To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth: A Translation and Study of Ge Hong's Traditions of Divine Transcendents

by Ge Hong, Robert Ford Campany

In late classical and early medieval China, ascetics strove to become transcendents--deathless beings with supernormal powers. Practitioners developed dietetic, alchemical, meditative, gymnastic, sexual, and medicinal disciplines (some of which are still practiced today) to perfect themselves and thus transcend death. Narratives of their achievements circulated widely. Ge Hong (283-343 c.e.) collected and preserved many of their stories in his Traditions of Divine Transcendents, affording us a window onto this extraordinary response to human mortality.

Robert Ford Campany's groundbreaking and carefully researched text offers the first complete, critical translation and commentary for this important Chinese religious work, at the same time establishing a method for reconstructing lost texts from medieval China. Clear, exacting, and annotated, the translation comprises over a hundred lively, engaging narratives of individuals deemed to have fought death and won. Additionally, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth systematically introduces the Chinese quest for transcendence, illuminating a poorly understood tradition that was an important source of Daoist religion and a major social, cultural, and religious phenomenon in its own right.

Genres: History, Spirituality, China, Taoism

633 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book of hagiographies of Daoist immortals from the Han dynasty. It's very fragmentary, but so interesting how they describe the alchemical methods that these 'saints' supposedly used to achieve their eternal life. Apparently consuming large amounts of mercury and cinnabar is the way to go. There is even a disclaimer in the front of the book saying that these recipes are metaphorical and please not to eat poisonous metals. My favorite is Zuo Ci from the Three Kingdoms, who just screws with all the rulers who try to hold him prisoner.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

n fourth century China Ge Hong wrote a book about Daoist Immortals or divine transcendents. Similar in many ways to western medieval books on the lives of saints. In his book To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth Robert Ford Campany gives a background and analysis of Ge Hong's book, a complete translation of the work, and an extensive look at the sources he used when reconstructing the work.

The first part of the book looks at religion in China at the time Ge Hong was writing. Campany also gives a much more in-depth look at the different ways to immortality, or as he translates Xian, to transcendance. These include elixers, sexual practices, and abstaining from grain. Some people also use talismans to extend life and cure the sick. There are three different types of transcendances, the first is "those who escape by means of a simulated corpse". These were my favourite as they are immortals who appear to die but when their graces are opened they do not contain a corpse. The book gives instructions on how to do this. The theology behind leaving what appears to be a corpse is not so much to trick those around you, frequently these people open the coffins and find it to be bare, but rather to trick the bureaucracy into believing that you have died, to give them a simulated corpse to take into the afterworld in your place. So you can go on living in another area, usually under another name. "Those who escape by means of the simulated corpse" are by far the most common types of transcendants in the book, the second are those who become earthly transcedants, those who have achieved the way but don't have the destiny to ascend to heaven, so they stay on the earth helping people, or living in isolation. The third and most revered type of immortal are those "who ascend to heaven in broad daylight". These are often done through taking very potent immortality elixers.

Campany does a very good job of illustrating how these different types of immortality are achieved. Quoting many direct sources from the time and earlier, and relating them to other popular religious movements at the time. He uses lots of the original Chinese charters in his explanations and always explains his interpretations of them, and often others interpretations as well.

Campany is very strong on the point that the book of the Transcendants was not intended to be viewed as fiction rather it was intended as a collection of events that had really happened used to inform the people. Section 2 of the book was a translation of the text itself. He had divided the text up into three sections depending on what he thought was a, most likely to have been originally in the book and had earlier sources to back it up, what he thought was likely to have been in the book but the sources only were from later copies, to what he thought was most likely to have been added later. The interesting thing about reading the texts were the great diversity shown in the lives of the transcendants. There were many women transcendants, perhaps a quarter to a third. Frequently the women adepts were much better practitioners of the Dao than their male counterparts. The transendants also came from many different walks of life, frequently the best immortals who had the elixers were too poor to obtain their ingredients and so would obtain sponsorship from a wealthy family or royalty in order to complete their works. There were also many transcendants who were concerned with charitable works, healing the sick, feeding the poor and casting out demons.

The texts made for a very interesting look at the life of people at the time. How the search for immortality or transcendance was often at odds with traditional ties to family and state. In the inverted Taoist world women were considered to be more valuable. Transcendants also used the correct methods of healing and exorcism to show the people the false ways of the common healers.

The third section of the book was a list of the documents that Campany had used in his translations, when and why he used them, and then he went through each text showing which parts came from which source, why he used certain translations, and what other sources had said about certain people. Definitly an amazingly detailed and well researched and documented work.

Campany remains one of my favourite scholars on early Chinese religious history. I wish he'd write more books but they seem to take a great deal of time to put together. I'm lucky I found this one, it was published at 90 dollars but the publishers, California, were having a sale and it was down to 35. It's fun to own such a scholarly book, especialy one that's so well written, straight forward and just very interesting. Alas I can't get anywhere close to reading the source material myself so it's wonderful to have it translated for me.

[Lulu]

c. 350 CE


Campany's book is more than a critical annotated translation; it is also a painstaking reconstruction of the textual strata. He analyzed Shenxian Zhuan quotations in some forty sources dating from the fifth to seventeenth centuries, and chronologically recompiled them into three groups. Group A are biographies fully attested in works until the end of the Tang dynasty (618-907), Group B are those only mentioned in these sources, and Group C are those ascribed to the Shenxian Zhuan only since the Song dynasty (960-1279).

We can be certain neither that Ge Hong (283-343) himself wrote even the earliest-attested passages nor that he did not write event he latest attested. What we can be certain of is the date by which each passage existed and was attributed to the Shenxian Zhuan. … Based on these criteria, we can conclude that material concerning 15 adepts is reliably attributed to the Shenxian Zhuan before the year 500, that material about an additional 70 figures is reliably attributed to Shenxian Zhuan by 650, 9 more figures by 700, 22 more by the year 1000, and so on. Imagining these groups of material arranged in concentric circles by source, the earliest at the center, one quickly sees that there is a substantial body of hagiographic text occupying the inner rings, attributable with relative confidence to Shenxian Zhuan and securely datable to the late Tang or earlier. Hence, of the total of 196 hagiographies (in whole or fragmentary form) included in my translation, some percentage of at least 87 is attested in Tang or earlier texts.

Based upon detailed analysis of Shenxian Zhuan editions and fragments, Stephan Peter Bumbacher confirms the possibility that the text "indeed is from Ge Hong's brush"; however, if it is a forgery, "then it must have been fabricated in the time between Ge Hong's death and the earliest testimonies in the early 5th century (c. 429), most probably during the first decades after his decease."

[Charis Wolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually got this book thinking it was his Bao Pu Zi... It's not. But it is still worth reading. And since the entries are all separate, you can pick and choose what to read.