chinese famtly
practice, provided that the famrly could be made to patronize the Buddhist institution. For these authors, the actual content of
fam\ life was of
Moreover, the progressively intensive focus on mother-son issues

shows that the Buddhists were quick to draw on the dynamics of the traditional family and manipulate them so as to insinuate Buddhist obligations into the succession of generations. Buddhist authors recognized the
"structures of interest" in the chinese family with surprising precision
and proceeded to craft their doctrines to activate the fears and desires of
different family members. Buddhist family values turned out to be captivating precisely because of the accuracy with which Buddhist texts articulated the interests of family members. The articulation and subsequent
manipulation of these interests were achieved by sculpting roles and selfimages for the mother and the son-that is, for nearly every chinese citizen. These new, distinctly Buddhist forms of selfhood took root in chinese culture in a self-perpetuating way and became the means by which
the Buddhist monasteries garnered reliable support from the family.
The broad themes of the son's indebtedness, the mother's sinfulness,
and the Buddhists' saving power are clear enough in the texts that make
up the Buddhists' eight-hundred-year effort to write new scripts for chinese family members. More difficult issues arise in trying to assess the
impact of these models on personhood in china. How did these dockines
appear to men and women in medieval china, and exactly how did the
family derive support and stability from them?
The first thing to emphasize is that mothers are not worshipped or elevated in chinese Buddhist family values. Although always put on the nature side of the nature/culture divide, they are never compared with the
grander elements in nature such as the earth, the sea, or the heavens. Mothers remain prosaic. There is no attempt to make the son see his mother as an
a greater being, an image of a goddess, or an emblem of

some deep, hidden cosmic principle. And even though motherhood is a
metaphor for wisdom elsewhere in the Buddhist tradition, in this discourse
incarnation of
she remains
simply "Mom," with no pretense to elevated cosmic staturc.
228
Bfurcated Mothers and Other Conclusions
Bifurcated Mothers and Other Conclusions Z2g
This plebianization of the mother is in sharp contrast to the Daoist image of motherhood. rnthe Dao de jing the mother does stand for a cosmic
principle, is associated with many grander forms, and is valorized as a

model of virtue, perfection, and life itself. Likewise, in medieval chinese
popular religion, the goddess known as the
(xi
eueen Mother of the
'/est
wang mu) was worshipped by a large segment of the population., These

images are the exact opposite of the flat and uninspiring porhayal of the
mother in Buddhist discussions, where mothers do not appear as leaders
or rulers of the cosmos and never have homage paid to them.
In fact, not only is the chinese Buddhist image of the mother restricted
to her being her son's mother and nothing more, but she is also someone
whose good qualities are recognized only by her son. No one else in the
family or in the cosmos considers the mother loving or virtuous, and it is
her son alone who will come to her aid in the netherworld: her husband is
absent or unconcemed, and her natal family is almost never mentioned.
Another point I find particularly interesting is that the Buddhists never

show the husband delighting in his wife's fecundity. Her production of a
son is a great service to the boy's father and his family line, yet nowhere
is he shown expressing wonder at or gratitude for her achievement. To

allow this type of praise might have strengthened the husband-wife bond,
which the Buddhists were intent upon weakening.
This omission is reinforced by the demonization of the mother,s reproductive fluids. whereas, in Daoist theories of life and reproduction,
blood is usually acknowledged as a powerful, essential, and even religious ingredient, Buddhists have nothing good to say about blood.3 Nowhere in the chinese Buddhist texts analyzed here is there reverence for
the blood that makes human life possible. zong Mi comes the closest (in
his commentary on the Ghost Festival sutra, discussed in chapter 7)
when he remarks that the Buddhist version of indebtedness emphasizes
the mother rather than the father because the mother's womb provides a
place of rebirth for the child when the child is still an intermediate being
in the bardo state. still, zongMi does not mention blood or celebrate the
mother' s life-giving properties.
Besides being unappreciated by other fatntly members, the mother is
regularly depicted as being completely alone. whether a denizen

of helr
or a hungq' ghost, she is friendless, without society or succor.
If
there are
other beings around her, they ae torturers or fellow sufferers
with whom
she has no relationship. Her only contact with culture and
Buddhism is
through her son.
Most interestingly, though there is great emphasis on the deep love

and
affection between mother and son, they rarely interact in these
na:ratives.
when they do meet in some of the stories, there is little more than
visual
contact and few words are exchanged. Except for one scene
in The lltustrated Tale of Mu Lian saving His Mother
from the Netherworrd (see
Chapter 8), no hugs or other physical intimacies are suggested.
Though
mother and son are described as roving each other almost
fanatically, the
na:ratives are devoted primarily to portraying their individual
experiences
of long-suffering love, with much less attention to mother and son actu_
ally being together and happy. It is as though their rove is to
be encouraged as an underground emotion-one that is experienced
intensely but
that remains unexpressed, at least until the mother dies.
In addition to keeping the love between mother and son silent, there
is
a distinct puritanical code in the texts. First, there is no

humor here, nor
any attempt at levity or satire. second, though the sinfurness
of the
mother is crucial to the discussion, when it is a question of
sexual sin, the
facts of life remain shrouded and the mother's sexual sins
are not graphically depicted. Third, when mother and adult son meet, she is arways
represented as standing-never lying down or in any other compromising
position. The one exception is The Illustrated Tale,which
describes eing
Ti staked to an iron bed in hell, apparently being punished for sexual deviance. Even in that case, she is helped from her bed and brought
out to
meet her son in an upright position. Thus images of the mother,s
sexual
identity are suppressed even as sexuarity is singled out as one ofthe
defining characteristics of her being.
The most obvious aspect of the mother in the Buddhist discourse
is her
neediness. The mother is always in need of food, comfort, and
salvation.
Though she is pictured as once full of life and milk, this image
of plenitude merely stands in contrast to the current condition, in
the real time of
230 Bifurcated Mothers
the na:rative, in which only her needs are present. Part of the mother's
is the result of her eternal helplessness. She cannot do the
things that would get her what she needs, and therefore remains a passive
being who must rely on her abilrty to coax her son into action. Her pasneediness
sivity is highlighted by the activity of her son, who ardently plays the
hero's role and rescues his incapacitated mother.
The negativity and passivity of the mother are visible in another trend
in the discourse-namely, that the texts speak little of her transformation.
There are no vivid descriptions of her ascendence to heaven or of glorious deeds achieved once she gets there. The focus is mainly on her deplorable present condition, which is simply erased at the end of the nana-
tive when her son rescues her. It is as though the texts simply move her
from a state of suffering to a state free from suffering. There is no reconstructed identity for the mother; she is just whisked upstairs into a heaven
where she is well fed and free from torment. Perhaps mothers were unimaginable apart from their role as sufferers. The best the mother is offered is freedom from pain-never a seat at the right hand of the Buddha
or a lead role in some divine drama. She is passive in her redemption and
passive in her state of salvation.
To sum up the Buddhist image of mothers, it would seem that Buddhist authors have cut the female body in two.a The Buddhist discourse
considers the upper half of the mother, the breasts and face, as the good
mother, the half that gives love and nourishment. The lower half is demonized for its reproductive powers, with uterine blood being targeted as
the most evil substance in the cosmos. And though u/omen exist only as a
complete unit, the Buddhist discourse deliberately isolates the elements of
that biology associated with each "half." Obviously child production depends on both so-called halves of a woman's anatomy, but the Buddhist
rhetoric of nostalgia offered to the son focuses exclusively on the wholesome, breasty, upper half of the mother. There are no hints that he ought
also to revel in discovering the roots of his being in the lower, sexual half
of her body, which iemains "other" and evil. In fact, the two halves of the
mother are used for their very "oppositeness": the nostalgia and love for
Bifurcated Mothers and Other Conclusions 23I

her upper half is hamessed to the project of saving her lower
is in dire need of redemption.
half which
Jhe fluids from the two halves of the mother's body are similarly employed: the,goodness flowing from hr breasts begets a debt born of love,
while the evil blood flowing from her vagina begets a debt born of sacri-
fice. In both cases the fluids she releases in reproduction bind her son
closer to her. Never is it said that because women leak polluting menstrual
blood they shouldbe left to rot in hell. on the contrary, just as the kindness
of breast-feeding requires action from the son, so does the mother's polluting blood. Thus, by bifirrcating the mother, the Buddhists explain that
she has made a double blood sacrifice: (l) the blood in the form of milk
(called "white blood") flowing from her breasts is a kindness that must be
repaid, just as (2) the blood flowing from her vagina is a sin that must be
erased. Though they flow from separate orifices, the two fluids together
generate the mother's identity as a sinner deserving of salvation-exactly
the image that the Buddhists had been rying to create from the outset.
Looked at another way, the two halves of the mother reflect the Buddhist use of the tensions that suround the struggle between the uterine
family and the pahiline. The mother-son love within the uterine family,
signified by the mother's breasts, is directed toward overcoming the
mother's threatening sexual identity as wife and daughter-in-law, which
is signified by her vagina. The son-the only player who belongs to both
family groups-is then shown both halves and required to negotiate a
settlement between them that satisfies the patriline, the uterine family,
and the Buddhist monastics.
It would be easy to assume that the Buddhist discourse on mothers and

sons was bad for women-that it is yet another example of how men oppress women with religious ideology. This evaluation is more accurate
than one that sees no cunning here, but on closer inspection I have come
to the conclusion that this doctrine would actually have been favored by
\ry'omen because, given the continuing realities of patrilineal family practice, it offered them additional security in their later years.
232
Bifurcated Mothers nd Other Conclusions
Ideologies of violence and/or damnation need to be differentiated into

those directed outward, at other religious, racial, or national groups, and
those that remain intemal to a single system of social reproduction. The
in
compensation for their

damnation, because the members of the out-group are not part of the reproduction of the discourse, which is bounded by the domain of the ingroup. However, the Buddhists' damnation of women is an example of
the latter type: women were damned but were a vital part of the system
that reproduced and maintained the damning ideology. Chinese Buddhists
could ill afford to estrange women from Buddhist goals because women
were important or even essential in passing on religious views and values
to their children. If the Buddhists had failed to draw women into their
programs, they not only would have lost half their target population but
would have increased the resistance of men who would consequently
have been raised by anti-Buddhist mothers.
There are several reasons for thinking that women stood to gain
former need not offer their victims anything
something from the Buddhist version of filial piety and hence came to
support it. First and foremost, Buddhist filial piety singled out the contributions of mothers in child rearing: their love, care, and physical hardship
are described over and over again in the Buddhist discussion. Before the
Buddhists initiated this version of family values, the mother's contributions were left unsung and her long years of toil were not publicly ac-
knowledged.
Now these contributions formed the backbotr" f th"
mother's image as presented to the public and especially to her son.

The second reason is perhaps more significant. By making the son feel
indebted to his mother for her gifts, the Buddhist discourse gave the
mother leverage in managing her son and controlling his loyalties as he
grew up. Since the Buddhists were so adamant in declaring the son's
mother-and in threatening him with hell should

he renege on this relationship-the mother had ample grounds for insisting on his unfailing devotion. Moreover, because Buddhist ideology allowed the son to repay his mother completely only after she died, the
mother gained a lifelong source of legitimization for bearing down on her
deep indebtedness to his
son and making demands of him.

The third reason v/omen stood to gain from the Buddhist version of
filial piety is that, even though the Buddhist depiction of motherhood is
unflattering, the story ends well. The dramatization of a mother's life of
toil and loneliness is redeemed by her final salvation, when she is delivered from hell by her son (that 'recious one produced from her sinful
body," as Mu Lian's mother puts it in The Illustrated Tale). Her suffering
is acknowledged by the Buddha and her salvation is guaranteed. Like the
story of Cinderella, the myth sffucture here is appealing precisely because
it begins with unforgiving degradation and ends when that humiliation is
ultimately overcome by a grand gesture that redeems all injustices.
The fourth reason is that the Buddhist discussion explicitly sided with
the mother in her struggles with her daughter-in-law. From the stories of
Guo Ju and Ding Lan to The Sutra on the Pround Kindness of parents
and the lecture-note texts from Dun Huang (see Chapters 6, 7, and 8), the
Buddhists repeat not only that a son should love his mother more than his
wife, but also that the wife is a dubious character who needs to be controlled lest she wrest the son away from his mother. obviously there is a
tension here, since a v/oman usually becomes a wife first and then, later,
If Chinese r/omen had not been so pressured to become mothers, they might have had reason to resist the Buddhist perspective on mara mother.
riage. But since they were likely to become mothers soon after marriage,
and since their identity as women was defined predominantly as mother
and not wife, the Buddhist position probably appealed to them. A Chinese womul had to produce children, so she would see fortification of the
role of child-producer as beneficial, even if it meant that her days as a

childless wife were more difficult. The Buddhist support of mothers
against wives encouraged women in their movement forward in the life
cycle and was thus consonant with the demands of traditional family
practice.
These four reasons make it believable that women would have seen in
the Buddhist version of filial piety a means to further their ends within
the given structure of the traditional Chinese family. A mother would

want to quickly produce children, especially sons, and inculcate these
Buddhist values in them so that she could extract from them support and
234 Bifurcated Mothers
care in this life and the next. I believe that the immense success of Buddhist frlial piety was in a large part due to the Buddhists' skill in captur-
ing women's interests so that women saw this version of frlial piety as
particularly useful and were also then in a position to pass that enthusiasm on to their children'
How did Buddhist filial piety appear to men? on a basic level, men
would have seen Buddhist family values as.parallel to the other cultural
dediimperatives demanded of them, since these values were likewise
cated to maintenance of the traditional family model. As fathers, the invocation of mother-son love would not have strengthened their hands directly, but would have been valued for encouraging the production of
docile sons dedicated to the family line and to vertical responsibilities.
As sons, however, men would have found the dramatization of loving
of
and saving one's mother to possess powerful attractions. First, it spoke
mother-son love and provided a medium through which mother-son feelings could be expressed and celebrated. second, the myths that dramaLian
tized Buddhist filial piety put sons in the roles of hero and saint. Mu
of
and all the other sons in the Buddhist narratives are flawless paragons
morality, unflinching in satisfying the demands made of them and thoroughly lovable in every way. Thus chinese sons were offered a script
Budthat allowed them to appropriate the roles of the greatest men in the
dhist
universe-Mu Lian and the Buddha'
Third, the cycle of the mother-son drama ends in completion. The son
canpaybackwhatisowed,cancelingallhisdebtsandfindingfreedom
guilt she
from whatever demands his mother has made on him-and the
required
may have invoked in him. By supporting the Buddhists in the
that
him
tells
which
manner, the son also acknowledges their authority,
aswith these offerings he has fulfrlled his duties as a son. without this
his feelings of indebtedness and obligation might remain unfocused and potentially disturbing, lacking a sanctioned outlet'
Fourth,thesongetstoimaginehismotherbegginghimforhelp.Heis
now in po\/er while she is in need and remains at his mercy. The implicit
late Tang pesadism in this discourse is particularly noticeable from the
scenes
riod on, when the myths begin to linger gratuitously on the torture
surance,
and the mother's pitiful pleas for deliverance. Besides granting the son an
image of power, these myths also gave him images for fantasizing about
his mother's degradation and punishment. They required him to visualize

her in bestial conditions in hell; then, with his feelings of vengeance presumably vented, the narratives resolve into peace, purity, and the restoration of normality. If a man's mother had been an exacting and imposing
force in his life, he would probably have gained satisfaction from reading
through these episodes of the mother's damnation, torture, and final redemption at the hands of her son.
These hypotheses provide ample ground for imagining how Chinese
men and women were captivated by the Buddhist version of family values. Within the strictures of traditional Chinese family practice, the Buddhists offered family members mythic and moral material useful in conducting their lives, even as the Buddhists demanded from them significant economic support. The Buddhist discourse on filial piety thus secured a place for Buddhism in Chinese society, by convincing the family
that it was advantageous to accept these terms and support the producer
and guarantor of this form of family ideology-namely, the Buddhist establishment.
This is not to say that I believe that Buddhist family values made anyone happy. Buddhist filial piety was unremitting in creating roles for men
and women that cast them exclusively as mothers and sons. There was
minimal room for variant forms of selfhood in which one could find
models and images to construct a wider and more interesting sense of
self. The narrov/ness of the personae offered is striking: sons are to feel
guilty and mothers are to feel fear and anxiety over their own future state.
The Buddhist discourse rides on these negative emotions and manipulates
them to the advantage of the Buddhist establishment. Even more pemicious is the role of love in the Buddhist discussion. Love and kindness
become calculated quantities of a mercantile system of exchange. The
mother's love is mathematically reckoned and then held up as a social security policy. The son's love for his mother is first intensified with bizarre
notions of biology and impurity, then exhausted in payments made to the
Buddhists.
236
Bifurcated Mothers and Other Conclusions
Clearly, the Buddhists transformed family feelings into donations. This

discourse bred, intensified, and controlled family feelings so that they
would bring forth revenues for the Buddhist establishment. This function
of Buddhist ideology can also be seen as a kind of farming, in that it deliberately sows the seeds of specific forms of selfhood that will ripen into
a harvest of plenty, in the form of offerings made to Buddhist monasteries.
The final agony of the Buddhist discourse is that it generates repetition. The selves that the Buddhists set in motion are ones that set replicas
of themselves in motion in the following generation. The mothers and
sons involved with Buddhist family values in one generation make the
mothers and sons of the next generation even more likely to look to the
Buddhist establishment for help. Any success in tuming the son toward
his mother and away from his wife will make his wife in tum seek to
keep her son to herself and away from his future wife. As a perfect example of bad infinity, Buddhist ideology tethers succeeding generations to
its purposes.
This is not to blame the Buddhists. There is every reason to believe

that even the most educated and elite Buddhists were themselves as
caught up in the eddies of Buddhist family values as any poor peasant.
Biographies of eminent Tang Buddhist teachers suggest that these masters were quite involved with feelings of indebtedness to their mothers.s If
the writing elite were captive to the discourse, who is there to blame?
Probably no one. lndividual players came onto the scene at different
junctures to make specific contributions, but the overarching trajectory of
the discourse seems to have been uncannily directed by the goal of preserving two institutions: the patriarchal family and the Buddhist monastery.u
Reference Matter
Notes
Chapter
1. wolfram Eberhard makes this point in Guilt and sin in Traditional

china, pp. 16-18. In contrast, Anna seidel, in reviewing funerar texts taken
from Han tombs, suggests that notions of retribution may have been a significant part of popular religio4 see her "Traces of Han Religion in Funeral
Texts Found in Tombs." For more discussion of pre-Buddhist beliefs, see
Michael Loewe, Chinese ldeas of Ltfe and Death.

2. This metaphor is particularly appropriate because by the eighth centu/,
when Buddhist monasteries were well established as economic centers, they
did in fact appropriate water rights in just this manner, often to the great consternation of the government. see Jacques Gernet, Buddhism in chinese society: An Economic Historyfrom the Fifth to the Tenth Centuries,pp. 145_146.
3. Translating the Chinese term "en" presents some difficulty. It always
means a kindness that one person does for another, but in many cases in
Buddhist usage this kindness is spoken of as something that must be repaid.
when the latter connotation is predominant, I often translate en as "debt" to
emphasize that the term carries the obligation to reciprocate.
4. Gernet noted the general conflation of sin and debt in chinese Buddhism; see his Buddhm in chinese society, p. 246. This also recalls Nietzsche's point about sin and guilt deriving from the same root schutd; see on
the Genealogt of Morals,p.65.
5. stanley J. Tambiah pioneered this approach in his article entitled "The
Ideology of Merit and the social correlates of Buddhism in a Thai village."
6. See Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays,pp. 127-lg6.It
is also useful to look at Slavoj Ztzek's critique of this essay; see his The Metastases of Enjoyment,pp. 59-61.
240
Notes to pages 7_12

Notes to pages
7. These metaphors were used abundantly

in medieval chinese texts. For
a pre-Tang example, see The sutra
on the Retribution of Good and Evir (Fo
shuo zui fu bao ying jing, T.17.562b).
For a collection of textual sources on
the field-omerit motif in the earry Tang period,
see chapter 2r of Dao Shi,s
Dharma Treasure Grove (Fa yuan zhu lin,
T.53.436a). ror a late Tang text
that is particularly expricit, see zong
Mi's discussion of merit fields in ste_
phen F' Teiser, The Ghost Festivar in
Medievar china, pp. 2r0-2r3.For discussion of the power of employing natural
metaphors to legitimize human institutions, see Mary Douglas, How Insttutions
Think,p.4g.
8' This metaphoric "farming of farmers"

was practiced
with the partial and total enslavement of a
in
conjunction
sector of chinese farmers under a
feudal estate system. See Gernet, Buddhsm
in Chinese Society, pp. 94_l4l
for details on "sangha households," Buddhist
serfs, and monastic slaves.
9' See stephen F. Teiser, The scripture on the
Ten Kings and the Making
of Purgatory in Medievar chinese ninsm
for a deta'ed discussion of the
grortl of hell concepts in the medieval period.
10' see Jean Delumeau, sin and Fer; The
Emergence of a western Gu,t
Culture,p.3.
I 1' This advertising campaign, in trre

context of irmovative capitarist
ventures like usury, agricurtural banks, and
pawnshops, makes crri""r" g"dhism an interesting premodern case for
considering the origins of capitalism' For firrther discussion, see Gernet, Buddhism
in chnese society, pp.
152, 166-178, and 22712g. see also yang
Lien-sheng, ,.Buddhist Monasteries and Four Money-Raising Institutions
in Chirr"r" History.,,
12' For an insightfur if not artogether convincing
processes in the west, see Micher Foucault,
The
I:
discussion of paralrel
Htory of sexuarity, rrotu*"
An Introduction.
13' Though it is beyond the scope of this
book, there is an argument to be
made that monks in particular would have
been invested i' creuttg doctrines
that made it look as though Buddhism was
the most effective vehicre for satisfying their mothers, who, it shourd not be
forgotten, would have been abandoned as their sons took up monastic careers.
Bernard Faure kindly pointed

this out to me in his review of this manuscrip!
and T. Griffrth Foulk mentioned it during my dissertation defense.
14' I would like to thanl Brook ziporyn

for an engaging discussion on
this problem of forgery.
15. See Gernet, Buddhism in Chinese
Society,chapter
4, esp. pp. 104_l11,
14_20 24I
12129, and 131-133 for complaints

from the literati about Buddhist abuses
and for examples of contracts with
laborers
that are putti"..rturty ,tirrgy.
Chapter 2
The epigraph is taken from the
first chap ter of The crassic of Firiat piety
(xiao
revised James Legge,s translation
, entitled.Hsiao King,in Max Muller,
ed'' sacred Boor<s of the East,vor.3,n.
+as.For an alternatii transration,
see
Pahicia Ebrey, ed.., Chinese Civilization;
A Sourcebook,pp. 64_6g.
jing).I
1. For examples
of this tendency, see Rodney fuyior,

The R:etigious Dt
of confucianism, pp. 12,26, and,42;
or Tu wei_ming , Humanity
nd Self-Cultivation; Essays in
Confucian Thought, pp.7, 17,and
lg. Both
authors gloss
mensions
over the fact that the discussions

of .,humanitr,, (ren)are based
on the moder of the gentleman
un zi), which never was intended to include
women.
2. MargeryWolf, Il'omen nd the

Family in Rurl Taiwan,pp. viii, 37.
3' It seems that parallel dynamics
-uy Luu" been present in Indian fami_
lies,
too. See Rorand Lardinois, "The
uorrd order and the Family Institution
in India," pp. 594_600.
4' See Erik zrcher,.The Buddhist conquest

of china, for discussion of
the early impact of Buddhism
on the erite io clrirru. See arso paur
Demivile,
"Philosophy and Religion from
Han to Sui.,,
5' See Yang Lien-sheng, "The concept

of 'pao, as a Basis for Social Relations in China.',
6. See Marcel Mauss, The Gift; Forms
and Functions of Exchange in Ar_
chaic Societies.
7. Legge, ttans., Hsiao King
f(Xiao jing) The Classic of Filiat pieryl, in
ed., Sacred Books,vol. S, p. +S0.
,r" U"olects 2:7.I have revised Legge,s
Muller,
tanslation inhis Confucius, p.

,O:..
9' Legge cites this fact in his inhoduction
to his tansration of the Hsiao
King f(xiao jing) The classic of Filil pietyl,
in Muller, ed,., sacred Books,
vol.3,p. 449.
10' Michihata Ryshu argues that

there are very few instances of bao
en
terminology in the Confucian classics;
see his ..Juky ronri to orr,,,
,rr_
fO.
1l' Legge,
Muller,
trans', Hsiao King

f(xiao
ed., Sacred Bool<s, vol.
jing) The crqssic

i, p. llO.
of Fitir
pietyl,
242
Notes to Pages 20-24
12. Legge, tans., Li Chi: The Book of Rites, vol. 2, p. 222.

13. See Michfata Rysh's discussion of this passage in his "Juky ronri
to on," p. 139.
14. The Analects, 17:21. Legge's translation, in his Confucius, p. 328.
Arthur Waley makes the good point that this practice of a three-year mourning period was far from being "universally observed throughout the empire."
See p. 215 of Waley, tans., The Analects of Confucius, where, in n. 3, he
cites a passage ftom The lYorl<s of Mencius where it is claimed that not even
in the state of Lu, Confucius's home state, did people practice this lengthy
mounring. In general, the three-year period was shrunk to roughly twentyfive months, or approximately two years, even though it continued to be referred to as "tlree years of mouming."
15. Evelyn Rawski, in discussing this quote, treats the repayment schema
as unproblematic, whereas I see several reasons to see it as complicated. See
her "A Historian's Approach to Chinese Death Ritual l' p.26.
16. See the passage from The Book of Etiquette (Yi ii) cited by J. J. M.
DeGroot rnThe Religious System of China, vol. 2, p. 515.
17. Legge, trans., Hsiao King f(Xiao jing) The Classic of Filial Piety], n
Muller, ed., Sacred Bool<s,vol.3, p. 488.
18. Arthur V/aley gives a rendering of the passage from song no. 283 in
his tanslation entitled The Bookof Songs, p. 316.
19. Legge, trans., Zl Chi: The Book of Rites, vol.1, p. 122. Another passage explains that mourning for a divorced mother is not to be performed if it
interferes with offering sacrifices to the father; see vol. 2, p. 57 of Legge's
tanslation.
20. The Analects 2:5. Adapted from Legge's tanslation inhis Confucius,
p. 147.
21. The Analecrs 1:11. Legge's tanslation rol,his Confucius,p.142.
22. Legge, bians., The Worla of Mencius, p. 313.
23. Interestingly, the system allows for identity to be passed back up the
lineage, too. A son, by being a gentleman un zi), can bestow the same status
on his father in a kind of retro-tansmission of identity. See Legge's tanslation of Li Chi: The Book of Rites, vol. 2, p. 267, for Confucius's comment
that "Jun zi is the completest name for a man; when the people apply the
name to hirr they say [in effect] that he is the son of a jun zi ; and thus he
makes his parents into ajun zi."
24.For passages explaining the evils of the son making his own choice of
Notes to Pages
24-30
243
a bride, see 1-an ljoe son trans., Po Hu T'ung: The comprehensive Dcussions in the llhite Tiger HaIl, vol. l,p.244.
25. Legge, rans, Li Chi: The Book of Rites, vol. 2, pp. 264J65 .
26.Ibid,p.428.
27. The Book of Rites explains, how in the mariage ceremony, the bride is
to be told of her subservience to her in-laws and her responsibility to extend
her husband's line: "Thus the ceremony establishing the young wife in her
position; ffollowed by] that showing her obedient service
fof her husband,s
parents]; and both succeeded by that showing how she now occupiedthe position of continuing the fam line;-all served to impress her with a sense of
the deferential duty propff to he." Legge, tans,
vol.2,p.43l.
Li Chi;
The Book
of
Rites,
28.Legge, trans., Zi Chi: The Book of Rites, vol. l, p. 457. The passage
allows for her return if her in-laws ae not satisfied with her even if he is: ,.If
he very much approves of his wife, and his parents do not like her, he should
divorce her. If he does not approve of his wife, and his parents say, .she
serves us well,' he should behave to her in all respects as his wife,-without
fail even to the end of her life."
29. Legge,trans., Li Chi: The Book of Rites,vol.2,p.266.
30. Legge, tans., Hsiao King f(Xao jing) The Classic of Filiat pietyl, n
Muller, ed., Sacred Boofrs, vol. 3, p. 483.
31. The Analects 1:7. Adapted from Legge's translation rnhis confucius,
pp. 140-141.
32. Legge, trans., Hsiao King l(Xio jing) The Classic of Filial pietyf, tn
Muller, ed, Sacred Boolrs, vol. 3, p. 47 6.
33. Ibid., p.479.
34. Ibid., p.470.
35. A notable exception to this statement is the famous stories of Mencius's mother taking care that he grew up in the most suitable environment.
See Legge's discussion of these accounts in his translation entitled rhe
Ilorl<s of Mencius, pp. I 6-1 8.
36. See Legge, frans., Zi Chi: The Book of Rites, vol.l, pp. 126,175.
37. ln fact, Han Fei Zi claims that "the mother's love for the son is twice
the father's." Cited in A. C. Graham , Disputers of the Tao, p. 277 .
38. There was some effort, too, to dampen the son's joy at getting this
wife chosen by his family. rn Po Hu T'ung: The comprehensive Discussions
in the White Tiger Hall, it is said, *In the family of the man who takes the
244
wife no music is made during tfuee days; they think [of the fact that the son
is going tol succeed his father. They feel sad at [the thought that] the father
has grown feeble and old in the course of years and that [the time of his] being replaced lby the son] has arrived. The Book of Rites says, 'The wedding
is not [a case] for congratulations; it is [a case ofl generations succeeding

each other."' See Tjan -oe Som, trans.,p.249.
39. The Analects L6:13. Legge's translation rnhis Confucius,p.3I5.
40. The Analects 16.13.2. Legge's translation tnbts Confucius, pp. 3153 16.
41. See the Dao de jing, Chapters 1 and 10. Robert G. Henrick notes that
the Dao is declared feminine five times in the Dao de jing; see his introduction to the Ma Wang Dui manuscripts that he translates in his Lao-Tzu: TeTao Ching, pp. xviii-xix.
42. Henrick, tans., Lao-Tzu: Te-Tao Ching, p. 226.
43. Interestingly, Lao Zi identified the newborn boy as full of a kind of an
irurate, though objectless, sexuality. See the Dao de jing, Chapter 55: "He
does not yet know the meeting of male and female, yet his organ is
aroused-this is because his essence is at its height." Henrick, tans., LaoTzu: Te-Tao Ching, p. 132.
44. See the Dao de jing, Chapters 11-19.

45. See Zhuang Zi, Book 29, Story 1. I thank Sarah Wang and Brook
Ziporyn for kindly pointing me to this passage. I have cited Legge's translation as fornd in his The Texts of Taoism inMax Muller, ed., Sacred Books of
the East, vol.40, p. l7l. A parallel passage is found in the contemporary
proto-legalist text, The Book of the Lord Shang (Shang Zi), which A. C. Graham translates as follows inhis Disputers of the To, p. 271: "When Heaven
and earth were established mankind was born. At this time people knew their
mothers but did not know their fathers."
46. Paticia Ebrey, "Women and the Kinship System of the Southem Song
Upper Class," in Richard W'. Guisso and Stanley Johannesen, eds., lV'omen in
Chna: Current Directions in Historical Scholarship.
47. More evidence of this kind of family tension can be found in Yan Zhi
Tui's late-sixth-century comment that "A woman, whether married or not,
brings trouble to her household; but the mother real causes it." See YanZhi
T,ti, F amily Instructions for the Y en CIan, p. 20.
of Rites which explarn the rihral of

the groom escorting the bride ftom her natal home to his home, n Legge,
48. See the passages from The Book
Notes to Pages
35-41
245
tans., Li ch: The Book of Rtes, vol.2, pp. 430-431. see The lilhite Tiger
Notes for an incisive explanation of why this should be so: ..why is it that according to the rites the man takes his wife, whereas the woman leaves her
house? It is because the yin [to which the woman belongs] is lowly, and
should not have the initiative; it proceeds to the yang in order to be complete.
Therefore the Zhuan says: The yang leads, the yin conforms; the man goes
[ahead], the woman follows." See Tjan Tjoe Som, trans., po Hu T,ung; The
comprehensive Discussions in the l(hite Tiger Hail, p. 244; also see p. 262
for another passage about "the wife comes from outside to anothe house to
make it her home."
49' see Lloyd E. Eastrnan's succinct statement

Family, Fields, and Ancestors, p. 28.
of this scenario in
50. see Arthur'wolf, "Adopt a Daughter-in-Law, Marry a sister:
his
A chi-
nese Solution to the Problem of the Incest Taboo,,'p. g69.
51. V/olf, "Adopt a Daughter-in-Law,', p. 870.

