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Between Representations: The Historical and the Visionary in Chen Hongshou's "Yaji"Author(s): Anne Burkus-ChassonSource: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 84, No. 2 (Jun., 2002), pp. 315-333Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3177271

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B e t w e e n Representations:h e Historical a n d t h e

Visionary in C h e n Hongshou's Y a j i

Anne Burkus-Chasson

Some time between late 1646 and early 1647, Chen Hong-shou (1598-1652) painted an unusual image of nine men

gathered in a wooded close, their company undisturbed bythe appearance of a bodhisattva (Figs. 1, 9). He presented the

handscroll, now known as Yaji, or Elegant Gathering, to Tao

Qubing ("Ridding Sickness" Tao), whose seals appear be-

neath Chen's dedication. Tao was an acquaintance from that

period of violent disruption, after Manchu armies had occu-

pied the southeastern provinces of China in the summer and

fall of 1646. That summer, Chen took refuge in a Buddhist

monastery south of Shaoxing, deep within the Yunmen, or

"Cloudy Gate," Mountains.' Indicating his ambivalence as a

Buddhist monk, he signed this painting as "Monk Who Re-

grets" (Seng hui) and impressed two rare seals, "RegretfulToo Late" (Hui chi) and "Not Too Late" (Fu chi).2

The present title of the handscroll, yaji, or "elegant gath-

ering," suggests that the picture belongs to a genre of Chi-

nese painting that exhibits groups of like-minded men-

either named or anonymous, historical or imaginary-incelebration of their community. Elegant Gathering n theApricotGardenby Xie Huan (fl. 1368-1437), a handscroll from the

early Ming court, exemplifies the historical subjects within

this genre (Fig. 2).3 Inscriptions on the painting indicate that

it records a gathering of eight bureaucratic colleagues on

April 6, 1437, at the Apricot Garden, the Beijing residence of

the powerful court official Yang Rong (1371-1440).4 In the

section of the scroll reproduced here, the minister Yang Pu(1372-1446) leans toward a colleague who admires a paint-

ing. Another, seated at a table, prepares to write. The figures

perform, ostentatiously, activities of educated men. The ele-

ments of the garden-its luxuriant plantings as well as its

pitted rocks-frame them and enhance their presence.These three men, accompanied by servants, are further dis-

tinguished by their ceremonial court costumes. Telling at-

tributes of their dress include the wusha mao (black silken

gauze hat), furnished at its base with two outstretched rib-

bons; the colorful outer robe, designed with wide sleeves and

a circular collar; the stiff leather belt, decorated with plaquesof precious materials; and the badge of official rank, repre-sented here

bythe

figureof two

cranes,emblazoned with

gold paint, on the front of Yang Pu's robe.5 Xie Huan's

rendition of the "elegant gathering" underscores the ideo-

logical impetus for the production of such paintings: theycommemorated the association of allied men and celebrated

the political and social order that defined and supportedtheir alliance.

In contrast, Chen's Elegant Gathering hwarts the distinctive

act of the genre to eulogize. Although the artist identified

each of the nine historical figures he portrayed, it is doubtful

that they ever actually convened. What the fictive image of

community commemorates, therefore, is uncertain. More-

over, Chen did not elaborate the gathering with signs of an

established social or political order. Nor did he put the

figures on display in a frontally disposed arrangement.Rather, the group of men is divided. A stand of trees

absorbs several of its members at left; another, at far right, is

placed entirely apart. Their costumes and headdresses signifywithdrawal. It is fitting, then, that the setting is harsh and

secluded: the border of a garden, edged with rocks, marked

with a solitary cypress, a spire of pitted rock, the tattered

fronds of a banana palm. A stone table, at which several of the

men sit, bears implements of Buddhist worship, but these are

placed in an asymmetrical disorder. A hooded figure seated

at the table, positioned with his back to the viewer, intones a

sacred text. But the efficacious power of the spoken words is

thrown into doubt. For although the appearance of a bodhi-

sattva, who seems to preside over the gathering, may be

understood as an act of deliverance in response to the into-

nation, the members of the group do not openly acknowl-

edge her presence. Since the painting does not present a

coherent scene of worship, it is uncertain that these men

were united by Buddhism. Conflict between the picturedscene and the generic situation of the "elegant gathering"creates a tone of dissonance: the assembly calls for commem-

oration, but it is not a ceremonial occasion; the manifestation

of the bodhisattva calls for acknowledgment and obeisance,

but the divinity apparently remains unseen.6

Interpretations of Elegant Gatheringdwell on the portrait-

like depiction of the figural group and its allusion to conven-tional representations of a historical gathering that occurred

in the fifth century.7 However, in this essay I begin with the

premise that the pictured gathering is an imaginary event.

Analyzing the fabrication of Chen's unusual "elegant gather-

ing," I look to the historical circumstances under which the

painting was produced, that is, the mid-seventeenth-centurywars of the dynastic transition. I also examine how the pre-sentation of a story within this "elegant gathering" allows the

exploration of historical issues that pertain to the nature of

sight and seeing.The dynastic crisis of the mid-seventeenth century informs

Chen's work in various ways, particularly in a conflicted atti-

tude toward theefficacy

of Buddhistpractice

tobring

salva-

tion from the terrors of the war. The nine historical figuresChen convened in the imaginary realm of the painting are

known to have been engaged in the study and practice of

Buddhism. However, they represent a spectrum of beliefs.

Within the uncertain alliance that Chen drew them into, they

embody points of doctrinal debate. The presence of the

uncelebrated divinity among them accentuates the urgencyof the debate; the means by which the bodhisattva might be

made fully manifest to the devotee, thereby bringing salva-

tion, is left undecided.

Skepticism fitted the circumstances of the mid-1640s. The

country was engulfed in war for decades after the fall of the



316 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2002 VOLUME LXXXIV NUMBER 2

1 Chen Hongshou,ElegantGatherin$ andscroll, nk on paper,ca. 1646-47. ShanghaiMuseum(fromZhongguo eishu uanji:uihua ian,vol. 8, Mingdaihuihua, ol. 3, 186)

2 ie Huan,ElegantGatheringn theApricotarden,ection three of ahandscroll,nk and color on silk,1437.ewYork,The MetropolitanMuseumf Art,Purchase,The DillonFundift,1989,1989.141.3

Mingouse and during the consolidation of the ManchuQingynasty.Manyloyalistsamong the Chinese social elite,likehen, sought refuge in Buddhist monasteries from thedestructionf the cities, the massacres,and the suicides.8Many,ike Chen,were tonsured,makingofficialan affiliationthat,rior to the war, may have been only an intellectualinclinationr a

mark of status.9For some, therefore, theprotectionound withinthe Buddhistcommunitywasaccom-paniedy concerns about the sincerityof their belief. Thatwhichas convincingly enacted to the eye may have beenwhollyalse from within. Chen often acknowledgedthe pre-tensender which he brieflywore the costume of a monk:"Howan I be a monk?I pretend to be a monk merelyto savemyife.''l?Nonetheless, it is undeniable that he and many ofhisontemporarieswere familiarwith sacred Buddhist texts,whichromised to the faithful deliverance from suffering,includinghe terrorsof war.A yearningfor salvationthroughanfficacious eligious practice must have been difficult to

suppress,espite unresolved questions about the distunctionbetweenworshiper'sprivatemotivation and public acts ofritual.anylate Ming philosophers perceived a tension be-tweenhe inner mind and the outer body and viewedit withdisquiet.twasLu Kun (1536-1618) who observedthat mim-ickinghe wordsof ancient sages is merelyplayacting,a

studyinweepingnd laughing, without grief or happiness.1lDoubts bout the authenticityof visualappearances,whichmarkeventeenth-century ethics, also prompted a generalepistemologicalnterest in what the eye perceived. Chenengageshe viewerof ElegantGatheringn a debate about thenaturef sight and seeing, elaborating it within a story.12Detailsn the composition of the painting, despite theirrealisticffect, disturbits coherence and emphasize instead atensionetween the real and the illusory.Such a tension isexemplifiedn the image of the bodhisattva,whose appear-ance,onjured by the intonation of a sacred text, constitutesa isionaryvent, but that exhibits attributes of a sculpted



CHEN HONGSHOU S YAJI 317

icon. Simultaneously mmaterial and material, the bodhisat-tva s at the center of a story that dwells on the question, Who

sees? The events of the visual story are uncomplicated, yet thepainting conveys a strong sense of uncertainty. Through theintroduction of different levels of narration, Chen raises and

leaves unresolved the question of whether the bodhisattva,

though unacknowledged and uncelebrated by the group, is

perceived by one of the participants. The hooded characterat the stone table who holds a manuscript faces her. The

possibility that he can see the bodhisattva renders the visualstory unstable and ambiguous. For if the apparition is seen by

the hooded character, the act of his perception becomes atransformative vent that alters the story about the gathering.

The others, too, may look and see; their assembly may unite

to celebrate the manifestation of the divinity. But the objectof the hooded character's sight remains indefinite. The con-flict between the real and the i llusory that persistswithin the

painting intensifies the doubt that Chen raises about the

authenticity of the seer and the seen.

Between History and FictionElegantGatheringis n artful lie. One of Chen's most complexpaintings, it is particularlyambitious in its examination of the

intersection between history and fiction. For although the

nine figures pictured and named in the work are all known to

have existed, no evidence shows that they ever convened as agroup. Chen seems to have invented the gathering. Invention

of this sort is not unknown in renditions of the "elegantgathering."As Ellen Johnston Laing has demonstrated, rep-resentations of the famous "Elegant Gathering in the West-

ern Garden" that show the assembly of Su Shi (1037-1101)and members of his coterie are not based on historical fact.l3

However,within his imaginary"elegant gathering,"Chen alsoalluded to several documented historical gatherings. The

conundrum, then is to explain why the painter vacillatedbetween the historical and the fictive.

As a painter of historical narratives, Chen assumed the

didactic role of the historian. However, in picturing an in-

structive event from the past, he tended to heighten itsemotional aspect and focus on its transient, unknowablemoments. The moral paradigm represented by the event thus

lost its central importance. To use the critical terms of hiscontemporaries, Chen's predilection to depict emotion made

his paintings like theatrical performances.l4 One writerpraised him for having brought sounds and tears to a paint-

ing of the hapless Wenji, who was abducted in the secondcentury C.E. and forced to become the wife of a Hunnish

chieftain.l5 Emulating the anonymous illustrators of wood-block-printed books, in particular, fiction, which flourishedin the seventeenth century, Chen depended on exaggerated

figural gestures to invest a climactic narrative event withaffective power.l6 Chen's historical paintings, presented asillustration, thus verge on fiction. It is unsurprising, then,

that he also fabricated historical events. As KoharaHironobuhas demonstrated, Chen invented a scene in Episodesrom the

Lifeof TaoQian,a handscroll from 1650, pictured or recordednowhere else.l7

Chen's Farewell f Su Wu and Li Lin$ probably from the

1630s, exemplifies his proclivity to invent the past (Fig. 3).Both Su Wu and Li Ling surrendered to Hunnish forces

3 Chen, Farewellf Su Wuand Li Lin$ hanging scroll, nk and coloron silk, ca. 1630s. ChingYuan Chai Collection, on extended loan tothe UniversityArt Museum, University f Califomia,Berkeley



318 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2002 VOLUME LXXXIV NUM BER 2

during the conflicts of the first century B.C.E. Under the

duress of capture, Li capitulated to the enemy, whereas Su

remained loyal to the Han emperors and was forced to herd

sheep. The loyalist, usually portrayed isolated on a barren

plain, identified by his tasseled staff, an emblem of his impe-rial commission, became a figure of exemplary behavior. Su

was eventually released, but Li, the collaborator, remained in

exile. The sorrow expressed at their farewell was recorded by

historians; painters traditionally showed them in a warm em-

brace. Chen, however, introduces an element of conflict

between the two men. Su, in tattered clothes, draws back

from Li, holding a fisted hand to his mouth. It is unclear what

has disturbed him. Li, in a military costume that is vaguely

foreign, covers his face with both hands, either simply hidinghis face from his friend or weeping. Indifferent to the histor-

ical event, his attendants, shrugging off the cold, mark time.

This is appropriate, for Chen portrayed a transient moment

in the farewell of these men that had no witness.

Chen's historical fiction, or fictive history, evidences the

permeability of the boundary that separated history and fic-

tion in traditional Chinese historiography. On the one hand,despite an awareness that they used language and the imag-

inary as their tools, traditional historians were disinclined to

acknowledge an inventive or subjective aspect to their writ-

ing.18 On the other hand, stories, denigrated as xiaoshuo, or

gossip, were traditionally included in the bibliographical cat-

egory of history.19 Moreover, writers of fiction commonlyborrowed the verisimilitude of history to validate their texts.

David Der-wei Wang has therefore suggested that "the world

implied in the bulk of classical Chinese fiction is one in which

everything 'means' as long as it is related to a historical

context."20 The didactic purposes of historical writing, as well

as the role that history played in the legitimation of political

power, largely explain the privilege granted to history intraditional China.21

However, by the early decades of the seventeenth century,

invention, or xu (emptiness), was increasingly acknowledgedto be a valid aspect of a fiction writer's craft, and one that

distinguished it from historical writing.22 The nature of fic-

tionality, notably, the contradiction between its dreamlike

status and its lifelike aspect, attracted many commentators.

The capricious remarks of the seventeenth-century publisher

Wang Qi on the power of fictional characters to convince a

reader of their material presence are pertinent:

Today's popular novels are all lies. There is no need to talk

about the mediocre and absurd among them. The goodones are like actually hearing and seeing, like an intimate

conversation, such that you call and he comes, when he

laughs there's noise, when he cries there are tears-as in

your many publications. Today's readers only perceivetheir remarkable qualities, not the fact that they are lies. It

is a miracle that your technique is so sophisticated. Of

course, common people who cannot read and who have

never opened a book might mutter "lies, lies." I think now

of an episode in the Zuozhuan. Chu Ni was going to stab

Zhao Xuanzi, but then he saw Xuanzi fully dressed on the

bed and could not bear to hurt him. He stood back and

sighed: "I do not forget respect, etc. etc." Then he

rammed his head against a tree and died. Zhao Xuanzi

never woke up. As far as Chu Ni's utterance is concerned,

there was no one else around to know what he had said. So

how did Zuo Qiu know about it? Those who hear this story

spontaneously applaud. But from my point of view, Zuo is

the progenitor of a whole line of literary lies. Yet no one

thinks of them as lies.23

Although Wang extols the verbal crafting of illusion, he

refuses to be seduced into accepting the reality of its illusion.

