The Immortal Maiden Equal to Heaven and Other Precious Scrolls from Western Gansu

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Notes

1 In the Ming Dynasty there was a fort on the Black River in this area called Big Bridge Fort. It is tempting to connect this with the bridge-building goddess. Tan Qixiang 譚其驤, Zhongguo lishi dituji 中國歷史地圖集 (Chinese historical atlas; Shanghai: Ditu chuban she, 1982), vol. 7, p. 61.

2 I prefer “scripture” rather than “sutra,” since this is not a Buddhist text.

3 I will use Idema's rendering of laoshu 老鼠 as mice, though I think these laoshu are rats. They live in a nest at the base of a cliff, not in a house, and the damage they cause is more rat-like than mouse-ish.

4 I was surprised that more anger is not expressed at the well-to-do who do next to nothing to help the suffering. For a much more savage indictment of social injustice in a text meant for village audiences, see my translation of the Ding Xian yangge 秧歌 “Guo Ju Buries His Son,” in Sources of Chinese Tradition, 2nd ed., ed. W. T. de Bary (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), pp. 105–17.

5 This shift toward entertainment is consistent with what Rostislav Berezkin has found regarding baojuan texts and performances in the area around Shanghai. See his article, “The Lithographic Print Technology and the Development of the Baojuan Genre in Shanghai in the 1900–1920s,” Zhongzheng Daxue Zhongwen xueshu niankan 中正大學中文學術年刊 (Chongcheng University Bulletin of the Department of Chinese Language and Literature) 13 (2011): 337–68; and Berezkin, “Printing and Circulating ‘Precious Scrolls’ in Early Twentieth Century Shanghai and its Vicinity: Toward an Assessment of the Multifunctionality of the Genre,” in Religious Publishing and Print Culture in Modern China: 1800–2012, ed. Gregory Adam Scott and Philip Clart (Boston: Walter De Gruyter, 2015), pp. 135–89.

6 See Victor Mair, “Language and Ideology in the Written Popularizations of the Sacred Edict,” in Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, ed. David Johnson and others (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 354–55.