52. See Margery Wolf, Vlomen and the Family in Rural Taiwan,p.37.
Chapter 3
1. Japanese scholars of Buddhism have, since the 1940's, noted the
mother-emphasis in chinese Buddhist family values, but have said little
about it other than to claim this as another reason that Buddhism is better
than confucianism. Michihata Rysh is the authority most cited for the
opinion that the mother-focus of Buddhist filial piety is evidence that it is not
as dictatorial as father-focused confucian filial piety. For a concise statement
of his views, see his "Jukyo ronri to on," p. 141.
2.r want to thank Stephen F. Teiser for sharing his unpublished paper,
"Mother, Son, and Hungry Ghost," which explores some of the topics found
in the following chapters.
3. I choose this cutoff point because it marks the era from which catalogues and compendiums have survived. prior to 516 (the date of Bao
chang's Details on sutras and vinaya), we have scant reliable evidence
about which texts were in circulation. There were earlier catalogues, but they
have been lost, save fo Dao An's, which is partially preserved in Seng you,s
catalogue. Though some researchers rely on dates provided by the Buddhist
tradition for the appearance of these early texts, in many cases these attributions can be shown to be fallacious. ln the remaining cases, it often cannot be
determined what is and is not a firm date. To avoid this uncertainty, I draw
246
Notes to Pages
4I-42
the line at 516, accepting the limitation that the exact order of appearance of
the earliest texts will remain undecided and perhaps unknowable. For an im-
pressive discussion of texts from earlier periods, see Erik Zurcher, "A New
Look at the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Texts." For a survey of Chinese Buddhist catalogues, see Kyoko Tokuno, "The Evaluation of Indigenous Scriptures in Chinese Buddhist Bibliographic Catalogues."
4. The famous collection of early charges against Buddhism, Mou Zi and
the Resolution of Doubts, certainly demonstrates how crucial an issue filial
piety was. See Paul Pelliot's translation "Meou-tseu, ou les doutes leves,"
esp. pp. 295-300 and 304-306. For a less detailed tanslation, see William
Theodore de Bary, ed., The Buddhist Tradition in India, China, and Japan,
pp. 131-138. John Keenan recently published a thorough study of this text;
see his How Master Mou Remoyes Our Doubts.
5. Such Chinese-authored works are called "apocryphal" because they falsify their origins and seek the authority of tradition by masquerading as the
words of the Buddha. However, the connotations of "apocryphal" suggest a
marginality that is not warranted. In India this kind of "creative writing" had
been, and continued to be, the mainstay of the Buddhist tradition, with most
of the great Buddhist sutas surely falling into this category. See the intro-
duction to Robert E. Buswell Jr., ed., Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha, for a

good discussion ofrelated issues.
6. Similar examples of this type of "snowballing" can be found in twentieth-century America, where trends in pornography and advertising keep
pushing at the limits of acceptability. Perhaps not unrelatedly, recent literary
theory also has followed a parallel trajectory.
7. See T.55.29c.3. Seng You frnished the catalogue, Chu san zang ji ji, in
515 but revised parts of it before his death in 518.
8. See Eugne Burnouf, Introduction l'histoire du buddhism indien, p.
241.
9. The Mltlasarvstivdavinaya story of Mu Lian and the Buddha converting Mu Lian's mother also has the trope of the son carrying his parents
on either shoulder to repay their kindness (T.24.16a-b), as well as the passage that matches the middle section of The Sutra on the Dfficulty of Repaying the Kindness of Prents, beginning with the sentence, "If parents do
not believe in the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha . . ." (T.24.16a.24). A very similar variant is cited from the Mlasarvstivddavinaya by Dao Cheng in his
Song-period encyclopedia,he Shi shi yao lan (T.54.289c.28).
Notes to Pages
43-46
247
10. Jan Jaworski translates this passage to read that the son allows his parents to urinate and defecate on his shoulders: "si mme il leur laisse faire
leurs besoins naturels sur ses paules"; see his "L'Avalambana Suta de la
terre pure," p. 84. This is defensible, especially since in Dao Shi's seventhcentury Dharma Treasure Grove (Fa yuan zhu lin, T.53.655a.10) there is a
passage from the Ekottrdgam which matches this passage but explicit
mentions urination and defecation. However, because of the lack of those
terms here and the ambiguous meaning of bian (lit., "convenient"), I have
opted for the vaguer "while making them comfortable," which I think represents the euphemistic tone of this line.
ll. T.16.778c.
12. There is evidence that mothers were sometimes the primary instructors
of their sons; see Vy'u Pei-Yi, "Childhood Remembered: Parents and Children
in China, 800 to 1700," p. 132 andn.2.
13. Here is an ear example of the Buddhist use of the field metaphor for
convincing farrrers to farm the Buddhist institution (as discussed in chapter
1 above).
14.
For more discussion of these extacts, see Kyoko Tokuno, ',The
Evaluation of Indigenous Scripture in Chinese Buddhist Bibliographic Catalogues," pp. 39-40.

15. The exact meaning of the title Guan la jing (The sutra on Bathing [a
Buddha ImageJ and Malcing Offerings) is difficult to determine. The first
character, guan,rcans "to pour," "irrigate," or "bathe." The second charactet, Ia, means "meat," "sacriflce," and in particular, the winter sacrifice performed in the twelfttr month of the lunar calendar. Since the text mentions
bathing the Buddha, and since the offering to the Buddhists on 7/15 was
sometimes referred to as la,I have read the two as a list "bathing and sacrificing." However, there are two places in the text that suggest that the two
characters should read as a verb-object binome, 'ouring the offering," so
this author may have been using the two terrns in a more technical way, to
mean Buddhist offerings in general. A further consideration is a title that
Seng You mentions, Si yue ba re guan jing (The Sutra on Bathing fthe Buddhal on 4/8, T.55.28a.10).
Stephen F. Teiser notes that the end ofthe rainy season retreat, usua on
7/l5,was calledfa Ia, or"Dharma offering," and marked the beginning of the
Buddhist New Year; see his The Ghost Festival in Medievl China,p. 34. Seng
You cites a text confirming this usage; see T.15.36a.20 for alext enlttled The
248
sutrs on the Dharma offering (fa la) on 7/15. Another contemporaneous text
also used la for tbe 7/15 offerng; see a story entitled *A Monk Accepted the
Offering (la) arGained the Way on the [Day] of Self Release,,, cited in Bao
Chang's compendium Jing l yi xiang (Detaits on Sutras and Vinaya),
T.53.97c.39 to 53.98a.10.In the early fifth century, Fa Xian also used the term
lafo to refer to an offering of peaches to the Buddha on 7/15 in India; see James
Legge, t'ans., A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, p. 115. For discussion of /
offerings in ear medieval Daoist cults, see Rolf stein, "Religious Taoism and
Popular Religion from the Second to the Seventh Centuries,', pp. 68-76.
16. For discussion ofthe precedents for this offering in India, see Teiser,
The Gho st F es tival, pp. 3 l-3 4.
17. T.l2.lll4a.
18. The date of 4/8 is traditionally held to be the birthday of the Budrtha.
For discussion, see Kenneth Ch'en, The Chinese Trnsrmtion of Buddhism,pp.263-266.

19. The standard phrase in pre-Buddhist times was "the six kinds of relatives," not five. See, for example, Chapter 18 of the Dao de jing (p. 222 of
Robert G. Henrick's tanslation in Lao-Tzu: Te-Tao Ching). The other Budrlhist advertisements ot sffsrings on 7ll5 promise aid to six kinds of relatives, suggesting an error here or a phrasing in which the parents of this lifetime have already been counted, thereby leaving only five remaining types of
relatives. The enumeration of seven generations likely derives from Indian
precedents, where that number of ancestors was the stock set referred to in
Brahmanical ancstor worship. See the entry for "Vedas" in Mircea Eliade,
ed., The Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 15, p.225.
20. See T'r ng-tsu Ch'u, Han Social Stracture,p.3l.
21. Fa Jing's catalogue of 594, the Zhong jing mu Iu (T.55.133b), considers the two earlier ghost-festival texts, as well as The Sutra on Bathing [a
Buddha Imagel and Making Offerings, to be different translations of the

same Indian text, cited in Teiser The Ghost Festival, pp. 54-55, n. IO. Zong
Mi makes the same claim in the introduction to his ninth-century Commentary on the Ghost Festivsl Sutra (T.39.506c.17-20). Later in the seventh and
eighth centuries, other texts on bathing Buddha images circulated; see Daniel
Boucher, "Sutra on the Merit of Bathing the Buddha," pp. 59-68.
22. See Teiser, The Ghost Festival,p.l33 for his discussion of ,.The Story
of Na She." For discussion of the termyin yuan for the Sanskrit avadn, see
Maurice Winternitz, History of Indian Literature, vol.2, p.230, n.3.
Notes to Pages
49-57
249
23. see Michel Strichnann's article, "The consecration sutra: A Buddhist

Book of Spells," in Robert J. Buswell, Jr., ed., Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha.
24. See T.21.528c.
25. The explicit discussion of how an ideal Buddhist son disposes of his
resources was probably included as a model for all filial sons. Self parents,
and Buddhists are supported by this budget in a spending program that ensures the stability of the family and the monasteries.
26. For a discussion of the history of Buddhist fi.rnerals, see my "upside
Down/Right side up: A Revisionist History of Buddhist Funerals in china."
27.we know that, at least tn 597, the official yanzht Tui saw the 7ll5
offerings as suitable to replace the confucian seasonal offerings; see yan Zhi
Tai, Family Instructions for the Yen CIan,p.210.
28. See T.21.531.
29. uttara's Mother Falls into the Ghost Realm is number 46 tnthe one
Hundred Avadnas (Avadnaiataka) and is found tnthe Zhuan
bai yuan
jing (T.4.224c). See Teiser, The Ghost Festival,pp. 132-133, for a summary
and other details.
ji
Chapter 4
1. Bemard Faure sees this story as a counterexample to the numerous stories of mothers being reborn in evil realms. This is true, but on a deeper level
the story parallels the others insofar as it presents the uncultured mother in
need ofBuddhist salvation from her son. The son's anxietSr over the uncer-
tain fate of his mother is the shared motif. For Faure's discussion, see his
Sexualits Bouddhiques, p. 139.
2. See Stephen F. Teiser, The Ghost Festival in Medieval China,pp. 13l_
133, for his discussion of the chinese translation of the Indian story and its
role in ghost-festival mythology. Exactly where Bao chang got this version
of the uttara's mother narrative is not clear. He introduces the story as "The
Sramana, Precious Heavy one (zhen Zhong), saves his mother with skillful
means (upya) after she became a hungry ghost" (T.53.107b.2). Though the
monk is referred to as "Precious Heavy one," the first line of the story explains that his lay name was uttara. Bao chang makes this connection with
uttara again at the conclusion of the accoun! where he notes that he got the
story out of rhe sutra on uttara's Mother. Interestingly, this title is mentioned in Seng You's catalogue (T.55.7a.3) as an incomplete or damaged
work. This note is dropped in later references; see Fa Jing's catalogue of594,
250
the Zhong jing mu lu (T.55.128c.2), and Ming Quan's catalogue of 695, the
Da zhou kan ding zhong jing mu lu (T.55.441c.1).
As for Bao Chang's sources, there is Uttara's Mother Falls into the Ghost
Realm (T.4.224c), the avadna from the Chinese translation of the Avadnaatakn discussed in Chapter 3 of this volume, which obviously has much
in common with this version, although there are elements in Bao Chang's
summation that do not match that text. A frrrther complication is that there is
a Pli version of this story (in Jean Kennedy and Henry Gehman, tans., The
Petavatthu, p. 195). Suggestion of contact between that Pli version, or a derivative of it, and Bao Chang's version is found in a snippet of conversation
about plentiful water that is recounted in Bao Chang and in the Petavatthu
but not found in Uttara's Mother in tJne vadna version. Interestingly, the
Pli version of the story has Uttara's mother begging assistance from another
monk who is not her son. Thus it lacks the basic "mother is sinfrrl, son repays
her" dmamic.
3. T.53.t076.2.
4. T.53.t07b.12.
5. This passage echoes the Pli version of the story. See Kennedy and
Gehman, tans., Petavatthu, p. 195, where the passage reads: "The peff lfemale hungry ghost]: 'It is frfty-five yeaxs since I died. I know neither food
nor drinking water. Give me some water, reverend sir; I am thirsty for a
drink.' Monk: 'Here is the Ganges with its cool waters; it flows from the Himalayas. Take some from it and drink. Why do you ask me for water?"'
6. The purpose of this poplar twig eludes me.
7. T.53.107b.30.
8. Gregory Schopen has documented this fact in his article, "Filial Piety
and the Monk in the Practice of Indian Buddhism: A Question of Sinicization
Viewed from the Other Side."
9. The Chinese rendered the name of this particular Buddhist heaven Dao
Li Tian, which usually corresponds to the Sanskrit Trayastrima, or "Heaven
of the Thirty-Thee [Gods]."
10. T.3.136b. This charge implies that some Chinese regarded the Buddha's mother's death as the result of his willful intent, and thus the Buddha
was being accused of murder. This manslaughter issue got some attention in
India. See the passage in J. J. Jones, trans., The Mahavastu,p. 157, vol. l,
where it is explained that because all bodhisattvas' careers must mimic the
Buddha's, they must be bom to mothers who will die seven days after giving
Notes to Pages
65-66 Z5l
birtlr. The same is said in the Mahpadna Sutta in the Pli canon. See Maurice Walshe, f:ans, The Long Discourses of the Buddha, p. 204. Thus borlhisattvas must carefully choose for their mothers women who will be dying on
this day for other karmic reasons, thereby annulling the implication that bodhisattvas
kill their mothers.
11. T.4.450a. For a translation, see Charles Willemen, The Storehouse

Sundry Valuables, pp. 19-20.
of
12. See Fa Xian's account in Legge's translation of A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, pp. 47 -5 l.
13. Bao Chang's text is found on T.53.33a.
14.T.53.664a. Dao Shi's citation parallels Bao Chang's but adds occasional characters to clariff the narrative. I translate the title of Dao Shi's encyclopedia, Fa yuan zhu lin, as Dharma Treasure Grove to preserve some of
the euphony of the Chinese four-line expression. More exact, the title is
"Dharma grove, flike a] pearl forest."
15. For the rll sutra of The Buddha Goes to Heaven to Teach Dharma to
H Mother, see T.l7 .7 87b.
16. Proving mothership by suckling adult sons at a distance was a trope
known in India. Fa Xian recorded a variant of such a narrative in Legge,
lr:ans.,A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms,p.73.
17. Some readers have been reluctant to call this scene erotic. I believe the
term is wranted not because breasts are necessari erotic, but because this
encounter is described in language that is sensual and full of excitement.
Also, as discussed in Chapter 7 below, the framing of the story puts the Buddha, the son, into the same age bracket as his mother, Maya. Thus the gen-
erational divide of mother and son is collapsed, making their meeting in

heaven a collision of categories, with a still-young mother meeting her adult
son.
18. In both Bao Chang's and Dao Shi's versions, the Buddha arurounces
to his mother that he is going to die soon, and she cries. Besides adding another element of bathos, this detail suggests that the Buddha-and, by impli-
cation, any son--can die only after he has taken care of his mother in this or
in a comparable Buddhist manner. Accounts of the Buddha's death that
hightight the sorrow of his mother seem to have circulated independently;
see, for example, the short Dun Huang text, The Sutra on the Buddha's
Mother (Fo mu jing, Stein # 2084, T.85.1463a). The breast-feeding motif is
found in this text when, among the Buddha's mother's bad dreams of the de-
252
Notes to Pages
struction of the world, signifying the passing of her son, the final omen is that
her breasts begin to spontaneously lactate.
19. It is worth noting that the next entry (T.53.33a.29) in Bao Chang's encyclopedia is the story of the Buddha's aunt petitioning him to enter the
Buddhist Order. He denies her until nanda reminds him that she breast-fed
him after the early death of his mother and that he is therefore indebted to
her. After much debating, the Buddha consents to ordain nuns, lamenting that
it will hasten the end of his Dharma. For discussion of this story in India, see
Alan Sponberg, "Attitudes toward Women and the Feminine in Ear Buddhism," pp. 13-18.
20. This emphasis on repayment was ear recognized as central to The
Sutr on the Filial Son, and by 518 the text was referred to by the alternative
title of The Sutr on the Filial Son Repaying the Debt (Xiao zi bao en jing).
See Seng You, Chu san zang ji ji (T.55.17c.2).
2I.Ihave discussed the issue of monastic discipline taken into the home
in a recent paper, "Homestyle Vinaya and Docile Boys in Chinese Buddhism," presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, New Orleans, November 1996.
22. TbLe phrase about the mother "puttittg you in the dry places and sleeping in the damp ones" is used in pre-Buddhist literature to evoke a mother's
selfless compassion. It is mentioned in the Hou han shu, cited in Wu Hung's
"Private Love and Public Duty," p. 91.
23.T.16.780b. For an alternative reading of this text, see Kermeth Ch'en,
The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism, pp. 4345. This text is not easy to
read and several of my renderings are tentative.
24. T1ae Majjhima Nikaya, i. 265, has an explanation of reproduction that
includes the line, "Then at the end of nine or ten months she brings it [the
baby] forth, with great anxiety, a heavy burden. When it is born, she feeds it
on her own blood: for 'blood,' brethren, is called mother's milk in the discipline of the Aryan" (see F. L. Woodward, trans., Some Sayings of the Buddha, p. 29). For an interesting discussion of breast-milk as a product, see
Gayatri Spivak, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, p. 248. For a
comparative perspective on cultural notions of moth.er's milk as a blood derivatrve, see Caroline Wa\ket Bynum, Jesus os Mother, pp. 132-135.
is to
25 . Ns one of mJ s\rents, Sara Snoith, note, rn this scenano the son
l\s\}or\ \s treatrng re pub\\c-$rst

a.es \us\ ts eBu\st
ct\o\e\\ern,errhnea\en\\em'w\\\1os\-nror\ern'\otNte'an'st\ena\\e\se
\ea\\\s
72-81
253
has failed, evoke the power of private feelings between family members in
order to effect a conversion to Buddhist ways.
26. This list of the five Buddhist precepts for the laity is interesting for the
way it interjects Confucian values into Buddhist ethics-the most notable addition being frlial piety, tucked in rather incongruously after the injunction
against drinking.
27. How this enumeration of family relations was arrived at I have no

clue. Counting six relations is the norm.
28. The phrase "[all] those who have blood" is a traditional pre-Buddhist
term for sentient beings.
29.For slightly later comments on the danger of desire for women, see
Chapter 75 of Dao Shl's Dharma Treasure Grove (^1.53.847), which contains
a collection of quotes speaking to the threatening nature of women's sexuality and the hellish karmic effects of desire.
30. In a parallel case, Petff Brown argues that Augustine was the first
Church Father to turn Cbristian asceticism inward until it was applicable to
life in the world of society. See his The Body and Society,pp.398-405.
31. A late Tang text, The Sutra on the Contemplation of the Mind-Ground
(Ben sheng xin di guan jing), piles up debts to the mother (T.3.297a.15) and
then follows with specific commands that a son must obey his mother or risk
excruciating punishments (T.3.297b.5). This suggests that Buddhist authors
saw in the mother a kind of comrade-in-arms who could be counted on to
uphold and pass on "the law/Dharma" and who deserved formal Buddhist
support.
Chapter 5
l.
See Stephen F. Teiser, The Ghost Festival in Medieval China, pp. 4362, for an alternative discussion ofthis text, and p. 48, n. 5, for an extensive
bibliography of secondary literature on the ghost festival.
2. Interestingly, the one example from this early period that provides both
a narrative and ritual prescriptions, "The Story of Na She" (discussed in

Chapter 3 above), did endure with a tenacity that the other texts lacked. Apparently it circulated as an independent text even as late as the tenth century,
for numerous copies of it were found at Dun Huang. See Michel Strickmann,
"The Consectation Sutra: A Buddhist Book of Spells," p. 110, n' 17.
3. T.16.780a.
4. Teiser's discussion passes over the significance of the mother-son dy-
254
Notes to Pages
namics in this narrative, for he states that The Ghost Festival sutra (yu lan
jiry and The Sutra on Repaying the Kindness by Making Offerings (Bao
en feng pen jing) "represent the sparest version of the ghost-festival myth.
Mu Lian and his mother occupy a relatively insignificant place, merely filting
the necessary roles of filial son and departed ancestor without greater elaboration" (Teiser, The Ghost Festival,p. 55).
5. This merging of liberation and food for the deceased was already sug-
pen
n The Sutra on Bathing [a Buddha ImageJ and Mabing Offerings,

discussed in Chapter 3 of this volume.
gested
6. For details on Mu Lian's magical powers, see Teiser, The Ghost Festival, pp. I l3-l 16, 120-130. In the Mahratnalata, Mu Lian also plays this
role of being the disciple most endowed with magical power, but still unable
to effect things that only a Buddha has control over; see c. c. chang, trans.,
Treasury of Mahyna Sutras,p. 457.
7. See, for instance, the fust chapter of the Mahvastu, enlitled ,.Maudgalyyana's (Mu Lian's) Visits to Hell" (in J. J. Jones, trans., The Mahavastu,
pp. 6-21), and the second chapter, entitled "Visits to Other Worlds" (ibid.,
pp.22a\.In
stories no. 5G-60
of the One Hundred Avadnas (Avadnaa-
taka), he is likewise portrayed as the Buddhist monk most knowledgeable

about hungry ghosts, hidden realms, and the 'sftings of karma (see
T.4.222-228 for Chinese franslations). Then, in what is likely a Chinese rendering of this image of Mu Lian, see him in a similar role in Hungry Ghosts
Ask Mu Lian Sutra (T.17.535b).
8. Up to the seventh century, there is no evidence for The Ghost Festival Sutra aswe have it now. In his Details on Sutras and Vinaya of 516, Bao Chang
quotes the Yu lan jing, a text whose title is close to Yu lan pen jing (The Ghost
Festival Sutra) but that actually closely matches The Sutra on Repaying the
Kindness by Mking Offerings and that shows none of the additions found in
The Ghost Festival Sutra (see T.53.73c.22; the Yu lan jing is also mentioned
in Seng You's catalogue, T.55.28c.2). Similarly, though Zong Lin, in his
mid-sixth-century Record of Seasonal Observances in Jing Chu, says that he
is citing a sutra called The Ghost Festival Sutra, the text that he provides
matches Repying the Kindness except for a short addendum at the end
which hints at lines that appear in the second half of rhe Ghost Festival sutra
Festival,pp.56-57). Thus there was probably a name

change, wifh The Ghost Festival Sutra as we have it now almost certainly
(see Teiser, The Ghost
being written after Repaying the Kindness and then being given the fuller
88-90
255
name Yu lan pen jing. Given the instability of the titles of these works, confrrmation of the contents of The Ghost Festival Sutra can only be securely
dated to the 640's, when Hui Jing gave the sutra a line-by-line correntary.
Fa Jing's catalogue, the Zhong jing mu Iu (T.55.133b.9), written in the last
decade of the sixth century, cites The Sutra on Repaying the Kindness by
Making Offerings and The Ghost Festivl Sutra, as well as The Sutra on
Bathing [a Buddha Imge] and Making Offerings (discussed in Chapter 3
above), as different tanslations of the same Indian text (cited tnTeiser, The
Ghost Festival,p.55, n. l0). This marks the earliest reference that differentiates Repaying the Kindness ftom The Ghost Festival Sutra. Thus it seems
that, for most of the fiff and sixth centuries, there was only the Repaying the
Kindness version of the ghost festival, which might also have gone under the
name Yu lan jing; then, some time in the mid- to late sixth cenhrry, Repaying
the Kindness was adapted into what is now referred to as The Ghost Festival
Sutra.
9. In most of the research done on the topic, the evident gap between these
two texts is collapsed to make them appear as contemporaneous creations. In
other cases, scholars have labored to make The Ghost Festival Sutr, or a hypothetical'roto-version" of it, precede The Sutra on Repaying the Kindness
by Making ffirings. See Iwamoto Yutaka's analysis for a particularly convoluted effort aimed in this direction, in his Mohtren densetsu to urabon.
10. The second section begins with, "At this time, Mu Lian again asked
theBuddha . . ;'(T.16.779c.2).
lt. T.16.779b.7 .
12. For discussion of medieval Daoist rites on 7/15, see Teiser, The Ghost
Festival, pp. 35-40. For discussion of modern Daoist rites on 7/15, see Kristofer Schipper, "Mu-lien Plays in Taoist Liturgical Context."
13. See Jacques Gernet, Buddhism in Chinese Society, pp. 3-5 and 38-45,
for a discussion of the differences between these two types of monasteries
and the politics involved. For details about how public monasteries functioned in later periods, see T. Griffrth Foulk, "Myth, Ritual, and Monastic
Practice in Sung Ch'an Buddhism."
14. It is interesting to note that, in Mou Zi nd the Resolution of Doubts
(Paul Pelliot trans., "Meou-tseu, ou les doutes leves," p.292), the Buddha's
ability to fly is specifically cited as proof of his supernormal powers.
15. For a near-contemporary collection of texts on stupa veneration, see
Chapter 3 of Dao Shi' s Zhu j ing yo ji (T .5 4.19 c).
256
Notes to Page
16. Another precursor title can be found in the back of Seng you's catalogue, where there is an entry on the yu lan pen yuan ji (origins of the Ghost
Festival) which is said to derive from the Mu lian wen

Lian's Questions); see T.55.9 la. 10.
jing (sutra on Mu
17. See Vasubandhu, AbhidhramqkoSabh;yam, trans. Leo pruden, vol.

2, p. 397. Pruden adds in a foorote that this belief appears to be pan-Indian
because similar statements can be found in The Laws of Manu. M. r/. De
visser notes that the term avalambana is also found nrfie Mahabhrata; see
his Ancient Buddhm in Japan, vol. 1, p. 62. Also, n the Mahavastu, rhe
fist hell that Mu Lian visits, the sanjiva Hell, is peopled by beings who ..had
their feet upwards and head downwards," again s rggesting that a regular vision of hell had beings "hanging upside down." see J. J. Jones's translation,
vol. l, p.
6.
18' See Hui Jing's seventh-century Eulogt on the Ghost FestivI sutra,
which, though missing the first page, still makes it crear that, in explaining
the meaning of yu lan, Hui Jing glossed it as "the suffering of hanging upside
down" (dao xuan zhi ht, T.85.540a.14). Kenneth ch'en gives a review of the
opinions, modern and medieval, about what yu lan means tn his chinese
Transformation of Buddhism, pp. 6l-64. He decides, wrongly I think, that
the term means "to save, to rescue." His reasoning is that "the original purpose of the service carried out by Mu Lian was to rescue his mother,' (ibid.,
pp. 63-64). However, if Ch'en had noted that avalambana s a term used to
describe the suffering of hungry ghosts in India, he would have had a better
reason to see why the chinese commentaries also explained it thus. see also
Teiser, The Ghost Festival, pp. 2l-23, for a survey of opinions on the meaning of the term and a full bibliography.
in
19. T.l6-779c.10.
20. De visser points out that in India the festival had this sense of reprieve
it. See his Ancient Buddhm in Japan, vol. l, p.74, where he notes a
Hindu belief about Yama letting tJLe pretas ar.d pitarasi out on the thirteenth
day of the eighth moon so that they can roam about announcing their sins and
asking for food. For a description of the festival in India, see yi Jing's (ITsing's) account in Takakusu Junjir, trans., I Record of the Buddht Religion as Practiced in Indi and the Malay Archipelago, p. 86.
2l . Y a;ma appears in this role tn the bian wen version entttled, Da Mu
eian
Lian ming jian jiu mu bian wen, dated roughly to the early ninth century. See
victor Mat! Tun-huang Popular Narratives, pp. 93-94, where he is referred
92
257
to as the "Great King Yama" who presides over a huge hall and is surrounded
by attending functionaries.
22. See Mair, Tun-hung Popular Narratives, p. 119, where it is said that
7115 is a singular day out of the year when
"King Yama rejoices." The whole
"'Not only is this the prescribed date on which to

provide a purgatorial feast on a large scale for your mother,' the WorldHonored One replied to him, 'it is also the day on which those who have
been sitting in meditation in the monasteries end their summer reteat, the
day on which arhats achieve the fruit of their religious practice, the day on
which Devadatta's sins are annihilated, the day on which King Yama rejoices, and the day on which all hungry ghosts everywhere get to eat their
passage is worth citing:
fill.'"
23. Teiser explains that the fall date reflects the conjunction of agricultural
and meditative harvests; see his The Ghost Festival, p. 4, and then, in more
detail, pp. 203-208. Stanley Tambiah argues in a similar vein in his "Ideology of Merit and the Social Correlates of Buddhism in a Thai Village," pp.
10-75.In this view, on 7/15 the monks release, as in a bountiful harvest, the
fruits of their summer labor in the forrn of intensified ascetic energy. This
position, while very suggestive (and the metaphor of fruit is mentioned in the
preceding note from lLe bian wen version), is not supported by passages or
idioms in either of these two early ghost-festival texts. This question warrants
consideration, especial in light of my argument about Buddhist ideology
"farming farmers" (see Chapter I above) because, according to the logic of
gifts as "seeds," 7/15 ought to be a big planting, not a harvest. That is to say,
the donors' gifts, which are the fruits of this year's agrarian labor, are now
being planted in the Buddhist frelds of merit. If this line of reasoning is correct, then what the monks have been preparing during their summer labor of
meditation and discipline is a kind of fecundity that is not distributed to donors at this time but, rather, opened up for a kind of insemination that begins
the gestation of the next year's crops in the unseen world of karmic farming.
This position matches Buddhist notions of fertility in India, where quite a few
sources explain conception-even the Buddha's conception-as the result of
ascetic action.
As a point of clarification, Teiser's citation of Zong Lin's explanation that
monks should stay put during the summer months (Teise The Ghost Festival, pp. 206-207) need not bring with it the implication that an agrarian
metaphor was being employed to invoke the amassing and subsequent distri-
258
Notes to Pages
bution of ascetic energy. Zong Lin's cornments appear to be a direct paraphrasing of a much older Indian explanation of how the Buddhists started
settling down for the summer months. one can find similar statements in the
Mhvagga w.ith no implication that ascetic energy is being homologized
with the agricultural harvest. Instead, the intent of the passage appears to be
to harmonize the Buddhist peripatetic schedule with what seems to have been
a pan-Indian dislike for wandering during the monsoon season; see the Mahavagga, iii.1, in Henry Clarke Warren, Buddhism in Translation,p.414.
24. T.76.779c.7.
25. For the earliest mention of this text in the catalogues, see Dao Xuan's
Da Tang nei dian lu of 664 (T.55.298b.13), where, under the heading of IZ
lan pen jing, it adds that there is another version five pages long, called the
Pure Land Yu Lan Sutra, whose origin is unknown. For Dao Shi's citation,
see T.53.751a.5. For alternative discussions of this text, see Teiser, The
Ghost Festival, pp. 58-62, 116-119, and Jan Jaworski, "L'Avalambana Sutra
de la terre pure," pp. 82-107.
26. Teiser also suspects this connection; see his The Ghost Festival, pp.
131-133.
.Ithiui,k the model for this conversation was taken from the first chapter
of the Vimalsktrtinirde1a, where Sariputra is confused about purity and the
Pure Land. See Robert Thurman, tans., The Holy Teaching of VimalakTrti,
pp. 18-19.
27
28. Thurman, trans., The Holy Teaching of Vimalaktrti,p.25. See also the
introduction to Chapter 4 of The Lotus Sutra for a similar arrangement, in Leon Hurvitz, trans., Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma,p.84.
29. Teiser notes that with Fei Chang Fang's 597 catalogue, the Li dai san
bao ji, there began a trend to attribute the translation of The Ghost Festival
Sutr to Dharmaraksa; see his The Ghost Festival, p. 55, n. I 1 .
30. T.53.751a.5.
31. See Teiser, The Ghost Festival,p.6l, for discussion.
32. Dao Shi's teacher, Dao Xuan, in his contemporary catalogue, the Da
Tang nei dian lu, includes the Yu lan pen jing, Bao en feng pen jing, and,
Guan la jing in the H-mayna section of his catalogue (T.55.298b.13).
33. For a passage from the Mlasarvastvadavinaya where these powers
are also mentioned, see John Strong, The Experience of Buddhism, p. 13.
34. Victor Mair has pointed out that by 518 Mu Lian was already identifred by the nickname "Luo Bu"; see his Tun-huang Popular Narratives, n.
99-108
259
17 , W. 224-225. Iwamoto Yutaka notes the same and cites the One Hundred
Avadanas (Avadanaiataka) as the source; see his Molaren densetsu to ura-
bon,p.75.
35. Part of the narrative borrowed from Uttara's Mother Falls into the
Ghost Realm has been embellished in the following way: It turns out that
each time Mu Lian has tried to send his mother rice, as usual in these ghostfestival texts, she caffiot eat it, but now the reason given is that her fellow
ghosts want to share in it so badly that she has to sit on the rice to keep it
from them. This original touch emphasizes, I suppose, her stinginess and
subhuman status, by depicting a failed feeding in which food is fruitlessly
placed at the end of the alimentary canal instead of in the mouth.
36. See Stephen Jay Gould, LTonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the
Nature of Htory, pp. 301-304.
Chapter 6
1. See Stephen F. Teiser, The Ghost Festival in Medieval China, p. 63, for
more biographical details.
2. T.85.540a.
3.In
Zong Mi's ninth-century Commentary on the Ghost Festival
(T.39.506c.27), discussed in Chapter 7 below, the same case is put forth.