It is unusual that his skepticism should have extended to

historical writing as well. Nevertheless, he demonstrates how

the author of the classic chronicle Zuozhuan, or Zuo's Com-

mentary, rom the fourth century B.C.E., also fabricated lifelike

illusions.

In this sense, Elegant Gathering s an artful lie. The labeled

names that identify the figures suggest that the picture is a

historical document. Traced in gold ink, they are conspicu-ous and yet fragile in their luminosity, awkwardly suspendedin the interstices of the composition.24 Chen used a tool of

the historian, that is, language, to reconstruct a past event

and to verify its authenticity. Each of the nine men he de-picted is known to have associated with either the late six-

teenth-century poet Yuan Hongdao or his intimate friends.

Each demonstrated an interest in Buddhism, although the

sectarian affiliation, as well as the devoutness, of their reli-

gious practice differed. Some were inclined toward Chan,

whereas others were affiliated with lay Buddhist organiza-

tions, notably those inspired by the Pure Land monk Yunqi

Zhuhong (1535-1615). Some were known to have practicedboth Chan and Pure Land, thus participating in a syncreticmovement that had been initiated by contemporary Buddhist

teachers, including Zhuhong. Several among them were also

students of the controversial Confucian thinker Wang Yang-

ming (1472-1529) and his later followers.At the opening of the scroll, in the lower right corner of

the painting, Tao Shiling (1571-1640), more casually identi-

fied as "TaoJunshi," is seated on a chair of plaited grass, his

solitary figure framed by the knotted branches of a cypress.25He was the younger brother of the writer Tao Wangling

(1562-1609, jinshi 1589), who also appears in Elegant Gather-

ing. Shiling did not excel in a bureaucratic career, distin-

guishing himself instead as a lecturer and a teacher of Con-

fucian philosophy. Concerned with the problem of ethical

learning, he believed in the mind's capacity to come to a

sudden understanding of its heavenly nature, and he advo-

cated meditation as a means of beginning moral cultivation.26

In this, he demonstrated his leaning toward the teachings of

Wang Yangming, who had advocated reliance on the innate

consciousness of the mind to recognize good and evil, as well

as those of his later followers, notably WangJi (1498-1583),who argued that the original mind did not make moral

judgments.27 Letters exchanged between Shiling and his el-

der brother indicate their interest in the iconoclastic writer Li

Zhi (1527-1602), who denounced the hypocrisy of contem-

porary mores and celebrated the "childlike" mind as a source

of authenticity. The letters further reveal the seriousness with

which they studied Chan.28 Following his brother, Shilingshowed an interest in Zhuhong's teaching as well, assisting in

the publication of the monk's writings.29In the central section of the handscroll, which is framed at



CHEN HONGSHOU'S YAJI 319

either end by large trees, other members of the group gatheraround a stone table. The figure named "Huang Zhaosu," or

Huang Hui (1554-1612, jinshi 1589), is seated on a fancy rugto the left of the darkly marked cypress.30 An eminent gov-ernment official forced from office by scandal, Huang de-

voted himself to the practice of Pure Land Buddhism. He was

especially moved by the writings of Zhuhong and, in partic-

ular, by his widely circulated essay on the doctrine of non-

killing.31 He emulated Tao Wangling, whom he considered a

fellow disciple,32 and associated with the monk Yu'an, who,

like Tao, is portrayed in Chen's tableau. Noted for his artistryas a calligrapher and a poet, Huang was well acquainted with

the two elder Yuan brothers, with whom he shared literaryinterests. His style of writing is said to have been transformed

after he encountered Hongdao in 1598.33

The figure named "Wang Jingxu," also known as WangZanhua (fl. late sixteenth century), has just risen from a

gnarled wooden backrest. Positioned in front of "Huang

Zhaosu," he bends forward, his hands placed together in

front of his chest. A government student from Shanyin, Wang

Zanhua practiced Chan.34 Briefly acquainted with YuanHongdao and the two Tao brothers, Wangling and Shiling,he accompanied them on a trip in 1597 to scenic sites in

northern Zhejiang.35 Through his acquaintance with Hong-

dao, Wang was introduced to Li Zhi, who apparently became

a close associate.36 The figure of Tao Yunjia (fl. late sixteenth

century), here identified as "TaoYoumei," leans on the stone

table, holding a wooden staff in the crook of his arm. Though

recognized as a poet, Tao did not excel in political affairs.37

A correspondent of Tao Wangling, he was a member of that

prominent family from Kuaiji.38 Little is known about his

engagement with Buddhism, though he apparently sympa-thized with the religious devotions of his famous relative. An

undated letter by Tao Wangling addressed to him suggeststhat he participated in Wangling's society for "releasing livingcreatures" (fangsheng), a practice advocated by Zhuhong.39Tao later recorded Yunjia's effort to care for an Indian monk

who had traveled to China, and whom Yunjia likened to

Bodhidharma, the reputed founder of Chan.40

Pictured in front of the stone table, seated on a mat of

plaited grass, is a Buddhist monk named "Yu'an heshang."

Formally known as Zhengui (fl. late sixteenth century), Yu'an

was a native of western Sichuan.41 He left home as a young

boy, following his father, and together they were ordained in

1569. After traveling widely, they settled in Beijing. Althoughtheir lineage is undefined, they apparently advocated the

dual practice of Chan and Pure Land Buddhism. In 1589,

Yu'an was invited to head a temple that was to be built outside

the gates of the capital city, where he became a teacher of

renown.42 Completed in 1602, the temple was named Cihui

(Compassion and Wisdom) by the dowager empress. Tao

Wangling composed the history of the temple, which was

engraved on a stone stela in the hand of Huang Hui. In this

text, Tao indicates that, among other official donors, both

Yuan Zongdao and Huang Hui contributed to the establish-

ment of the temple.43 Huang was a specially close associate of

Yu'an and paid deference to him on questions of dogma. The

record of his experience with a transfigured spider was en-

graved on a stela at Cihui si, and a pagoda was erected there

for its commemoration.44

The hooded figure seated next to 'Yu'an" holding a manu-

script in his hands is Mi Wanzhong (1570-1628, jinshi 1595),

here named "Mi Zhongzhao." A dedicated civil servant, Mi

served in provincial administrations as well as in the central

government, until he was wrongfully impeached in the mid-

1620s.45 A noted calligrapher and painter, Mi was also cele-

brated for his collection of strange rocks. These he exhibited

in the several gardens he built in Beijing, where he hosted

gatherings that became famous in the writings of his contem-

poraries, including those of Huang Hui.46 Records about

Shao Garden suggest that Mi was inclined toward Chan.47 At

the northern end of the garden stood a building named Se

kong tian (Firmament of Form and Formlessness), whose

interior displayed images of bodhisattvas. The name of the

building refers to the enigmatic lines of the Heart Sutra, a

text that had prompted considerable commentary by Chan

authorities: "Form is emptiness; emptiness is form."48 Al-

though Mi's biographers do not dwell on his practice of

Buddhism, Wang Siren (b. 1575) observed that he meditat-

ed.49 However, the diary entries of Yuan Zhongdao, a close

friend, indicate that Mi, like many of his contemporaries, also

considered Buddhist monasteries places for the convivial

gathering of friends.50

The trunk of a withered tree obscures the figure named

"Tao Zhouwang," also known as Tao Wangling. Seated on a

figured rug and pinned in place by the stone table and the

twisted wood of his backrest, he gestures toward "Mi Zhong-zhao." Tao held prestigious positions within the central gov-ernment.51 As a writer, he shared the literary ideas held byYuan Hongdao and Zongdao, with whom he was well ac-

quainted. Like his brother Shiling, with whom he sometimes

lectured, he studied the writings of Wang Yangming, as well

as those of his radical disciples, notably Zhou Rudeng (1547-

1629?), who considered that the mind was beyond good and

evil.52 Tao also admired the writings of Li Zhi. Though a

student of Chan, in his later years he became a disciple of

Zhuhong, and in 1601 he organized a fangsheng society in

Kuaiji.53

The two elder Yuan brothers appear at the far end of the

stone table. They are isolated, encased within a densely

wrought frame of foliage, branch, and trunk. The figurelabeled 'Yuan Zhonglang," or Hongdao (1568-1610, jinshi

1592), seated on a fancy rug, folds his hands on the edge of

a fan. "YuanBoxiu," or Zongdao (1560-1600, jinshi 1586), is

seated behind him, erect in a chair of plaited grass. Both men

pursued prominent government careers, but at the same time

devoted themselves to writing and became known as leadersof the Gongan school of poetry.54 They spurned the imitation

of canonical poets and advocated reliance on xingling (native

sensibility) to bring forth the words of a text. Thus, they

adopted the philosophical notions of Li Zhi, with whom theyassociated for some time. The brothers also shared an abid-

ing interest in Buddhism.55 Inclined toward Chan, both

brothers later turned to the practice of Pure Land Bud-

dhism.56 In 1599, Hongdao wrote Xifang helun (Combineddiscussions about the western quarter).57 Advocating the no-

tion that the Pure Land lies in the mind, Hongdao endeav-

ored to combine Pure Land and Chan in a way that recalls

the teachings of Zhuhong.58 Zongdao contributed a preface




to the text.59 n his own preface, Hongdao acknowledgedthe

encouragement of Huang Hui and Yu'an.60The complex filiation among the nine men pictured in

ElegantGatherings undeniable;it is in fact plausiblethat theyonce convened, which encourages a realist reading of the

painting.Yuan Zongdao'sdeath in 1600 providesa terminusad quem for the gathering.Prior to 1600, the activitiesof his

associates are difficult to trace. Nonetheless, the followingevidence indicates that they never met together. Wang Zan-hua disappearsfrom the writingsof YuanHongdao and Tao

Wangling after 1597; he apparently remained isolated in

Zhejiang and unrelated to the other members of Chen's

tableau.Similarly, he lettersof TaoWanglingsuggest thathisbrother Shiling remained isolated in Kuaiji during the late1590s.61 Finally,although MiWanzhongretired to Beijingin1597 to mourn the death of his father, he is not mentionedin the writingsof the two elder Yuanbrothers,who assumed

government positions in Beijing in 1598.

Nonetheless, as with a literaryfiction, it is in relation to

history that the fictive aspect of ElegantGathering cquires

meaning. The image deliberately verges on the real. Theartfulness of Chen's fantasyrests on his calculated allusionwithin his fictive gathering to several historical gatheringsthatpertainto the literaryambitionssharedby Chen and the

painting's recipient,Tao Qubing. They pertain as well to the

religious concerns of the painter-monk,who, in 1646-47,

expressed uneasiness with his opportunistic disguise as acleric. Through the examination of these allusions, I shalladdress the question of whyChen chose these particularninemen to constitute his imaginary gathering,

Despite his obscure place within its figuraldisposition, the

dominant presence of Yuan Hongdao in ElegantGatherings

indisputable.It has been proposed, therefore, that the paint-

ing wasa portraitof the Grape Society (Putao she), a literaryand philosophical club that had met in Beijingat a Buddhist

temple between 1598 and 1600.62The club brought togetherthe associates of Yuan Hongdao and his brothers Zongdaoand Zhongdao. But the painting proves to be an inexact

portrait. On the one hand, a number of the men Chen

pictured-Tao Shiling, Tao Yunjia,Wang Zanhua, and Mi

Wanzhong--did not participate n the GrapeSociety.On theother hand, prominent writerswho did take part in the club

were not included. Absent areJiangJinzhi (1556-1605), Pan

Shicao (jinshi1583), Xie Zhaozhe (1567-1624), Zhong Xing(1574-1625), and others who are repeatedly mentioned in

poems and essaysthat describe or commemorate the gather-

ings of the society.63Although a Buddhistmonkjoined their

group in the spring of 1599, he was not Yu'an but a Chanmonk named Sixin.64

Nevertheless, by evoking the Grape Society, the painteralluded to a literaryancestry. In his own writings, posthu-mouslycollected in Baoluntangji,Chen emulated the casual,

proselike diction of poets such as Su Shi and BaiJuyi (772-846) 65 He also tended to dwellon episodes of personalcrisis.He sought out what he called qing(feelings) in the subjectshe chose. At least once, he used the critical term xingling(nativesensibility)to identifywhat it wasthat wordsconveyedof the writingself.66These criticalnotions and literarytastesevidence his affinity with Yuan Hongdao and the Gonganpoets. It was a selectivechoice,YuanHongdao's influence was

limited in the early seventeenth century to a small circle of

friends, and his work was increasinglycriticizedby poets ofChen'sgeneration,67Nevertheless,membersof Chen'sfamilyhad associated with the poet and painter Xu Wei (1521-1593) and Tao Wangling,both important figuresamong the

Gongan poets.68Chen's familiaritywith the writingsof theircircle is demonstrated in the choice of figures named in

ElegantGathering,everal of whom could have been known tohim only in that context.

The painter's identificationwith the circle of YuanHong-dao extended beyond literarymatters. For Chen, the Wanli

period (1573-1620), when the Gongan poets were active,wasitself an object of idealization, In a short poem that he

probablywrote before the war and during his retirement inthe late 1620s or 1630s,he recollects the end of the sixteenth

century. The tone of the final couplet is nostalgic: "I am

lucky, and unexpectedly, today I imagined / The years ofGreat Peace under the reign of the emperor named Shen-

zong, the Divine Ancestor."69The first decade of the Wanli

period was indeed remarkablyprosperous. But by the time

Chen had entered the school system,and had writtenpoemsabout militaryand political affairs,the government was fal-

tering.The "GreatPeace"of the Wanliperiod wasshort-lived.In the late 1640s, when ElegantGathering as presented, the

power of the Ming government had been broken; its flour-

ishing past could only be envisioned at a dreadful remove.The dedicatoryinscription that appearsat the opening of

the scroll alludesindirectlyto a differenthistoricalgathering,which raises other questions about the representationalna-ture of this painting. It reads,"The Monk Who Regretsmadethis for Qubing, a Man of the Way."Qubing's seals appearbeneath the dedication; one bears his formal name, Tao

Xing.70A dedicated writer steeped in Confucian historical

learning, Tao was a founding member of a literary societywith which Chen was familiar.Although nothing is known

about the transactions between painter and recipient that

may have had a part in the making of Elegant Gathering,tseems likely that the painting recalls the literary alliancebetween them.

