Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China

by Robert Ford Campany

Honorable Mention, Joseph Levenson Prize (pre-1900 category) , Association for Asian Studies By the middle of the third century B.C.E. in China there were individuals who sought to become transcendents (xian)― deathless, godlike beings endowed with supernormal powers. This quest for transcendence became a major form of religious expression and helped lay the foundation on which the first Daoist religion was built. Both xian and those who aspired to this exalted status in the centuries leading up to 350 C.E. have traditionally been portrayed as secretive and hermit-like figures. This groundbreaking study offers a very different view of xian- seekers in late classical and early medieval China. It suggests that transcendence did not involve a withdrawal from society but rather should be seen as a religious role situated among other social roles and conceived in contrast to them. Robert Campany argues that the much-discussed secrecy surrounding ascetic disciplines was actually one important way in which practitioners presented themselves to others. He contends, moreover, that many adepts were not socially isolated at all but were much sought after for their power to heal the sick, divine the future, and narrate their exotic experiences. The book moves from a description of the roles of xian and xian- seekers to an account of how individuals filled these roles, whether by their own agency or by others’―or, often, by both. Campany summarizes the repertoire of features that constituted xian roles and presents a detailed example of what analyses of those cultural repertoires look like. He charts the functions of a basic dialectic in the self-presentations of adepts and examines their narratives and relations with others, including family members and officials. Finally, he looks at hagiographies as attempts to persuade readers as to the identities and reputations of past individuals. His interpretation of these stories allows us to see how reputations were shaped and even co-opted―sometimes quite surprisingly―into the ranks of xian . Making Transcendents provides a nuanced discussion that draws on a sophisticated grasp of diverse theoretical sources while being thoroughly grounded in traditional Chinese hagiographical, historiographical, and scriptural texts. The picture it presents of the quest for transcendence as a social phenomenon in early medieval China is original and provocative, as is the paradigm it offers for understanding the roles of holy persons in other societies.

Genres: China, History, Nonfiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2009

Reviews

[Chelsea · Rating 4 out of 5]

小时读的故事起源于神话故事，确一直不明古代的“仙”如何诞生，今日倒是翻的一本冷门小书，从一个西方宗教的视角解剖中国古代什么是仙，如何构建与文本和意识形态过程，如何在保持远离社会而塑造身份的不同，但而又需通过群体社会接受和集体记忆才能成为仙。 仙的形成与理解构成觉得的特征和行为，扮演觉得人与他的观众，观众应答之间相互交流的社会过程才能理解从社会文化视角仙的形成过程。

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Campany is without a doubt one of my favourite historians of Chinese religion, his books are really excellent with a high level of scholarship and he's interested in a lot of the same things that I am. His Divine Transcendents book is one of my top five history books of all time. His books are aimed at a very small scholarly audience and so always quite expensive, but I've found if I'm patient I can usually end up getting a cheap(er) copy. When I started to read this though I was a little disappointed. There was a lot of the "post-modern" vocabulary that seems to plague modern scholarship these days. A lot of discussion of "performance" and "audience" around texts. It wasn't as bad as some books, but it did put me off a bit for the first 50 pages. After that though the book got much more interesting as he did a deep textual analysis of the reception of transcendents, and people who wanted to be transcendents within Chinese society during the Han. A lot of the material covered was the same as in Divine Transcendents but the focus had shifted from how people become transcendents to how they were perceived within the community, and how the community built up the tales surrounding them through stele, hagiography and other tales. It was interesting to see that the first premise about transcendents (that they withdrew from the community to live in isolation) was in many cases false, and that they frequently had large groups of followers, and would deliberately try and perform spectacular feats for the Emperor and the populace. The last chapter was I think the most interesting, as Campany took two different transcendents stories, one that had been lost till 1992, and one that had been passed down and commented on for 2000 years, and compared the different success and reception of the two stories. It was an interesting look at what the society considered to be important about transcendents, what would make them stay in the public conciousness through hagiography and temples and shrines. While I was a little disappointed in this book, when he left behind the theory of why he was doing something and just did it I found the work fascinating and a good compliment to his previous work.

[versarbre · Rating 3 out of 5]

It seems Peter Brown's 1971 treatise on the role of the holy man in late antiquity was the main reference point for the author's treatise of the Chinese status of "xian." The narrative plot is clear in this regard. The book seems to be written for a small group of experts in the narrow field of Chinese religions. But it could have been a book for comparative studies of sainthood. The book already does this but it seems the conversation is still absent. How so?

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tropological analysis of the 'transcendent' (xian) and his (sometimes her) creators in the period before the Tang (pre-, para-, or proto- Daoism), gleaned largely from earlier studies on 'biographies/traditions' (zhuan) of the transcendents, but also from new epigraphical material and works of more skeptical authors. Great stuff, great analyses on the Durkheimian model of social constructionism. Nothing new though, theoretically, perhaps - but maybe that comes with the material.