4. For a list of references to Zeng Zi tn The Analects, see D. C. Lau, trans.,
The Analects,p.245. For discussion of his exemplary frlial piety in the Han period, see Wu Hung, The l(u Liang Shrine,pp.275-278.Interestingly, although
pre-Han references do not suggest that Zeng Zi was an icon for a form of
mother-son ideology, by the frst century C.E., wdters such as Wang Chong
cited the story of Zeng Zihaving a telepathic connection with his mother such
that she could squeeze her own arm and he would feel it and know that she
needed him. Other stories also proliferated highlighting his deep devofion to
his mother; see Wu Hung,The l(u Liang Shrine,pp.277-278.
5. T.85.541b.2.
6. See Yi Jing's translation of this passage from the Mlasarvstivdavinaya (T.24.16a-b). For a summary in English, see Teiser, The Ghost Festival, p. l3l. Yi Jing's tanslation was made late in the seventh century or perhaps in the ear eighth century, but Hui Jing could have known of this story
before the translation was made, since it is also found tnthe Divyvadn.
7
. T.53.73a.29- 53.7 6a.
8. T.85.54lb.12.
260
Notes to Pages I
9. T.85.541b.20.
24.
25.
26.
21.
10. This passage does not exactly match The Sutra on King Malla as
found in the modern Tasho, and we can be reasonably sure that the Taish's
version was in circulation in Hui Jing's time because Dao shi quotes it in his
contemporary work, The Dharma Treasure Grove (discussed later in this

chapter; see below for translation).
11. T.85.541b.21.
12. Song no. 283, Arthur Waley, f:ar.r., The Book of Songs,pp.3l317.
1 3. T.39.508a .29-508b.4.
14.
T.53.655a.1; see T.14.79lb.18 for the passage in the original sutra.

T.53.655a.5.
T.53.655c.11.
T.53.656c.7.
(Sutra on the
For a translation of the first fifteen chapters, see Etienne Lamotte,
Filial Son Shan), thereby
emphasizing
its exemplary filial
theme, T.55.17c.3.
29. See Ch'en, The Chinese Transrmation of Buddhism, p. 23, for mention of later versions of this tale. A synopsis of this story was also interpolated in at least three Dun Huang versions of The Sutra on the profound
Kindness of Parents; see Stein #149, Stein #6087, and Stein #2269.
30. T.53.658a.9. Although the Buddha's name in this incarnation is translated as "benevolent, youthful woman" (ci tong nu),I am sure that he was a
tlree years of breast-feeding, and then after ten more years they become selfsufficient." Another passage, T.25.525c, has the following: ,.It is like a
woman pregnant with her body heavy with suffering. Walking is inconvenient; it is uncomfortable to sit, she does not get enough to eat, nor does she
sleep enough. She does not feel like talking; she just is used to the oppres-
son and not a daughter both because the child is often referred to in the narative as er, which can only mean son, and because the child is engaging in
business and making long trips, which Indian women do not do even in
myths. Moreover, the divine compensation that the child receives in heaven
consists of numerous beautiful maidens. For the full version of this story, see
Charles Willemen, trans., The Storehouse of Sundry Valuables, pp. 2l_25;
the chinese is found in T.4.450c.19. For discussion of two Indian versions of
this story, found in the Pli Jtaka, no. 82, and in the One Hundred Avadanas (Avdanaiatakn), story no. 36, see Maurice Winternitz, History of Indian
Literature, vol. 2, p. 27 l.
31. This is another example of the "math of morality," suggesting again
the tendency to quantify the milk-debts in a mercantile manner.
32. The Buddha never actually suffers this torture because at the last minute he musters a bodhisattva's wish to take on the suffering of all sentient
siveness of this suffering. Another woman, seeing her signs, would know that
she will soon give birth, thus bodhi isjust like this, too." In both cases the
context is quite different from Hui Jing's. Neither of these passages even
hints at belonging to a discourse on debts to the mother, like the one constructed by Hui Jing.
16. Text correction: I am reading gan ("dry") for yu. The passage is nonsensical without this change.
t7. T.8s.s4tb.28.
18. For an early example
of this explanation of milk, see The Mahayana

on the Skillful Means for Repaying the Kindness of the Buddha
(T.3.129c.27).
19. See Dao Shi's explanation of dou in his Dharma Treasure Grove
(T.53.663c.26). See R. H. Mathews, Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary,
for the note that the capacity of a dou may vary but is standardized at 316
beings, and this cancels the imminent punishment.

33. See T.53.661a.25. The story matches ayadana no. 94 in the One Hundr ed Av adanas (Avadana ataka, T.4.25 I c).
34. See Ch'en, The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism, pp.37-38, n.

50, for a discussion of these tales, alternative versions, and their location in
non-Buddhist sources.
35. See Stein #149 and Stein #2269 for manuscripts of The Sutra on the
cubic inches.
20.T.53.14b.7.
22. T.53.663c.18.
261
28.T.53.657c.11. See Kenneth Ch'en, The Chinese Transformation of

Buddhism, pp. 20-23, for discussion and references to Indian versions of this
story. It is the Syamajtaka inthe Jataka collection, and is in the Mahvastu,
vol. 2, pp. 199-218. Note, too, that Seng You lists it as the Xiao zi Shan jing
trans., Le Trait de la grand vertu de sagesse de Nagrjuna (Mahaprajapramitiastra).

15. For other related passages tnt}ra Da zhi du lun, see T.25.118a for an
explanation of the five different types of birth in the universe, which includes
the following passage: "Humans are bom after ten months, then there are
Sutra
17-21
21. T.53.664a.21.
23. T.12.1059b.4.
262
Notes to Pages
Pround Kindness of Parents that mention Ding Lan, Dong yan, Guo Ju,
and Shan Zi. Stein #6087 also looks to be the same version, though the manuscript is lost save for the final lines about Shan Zi, which match #149 and,
#2269. For Zong Mi's reference, see T.39.508a.24 and further discussion in
Chapter 8 of this volume, where The Story of Mu Lian's use of these stories
125-26
263
ing to sex; see La Valle Poussin's translation of Vasubandhu, Abhidharmakoiabh;yam, vol. l, p. 395, in Leo Pruden's English tanslation (Berkeley, 1988). In The Mahavstu much is made of the way bodhis1ys,
contrast to ordinary ings, sit gracefully in their mother's wombs, not hurting them in the slightest and positioning themselves so that mother and son
can gaze at each other. See J. J. Jones, trans., The Mahvastu, vol. 1, pp. 114,
ll7, and 167-169.
45. Vasubandhu has this wind theory in his explanation of birth nhis Ab-
is also analyzed.
36. T.53.658c.16.
37. The verbs here are crucial.
I read yang as "raising the child" and gong

yang as "respectfully offering food," which in this context can only refer to
hidharmakoiabhyam, vol. l, p. 400.
Guo Ju's mother.

38. T.53.658c.22.Dng Lan is also featured in another encyclopedic work
by Dao Shi; see his Essentials of the Various Sutras (T.54.18Ib) for a discussion of Ding Lan in the context of explaining making offerings to images.
For discussion of Ding Lan in the Han period, see Wu IHit:lr'Lg, The Wu Liang
Shrine, pp.282-285.
39. Given the later implication tn The Blood Bowl Sutra that a women's
hair is connected with reproductive cycles, this hair loss may symbolize a
loss of fertility. See Chapter 9 below for more discussion.
40. T.53.807b.
41. T.53.811a.11.
42. T.53.811a.24. There were many sources for Buddhist explanations of
pregnancy. See The Sutrs on Pregnancy (Bao taijing, T.11.886), which has
the week-by-week description of development, milk-debts, and the pain of
birthing. The Sutra on the Intermediate Stte (T.12.1058) has many similar
46.T.53.811c.24.
T\e use of the binome dao xuan, "hanging in
sus-
pense," is noteworthy. Hungry ghosts also wait, "hanging in suspense" until

their descendents make offerings on their behalf which allow them to be bom
into new and more pleasing states of being. Thus it seems that a connection is
being forged between these two liminal states between life and death. In
modern Taiwanese Buddhist rites, Gary Seaman has noted a similar convergence between gestation and movement tbrough hell realms; see his "Mu-lien
Dramas in Puli, Taiwan," p. 178.
47. T.53.811c.27.
48.T.53.812a.3.
49.T.53.812c.14. The soruce for the quote is identified as The Sutra on
Rebirth in the Five Pathways [of Cyclic ExistenceJ (14/u dao shou shengjing).
50. T.54.184b.11.
5t. T.54.184b.t7.
52. Anearly identical passage can be found in the Saryyutta Nikaya, .178
ff., which reads: "Now what think ye, brethren? Whether is the
passages.
greater, all
the mother's milk that ye have sucked in this long journey, for ever running
Discussions of fetal development were also present in pre-Buddhist China.

Discovered in the Ma Wang Dui tombs was a medical text on pregnancy issues called t};re Tai chan shu, cited in Anne Behnke Kinney, "Dyed Silk: Han
Notions of the Moral Development of Children," in Kinney, ed., Chinese
Views of Childhood, p.51, n.51. Discussions of month-by-month gestation
are also found in the Huai nan zi; see Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese
Philosophy, vol. l, p. 398. For discussion of other non-Buddhist notions of
reproduction in China, see Charlotte Furth, "From Birth to Birth: The Growing Body in Chinese Medicine," in Kinney, ed,., Chinese Views of Childhood,
pp. 157-191.
43. T.53.811c.2.
through the round of rebirth, or the water in the four mighty oceans?" See F.
L. Woodward, Some Sayings of the Buddha,p.23.
53. It seems that most of the Indian discussion about conception, pregnancy, and birth is bom out of the desire to explain rebirth to those who do
not accept Buddhist tenets. For instance, Vasubandhu's polemics are usually
directed
to those who do not believe in karma or
Vasubandhu, Abhidhrmakoiabh;yam, vol.
reincarnation. See
l, p. 400.
54. I believe that there were two funerary schedules brought to Chinaone calling for tlree weeks of services, the other for seven weeks. Sometimes
the two were offered as alternatives. The mention in this passage of three
44. Vasubandhu also has comments on the positioning of fetuses accord-
weeks in the intermediate state must reflect the shorter time frame.
264
Notes to Pages
55. We should not miss the metaphoric use of the term dao xuan, *hang-
ing upside down," where it likely refers to the hunger experienced in the
hungry-ghost realm.
56. T.54.185b.23. See T.14.795c for the Taish version of this text; the
passage cited by Dao Shi begins T.14.796a.25. For a Dun Huang version of
this discussion of the eight sufferings, with a heavy focus on debts to the
mother, see The Public Teachings of [Hui] Yuan of Mt. Lu, alsoreferred to as
The Unfficial Biography of Hui Yuan (Hui Yuan wai zhuan), T.85.1314b,
which I treat in Chapter 9 below.
57.
The Sutra on Contemplating the [Buddha
ofl
Limitless Life
(T.12.340c) is, in itself, an interesting text on family concerns set within the
story of AjtaSatru. For a fianslation, see Hisao Inagaki, trans., The Three
Pure Land Sutras, pp. 317-350. A full analysis of family issues in popular
Pure Land texts is beyond the scope of this work, but I should mention that
the section on the five evils in what is called The Larger sutra on Amityus
has important statements on failed frlial piety; see ibid., pp.29l_301, and, for
another translation, Luis Gmez, The Land of Bliss, pp. 205J13. Hui Jing
noted the relevance of this section in his Eulogy on the Ghost Festival sutra
(T.85.541a.29).
58. See T.37.259b.4.
59. Kenneth Ch'en thinks that this passage is closely enough related to
The Sutra on the Pround Kindness of Parents (discussed in Chapter 7 below) to assume that shan Dao had read it and based this section of his commentary on it; see Ch'en, The Chinese Transrmation of Buddhism, p. 4l.I
see no such clear connection, and we know that all these chunks were found
in other places besides The Sutra on the Pround Kindness of parents.
60. T.37.259c.8.
61. Somewhat unlike the numerous other authors who comment on the
Buddha's ip to heaven, Shan Dao explains that the Buddha taught the
Dharma to his mother "in order to repay the debt of her ten months of preg-
nancy." Although the original narrative is quite involved with milk, Shan
Dao chooses to define the son's indebtedness as a birth-debt.
132-38
265
similar title existed in the early part of the seventh century: see his Tdai
buk shi no kenlqt, p. 381.

2. Besides the literary interest that The sutra on the profound Kindness
of
Paren spawned as discussed below, fifty-some manuscripts of the text

were found at Dun Huang, suggesting that it was a favorite text to copy and
distribute during the Tang dynasty.
3. see chapter 6, which discusses how Hui Jing and Dao shi cited texts
with this phrase,fu mu en zhong, and how Shan Dao used it in his prose.
4. T.85.1403b. For an alternative translation, see Kenneth Ch,en, The
chinese Transformation of Buddhism, pp.38-41. variations between our

translations have largely to do with the vagueness of the text and its often unclear syntax.
a
5. Literally, "spit out the sweet," which I presrme refers to the practice of
mother partially chewing food and then transferring it to the baby's mouth.
6. The quantification here is interesting, in that the large, vague number of
180 pecks of milk has been switched to 84-a special Buddhist number, like
108, that is usually used to indicate alarge number of auspicious things.
7. A similar interweaving of repaying parents and proselytizing Buddhism
is found in two later texts, The Blood Bowl sutra and The sutr [Explaining
ThatJ the Kindness of Parents is Profound and
discussed in Chapter 9 below.
Dfficult to Repay, which
are
8. T.85.1.404a.17.
unlike the ghost-festival mythology, which made use of the relationship between food and morality, there is no undering nutient cycle tn The
sutra on the Profound Kindness of Parents. The sparseness of this message
harks back to earlier versions ofBuddhist filial piety, such as that found in
The sutra on the Dfficulty of Repaying the Kindness of parents (see chapter
3), where the same basic message was articulated, albeit without the motherson focus that is so pronounced here. The continuity between these texts suggests that the foundations of Buddhist family values laid in the pre-sixthcentury era texts were maintained and then built upon here.
10. My rendering of this passage is tentative. I hanslatedye
fu (lit.,,.pull
9.
belly")
"tickle."
Chapter 7
at his
l. The Sutra on the Pround Kindness of Parents (Fu mu en zhong jing)

is first mentioned in the catalogue Da zhou kan ding zhong jing mu lu of 695,
I 1. The period of two to three years probably represents tle Chinese way
of counting age beginning at conception.
12. This may refer to the "five constants" (wu chang) in Confucian ethics:
but Michfata Rysh has found epigraphical evidence that a text with
as
benevolence, uprighbress, propriety, wisdom, and trust.
266
Notes to Pages
14. Based on Zong
Mi's citation of this passage
was known for his
(see later in this chapter),
("return").
267
21. Ding Lan and Guo Ju are discussed in Chapter 6 above; Dong yan
filial conduct toward his mother, and after her death murdered a neighbor who had insulted her. See Kenneth Ch'en, The Chinese
Transformatipn of Buddhism,p.38 n, for a synopsis of the story.
22. How the Buddha in India could have known about these exemplary
Chinese boys who post-date him by five hundred years was a problem never
considered significant by the author(s), even though the cataloguers ofBuddhist texts seized upon this anachronism to discount The Sutra on the Profound Kindness of Parents' claim to Indian authenticity. Shortly thereafter, in
an interesting case demonstrating the interplay between elite opinion and
popular literature, this section on the filial boys was excised. By the time the
Dun Huang caves were sealed up, it was hard to find a manuscript that still
had this section. I have found twa-Stein #149 and Stein #2269-and a
probable third, Stein #6087.
23.For a representative example and the most quoted authority, see
Michihata Rysh's Tdai buk shi no ken, pp. 382,394. Makita Tairy's opinion is similar; see his Gio kenfi, p. 50. For an account of the
sutra in English, see Kenneth Ch'en, The Chinese Transrmation of Buddhism, p. 41: "The purpose of this forged suta is obvious, namely, to make
Buddhism popular among the masses of Chinese who are imbued with the
13. T.85.1403c.14.
I am switching a radical to read fu ("wfe") for gui
146-47
See
T.39.508b.29.
15. The termwuni refers to the five most heinous crimes in Buddhism:
(1) kining one;s father, (2) killing one's mother, (3) killing an arhat, (4)
drawing the blood of a Buddha, and (5) disrupting the Sangha' The rather exaggerated charge that the younger couple is involved in the most serious of
Buddhist crimes is interesting because it suggests that the authorrvants to
link their unfrlial conduct-the most heinous of crimes from the Confucian
point of view-with charges of equal aocity from the Buddhist code of

ethics; there is also an implied threat in doing so because it was well known
that committing any of these five Buddhist sins resulted in direct rebirth in
the worst of hells. In Chapter 8 below, I comment more on the fusion of Confucian and Buddhist ethics in these texts, although the topic warrants treatment in a separate essay.
16. Repeating the phrase "nine times out of ten" here from the opening
section on mother-son love highlights the disjunction between (l) the time
when the infant son receives the total attention of his mother, and (2) his
adult failure to replicate a facsimile of that relationship in caring for his now
spirit of frlial piety."

24. Comparnon texts served as prompters for taveling teachers to use in
lecturing on a particular text. Apparent, few sutras were accorded the honor
of having a lecture-note script attached to them. Those found at Dun Huang
needy and childlike parents.

17. T.85.1403c.24.I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer at Positions: eastasia cultures critique for suggestions in translating this text.
18. Precedent for this lament is found in The Sutr on the Buddha of Limitless Life (Wu liang shou jing,T.12.277a.4) in the section on the five evils (a
different list, unrelated to the five heinous sins described in note 15 above),
which was evidently written in China and which may have been a template
for this discussion of the unfilial son. See Luis O. Gmez, The Land of Bliss:
The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light, p. 2ll for a translation,
and p. 253 for discussion of the reasons for believing that this section was
written in China. For an alternative translation, see Hisao Inagaki, tans., The
Three Pure Land Sutras,p.299.It seems to me that the phrase bu ru vnt zi
parallels the phrase herc, bu ru ben wu, and that both must be read as "it
include The Ghost Festivl Sutra, The Diamond Sutra, The Vimalakrti Sutra,
and a chapter from The Lotus Sutra.Most likely the sutras in this list were
singled out as particularly worthy ofpropagation, and there is every reason to
believe that the contents of The Sutra on the Pround Kindness of Parents
were revered and valued as much as the other classics in this special group.
In addition to making its way into this select group of texts, several cave
paintings from Dun Huang depict scenes (bian xiang) from The Sutra on the
Pround Kindness of Parents. Since paintings of this text appear abutting
paintings of the ever-popular Lotus Sutra, we can be sure that the mother-son
iconography v/as seen as a first-rate statement of Buddhist values. For more
discussion, see Matsumoto Eiichi's Tonk-ga no kenlr, vol. 1, pp. 196-200.
Victor Mair also mentions that there are paintings based on this text in caves
112 and 156, in his "Records of Transformation Tableaux," p. 4.
would have been better not to have had a son."

19. Margery Wolf, llomen and the Fmily in Rural Taiwan,p.37 .
20. T.85.543a.8. Zong Mi picks up this problematic and attempts a similar
resolution, discussed at the end ofthis chapter.
,\
268
Notes to Pages
25. See Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, Siva: The Erotic Ascetic.

26.For more bibliographic information, see Peter Gregory, Tsung-mi and
the Sinification of Buddhm, pp. 27 -88.
27. ZongMi's Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity (Yuan ren lun) is certainly to be considered in this light, too; see Peter Gregory's treatrnent of this
text in his Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity: An Annotated Translation of
Tsung-mi's Yan Jen Lun with Modern Commentary.
28. T.39.508a.22. Several of the charaters in Zong Mi's citation are
slightly different.
29. T.39.509c.16.
30. T.39.508b.6. Several of Zong Mi's passages do not match the Dun
Huang manuscripts.
31. T.39.508a.24.
32. T.39.508a.29.
33. T.39.505a.22. Despite being taken with the current version of Buddhist filial piety and using it as a hermeneutical tool for explaining Buddhist
behavior in the past, Zong Mi is completely uninterested in noting differences in the way filial piety is formulated in various texts. When mentioning
the tlnee sutras which advertise the 7ll5 offering (The Sutra on Bathing [a
Buddha Imagel and Making Offerings, The Sutra on Repaying the Kindness
by Making Offerings, and The Ghost Festival Sutra), Zong ll|lfi, like other
cataloguers, claims that they are just different translations of a single Sanskrit
text (T.39.506c.20). Clear he was not interested in close readings.
34.'.39.505a.6. See Stephen F. Teiser, The Ghost Festival in Medieval
China, pp.93_94, for an alternate translation and more discussion of Zong
Mi's position.
35. T.39.505b.6.
36. T.39.505b.13--22. See my "Homestyle Vinaya and Docile Boys in
Chinese Buddhism" for more discussion.
37. For another important Tang source which argues for a similar hierarchy of discipline, see The Sutra on the Contemplation of the Mind-Ground
(Ben sheng xin di guanjing), which articulates a set ofdebts to four types of
superiors that begins with parents and ends with the Buddha (T.3.297a.1,2).
Interestingly, the passage leads into an explicit discussion on the value of
obedience toward the mother, a point driven home in a slight later passage
which states that turning your back on your debts to parents, making them
mad, or causing your mother to swear warrants a bad rebirth (T.3-297b.6).
154*60
269
Conversely, it is said that obedient following your "kind" mother's instruction will win you the protection of the gods and good fortune. This passage is
also cited in Dao Cheng's Song-period encyclopedia, the Sh shi yao lan
(T.5a.289c.2).
38. T.39.505b.20.
39. T.39.508a.7.
40. On top of promoting the logic of giving gifts to Buddhist monasteries
as a way of repaying debts to one's parents, Zong Mi was not adverse to
threatening sons with hell and vigorous Buddhist torture if they failed in repaying their debts; see T.39.508a.26.
41. See Teiser, The Ghost Festival, pp. 218-219, for another discussion of
this problem.
42. T1nis disregard for ancestors also appears in the late-eighth-century
rewriting of the ghost festival tn The lllustrated Tale of Mu Lian Saving His
Mother from the Netherworld, which also leaves off any concern for ancestors. I believe that Zong Mi was aware of this later version of the ghost festival, or of ones parallel to it, because he mentions a detail about Mu Lian's
father that is not found in any of the earlier ghost-festival texts-namely, that
Mu Lian's father was reborn in heaven (T.39.508c.14). The significance of
this detail is discussed in Chapter 8 below.
43. T.39.508a.20.
44. One way out of this conundrum would be to claim that ancestors are
indeed to be counted as one's debtors because they gave life and care to
one's parents and therefore formed, in part, the conditions which made one's
own birth possible. Zong Mi does not choose this route, either because it
didn't occur to him (which is not likely) or because it is even more subversive in suggesting, in addition to the already-abundant emphasis on the
mother, that matrilineal ancestors are as important as patrilineal ones.
Chapter
1. The text I am reading from is Pelliot #2193, edited and reprinted in

Zhou Shao Liang, Dun Huang bian wen hui lu, pp. 193-207. See Kenneth
Ch'en, The Transformation of Chinese Buddhism, pp. 229, for his synopsis
and discussion of this text. Though there is a text with the same title men.
tioned in Seng You's catalogue of 518 (Chu san zang ji jt, T.55.8b.15), there
is no reason to believe that the texts are the same, or that the text I am reading from was extant then. This is because the Dun Huang text's narrative is
270
much more developed than those found in the sixth century, and above all
because it is written in prosimetric style, which we believe became popular
only in the late Tang. See Victor I|dafu, Tun-huang Populr Narratives, pp.
1-5, for a discussion of dating this style of writing.
2. Zhou Shao Liang, Dun Huang bian wen hui lu, p. 194.
3. T.4.225a.9.
4. It is quite possible that the torture of being burned on a steel bed goes
back to a punishment recommended for male adulterers in the Laws of Manu;
see Wendy Doniger and Brian Smith, ;ans., The Laws of Manu, YIII.372, p.
l92,andxl104, p.261.
5. For more details on the expansion of hell in this period, see Stephen F.
Teiser, The Scripture on the Ten Kings.
6. See J. J. Jones, tans., The Mahvastu, vol.l, pp. 22-23.
7. Avadnano.24 ofthe One Hundred Avandnas (Avadanataka) has an
account of Mu Lian saving an old women who was stingy and did not make
offerings. The offering got her out of the ghost realm and into an animal
body. See T.4.214b.
8. Zhou Shao Liang, Dun Huang bian wen hui lu, p. 206.
9. T.39.505c.3-6.
10. There is the distinct sense in this version of the myth that the loving
mother is being constructed as the "sublime object." See Slavoj Zt1ek's essay, "Courtly Love, or, Woman as Thing," which explores the logic of this
idealization in courtly love and modern pornography, in his Metastases of
Enjoyment, pp. 89-112.
11. Victor Mah, Tun-huang Popular Narratives,p.88.
12. Ibid., p. 90.
13. One can
find this kind of leaping in Jones, :ans, The Mahavastu,
vol.1, p. 46.
14. Mair, Tun-huang Popular Narratives,p.92.
15.Ibid., pp.93-94.
16. Ibid., p. 97.I have changed a word or two to make the translation parallel with my previous word choices.
17. Ibid., p. 88, and then n. 50 for the Confucian reference.
p. 101.
19. Ibid., p. 103.
20. Ibid., p. 104.
21. Ibid., p. 109.
zz.Ibid. This passage is yet another example of how Mu Lian is walking
a line between Confucian and Buddhist death practices. Here it seems that he
18. Ibid.,
Notes to Pages
171-78
271
is being made to play the fool so that Qing Ti can give him, and the rest
of
us, more extensive teachings on Buddhist funerary rites.
23.Ibid., p. 110. It seems to me that there is a parallel between the sins

that Mu Lia4's mother admits to and the moral failures, usually of a sexual
natirre, that are foisted onto the prototypical "final emperor" of a dynasty.
Both "evil" characters are made to be the epitome of licentiousness, thus
'roving" how failed discipline breaks the smooth tansition of the patriline.
For the meaning of these charges in Chinese historiography, see Arthur F.
Wright, "Sui Yang-Ti: Personality and Stereotype," esp. pp. 172-174.
24. Man, Tun-huang Popular Narratives, p. 111.
25. Ibid.
26. The "Impartial King" may refer to King Yama, or to the king of the
eighth hell. See Teiser, The Scripture on the Ten Kings,p. 177, for details.
27 . [lf.atr, Tun-huang Popular Narratives, p. ll4.
28. Ibid., p. 115.
zg.Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid., p. ll7.
32. Ibid., p. 118.
33. Emily Ahern [Martin] notes that in modern Chinese mythology the
black dog is a euphemism for menses; see her "The Power and Pollution of
'W'omen,"
p. 197.I have not seen compelling evidence to make that
Chinese
connection at this ear stage in the Buddhist construction of female sin, but
it
is possible.
34. Matr, Tun-huang Popular Narratives,p. 1,21. For one Dun Huang version, see T.85.1307.
35. It is interesting to compare this Mu Lian narrative with Dante's depiction of hell. One clear difference is that Dante is looking for his young lover,
Beatrice, while Mu Lian is looking for his mother, whom he seems to love
like a lover.
36. Mair, Tun-huang Popular Narratives,p. L12.
37. Ibid., p. 89.
38. Ibid., p. 100.
39. Ibid., pp. 101-102.
40. The detail of forly-nine spikes is interesting, too. Each stake seems
representative ofone ofthe days in the forty-nine-day purgatorial period after
death. The nurnber forty-nine also appears in The Story of Mu Lian, where it
was said that Mu Lian has to fte forty-nine monks to finally get Qing Ti out
of the ghost realm. In both cases an obstacle counted as forty-nine needs to
be overcome to allow the mother-son reunion.
272
41. The Sutra on the Retribution of Good and EviI (Zui fu bao ying jing)
mentions that adulterous v/omen have to lie on a (b"*i"g) iron bed in hell
(T.17.562c.26); so does The Sutra on Retribution as a Hungry Ghost
(T.17.562a.t2).
42.For evidence that the Buddhists in China v/ere prepared to threaten

hell for the unfilial, one can look to early apocryphal works on retribution,
which often list unfilial conduct as a serious crime, equal in gravity to not
believing in Buddhism; see, for example, the rather explicit discussion in The
Buddha Teaches the Sutra on the Retribution of Sinful Karma in Order to
Convert Those in Hell (Zui ye ying bao jiao hua di yu jing):
"A bodhisattva
asked the Buddha, 'World-Honored One, today there are