There is scant historicalevidence to assist in a reconstruc-tion of Tao'sbiography.71A nativeof Kuaiji,he livednear Mt.

Cao, the residence of the prominent Tao clan, whose mem-bers included the brothers Tao Wangling and Shiling. This

suggests that a genealogical tie bound Qubing to several ofthe men pictured in ElegantGathering, amely "Tao Zhou-

wang," "TaoJunshi" (with whom he was acquainted), and"TaoYoumei."72A maritalalliance between Qubing's familyand thatof the prominent statesmanQi Biaojia(1602-1645),who became his brother-in-law,confirms his social stand-

ing.73Chen, who wasacquaintedwith Qi's familybefore the

warsof the dynastictransition,was apparently ntroduced toTao in late 1646 through Qi Lisun (b. 1627), Biaojia'seldest

son, and Qi Hongsun (fl. mid-seventeenth century), his el-

dest nephew.74At the time, Tao lived in seclusion in theYunmenMountains,where Chen had sought refuge from thewar. Between 1646 and 1647, Chen addressedseveralpoemsto Tao, thanking him for gifts of rice and candles; other

poems mention him as a drinking companion.75Chen's oc-casional reference to the New Year in these poems suggeststhat Tao's gifts were presented to him in early 1647. Elegant




Gatheringwas probably exchanged between them around this

time as well. In 1649, not long thereafter, Qubing died.

Chen describes the companionship that was briefly main-

tained between him, Tao, and the younger Qis, emphasizingtheir ties to the Ming house as well as their common interest

in poetry.76 Of special import in this regard is Chen's prefaceto a manuscript of poems that he titled Bi luan (Escaping

confusion), In his introductory remarks, written on the eve of

the New Year in 1647, he recalled his escape from the chaos

of war that had overwhelmed the region of Shaoxing in the

summer of 1646. During the eight months of his flight, Chen

claimed to have written over one hundred poems, which were

treasured, he noted, by Tao Qubing, Qi Hongsun, and Qi

Lisun.77

Furthermore, Tao was a founding member of a literary

club named Fei she, or Throw Away Society, which convened

before and after the wars of the dynastic transition.78 Al-

though Chen apparently never attended the meetings of the

Throw Away Society, he once addressed a poem to the group.

It is a bitter text, full of self-denunciation and grief at the loss

of the country for which he held himself accountable. Itbegins: "Heaven and earth have been lavishly wasted. / The

society's name adopts 'throw away' as it should. / The hosts

are very pained at heart; / The listeners too are wounded."

To demonstrate his own uselessness, the poet enumerates

twelve societal obligations that he had forsaken and expresses

his wish to join the members of the Throw Away Society in

their hideaways near Mts. Cao and Hou. In the meantime, he

would make a store of poems, advising his fellow poets to

consider that "killing makes poetic subject matter. / Afflic-

tion and worry are the poem's guts."79Refracted through its

illusory medium, Elegant Gatheringmay have been understood

to mirror the Throw Away Society.

However, a portraitlike resemblance between the paintedfigures in Elegant Gatheringand the refugees of the Throw

Away Society is hardly tenable. No less tenable is a physiog-nomic resemblance between the members of the Grape So-

ciety and those of the Throw Away Society. Chen drew one

history on the palimpsest of another, illuminating wishful

continuities and regrettable discontinuities.

Chen's painting thus depicts an elusive and improbable

Wanli-period gathering, removed to the remote edge of a

garden. Trees placed in the foreground extend across and

beyond the full height of the scroll to enclose the figures and

to accentuate their isolation. It is appropriate, then, that the

eminent officials among them are hatted as retired gentle-

men. Both "Mi Zhongzhao" and "Tao Zhouwang" wear the

so-called Yuanming head cloth (Yuanming jin), named after

the pastoral poet Tao Qian (365-427) and worn for protec-tion against the wind.80 Students and officials alike are cos-

tumed in zhishen (straight body)-capacious robes, tied at

the waist, and edged with tinted borders-which identified

retired gentlemen.81 With the exception of "Tao Youmei,"

who wears a ceremonial headdress that is vaguely archaic, the

figures in Elegant Gatheringhave abandoned the sartorial signsand accoutrements of governmental station.82As they poseon fancy rugs and animal skins, their emulation of paradig-matic recluses of the past seems almost carefree.

But Chen's rendering of the "elegant gathering"is enig-matic. Emblems of endurance-the overarching limbs of a

withered tree, a dark cypress--dominate the scene.83 The

circumstances of withdrawal from political engagement are

represented as a hardship. An accurate rendering of the

Grape Society might have been the object of nostalgia and

reverie. A portrait might have conjured the past and all that

had been lost during the war. The falseness of Chen's por-

trayal betrays its historical referents. It prompts other reread-

ings and other renamings of the historical event. An imagi-

nary gathering that bears an uncanny resemblance to the

Grape Society recedes; an image of the Throw Away Society

slips into place. Neither historical group is entirely present.The juxtaposition of the Grape Society with the Throw

Away Society also exemplifies a mechanism of historical

change that characterized traditional Chinese historiogra-

phy. Cyclical patterns of transformation were considered to

govern human history, just as they governed the regular

waxing and waning of the day and the year. The flourishingcircumstances of the Wanli-period poetry society must inevi-

tably wane; the diminished circumstances of the subsequentThrow Away Society were ineluctable. Chen's interest lay in

the atemporal significance of history, in the fundamentalpatterns of historical change that are perceived over time. In

this, he emulated contemporary fiction writers who elabo-

rated allegorical tales, designed to explain the present day,with illusory historical events.84

If the juxtaposition of the two historical literary societies in

Elegant Gatheringdelineates a vision of history that is repetitiveand unchanging, the transfigured presence of a third histor-

ical gathering within Chen's painting offers an escape. A

compositional peculiarity of Elegant Gatheringalludes to the

legendary Buddhist monk Huiyuan (334-417), who led a

small group of clerical and lay followers at his retreat on Mt.

Lu.85 In the autumn of 402, he is recorded to have assembled

his followersbefore an

imageof the Buddha

Amitabha,where they vowed to help one another gain rebirth in

Sukhavati, the realm of bliss in the Western quarter of the

universe over which Amitabha presided. (This paradise is

known in Chinese as jingtu, or the Pure Land.) To ensure

salvation, Huiyuan advocated a technique of visualization

that induced a state of ecstasy in which the meditator came

face to face with Amitabha. Huiyuan's assembly on Mt. Lu,

later referred to as the White Lotus Society, became the stuff

of legend.86 Through Ming times, lay Buddhist associations

continued to emulate its practice, though the chanting of the

Buddha's name later acquired greater importance amongthem as a technique of concentration and salvation.87

Chen's allusion to the fabled White Lotus Society in Elegant

Gathering s unsurprising. Several of the figures he chose to

depict practiced Pure Land Buddhism, notably, Yu'an,

Huang Hui, Tao Wangling, and the two Yuan brothers. Chen

himself was familiar with the teachings of the monk Zhu-

hong. He claims to have practiced the doctrine of nonkilling

by releasing living animals from captivity; to have chanted the

Buddha's name; and to have kept a ledger of merit and

demerit.88 Chen's family is also known to have supported a

monk of the Lotus Tradition (Lian zong).89 Tao Qubing,

however, was not a lay Buddhist.90 Nevertheless, after the

Manchu invasion, he and Qi Junjia (fl. early seventeenth

century), Biaojia's elder brother, organized an yicang (righ-teous granary) to feed refugees of the war.91Chen apparently



322 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2002 VOLUME LXXXIV NU MBER 2

5 Detail of Fig. 4

4 The ite Lotus Society, from Cheng Dayue, Chengshi moyuan,4 The WhiteLotus Society, rom Cheng Dayue, Chengshimoyuan,She xian: Zilan tang, 1605, thread-bound book, ink on paper(from Zheng Zhenduo, comp., Zhongguobanhua shi tulu,20 vols. [Shanghai: Zhongguo banhua shi she, 1940-42],vol. 7, n.p.)

benefited from their generosity, and he recognized Tao's

enlightened compassion in the dedication of Elegant Gather-

ing, in which he referred to him as a daoren, a "Man of the

Way." Benevolent societies such as Tao's flourished in the

late Ming.92 Timothy Brook has suggested that they derivedtheir inspiration in part from lay Buddhist groups.93 Qu-

bing's associate Qi Junjia studied at Yunqi Monastery, where

Zhuhong had encouraged his lay followers to perform goodworks for karmic merit.94

Although Chen's evocation of Huiyuan's assembly in Ele-

gant Gatheringdid not embody Qubing's religious practice, it

may have appealed to the latter as an art historical curiosity.Tao was a collector of paintings, and Chen's allusion to

Huiyuan's assembly depended on a connoisseur's knowledgeof the history of pictorial presentations of the White Lotus

Society.95 Renditions of Huiyuan's gathering from the twelfth

and thirteenth centuries show a sequence of discrete scenes,

including one in which monks and laymen are assembled

before an imposing sculpted icon of the bodhisattva

Mafijugr, or "Sweet Glory."96 As James Cahill has demon-

strated, Chen based his "elegant gathering" on this singlescene.97 The multipartite version of the White Lotus Societystill circulated in the seventeenth century and would proba-

bly have been known to both Chen and Tao. It appears in

Chengshimoyuan (The Cheng family's garden of ink), a wood-

block-printed book, published in different editions between

1605 and 1610, to exhibit a collection of ink-cake designs

(Fig. 4).98 The scene of worship appears along the upper

right edge of the printed leaf, before a pool of lotuses (Fig.

5). Mafijugri is seated on a lotus throne, borne on the back of

a festooned lion. A stone altar, which holds an incense

burner and offering bowls, stands in front of the tiered

platform that bears the icon. Worshipers who surround the

consecrated space address the bodhisattva by looking and

speaking.Other painters besides Chen had altered this familiar pre-

sentation of Huiyuan's assembly. In an anonymous paintingfrom the late sixteenth century, the devotional scene centers

not on the sculpted image of Manfjusr but, rather, on one

monk among the group of monks and laymen assemblednear a lotus pool (Fig. 6). Seated on a figured rug, supported

by a wooden armrest, he holds a fly whisk in one hand to

signify his authority. With the other hand, he points to a

collection of devotional objects and offerings placed in front

of him: lotus flowers, an incense burner, a box of incense,

and sacred palm-leaf books. The icon of Mafijusrl remains in

the background, placed on an ordinary table, adjacent to

other precious things, such as a branch of coral. Although the

power of the bodhisattva to enlighten is manifest in the

attribute he holds-that is, the lotus, on whose flower head

rests a "perfection of wisdom" sutra-the assembly does not

pay attention to him. It is possible that the devotional objects




6 Attributed to Li

Gonglin, The WhiteLotusSociety, ection ofa handscroll, ink on

paper, Ming dynastycopy. Washington, D.C.,The Freer Gallery of

Art, SmithsonianInstitution

collected before the head monk will be arranged on an altar

and the icon placed on a platform for veneration. But in the

scene designed by the artist, the sculpted icon is isolated

among rare, aesthetic collectibles.99

Chen similarly altered the devotional aspect of this scene as

he incorporated it within Elegant Gathering:he replaced the

icon of Mafijusri with a feminine manifestation of the bodhi-

sattva Avalokitegvara, known in Chinese as Guanyin, or "Ob-

server of the Sounds [of the World]." The presence of the

animal mount, which resembles the lion that traditionallycarries Mafijusri, has confused her proper identification.100

But, by Ming times, Guanyin had been provided with a lion-

like companion called a hou.101Mounted on this fantastic

animal, she appears as a fertility goddess in a devotional

painting from the late sixteenth century (Fig. 7). In this work,

Guanyin' descends earthward on swirling clouds to bestow a

child; the hou, stepping among the heavenly clouds, turns to

look back at the goddess.102 In depicting the bodhisattva,Chen departed from the archaic and exotic prescriptions for

the portrayal of Guanyin adopted by his anonymous prede-cessor. Rather than present a remote and solemn goddess,adorned with the jewels of her divine position, Chen por-

trayed an aging woman, wrapped in a simple robe and un-

adorned, except for a bracelet and a diadem. She holds an

ornate and spouted container in her right hand, which,

though more often fashioned as a vase, distinguished imagesof

Guanyin.The

simplerobe

pulledover her shoulders

andthe container together serve to identify this figure as the

White-Robed Guanyin, whose cult had been active in China

at least since the tenth century.103

Although the White-Robed Guanyin does not appear in

canonical Buddhist scriptures, her powers of salvation are

equivalent to those wielded by her Indian counterpart, Avalo-

kitesvara, who is represented in many important sutras and

dharanz, or incantations. In the Lotus Sutra, delivery from

earthly perils and calamities, including fire and armed as-

sault, is promised to the devotee who is constantly mindful of

Avalokitegvara or who calls out his name.104 Such powers of

salvation were later incorporated into indigenous Chinese

scriptures.105 For instance, Incantations to Guanyin Bodhisattva

for Rescuefrom All Difficulties (Guanshiyin pusa jiuzhunan zhou),a fold-bound book, reprinted in 1586, contains a series of

chants intended to save the devotee from diverse calami-

ties.106 An illustration of the perils from which Guanyin

promised deliverance opens the book (Fig. 8). Presiding with

serenity over scenes of catastrophe, including shipwreck and

armed assault, the bodhisattva offers salvation in a bowl of

purifying water that she holds in her left hand. Chants of the

sort included in this book played a significant role in layBuddhist practice in China.107 Although the intonation of

the name of Amitabha ensured rebirth in the Pure Land,

chanting the spells of Guanyin brought relief in the devotee's

present incarnation. In the seventeenth century, the White-Robed Guanyin was still worshiped for her powers of salva-

tion. The Upper Tianzhu Monastery, located outside the cityof Hangzhou and familiar to Chen, sheltered a famous imageof the bodhisattva, to which local officials prayed for assis-

tance in times of drought or flood.108

In Elegant Gathering,Chen alludes to the salvific power of

Guanyin, a power that is embodied in the water container

that she holds. In one of his poetic apostrophes to the bodhi-

sattva, Chen focused on the efficacy of the water that fell from

her vase, observing, "An image of a bronze Guanyin: / Copyit and enter the 'universal gateway.' ... I pray that the root be

broken from the habits of my nature. / In one drop, splashes

a merciful benevolence."109 The poet considers that the act ofpainting an icon will open the way toward salvation, the

pumen, or "universal gateway," that is praised in the Lotus

Sutra.ll? But, given the stubborn habits of his mind, he will

depend on the cleansing water of the bodhisattva for deliv-

erance.

