A Medieval, Central Asian Buddhist Theme in a Late Ming Taoist Tale by Feng Meng-lung
Abstract
Feng Meng-lung's (1574-1646) Stories from Yesterday and Today (Ku-chin hsiao-shuo) includes a short story entitled "Chang Tao-ling Seven Times Tests Chao Sheng" ("Chang Tao-ling ch'i shih Chao Sheng"). One of the most memorable episodes of the story is a contest of supernatural powers between the Taoist master Chang Tao-ling and Six Demon Kings. At first glance, the structure, development, and even some of the minutiae of the episode are remarkably similar to the celebrated contest of supernatural powers between Sariputra and the Six Heterodox Masters recounted in the "Transformation [Text] on the Subduing of Demons" (Hsiang-mo pien[-wen]) from Tun-huang dating to around the middle of the eighth century. Consequently, several scholars have suggested that the Ming tale must have borrowed the contest episode from the transformation text. This poses the puzzle of how Feng Meng-lung had access to the mid-Tang Buddhist tale from the far western reaches of China since the latter seems to have disappeared from circulation by the first third of the eleventh century. The contest between Sariputra and the Six Heterodox Masters is also to be found in an earlier collection of Buddhist tales, The Sūtra of the Wise and the Foolish (Hsien-yü ching) (compiled in 445 on the basis of materials gathered in the Central Asian city of Khotan) which is a part of the Chinese Buddhist canon and would thus have been available to Feng Meng-lung. Yet, upon closer examination, the nature and arrangement of the episode's incidents in "Chang Tao-ling Seven Times Tests Chao Sheng" are not as close to those of the contest in the "Transformation Text on the Subduing of Demons" and in The Sūtra of the Wise and the Foolish as they are to transformational encounters in such late Ming novels as Investiture of the Gods (Feng-shen yen-yi) and Journey to the West (Hsi-yu chi). Hence, we may say that the ultimate, but not the immediate, source of inspiration for the contest of supernatural powers in "Chang Tao-ling Seven Times Tests Chao Sheng" is the Buddhist tale about Sariputra and the Six Heterodox Masters. Furthermore, inasmuch as the contest of supernatural powers is not included in any of the standard Taoist hagiographical accounts concerning Chang Tao-ling or his disciple Chao Sheng which constituted the primary materials for "Chang Tao-ling Seven Times Tests Chao Sheng", Feng seems to have picked it up from other sources, perhaps strictly oral, which have not been preserved for us.