(shou
condemned
zui) sentient beings who in various hells have their bodies
pulverized from their feet up to their heads, even right up to the very top.
Then a magical wind blows and they are revived, only to be pulverized again.
What sins have they committed?'
The Buddha answered, 'In previous lives, they killed sentient beings on
Budrlhist holy days (zhai re) and did not believe the Three Worthies (sr
zun). They also were unfilial to their parents or were butchers who chopped
up sentient beings. Therefore, they receive this punishment.'
'Second, there are also sentient beings whose bodies are stubbornly misshaped, and whose eyebrows and hair hang down in disarray, birds roost [in
their hair?], deer gather around them, and the trace of humanity is completely
cut off. They are filthy aqd polluted, their family mernbers are not happy to
see them and call them "lepers."'What sins did they commit?'
The Buddha answered, 'In previous lives, they did not believe in the
Three Worthies, they were unfilial to their parents, destoyed stupas and temples, and exploited men of the V/ay. They also attacked the virtuous and holy
and harmed teachers and elders and never repented. They also turned their
backs on the kindness shown to them by others, and they forgot righteousness. They were negligent and wanton. They avoided the worthy and were
shameless. Thus it is that they received this punishment"' (T.17.450c.26).
43. This is the list as found in the lecture notes on a text whose title is unknown; it is reprinted in Zhou Shao Liang, Dun Huang bian wen hui lu, p.
101, based on manuscriptHe Zi #12, held at Beijing Library. Though Zhou
titles this manuscript "Transformation Text on the Suta on the Profound
Kindness of Parents," it is clear that the sutra quotes in the text do not match
The Sutra on the Pround Kindness of Parents as found in other Tang
Notes to Pages
182-88
273
it seems that this sutra was later incorporated into a larger text called The Sutra [Explaining ThatJ the Kindness
of Parents is Profound and Dfficult to Repay. See Makita Taky-o, G
kenlt, p. 57 , for this passage in the larger work.
44. See Stein text #289 for a fairly well-preserved manuscript of this kind
of text. For a similar list with just the headings, see the ten kindnesses section
of The Sutra on Pround Kindness of Parents and the Fehts's [DevelopmentJ (Fu mu en zhong tai gu jing), which Makita Tairy dates to the fourteenth or fifteenth century: for his comments and a text, see his G kensources. Regardless of its original title,
lcy,pp.52-55.
45. See Michel Soymi, "Kestubon
no shiryteki
kenky,"
p.
128.
Henry Dor also posits the connection in his Researches into Chinese Superstition, vol. 1, p. 86.
46. This charge of being involved in licentious animal sacrifices needs to
be put in the context of me{ieval Chinese polemics, where such a charge was
often used in slandering people deemed deviant. See Rolf Stein, "Religious
Taoism and Popular Religion from the Second to the Seventh Centuries."
47. Although it is beyond the scope of this chapter, there is reason to think
that Ren Girard's discussion of scapegoating might well apply to the mythic
depiction of the mother here. She is the person onto whom evil is foistedand who is then excised from the community in a purging that produces and
preserves social harmony. For Girard's discussion, see his Violence and the
Sacred.
48. See, for example, the beginning of The Lecture Notes on the Sutra on
the Pround Kindness of Parents, Pelliot #2418, reprinted in Pan Chong
Gui, "Cong Dun Huang yi shu kan fo jiao ti chang xiao dao," p. 200.
49. rbid.
50. The Pelliot manuscript (#2418) cites variations of the first two lines,
which it identifies as a quote, "Save up grain to ward off hunger, raise sons to
prepare for old age"; see Pan Chong Gui, "Cong Dun Huang yi shu kan fo
jiao ti chang xiao dao," p. 201.
51. Zhoa Shao Liang, Dun Hung bian wen hui lu,p.97.
52.Pan Chong Gui, "Cong DunHuang yi shu kan fo jiao ti chang xiao
dao," p.207.
53. It is reasonable to assume that the Song version of this text, even
though it includes other texts around it, stays true to its Tang form because
the narrative appea$ unified in style and content. Also, it matches well the
274
Notes to Pages
intents and purposes of the Tang commentary provided by the lecture-note

texts. The themes found in the later part of the sutra appear in thc lecture
notes, and thus it is likely that the contents of the sutra were extant in a similar form during the earlier period.
54. This is yet another metaphoric use of the term dao xuan. Here it
clearly indicates the suffering caused by descendents not caring for their elders as they should. The difference is that this usage is completely this-worldly
and has nothing to do with the hungry-ghost context from which the term derived, even though the dynamics are parallel.
55. For an edited version of the whole composite suta, see Makita Tairy,
G ken, pp. 55-60. The sutra that I am claiming is an inset begins on p.
57, with the line, "The Buddha said to nanda, 'When I observe sentient beings. . . ."'The passage translated here is found on p. 58.
56. See Zhou Shao Liang, Dun Huang bian wen hui lu, pp. 97-98, and
Pan Chong Gui, "Cong Dun Huang yi shu kan fo jiao ti chang xiao dao," p.
203.
Chapter 9
1. There is some evidence that the mother was assumed to be hating the
trial of pregnancy, and that her in-laws mocked her during her pregnancy'
For another hint of this dynamic, see the Beijing hymnal in Zhou Shao Liang,
Dun Huang ban wen hui |u,p.99.
2. Later in this hymn, daughters are mentioned in the context of mothers
missing them after they grow up and marry out into other families.
3. T.47.490a.5.
4. T\e following translation is made from the Taish text listed under the
imputed tttle The Unfficial Biography of Hui Yuan (Hui Yuan wai zhuan,
T.85.13I4b.23), based on Stein manuscript #2401. However, another Dun
Huang manuscript survives with its frontispiece intact, carries the title Zu
Shan Yun gong hua, and has the full introduction; see Stein #2073, reprinted
in Yang Chia-lo, Tun Hung pien wen, pp. 167-195; see ibid., pp' 178-179
for the translated passage.
5. A parallel passage is found tn The Sutra on the Way Merit Protects Elders (De hu zhang zhe jing, T.14.842b.2). This suha is rich with many other
statements about Buddhist family values.
6. In an interesting section that follows, the standard Indian Buddhist dis-
196-98
275
cussion of the suffering of being separated from loved ones is tansformed in

a typically Chinese way, so that it dwells exclusively on the pain of being deserted by one's son: "Then Hui Yuan explained the suffering of being sepa-
rated from loved ones. If a family raises a son, the parents regard him as a
jewel (zhu yu). But when he grows up they have arguments and he leaves
town for another locale. His parents night and day are longing to see him,
and every morning they lean against the front door weeping mournfully . . .";
see T.85.1315b.26.
7.lna Daoist version of The Blood Bowl Sutra,there is similar mention of
vengeful creditors tormenting women during childbirth. See Michel Soymi,
"Ketsubon no shiryteki kenkr," pp. 122-123.
8. See T.54.185b.24 for Dao Shi's citation.
9. In 1965 Michel Soymi published a long monograph on the history of
The Blood Bowl Sutra.in which he meticulously taced different manuscripts
of the text, its earliest mention in ritual encyclopedias, and its appearance in
novels. I have relied on his impressive research to give the following synopsis of the text's history; see his "Ketsubon o no shiryteki kenky." Other
authors who have dealt with The Blood Bowl Sutra include Henry Dor in
Researches into Chinese Supersttion, vol. 1, pp. 84-87, which includes a
Chinese text and a translation, as well as Christian polemics against the mythology. Takemi Momoko's "Menstruation Sutra Belief in Japan" gives a detailed genealogy of the text and a history of its ritual uses in Japan. Recently,
in his ,Sl Zen in Medieval Japan, pp. 20207, William Bodiford discussed
the ritual context for the sutra in Zen funerals. Most recent, Bernard Faure
discussed the sutra inhis Sexualits Bouddhiques,pp. 180-184.
10. See Soymi, "Ketsubon no shiryteki kenky," p. 132, for citation
of this passage from the Ru ru ju shi sn jiao da quan yu lu.
1. Ibid., p.
ll2.
12. Ibid., p. 13l.

13. Ibid., pp. 134-135. See also Sawada Mizuho's
Jigolu hen: chugoku
no meikai setsu, pp. 3940. For its use in modern Daoism, see Kristofer
Schipper, "Mu-lien Plays in Taoist Liturgical Context," pp. 137-139.
14. For an interesting discussion, see Akizuki Kan'ei, "Doky to bukfty
no Fubo onch o."
15. See Sheng Yen, lVei shenm yao zuo fo shi (why Pedorm Funerals?),
p. 30.
276
Notes to Pages
16. Personal communication from Professor Catherine Bell, April 1993.

17. The version translated here is edited and published in Makita Tairy's
Go ken, pp. 79-80. A slight
different manuscript is reprinted in
Soymi's arlicle, "Ketsubon no shiryteki kenky," p. ll2.I would like

to thank Stephen F. Teiser for helpful suggestions in tanslating tough passages in this suta.
18. Soymi notes this
128.
19. See James
in his "Kelsubon -o no shiryteki kenn1,"
p.
L. Watson, "Of Flesh and Bones: The Management of
Death Pollution in Cantonese Society."

20. This passage is found in the manuscript Dor published in his Researches into Chinese Superstition, vol. 1, p. 84, and in a text in my possession.
21. See Patricia Ebrey, Inner Chambers, p. 58.

22. See J. J. Jones, tans., The Mahvastu, vol. 1, pp. 22-23.
23. Sce T.24.16a-b. Teiser notcs the possible connection between this
story and the cycle of "Mu Lian saves his mothet" myths; see his The Ghost
Festival,p.
131.
24. Ttle appearance of earth gods is noteworthy here. They are representative of native Chinese cosmologies and do not seem to have played major
roles in earlier Buddhist mythology.
25. T.3.138c.21. This story goes back to India and is found in two versions in the Jtakas as well as in many other permutations; for discussion, see
Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, Siva: The Erotic Ascetic,pp.43-52.
26. Matsumoto Eiichi mentions this fact tnhis Tonl<a-ga no kenu, vol'
l,pp. L72-173.
27.See Howard Levy, Chinese Footbinding: The History of a Curious
Erotic Custom,p.39. The connection with bound feet is that this fawn grows
to be a beautiful doe who leaves the golden hoofurints. Levy traces the story
back to a translation by Xuan Zang,bat as mentioned above, it was known in
an earlier collection oflndian stories several centuries prior to XaanZang?s
seventh-century work.
"we" in the phrase, "How
28. Though the passage does not use the
"r'ord
can we repay our moms?" I see every reason to tanslate as I have' First, by
using the family tetm a niang for "mother," we know that Mu Lian is saying
"How can we, those who refer to this woman in the familiar, make this re-
208-18
277
payment?" The later passages also make it clear that this is a repayrnent to be
made by the children of this mother
29. This obligatory three years of suffering would paralel the son,s three
years of mouring and provide justification for why he must endure the hardship of mourning. The use of this tlree-year period, a confucian idea, is yet
another example of how the Buddhist authors drew from multle sources to
hone their message.
30. on frlial piety for daughters in modern Taiwanese rites, see Gary
Seaman, "Mu-lien Dramas in Puli, Taiwan," pp. 173-174.
31. see Gary Seaman's article, "The Sexual politics of Karmic Refribution." See also Ch'iu K'un-liang's article, ,..Mu-lien Operas, in Taiwanese
Funeral Rituals," pp. 115-117.
32. For sources usefirl for thinking about the Buddhist discussion of menstruation, see T. Buckley and A. Gottlieb, eds., Blood Magic; The Anthropologt of Menstruation, and chris Knight, Blood Relations: Menstruation and
the Origins of Culture.
33. see especially Emily Ahern [Martin]'s The cult of the Dead in chinese Village and "The Power and Pollution of Chinese'Women."
-34.
see Emily [Ahem] Martin, "Gender and Ideological Differences in
Representations of Life and Death."
35. Ibid., p. 169.

36. see Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry, eds. Death and the Regeneration of Life.
37. See Daniel overmyer's essay, "women in chinese Religions: submission, Struggle, Transcendence."
38. Ibid., p. 110.
39. Ibid., p. l1l.
40. Ibid., p.lL2.
41. See Seaman, "The Sexual Politics of Karmic Retribution," p. 3lg.
42. of the various sutras on family values available in Taiwan in 1990,
copies of rhe sutra [Explaining That] the Kindness of parents is profound
nd Dfficult to Repy (Fu mu en zhong nan bao jing) were by fa the most
numerous.
43. See Makita Tairy, G kenft, pp. 55-60, for an edited version of
this text. Makita's short introduction is slight misleading though, since the
whole text that he provides was not found at Dun Huang as far as I know.
278
The Beijing manuscript
HeZi#\2
Notes to Page
that Makita mentions is not the text that he
then cites.
bones?"
46. This may suggest that the famring metaphor was exchanged for the
logic of breast-feeding. I hope to give a fuller discussion of metaphors in
Buddhism in another essay.
47. It seems that the ideological appropriation of a natural phenomenon
usua involves such a two-step maneuver, in which the positive aspects of
the natural item are subsumed by a cultural icon, which then uses that association as the basis for asserting its dominance over natural phenomena. This
tendency permeates twentieth-century advertisement; for example, in 1996
Chevy trucks were hyped as "Like a Rock." Trucks are, obviously, the farthest thing possible from a naturally produced rock, but the claim transfers
the image of durability to the product, so that the truck can then assert its
dominance over real rocks and the other elements that trucks must combat.
48. This part of the narrative seems particularly inverted because it is easy
to imagine that women in medieval China were, as they are today in Taiwan,
particularly drawn to Buddhist events.
Chapter
I0
1. For an interesting comparison, see Jack Goody, The Development of the
Family and Marrige in Europe, which contains a discussion of how Christianity reworked patterns of family reproduction.
2. See Suzanne Cahill, Transcendence and Divine Passion: The Queen
Mother of the ly'est in Medieval China.
3. For Daoist views on blood, see Catherine Despeux, Immortelles de la
Chine Ancienne, pp.
21519.
4. Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty finds a similar phenomenon in Indian mythology; see her Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts, p. 55.
279
5. For a discussion of several accounts of chan masters and their mothers,

Benrard Faure, Sexualits Bouddhiques,pp. I38-143.
6. See Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think, for rich refrections on the
sociology of knowledge and the power of institutional structures to shape individual cognition and motivation.
see
44.T\e notion that the Buddha was the father of all beings is another
point to consider in evaluating the erotic/ascetic figure in China and the fusion of Buddhism with family values.
45. I have found one earlier reference to the Buddha bowing to bones. In
the Jin gtang ming zui sheng wang jing (T.16.451a.20), the Buddha makes a
great point of bowing to relics of past bodhisattva-martyrs. Matching the
above passage, nanda responds with disbelief and asks the Buddha, "Why,
if you are the ing honored by all beings, must you bow down to these
236
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aienzhitong ,E,Zr
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en *F,K
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chan
jn #$F#S (The Sutra on the Retribution of Good and
Evil).T. no.747.
ffi
chong
dao
he chang wen
hou de tr'
huai en 'tr,R
hun tun lEf
huo an yin chu
rE.
ar ffiE
ci tong nu #k.
ji tuo fr,
dao
Jun
cr
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Retribution of Sinful Karma to Convert Those in Hell). T. no. 724.
chang t
dao xuan 15!JF
de
fang 'fr
DongYong
dou
e
gui
ffi,fr"
fata
*flH
reng
tian
flH
la
lan
che ffi
f,E
ffi"Ltr,
ling'
shi
ffiffi
dao fl1H
MuLian E
NaShe #F
niang dang
pian zhong
fu mu en zhong
fu mu zhi huai
fu
-+w+
1,K
'_EZ-'W
E#-x
ta
mlng
Er shi si xiao
*Wffi
zl -r
ku gu f
li
=XEffi
rEl
jiang jing wen
fo
di shen tH
di yu t&-i
Ding Lan Tffi
t,
ling fuffi
ji
hao tian wang
hui 'tfrg
chao
gong yang 'f*

Guo Ju 9tr
qr
zui ,RH#
mu ffiE
R,
ren
1_
ru bu zhi
en
?ltr,K
294
Character Lst
ru you xue
bian LHffi
=e
san
zun
sha
men i4 F5
Zi
V.+
JtktJmg
Trf$
Shan
xue pen sheng
yang
yang
yl
(raise) ff
(male) W
yin
yuan Wffi
xian +ffiP_FE fr,

wu chang .H
wu ni
xi wang mu EE
xiao +
yu lan pen
shun +XR
zhi MH.
xue ry
zong
zuo
xiao
xing
mfi
yu f[
Index
#E
vin
tlan shl t+
wo qian shi zu
xue cheng pen

xue pen chi di
hui mffi$
hui ffig
zhai
zhaire ffi E
zhu sheng
zi+
miao
fu
zut
zui
;*g
In this index an "f" after a number indicates a separate reference on the next
fiffi
page, and an
lFfE
"ff"
indicates separate references on the next two pages. A con-
tinuous discussion over two or more pages is indicated by a span of page

numbers, e.g,,"5'7-59." Passim is used for a cluster of references in close but
,F
ren 5^
not consecutive sequence.
it^
Abraham andlsaac,122
Ahenq Emily, seeMartin, Emily

IAhern]
Althusser, Louis, T
Analects, The, 18ff, 22f, 26,30f, I 69
ancestral bones, 218f, 224, 27 8
ancestors, 2, 17-24, 46ff, 54,84-92
passim, 143f, 155-58, 173, l7 5,

224f, 269; seven generations of,
47f,87,143,155f
animal sacrifice, 154, 160, 162, 171,
180, 200, 203, 2ll, 273; as meta-
phor, 182-85 , l93ff, 197

animals, l9f, 125f, 129
apocryphal Buddhist texts, 1, 3, 12,
80i 101-5, 115f; as extacts,
42,46; expansion of, 88, 90; commentaries on, 104ff; as dteams,
Avadnas [Zhuan
ji
bai yuan
jing,52,63,120
av al amb an
a ("hanging upside
down"), 91,106,256
Avci hell, 120, 161-65 passim, l70,
t97
Bao Chang, 57, 63f, 91, 107, 1 13-16
passim, 177,245,249f
bao en ("repaying the kindness"),
lff, 10f, 19, 30, 4248 passim,
58f , 63-:1 3 passim, 7 9-102 passim, 107 -19, 12847, 154-64 pas-
4ll
sim 168,175f, 180-98 passim,

20 6ff, 214-3 6 p as s im' 239
bao juan ('recious scrolls"), 2 14-
104; as creative writing, 105,246
bian wen ("illustrated texts"), 94,
avadana,93,120
,--J
Avadnq atakn (One Hundred
17
119
296
Index
Index
birth, 69f, 154, L82, 193-97, 2I423 ; as hell, 125, I 83ff, 194-20L;
blood, 182-85; as slaughter,18285,193-97 passim
birth-debt, lff, 10, 58, 66, 69f, 103,
109-12,128, l5l, 181-95, 197,
206ff
Bloch, Maurice, 215, 217
blood, 58, 182-85, 212f, 217, 228,
230f; as a donation, 21
Blood Bowl Sutra (Xue pen jing),6,
183f, 197-214,222,275
Book of Lord Shang, The,244
Book of Rites, The,20,24f,29
Book ofSongs, The (Shijing),21,
lff
111,133,151
bones (ancestal),218-25; male vs.
female bones, 219-25
breast milk, 65-68, ll2,ll9f,l39
breast-feedin g,
l,
21, 43, 65J 0, 7 3,
81f, 85f, 107f, 1 16f, 120, 139, 147,

154f, 17 0, 1 8 lf, 193; as blood derivative, 69f,112f.,125, 181, 183,
193, 219, 221, 229, 23
l, 252;
quantified, 112-16, 125, 128, 133,

183, 219,265; for three years, ll2,
125. See also, milk-debt
breasts, 32, 66, 120, 126, 1381 155,
22lf
Buddha, the: goes to heaven to teach
his mother, 56, 64-68, lI6f, 264;
death of his mother, 65,130,250f;
as intercessor, 90, 166, 173; his
happiness on 7 /15, 92, 166,
as
2ll;
filial, 151f; trip to hell, 173,
176; as polluted by one's mother,
2ll-13; bowing to bones, 218f,
l4f
278; as father of the world, 218,
Confucianism,4,
277
Confucius, 30,107f,129
Consecration Sutra, The (Guan ding
Buddha Goes to Heaven to Teach

Dharma to His Mother, The (generic title: Fo sheng Dao Li Tian
wei mu shuo fa), 56, 64-68,79,81
Buddhist: biology, lf, 112, 126, 128,
192-93, 209, 213, 260 ; anxiety,
2f , 9, 46, 223, 23 5 ; public-private
issues, 3,12f,26,51, 83, 86, 104,
109, 1 13, 153, 162, 176, lg0,
213 f , 220-25 p s s im, 23 5 ; literature as advertising, 10-12; hierarchy,2l0_l4 passim
burning bed: as punishment for sexual
deviance, 163, l7 8, 229, 27 lf;
forty-nine spikes, l7 0, 17 8, 27
jing),49,52
Ebrey, Pahicia, 34,200

economy, Buddhist, 7-10 passim,
Dao 4n,245
DaoCheng,246
54, 113,240,249
Dao de jing, 3lf, 40, 228, 244

Dao Sh| 5,65f,93,95,115-33 passim, 144, 190, 193f, 197, 247
Dao Xuan,95
dao xuan ("hanging upside down"),
106, 125, 127, lg3, lgg, 194,256,
263f,274
Daoism, 31,149
daughters, 27, 188f, 208f; as unfilial,
childcare,
l,
69,
ll7, l33ff,
death,200; Confucian notions of,

154
Chinese family practice, 4, 15,
l8f; in childbirth, 195f
33-
fect"), l48f
passim,27ff,68
Commentary on the Ghost Festival
(Yu lan pen jing shu), I 1 1, 150-
less
Lift (Guanwu
conception, 124-27, 133, 192,204f

Confucian views of: humanity, l4f
1 8; women, 15, zlf, 27 40; reproduction, 18-40; birth, 20ff,
yi xiang), 113f,248
discipline, Buddhist, 69,
135f
Fa Jing, 248
family: and Buddhist monastaries,
vii, 5ff, 13, 80, 166, 180,217,

226f , 236; and the state, 26,
l5l,
201,233,262,267
11lf; hierarchy,26ff
l0lf,
FaZhao,192-194
Dharmaraksa,94f
Ding Lan, l2l-24, 1.30, 146,
jing shu),12811
144,256
220
Details on Sutras and Tinaya (Jing
yuan zhu lin), 65f, 93, 95, ll5-25,

128, 190, 193, 240, 247 , 251
liang shou
of apocryphal writing, 115f

erotic ascetic, 150, 277
Essentals of the Various Sutras, The
(Zhu jing yao ji), 125-28, 196,
Eulogt on the Ghost Festival Sutra
Fa Xian, 65
Dharma Treasure Grove, The (Fa
Commentary on the Sutra on Contemplating the Buddha of Lmit-
encyclopedias, Buddhist, as a form
desire, sexual, 26,56,72-78, I32,
58,165,228
emperor, 26f,153f,271
evolution, as metaphor,
Delumeau, Jean,9
Denver, John ("Country Roads' ef-
40
Cinderella, 233
Classic of Filial Piety, The,14-21
eight sufferings, 194, 196,264

Ekottaragama (Zeng yi a han jin,
ll2, 11,7, 144,247
(Yu lan penjing zan shu),105-15,
189,208,266
censorship, 42, 49, 104
Dong Yan, 146, l5l, 165, 262, 267

Douglas, Mary,240
earth gods, 202,210
Dao, as mother, 31f,228,244
with
297
5-7 6,
ll0,
l-7
family romance, ix; see also romance
farming, as metaphor,
7t
85, I15,
236,240,257f,279
father: debts to,19,117,135; as sovereign, 20,26ff; will of, 22; fear
of,27-30 passim;free of,
t53-54,268-69,272
divorce, 22,25,243
Faure, Bernard, 249

feet binding, 205,276
Divyavadna,42
fertility, 7 f, 205, 228, 257
3lff
298
Index
Index
fetal development, 124, l26f , 19297

fetus, morality of, 124f, 195f
fields of merit,7,44
filial piety: Buddhist versions of 2f,
4l-55 passim, 68f, 106-58 pssim, 187-91,213-36 passim; Confucian versions of, 2ff, 1440 passim,68f, 107f, 133-37 passim,
1424V, 152, l57 f, l 87ff; hystericization of 190f
five perversions (wu ni),1.40f, I95f,
266
food, 7f, 13, l7f, 20, 58-61, 7 l, 8287, 136f, 164, 229, 259, 265
four debts, 268
gong yang ("to offer up"), I 10,

154, l88f
Freud, Sigmund, ix, 105

Fumu en zhong ("the kindness ofparents is profound"), I I 8, 128f, 132
Fu mu en zhong jing, 1 18, 132-150
funerals, 200, 214; Confucian, 2 1,
154, l69ff; Buddhist, 49-52,79,
154, 761, 165, l6gff, lg7, 206ff,
2t3
as a
food-
loop, 82-86; and care for living

parents, 89, 93; and filial piety,
9G-93; and the govemment, 92f;
commentaries on, 103-15, 150-58
Ghost Festival Sutra, The (Yu lan
pen
jing), 80, 88-95, 105ff, I 1 1f,
u4,
158,
t66,254f
patrilocal, 33ff child marriages,

38; resistance to,216
hair, women's, 123, 199ff
karma, 9,59,93f, 124, 172, 192
HanFei 2i,243
King Malla, 117
menses, 201-5,231
la ("winter offering"), 48,247f
merit, viii, 8f, 44-50 passim, 59f, 63,

96, 108, ll7, 137, 14146 passim,
hao tianwngji ("as extensive as the

horizon"), ll0f, 133, 152
hell: Buddhist, 8ff, 46, 50ft 166,
168f,211,240,272: for the unfilial, 110, 144, l89ff; women only,
163, 199, 222; bweaucracy, I 66-
passim,203f,2ll; of child
birth, 183
Hrnayna,94f
"Homily on the Profound Kindness

of Parents" (Fu mu en zhong zan
intermediate state, 124-27, 228, 263
LaoZi,3l,40
lecture-note texts, 147,
169,221
I8
l,
85-91,
233,267
Levy, Howard,205
lineage, see patriline
Lui xiang baojuan,216
love: Confucian views of, 24, 28-31,
36f
Luo Bu, 99, 160f, 258f
wen),192-94
Huai nan 2i,262
Hui Jing, 5,103-17 passim, 128,
130, 154, 157, 181,
lgl,2lg
l96f
hungry ghosts, 51, 169,256
l6lf,164,223,254-58;
133ff, 138f
Jaworski, Jan,247
165,233,262,267
Hui Yuan, 194,
gentleman (jun zi),242

ghost festival: 4,46-49,53f, 65, 80102, 105-32, 134, 144f, 1 5 1-59,
indulgences, 92,211
infancy, bliss of,3lt 56, 69f,76,
Martin, Emily [Ahern], 214, 225

Mauss, Marcel, 17
Maya (the Buddha's mother), 65ff,
I 16, 139, 250ff; as doe,204ff
Mencius,243
Meng Zong, 165
Gould, Stephen Jay,l02

Great General, 17 0, 202, 211
Guo Ju, l2lf,124,130,146, l5l,
73
4/8,47r
l2l,
299
Hungry Ghos AskMu Lian Sutra

(Guiwen Mu Lian jing),254
ideologies, l-6 passim, I lff, 151,
I 59, 23 l-23 6 pas sim, 27 8
Illustrated Tale of Mu Lian Saving
his Motherfrom the Netherworld,
The (Da Mu Jian Lian ming jian
jiu mu bian wen), 109, 163, 16
80, 185, 190, 199, 221f, 229, 233,
256,269
Madhyamgama (Zhong a han jing),

125
Mahapdna Sutta,25l
Mahpraj dpramft AS as tra (D a zhi
du lun),112,260
metaphors,
v,278
Michihata Rysh, 245, 264

milk, see breast-milk
milk-debts, 63, 7 3, 8l-87 passim,
103, 107 -17 passim, 125-28 pas-
sim,l33,l38f, 145, l5l-58 passim, 164, l8l-83, 193, 252, 262

monasteries, lff,7f, l3; as breastlike,221f
monks, abuse of, 160,162,167
mother-in-law, 37 f , 123f, 233
mother: as hostage, 2,166;as sinner,
2,57'64,158, 160-65; as deserving sinner, 9ff, 1001 163, 231; dou-
Mahavastu, The, 201, 250, 254
ble image of,10,77f,100f, 149i
Mahayana,94f
158,162f,176,230f; as evil, 10,

52ff, 144, 158; pollution of, 10, 58,
Mahdyna Sutra on the Skillful

Means for Repaying the Kindness
of the Buddha, The (Dafangbian
fo bao en jing), 65f, 718, 204
Mair, Victor, 175

Majjhima Nikya,252
marriage, 15, 24, 27, 3440,
6f,
128-32, 13946 pas s im, 1 5 6f ,

17 9, 189, 200, 225, 233, 243ff;
lf;
Dao,
status of, 22, 29, 227 ; as the

3I
ff, 228, 244;struggles with
daughter-in-l aw, 37 f , I 4 6, 233 ; as

anti-Buddha figure, 53, 60ff, 68,
144,162,171; hunger of, 58-63,
8 1-86, 229f; ashungry ghost, 5 863, 81-86, 96ff; reproductive power of, 60f, 228, 23f;salvation of
300
Index
Index
6l-68 pas sim, 2 1 1 ; sacrifices of,

70,207-10,231;
object,
as suitable
love
6, 132, I 49f; sins of, 82-
85, 1 76-80, 197, 200, 229, 27 l; as

erotic icon, I39, 149f , 25 ; depicted
alone, 229 ; torture of, 228, 234f; as
teacher, 253,268
mother-son-monastery triangle, s ee
triangular exchanges
mourning: 17 , 22, 29; Iluee years of,
20f , 30f , 39, 165-169 passim,
f , 206, 208, 242, 27 6f

Mou Zi and the Resolution of
Doub,246
l,
l5l, l90l
199-214 p s sim, 23 4, 25 4; as
failed hero, 83, 88f, 96; as donor,
84; as uninformed, 84, 163; death
of his mother, 86, 95f, 100, l6l,
165,1671, crying, 88, 90, 96,163f,
166, 170; as paragon offilial piety,88f, l07f,ll0l 1la; magical
powers, 95,97 , l07ff, 161-66
passim; mourning his mother, 95f
100, 109, 161; his father, 16l,
67
f , l7 5f , 269 ; self-punishment,
171f; as unfilial, 17l,177; feeding

his mother, 173f,221; begging out
of time,174
Na She, 49-56,760,
Nirvana Sutra, The, 1 10, 154
nostalgia, 5,32,39f,7 6, 146,
166,190,230
nuclear family, 54
offerings: to Buddhists, 2f,7, lDf,

13, 47ff, 59, 62, 65, 90, 1 17f,
136f, 153{ 160, 164f, 180, 223,
226f,236
O'Flaherty, Wendy, 15
Overmeyer, Daniel, 214-17, 22025
parental covering: over father-focus,

27f; over mother-focus,8l, 129,
17-22,28f,45,
ll7 , 136; submission to, 22f, 156;
conversion of , 43f, 7 lff, 77, 79;
anxiety over,44,46-54; as antiBuddhist, 50-54,71f; sins of,

50ff, 7 lff; hate for, 129f, l40f;
defecating onson,247
Parry, Jonathan, 215, 217
patriline, 2, 5, 15, 23ff, 3240, 72,
87, 142ff, 146, 155-59, 17gt ig5,
tgt,224,226,23t,234
Petavatthu,250
pollution, 205, 212,
2141, female,
10, 125--28 passim, 184,204f ,
217 ; and flowing water, 205
vli,
postrnortem suffering, 8, 46ff, 50,
1lf,120,198
80, 82, 93-101, 109, 151, l5g62, 213
7/15 (end of summer retreat), 450,

53f, 63, 79f, 84, 90-93, 134, 166,
241fr,257
Pure Land sutras, 264
sex: trial by, 35; in the wrong place,

178f; as subversive, 210
Shan Dao, 5, 103, 128-31, 144, 187,
pwgatory,92
Purnavadana,42
ShanZi,ll8,262
191
Qing Ti, 99,160-85 passim,l99214, 229; sins of, 82-86,
174
Shuo llen,lS
sin(s): 1f, 239; Buddhistnotions of,
v, 2, 9ff, 56, 84fl 27 2; origtnal,
ofsex, 10,164,177ff,200; of
the final emperor, 271; of women,

see mother
rebirth, 9f, I 15, 124,155-58

Repaying the Ten Kindnessess ofthe
Loving Mother (Bao ci mu shi en
de),182-185,
l9l
repa)ment, see bao en
reproduction: viii; Buddhist theories

of, vii, lf, 5f , 10,45,124--28, 13032, 142, 1 55-58, 262f; sin of, 10,
56, 86, 164, l7 7 -80, 200, 207,
210ff, 23 0f; Confu cian theories of,
14, 45, 1 55-58, 262; agony of , 1 70
romance: 25; mother-son, 39f, 56,
144, 166, 175f, 790,229
sinification of Buddhism, l-13 pas-
sim,l04
son: as unfilial, 8, I 10, 120,128-32,
137f , 14M6, 152f, 157, lg7-91,
195, 208, 224f, 266, 27 2, 27 5 ; as
mottrer's savior, 9,230; as Buddhist saint, 10, 57, 59-62,67f,
230,234; purlty of, 10,74,210; as
insurance policy, 35, 187, 273; as
monk, 44f 62, 69, 7 5-7 8; deception ofby parents, 50f, 53, 99,
160, 167f,171,177
Soymie, Michel, 184, 27 5
Story of Mu Lian, The (Mu lianyuan
precepts, Buddhist, 43, 57, 60, 72f,
Sangha, purity of, 60, 84
t37
21,44f
Sheng Yen, 198
10;
Queen Mother of the West, 228
sadism,
pregnancy, l, 70, 125-28, I 8 1-85,