When Elegant Gatheringwas presented to Qubing, deliveryfrom the dangers of war may have seemed impossible. Guan-

yin, however, ultimately promised escape, even from the

repetition of lifetimes-an escape, in other words, from his-

tory. Chen may have intended to offer this solace to his

companion. Nonetheless, her presence in Elegant Gathering s

also potentially disruptive. It defies the cyclical notion of




7 Guanyin Bestowinga Son, hanging scroll, ink, color, and goldon silk, late 16th century. New York, The MetropolitanMuseum of Art, Purchase, Friends of Asian Art Gifts, 1989,1989.152

history that the painting elaborates through the juxtapositionof the Grape Society and the Throw Away Society. It also

challenges the painter-monk who regretted the transgres-sions of his present life, and in particular the falseness of his

identity as a Confucian and a Buddhist.1l His predicament is

manifest in the contradictory seals that he impressed at the

opening of the scroll, "Regretful Too Late" and "Not Too

Late." Perhaps it was not too late for the monk to be saved

from the calamity of war. But for the painter, who had

acknowledged the falseness of his priestly motivation, it was

too late to find refuge and salvation.112

Between Visibility and InvisibilityIt is unusual that Chen should have presented a story within

his "elegant gathering." Unrelated to the historical gather-

ings to which he alludes, the events that unfold in the visual

story question the nature of sight and seeing. In Elegant

Gathering,acts of looking constitute the means by which the

painter-narrator presents the story.113The characters within

the imaginary realm of the painting either perceive and

respond to an event in the story or they do not. Chen lends

the assembly a theatrical aspect by exaggerating the search-

ing looks of its members. Yet uncertainty as to whether or not

they perceive the bodhisattva mutes the celebratory task of

the "elegant gathering." In asking, "Who sees?" Chen involves

the viewer of Elegant Gathering n a debate about the efficacyof Buddhist practice. Each of the historical figures named in

the painting practiced some form of Buddhism, yet appar-

ently none perceives the bodhisattva who presides over the

gathering. The story highlights the tension, already centuries

old, between the schools of Buddhism represented in Elegant

Gathering.

Moreover,the

presentationof the

storyis

complicated byshifts in points of view and layers of narration that are distin-

guished by acts of looking. Although it appears that Guanyinis not perceived by the characters in the story, one character,

the hooded "Mi Zhongzhao," faces her. It is possible that he

perceives the apparition, but the direction of his glance is

uncertain. Whether or not an act of perception will occur

and transform the story about the gathering is unresolved.

The suspense of the story is enhanced by differences between

what the viewer and the painter-narrator see and what the

characters in the story see. The apparition is perceived by the

painter-narrator "Chen Hongshou" and by the external

viewer of the painting. Despite their privileged view, however,

those external to the realm of the painting are placed in an

ambiguous position with respect to the space of the painting.The ambiguity of their position is created by the glances of

the characters in the visual story, which both invite and

exclude. The story oscillates between the seen and the un-

seen, between the interior of the painting and its exterior.

In analyzing the pictorial narrative, let us begin with the

role of its painter-narrator. Although the narrator appears to

be imperceptible, as well as external to the visual story, the

hand of Chen Hongshou emphatically inscribed his pres-ence. With his distinctive calligraphy, he named each of the

characters of the story. He is the authenticating agent who

testifies, however falsely, that these particular nine men as-

sembled. The names of the first four characters, who are

positioned on either side of the cypress, are definitive. Adja-cent to their referents, they cannot be mistaken. As the scroll

opens, the placement of the names becomes more and more

haphazard. The labels "Mi Zhongzhao" and 'Yu'an heshang"

already appear well above their referents. Far more problem-atic is the naming of the last three characters-"Tao Zhou-

wang," 'Yuan Zhonglang," and 'Yuan Boxiu"-whose labels

are scattered in chinks of the composition. Thus, as the storyis unrolled, the narrator seems to relinquish authority. And

the protean aspect of this pictorial history, elusive and dream-

like, is heightened.The story of Elegant Gathering may be summarized as fol-

lows. Eight retired gentlemen and a Buddhist monk assemble




8 Frontispiece to Incantationsto

GuanyinBodhisattvafor RescuefromAll

Difficulties,n.p., 1586, fold-bound

book, ink on paper. IndianapolisMuseum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs.Robert L. Shula, IMA 1983.106

in a garden. The number nine may symbolize their seclu-

sion.1l4 They listen to and, in some cases, actively respond to

the intonation of a sacred Buddhist text. I assume that the

scroll in the hands of "Mi Zhongzhao" represents a Buddhist

text because it has engaged the monk 'Yu'an," who points to

it emphatically as he opens his mouth to speak. The mani-

festation of the bodhisattva also suggests that a sacred text is

being chanted. The apparent location of the story in a gardenreinforces the enclosure and isolation of the group. A garden

setting is suggested by the banana palm and the spire of a

perforated rock that appear just at the end of the scroll. But

the garden is rendered remote and astringent. Blocks ofstone surround the figures; luxuriant plantings are absent in

this place. The banality of the palm and the rock, often

featured in garden gatherings, is jarring. For in Elegant Gath-

ering, the overarching, twisted branches of trees are ani-

mated, as though poised to overwhelm the figures beneath

them.

Eight of the nine men have gathered around a rectangularstone table. Instruments of Buddhist worship, each drawn

large, are set at its foremost edge. A bottle, furnished with a

fancy top, designed to contain offerings of water rests on an

ornate stand. A flower vase, fashioned as an antique zun,

holds offerings of two artificial lotuses; one of the blossoms

twists behind the water container. A large, tripod censer,unlit, stands out in its bold simplicity; it rests on a figuredmat. Adjacent is an offering bowl, rendered with an ornate

base that resembles a lotus flower. A set of books occupies the

far left side of the table. Their wrapping, decorated with

columns of swastikas, indicates that these are printed Bud-

dhist scriptures. Still, the stone table is merely a table. It is not

used as an altar. The instruments of worship are not properly

arranged for the conduct of ritual: the offering bowl is con-

spicuously empty; the other objects, mostly obscured from

view, are crowded together, rather than placed in the requi-site symmetrical formation before an icon.115 No candles or

lamps, whose flames would represent the awakened being of

Buddha, light the scene. Furthermore, the printed texts are

not opened for reading. They remain secreted within their

cover. "Tao Youmei" even leans on the table. The scene is

makeshift. Not everything has been prepared. The settingthus creates suspense: Will the table be readied and trans-

formed? Will an offering to a divinity be made?

Each of the characters in Elegant Gathering s watchful. The

black shapes of their pupils stand out, precisely set within the

corers of their sliverlike eyes. Their looking not only colors

the story itself, it also defines the relation between the external

spectator and the picture by rendering the spectator either

intimate or aloof, blinded or seeing. This dynamic begins with

"TaoJunshi," the first character encountered in the scroll, who

sits alone at the right side of the cypress. Portrayed on a chair

that is turned awayfrom the rest of the group, he also turns his

head awayfrom the others, peering at something. The impliedmovements of "TaoJunshi" suggest surprise at the presence of

another. The object of his glance is somewhere further to the

right, somewhere between a fictional onlooker and an external

spectator. Thus, the viewer is at once acknowledged and not

acknowledged. The boundary between the fictional space of the

picture and the real space of the viewer is blurred: the spectatoris invited, though tentatively, to identify with the characters of

the story.

As the scroll is further opened, the cypress immediatelypresents a barrier. Its dotted black foliage and its gnarledbranches extend across and beyond the full height of the

scroll. The cypress, as an evergreen, represents longevity and

endurance. On the other hand, as a marker of graves, it is

also a symbol of death and transformation. Chen takes full

advantage of the tree's multivalent symbolism. In Elegant

Gathering, he cypress marks a passageway to another realm, a

realm separate from that inhabited by "TaoJunshi." Bounded

on the opposite side by two trees, one withered and the other

still in leaf, this realm contains the central group of figureswho have gathered around the stone table. Unlike "Tao

Junshi," they do not address the spectator. Here, the specta-



326 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2002 VOLUMNE LXXXIV NUMBER 2

9 Chen, Elegant Gathering,detail

tor is firmly excluded from the picture and positioned at a

certain distance from which to observe the group. The veilingof several of the characters increases the distance between

the fictive space of the picture and the space of the external

spectator. "MiZhongzhao" sits with his back to the viewer, his

features entirely hidden from view. The dark hood that cov-

ers his head emphasizes his remove. Other characters,

though less obviously concealed, reinforce the exclusion of

the spectator. The three figures seated at the far left side of

the table, "Tao Zhouwang," "Yuan Zhonglang," and 'Yuan

Boxiu," are partially obscured by trees. The densely worked

patterns of their bark-the one, scalelike and fragile; the

other, undulate and fantastic-command attention. Com-

pressed within this unnatural bower, the three figures are cut

off as much from the viewer as they are from the rest of the

group. A large oval fan, a customary implement of with-

drawal, further obscures the body of 'Yuan Zhonglang" andaccentuates his separation.The glances among the characters around the stone table

also exclude the spectator as strongly as they undermine the

painter-narrator (Fig. 9). The six men who flank the table, as

well as the monk who sits in front of it, all direct their eyestoward the hooded figure of the reader "MiZhongzhao." The

glance of "Huang Zhaosu," who is seated on a figured rugnext to the cypress, is remarkable in its contradiction: de-

picted with his face turned outward to confront the spectator,he looks directly to the left, toward the reader. The spot of

black that defines the right pupil of "Tao Youmei" is smudgedoutside the contour of his face to enhance the direction of his

look. Other characters, in addition to looking, position their

bodies toward the hooded figure of the reader. "Tao Zhou-

wang," who sits immediately to his left, leans forward with one

hand extended as though to proffer encouragement or ac-cord. "Wang Jingxu" has risen from his chair and moves

toward him. The monk "Yu'an" emphatically points to the

scroll, as though to elucidate a passage in the text, and openshis mouth as though to speak to the reader. The content of

the scroll is secret; no words were inscribed by the painter-narrator. But the actions of the monk, as I have already

indicated, suggest that it is a Buddhist text. The presence of

Guanyin further suggests that the text is either an incantation

or a sutra dedicated to her worship.The net of glances, precisely manipulated by the painter-

narrator to focus attention on the reader "Mi Zhongzhao,"crisscrosses in front of the bodhisattva. Neither "TaoJunshi"

nor any of the men at the stone table looks at Guanyin. Justas their looking excludes the spectator, so, too, it excludes

the divinity who presides over the gathering. Her exclusion is

puzzling. However, the perception of the figure "Mi Zhong-zhao" is uncertain. Seated opposite the bodhisattva, he alone

faces her. The triangular disposition of the figures at either

end of the table, which echo one another in form and

resonate with the glances that the characters throw toward

the reader, also emphasize the singular link between the

bodhisattva and the figure "Mi Zhongzhao." Although "Mi

Zhongzhao" holds a scroll in his hands, he does not bend his

head over it. The direction of his glance is unknown. It is

possible that the form of Guanyin is perceptible to his eyes.




10 Attributed to ZhangJi, The WhiteLotus

Society,handscroll, inkon paper, 12th century,Liaoning ProvincialMuseum (from WangHaiping, "Bailian she tu

mantan,"Yiyuan duoying39 [1989]: 10)

To complicate further the seeing of "Mi Zhongzhao," the

painter-narrator obscures the object of his perception. Guan-yin possesses the attributes of a devotional icon, at the same

time that she appears to be a visionary manifestation. De-

scribed by Richard Vinograd as an object capable of anima-

tion, the figure of Guanyin is highly ambiguous, at once

coherent and incoherent.116 Densely wrought, the imageechoes other things in the picture, notably, the designs of

woven rugs and the decoration of ritual vessels, all of them

precisely rendered in repetitive, geometric patterns. Yet the

intricate forms of this divinity and her fantastic animal mount

are confusing and hint at their immateriality. As patternoverwhelms the representation of physical shapes, the imagebecomes a tracery of inked lines. The spectator readily aban-

dons the removed position from which the story is presented

to look carefully and examine at close hand how the imagewas made. The curls that represent the sprawling mane and

tail of the hou are indistinguishable from the spiraling hem of

the bodhisattva's robe. Hidden within these patterns, the

folded paws of the animal and the bared feet of the divinityare difficult to make out. The forked tongue of the animal

transforms into the twisting stems of lotus flowers, one of

which supports the bodhisattva's pendant foot. The perfectlywound circular coils that proliferate around the body of the

hou exemplify another act of metamorphosis: they are, I

propose, the remnants of streaming clouds, the pictorial signthat denotes heavenly apparitions. (Such clouds accompanythe iconic image of Guanyin bearing a child in Fig. 7.) In

Elegant Gathering, Guanyin and her mount are themselvesdiaphanous. They lightly occupy a place, havingjust momen-

tarily materialized.

Nevertheless, portrayed on a decorated platform with a

scalloped edge, the bodhisattva is presented as though she

required a material support. The overhanging branches of

the withered tree, acting as a repoussoir, pin her into a

certain pictorial space. However, just as the shape of the

divinity is made indefinite, the physical reality of the platformis thrown into doubt. It does not rest on the stone table: the

foremost scalloped edge of the platform dips below the

straight edge of the table, and the base of the platform is not

rendered visible. In fact, despite its monumental proportions,

it is lodged in an indeterminate space. Tightly hedged by the

table and by the rocks that enclose the scene, the platformdoes not fit, which heightens the ambiguity of its materiality.This is specially evident at the far right, where the straightline of the platform, drawn against a rock, runs into the

tabletop. Moreover, the sharp upward tilt of the platform'ssurface jars against the plane of the table. As it contradicts the

strong recession of the middle ground that is established bythe table, the platform defies the opening of a space to

accommodate itself in front of the rocks that appear to lie

behind it. Though solid in appearance, the platform, ab-

surdly positioned, occupies no space. In the end, the contra-

dictory aspect of the platform intensifies the inherent con-

tradiction of the visionary image, which vacillates between

pattern and substance, the seen and the unseen, the real and

the illusory. Such a vacillation complements the strong formsof contestation in this picture between history and fiction.

