Personal Salvation and Filial Piety: Two Precious Scroll Narratives of Guanyin and Her Acolytes

by Wilt L. Idema (Translator)

The Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara was a handsome prince when he entered China. As Guanyin, the bodhisattva was venerated from the eleventh century onward in the shape of a beautiful woman who became a universal savior. Throughout the last millennium, the female Guanyin has enjoyed wide and fervid veneration throughout East Asia and has appeared as a major character in literature and legend. In one tale, Guanyin (as the princess Miaoshan) returns from the dead after being executed by the king, her father, for refusing to marry. The most popular version of this legend is The Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain (Xiangshan baojuan) , a long narrative in prose and verse and a work of considerable literary merit. It emphasizes the conflict between father and daughter, in the course of which all conventional arguments against a religious lifestyle are paraded and rebutted. A lengthy description of Guanyin’s visit to the underworld, which focuses on the conflict between grace and justice, is also included.

Personal Salvation and Filial Piety offers a complete and fully annotated translation of The Precious Scroll , based on a nineteenth-century edition. The translation is preceded by a substantial introduction that discusses the origin of the text and the genre to which it belongs and highlights the similarities and differences between the scroll and female saints’ lives from medieval Europe. There follows a translation of the much-shorter Precious Scroll of Good-in-Talent and Dragon Daughter , which provides a humorous account of how Guanyin acquired the three acolytes―Sudhana, Nagakanya, and a white parrot―who are often shown surrounding her in popular prints.

As the first English-language translation of major "precious scrolls," Personal Salvation and Filial Piety will appeal to a wide range of readers―from scholars of Chinese literature to students of Buddhism. Beyond the field of East Asian studies, it will interest specialists in comparative religion and literature and feminist theologians. Because of its lively and moving narratives, the text is suitable for courses on popular Buddhist religiosity (particularly female religiosity) in Chinese society.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2008

About the author

Wilt L. Idema obtained his BA and MA from Leiden University. Following continued study in Sapporo (at Hokkaido University) and in Kyoto (at Kyoto University), and research in Hong Kong (at the Universities Service Center), he returned to Leiden, where he taught in the Department of Chinese Language and Culture. He obtained his doctorate in 1974, and was promoted to Professor of Chinese Literature and Linguistics in 1976. Since 2000, he has been teaching at Harvard as Professor of Chinese Literature. Wilt Idema's research initially was focused on the early development of Chinese vernacular fiction (Chinese Vernacular Fiction: The Formative Period, 1974), but later shifted more towards early Chinese drama (Chinese Theater 1100-1450, A Source Book, with Stephen West; 1982; The Dramatic Oeuvre of Chu Yu-tun (1379-1439), 1985; Wang Shifu, The Moon and the Zither: The Story of the Western Wing, with Stephen H. West, 1992). In recent years he also has published on Chinese women's literature of the premodern period (The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China, with Beata Grant, 2004). His current research is focused on China's rich tradition of popular narrative ballads. He is also the author, with Lloyd Haft, of A Guide to Chinese Literature (1997). For his voluminous Dutch-language translations, especially of classical Chinese poetry, he received the Martinus Nijhof Award for 1991, the highest distinction for literary translations in the Netherlands.