192-97, 204, 214-23, 27 4
propaganda, vii, 1, 8, 12,104,135,
98ft
145, 160, 164-7 4 passim, 229,

259; aspig,164f; as black dog,
Practicing the Stages of the Path

(Xiu xing dao dijing),124
84,253
l48ff,
The Pure Land Ghost Festival Sutra (Jing tu yu lan pen jing),
sheng ("give birth to"),
parents: care for,
Mul as arv as tiv davinay a, 42, 20
Pure Land, 62,64,94
ix
132,134,167,185
197
246,259
Mu Lian, 4f, 80-115, I19,
Oedipus complex,
301
5,234f
Seaman, Gary,2l7
selflrood: Buddhist notions, 5-9 passim, l56ff, 227; Confiiciannotions, 14, 25, 156ff
Seng You, 42,245
qi), 159-67, 176, 185,
190
Story of Na She, The (Na Sheyin

yuan), 49*55, 63f, 79, 160, 165
Strickmann, Michel,49
stupas,90
summer retreat, 50,67f,92-96 passim
Index
302 Index
Sutra on Bathing [a Buddha Image]
and Making Offerings, The (Guan
lajing [Ban ni yuan hou guan la
jingJ ), 4G49, 54, 7 9, 247

Sutra on the Buddha's Mother, The
(Fo mujing),251
Sutra on Contemplating the [Buddhal of Limitless Life, The (Guan
wu liang shou [foJ jing),128-31
Sutra on the Contemplation of the
Mind Ground, The (Ben shettg xin
di guanjing),253,268f
Sutra on the Dfficulty of Repaying
the Kindness of Parents, The (Fu
mu en nan bao jing),4246,53,

7 If, 79, 81, 151, 221, 246
Sutra [Explaining thatJ the Kindness
of Parents is Pround and
Dfficult
to Repay, The (Fu mu en
zhong nan bao j ing), 6, 186, 217 25
Sutra on the Filial Son, The (Xiao zi

jing), 56,68-82, 100, 129, 179,
252
Sutra on the Five Kings, The (lYu
wang
jin,126,196
Sutra on the Intermediate State

[Between Death and BirthJ, The
(Zhong yin jing), 116
Sutra on King Malla, The (Mo lo
wangjing),110f, 117
Sutra on the Pround Kindness of
feng penjing), 80-88, 90f, 93, 98,

106,
Sutra on the Retribution of Good nd
Evil, The (Fo shuo zuifu bao ying
lll
jing),240,272
Sutra on Retribution as a Hungry
Ghost, The (E gui bao ying jing),
272
Sutra on the Storehouse ofSundry

Valuqbles, The (Z bao zang
jing),
65,119
Sutra on the Way Merit Protec Elders, The (De hu zhang zhejing),
274
TaiZi,
ll8
f
Teiser, Stephen, tx-x, 253f, 257

Ten Kindnesses, The (Shi en de),
ten kindnesses of the mother, 18186, 191,214-23
texts: recitation of, 2f, 160, 164, 17 5,
l8l
4\
206; sandwiched-shaped, 137

224f; distribution of, 206-9 passim
time: biological time inverted, 19,

44; Confucian views of, 23,28f,
38ff; Buddhist views of,44,62f
torhrre, 120, 163, 178, 190
triangular exchanges, 54, l2l;' of
mother-son-monastery, 3, 5, 10f,
128,211,223
Twenty-Four [PragonsJ of Filial
Piety (Er shi si xiao),11,9
Parents, The (Fu mu en zhong
jing), 5, 132-51, 157f, l87l

198,221,224,233,264f
191,
Sutra on Repaying the Kindness by

Making Offerings, The (Bao en
Unfficial Biography of Hui Yun,

The (Hui Yuan wai zhuan [Lu
Shan Yuan gong hual),194-97,
274f
uterine family, 15, 34, 39f, 7 6, 100,

122, 130f, 143f, 179,231
Uttara, 57 -68 passim, 98f, 167,
249f; his.morher,564
Uttara's Mother Falls into the

Ghost Realm (You Duo Luo mu
duo e gui yuan) fromthe One
Hundred Avadnas, 52f, 63f, 162,
250
Uttara's Mother Falls into the Ghost
Realm (Bao Chang's version), 56-
64,77ff,81,94,981
101
vegetarian feasts, 47, 57,95

vertical alliances/obligations, 7 6-79,
180, 209-16 passim, 232, 234
Vim al aktrtinir d ei a, 9 4
vinaya,T
Waley, Arthur,242
Wang Xiang, 165
Watson, James,200
Ihy Perform Funerals? (Wei
shi?),275
wife-taking, 15, 24, 33f, 129
shenmayao zuo
wives as temptresses, 72J8 passim
Wolf, Arthur,37
303
TVolf, Margery, 15, 34,38,76, 143

womb, 124-28, l55ff, 192-96 pas-
sim,212f,218,228,263
women: as homeless, 34f; as de-
praved,72,74-78
xue cheng pen ("the blood fills a
bowl"), 182ff,200
Yama, 92,200,211,256f
yang ("to raise"), 19, 44,
l,
221,
262
"youth pitch", l4lf, 187

yu lan hui ("ghost festival"), 46,48,
54,91
YMCA,
I2f
Zald,Mayer,
12
zero snm situations,

220
l2l,
145, 183,
ZengZi,107,188,259
Zhuang 2i,32
ZiXia,78
Zi You,
18
Zong Mi, 5, 111, I21,147,150-58,

165, 181, 191, 219, 228, 248,
268
'"' I
t,/ 5r
Y3
DANA
BUDDHIST TRADITION SERIES
Edited bY
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in Pnli Buddhism
ALEX \AYMAN
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8 Camac Strett, Kolkata 700
Ashok Rajpath, patna g00 004
Chowk, Varanasi 221 001
}lj
+00 026
ol I
oo+
1 002
printed in India
BY JAINENDRA PRAKASH
JAIN AT SHRI.JAINENDRA PRL,SS,
A-45 NARAJNA, PHASE-I, NEW DELHI I IO 028
AND PUBLISHED BY NARENDRA PRAXASH.JAIN FOR
MOTITAT BANARSIDASS PUBLISHERS PRTVATi LIMITED,
BUNGALOW ROAD, DELHI I TO OO7
For
Fred and Tendol Ia
two generous
bengs
Contents
Foreword by Alex Wayman
IX
Acknowledgemenrs
xi
xiii
Preface
Abbreviations
XV
Introduction
CHeprens
l.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Buddhist Donation: A Religious Response to

Changing tJ/orld
Redefining Relationships: The New Donor
9.
2l
49
Resources to Requisites: Gifts to the Gone Forth
105
Giving Gifts
179
Receiving Gifts
214
Making, Using, and Transferring Merit
249
"1. Renunciation
8.
and Property
292
Monastic Strategies for Encouraging Dana: Curbing

Misbehavior and Generating Goodwill
331
The Renunciant as Facilitator: The Case of nanda
368
Final Thoughts
403
Bibliography
405
Index
421
Preface
Our experience of the world is of interdependence' In that we are
mindful of things in our experience, we notice that they appear in
our field of knowing through the five senses and as various

components of the five aggregates. Investigation of these things
brinls us to see that they are not isolated elements but related to
one-another in manifold reverberations of cause and condition. A
tree depends on soil, soil depends on organic matter, organic matter
depends on carbon, and so forth, in waves of infinite regress'

coming to see experience as the result of causes and conditions is
part of vipassan or insight.
Those who are interested in the Buddhist pathway' but who are
still some distance from awakened being, often need the guidance
of the teaching, of Dhamma, to turn them toward greater insight'
Dhamma provides structure through which trustworthy views of
experiencecan be <leveloped. Danadhamma, or the teaching on dana'

donation, is one such guide; through it the practitioner is provided a
structure by which she or he comes, daily, to the moment of contact
go
between those staying at home and those who have chosen to
other.
the
on
one
dependent
mutually
forth, and se'es that they are
This very elementary teaching which is the teaching on giving has
the power to bring laypeople and renunciants alike to the realization
that interdependence is not just a mark of nature or of the body' but
of human social life. Renunciants are said to live upanissya
'depending on' the resources given fo them by householders in
villages, towns, and cities; likewise, laypeople progress in the
Dhama depending on renunciants whose presence at the householcl

door models the equanimity, anonymity, and humility of a life
without possession, and whose teachings give guidance for following
the path. The dna system, then, is a formalized code mirch like a
contract which, if followed in confidence, can give rise to authentic
experience of, and insight into, interdependence'
The teachings on dna also provide evidence that one'of the
central postures of the early Buddhist community toward being in
xiv
Dna: Giving and Getting in Pali Buddhisn
the world is one of accommodation. In that the survival of the

community depends on having enough food, clothing, lodging, and
medicine, the practice of dna allows the interaction which provides
these resources to be flexible and adaptable, and suited in every
case to the particular needs and circumstances of the individual
lay-renunciant transaction. The charge to give teachings, for
example, only in the local language and not in chandas or meter,
that is, in Vedic dialect, is indicative of a desire to meet potential
followers at their own starting point. And the teaching which lets
donors wish the "blessings" of a long life on a monk who sneezes
and who then must respond in kind, not only appeases donor
sensibilities, but also helps to break renunciant attachment to
monastic custom and habit.
The experience of interdependence and the practice of
accommodation are rich benefits of dna practice, a doctrine set
up, in part, as an exchange: householders give according to the
teachings on donation called dnadhamma, and renunciants return
householders' offerings with a gift of teaching called dhammadna.
While the benefits of giving and getting dana and Dhamma are
immense, it is the ritual form of this exchange itself which continues
to have its own power to teach and to transform.
November 26, 2002
Hartford, Connecticut
ElusoN BeNrs FlNor-y
Abbreviations
A
AB
pDS
pSS
Artha
rU
Anguttara Nikaya
Aitareya Brhmana
pastamba Dharma Stra
pastamba Srauta Stra
Artha Sstra
runi Upanisad
,qcaranga Sutra
sGS
Svalyana Grhya Stra

Svalyana Srauta Stra
Srama Upanisad
sSs
su
AU
AV
BAU
BU
Aitareya Upanisad
Atharva Veda
Brhadavadhta Upanisad
BDS
BhU
Bhatrayaka Upaniad
Baudhyana Dharma Sutra
Bhiksuka Upanisad
BSU
Bhatsar.n nysa Upanisad
BU
Cp
Brahma Upaniad
Cariy Pitaka
CU
GGS
Chndogya Upanisad
Drgha Nikaya
Gautama Dharma Sutra
Gobila Ghya Sutra
HGS
HiranyakeSin Grhya Stra
D
GDS
Iti
Itivuitaka
Jtaka
ru
Jbla Upanisad
KB
Kausrtaki Brhma4a
Kausrtaki Brhmana Upanigad
Khuddaka Patha
Khadira Grhya Sutra
KBU
Kh
KhGS
xvi
KS
KSS
KSU
KV
LSS
LSU
M
Manu
MP
MS
MU
Dana: Giving and Getting in pali

Buddhism
Kthaka Samhita
Ktyyana Srauta Stra
KarhaSruti Upanisad
Kathvatthu
Ltyana Srauta Srra
Laghusamnysa Upanisad
Majjhima Nikya
Manusmrti
Milindapanha
Maitryani Samhita
Maitr Upanisad
Nd2
Cullaniddesa
Npu
Nradaparivrjaka Upanisad
P.
Pali
Praskara Grhya Stra
Paramahamsa Upanisad
PGS
PhU
Ppu
Paramaham saparivrjaka
Upanisacl
Ps
Patisambhidmagga
Pv
Petavatthu.
RV
Rg Veda
Samyutta Nikaya
Satapatha Brhmana
Sankhayana Grhya Sutra
Sanskrit
SB
SGS
Skr.
SU
Satyaniya Upanisad
TaU
TB
Tunytitvadhuta Upanisad
Taittirlya Brhmana
Thera
Theragth
TherI
Therigth
TS
Taittirlya Samhita
Taittirlya Upanisad
TU
Ud
VDS
Udna
Vasistha Dharma Sutra
Vin
Vinaya
VS
Vajasaneyi Samhita
Vv
Vimnavatthu
Introduction
When a person goes forth from home into the homeless life, a
momentous transition occurs. Moving from a stable, settled life
centered around the domestic fires, the renunciant is now a wan-
dering mendicant, free from domestic responsibilities but dependent upon the same culture for the maintenance of life needs.
In the Pali Buddhist context, as in those of other early heterodox Indian traditions, the domestic agent or householder and
the renunciant become the two primary poles of religious choice,
but they are not, however, independent of one another. While
the renunciant depends on the householder for food, clothing,
and resting place, the householder depends on the renunciant
for exemplifying the fullness of the spiritual quest and for pro_
viding the opportunity for making merit. This inrerdependnce
is expressed in the practice of dna or donation, preient in a
number of early South Asian traditions but developed with great
complexity and nuances in early Buddhism. The relationship be_
tween Buddhist donors and renunciants is a dynamic one, with
each responding fully and flexibly ro rhe other. As negotiations
unfold, clear and precise dana relationships emerge and, as these
relationships become formalized and institutionalized, something like a "contract" emerges. Through the process of negoti_
ating this dana confract, the genesis of a genuinely cooperative
society is in evidence that is marked by a spectrum of reciprocity between householders and renunciants.
The rise of Buddhism in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE
coincides with the appearance of the gahapatior householder as
the mark of a newly influential social grouping. The occupational range of the gahapati, a functional alternate to the vissa
(Skt. vaiya) in the Pali Vinaya and Nikayas, is wide and he
(together with the gahapata-nI, his wife) is often described as a
figure of substantial wealth. The reciprocal relationship that
develops between this emerging householder sector and the young
Sangha meets the Buddhist community,s needs for material
Dana: Giving and Getting in Pali Buddhisnt
support as well as the householders' needs for clear religious

involvement and demarcation not available to them at the time.
In return for their giving gifts, householders receive appropriate
merit normally reflected in better rebirths in the future. In return
for their receiving gifts, Sangha members have to make sure
that their public behavior and appearance conform to householders' expectations, for householders are not shy about complaining of breach in what they perceive to be monastic etiquette.
With the accumulation of property as a more broadly significant phenomenon, then, wealth is not discredited in the new religion but rather given serious spiritual cachet.
The evolution of dna relationships and their codification in
a " dnic system" is one that incorporates at least two processes.
The first is the adaptation of ideas and practices already known
to the young tradition from its religious environment, in particular those with origins in Brhmanism and Jainism. Followers of Gotama Buddha have substantial contact with followers
of these traditions, and many aspects of what comes to be the
full Pali practice of dna are drawn from contemporary and
antecedent Vedic culture: e.g., the dakkhi4eyya or 'gift-worthiness' of a donee, the constructs of causality that describe the
production of future fruit resulting from present action, and the
paradigm of creating bodies for ancestors by offering pinda or
rice cakes. The second is the new configuration of ideas of relationship, of values that inform them, and of structures that ritualize them, in ways that respond more directly to changes that
are taking place in north Indian culture. Central here are the
ethics of acquiring and using wealth, the precise posture of the
person inclined to give (e.g., her or his confidence), and donees
as fields of merit, with implications for how merit can get transferred. This reconfiguration of ideas of relationship, then, is
accompanied by the forthright acknowledgement that the
worldly-otherworldly division of personnel must be mediated
with clear attention to the particular parties' mutual benefit.
Thus, Pali Buddhism's practice of dna arises out of both the
enduring ties it has to extant religious traditions and the new,
often radical, proposals it offers about religious life; that is, the
power of the new dna practices derives from its descent-and
divergence-from older established religious patterns.
Inroduction
As with so much else in the history of Buddhism, dana practice is based in a Buddhist posture of accommodation. In dna,
this accommodation is both behavioral and doctrinal, and takes
place between householders and the Sangha as the dynamic of
their reciprocity is an often shifting balance of needs and responses. It is clear from the Vinaya texts that the relationship
of Sangha to benefactor has to be managed carefully, and that
there is a proper threshold of dependency that has to be maintained with self-conscious delicacy. The institution of the Sangha
needs the wealth of an affluent society for its survival and
growth, and because the emergent householders find themselves
as a group without clear religious placement in a cultural matrix
where status within ritualized hierarchy is essential, the relationship between the two becomes carefully guarded and nurtured.
This emergent contract between donors and renunciants is a
prime example of the Buddhist posture of accommodation because the transactions of giving and receiving are honed con-
tinually for precision and efficacy. Especially intricate is the

balance between the elements of straight-forward exchange, e.g.
gifts of food for gifts of teaching (and vice versa), and elements
of patronage or grant-making that involve more cornplicated
ties and obligations. Moreover, ihe dna contract's use of ideas
of credit and debit, currencied transactions, and savings and
surplus tie early Buddhism to rising mercantile and financial
interests of the time. Such connections make the young religion
an especially competitive one among its sectarian rivals as it,
unlike most of them, takes seriously the need for material support and the complexity of guaranteeing its physical continuation over time. The accommodational bent of early Buddhism is
seen as well in the
community's self-conscious willingness to adapt
and compromise, especially in response to local and what might
minority issues. One of the great beneficiary groups of

this openness is women, who carve new places for themselves
as charitable donors in their own right and who, because of the
depth of their material support of the Sangha, exert significant
influence on the development, especially, of disciplinary practice. This accommodational approach in the tradition is also
be called
Dana: Giving and Getting in Pali Buddhisn
Introduction
responsible for the soteriological elevation of the lay householder. Instead of rejecting the salvific role of ordinary folk as
is done in earlier Vedic contexts, Buddhism redefines the householder life in the light of its essential interconnections with the
renunciant life, thereby making the householder life itself of
prodigious salvific value. Arising as part of substantial cultural
change, early Buddhism thus adapts to it by making ongoing
and fairly rapid response to change a foundational posture.
A part of Buddhism's reconfiguration of "relationships" is
its focus on the idea of "being in relation" itself. Donors appear
in Pali narratives not as isolated figures with histories separable
from their Buddhist actions but as people who are defined precisely because they are "in relation to." But rather than being in
relation to their gifts or in relation to the persons they are giving
to, they are portrayed as being in relation to the act of giving
itself. Likewise, the prescriptions for receiving place Buddhist
renunciants in relation not to the donors themselves, or to the
gifts they are given, but, instead in relation to the act of receiving itself. Buddhist dana, then, is not about the separable parts
of the giving relationship but about the fluid dynamic of individuals within the incieasingly complex network of conditioned
interdependencies of the time, with the interdependency of the
donative process being mediated in particular by wealth.
THE MBDIATIONAL VALUE OF WEALTH

In that fhe dna contract places a premium on the interpersonal
nature of conventional identity in Buddhism, this means that,
in renunciant practice, there can be a shift away from the normative "be a refuge unto yourself" view, a tendency in early
Buddhism with affinity to the kaivalya, or isolationist, theme
of classical Hinduism, and an acknowledgement that, at least
on the ordinary level of experience, relations with others have
some degree of salvific value. Moreover, for lay practice, most
discussions of ethics touch at some point on the teachings of
the Drgha Nikya's Singalovada Sutta, a discourse the Buddha
gives to a young householder on friendship, and on the proper
understanding of six specific relationships that are thought to
be central to the householder's life.r
The general tenor
of fhe sutta
's teaching is the personal pos-
ture of being anukampaka or compassionate, literally, being 'one

who vibrates because of.'2 The Buddha's teaching here describes
the mental posture and behavior of the lay follower and charts
two fields of discourse: a foundational field based on friendship and empathic association, and six specific types of relationships that draw on friendship as their paradigm. Friendship
here is "the model for social harmony in the mundane sphere
and the model for spiritual encouragement of the laity by the
monks in the transmundane sphere,"3 and the Buddha, in placing friendship so centrally, emphasizes Ioyalty, acceptance, protection, empathy, and good counsel as the hallmarks of every
sound householder relationship.a The six specific relationships,
as associated with the six directions of Singla's ritual morning
ministrations, are as follows:
I. parents-east;
2. teachers-south;
3. wife and children-west;
4. friends and companions-north;
5. servants and workmen-nadir and
6. recluses and brahmins-zenith.5
For each of these, the Buddha makes clear that resporsibility
for the soundness of the relationship rests upon the shoulders of
both parties equally, not any more on one than on another, and
that infusing both parties' commitments to the relationship

should be anukamp, compassion or empathy for the other.
This teaching, then, reflects the canonical thrust of householder ethics as being thoroughly relational or other-oriented.
Contrary to what is perceived as the separatist emphasis of the
renunciant posture, the non-renunciant posture involves the
householder fully in a personal network of human interdependencies.6 While the Singlovda Sutta, for example, presents
these relationships as an idealized vision, it is clear that, contrary to the prescriptive quality of these materials, other materials are in fact quite descriptive of what relationships in early
Buddhist times are actually like. In actual practice, relationships
reflected in Pali texts are often tension-filled, and a number of
stories are overtly illustrative of the disquiet and even anxiety
that color the ties between people belonging to the very groups
under discussion in this sutta. The tension in these relationships
are charged with a kind of "liminality,'l for the newness of the
social and economic contexts, and of the resulting religious possibilities, cast the players into arenas where traditional expectations are undermined, old rules of decorum are questioned, and
customary commitments are no longer so customary.
The new tension in relationships that thrusts ordinary linkages into betwixt and betweenness-and the reason why such a
sutta is necessary-is accommodated by experimentation.
Narratives of the Vinaya and four Nikyas reflect a tendency to
test out, to inquire by trial and error, and to make tentative forays in the hopes that such experimentation will help establish
parameters for the new institution. A central feature of this way
of defusing tension is negotiation, a process of informal,
creative, and yet very serious-minded arbitration between concerned parties that plunges them into the tricky web of
affiliation and produces a variety of agreements that govern the
relationships with seemingly binding authority. Thus, the early
Buddhist landscape can be seen as a milieu conducive to the
jostling and jockeying of the market-place, where the Buddha
and influential members of his Sangha succeed in mediating
transactions between people and groups of people such as to
ensure the survival and growth of the young institution.
Central to the negotiation of these contracts is wealth, whose
successful management mediates the liminal areas between
parties. Not only is lay poverty not encouraged but great wealth
is celebrated; what is taught is proper accumulation and proper
use, rather than hoarding, of wealth as well as the instrumental
value of wealth for social and soteriological good.7 Most significant is the way in which wealth plays a role in the tensions
between parties to a relationship, and the way in which wealth
becomes an element in the resolution of these tensions. In the
Singlovda Sutta, there is the householder who is once supported by his parents and must now support them; the pupil
who is enjoined to wait upon and serve his teacher, and the
teacher who is enjoined to provide for the pupil's safety and
welfare; the husband who is to provide for his wife and the wife
Introduction
who is to guard and protect the household goods; the friends

and associates who are to guard each other's property and offer
constant material refuge for the other; the employer who is to
ensure food, wages, and medicine to employees and the
employees who are to be content with what is given; and the
donor who is to keep an open door for recluses and brahmins,
always serving their temporal needs.8 In these ways the canon
recognizes that wealth and material goods underlie many ethical contracts and that not only do the possessions of this world
exacerbate the choices one has to make, but that they also, if
understood and handled properly, can provide a working solution to each dilemma as well.
Four areas stand out as particularly pivotal places of relational irresolution, places of contractual discussion and maneuvering, places where persuasion has to take place, often hinging
on the uses and abuses of wealth:
l.
between a child and his family as he or she decides to renounce.
2.
3.
4.
between a renunciant and the Sagha as he or she gives up

the household life and decides, finally, to commit to the
Sangha,
between a donor and the Sagha as he or she negotiates what
to give, how to give, and to whom to give, and
between a donor and society as his or her acts of donation
and support for the Sagha "buy" places of religious.reputa-
fion and status.

1.
A Child and the Family
The relationship between a child and his family, and especially

between a child and his parents, is in the most normal circum-
with tensions of growth, independence, and divided loyalties and responsibilities. If a society is to add to this
the possibility of renunciation, the possibility of wholesale, lifelong abandonment of the family for a quest that may or may
not ever again touch the family, normal parental frustrations
may be multiplied. It is no wonder, then, that the reluctant parents of the Pali texts try to use whatever leverage they have to
prevent a child's going forth or when, at whatever stage they
srances fraught
Dna: Giving and Getting in pati Buddhistn
wisdom (or inevitability) of the decision, rhey rry to demonstrare their wholehearted support for their child
ln his or her
new life. The leverage most often used in these discussions,
not
surprisingly, is wealth: the pleasures and good deeds
of wealth
glorified to entice the candidate to stay at (or return)
home, or
the benefits of donated wearth held up as a way to
continue to
reach a child now gone forth. wearth, then, as either
an inhibitor or a facilitator of the non-renunciant/renunciant decision,
becomes an important negotiating tool as this contract
comes,
often with difficulty, ro closure.
The fear of a parent that a child might renounce is
brought to
the forefront in the story of the sage Asita,s prophey
to
Siddharrha's farher, suddhodana, that rhe young boy will
be a great king or an enlightened being. Suddhodnu;,
"ith".
,".ponr",
of course, is to safeguard the child and to supply him all bodily
gratifications in order to prevent the most horrific possibility,
at least to Suddhodana, that the son will forsake the family
by
leaving home.e The contrast between the life of the home
and
the homeless life is discussed in many passages. In the
Dtgha
Nikya, for exampre, the benefits of boih are made clear but
it
is also made clear that the househorder life urtimatery precedes
and is inferior to the homeless rife, and that the greateitchievement is the religious life after full renunciation.ro The ocherrobes and shaved head are thus an external sign that
some
momentous, and ordinarily irreversible, transformation has
taken place.
A number of passages also illustrate not only the parental
fear of losing a child to the Sangha, but rhe porribitity^that the
Sangha might lose a renuncianr back to the househlder
life.
This eventuality is known as hrna-ya avattati 'he returns to the
low life' and it involves renouncing one's training up to that
time. Several reasons are given for this when it hlpiens: the
renunciant has failed to guard his senses, ha, o.,r"."ten, and
has not been watchful over the righteous rife;, he or she is
without confidence, conscientiousness, fear of blame, energy, and
insiht into the wholesome teaching;12 he or she derights in uusiness, gossip, sleeping, and keeping company; and he or
she does
not reflect on the mind as freed.13 Another list gives the following
see the
Introduction
reasons for the decline of the in_training monk or

nun:
1. he takes on too much and tries to be clever at
it;
2. he fritters away the day doing trifling things;
3. he associates with unrighteous company;
4. he goes into the village too early, and laves too late;
and
5. he does not engage in spiritually conducive talk.ra
Finally, a set of water images describes the four great perils
that plague a renunciant and to which a renunciant

migtri suc_
.low
.wves,
sending
him
back
to
the
life,:
the
peril
of
9umb,
or
being filted with anger, the peril of 'crocodiles,
o overfilling
the stomach, the peril of 'whirlpools' or the five
strands of sense
pleasures, and the peril of .fierce fish' or women.15
How fluid non-renunciant/renunciant ties really are is
illus_
trated in stories of rwo different monks, sudinna
u.r Rutthupru.
while the stories begin in the same way with the same dilemma,
they have different conclusions: the "-bad" Sudinna
i,
from the Sangha while the ..good" Ratthapla, tno*ing
"*p""a
ihe
proper place of wealth acts wisely. Sudinna ii
the son of a lreat
merchant who, hearing the Dhamma one day, d,ecides
to go fn.
When he asks his parents, however, they rfuJe
on the irounds,
first, that he's their only child and, secnd, that he can",t possi_
bly want ro leave behind all rhe comforrs they,ve provide
him.
Sudinna persists and, in rhe face of continuld oiposition,
lies
down on the ground to fasr unto death. When nitf,".
his par_
ents nor his friends can dissuade him from the
fast, his parents
give in and agree to his ordination. As an almsman,
Sdinna
eventually encounters a shortage of alms food and
decides to
go back to his relarives. A woman slave of the
family recog_
nizes him as he petitions for scraps and tells his parents.
Hoping
to entice him back into the househorder's life, hs parents
invite
him to a meal in their home now heaped witir gold coins
(including his mother's treasure) and housing
Sudinria,s former
wife dressed in all her ornaments. When presented with
the
family's wealth and with his father,s u.gu-"nt that as
a layman
he can still enjoy riches and perform*good actions,
Sudina
consistently declines. His mother then ks the former
wife to
go to the monk and, successfully seducing
Sudinna, she in due
time bears a son, Bijaka. The remorseful Sudinna,
rebuked by
l0
Dna: Giving and Getting in pali Buddhisnt
his fellow renunciants and by the Buddha, is charged

with a
(rU1*a.gffense (sexual misconduct) and is expelle from the
Sangha.r
Ratthapla's story proceeds in much the same way:

the hear_
ing of the Dhamma, the decision to go forth, the
ne"j for paren_
tal consent, the refusal of consent by the parents
three times on
the grounds that Ratthapra is the onry chil,
Ratthapala's iast
unto death, the parents' and friends, inability
to dissuade him,
the parents' eventual consent to ordination, and nutttupa,s
going forth.rT The story at this point, however, diverges
from
Sudinna's: now a monk, Ratthala returns home,
noib""uur"
there is a shortage of food, but because he wants
,o ,.. ii,
parents. The Buddha gives him permission because
he knows
that it's impossible for Ratthapaia to abandon his
training and
to return to the 'low life' because, unlike Sudinna, tre h
e_
come an arahant-t8 Ratthapla returns but, when his
father sees
him, he is heaped with abuse. Eventually, Ratthapla
is invited
to eat a meal and, as for Sudinna, the family houie prepared,
is
heaps of coins are amassed,re and the daughters-in-raw
re finety
adorned. Before eating, the family asks him to return home,
to
a.bandon his training and take up ih" secular life,
and to enjoy
riches and do meritorious thingi. Ratthapala not
only refus'er,
however, but tells his family to throw all the piles
of wlarth into
the river Gang because it causes nothing but grief
and distress.20
Then, fending off his former wives, Rtthapala eats
his meal,
gives a Dhamma talk on the foorishness of -bodily
adornment,
and leaves.
A comparison of these two stories suggests the following: l)
that one still in training is_ more likely io succumb to rvo.ldly
pleasures than one already an arahan; 2) that,
of the two
enticements to stay in or return to the householder life (weatth
and sex), the greater one is sex; but 3) that, of the two
entice_
ments, the one that is most successful in negotiating
the
disjunction berween a child and his family is wearth. nil"
women and sex can be a part of the problem, wealth can
be not
only a part of the problem but also purt of the solution. The
candor of the stories thus helps to illuitrate the frustrations
of
families of renunciants as they attempt desperatery to recover
their filial losses.
Introduction
ll
2. A Renunciant and the Sangha
Discussions
about wealth and property also play a pivotal role

in the negotiarions between the renuncint and
the sangha. while
parents of prospective renunciants may glorify
the locial and
religious uses of wealth in performing-meritorious deeds
as a
way to persuade a child that he or she can rive a good
Buddhist
life and yet remain a householder, the opposite oithis
argument
is rarely used. For example, there are^few, if any, wnlesul"

malignments of wealth designed to wrest a wourd-be-renunciant
from his family; rather, the normal focus is on his progress
on
the spiritual path. whether a householder comes
from the most
impoverished of circumstances or from those of gr"u,
*"ut,h, i,
is the strength of his or her mental bonds to th;
material life
that helps or hinders the break from the householder,s
life and
allows a vow of homelessness. Although it's one,s wealth
and
property that are central at the moment of decision,
wearth in
and of itself isn't the issue; it's the cringing to or
casting off of it
that makes the difference.2r
- Three examples show this negotiation. Each assesses the prob_
lem of the renunciant-to-be's ties to the pleasures

of wealth and
the material world, and each demonstrtes the

kind of mental
posture necessary to bring about the life-style
transformation.
The first case involves a brahmin who, ,""ing the good
meals
and sheltered bedding the Buddhist renunciants are
afforded,
decides to renounce. At some point, the luxurious
invitationar
meals dry up and his fellow renunciants ask him to
accompany
them on an alms tour. The former brahmin is stunned
urra Jufr,
'Your reverences, I didn,t go forth in order to do
this, tfrat t
should walk around for alms food. If you,ll give to
me, i,ll eat;
but if you'll not give to me, I'll leave the Sangha.'22 The
other
monks then ask him if he's gone forth solely for his .belly,s
s.ake,'to which he replies .yes, indeed.'23 In their shame
of him,
the group of monks look away and tell the Buddha,
who rebukes the former brahmin for ieceiving alms from
donors un_
der false pretenses. The Buddha reminds his audience
of the four
resources (nissaya), but doesn,t suggest a clear conclusion
to
the case of the offending 6.u1lrnnrr-though the
story does il_
lustrate how ties to pleasurabre items can interfere
with the successful relations between a renunciant and the
institution.
12
Dana; Giving and Getting in pali Buddtisnt
The second case describes the eventual going

forth of
Anuruddha and orher Sakyans after disposing
of tf,"i prop."V.
Mahnma the Sakyan decides one day that since
no one from
his immediate Sakyan family has gone
forth yet, he or his brother
Anuruddha should be the first. nuruddha declines
because .I
am too delicate.,2s.Mahnma responds

by describing ut t"ngtir
the endlessness of househorder life and the
enduranceeded to
do the great work of sowing and harvsting the
fields year after
year: 'The workings do not stop,,?6 you,lllway,