Chen's rendition of the bodhisattva as a vision, as some-

thing both real and illusory, is not exceptional. A similarly

ambiguous presentation of the bodhisattva Manfjusr appearsin a version of The White Lotus Societyattributed to the early

twelfth-century painter ZhangJi (Fig. 10).117 In this scene of

two monks and a layman paying obeisance to Mafijusri, the

artist animated what appears to be a large and substantial

sculpture of Mafijugsr on a lion. Curling wisps of cloud that

trail behind the bodhisattva indicate that the divinity has

momentarily descended from a heavenly realm. Lotus flowers

were not placed on the platform to support the paws of a

sculpted lion. Indeed, the beast is shown in flight, lifting apaw, as though having just alighted. The materiality of the

icon is thrown into doubt.ll8

Finally, the deliberate ambiguity with which Chen delin-

eated the form of Guanyin in Elegant Gatheringbecomes all

the more incontrovertible in comparison with a devotional

image, now titled Playing Children (Fig. 11). Executed about

1650, the painting shows children paying obeisance to an

icon of the Buddha, while another child looks on as he

assiduously scrubs a miniature pagoda. Wei Dong has dem-

onstrated that Chen depicts in this work the observance of

the ghost festival, known in Chinese as yulanpen, which was

held on the full moon of the seventh lunar month.l19 This




figure is an artifactconstructed by the painter-narrator s well

as the vision of one of the characters n the story. On the onehand, if the bodhisattvarepresents simply an interpolation of

the painter-narrator, hen she is visible only to the spectator

and to the painter-narrator"Chen Hongshou." Neither the

monk nor the instruments and books of Buddhist worship

bring listeners or reader to acknowledge the presence of the

divinitywithin the setting of the story.Although the words ofthe sacred text occupy them, their power to conjure the

presence of Guanyin is made to appear ineffectual.l20 The

disorder of the gathering, manifest in the 1lnready table as

well as in the uncertain alliance among its members, reso-

nates with the fleeting image of a bodhisattva that is urlac-

knowledged and unseen. The possibility that the saving

power of Guanyinwill not be made manifest accentuates the

harshness of the scene presented in the visual story. The

cycles of history, and in particular, he fall of dynastic houses,

threaten to be phenomena from which no one awakens. In

Elegant Gatherzn$ t is suggested that deliverance from the

ravages of war rnay not be possible. Only the external spec-

tator, who can see the intervention of the narrator, has theadvantage of being momentarily positioned outside history.

Having been excluded, through the process of focalization,

from the theatricalscene of the past depicted in the painting,

the spectator alone benefits from the reminder that the

bodhisattva s alwayspresent to those who are mindful of her.Thus, the visual story becotnes a morality tale for the edifica-

tion of its viewers.

On the other hand, if "Mi Zhongzhao" does perceive the

shape of Guanyin, he becomes an independent agent who

sees something that is invisible to the other characters n the

story. In narratological terms, he may be identilSed as an

actor who embeds the story of a visionary experience within

the primary tory about nine men whc)assembled in a garden.In this case, Guanyin s not merely an artifactof the narrator.

Her appearance in the eyes of "Mi Zhongzhao" is an event,

despite the uncertaintyof its duration, that significantlyalters

the storywithin which it is embedded. The events of the story

are tllrned aroursd: he intonation of the sacred Buddhist text

results in the appearance of the divinity. The efficacy of the

reading is not thrown into question. Deliverance is not re-

stricted to the external spectator; it is offered to an actor in

the historical fiction itself. Thereby, an element of suspense is

introduced: Will the other characters look away from the

reading to observe and pay reverence to Guanyin?Will the

efficacy of the intorlation that corljured the presence of the

bodhisattva be realized in the eyes of the listeners?

In this context, i t remains to be considered why the paint

er-narrator chose "Mi Zhongzhao" to embed the visionary

event. Mi, who did not enjoy an intimate relationship with the

elder Yuan brothers or with many of their companions, does

not seem to have been seriously devoted to the practice of

Buddhism. His fame rests on painting and calligraphy and

the collection of strange rocks. In this, he is exceptional in

the company of writers and philosophers assembled in Ele-

gant Gathfflng.Moreover, as he is presented in the visual

story, the painter "Mi Zhongzhao" alone vatillates between

two competing objects of attention. One is linguistic, that is,

the manuscript roll. The other is visual, embodied in the

11 Chen, PlayingChildren,anging scroll, ink and color onsilk, ca. 1650. Beijing,Palace Museum

colorful painting depicts a religious gathering fundamentallydifferent from that shown in ElegantGathering:ts traditional

function was understood by its participants and the icon ofthe Buddha holds a clearly defined place.

In ElegantGatherzn$he bodhisattva'splace in the story of

the gathering adds another uncertainty to the narrative.Her




form of Guanyin. A tension between word and image further

complicates the presentation of the story.The tension between seeing and reading that Chen brings

forward in Elegant Gatheringis mirrored in a mismatch be-

tween word and image that he identified in a number of

poems dedicated to Buddhist subjects. In one poem, Chen

described a painter "roughly" gesturing toward the image he

had produced, whereas a Chan monk "discussed it with sub-

tlety."'21 The painter in this poem does not use verbal lan-

guage to re-present or explain his image; speechless, he

approximates the gestures of his hand, which had held a

painter's brush, to indicate meaning. Chen implies that for

the painter, the visual image has no verbal equivalent,whereas for the monk, it provides an opportunity for verbal

ornamentation. In another poem titled "Painting Buddha,"

Chen observed, "Having painted the Tathagata [Perfect

One], I wish to make a eulogy. / But if the word samadhi

[concentration] is in the mouth, it is difficult to show other

people."122 The poet considers that the act of making the

icon is an act of devotion that is appropriately accompanied

by verbal praise. However, the articulation of praiseful devo-tion in words alone raises the suspicion that the religious

practice of the speaker is inauthentic. Acts of devotion are

elevated above verbal expressions of devotion. Finally, in the

last section of a poem titled "Be Done with It," written some

time after the summer of 1646, Chen fully discloses the

skepticism with which he had embraced Buddhism and ac-

knowledges the inefficacy of his practice. Nonetheless, it is

also clear that he never lost faith in the power of image

making:

Visualizing the image before coloring the brush

Is like climbing toward Tusita Heaven.

The task of settling the mind is prior to the task ofcleansing the room.

Then, dare to study meditation.

How can I aspire toward enlightenment in this life,

Just hoping to obtain the advantages of the next realm

of existence?

The school of Confucius cannot accept me.

Among Buddhist monks, I obtain tranquillity.123

Here, before beginning to paint, the poet visualizes an imageof the paradise of the bodhisattva Maitreya. His mental imageis so vivid that he feels as though he has ascended to that

place. Whereas acts of devotion necessary to prepare for

meditation intimidate the poet, preparations made for paint-

ing grant him a vision of paradise. The mismatch between

verbal and visual languages identified in Chen's poems is

heightened in a religious context because, like many of his

contemporaries, Chen associated an opacity of language with

Buddhist sutras, in general, and with the witticisms of Chan,

in particular. The making of icons, on the other hand, was

not entangled with what he called "dark language."124 In this

painterly activity, Chen seems to have found refuge.The tension between visual and verbal language that Chen

identified both in Elegant Gatheringand in his poetry can be

extended into the arena of debate between advocates of the

Chan and Pure Land traditions. By the late Ming, this debate

was already centuries old. The Chan position had been iden-

tified as "burning mental incense to worship a mental Bud-

dha."'25 Zhuhong criticized Chan institutions of the late

Ming for belittling the importance of monastic discipline and

acts of devotion. He ridiculed Chan practitioners for their

verbosity in the face of their proclaimed disregard for scrip-

tures, suggesting that "not to rely on the written word does

not mean to annihilate the written word. An enlightened

person knows that it really means one should refuse to ad-

here to the written word and yet, at the same time, not clingto this refusal."126

As a historical event, Elegant Gatheringparticipated in this

debate in at least two ways. It displays at its center a compe-tition between reading and visualization, word and image.The painter-narrator reinforces this oppositional aspect of

the story by choosing to exhibit men who favored Chan

together with those who were devoted to Pure Land practices,in addition to those who wavered between the two. The

demonstration of this debate prompted the very choice of the

men pictured in Elegant Gathering.The contention between

advocates of the Chan and Pure Land traditions inherent in

the fictive "elegant gathering" lends the painting a historical

veracity that it otherwise skirts.

Historical debates about the nature of the "numinous

strangeness" (lingyi) with which the presence of Guanyin was

imbued, and whether or not her presence was defined by its

visibility to the eye, are also profoundly relevant to the his-

torical event of Elegant Gathering. Miracle tales that relate

Guanyin's power to deliver people from earthly perils had an

important place in the religious culture of the late Ming.Robert Campany has observed that Guanyin was the first

spiritual personage in Chinese religious history to manifest

herself as a "strikingly immediate, concretely salvific, unfail-

ingly responsive" presence.'27 This accords with the teachings

of the Lotus Sutra, and in particular with the chapter of the

sutra devoted to Guanyin, which circulated independently as

the Guanshiyin jing (Scripture of He Who Observes the

Sounds of the World). The "efficacious response" (yingyan)of

the bodhisattva only waited for a trigger, which might lie

either in a devotee's call for help or in the sound of the

recitation of a scripture dedicated to her. Later, in the six-

teenth and seventeenth centuries, when the manifestation of

Guanyin was closely associated with specific pilgrimage sites,

celestial visions of the divinity were commonly recorded in

temple records.128 This phenomenon stands in contrast to

earlier miracle tales from the fourth through the sixth cen-

turies in which, as Campany has observed, she manifested her

powers of deliverance anywhere and rarely appeared to the

eye of the devotee.l29 The proliferation of recorded visions in

the sixteenth century was observed by the monk Zhuhong.

Though committed to the practice of Buddha contemplationand the visualization of Amitabha, Zhuhong ridiculed pil-

grims who flocked to famous pilgrimage mountains and

claimed to have seen the great bodhisattvas.130 Elsewhere, he

exhorted, "If you always maintain the heart of compassionand practice deeds of compassion like the bodhisattva, youare already looking at Potalaka; and even if you do not see

Kuan-yin's [sic] golden visage, you are already with the bodhi-

sattva moment to moment."'13 Nonetheless, it is clear that

pilgrims who visited Putuoshan, the cultic site of the earthly




dwelling of Guanyin on an island off the coast of Zhejiang,wished to see the bodhisattva with their eyes.

Regarding contemporary habits of pilgrimage, the writer

Zhang Dai (ca. 1597-ca. 1679) also expressed a certain skep-ticism. Among the recollections of his past life is an essay on

the pilgrims' fairs (xiang shi) at West Lake, during which

thousands of travelers flocked to the

Upper

Tianzhu Monas-

tery, where the White-Robed Guanyin had appeared centu-

ries before. He dwells on the commercial business that the

pilgrims brought to the city. In his conclusion, he observes

that the region had suffered drought for three consecutive

years, during which time many people died of starvation. In

the summer of 1641, he watched corpses being hauled out of

the city on carts. The White-Robed Guanyin had served as a

profitable marketing tool, but she brought no rain, for which

she was often beseeched, during the drought.l32 Yet Zhanghesitated to abandon belief altogether. In another essay, he

described his experience at a Buddhist monastery that

housed a reliquary said to contain a bone of the Buddha.

Accordingto his

testimony,"Whenever someone

praysto the

relic, it produces all kinds of visions according to the person's

karma; but if it remains dark as ink and nothing is seen, the

person will certainly die." Zhang was fortunate. When he

looked into the reliquary, he discerned an image of the

White-Robed Guanyin.133 In evaluating both experiences,

Zhang privileged what he had witnessed. Material evidence of

the efficacy of the divinity presented itself to his eyes, and on

this he drew his conclusions. In the seventeenth century,

seeing was believing.l34 Although in traditional practices of

visualization, referred to as guan (to view or to contemplate),eidetic images of a divinity or his paradisal dwelling were

constructed in the mind, these visions were not visible to the

eyes. They represented an alternative realm of the senses.'35In the late Ming, the sensory experience of this world in-

truded on the practice of visualization, at least insofar as it

became highly desirable among certain groups to see the

form of the divinity with the eye.In Elegant Gathering, he narrator "Chen Hongshou" placed

the figure of a historical painter in a position to see the

bodhisattva that had been conjured by words. The markingsof a painter's brush, which makes material that which is seen

by the eye, have the capacity to render visible the shape of the

bodhisattva. Although the forms within a painted image are

illusory, they possess an ineluctable materiality. Chen dem-

onstrates this contradiction within the painting itself, in par-

ticular, with the representation of a branch of bamboo on theoval fan displayed by "Yuan Zhonglang." Within the bound-

aries of the fan, an illusory hollow of space opens to accom-

modate the strokes of ink that compose the bamboo. The

image of the bamboo competes with the image of the figureit conceals. The presence of the character named "Yuan

Zhonglang" becomes fugitive. From one point of view, he is

there, whereas from another, he tends to disappear. The

painterly mark that falls between the real and the illusory

complements the other forms of representation that Chen

manipulates in Elegant Gathering. The historical fiction of an

elusive Wanli-period gathering is both as real and as illusory

as the fleeting vision of the bodhisattva.

Anne Burkus-Chassonwrites on seventeenth-centuryChinesepaint-

ing and woodblock-printed ooks [School of Art and Design, Art

History Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,408

East PeabodyDrive, Champaign, Ill. 61820].

Frequently Cited SourcesChen Hongshou, Baolun angji, comp. Chen Zi (early18th century;reprint,

n.p., DongJinjian, 1888).

Qi Biaojia,Qi Zhongmin ongriji(1631-45; reprint, Shaoxing: Shaoxing xianxiuzhi weiyuan,1937).