" ounJ, n"
argues. Eventually, Anuruddha is convinced
and asks his moiher
for her consent, but three times she refuses. To put

an end to
Anuruddha's monastic aspirations, she decides
to involve the
Sakyan chiefrain, Bhaddiya, and says to
Anuruddha that she,ll
let him renounce if Bhaddiya does_thinking,
of course, rhat
Bhaddiya can'r possibly renounce with all
oi his ...po.rrib'ities. Overjoyed, Anuruddha goes to Bhaddiya
who ug."".Lu,
asks him to wait for seven years while
he puts his iffairs in
order. Anuruddha, convinced by now that joing
for,t ir-por_
sible for him, negoriates with nuaOiyu to
lessen the waiting
tjme from seven years to seven days. After
the seven_duy *ui,,
Bhaddiya and Anuruddha as well s nanda,
Bhagu, Kimbila,
and
Upli
rhe
barber
go
all
forth
into tlhe homeless
l3v3a3tta,
life'27 This story shows not only the
farentar reructance to ret a
child go forth as illustrated in the previous
section, but also the
role of peers both in making the ecision (Mahnma)
and in
carrying it out (Bhaddiya). Finally, it shows that
entering the
Sangha involves attention to the isposition
of properties-and
responsibilities, a considerable source of
attachme.rt for any
renunciant-to-be.
The third case involves a response to a query
from King
Ajata-sattu of Magadha. Once, Ajatasattu enumerates
a long
list of occuparions that are followed by people
in his realm and
notes that the fruits of these crafts and srvices
are visible when
they're enjoyed by the people who live off them.28
Couta you"tt
me, then, he asks the Buddha, whether there
are similar visible
fruits for the life of a recruse?2e After hearing what
Rjatasaitu
has learned from the teachers of other sects
when asked this
very same question, the Buddha then answers
affirmativery as
Inroduction
l3
follows. A man, once an anxious slave, is treated

with great
reverence and respect upon going forth.30 ,free
A
_un, ori"" u
taxpayer beholden to the king, gives up those
worldly concerns
and becomes visibly unburdened by thern
upon his gong forrfl.r,
A householder, in renouncing, gives up ail the hindrances,
the
dusty parh' and alr the diffiiuliies of his domesric
rife in ex-
change for the freedom of the renunciant

rife on the road.32 Thus,
the renunciant life is visibly full of moral
habit and guarding of
the sense doors, and its follower is mindful,
self_poslessed, nd
content.33
woven through this description of the visible

fruits of the life
of the recluse is a consistent theme about wealth
and materiar
property: the recluse is no longer bound
by his worldly trea_
sures' His freedom and "at ease-ness" are
evident in his selfpossession and in his lack of enslavement
to the opurence of the
Iay life. Alrhough the suta 's description of
the resulrs of the life
of the Buddhist renunciant is concse, it serves
as a marketing
advertisement to those not yet gone forth-about
what
-an
the experience
after ordination .un ". in this way, the sutta
is
tool
an important vehicle in the negotiation process
of bringing
renunciants into the Sangha, demonstrating

that beyond tneicn
foil of the materiar world are the even richer fruits
f a new
life.
Donor and the Sangha

Negotiations'between donors and the Sangha
touch on many
elernents of their lives-sociar, economic,
and soteriologicalin this complexity, are indeed precarious. This
unce-rtainty
1.nd,
finds resolution in a reciprocity of tehaviors
and attitudes that
stem from the vulnerability of each side and
that accommodate
their shifting parameters of activities. And, once
again, the equi_
librium for both donor self-consciousness in the
face of the new
renunciant movement, and for monastic susceptibility
in the face
of ongoing survival needs, is provided by material pioperty
and
its disposition. wealth groun, the discussion
between th two
parties and provides a talking point around
which new constructs
can be buiit.
From the donor's vantage point the vulnerability
is that.there
are, from the start, no rures. Aside from
suttasrikethe singarovada,
3. A
14
Dana: Giving and Getting in pali Buddhisn
Introduction
15
there is no real Vinaya
for the lay,v much less for the general

householder who can be called upon at a moment,s notice
to
give to renunciants at her or his dor, and who are thus ..never
never far distant"35 from the renunciant rives

depicted in the vinaya. It is clear, however, that aside from
all
the canonical teachings on dana, there are some kinds
of estababsent,
lshed codes that govern donor_renunciant relations, for the

Cullavagga refers specifically to renunciant rules of training
(sikkhpada) that have an effecr on househo lders (gihigata)

and
that 'householders know concerning w, (gihI pi no
when, after the Buddha's death, Sangha
\nuti.*
members" entert;in
nanda's remark that the Buddha encJuraged the abolition

of
the lesser and minor rules of training (khuddnukhuddakani
sikkhapadanr), it is determined that nanda has forgorten
ro
ask what those lesser and minor rules of training miglt
be. In
the absence of such knowledge, the senior monk rcssupu
makes
the motion to leave things as they are: not to ray down
rures not
already laid down and not to abolish what has arready been
raid
down before'37 while the householder rures ur" u-ongrt those
determined to be kept "on the books," the content of those
rules
is never explicitly made clear. Another text, however, gives
a
hint. Although rhe Anguttara Nikaya gives no derails when it
speaks of gihidhamma o 'a householder's duties,,38 the
term
occurs in a section on donation. Here, not straying from
the
gihidhamm is considered to be one of the rive v"antages
or
benefits of dna, suggesting that gihidhamma has some close
association with dna teachings.
In terms of the negotiation between donor and Sangha, then,
a householder is identified in one of two ways: either
he or she
is a hearer of the Dhamma who might someday be an upsaka_
upsik or layperson and thereby a fellow journeyer on th"
,urn"
spiritual quest, or he or she is a potential donor, someone to
give one or more of the four requisites to members of the
com_
munity. These two options meet when there is an exchange of
gift and Dhamma at the time of dna.The preeminence of wlalth
here needs no restating. Making what is arready understood
into
the cornerstone of the new rerationship, then, brings householders as donors into the precarious liminal space inventively and
resourcefulry; what keeps them

there is ongoing and careful curtivation of householdei sensibili;y. . from the Sangha's vantage pont, the vulneability of the re_
larionship is multiplie manifoity
iytn" fact of ;;;r;;r;;"
'being dependent upon.' ,fhe
m**iulives depending upon rhe
",
village or the maket-town;', .my
life,, says the bhikkhu,is
dependent on others;'4 and
donors io ,t" Sangha, luckily, are
many for, say the monks, .if you
do not give to us, then who is
there who will give to us?,o,The
renunciant is certainly in a bind,
for he or she is one of many of
u .onri"rable number of people
across northern India who are
no longer
for whom materiar provisions huu toin the work force but
be made. Thus, as
Gombrich notes, totui d"p"ndency
on fuy support is ensured:
...a monk may not Live as a solitary
hermit
in the forest; ...[andJ he may not grow
his
own food... [so he must followJ lhe
general
precept not to take what is
not giveh.a2
The bhikkh.r-literaily, 'he who
seeks
to live our a parado^. H" has renounced to share,_then, has
the *.lo ;';;.r""
more otherworldlv ends, yet he
still needs to live in the world to
do so; and to live in the world
f," nu. io Uue off the world, thus
taking the provisions of donors.
The *,"t i, that if d";;;;;.
ceive rhe inrensiry of the need,
o,
provisions, they will be affronted ""ially of the desire for
andturn away.
The canon has several examples
of dishonest renunciants who
are more inreresred in their
hungers than they are in tfr".pi.i
tual srates' There is a mendicanibrahmin
who thinks himserf ro
be mendicant just because
he seeks alms;a3 there is a teacher
who claims moral soodness only
in order to continue receiving
gifts from househo'idersi4 and
i.r.-i.l course, the brahmin
turned bhikkhu who decides
"f onty for his .belly,s
to go forth
sake''as Significant in these
"û-'pr". i. itr"t the concern in the
narratives is less with the renunciait
himself,
to be ill-suited to th.e renunciant posture, that he t r. p..""A
and more with the
donors, that they wilr be oispt"as.
ioir"ou",
rhar rhere are
counterfeirs among the recients
of
their gifts and ;ill,-;"
consequence, srop giving.
The burden then falls on rhe n**iu
to be honest for, as ComUrich
no,"r, u_ong renunciants only
16
real indifference "to comforts thus cause[s]...them to be provided."6 ^fhe bhikkha has really not to need the world in order
for the world really to be there for him. As Horner states:
Those who had gone forth into hometo withstand aII temptation
and ambition offered by life 'in the
world," they are to be beyond the reach
of its quarels, Ioves and hatreds. For, if
they continued to behave as those who
had not gone forth, their supporters
would fall away, the non-believers would
think but ttle of them, and the,believers
would not increase in number.-'
lessness are
Much, then, hangs in the balance as donors and Sangha members work to effect a serviceable agreement. While both come
to the relationship initially through uncharted territories, and

despite the great responsibility that the donor has in acquiring
and using his wealth appropriate to Buddhist dna, the greater
responsibility falls on each member of the Sangha who, by vow,
'wanders forth out of the home into the homeless state' and is
not to touch on worldly matters at all, but whose paradoxical
position on these matters makes being 'in' but not 'of' the world
a difficult task.
4. A Donor and Society
Gombrich calls early Buddhist lay ethics "an ethic for the
socially mobile."a8The new social and economic circumstances
that are present at the time of early Buddhism, and that are
reflected in the expanding role of the householder, necessitate a
new ethic that will appeal to the increasing numbers of small
businessmen and traveling merchantsae who are available in
towns and the countryside as well as to wealthy urban groups.
The old Brhmalical system has serviced only the conservative elite, and in the process has left many others to fend for
themselves, being largely unaccounted for in the early textual
traditions. There is no clear place within the established range
of religious possibilities for those in the middle and lower levels
Introduction
l7
of society who are. outside the range of vedic

rites and who are
thus in need of more. subsranrial ieligious
uffiliu;i;
ii, i,
will be for religions like Buddhism aid Jainism ro provide
op_
portunities that are not only easily accessible
to extra-"ap.u"titioners but that, through their patronage
of these n"w r"figorrr,
allow recognized and t".p""t"d pracem*ent in
the religiouJrf""trum. Concerning this, Thapar has identified
some f .tn" ,"u_
sons for the appeal of these religions to
non_elite groups: their
anti-caste implications, their urban settings,
their ack of
expenses in worship, and their use of
locai
Sanskrit.50
languug", ou",
While Buddhism may not rise because these groups

need clear
religious placement, the conjunction of Buddhism
urr tt newly
emergent and more broadly designated
"
householder category
is
certainly fortuitous. This conjunction, for

exampl", unJ*rit"
patrons of the rerigion to prosper sociaily
in ierms of th"i,
status and reputation, for dna teachings
telr potentiar donors
that the more one gives the greater wiil bL
the report that will go
abroad about them and the greater their reputations.
Moreover,
jockeying among donors over the
issue of giving meals often
occurs, as competition develops. in providing
forlhe Buddha,s
followers. Broad religious uppu, then, means
not only that the
good man (sappurisa) to whom the Dhamma
is addressed can
now come from any social ranking_his worth
being based on
merit not on births'-but also tht renunciants
ofny back_
ground will now be the objects of attention
by donors-of any
background. In understanding the .report
and reputation, ad_
vantage of dna to be the central element
in the contract be_
tween donor and society, the full force of
the cultural urr!",
of this period becomes clear: donors of all social
"t
origins
an
enhance rheir repuration among all
sectors of .o"i"rvîi;ji,
donations to renunciants who re themselves
of att-socir origlns.
i
The match between Buddhist donor and

a society that allows
the negotiation over status and reputation

to take place is not
coincidental. Rather, it is carefully crafted
ro bes.t fcilitate the
interests, abilities, and habits of tne donor,It
is not iurt tupp"n_
stance that the elements of the contract
with the Sungt u
tf,at
l8
appeal to
donors-e'g.,
the focus on individual
Introd uction
19
ENDNOTES
effort, on earned
rther than assigned value, on initial investments and postponed

rewards, and on the acceptability of any size "store" upon which
to draw-are exactly those same elements that in this period
appear to have characterized the success of householder efforts
in society. What donors admire in the renunciants they support
diligence, and thrift, for example-are those very
-prudence,
sae things that they are encouraged to express in their own
accumulation and use of wealth and are the very same things
that are probably operative in the continued expansion and
of
development of the middle class at large' Just as in the case
gets, so it is
the renunciant, where the less he desires the more he
also in the case of the donor: the more he gives up of one sign of
social status (e.g., material possessions), the more he gets of
(e.g., report and reputation as a great benefactor)' So'
another
although the grantor, by granting, reflects his status within a
hierarJhy and, by increasing the grant, increases his status as
well, there is also a clear quid pro quo: giving in exchange for
reputation. And just as the merit system operates in a manner
parallel to the caih economy that is so well-known now to do,rorr-"urn cash/merit through hard work and then use it to pur-
chaseanappropriateanddesirablereward-sothesocialcontract followi suit: you invest in the Sangha, and society will
invest in You.
Throulh material support of the Sangha, then, the householder
earnsaclearplaceinthenewreligiouslandscape.Whilethe
great merchani of Rjagaha can hear the Buddha spell out the
iraditional agreement of giving donations and getting Dhamma

in return,52 h also knows that, additionally, with his gifts to the
Sagha, he will be buying religious respectability and social status. Although there is no way to tell why each individual is mo-
tivated to give-reputation and status, a good rebirth, or personal spiritual development-the Buddhist teaching on dnapays
tributeo a11 of these as worthy reasons. The Buddhist tradition
is successful because, above all others, it is open to broad human eccentricity in the deciding what gets done with material
pfoperty.
1.. Rjavaramuni (p.35) has called this sutta "a typical example of the Buddhist code of social ethics," while C. A. F. Rhys Davids nores rhe unique
role this .suttahas in early Buddhist literarure as the Vinaya of the householder (gihin). She argues that, in a religious canon "compiled by members of a religious order and largely concerned with the mental experiences and ideals of recluses...it is of great interest to find in it a Sutta
entirely devoted to the outlook and relations of the layman on and to his
surroundings" (T- W. and C. A. F. Rhys Davids, Dialogues 3:168-69).
2. This, C. A. F. Rhys Davids argues, is a "doctrine of love and goodwill
between man and man...set forth in a donrestic and social ethic...with
more comprehensive detail than elsewhere" (T. W. and C. A. F. Rhys
Davids, Dialogues 3:179n, 186).
3. Rjavaramuni, p. 36.
4. D 3. 18l-88.
5. D 3.188-191.
6. Rjavaramuni (pp. 37-38) tries to reconcile these two extremes.
7. Rjavaramuni, pp. 43, 52.
8. D 3.188-19t.
9. Jtakas; Sn pp. 13l-136; Thomas, pp. 38ff.
lo. D 3.t42-t79.
ll. s 4. 103- 104.
t2. A
13.
14.
15.
16.
3.3-9.
3.
3.il6-118.
1.459-462;
il6.
2.123-26.
Vin 3.ll-21.
l7. M 2.54-60.
18. M 2.61.
19. M 2.63.
20. M2.64.
21. M t.449-454.
22. nham vuso etam karana pabbajito pity'ya carissmIti,
bhujissmi, no ce me dassatha vibbhamissm7
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
Vin
Vin
1.57-58.
1.58-59.
Vin 2.180.
Vin 2. l8l.
Vin 2.180-84.
Vin
sace me dassatha
1.57.
20
Dna: Giving and Getting in Pali Buddhistn
28. D 1.51.
29. D r.5t.
30. D r.60-61.
CHAPTER I
3t. D t.6t-62.
32. D t.62-63.
33. D 1.63-71.
34. Horner, Discipline |.xv.
35. Horner, Disciptine l:xvi.
36. Yin 2.288.
37. Vin 2.287-89.
38. A 3.41.
39. M 1.369. idha jtvaka bhikkhu ailararam gmar.n vJ nigamam
Buddhist Donation: A Religious

Response to a Changing World
upanissya viharati.
40. A 5.87. parapat.ibaddh me jtvika.

41. Vin 3.265. tumhe ce amhkam na
dassatha atha
ko carahi amhkam
dassati.
42. Gombrich, Theravada Buddhism,p. lOl.

43. S 1.182.
44. Yin 2.186.
45. Vin 1.57-59.
46. Gombrich, Theravada Buddhism, p. 95.
47. Horner, Discipline l:xxi.
48. Gombrich, Theravada Buddhism, p. 78: Olivelle, Samnysa [Jpanisads.
p. 36.
49. Note that monks
are allowed to spend the rainy season with a traveling

caravan (Vin l. 15l). See also Wagle, pp. 147-48; Misra, pp. 263-65.
50. Thapaf, pp.63-69.

51. M 3.37-45.
52. Vin 2.147-48.
The contract that is Buddhist

dana emerges as the young reli_
gion accommodates to change-s
taking place in the Gang Val_
ley. In.the period just prior to guf,l;;,
amidsr signs of a new
c.ivic vitality, I settrement patterns
develop over a wide area, with
the most dramatic increases
taking place along the river, ..show_
ing an easrward shift of power
tnt'"ninued up to the rime of
the Mauryas'"2 This culture
is marked by expanded grain cultivation and domestication of animals,
us" of a variety of orna_
ments and tools including those
made of iron,3 lack
tion facilities,a and a relatively
"i,".ii"
s Tex_
low pofutation density.
this
period
corresponds
ro
re compilation of the late
1uall,yl
Sarirhitas and Brhmanas,
when the center of the Vedic tradition is shifting away from the
Rg V"Ju,, sapta sindhu .seven
river'area6 to the macthya AeSaiitiaale
country, of subsequent
texts'7 As this period crevelops,
greate. utt"ntion is given to the
of. srable political bou,iduri", ano,
by the time of the
|t",*t:.t
early
Upanisads and Srauta Stras, beginning
in the sixth cen_
tury BCE onwards, a clear
urro.iutiorr"between political orga_
nization and territory comes to
be made.s The firm establishino
o.rthodoxy conrinues throughout this
period, una ,"*rT
:jÎ.ol"
refine ideas abour t<ingJtrip and irs
rerarion to reri:1::-e-asingly
glous
sancrion, and ro strarified
affiliation,
.oup
,frrougfrû
complex and often cumbersome
riual^system. The culture of
the late Vedic ase- however,
will not be sufficient to meet the
challenge of the hung",
taking place in rhe easrwardly expand_
ing madhya deia.s
A NEW URBANISM
Buddhism emerges
IN THE MIDDLE COUI.{TRY

in the second period of urbanization in
22
Dna: Giving and Getting in Pali Buddhism
northern India.r0 Work in archaeologyrr and textual analysis

identify this period, ca. 550-250 BCE, as characterized by significant change: dramatic population growth and clustering, new
clearing and building in forested areas away from waterways
(facilitated by the increased use of iron implements in agriculture), and the reappearance of long-distanc trade, an economy
based on cash currency, and written communication.13 Alliances
marked by lineage give way to states marked by territorial boundaries and, as territorial expansion intensifies, hostilities increase
untiL the ascendance of a single focus of rule, the Mauryas,
around 325 BCE.'4 The process of state formation, then, replaces
a centering in lineage and ritual performance with a political
organization overseeing administrative and economic functions,
and these structures are in turn reflected in hierarchically differentiated settlement Patterns.15
Material evidence suggests the increased use of iron from
about 550 BCE on, the use of a coinage system alongside or in
place of barrer from about 400 BCE on. substantial increase in
wealth from the third century BCE on, extensive construction
with baked bricks (instead of mud), and an expanded and interconnecting system of arterial roads.16 The shape of the culture
attending these new elements is marked by "a quickening commercial sense"'t that is made possible by developments in agriculture. The tillage of greater stretches of land, the intensified
use of the plough, the preference for the cultivation of rice (whose
higher yield supports more people than wheat), and the increased
use of irrigation and concern for water conlrol make an economic surplus possible, thus providing support for a larger
population.rs This surplus, and the accompanying administrative
structures, encourage trade and, in time, an economic infrastructureemerges that includes continued development of road networks
and distribution centers, merchant groups of various backgrounds
ancl affiliations who are able to travel, and a coin-based medium
of exchange reaching across social boundaries.re The manufacture
of transportable goods, the development of consumer markets, and
an increasing state purview over agriculture, trade, and industry
become features of a burgeoning urbanization where cities come
to function as administrative and trade centers'20
12
Buddhist Donation: A Religious Response to a Changing
World
23
In the process, vedic varues and structures prove "ilr-suited

[to] an expanding national economy and the mercantile nature
of cities."2r The earlier stratified, lineage-based tradition, that
is oriented toward a rural, static, village-bound society, cannot
respond as well as more egalitarian religions to the develop_
ments of the time. The Buddhist Sangha with its commirment io
transcend family, village, and caste22 parallels the evolving state
system with "an ideological framework for integrating diverse
groups."23 Moreover, the increased economic surplus and re_
sulting availability of leisure time, the nerwork of improved roadways kept open and free for travel by an adherence to ahims,
and a detailed ethic of householder donation all allow for the
development of wandering renunciant traditions.
Settlement Hierarchies: Where the Dna Contract
Accommodates
One of the features of the early Buddhist period is an expanded
of settlement hierarchies.24 Within these new broader pat_
range
terns, Erdosy has delineated four increasingly large and complex categories: the nucleated village, focusing primarily on
pastoral and agricultural activities; the minor center, evidenc_
ing ceramic and iron-smelting activities and associated with marketing, policing, and tax-collection; the town, incorporating
manufacture and distribution of commercial items, including
luxury pieces using semi-precious stones, shell, and copper; and
the capital city, containing ail of the above activitiei under a
centralized political power.25 From about 400 BCE on, a fifth
category emerges, that of the secondary center set in a rural
area and participating in long-distance trade.26
Pali texts give striking confirmation that Buddhist life in the
eastwardly-expanding middle country takes place in a range of
locales from jungle to city. Sixteen mahajanapadas or ,gr.ut
realms'are listed in the Anguttara Nikya as fairly unified sociocultural regions containing various sub-units.27 In time, four of
these mahjanapadas survive the political rivalries of their par_
ticular settings (Avanti, Vamsa/Vatsa, Kosala, and Magadha
and eventually a single power, that of Magadha,
puli
"-".g"r.tr
sources describe the strong and unwavering support
given the
24
Buddha and the early Sangha by Magadha's King Bimbisra,

and the Digha Nikaya's eulogy of him upon his death is testimony not only of the confidence of this one layman in the teachings of the new religious leader, but of the commitment of his
realm, and of his people, to supporting the new religious movement.2e An early Buddhist sense of "own place," in which Buddhist life prevails and from which Buddhist renunciants go out
to teach, underlies many of the early texts and is reflected in the
Pali distinction between the majihima janapada'middle realm'
and paccantima janapada'border or outlying realm'-where
the majjhima janapada represents a "more or less culturally homogeneous region vis--vis the others."30 In fact, the development of monastic law in the Pali Vinaya reflects this division,
for there is a relaxation of disciplinary rules as the Sangha expands into outlying regions from the middle country.3r The next
level below the janapada is the nagara or 'city.' Traditionally,
fhe nagara is the highest ranked member of a sequence of smaller
settlement hierarchies listed in ascending size, gma'village,'
nigama'town, market town,' and nagara;32 although six great
cities (mahnagara) are enumerated in the Digha as possible
worthy places where the Buddha might choose to die.33 Other
lists sometimes expand this sequence to include janapada as its
highest member, ranking beyond nagara.Y
In the day-to-day practice of the Buddhist life, however, the
two most important categories of settlement are the two smallest, the gma 'village'and the nigama 'town.'These two terms,
the village and the town, are regularly listed together to indicate
those places where Buddhist renunciants and lay most often interact with one another. Distinguished in the texts by clearly
defined features, the village and the town are the two smallest
collective units tied to geographic settings that separate human
culture from the wild surrounds of forest and jungle.3s By choice
of life-style, Buddhist renunciants routinely traverse the divide
between jungle and village in their daily wanderings and evening
lodgings.36 Taught to stray not too far from nor too near to a
village,3T the renunciant lives at the threshold of organized culture for which fhe gma is the first order of human settlement
with which he or she interacts.
Buddhist Donation: A Religious Response to a Changing World
25
As village, fhe gma is small and vulnerable enough to be

easily plundered,3s though often distinguished by recognizable
boundaries.3e Roadways connect villages to other areas of settlement, allowing for travel between and preventing isolation, but
these roads often cross through areas of danger and insecurity
making policing sometimes critical for anyone wishing to enter
or re-enter village areas.4 A gma can be as small as a single
kuti or 'hut,' which Wagle interprets as "a hamlet of one large
house perhaps surrounded by a few smaller buildings in which
the dependants and servants of the family dwelt."ar Small gamas
of about four kutis may constitute scattered habitations "in the
forests, outlying woodlands, hilly tracks and mountainous areas that surrounded the rich plains of the Gang valley."a2
Though small, these settlements are not insignificant for emergent Buddhism, as they host not only organized renunciant communities, but forest dwellers and wanderers of all seniority as
well. Gmas can be permanent habitations or temporary encampments, as when the term refers to the extended stops of merchant caravansa3 or of migrant peoples.a Some gmas are homogeneous groups representing one occupation or profession,
such as park attendants,a5 reedmakers,6 or saltmakers.aT Others represent a single extended kin group,at or a group defined
by vanna or caste such as fhe brhma settlements liberally
mentioned in the texts, some of which are situated on land given
by a king specifically to brhmans in exchange for ritual services.ae Gma can even refer to a village of renunciants who
have stopped and stayed in a place to wait out the rainy seas
o n.50
As characterized by Pali narratives, villages are places where

everyone knows each other and each other's business, where
gossip flourishes and social and occupational bonds are strong,
and where ties to place are critical markers of who one is. Moreover, villages are settlements from which new renunciants go
forth into the homeless life, breaking vital ties of family, work,
and place and stepping out of accepted rules and rituals into the
new ones of the Sagha. As the world left behind, the village is
also the world reentered by the renunciant every day for alms, a
reentry governed by a strict etiquette of proper dress and
26
Dna: Giving and Getting in pali Buddhisnt
comportment and by the anonymous distance of silence.