Tao Wangling,Xieanji, 5 vols. (1610;reprint,Taipei:Weiwentushu chuban-

she, 1976).YuanHongdao, YuanHongdaoijianjiao,ed. QianBocheng, 3 vols. (Shanghai:

Shanghaiguji chubanshe, 1981).

Notes

The initial presentation of this paper took place at the conference "New

Understandingsof Ming-QingPainting,"which was held in Beijing n Decem-

ber 1994. The conference wasorganizedbyJames Cahill,RichardVinograd,and HsingyuanTsao,togetherwith membersof the CentralAcademyof FineArts,Beijing;I remaingratefulfor their invitationto participate.In revisingthe paper, I was counseled by Chris Bell, Timothy Chasson, Ellen Laing,AlexanderMayer,and MarciaYudkin.I also benefited from the assistanceofProfessor H. Perry Chapman and from the criticisms of two anonymousreaders or the ArtBulletin.Unless otherwise ndicated,translationsare mine.

This essayis dedicated to Sambuco and to the memoryof Haruko.1. Chen documented his flight to the Yunmen Mountains n manypoems.

See "Inthe summer of bingxu 1646], I regret to have fled for my life to themountains and valleyswhere gibbons and birds are plentiful.Then I shaved

myhead and threw on the black garbof a monk ... ," n Chen, juan 4, 15a.Forpoems that record his stayat YunmenTemple, see ibid.,juan 8, 1 a, juan8, 1la-b, juan 9, 21a.

2. Chen adopted several names that include the word "regret,"or hui,which he used, with only one exception, after the summer of 1646. See

Wan-goWeng, ChenHongshou, vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin meishuchubanshe,1997), vol. 1, 210, for a chronologicallist of the names that Chenassumed.

3. See RichardM.Barnhart, aintersftheGreatMing:The mperial ourt nd theZheSchoolDallas:DallasMuseumofArt,1993),73-75;JamesCahill,Partingt theShore: hinesePainting ftheEarly ndMiddleMingDynasty,368-1580 (NewYork:Weatherhill,1978), 24-25; MaxwellHearn,"AnEarlyMing Exampleof Multi-

ples:Two Versionsof 'ElegantGathering n the ApricotGarden,'" n Issues fAuthenticityn Chineseainting, d.JudithC.Smith and Wen C. Fong (NewYork:

MetropolitanMuseumof Art,1999), 221-58.4. ForYangRongand his two famousministerialcolleagues,YangShiqiand

Yang Pu, all three of whom appear in Xie's painting, see L. CarringtonGoodrich, ed., Dictionary f MingBiography,368-1644, 2 vols. (New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress,1976), vol. 2, 1519-22, 1535-38, 1537-38.

5. See Zhou Xibao, Zhongguoudai ushi shi (Beijing:Zhongguo xiqu chu-banshe, 1984), 379-80, 382-403.

6. Formulatingmy argumentaboutgenre, I benefited fromStephenGreen-blatt, "MurderingPeasants:Status, Genre, and the Representationof Rebel-lion,"Representations, no. 1 (Feb. 1983): 1-29.

7. See James Cahill, TheCompellingmage:Natureand Style n Seventeenth-

CenturyChinesePainting(Cambridge,Mass.:HarvardUniversityPress, 1982),129-30;

Hsing-liTs'ai, "Ch'en

Hung-shou's ElegantGathering: Late-MingPictorialManifestoof Pure LandBuddhism,"Ph.D.diss.,University f Kansas,1997;and RichardVinograd,BoundariesftheSelf:Chinese ortraits,600-1900

(Cambridge: CambridgeUniversityPress, 1992), 35-36. Of these writings,Ts'ai'sis the most extensive.Assertingthat Chen used the painting to advo-cate the tenets of Pure LandBuddhism,she suggeststhat it is, in particular,a celebration of a polemic writtenby the 16th-centurypoet YuanHongdao,who is portrayed n ElegantGathering. n ambitiousstudy, it is, nonetheless,unconvincingand marredbyhistorical naccuracies,as I shall indicate below.I thank ProfessorAmyMcNair or having ent me her copyof the dissertation.

8. Chen documented his traumaticexperience of the dynastic ransition n

many poems. See Chen, juan shiyi,la-2b, juan shiyi,7a-b. For other vividaccounts of the war, see Lynn A. Struve, ed. and trans., Voicesof the Ming-Qing

Cataclysm:China in Tigers'Jaws (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).9. Timothy Brook has argued that Buddhism became popular among 16th-

century intellectuals because it represented a means of securing local political

power through the patronage of monasteries, and became a form of protest

against the state, in Praying for Power: Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry

Society n Late-Ming China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).




10. Chen, juan 4, 15a. Chen maintained his disguise as a Buddhist monk for

only a few months.

11. Lii Kun, Shenyin yu, annot. Wang Guoxuan and Wang Xiumei (1593;

reprint, Beijing: Xueyuan chubanshe, 1993), 277. The writings of the 16th-

century thinker Li Zhi express a similar doubt; see Wm. Theodore de Bary,"Individualism and Humanitarianism in Late Ming Thought," in Self and

Society n Ming Thought (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1970), 188-225.

12.Julia K. Murray defines "story" in "What Is 'Chinese Narrative Illustra-

tion'?" Art Bulletin 80 (Dec. 1998): 602-15. Indicating that there is no Chinese

term of classification todesignate pictorial

stories,Murray depends

on mod-

ern European and North American definitions of narrative to formulate a

means of identifying visual stories. She concludes that "somethinghappens" n

a story (608). However, Murray underestimates the significance of the Chi-

nese term shi, which may be translated as "affair" or "event" (602). Victor H.

Mair has demonstrated that the term shi commonly punctuates sentences in

bianwen, or transformation texts, to mark a "discrete narrative event as part of

a series," in T'ang TransformationTexts:A Study of theBuddhist Contribution o the

Rise of Vernacular Fiction and Drama in China (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on

East Asian Studies, Harvard University Press, 1989), 76. Mair also points to the

evidence of captions punctuated with the term shi and inscribed on a late

12th-century handscroll, now in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, that de-

picts the military campaigns of an unknown general. For this painting, see

Eight Dynasties of ChinesePainting (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1980),37-40. The late 11th-century writer Guo Ruoxu uses the verbal phrase zhi shi

(to indicate the event) to refer to historical stories in Tuhua jianwen zhi

(1080s), in Huashi congshu, comp. Yu Anlan, 4 vols. (1962; reprint, Taipei:Wenshizhe chubanshe, 1974), vol. 1, juan 1, 7. In sum, there is evidence

within the Chinese cultural context to justify the notion that transformative

events distinguish a story. Therefore, in suggesting that Chen presented astory in Elegant Gathering,I follow the basic premise that a story is a series of

events or transformations.

13. Ellen Johnston Laing, "Real or Ideal: The Problem of the 'Elegant

Gathering in the Western Garden' in Chinese Historical and Art Historical

Records," Journal of the American Oriental Society88 (1968): 419-35.

14. Xie Zhaozhe describes the affective power of the theater in Wu za zu, 3

vols. (1608; reprint, Taipei: Xinxing shuju, 1971), vol. 2, 1290.

15. Song Zulian, "To Chen [Hongshou] Zhanghou," in Chidu xinchao,

comp. Zhou Lianggong (1662; reprint, Shanghai: Shanghai zazhi gongsi,1935), 18. The painting does not survive.

16. Chen's appropriation of figural conventions used in printed illustration

is addressed in Anne Gail Burkus, "The Artefacts of Biography in Ch'en

Hung-shou's Pao-lun-t'ang chi,"Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley,1987, 374-92.

17. Kohara Hironobu, "Ri Sobo hitsu ToEnmeijiseki zukan," Yamato bunka 67

(1981): 46. Episodes rom the Life of Tao Qian is now in the Honolulu Academyof Arts.

18. Anthony C. Yu, "History, Fiction and the Reading of Chinese Narrative,"

Chinese Literature:Essays, Articles,Reviews 10 (1988): 6-8.19. Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu, FromHistoricityto Fictionality: The Chinese Poetics

of Fictionality (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 38-52.

20. David Der-wei Wang, "Fictional History/Historical Fiction," Studies in

Language and Literature1 (1985): 69-70.

21. Lu (as in n. 19), 82-91; Yu (as in n. 18), 9-12.

22. Lu (as in n. 19), 129-50.

23. Wang Qi, quoted by Ellen Widmer, "Hsi-yu Cheng-taoShu in the Context

of Wang Ch'i's Publishing Enterprise," Hanxue yanjiu 6, no. 1 (June 1988):44-45.

24. Vinograd (as in n. 7) considers the obtrusive names to be an archaisticfeaturethat Chen manipulated ronically,35-36. However, he use of gold inkto write text, common in Buddhist art, complements the religious debate

presented in ElegantGathering.eekingheWay,a handscrollthat includes the

portraitof a Buddhistmonk, providesanother telling instance of Chen's useof gold to write names; the painting, now in the Palace Museum,Beijing,is

reproduced in Weng (as in n. 2), vol. 2, 268-70.25. For Tao Shiling, see Kuaijixian zhi (1683; reprint,Shaoxing: Shaoxing

xian xiuzhi weiyuan, 1936), juan 20, 7b, juan 24, 2b-3a. Tao attained the

position of juren in 1603. (Juren, iterally,elevated man, indicates that anexamination candidate has passed the provincial examinations;jinshi, or

presented scholar, indicates that a candidate has passed the examinationsadministered n the capital.)He was admiredbyLiuZongzhou (1578-1645),who providesbiographical nformationin the essayshe wroteon behalf of his

colleague. See LiuZongzhou,LiuZongzhouuanji,ed. Dai Lianzhanget al., 5vols. (Taipei: Changda yinshua, 1996), vol. 3, shang,347-49, xia, 763-65,1067-69. See also He Guanbiao, "TaoWangling, Shiling xiongdi shengzukaoluie,"Zhonghuawenshi uncong33, no. 1 (1985): 285-91.

26. Qi, who attended Tao's lectures, recorded their subjects in Guinankuailu(1635), 28b,Julinshibi 1636), 12a,and Shanju huolu 1637), 7a, 13b.

27. Liu (as in n. 25) acknowledgesTao's commitment to the teachings of

Wang Yangmingin vol. 3, xia, 764, xia, 1067.28. Tao, vol. 5, 2346, 2353, 2361-62. Other sources observe the profundity

of Shiling's learning in Chan, such as Peng Shaosheng, comp., Jushizhuan(1776; reprint, Kyoto:Dainihon zokuzokyo,1905-12), juan 44, 478a. Liu (asin n. 25) representsTao's engagement with Chan in vol. 3, xia, 764-75.

29.Yunqi Zhuhong, Yigao,n Yunqi ahui (n.p., 1897), 5b.

30. ForHuang Hui, see Mingshi,comp. Zhang Tingyu (Beijing:Zhonghuashuju, 1974), vol. 13,juan 288, 7394;and Qian Qianyi,Liechaohijixiaozhuan(1698;reprint, Shanghai:Gudian wenxue chubanshe, 1957), dingjixia, 621-22.

31. See Peng (asin n. 28), juan42, 474a. Lettersexchanged betweenHuangand Zhuhong are recorded in Zhuhong (as in n. 29), juan 1, 25b-32b. Inthese letters,Huang refers to himself as a "discipleof the Pure Land"(25b);he acknowledges having admired Zhuhong's essayon the doctrine of non-

killing (26a-b, 31b-32b); he reportshavingbuilt a pagodafor a transfigured

spideras a form of

goodwork

(30b).For

Zhuhong'sdoctrine of

nonkilling,see Chfin-fangYfi, The Renewal f Buddhism n China:Chu-hung nd theLate

Ming SynthesisNewYork:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1981), 76-87.32. Zhuhong (as in n. 29), 28a.33. YuanZhongdao observesthat Huang's writingchanged in response to

the example of Yuan Hongdao, in Kexuezhai qianji,5 vols. (1618; reprint,Taipei: Weiwen tushu chubanshe, 1976), vol. 5, 1984-85. Yuan Zongdaorefers to Huang as an intimate friend whose companionship relieved hisloneliness in the capital,in Bai Su zhaileiji(ca. 1600;reprint, Taipei:Weiwentushuchubanshe,1976), juan 16, 194. Few of Huang's writingshave survived,however,with the exception of Huang Hui, Huang Taishi Yichun ang yigao(lateWanliperiod;reprint, Taipei:Weiwen tushuchubanshe, 1976). See alsoChen Tian,Mingshijishi,6 vols. (1897-1911;reprint,Shanghai:Shanghai gujichubanshe, 1993), vol. 5, gengqianuan 16, 2525-29. YuanZhongdao recallsthat both he and Huang discarded their writings n 1600, havingdecided todevote themselves to the practice of Pure Land Buddhism, in Youjueilu,annot. BuWenying(1624;reprint, Shanghai:Shanghaiyuandongchubanshe,1996), juan 11(1616), 264.

34. QianBocheng identifiesWangin Yuan,vol. 1, 358. I owe this reference

to Ts'ai (as in n. 7), 45.35. See Yuan,vol. 2, 746, for a letter dated 1598 in which Hongdao alsoidentifiesWang.Other letters refer to this three-month-long trip (Yuan,vol.1, 482, 483, 487, 491-93, 494-97, 505-6); in addition, travel records and

poems referto the companionshipof the two Tao brothers andWangJingxuduring thistrip,though some versions of the travelrecords omit Wang (Yuan,vol. 1, 358, 422, 428-29, 439-41, 447-49, 450, 451-52). Tao Wanglingconfirms having traveledin 1597 with his brother Shiling,Yuan Hongdao,Wang Jingxu, and others to the scenic Five Gorges, located outside Zhuji,Zhejiang, n Tao, vol. 1, 173-84.

36.Yuan,vol. 1,371. TaoWanglingnotes Wang'sparticipation n mourningrituals held afterLi's death in Tao, vol. 4, 1623.

37. For Tao Yunjia,see Kuaijixian zhi (as in n. 25), juan 19, 4b; and Zhu

Yizun,Mingshi zong(n.p., 1705), juan 62, 7b-8b.38. For the correspondence between Tao Wangling and Yunjia,see Tao,

vol. 5, 2258-64; for other references toYunjia,see Tao, vol. 1, 212-13, vol. 5,2009-10, 2058-59, 2072.