Not
only does the renunciant hope for hospitality and respect
from
villagers newly his donors, bur becausene vitiage is no
a worrd
5s "61e"-with its normar life oriented to the preasurable
habits
of householders-that the etiquette arso provids a shield
against
renunciant waywardness. It is the tight smallness and fariiliarity of the village, then-that the renunciant is now perhaps more
fully engaged with in his new life than with other typ"r oi sertlement-that tests both the strength of the original ienunciation
as well as the confidence of its continued cultivation.
Tied conceptually tb the village, the nigama.town or market
town' is the next level of settlement. Although many of the
features characterizingthe village are applied equally t tne
town,sr
including the renunciant's need for ritualized structures of interaction when entering it, the nigama is distinguished both
in
size and in function from the gama- Bigger than a village
and
smaller than a city, the town is more than just a 'greaf ui-uug";'
rather, a nigama is a meeting place or point of
tog.th"i.rt
"ornirrg
That nigama is probably a small-scale collecting
ptice fr trade
and commerce, a market town as it is so often ienciered,
does
not override the fact that it is also a place of permanent resi_
dence' Here might live those speciarizing in pariicular crafts or
occupations, those involved in commercial connections with
other centers or with rural areas, or those whose profession
comes to be organizing general market activity.s3
The single feature that sets the nigama apart from the gama
in Pali texts is the consistency with which nigamas u."
!iu"n
names. Although there are a few vilrages with individuar
names-e.9., Ambatitthasa and g"1.ryss_aming is not a regu_
lar feature of this smallest settlement level. Naming does p_
pear regularly, however, with towns,56 due to the larger size
f
a town over a village and to a town's greater diversity of popu_
lation, among whom there is common commerce. Because the
mix of peoples in a town is more heterogeneous than in a vil_
lage, where homogeneous groupings of family, occupation, or
vanna prevail, and because travel to and from a town in the
regular course of market activities is the norm, providing a name
for a town allows distinction from other sites, recognition by
Buddhist Donation: A Retigious Response to a Changing
World
27
all those served, and specific singring out of no one member

group of the population.
One other phrase is important in describing the spatial and
social arena in which Buddhist renunciants rive out their
tradition, n ega m aj n ap a d aor, town-fotk and ;;;;il t"0.;,
;;ris used to cover those who might live in rural as weil as in
small
to mid-range settlement areas, for it distinguishes those town
and country people who are "unmarked" and differentiates
them
from the specialized categories of royalty, military, and reli_
gion,57 as well as from those whose professions plce
them in
the denser, more diverse setting of urban centers: e.g., govern_
ment ministers, treasury officials, city wardens, Uoayluards,
and courtiers.5s Being unmarked by occupational or social
dis_
tinction does not mean that 'town and country-fork, live in
different places from their more distinctive fellows, however.
Rather, it signifies those who might otherwise go unmentioned,
and reaffirms that it is from the whore continuum of peoples
that Buddhism gathers material and religiou,
-o-"nt,r,'. ih"
context of the term thus demonstrates the wide range of
commitment to the new religion, and the inclusion of persons distinct for no other reason than their presence and zupport. Not
all from this wide continuum are counted u, ,upporrs, how_
ever' for the continued differentiation of Buddhist followers (as
those who adhere to ariya doctrine) from the untaught
o. igno_
rant many-f olk (assutavant puthujjanafe indicate the presJnce,
in town and countryside, of large numbers of those noi yet con_
verted to the new tradition.
The Renunciant Alternative
Many factors contribute to the complex culture of the Gang

valley that emerges around the sixth and fifth centuries BC.
The invention of ion smelting, for example, ailows for the
clearing and cultivation of rand reading to surplus that has to
be
managed by a layered administration; the evolution of society
from lineage to state is a response to the pressures of popula_
tion growth; and political competition and warfare
u'
underclass of captives and necessitate a structure"r"ui"
for the
dispersal of booty.60 Whatever the primary causes of the
28
Dna: Giving and Getting in pali Buddhisn
evolution, however, conditions are now conducive

to wide_
spread renunciant rife:6r sufficient surplus
to provide for numbers of non-workers, safe and accessile
roadways connecting
where support is availabre, a shift from the

in"ug" house:elrers
hold defined along ritual lines to a nuclear
householJ defined
along economic lines, and increasing state compatibility
with
other institutions endorsing egalitarian treatment
of diverse
peoples.
Text materials point to other processes related

to Vedic reli_
.
gion. J.C. Heesterman, for example, argues
for ..the orthoge_
netic, internar development of vedic thought"
into the renunciant
tradition, in which irauta ritual practice provides
a context for
the emerging self-conscious agency of the
single worshipper and,
in time, for rhe individualization nd inreriorizario.,
oiih" ra"rifice as it puts aside the need for external rerigious
officiants.62
Steven Collins, argument for the cultural
hegemony of
Brhmatical thought over Buddhist philosopny
uO pry.not_
ogy-e.9., that "Brahmanical thought and practice...nas
the "_
cisive intellectual infruence on Budhism"-wourd
support the
importance of Heesterman's theory in understanding
t^trl evetopment of Buddhism. But he does, however, -.""
Brhmanical roots to ideas-for example of
"*t.u_
samsra and
,
re_
birth as well as of world renunciation.6i patrick
orivete por,ulates a "'new'element that at reast initially challenged
u., .ontradicted many of the cenrral premises of sacrificil
theology.,,
In particular, he and Louis Dumont argue that the
concep of
the individual that is present in renuncint traditions
like Buddhism is, on the whole, absent in Vedic views on
religious life,6a
suggesting its development as a distinctive alternative
rather than
as a traditional option.
Factors relating to the emergence of the concept
of the indi_
.
vidual and of the renunciant ideal fit with those
keady noted
by historians and archaeorogists. In the evolution
from rineage
to state society, a relatively closed and community_orientJd
structure is opened up, providing the opportunity
for individual
choice. The breakdown and realignmnt of traditional
family
and kin networks atow greater freedom for
indepen.nt initiu
tives and challenges, especially among traders,
merchants, and
Buddhist Donation: A
Relious Response to a Changing
Wortd
29
bankers. In this spirit, voluntary

religious organizations can
freshlv affiliare utr uti.u.i;;r;J.;;"
of surpluses widety auuituulJi;;i; from varied sources our
o rr th n
J ro. uiq r. *irl
""
"
: ::
"
;i:i1Ti,'iJ;li X'::t ":tio " ivr s " i. " 1ffic ient .";;;
*, -
#;i; ":ii:;:i :
;;
andpiactic"";i::i""i jnii:,i:x':::i:,:i,",ii:
.""i
ceribacy over mar"""i._i"
riage, economic ina-cri"i;y
"ur"r",productivity,
;;;;
inactivity
rituat
turar revaluations.of "wilderness
over rirual p"rfr,nu1..,
residence.',65 Buddhism
i.
i""Ol instability ovr stable
,;;;i;;;,ii
purti"ipuring in rhese de_

velopments, for a.religious
pturatisn.ur,urn, not only
lished fam'v tradition"s
"dt"';;u*" and renunciantestab_
styles of groups like.early"i
sartr;" i;lowers,66 bur asceric rife_
wandering groups of
and
.more di";rr. p;uasions.67
Voluntarily commitred
to lives oi rimpficity in poverry
of equality in "commûnitas,,,os
and
r".ru.r"iun,r, nevertheless,
pete with each other for
com_
rhe
for the sustainins resources "";;i;;"rs of lay followers and
of an increasingly wealthy Gang
Valley poputatio. As asceric
i;;;;^ri"". proliferate, Buddhism
needs to offer a reasonable,
p".*uri*,
and appealing option
for potentiar donors in.o..'i"t""i""r""
continued mainrenance of its chosel
gath. fne aaoption of a policy of
accom_
modarion and flexibility r"ru.r-rr,"iaiiy
traoition
we,
and the
middle way, the
emerses nor onty as a
philosophy of non_extremism
but as ur,
i" of balance,
menr, and harmony. Fully
"ttthe distinctive uAiurt_
cognir*t
;f
roie of
greed and desire r, ".*"
;;iil,
early Buddhisr menrat
curtivarion focuses on rhe
u"ti"u"" of sati,a mindfurness
thar rranscends possession
and
greater abundance, Buddhism "";;;;;. In an environmenr of
r"rpo.,r'
moderarion and,
while curbing rhe temprarion
lith
,"
a
the
possibilities, it
does nor fu'y reiect th
benefits ".pil urban
order. Rarher,
Buddhism provides its renuncia"l'"irtre
"l;'h;;*
ways
ro negotiare
the maze of new Gang
v"lvir"i" in,* preserving
the in_
tegrity of their admission
uo*. This t does by
dcveloping an etiquette that
"rd;rd;;;.,
can u"a' situations of in_
"r"'i"*nu
no
t,h"
-i,
"""iunt'
-"n-, irtii"ii
:i::lii"i'il:
";
;;;;i;y
30
THE' BUDDHIST RENUNCIANT

The Buddhist commitment to the renunciant life is fully evident
in texts like the Smaaphala SuttaTo in which the many benefits of the homeless life, personal and communal, as against
the householder life, are detailed. That going forth from the home
comes to be seen as a major life-altering change for the individual is reflected in the development of a precise ritual for be-
coming a renunciant.Tt The act of going forth is attended by

several changes of both practical and symbolic value: cutting
off the hair and beard, clothing the body in ocher-colored robes,
using a clay or iron bowl for receiving alms food, and committing oneself to a life without fixed dwelling.T2 These external,
visible changes foster, and mark, the freeing of the renunciant
from attachment to the former life and personality, and the identification of the renunciant with a group espousing communal
equality for the purpose of internal development. Within this
new community, renunciants live a life characferized by democratic governance, harmonious development, social concord,
and respect for the seniority of elders of long-standing, and where
spiritual training and mental cultivation is found both in solitude and in the company of others.73
Renunciant Etiquette in Village and Town
Awareness of the habits ancl practices of other, non-Buddhist,
groups of ascetics helps shape the young Buddhist community
as well. In addition to the followers of the six heretical teachers,7a other ascetics, including Brhmanical renunciants eventually known as samnysins75 and 'bovine and canine ascetics '
distinguished by habits and behaviors of cattle and dogs,;u

appear prominently-particularly because their behavior is an
example of how not to live. Injury to living things, the hoarding
of material goods, addiction to worldly pleasures and recreations, excessive adornment and care of the body, gossiping
and telling tales, fortune-telling and divination, and fixing
astrological dates and giving charms all count as marks of
conduct unbecoming to the Buddhist renunciant.TT Moreover,
such practices as wearing bark, hide, or hair clothing, sleeping
on spikes, planks or the bare ground, and eating leather parings,
Buddhist Donation: A Religious Response

to a Changing
World
3l
roots from the woods, or cow_dun gis are

all cited as examples
of excessive behavior unnecessaryna ultimately
unhelpfu to
the full spirituar life. perhapt
probrematic is behavior
-ori
ttrat
offends potential donors, as when ascetics
ur" op.nty n"ir'
prattling in their tark,Te appear naked in pubric
and loose in ""
behavior, lick their hands after eating, and refuse
food offered by
householders in any number of settings.
These unconventionar
habits ae at odds with the resurts of hammic
mentar cultivation80 and, eschewing such external attention_getters,
Buddhist
followers choose a different way.
Knowing that they are branded as .recluses, (samana)by
the
people, Buddhist renunciants accept
the obligation that,u"t un
attribution means undertaking a clear and precise
trainrng. sucrr
training invests them with a practice that, publicly,
is prper to
the place they now occupy.
We will follow those practices
which are fitting for recluses; thus
will this designation of ours become

true and the vocation ,"al.t,
That a samaua be someone who not only
looks like one but
properly acts like one is critical_primarily,
for the pteasing of
donors. As the Majjhima purrug"
the Buddha
notes
"ontinues,
that once the behavior ol the ienunciant
per.fectry suits the
visible form of rhe renuncianr rhen
the gifts of .r""ifrr irrrg.,
such as robes, food, lodging, and
mediJine, will appear fo. if,"
full advantage of the renunciant community.
lt is ne upp"ur_
ance of these gifts, the passage artfully
concludes, tha then
makes the going forth into rhshomeress
tife fruitf
itiplii"l
and prosperous (sa-udraya).s2
"t
As petitioners of alms, Buddhist renunciants

are continualry
exposed
to abusive terms, like piltdota.scrap gatherer,; from
the householders among
whom they move.8, gufrirt ;";;,

by asking renunciants to cultivate a mentar posture
that.sees only the good in rhese housefolk
and ttrut, Uy ii,
continued stable reflection in proper
behavior, *itt
work to distinguish the Buddhiit ul*, petitioner
from"u"ntui
orhers in
the minds of the public. Overcoming
su.n terms of abuse, is a
responds
32
function, then, not only of convincing potential donors of the

authenticity and rightness of the Buddhist's internal transformation, but of keeping clearly in mind that the original
impetus to renounce is to find an end to suffering.
The need to distinguish Dhamma followers from other renunciants and ascetics is matched even more strongly by the
need to distinguish true renunciant life from householder life.
V/hether householder life is followed by a Buddhist lay or by a
person of some other affiliation, it is marked by its general
orientation toward pleasure. Most often, criticism of renegade
monks and nuns is based on thought, speech, or action that
belies an addiction to sensual enjoyment. Donors and potential
donors are quick to pick this up and their criticism of renunciant
behavior for looking too much like householder pursuit of
desires, in turn, helps shape disciplinary rule. Thus, the Digha
describes the moral conduct of Gotama as providing a model
for the whole community: his own curb on pleasure-oriented
activities and material luxuries is quite distinct from those practices followed on the 'village way' (ga-ma-dhamma).8a
Renunciant etiquette develops primarily in village and town,
where according to Pali narratives, there are complex situations
that have to be met by mental and behavioral cultivation. Movement between settlements is basic to the renunciant life-style
and the spreading systems of paths and roadwaysss make
renunciants increasingly vulnerable to the vagaries of highway
robbers86 as well as the dangers of exposure to uncleared jungle
and forest areas.87 Moreover, the new urban settings bring risk
of pleasurable distractions, especially in the form of women and
wily connivers. But because renunciants have to meet their daily
needs and have to spread the doctrine among all types of people,
they are obliged to travel everywhere, especially where there
might be 'untaught many-folk' available for conversion. Travel
through dangerous places for material support and missionary
activity has an advantage, however: the chance, given fear and
concern for safety, to develop'even-mindedness in the face of
unpleasant things.88 Likewise, travel through rich fields and intimate village and town life,se gives a renunciant the chance to
develop even-mindedness in the face of pleasurable things.e0
Buddhist Donation:
A Religious Response to
a Changing
World
33
Thus' liminal life-style

on the skirts of vilrage
and town is conducive to meeting daily
materiu rrl"Or, to proselytizing
Dhamma, bur mosr irnptrtu.rriy,'uuun"ing
the
spiritual Iife.
The BuddhiSt renunciant,s
asic relationship to village
town involves, in this
and
way, a ,irr"** ambivalence.
one hand, rhe renunciant
n
the
s
trave ," ,i", ;; Jrrrur"
"n'-i;;'roties to tho'";;;e
had ties ,",
,n"*
not tô huppy.or sad
with them, not ro
involve himself ?]vs'
9"
o i1ed, i; ;; ;,
T"
,e.j
i ffi :Jf
himserf' with no one
orher than himsefor
supporr. on te other
does
u""u,."
ili',"":i:i1J"
'"i"
J ;:,:i":
i"i"i"1;:r,e
"""d
;;;;,
ij;
or
ii. .,
ing,and,;;;;,iili;i"ff JJ?y,i':;"i"""""_,,;iff "r

towns, and cities for
*:
the *q"irir'nkkhareof
Iodging, and medici"".r=;i,kJ:i;
robes, food,
scrabbte off rhe abunda.,"",

dhist renunciants eat
cooked food and
the
;;;:i:::,ilJi:
#i:
products of huma,';;;::":.:-1i:1 *""1 woven cloth, both
tiario*n"";;;;TiJ"";l"iTr:#:il:i?li,;*l
to be found in associarir,
*irh ;;;;'-;f,1"T,1,'.i,j-,,n.o
ro
a r rra c, irur"r
ro,"
s
rheir *" ;,
.
rivals who also seek
t, nuiis, ,,";;;
founded on prin.ipr"s
of balance
the 'middle wav' rmajhim,
o"tri)il'*o, onty is rhis a prac_
tice midway u"t*"n
treonistic.r*"ri,, and extreme
ture,ea but it is a
serf-torlife_sryle rhar in
in a, pra cti"".,
"lirhi;,
"; ;;:::":::i:irii:';
r;, ;"d*; i,. ;T'; lX:ilJ :iT$'.":,

"ur,warding
for
off cot and heat, wind and
and insects and creeping
sun,
rhirgr,
nakedness.
erate use of food
Mo("J;.-;
;;":';::i'::""tô_touer
personat beaury orri:::.,T-te not lo: savorv indulgence or
s u s ra inin g u"dy M; ;";# ; : : i ji,i_::fL
r," u rtiv
:
iX
onrt for warding off
cord, heat, irrr."rr,
n"rement weather uno.
se.asons' and forproviding seclusion rrr".
necessary.
And
moderare
"""."":::"':'-itc
use
.in" .un. ;:;,;r;r
"f _;;;_
health.e. -"'v for overcoming injury u.ra -ui.rtuning
means use only
34
Dana: Giving and Getting in Pali Buddhism
Practice of the middle way involves a mental cultivation that

places individuals beyond competition with members of other
religious groups and beyond competition with fellow Buddhist
renunciants, either for gifts to the Sangha or for respect and
honor in the religious community.eT Practice of the middle way
means overcoming injurious emotions like anger that can
deflect and distract one from balance in the training of the seif .es
Practice of the middle way, ultimately, means adapting to the
new urbanized environment in two ways. First, it means taking
advantage of the new setting and opportunities by celebrating,
and even encouraging, benefit from the social and economic
openness that continues to be available to the Sangha. Second,
however, in teaching against the excesses of the new environment, it means continually having to work against adopting the
negative aspects of an increasingly competitive and wealth-oriented milieu. The middle way, then, charts a course that avoids
the pitfalls but allows some of the advantages of a life in but
not of the village, town, and city.
The ethic of moderation develops in tandem with an ethic of
egalitarianism that, likewise, is a natural desideratum of life in
an urban setting. Emerging as a worldview "solvent to the caste
system,"ee Buddhism appears increasingly tolerant of social and
economic diversity and generates within its own Sangha walls a
sense of "communitas" in which "accidents of birth" mean
little.roo As a hallmark of the Buddhist ethical posture, moreover, egalitarianism, like moderation, shapes a public etiquette
conducive to donor expectations and helps cement a reciprocal
ritual relationship operating at the boundaries of the two communities that pays no mind to social and personal background.
Buddhist rules of discipline develop to provide behavioral
structure for the renunciant "who wishes his life to be externally
blameless, so far as his relations with his fellow monks, with
the Order as a whole, and with the laity are concerned."ror
Although many of the rules are attributed to Gotama, it is
unlikely that they originate as a single unit of teaching but rather
"that the majority of the rules grow up gradually, as need arose,
and are the outcome of historical developments that went on
within the Order."ro2 Many disciplinary rules grow up at the point
Buddhist Donation: A
Relious Response to a Changing
World
35
lav and renunciant where

accommodarion
t"'
"'::::::,Tl"""
rurero.h":-,";"';i""i"",",;:::T::,:i::ff
person. Most of these
admonitio.r,
proper des s and proper
comporrme", "
ffi
:;J i,i:t:ii:"*t-
of the partic""1rv Buddhist qualities

of
;'";T:i:i#,u*,
rhe etiqu;;;;r;ri;lli,lX
Ti"ol.i",, or sunghu *r,,,"

wirh voca'y opinionated householders.ro3
Mfrur "onrur,uion
practice for Bud_
iori,iu"
dhists requires that each "uou"r,
renunciunr ., fuily in
the morning,
before going out
alms. tour by pr,ri"g on
the
inner
(santara), the upper
_on
robe utari., und the outer robe
(sanghan)'t0a The inner
robe
robe is to
the ,three circres, of the
abdomen and is to be
tied wirh a "ov"
bare-sandals are not allowed *i*""0, wh'e feet musr be
,o U" *on when entering
the vil_
lage excepr durins sickness.
F;iid;;;r
nuns incrudes rhe ad_
dition of u u"r, orio dice (sania-r"i-^
that goes from
below the colrarbone to
^'"orering
above tne nvet.,o5carefur
atlention to
dress is important in
village un to*., und full
covering
by all
three robes becomes
a public.ign of mArry
u.,O
tion among its membeir
in
humility. While
liberatity
in private
undress, movemenr in,:
_for l".ryq.;;.""
",of viltage, rown,
,;l;;,
iuui"
city means adopting a 11"and
fulr diess
yolng religion to its patres.roo "o'"-riri"ient for marketing a
Like etiquette for clothing,
etiquetre for proper behavior
is at
once an authenticat.
intern a r,;;;.f
; ;i: I ;l
: :'"';
arrenrion ro rhe worthiness
of poteniiui.J.,pi."ts. wh'e
on public
alms rour, renunciants_are
ro enrer;h;^;;il"g" ar rhe proper
(well before noon)
rime
and to go in .ii"n"" uon*
houses, properly
clad and with bowt,
with eyes d;;-;;
in full conrrol over
mind and body. There
is to bL full care Jn.onri"rarion,
going
not too fast and nor too.s.low,
uppropriare
urban
and domesric spaces,
"n,"ri"frrty
an inr".actinf*i
i o"r"rs with fut moderation and apprecialiol
0r tn" lui.ntor r, householder
rife.
When petitionins for
and receivine gil"lms
rour, renuncianr
silence is to belbserved
u, ."t;;;;^;_per procedure
for
the discipline ailo ws
;;
ii;
l*'t
j:j::
Dna: Giving and Getting in Pali Buddhisnt
36
Eating the meal'

receiving and handling of food and-water'
by a donor at his or her
whether at an invited Jccasion hosted
other renunciants' is to be
home or in the Sangha refectory with
full attention to low noise' to
done in moderation as well-with
bites' and to clean.r, ptuying with food, to eating in reasonable
The pracafierward''07
ing oneself and the u*t i""o"Ipicuously
at an apif'
only
broken
ticed silence of the alms tour ii to Ue
Dhamma'
a talk on
propriate point, a renunciant is to give
practice is to be
proper
tour,
alms
While walking on the
forrnation of the
.br;;; ongit" group as well' with the
of certain ones to be
renunciants into a lin,tt he designation
of all quarrels that might
at the head,rOe un itt" putting aside
the creation of an orderly'
exist between individuul''ro-1ut is'
Perhaps' the most important
ri"i, "n harmonious procession'culture that allows this public
is the development of mental
Sutta' or
etiquette to be carried out' The Pin{aptaprisuddhi the- alms
for
purity
complete
discourse on the Olu"topt""nt of
training needed by a
mindfulness
the
,our, "r".ibes at tengt
reflective setting into the
renunciant i., mouinf from a quiet'
In walking along the ro-adhustle and bustle of uiffug" and town'
business there' and in
ways, in entering n" uitug"' in doing
needs to be con,"trnng along the roadwa-ys' the renunciant
to an ever-changing
tinuously aware of his or her attentiveness
and- emotional
mental
any
to
and
experience of sensory data
that can ocdisturbances
and
;;i;.;t"t to it.rrr The distractions into' and back out of' the
cur for the renunciant on the tour
the practice of an etiquette
village and town u'" "'Uttu"tial and
such a posture of guarded,opencan be tremendousiy beneficial.
interaction with donors
ness to stimuli makes advantageous
ontinued provisions for a limipossible and
uttimffi ""tt""'
nal life-stYle.tt2
on return from an alms tour'

Rules also develop for conduct
development of harmony
While they pertain irimarily to the
themselves' their larger imand moderatio,, uJ"g '"nut'"iunts
u" el.silv observed and reported
plications
p;;ii;:i
"un practicels inconsistent with public

"r"
among householders if private
make it clear that consisbehavior.rr3Thus, disciplinary rules
in public and in private' are

tent mental posture u" p'u"ti"e'
Buddhist Donation: A Religious Response to a Changng Wortd
3t
the Buddhist life, and that movement through forest, jungle,

village, town, and city is a continuum, at each point of which is
an opportunity for developing mindfulness leading to calrn and
insight.
I)na: A Religious Response
of the Sangha is ensured

only by renunciants engaging each day with the folk of village
and town, an ethic underlying not only the renunciants' involvement but also the donors' as well becomes essential. The ethic
of dana grows over time into a complex understanding of behavior at this interface that guides the giving and receiving implicit as settlement hierarchies expand and differentiate throughout the Gang Valley. If Buddhism is a new doctrine well suited
to the new urban culture, dna is a doctrine critical to Buddhism's
survival as it negotiates the urban-to-rural network. In this way,
Buddhist dnais an important response to the increased wealth
and to the recharting of social and economic schema in the
middle country.
Within the emerging doctrinal structure of Dhamma, Buddhist dna develops in tandem with values of the larger culture.
The pattern of settlement hierarchies, first, reflects thedistributional function many of the centers have with respect to goods.ra
Similarly, dnabecomes a doctrine that governs the redistribution of goodS from, often, the increasingly wealthy to the voluntarily impoverished. As dana rules come to focus on issues
of proper acquisition and use of wealth, they support the new
surge in market activities at the same time as they curb excessive self-interest. The redistribution of goods under dana gtidance then becomes not only the acceptable but also the religiously
Because the support and maintenance
advantageous practice.
Secondly, in the increasing differentiation of settlement hierarchies, Buddhist dna is a doctrine adaptable to all kinds of
settings. Confident giving to a Buddhist renunciant can take place
on a jungle road, in a downtown market,rr5 or in a palace chamber. No matter what the changes in settlement hierarchies, dna
guidelines suit the one-on-one patronage of an obscure by-way
as easily as they do the large hosting of a meal or the extraiagant
38
Dna: Giving and Getring in pati Buddhism
Buddht Donation:
A Religtous Response to
a Changing
gifting of five hundred robes by a major

urban merchanr. Because dna focuses on the personal qualities
of the g"", un
Da-na
39
or-concept
new with Buddhism but

berol]"tor the ne "ul n i,,
?:,,1v,*":"-,"";ii::'HIg"::jjrata
longs insteao
receiver, and on the rewardsnsured

by a proper and successfur
transaction, it is an eminently flexible doctrine.
The emergent culture, thirI5r, is an increasingly
mobile one,
not only as commerciar professionars traver
to
and from centers of trade, but also as birth and geographical

ties become
weaker in the presence of new opprtunities.
With moUitity
comes a new focus_the worthiness of
a participant
action-that has less to do with his or her forebeas in a trans_
and much
more to do with the quality of an individual,s
work. guhirt
dana,Ilkewise, focuses on the internal qualities
of both givers
and receivers, and graded worthiness on
each side is reflected
-both in current tangibles and in future spiritual
rewards.il6
Fourthly, the market_oriented cultuie, in which
Buddhism
emerges, refrects a shift away from the varuation
of traditional
d,ty and obligation and a greater celebration of individual
choice. This shift is basd in the increased
freedom u.ougni uo,rt
by social and economic changes, and a'ows
for individuar initiative and creativity. It also means, however,
in the case of
renunciant petitioners, that householders are
not obrigated by
preset affiliation to support them, as
they are in vedicettings.
Just as a househorder's economic fate
no* r".,, in his own hands,
so also for the renunciant: goods come his
or her *uy u, t
result of personal action, and this means the
necessity f cutti-"
vating donor goodwilr. Because householders can
chotse not to
give, as they can increasingly choose the path
and direction of
their own economic careers, Buddhist renunciants
U""o"-"rpecially wary of ou::ll exuberanr begging and
of outright ha_
rassment of donors.r'Tputting donors and potential
donrs off
is not conducive to a renunciant's continued
life on the middre
way, and recognition of donor choice in where
his or her wealth
is allocated helps shape a large portion of Sangha
rules.
What is important, is that the monks
should neither abuse their dependence
on... flay-peopleJ, nor alienate...
[non_
BuddhistsJ, but should so regulate their
Iives as to give no cause for complaint.ttt
is not
World
:?:lf;,;",,",";;"_,-;l;,#l:,[J"T",Ti ji:ff il:

y,e p i,.o n.
e, tn." t,ut,; ;; l; J,"'r]"lTili."
ii,l: : :,:,r'.
become increasingly
linked to familv r"rrooir'r jt.",,Itont
pu
da-nabecomecJntrar,.,h;
j;;;;ii,i:.:i*:i,iX:Hl
ally distincr, bur i.,t".o"p"n;,;;"0,

with the formarized ,Jr''n^'il;"ii: . Da_na"uolu", uto.,g
mediating rhe retarion_
ships of kings and pri.rl,
,ri",i"'"io
:ir;ifi',,::':'"'nuining
y";
ieiv
reachers; and hosrs

and
una to the perper ua.uo
; ;. 'ii:: i ;iJ',:,"# 1"' i.'il

;;;
'
i,r,"
tion in rhe ra ce or
ffiJ
on da-na are revised..nuig".'
::"Xiri,;
to siit ,h; ;;;;;"ns
of grearer weatth for
distribution,
u."ur:r.1*,,r., or ;;;;;i';.."p!
and srearer per_
sonat anonymirv as
rravel u""o_.r-u n.r'n. p"i"";;;."r.
obligations give way
to a more uniu"r.Uy
applicable moral sen_
sibitity and' as "a narionar
rciitt'*.;;'d against rhe accumura_
tion of wearth ana power-"';;ias
g::rpr'.,:, and as groups like rhe ,";;;;;. of traditionar srarus
are.ordinarily
enfranchisea r.o--o,,-,
:i,i:fr
dis-
r""r r"i*r":"#,in"
;:ii:
bli t ies
ji,
i1q, is;iil;";;:
goes ro fund "*nuna
:
new retigiou!
tn the increasingly irr"..nriui;il.;;i.
"rr.r""i""i]
^. res emerse
rigu
r,ro u." xor. expricir,,
patterns: thar of the
householde, fi"iir"rrland
rhe housemisrress
(g a h ap a n ).
o,,n"
;;;;r','yt;
urulo
by c a s re, f a mily,
or occupationar nrace,
:_*n. : " "
tt" ttou."oi"u.ro housemistress
..pers
are
o ;;gro win g wea rrh a
[i1:;: i."._.::1fi: a nd
nd
22
ups,,
sro
u,rik;
in bound bv strict lines
:f"11i:J":i:
of rine"g"
"fi"ion, giving by Buddhist
0",.,d kin to rrienJs,
po
ssi
ll:i,;ffi
"i:iiir1,i"ffi,ff*,
;;;,"
; :y:jr
nf*l"lt
i:::::;ll"T ;i;."i
a
n'i aiJ
gi
*;
".ii
i ;ltfi'.
r * *U l;
villages, to*nrland
i:",n1",-Jr#rnirrs
ciries,
from being
Iigation to being a
matter of individual choice.
an
ob_
40
Dna: Giving and Getting in pati Buddhism
Buddhist Donation: A Religious

Response to a Changing World
The Buddhist sangha is one of the first institutions

of its time
to focus on the nature of non_kin corporate life and

develops
internal structures of democracy, egatrianism,
and governance
by lawtza that suit the new unaffiliated modes of givilng.
several
have argued that, at this time in the Ganga Vailey, tw parallel
systems of government coexist, monarchi", urr
ENDNOTES
I'
In the wake of the corapse of the

urban superstructure of the
civirization
in the Indus basin bv
r".."i,rtiiu- ecp, comprex socieries

only around the renrh
century BCE' calred materiaty"..,h";;;;;sia
the Early r.on'ag"
the earry
begin to consotidat again in
and textually the Late

Vedic period, this interval_is
Lound Uy'rt" upp"urance of painted
ware in the upper Gan{_y"ilt;;#r.u!rnir,*
Gray
."publi", o,
gana-sanghas, and that the organization of the

Buddhist
monastic communities best reflects that of the gana_sanghas.t25
Although, over the course of time "the republican staies
lost
their independence to one monarchical state or the other,,,
the
preservation of republican structure in the Sangha
is arguably
found in an array of technical poriticar terms present i-n pari
texts.126 The practic e of dna in a corporate structure-governed
by consent of all rather than by an utocratic hereditary rurer,
by a judicial system applying to each and every one with
clarity
and consistency, and by equal distribution of goods across
the
full spectrum of the membership-is a significantty differenr
setting than that of vedic culture. Giving in an environment
where every one receives as needed and where the proper
appli_
cation of donation guidelines is decided by rhe g.oup _r,,
that these guidelines have, in turn, to function .u""".rfully i.,
preserving the particular character of the community
Mavis Fenn has argued that the Buddhist Sangharepresents
the institutionalization of "communitas," such that communitas
"is that feeling of a common human bond with others
that arises
in liminal situations where structure, characterized by differentiation and hierarchy, is absent or minimal.,'r27 The association
of communitas not only with a voluntary poverty but with a
poverty understood as simplicity rather than as deprivation
means that, in the Buddhist case, guidelines for giving have to
account for the continued maintenance of the receiveis in this
state of poverty, that both distinguish them from the pleasure_
oriented householders around them and reflect exteaily the
developing non-attachment of their spirituar state. The complex
guidelines that become Buddhist dana, then,help create
andtabllize a religious life conducive ro Buddhism's highest goal, at
the same time as they help give Buddhism a competitive edge
in
the new market-place of religions.
41
in the tenth century

BCE, and the earliesr.appearance
of Northern-Black polished Ware,
gested to be in the mid_sixth
sug_
river. Erdosy, .,prelude
""ntu.yBE-urrt", east in region, of tli"
2.
ro U.Uunirationl;Oo.'rn_rQ,
Erdosy, ..Ethnicity
in the Rigveda i' p' 43' Te earliesr"-t"
iiir"* of the Gang Vatev is
ocher corored pottery;.it ir
Jur,u." producing Black and
Red Ware and Black btippea"u-"""""Jiy-u
wrr., ,n. iJ.i..or ro Northern Black pol_
ished Ware occurrins inire
middte il i;;.;'"og Va'ey
ar a chrono_
logicatty comparablJ,,.:1,;
ur" in rhe upper Gang
Valley. Erdosy, Urbanisarion,pp."*{qrj
153_155; eory, ..City States,,,pp.
l0l_
I02; Thapar, Lineage to Srarc,;p.71_72-.'-'*"
,erdosy, "prelude to Ubanizatin,,,
OO. g0_gl. Migration eastward and
the setrlement of people o."u.,
ulong;;";;".,
a norrhern roure alons
the Himarayan foothits and
a southen .ou.rong the
south bank of th
Yamuna and rhe Gang along ,t"
u";"".iri nar,yu.. Thapar, Lineage
to State, p. 70; Chaudhury, pp.
9_ll.
i;l;to,'T;tl;.
4.
ff:r],
?-
*""'zation "'
pp' 83-84; Erd osv,
r-Irba n is a
rion, pp.
"Prelude to Urbanizarion,', pp.

82_83; Erdosy, trrbanisation,
pp.
5.
This population is arrayed over ..a

two_tier
central place coordinated the pro.ur._*i, settlement hierarchy whose
il..rring and distribution
of vitat raw materiats..' Erdosy, ..crty
6.
Sapta sindhu as an area,iRl g,24.27)

probably refers to the land watered
by the Indus River, its five tributarier'fn.u.,-ilnab,
Jhelum, Rvi, and
il"i.ri;i.
,i 1 ;i::]' li'
1
11:"
" " ,''i u"' i o
il;
;t
nn
""
r.
o, v,
;;
;,
;';
See madhyam pratisth-dii.the

esrablished middle region,of
AB g.14.3,
inhabited,.savs rhe rext, uv
tt'" ruru,;;;;:i".as,
and usnaras. In
trme, madhya dea comes to_be
primarirv ,t" 1"" of the Kuru_pacras,
where the later samhits and.Biahmao"r
on the west
by the desert and on rhe easr by
the region"r*,'..arcared
oiti"-xorulu-videhas. In SB
l'4'l'ro.r7' a tradition is preserved
thai describes the Brhmanizarion
the Kosatas and Videhas irom
of
the f rr" p"n"'iegion (Thapa
r, Lineage
to Stare, p. 70). For a discussion
p^.g.-. .. urdorr, ..Language,
and ethnicitv," p'"fai.
18: e,o,v,'*,.rude
|no1t;;:|!:lj;re
The tradilionar
to urbanizatioi...
division of India into five areas

is to be found as a fu'
doctrine in the Kavyamrmms
as wet as in ttr" puranr., with
the boundaries
42
Dana: Giving and Getting in pali Buddhism
mldhfa deia (or rya-varta)being given in su"t texts

2f
8.
as Manu (2.19-
22).Law, pp. xix-xxi, l-3; Chaudhury, pp. 12-13.