39. Tao, vol. 5, 2260-61. For the practice of fangsheng dvocatedby Zhu-

hong, see Yii (as in n. 31), 76-87.

40. Tao, vol. 5, 2010.41. ForZhengui,see Yuqian,Xinxugaosenghuansiji (1923;reprint, Taipei:

Xinwenfengchuban gongsi, 1974), juan 44, 1308-10.42.Jiao Hong (1540?-1620),an associate of Huang Hui and TaoWangling,

acknowledgesYu'an's amein an essaywritten n responseto a sermon that heheard him deliver at Cihui si on monastic discipline. SeeJiao Hong, JiaoshiChanyuani, 4 vols. (1606; reprint,Taipei:Weiwen tushu chubanshe, 1977),vol. 2, 691-94.

43. The temple recordappears n Tao,vol. 2, 865-71. Fora historyof Cihuisi, see Zhu Yizun,Rixia iuwen (1688), published in enlarged form as Rixia

jiuwen kao,ed. Yu Minzhong et al., in 1774 (reprint, Beijing: Beijing gujichubanshe, 1981),juan 96, 1605-7.

44. Huang'sstoryabout a transfigured pider,whose identityas a bodhisat-tva wasdiscussed withYu'an,appears n Zhu (as in n. 43), juan 96, 1606. See

Huang (as in n. 33), juan 2, 105-7, for an exchange with Yu'an about foreignBuddhist practice.Yuan Zhongdao, 1996 (as in n. 33), met with friends atCihuisi,whereYu'anshowed them letters written to him byHuang Hui,juan4 (1610), 85.

45. For MiWanzhong,see Mingshi (as in n. 30), vol. 13,juan 288, 7397;Ni

Yuanlu,Lidaihuajiashiweni, vol. 9, Hongbao ingben, vols. (1642; reprint,Taipei:Taiwanxuesheng shuju,1970),vol. 2, 595-604; Zhu (asin n. 37),juan58, 6b-7a; and Arthur W. Hummel, ed., EminentChinese f theCh'ingPeriod

(Washington,D.C.:Libraryof Congress,1943), 572-73.46. Yuan Zhongdao, 1996 (as in n. 33), observes that Mi was a disciple

(mensheng)f Huang Hui, juan 13 (1618), 305. For literaryevidence of therelation between the two men, see Huang (as in n. 33), 205-8, for a poemabout Mi'sZhanGarden; ee Chen (asin n. 33), vol. 5, gengqianjuan 6, 2528,for a poem writtenin harmonywith one by Mi. Huang composed the graveinscriptionfor Mi's father, Mi Yu (1527-1597); the text is transcribed n Su

Yong and FanJing, comps., Yanyuan hihua(Beijing:Gongren chubanshe,1985), 59-61.

47. For Shao Garden,see PhilipK.Hu, "The Shao Gardenof MiWanzhong(1570-1628): Revisitinga Late Ming LandscapethroughVisual and LiterarySources,"Studies n theHistory f Gardens ndDesigned andscapes9, nos. 3-4

(July-Dec. 1999): 314-42; and William Hung, Shaoyuan ulu kao,Harvard-

Yenching Institute Sinological Index Studies Supplement, no. 5 (1932;reprint, Taipei: Chengwen chubanshe, 1966).




48. See Hu (as in n. 47), 323-24, 327. For the concepts of form and

emptiness, see Donald S. LopezJr., The Heart SutraExplained:ndian andTibetanCommentariesAlbany:State Universityof New York Press, 1988),57-93. John McRaeobserves the popularityof the sutra among Chan Bud-dhistsin "Ch'anCommentarieson the HeartSutra:Preliminary nferences onthe Permutation of Chinese Buddhism," ournalof theInternational ssociation

ofBuddhist tudies 1, no. 2 (1988): 87.49. Wang Siren, Wenfan xiaopin, comp. Jiang Jinde (Changsha:Yuelu

shushe, 1989), 386.50. Yuan

Zhongdao,1996 (as in n. 33),

juan11 (1616), 257, 259. For this

social practice,see Brook (as in n. 9), 37-53, 107-13.51. For TaoWangling,see Mingshi (as in n. 30), vol. 10,juan 216, 5712-13;

Kuaijixian zhi (as in n. 25), juan 24, 2a-b; Qian (as in n. 30), dingjixia,622-23; and Zhu (as in n. 37), juan 55, 17b-18b.

52. For Tao's associationwith ZhouRudeng,see Goodrich (as in n. 4), vol.1, 272-73.

53. See Peng (as in n. 28), juan 44, 477a-78a. A record of Zhuhong'smonasteryat Yunqi appears in Tao, vol. 2, 826-32; an essayon fangsheng,which documents his establishmentof a local society to release captiveani-malsin 1601,is recorded in Tao,vol. 4, 1944-52. Zhuhong'scorrespondencewith Tao appears n Zhuhong (asin n. 29), juan 2, 15b-17a;Tao is named asa proofreaderof Yigaon ibid., 5b.

54. ForYuanHongdao and his elder brotherZongdao,see Goodrich (as inn. 4), vol. 2, 1635-38.

55. See Peng (as in n. 28), juan 46, 483b-87a. For a studyof Hongdao'scomplicated engagementwithBuddhism,see QiuMinjie,Can Chan u nianfo:WanMingYuanHongdaodefojiao ixiang Taipei: Shangdingwenhua chuban-she, 1993).

56. This is made poignantlyclearin records about the death of Zongdao'sson, who had a vision of the Pure Landin extremisas he chanted the nameof the Buddha;see Yuan,vol. 1, 476-77. YuanZhongdaorecounts the similardeathbed experiences of a child born to each of the three brothersin Kexue

zhaijinji (1614; reprint,Shanghai: Shanghaishudian, 1982), juan 3, 75-77.57. Xifanghelun s reprintedin Yuan,vol. 3, 1637-45. For the publication

historyof the text, see Qiu (as in n. 55), 2-3; for an analysisof the text, seeibid., 65-96.

58. Hongdao met Zhuhong in 1597. See Yuan,vol. 1, 437.59. See ibid., vol. 3, 1701-5.60. See ibid., vol. 3, 1638.61. It is recorded that Tao Wanglingwent south to Kuaiji o studywith his

brother Shiling whenever he requested release from official duties in the

capital (Kuaijixian zhi [as in n. 25], juan 24, 2a-b). Letters written byWangling n Beijingand addressedto Shiling,cited in n. 28 above,are dated1589, 1594, and 1601.

62. I made this proposal in Anne Burkus,"MaskedImages of the Hero,"seminarpaper, Universityof California,Berkeley,1978. For the GrapeSoci-

ety, see Chih-p'ingChou, YuanHung-tao nd theKung-anSchoolCambridge:

CambridgeUniversityPress,1988), 27;and Ming-shuiHung, "YuanHung-taoand the LateMing Literaryand IntellectualMovement,"Ph.D. diss.,Univer-

sityof Wisconsin,Madison,1974, 148-62. Myproposalwaslater adopted byCahill (as in n. 7), 129. Vinograd (as in n. 7), 35-36, concurs, though hevacillates, uggestingthat Chen rendered "portraits, nd yet not exactlythat."

63. YuanZhongdao (asin n. 56), juan 3, 47, lists the members of the GrapeSocietyin a biographyof his elder brother Zongdao;see also his biographiesof JiangJinzhi (ibid.,juan 3, 66) and Pan Shicao (ibid.,juan 3, 69). Poemsrecordedin the collected writingsof YuanHongdao refer to the members ofthe society by name. See Yuan,vol. 2, 641, 646, 661. See also YuanZongdao(as in n. 33), juan 2, 58-59, juan 5, 121-22.

64.YuanZongdao (as in n. 33), juan 6, 141-42.65. ForBaiJuyi,see Chen,juan 1, 5a,juan 9, 29a, 54a.ForSu Shi, see ibid.,

juan 1, 5a, juan 2, la-b, juan 9, 11a, 72b, 54a. See also Aoki Masaru'sevaluation of Chen's poetic style in "Kin Roren," in Chukabunjingadan

(Tokyo,1949;reprint,vol. 6 of AokiMasaru enshu,Tokyo:Shunjusha,1969),168.

66. Chen,juan 4, 23a.67. For YuanHongdao's critiqueof his own position on unfetteredexpres-

sion and his younger brother Zhongdao's concurrence, see Chou (as in n.62), 61-69, 76-77, 84-90. See also the seminalworkby IriyaYoshitaka, KoankaraKyoryo : En Shoshu o chushin to shite," n Kyoto aigaku inbun kagakukenkyujooritsu25 shunenkinenronbun hu (Kyoto: Kyoto University,1954),305-30. Chen himself also favored the work of the poet and anthologistZhong Xing, founder of the so-calledJingling school. Opposing the rough,unfinished writing once admired by the Gongan poets, Zhong advocatedinstead the literaryrefinement that emulation of the past allowed. Chenindicated his familiaritywith Zhong's poetry in Chen, juan 4, 6a; he alsorecommended that in the "revision of phrases,"a poet should "venerateclassicalelegance,"in ibid., juan 4, 23a. For Zhong Xing, see NancyNortonTomasko,"ChungHsing (1574-1625): A LiteraryName in the Wan-liPeriod

(1573-1620)," Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1995. Modern art historians

have ignored the significance of the Jingling school with respect to Chen's

writing and painting, though it is a topic I addressed; Anne Burkus, "On Self

and Tradition: Chen Hongshou and Late Ming Poetics," paper delivered at

the Annual Conference of the College Art Association, New York, Feb. 1990.

68. For Chen Yuchao (Hongshou's father) and his reputed association with

Xu Wei, as well as a visit that Xu is reported to have made to the familyin1574, see Burkus (as in n. 16), 83-84, 103. Tao Wanglingwrote a series of

poems abouta lotus that bloomed in 1604 next to the room of the second wifeof the youngerbrother of Chen Xingxue (Hongshou's paternalgrandfather),in Tao, vol. 1, 283-85. Chen also recorded this event in Chen,juan 9, 59b.

69. Chen, juan 9, 7a-b.70. The legends engraved on Tao's seals read: "TaoXing zhi yin" (Tao

Xing'sSeal) and "Qubing u(?)"(Old ManQubing). I owe the deciphermentof the character"Xing" o Ts'ai (as in n. 7), 51.

71. For TaoXing,

seeZhongguoangzhi congshu,

o. 538,Shaoxing

ian zhi

ziliao,10 vols. (1937; reprint, Taipei: Chengwen chubanshe, 1983), vol. 9,2627-28.

72. For Qubing'sacquaintancewith Tao Shiling, see Qi,Julinshibi 1636),31b-32a.

73. Tao is identified as Qi's brother-in-lawn Qi, Julin shibi(1636), 32a,Shanjuzhuolu(1637), 2b. For records of Qi's social encounters with Tao

Qubing,either at Qi'sestatein Shanyinor at Tao's residencein Kuaiji, ee Qi,Shanjuzhuolu(1637), 2b, Qi lu (1639), lb, 7a, 14a-b, 21b, 31b, Ganmu u

(1640), 4b, 27a, Renwu ili(1642), 14b,22b,Jiashen ili(1644), 9a-b, Yiyouili

(1645), 14a. Their intimacyis attested by the gift of one of Qi's inkstones,presented to Tao by Qi's eldest son after his father's suicide in 1645. Tao

requestedthat Chen Hongshouwrite a poem to be inscribedon the inkstone;the poem is recorded in Chen,juan shiyi,12b.

74. Huang Yongquan first indicated the acquaintance of Chen and QiBiaojia n ChenHongshou ianpu (Beijing:Renmin meishu chubanshe, 1960),53. References to Chen appearin Qi,Julinshibi 1636), 25a, Yiyouili(1645),14a. For Qi Lisun, see Shaoxingu zhi (n.p., 1792), juan 54, 46b. For QiHongsun, see Wu Shanjia, Fu she xingshizhuanlie(1831; reprint, Taipei:

Wenhai chubanshe, 1973), juan 5, 47b.75. See Chen,juan 6, 5b,juan9, 12a-b, juan shiyi,6b. Texts includedin the

supplementto Baoluntangji,and designatedshiyi,maybe dated between thesummerof 1646 and early1647,accordingto the prefaceChen composed forthis collection. See also Chen,juan 5, 20b-21a, juan 9, 42a-b.

76. See Chen,juan 5, 11a-b, 20b-21a, 22b,juan shiyi,12b.The courageousefforts of Qi Lisun and Qi Hongsun in the Ming resistancemovement aredocumented by Quan Zuwang,Jieqi ting ji (mid-18thcentury;reprint, Sibu

congkan, hanghai:CommercialPress,1929), vol. 1783,juan 13, 15a-17b.77. Two versions of Chen's prefaceto Bi luan,distinguishedbya few variant

characters,are recorded in Chen,juan 1, 9a, juan shiyi, a-b.78. Shaoxing ian zhiziliao(as in n. 71), vol. 9, 2628.79. Chen Hongshou, "JiangQiji went to the gatheringof the ThrowAway

Society,which included Tianzhang,Zishan,and the two Taos. This poem issent to 'Skipper'Tao and Qubing, the two Taos." In Chen,juan 4, 20a-21a.

80. The Yuanmingjins identified by Xiang Shengmo (1597-1658) in his

inscription on Venerableriends,a group portrait from 1652, now in the

Shanghai Museum. See Chu-tsingLi andJames C.Y.Watt, eds., TheChineseScholar's tudio:ArtisticLife in theLateMingPeriod New York:Asia Society

Galleries and Thames and Hudson, 1987), 37. See also Zhou (as in n. 5),278-79, 410. Hatless,"Tao unshi"wearsonly a wangjin (net head cloth) tocover his hair knot (ibid.,438). "HuangZhaosu"and "YuanZhonglang"wearforms of the putou kerchief),not designedfor courtfunctions (ibid.,273, for

Song-period examples). '"Yuan oxiu"wearsa rujin (Confucianhead cloth),wornbyexamination candidateswho did not hold office (ibid.,382). The hatworn by "WangJingxu"s unidentified.

81. For zhishen,ee Zhou (as in n. 5), 279, 381.82. Constructedwith seven ridges, the hat worn by "TaoYoumei"recalls

courtlyheaddresses. But it bears no resemblance to contemporary ashions.

Apparently nventedby Chen, it can be comparedwith the quebian(sparrowcap), an archaic headdress llustrated n the encyclopediaSancai uhui,comp.WangQi, 6 vols. (1609;reprint,Taipei:Chengwenchubanshe, 1970), vol. 4,1512.

83. For the symbolismof withered trees, see Richard Barnhart, WintryForests,Old Trees: omeLandscape hemesn Chinese ainting NewYork:ChinaInstitutein America,1972).

84. See Robert E. Hegel's discussion of Sui Tang yanyi in The Novel inSeventeenthentury hina NewYork:ColumbiaUniversityPress,1981), 189-

217.85. ForHuiyuan,see E. Ziircher,TheBuddhistConquestf China:TheSpread

and Adaptation f Buddhismn EarlyMedievalChina,rev. ed., 2 vols. (1959;Leiden:E.J. Brill, 1972), vol. 1, 204-53.

86. Ibid.,vol. 1, 217.87. B. J. ter Haar, The WhiteLotus Teachingsn ChineseReligiousHistory

(Leiden:E.J. Brill, 1992), 2-3, 17-24.88. For Chen's practiceof Buddhism,see Burkus(as in n. 16), 202-31. For

lay practicesadvocatedby Zhuhong, see Yu (as in n. 31), 64-137.89. See Chen Yuchao,Zhuluo hangao (n.p., 1615), juan 5, 14a-b, juan 6,

14b-15b. See also Chen, juan 3, la-2b.90. The absenceof anyreference to Tao's Buddhistaffiliation n his official

biography explains the absence of his name from the list of recorded partic-

ipants in Qi Biaojia'sfangshengsociety. See Qi, Guinan kuailu (1635), 23a,Julinshibi (1636), 24b, 27b, Shanju zhuolu (1637), 4b, la, Ganmu lu (1640), 8a,Renwu rili (1642), 8b. Ts'ai (as in n. 7), 21, 51, contends, however, that Tao

was a devout Pure Land Buddhist. Her claim rests on the identification of Tao

Xing with a "Qubing from old Suzhou" who was acquainted with the Pure




Land monk OuyiZhixu(1599-1656). Butthere is no doubt thatTaoXingwasa native of Kuaijiand thereforeunrelated to "Qubing rom old Suzhou."Thelatter Qubing, mentioned only twicein the voluminouswritingsof Zhixu, isnot furtheridentifiedby the monk. See OuyiZhixu,Ouyidashiquanji,21 vols.

(Taipei:Fojiaochubanshe, 1975), vol. 4, 2271, vol. 18, 11290-91.91. See Shaoxing ian zhi ziliao(as in n. 71), vol. 9, 2627. For QiJunjia,see

Wu (as in n. 74), juan 5, 47b; Shaoxingfuzhi (as in n. 74), juan 54, 38b;andZhu (as in n. 37), juan 76, 12b.

92. Qi Biaojia, esponding o severe ood shortages n the regionof Shaoxingin 1640-41, had devoted himself to the organizationof famine relief. See Qi,Ganmu u (1640), 17b-18b, Xiaojiuu (1641), passim.See alsoJoannaHandlinSmith,"BenevolentSocieties:The Reshapingof Charityduringthe LateMingand EarlyQing," ournal fAsianStudies6, no. 2 (May1987):309-37.

93. Brook (as in n. 9), 106-7. See also Haar (as in n. 87), 24-28, for thecharities,calledfutian (Fieldsof Merit),organized by layBuddhistgroupsinthe Song period.

94. For Qi Junjia's visit to Yunqi Monasteryand his arrangement of a

daochang,r consecrated altarspacefor the performanceof PureLandritual,at his brother'sresidence, see Qi,Jiashenrili (1644), 3b, 5b. Zhuhong'sRecord

of SelfKnowledgeZizhilu), a moralitybook written in 1604, stressed the

importanceof acts of compassion.SeeYu (as in n. 31), 101-37, 233-59.95. For Tao's collection of painting and calligraphy,see Qi, Jiashenrili

(1644), 16b.96. It is unclear why Song-periodpainterschose to highlight an image of

Mafjusri rather than an image of Amitabha n their depictions of the WhiteLotusSociety.The bodhisattvawasordinarilyassociatedwith Chan. I suspectthat their painterly adjustmentreflects the Chan absorptionof Tiantai no-tions of the Pure Land in this historical period. See Daniel A. GetzJr.,"T'ien-t'aiPure Land Societies and the Creation of the Pure Land Patriarch-ate," in Buddhismn the Song,ed. Peter N. Gregory and Getz (Honolulu:Universityof Hawai'iPress,1999), 503.

97. Cahill (as in n. 7), 129.98. The woodcut is based on a version of TheWhiteLotusSocietyhat was

attributed to the Northern Song painterLi Gonglin and once owned by the

16th-centurypainterWen Zhengming.A 13th-century ersion of the paintingsurvives n the NanjingMuseum.Presented as a hanging scroll and executedwith ink, mineralcolors,and gold on silk, it retains the text of an inscriptionbyWen Zhengming.It is reproducedin Zhongguomeishu uanji:Huihuabian,vol. 3, LiangSonghuihua,2 vols. (Beijing:Wenwuchubanshe, 1988), vol. 1,64-65. See also Li-chiangLin, "TheProliferation of Images:The Ink-Stick

Designsand the Printingof the Fang-shihmop'uand the Ch'eng-shih oyuan,"2 vols., Ph.D. diss.,Princeton University,1998, for the publication historyof

Chengshimoyuan, ol. 1, 51-65, and for Cheng's reproduction of TheWhiteLotusSociety,ol. 1, 197-98.

99. A varietyof 17th-century exts indicate thatBuddhisticons were exhib-ited with secularpaintings.In this context, the icons were admired for their

artistry;heywere not special objectsof veneration. See YuanZhongdao,1996

(as in n. 33), juan 2 (1609), 20.100. Zheng Wei identifies the bodhisattva as Guanyinin Zhongguomeishu

quanji:Huihua bian, vol. 8, Mingdai huihua, 3 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghairenmin meishu chubanshe, 1988), vol. 3, 56. This identification was con-firmedbyProfessorRaoulBirnbaum,personalcommunication,Oct. 13, 1994;and ProfessorChun-fangYii,personalcommunication,Dec. 27, 1994. Othershave identified the bodhisattvaas Mafnjusri,ncluding Cahill (asin n. 7), 129;and Vinograd (as in n. 7), 36. Ts'ai (as in n. 7), 47, considers that Chenevoked both divinities at once.

101. For the identification of the hou,see Chin-fangYii, "Imagesof Kuan-

yin in FolkLiterature,"Hanxueyanjiu , no. 1 (June1990): 267 n. 22. See alsoidem, Kuan-yin:TheChinese ransformationfAvalokitesvaraNewYork: Colum-bia UniversityPress,2001), 88-89.

102. For furtherdiscussionof thispainting,see MarshaWeidner, ed., Latter

Days of the Law: Imagesof ChineseBuddhism,850-1850 (Lawrence,Kans.:

Spencer Museumof Art;Honolulu: Universityof Hawai'iPress, 1994), 158-60. For the Child-GivingGuanyin, see Yii, 2001 (as in n. 101), 126-41,247-62.

103. The scholarly iteratureon the White-RobedGuanyin s extensive.See

RolfA. Stein,"Avalokitesvara/Kouan-yin:n exemple de transformationd'undieu en deesse,"Cahiers 'ExtremeAsie(1986): 17-80; andYii, 2001 (as in n.101), 247-62. Although Chen certainlyportrayed he White-RobedGuanyin,the eccentricities of his portrayalare notable. The crown of the bodhisattva

generallycarried an image of the BuddhaAmitabha,which is missingin the

furling vertical panel of the diadem worn by Chen's goddess. The hand

gestures,or mudra, f Chen's divinityare also unusual. Her left hand is held

up, withthe palm turnedobliquelyoutward.Ordinarily, he palmwould havebeen turned fullyoutward,with the thumb and forefinger touching to forma circle;this gestureconveysa bodhisattva'sact of teaching or discussion.It is

possiblethat Chen misconstrued the mudra, onfusingit with a gestureof theright hand that conveysa wish for fearlessness.

104. Scripturef heLotusBlossomftheFineDharma,rans.Leon Hurvitz NewYork:ColumbiaUniversityPress,1976), 311-19.

105. SeeYui, 001 (as in n. 101), 93-149. Yuobserves thatindigenous sutraswerelinked to the miraculousexperiences of historicalpersonsand therefore

emphasize the presence of Guanyin n this world (148-49).106. For furtherdiscussion of thisbook, see Weidner (asin n. 102), 315-16.

107. Haar (as in n. 87), 17-24.108. HangzhouShang Tianzhuzhi, comp. Guang Bin (reprint, 1897), in

Zhongguofosihihuikan(Taipei:Mingwenshujuyinhang, 1980), ser. 1,vol. 26,42-43. For the development of the Upper Tianzhu Monasteryas a culticcenter for the worshipof Guanyin n the NorthernSong period, see Yii, 2001(as in n. 101), 360-69. See also Daniel B. Stevenson, "Protocols of Power:Tz'u-yiinTsun-shih (964-1032) and T'ien-t'ai Lay Buddhist Ritual in theSung," n Gregoryand Getz (as in n. 96), 347-50, 358-59.

109.Chen,juan 5, 33a.110. See

Scripture ftheLotusBlossomas in n.

104),319. Hurvitztranslates

the term pumenas "gateway o everywhere."The production of icons wasconsidered an act of karmicmerit.

111.Chen,juan 4, 20a.112.Forother interpretationsof Chen'sseallegends, see Weng (asin n. 2),

vol. 1, 209.113. I am indebted to Mieke Bal, Narratology:ntroductiono the Theory f

Narrative,d ed. (Toronto:Universityof Toronto Press, 1997), for an under-

standingof the importanceof looking in the presentationof a story.Bal usesthe termfocalizationo refer to acts of seeing or perception that present theelements of a storyto the reader through the eyes of a subjectwho sees theevent. For her analysisof focalization in visual stories, see idem, ReadingRembrandt:eyondheWord-ImageppositionCambridge:CambridgeUniver-sityPress, 1991), 138-76. The concept of focalization was firstproposed byGerardGenette,FiguresII (Paris:Editionsdu Seuil, 1972), 206-26, who usedthe term, however, to distinguishbetween the voices that orient a story byestablishinga mood and giving informationto the reader.

114. The number nine representsa potent figure in the Yijing (BookofChanges)nd associated texts. It is a strong (yang)number,most fullyembod-

ied in hexagramone, Qian,which is considered PureYangand significantofHeaven. Dragons are featured in the commentaries on the images of this

hexagram: they are submerged and do not act in accord with the situation

represented by Qian.If an analogywere to be drawn,the nine "dragons"n

ElegantGatheringbservethe strengthof Heaven,but refrainfromimpetuousaction, while secluding themselves in a wooded close. See The ClassicofChanges:A New Translation f the "IChing"as InterpretedyWangBi, trans.RichardJohn Lynn (New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1994), 129-42.Ellen Laingsuggestedthat I consider the significanceof the number of menassembled.

115.FujiiMasao,ed., Bukkyo yajigireishoshiki aijiten Tokyo:Yusankaku,1983), 166-69, 506.

116.Vinograd (as in n. 7), 36, also suggeststhat the representationof thebodhisattvablurs the "boundariesbetween realityand artifice," hough hedoes not suggest that the bodhisattva s an apparition.

117.Zhao Xiaohua, "Liaoning sheng bowuguan cang Bailian she tu uantsozhe kao,"Wenwu (1991): 72-80.

118. Thanksto EllenLaingfor her keen observationof the animal'scatlikemovements.

119. Wei Dong, "Chen Hongshou Xiyingtu xintan," Wenwu11 (1991):88-90.

120.See Yun-huaJan, "The Power of Recitation: An Unstudied Aspect ofChinese Buddhism,"StudiStoricoReligiosi (1977): 289-99.

121.Chen,juan 6, 3b.122. Ibid.,juan 9, 4a.123. Ibid.,juan 5, 18b.124. Ibid.,juan 5, 3b. See also ibid.,juan 4, 14a.125.Citedby DavidW. Chappell,"FromDispute to Dual Cultivation:Pure

Land Responses to Ch'an Critics,"n Traditionsof Meditationn Chinese ud-dhism,ed. Peter N. Gregory(Honolulu: Universityof Hawai'iPress, 1986),191.

126. Zhuhong, quoted in Yi (as in n. 31), 62. For Zhuhong's criticismof

contemporaryChan practices,see ibid., 171-91.127.RobertF. Campany,"The RealPresence,"History f Religions 2, no. 3

(Feb. 1993): 256.128.Chiin-fangYii, "P'u-t'o Shan: Pilgrimage and the Creation of the

ChinesePotalaka,"n Pilgrims nd Sacred ites n China, d. SusanNaquinand

Chfin-fangYu (Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress,1992), 216-20, 226-34.129.Campany(as in n. 127), 253-54.130.Yunqi Zhuhong, Zhuchuanganbi, n Yunqifahui(as in n. 29), 13b.131.Zhuhong, quoted byYi (as in n. 128), 234.132. ZhangDai, Taoanmengyilate 17th century;reprint, Hangzhou:Xihu

shushe, 1982), 86-87.133. ZhangDai, "TheRelic at KingAsokaTemple," n Inscribedandscapes:

TravelWritingfrommperialChina, d. and trans.RichardE. Strassberg Berke-ley:Universityof CaliforniaPress,1994), 351. See also Pei-yiWu, "AnAmbiv-alent Pilgrimto T'ai Shan in the SeventeenthCentury,"n NaquinandYu (asin n. 128), 65-88.

134.Robert M. Gimello explores a similar tension between the ecstatic

transportof visionaryexperience and the need for sensoryverificationin

"Chang Shang-yingon Wu-t'ai Shan," in Naquin and Yu (as in n. 128),89-149.

135.See, for example,AlanSponberg'sdiscussion of visualization n "Med-itation in Fa-hsiangBuddhism," n Gregory(as in n. 125), 21-30.

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