The use of terms like janapada'rearm, region' to denote this connection
becomes standard (CU 5.11.5; 8.1.5). With the use of the term mgadha
desr (KSS 22.4.22; LSS 8.6.28)
a connecrion is made betwe en
jan-apada
and the territory of its sovereignty. Erdosy, "prelude to urbanization,"
pp. 85-86.
9
This culture is marked by painted Gray ware and located in small-scale

two-tiered sites. Erdosy, "Prelude to Urbanization," p. 95. The Vinaya
passage used to locate Buddhist activity.within the larger geographical
area is in the Mahvagga (vin l. 197), where the main immediate division
of space is between middle regions (maljhima janapada) and border re_
gions (paccantima jandpada) with named areas located in different directions (diia). Here the eastward boundaries of the middle country are clearly
expanded beyond older vedic understandings. The use of diia to designate distant areas can be found in Vin 1.50; 2.21j: D 3.l97ff : S 1.33, 234;
3.106; 5.216.
l0
I
Ghosh, p. 2.
l. This period is marked, chronologically, by the appearance of Northern

Black Polished (NBP) ware, a distinctive trade ceramic whose alkaline
slip fuses to a surface lustre when fired at a high temperature. Based on
radio carbon levels, Erdosy has identified three phases of this period, that
fit with recent revisions of chronology regarding the date of the Buddha:
early NBPW (ca.'550-400 BCE), middle NBPW (ca. 4O0-250 BCE), and
late NBPW (ca. 250-100 BCE). Erdosy, ..City Srates," p. 105; Thapar,
Lineage to State, p.72.
12. Supporting Erdosy's work, Bechert has argued for a ..short chronology,"
based on Indian sources, that places the Buddha's death somewh"r" t"tween 370-368 BCE, giving lifetime dares of approximately 450/448-370/
368 RcE. This suits the ceramic chronology more comfortably than traditional "long chronology" dates for the Buddha attested primarily by sinhalese sources, that place his death about a century earlier. Bechert, i.Date
of the Buddha Reconsidered," pp. 36, 36n.
13. Erdosy, "city states," p. 99. The earliest surviving inscriptions are those
of the Mauryan emperor ASoka (ca. 2j2-26g-ca.235 BCE).
14. This happened in the aftermath of Alexander's efforts in north-west IndoPakistan. on the role of Alexander's conquests in the creation of conditions favorable to chandragupta Maurya, see Erdosy, [Jrbanisation, p.
138.
15. Erdosy, Urbanisation, pp. 124-130.

16. Erdosy, "City Stares," pp. ll0-ll2; Ghosh, pp. 13-15.
17. Darian, p. 227. On the monetary system, monylending, and banking in
early Buddhist times, see Misra, pp. 266-6g; Wagle, pp. 135_136, 145_150.
18. Thapar, Lineage to State, pp.42,73-76.
Buddhist Donation: A Religious Response to

a Changing
World
43
19. Darian, pp.226-27.
20. Darian. p.228.

21. Darian, p.228.
22. Darian, p.23O.
23. Thapar, Lineage and State, p. 149; see p. lll.
24. The previous period, the Late Vedic, has been
characterized,
archaeologically,
by a two-tiered pattern in which central sites manage

the gathering and dispersar of raw materials. Beginning
about 55o BCE,
increased concentration of a growing populatio-n ln

tt" ."gion, grrur",
gradation within the settrement hierarchy, and increased
dmina"nce of
25.
single central sites appear. Erdosy, ..City States,,, p.

99.
This classification is based on his work in the Ailahabad
district- Erdosy,
"City States," p. 107; Erdosy, [Jrbanisation, pp. l16_llg.

26' Added to this is the_ continued appearance of new villages, presumabry
established to provide service and support for the secondlry
"n,".. una
to continue support for the growth of the more complex

settiement levers.
Erdosy, "city states," pp. 107-10g. paralrel settremenr hierarchies
can be
found in such riterature as the Artha sstra. see Erdosy,
[Jrbanisattion,
pp. l2O-121, t39-r41.

27. That is, the places of the Agas, the Magadhas, the Kasis, the
Kosalas,
the Vajjis, the Mallas, the Cetis, the Vamsas, the Kurus,
thepaclas,he
Macchas, the Surasenas, the Assakas, the Avantis, the Gandhras,
and
the Kambojas . A 4.252,256,260_61; seeD 2.200_201.
Of these, Ganharu
and Kamboja are in the north west, Kuru, Maccha, and
Srasena in the
Indo-Gangetic divide, Avanti and ceti in central India,
Assaka in the south,
and Anga, Magadha, Ksi, Kosala, Vajji, Malla, Vamsa/Varsa,

and
Pacla in the Gang Valley. See Erdosy, [Jrbanisation, pp.

23-26. For
discussions of the nature and structure of janapadas, see ,rdosy, ..city
States," p. l15; Erdosy, [Jrbanisation, pp. ttS_tZO; Chosh, pp.
ZZ_IS;Wa1le,
pp.29-37; Law, pp. 3-23; Chaudhury, pp.6-7.
28. Erdosy, "City States," pp. l15-l16; Erdosy, (Jrbanisation,pp. 137_39.
On
the natural resources facilitating the rise of Magadha,
tlneage to State, p. ll4.
"i,"^thupur,
29. D 2.202-203.
30. Vin 1.197; A 4.226;Wagte, p.32.
31. Horner, in Book of the Discipline 4:xx. See, for example, Vin 1.197.
32' lnearly passages, the nagara is most often described as a city built
with
strong fortification, with ramparts, towers, and gates for the
watchfur
guarding of the movemenrs of inhabitants. D l. 193;
M 2.33: A l.l:lg_l9.
This confirms archaeorogical evidence of city areas with fortifications
appearing by 550 BCE throughout northern Inia, among
them Rajagaha
(the capital of MagadhaT napada), Camp (of
Anga), U.ain 1of avti,
and v/Brnasi fRajghat] (of Ksi). Anorher greal city'of
ttre suaJha's
Dana: Giving and Getting in Pali Buddhism
44
time, Svatthi, is fortified by around 4O0 BCE, and Plaliputta (formerly

P1aligma), that supersedes Rjagaha as capital of Magadha and later
becomes the capital of the Maurya empire, is fortified around 300 BCE.
Erdosy, "City States," pp. 109-1l0; Darian, p.221;Erdosy, Urbanisation,
pp. 106-116, 134; Ghosh, pp.62-67. A comparison of Erdosy's four settlement categories might allign them respectively with the gama, nigama,
nagaa, and mahnagara.
33. Camp, Rjagaha, Savatthi, Sketa' Kosambi, and V/Brnasl (D 2'146)'
These are offered by nancla, the Buddha's attendant. as alternatives to
the little. wattle and daub (kudda) city of Kusinr in the midst of a jungle
(uLjaSf, because they are places of greater wealth where the Buddha
might be more properly honored (Wagle, p.27).The Buddha refuses, however, and recalls the great urban past of Kusinra.
34. M 1.106, 187-189, 2ll 3.59,60; A 1.159-160.

35. E.g., Vin 3.4; S 3.93; A 2.95;3.209'
36. S1.233;41.281.
37. Vin 1.39;2.158.
38. M 2.97; S 4.173, 174.
39. Vin Lll0;4.166.
3.149-153, 369; S 1.89.
pp. 35-39,
Heesterrnan, "Brahmin, Ritual, and Renouncer," in fnner Conflict, pp.

40, 32, 3+36, 4l-42; see Kaelber, pp. lO2, 105- 107. Theories about rhe rise
(Samnysa
derives from the "emergence of kingship and urban culture," the king
being "the supreme individual in society," and is facilitated by a ..similar
individualistic mentality...among merchants, whose success depended less
on following an inherited and ritualized pattern of behavior than on initiative and enterprise," Heesterman's argument about the individual nature of the Srauta ritual is also persuasive. Not only is it "man by himself
and alone, not the gods or any other supernatural agency, who must realize the absohte static order by unquestioningly submitting to the exacting
rule of ritual," but it is the specialized use of the fire drill which, empha-
sizing "the exclusive link with its owner,...makes
21).
suggesting a specialized settlement where trade from rive commerce takes

place among large gatherings of people. Many early Indian centers occupi"d rit"r on the banks of rivers (Horner, Book of the Discipline2:63n).
53. Tapar, Lineage to State, P.90.

4.109.
3.61;
Upanisads, pp. 32-33) argues that the new value placed on the individual
Another derivation takes nigama from nadl-gma, a village on a river'
see a\so
57. D
58. D 3.148, t67-68, 169,172.

59. S 3.3, 42, 46, 138, 164, 173; 4.206, 2O7, 287, 330:A t.178.
60. Erdosy. "City Stares," pp. l19-120.
61. See Erdosy's summary, "City States," pp. l2l-22, Chakravarri,
of the individual note several sources. While Olivelle
46. }'{2.205.
55. D 2.98;
corresponding peoples, often one of the sixteen recognized mahjanapadas.

There are, for example, nigamassuch as Anupiya (Vin 2.180; D 3.1) and
Uruvelakappa (S 4.327;5.228) in the Matla region, Kammsadamma (D
2.55:M 1.55; S 2.107; A 5.30) and Thullakotthita (M 2.54) in the Kuru
region; pana (M 1.359,447. 2.146; S 5.225) and Assapura (M 1.281) in
the Anga region; and Pankadh (A 1.236), Dandakappaka (A3.4O2), and
Kesaputta (A 1.188) in the Kosala region. Other towns are in the regions
of other groups, such as Medatalumpa (M 2. l19) and Devadaha (S 3.5;
4.124) of the Skyans, and Haliddavasana (M 1.387) and Spga (A2.194)
of the Koliyans.
62.
41. Vin 3.46; Wagle, P. 13.

42. Wagle, p. 13.
43. Vin 3.46;2OO-2O\; 4.63-64; D 2.344.
44. D 2.338ff .
45. Vin 3.249-250.
54. Vin
45
64.
4A. M L276.
47. Yin 1.350; A 2.182.

48. See the discussion in Vy'agle, pp. 16-18.
49. See Wagle, pp. 18-19; Thapar, Lineage to State, p' ll0'
50. Vin 1.149.
51. Wagle, p. 20.
52. As a derivation from the sanskrit ni and gma implies (wagle, p.
Buddhist Donation: A Religious Response to a Changing World
1.5t9; A 2'115;3'90'
nur\e apeas \ith the name ot its

56. \us\ \o$ ts eo\s\ste\t\) ' e torrn
lthe
sacrificerl...independent, allowing him to make fire where there" is none

(Broken World, pp.8l, l0l). As the rauta ritual develops, moreover, a
process evolves, the "individualization of the ritual," whereby the sacrificer
no longer relies on an array of ritual officiants to create the world but
only on his own ritual work. Now an interior process, the individualizing
of the ritual not only places a premium on individual effort in the maintenance of moral order, but also leads, eventually, to greater hieraichy and'
fixity in social relations (Inner Conflict, pp.32-44; Broken World, pp.
2t6,2r8).
63. Collins, pp. 29,3O-33.
64. Olivelle, Sannysa LJpanisads, pp. 20, 21, 32; Dumont, pp. 46,50.
See
also Kaelber, pp. 108-109; Basham, jtvikas, p. 5; Erdosy, (Jrbanisation,

pp. 14445.
65' Otivelle, Samnysa IJpanisads, pp. 46,23-46; Gombrich, Theravada Buddism, pp. 49-59.
4
66.
67.
68.

See
Olivelle, p.
Buddhist Donation: A Religious Response to a Changing
Makkhali Gosla
(the jlvikas), Pliraa Kassapa, Ajitakesakamball, Pakudha Kaccyana,
and Sajaya Belatfhaputta: the six "heretis" of the Samaaphala Sutta
of the Dlgha Nikaya (1.47-86). See Basham; jtvkas, pp. lO-26;
Chakravarti, pp. 46-49.
Fenn (pp. 100-ll7) distinguishes between two types of poverty in Pali texts:
poverty as deprivation, which needs to be redressed by the king and then
by society at large, and poverty as simplicity lived out by renunciants in
the Sangha, an institutionalized form of Victor Turner's liminality and
Such as th followers of Nigantha Ntaputta (the Jains),
entering them. One could enter a village, for example, only to petition
food (NpU 145) and one could spend only a certain number of nights in
each type of location: one night in a village, five in a town (NpU 158);. one
in a village, two in a burg, three in a town, five in a city, six in a.holy
place, seven at a sacred bathing place (NpU 159, 201); one in a village,
three at a sacred bathing place, five in a town, seven in a holy place (ppU
284).'lhe need to be free of fixed attachments to places is extended to
persons as well, for while the ideal is the single mendicant wanderer, two
persons formed a village, three a town, and four a city (NpU 2O2), or'one
a mendicant, two a pair, three a village, and any above a city (NpU 145).
communitas.
sion (pabbajj)into the Sangha, whereby one becomes a novice (smatera)

and begins preparation and training under a preceptor (upaiihaya), and
the ordination proper (upasampada), whereby one becomes a newly ordained monk (nava). Horner, Book of the Discipline 4:ix-xi'
72. D r.250.
73. D 2.76-77.
74. M 1.198, 238:2.1-4; S 3.69;4.398-400.
75. See Bhagvat, pp. 1-17; Misra, pp. l-3,37,
M
D
D
105-107;
Olivelle' Salnnysa
1.165-67; 3.4O-42;
93.
S 4.330-331:Ps 2.147l. see
Misra, p. 76; Thapar, Lineage to State, pp. 152-
53.
t.295-297.
97. M 1.29-30.
98. M 1.126-127.
99. Darian, p.23O.
1.5-12.
r.77-83'
M t.5r3-t4.
S0. D
3.184; M 1. 106, 37O;2.171:' A l. 182-84, 274;3.95-99. Thaar

(Lineage to State, p. 150) has said of this relationship: "A parallel monastic society can only survive when there is a well-ordered agrarian system
and trade to provide the surplus since the monastery for its daily needs
has a parasitical relationship with society."
94.
t.38't-392.
l. 165-177; 3.4O-57;
91. s 3.9-12.
92. Vin l.ll0;
95. Vin 3.213-15; Yin 4.258-9.

96. M 1.10.
Upaniads, pp. 36, 52-57.
76.
77.
78.
79.
4j
time of the early Buddhist is also mindful both of the full range of settlement
hierarchies over the area and of the need for considred behavior when
14.
69. S 4.330-31; A 1.295-97; Ps 2.147.

70. D 1.47-86.
71. The early formula, the simple 'Come, monk" (ehi bhikkhu)' is in time
replaced by a ritual structure marked off in two clear stages: the admis-
World
l00.Fenn, pp. 109-110. Because Buddhism wholeheartedly adopts the karma

and rebirth system developing among its Brhmalical colleagues, there
are in fact no real "accidents of birth." It may be that the relationship
between Buddhism and society is a reciprocally transforming one and that
egalitarianism becomes a cultural value decisive in many arenas of activity. In economics, for example, "the egalitarian nature of Buddhism-far
more than the compartmentalized caste system-paralleled the markettype relations necessary for expanded commercial enterprise." Darian, p.
1.7'l-79; 1.238-39.
81. Horner, Middle Length Sayings 1.335. M 1.281.

82. M 1.281.
83. S 3.93; See S 5.224; Itivuttaka, p. 89.
84. D 1.4. See Chakravarti's (pp. 50-51) discussion of
the criticism made of

householders.
like
too
much
renunciants for behaving
85. See D 1.237; S 3.24O: 5.325; A 4.187.

86. A 3. 128- 130.
87. SeeD3.146: S 1.100,180-181.
88. A 3.103-105.
89. Therr no.34O.
90. A 3.108-ll0; 341-344; 5'l2l-22.The saqnysin tradition evolving at the
234.
101.
Horner, Book of the Disciplinel.ix.
102.
Horner, Book of the Discipline l.xv
Vin
104. Vin
103.
1.44;4.102.
1.298: 2.212-215.
Vin 4.34+45.
106. Vin 1.45, 50, 194,289,298;2.136, 214,217: A t.182-84;2.125:3.95-99.
l07.Vin 2.212-215: 1.70-71; M 1.206-207.
105.
48
Dna: Giving and Getting in pali

Buddhism
t08.
r09.
M 1.28.
M 1.28.
ll0. Vin
111.
4.4-6;
M 3.293-97;
1.242_44.
see
CHAPTER 2
D 3.89; M t.462;3.294;5 1.297; A

2.125;3.95_99.
l12. Vin 1.45:4.16465;M 1.469;

S 1.200; A 3.il7.
113' For example, the first
one to return from the v'rage
after going on arms
tour is to make ready rhe seats, ttre *ae.'fo.
drinking and whing the
feet, and the bowl_for refuse. The
lur;-;;. ."ru.ning"l.-.i"r;;rili: _,
attending to the reft-overs from
the mear, either eating them himserf
or
discarding them in
yuy ,t u, no in;ury will occur to Iiving rhings. He
is also responsibre lu"h.1
for tidyin! up ,r," ,.i.,',he drinking and
washi warer, and the
Redefning Relationshps:
The
New Donor
Buddhism arises in the
new urbanism
refuse po*J, un-g for sweeping ,h"

fr;;;.
,"
fo,
rv ur
Uviun?
rrdrru' not requested in words (Vin
these duries has to be signalled

1.157-58, 352; z.zt;
i;.;il;.:".o
Iey as material rer

erare, and as rhe
become more compl"*
U:..
114'
_**l_t:nt,i.;i;;,::iir,s
In addition to obvious rarge-scaie market

activity, heaps of grain, for
example, are kept near some villages
and towns from which
-"-.. country
r
'-*.,.ry folk
can simply come and take away clrn
(A 4.163_64).
I15. S l.l8_19.
l16. When a town like Madhur comes
to be known as a place where a.lms
are
gotten with difficurry (duttabhapinda),
nor onry does this signify hardship
for renunciant petitioners ttr".e'uut
los"o."puturion for the center, com_
peting as it must in a worrd where
attracting good people of at kinds
is
considerably more desirable than
repelling i"., 1a 3.256).
l17. Vin 3.144-45.
ll8. Horner, Book of
the
Disciplinel.xvi.
l19. E g,, cows, horses, garments, gold

(Thapar, Lineage to State,pp.
5g,
64_
Darian, p.230.
121. Darian, p. 232.
l22.Wagle, p. 152.
123. Wagle, p. 107.
124. Misra, pp. 108-110.
Erdosy, Urbanisation, pp. 144-45^;Misra,
pp. 208_209;Thapar, Lineage to
State, p. l16; Chakravarti, pp. lO_12.
126. Misra, pp. 2OB-210.
127. Fenn,
p.
109.
Marker and industriar-towns
ail;;
d"rr;;;;;;;','i;r,
""d
non-agricutrural acrivities,
un t;;;;
more comprex
vitiages by larger
ousness
120.
125.
'
";;; ,i"
ptayers ar this rime
the gahapar .househofer,
is
"rr",
',,,r* or rhe gahapant
fanir'
'housemistress,),
ferms .,or rr.* *itfr"guAfrirm
but, as used in
Pali texts, reflective
of the *o_.n,ou, social changes
place' Many factors.
taking
contribute to these changes
and one of them
is the cenrrarirv of
adminisr;"r;;;;;;mm"."iur
other in
politicar and comr.;

of both the ule ,"d th;
_;;;;;
organizario5.r
are disringuished from

by the prominence of
convergence poinrs for
;f;;;:il
;:;."
"each the arly of the
history,',
;;;"-;:::T::111,
,".,;;;;k;;,":iiiift
"f
:Til",";:,*li:,1;ll
wealth becomes a critical

medium
-u'''"*;''
l,if i
;11
:: i: ff
i,
,t
disposition of human
"
;* 'j*n
",
p r"
v; ; ;
;;; i,"
THE HOUSEHOLDER
AS DONOR
The more central place
of the merchant- and nf
the result of an .ul
^^__^_^
o ro
er rin e a
| ".:,-',*,ff tr;'; ii*r
a lineage culrure
of Rg-Vedi"
tion between rhe rulers
,:*
#r"
,*"Jr-i.,ir"n rhee is a bifurca_

(rq-anyaj ,i" ,*r*_giving
clan s (vis).
At this rime, Iands are

ht i";;;;;;,
irrougl, worked by
as a pasrora,r".;;,^;;;,d;i":
::o
^"1,
on ca*le.
Lat vedic texts refrect
ttre
;;;f ;;iffi:ii:
50
and householding economies with a shift from pastoralism to

agriculture. As the rrfproduce more, the sacrificial ritual draws
off greater amounts of wealth, going from the rrl through the
k;atriya (that is, the older rjanya) patrons to the brahmins.a
As the ksatriyas become more dependent "on the agricultural
activities of the viiand the prestations that Ihe viicanprovide,"
storage of materials for the ritual and for other gift-giving settings increases. As the grhapati'head of house' emerges from
this older householding system where keeping goods for ritual
use evolves, vii is replaced by vaiiya, suggesting "an altered
status, the clan element decreasing and the individual status becoming more apparent."5 In time, with the break-up of lineageheld lands into family holdings,6 the grhapati is transformed
from a household head within a clan system working the land
"to a landowner, and subsequent to this,...[to] a participant in
trading activities"T-in both cases, a household head being himself responsible for the storage of his own goods. During this
period, Pali literature often vses gahapalr as a functional equivalent of vessa (vaiiya), though the former is, at the same time,
evolving into a terrn of substantially broader referent. Thus, with
the erentual consolidation of the kingdoms of KoSala and
Magadha and the emergence of a more cornplex economy and
of commerce, the ghapati/ gahapati, now drawn from any of
the three twice-born castes, comes to be in clear contrast to the
idra as peasant cultivator and artisan.s
Early Buddhist texts reflect a culture in which Brhma4ic ritual
is seen as the domain exclusively of ritual specialistse and in
which non-Brhmanic renunciants are in regular daily contact
with ordinary folk during their alms rounds in the villages.ro
The old Vedic ghapati, once a fairly narrowly used concept,
now emerges as the Pali gahapari, its old ties to wealth still intact, but with a wider range of social applications. The term
gahapati cones to be used in two ways: as a general term referring to the broad category of non-renunciants, i.e., to those who
simply 'live in a house,' and as a more specific, contemporary,
term referring to powerful managers of property. Gahapatisform
"the basis of Buddhist Society." Not only are they the fledgling
mainstream in which Buddhism takes shape, but it is their
Redefining Retationshs : The

New
Donor
5l
patronage, their good counsel,

and their general supporr that is
sought by each emergent religious
group-. fney ar",
notes, "the prizes in the religious
", W"gl"
si'ruggls.,,,, itup..rgg"rr,
that the relationship_ betweei tn"

giipuds and new religions
like Buddhism and Jainism i. u
_ituJ
one. On rhe one hand,
gahapas provide essential
material support in their patronage
of young religious institutions. On
tfr"-tfrer, these young insti_
tutions provide a place for gahapa
merchants and businessmen in a religious panorama thai
up until this point has been
intensely exclusivistic-. By giving
,rrfpoa to Buddhism, for ex_
ample, ga h ap a ti merchants gain-s
o cio _ritua I s tanding
Jg" _
dhism, then, becomes theiireligion,
". u_"ng
a religion ooied
householders.12 The wold to
the householder is now an open
market, and pali texts show that
it is this group, with its broad
caste consriruency, that bec_omes
the principlt uui"n"" ;;o
o;i._
cipal source of patronage for
the new religion.
The Gahapati in the Social
Order.
The shift to an economically

viable family unit of smailer pro_
portions than the otder lineage
rendes tn"pi sunuputiri^;r",
a family man of a few but
efhite ties. Routinely accompanied
by his wife the gahapatnt3 .housemistress,
and his offspring
the gahapatiputtata (normally
a son), tn" gunupulr is no longer
just the Vedic householder
t"ping i" nurerrol stores bur often a figure of substantial social
nd economic irnportance as
well. Consisring of heads of
household, tt g^nupuii group hi,
s'oill recognition as a distinguirf,"
" collecrion
.Yifi:
of dis_
ttnguishable individuals,15
making ru", for themselves as the
opportunity suits.
Reflecting the production of wearth
through both agriculture

commerce-and the computi.rg of
its w"ulttr in both grain
and coin-the occupations f
th householder vary.16 Most
householders, ho*ever, are involved
in some sort of trade in
the town or city, and trade
is identified as the dhammaor duty
of the householder, along with support
urd prorision for his
parents.rT While there are passages
that locate the trader arnong
others fairly low in the ,o"iul
ofuer,,r texts most often treat the
trade practised by householders
as work oi Ur.g"orring intensity
and
52
and significance. Householder traders contract debts, set up businesses, and repay their accounts;re they assess investments and
act accordingly, putting themselves at risk for success or failure. There are four possibilities for someone in trade: either the
work fails, or it does not turn out as intended, or it turns out as
intended, or it ieaps rewards beyond all expectation. In the text,
these possibilities are understood Buddhisticatly, i'e',

" dnic;lly,"as they are kammically dependent on what tire trader
has given to renunciants in previous lives'20
The most prominent occupation of the householder, however'
is that of setthi2l (skt. reslin). a role exemplified by such figures as Anthapindika22 and his brother-in-iaw, the great merchanr of Rjagaha.z3 Although there is no detailed discussion
of the setthi, the texts suggest that he is a trader of high order
and of great prorninence: banker, treasurer, merchant' or a corporate officer.t A leading figure in the business community' he
as wealth, talent, and organizational skills that bring him into
decisive circles of political influence'2s As Narendra Wagle
points out, the sellhi gahapafr belongs primarily to urban sites
where there is a cash economy and where wealth accumulates
for those at the crossroads of commerce'26 G'S'P' Misra has
argued further that while gahapati"denote[s] a class constituted
oiwealthy people from [the] businessmen's community"' the
sehi is "a istinguished personage holding some post of respnsibility and distinct fiom other gahapatis of the place."27
Th" d"sign ation "setthi gahapatis lthen] would mean the leading middie class gahupitt It distinct from the brhmar.ras by
biith and the memberr f ttn"l ruling aristocracy."2s While many
are gahapalis, only some are setthi gahapatis'
ettnistime,thehouseholderhasacomplexrelationshipto
culthe varnaor caste system currently emerging in Brhmanic

texts
Vedic
in
important
ture. Given that the grhapatibecomes
whentheheadofthehouseholdbeginstostoregoodsforritual
of
use, the vi are drawn into the varna scheme as the source
manthese goods. Because it is the household head who does the
aging of what comes in, then, grhapati and vaisya, though not
.l"tty equable, become correlated' While Thapar argues that
the B;ddhist gahapati is seen to replace vessa' a substitution
Redefining Relationships : The New Donor
53
that "points to the final disintegration of the original yrl"2e sup_

port for this-viz., two apparenrly interchangeable lists in palimay refer instead to different systems of activity.
The first Pali list reverses the order of the first two ranks:30
thus, the traditional four-fold division of brahnian, k;atriya,

vaiiya, and iudra3l is rearranged into a decidedly Buddhist or_
der in this way: khattiya, brhmana, vessa, and. sudda.In the
other, the first two ranks are again reversed and the list shortened by one, khattiya, brhmana, and gahapati, giving an ap_
parent substitution of gahapatifor vessa. while the first listkhattiya, brhmana, vessa, and sudda-is a classification of
the four vannas,32 the second-khattiya, brahmana, and
gahapatF3-is distinct in several ways. First, the gahapatilist is
not used as a description of vanna ranking, suggesting instead
of ritual status something else, such as socio-eco.r.*i" place.
Second, unlike the first list it is applied to an economic term
mahsala'having great halls'v designating rhose who rive in
substantial residences and who, by inference, have a sizable income and are socially prominent. Third, its three members are
one of the many sets of parisa-'company, assembly, congregation,'35 a term applied to various categories of Buddhist dc_
trine.
The most important difference between the rwo lists is that
while the vessalist is oriented toward ties of birth and hereditrT,
the gahapati list is oriented toward associations macle voluntarily and toward status that is earned. This conclusion is based
primaril,v on the izessa list's applicaticn to the category of vanj,a,
a dernarcation relating to complexion colo136 and to status given
primarily by location of birth,37 while rhe gahapati trst,s appli_
cation is highlighted by nahs"\a, a designation usuaily set
within the context of acquiring great wealth and prosper"ui ur_
thority, and of individual distinction through honest efforr arui
hard work.38 The yessa list, then, suggests socio-ritual status or
caste, and the gahapadeconomic status or class.
The very use of the two lists in the same texts is a symptom
of a culture in transition, a culture that knows vedic structures
but is also forging new ones. Because ..the iiorninant strata of
urban society are not catered for, not even recognized by

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3801

Mothers and Sons in

Arsenaalstraat 1, P'O. Box 9515

Stanford Univers ity Press

Ghost Festival in Medieval China. A generous grant from the American

benefited from the patient assistance of Professor Jean-Pierre Drge.

Note on Transliterations and Abbreviations

Nascent Buddhist Filial Piety

Mothers and Sons in the Beginning

Mothers and Sons in the Ghost Festival

The Buddhist Elite Talk About Mothers and Sons

7. The Sutra on the Profound Kindness

10. Bifurcated Mothers

Note on Transliterations and

of the Chinese Buddhist canon contains sutras,

commentaries, histories, hymns, genealogical charts, and arfwork.

Transliterations and Abbreviations

of primary sources in the Bibliography, I have not included the

Pelliot Pelliot collection

Texts Analyzed in This Volume

of Dun Huang texts held in the Bibliothque Na-

Stein collection of Dun Huang texts held in the British Museum,

Dfficulty of Repaying the Kindness of parents (Fu mu

The sutra on the

tracted from the Madhyamgama (Chapter 3)

jing [Ban ni yuan

apocryphal, prior to the early

The Sutrs on the

The Sutra on Repaying the Kindness by Making Offerings (Bao en feng

to Repay (Fu mu en zhong nan bao jing), apocryphal, a com_

"Homily on the Profound Kindness of parents" (Fu mu en zhong zan

wen),by FaZhao (d.772),

seventh century, probably in circulation by 664 (Chapter 5)

a middle-Tang-period hymn (Chapter 9)

[HuiJ yuan of Mt. Lu (Lu shan yuan gong hua),

a late-Tang-period text found at Dun Huang; purports to be a discourse

enth century; an encyclopedic source book (Chapter 6)

century Song-period text; printed by 1437 in the imperial canon and

seventh century; Dao Shi's other encyclopedia (Chapter 6)

(Guan wu liang shou fo jing shu), by Shan Dao (613-681), seventh

The Sutra on the Profound Kindness of Parents (Fu mu en zhong

seventh century; first mentioned

in the catalogue Da zhou kan ding

jing mu lu of 695 (Chapter 7)

Titles of the Tang-period lecture-note texts iang jing wen) discussed in

Buddhist Prop aganda

trturs rs A sruDy of Buddhist family propaganda

aganda, written primarily in apocryphar

rr"* rror-. for the

family and, in particurar, sought to bind

construct theories of reproduction that sought to problematiLe and even de-

rilineal ancestors, with little mention of his connection to his mother.

hope of bettering their mothers' fates.

This Buddhist version of frlial piety also introduced a ne'vr complex of

it took form in the

I first considered writing

tory of Buddhist family values.

Clearly, the evolution of Buddhist family ideology was gradual and

tent on explaining the sinfulness of the mother, dramatizing her nefarious

tra [Explaining ThatJ the Kindness of Parents is Pround and Dfficult

am especially indebted to his-

My reading of these Chinese texts on the family assumes that religion

the broader outlines of Buddhist monastic ideology, an ideology that can