By the Han period, the careers of those free spirits described in Zhuangzi were the subject of universal interest. The earliest systematic collection of biographical notices on these legendary figures is the Lives of the Immortals (Liexuanzhuan) of the early 2nd century ce. Such collections were a genre of the time. Brief sketches were provided for 72 figures: the same symbolic number as was found in contemporary collections of the “Lives” of the disciples of Confucius, eminent scholar-officials, and famous women. Thus Immortals came to be classified as yet another category in the highly stylized gallery of ancient worthies. Each notice is followed by a short hymn of praise. This was the standard form of inscriptions on stone; its employment in hagiographic literature may have influenced the later development of the chantefable in alternating passages of prose and verse. The text appears to reflect a growing number of local cults dedicated to individual Immortals, while the many plants mentioned suggest the extent of the use of herbal compounds as a means to transcendence. Inscriptions
These literary notices are supplemented by epigraphic evidence, inscriptions on stone or bronze. The simplest of these are bronze mirrors depicting the plumed figures of airborne Immortals and bearing short rhyming texts of a general nature. Longer and more explicit are the texts of inscriptions on stone: tablets dedicated to the cult of a particular Immortal. They open with their subject’s vital statistics, list his latter-day manifestations, and commemorate offerings made in his honour. But all of this is only by way of preface to the core of the inscription, in which his merits are celebrated in verse. Such was the eloquent votive tablet erected in honour of Wang Ziqiao, a perennial favourite among the Immortals (165 ce). Another, dedicated to Laozi in the same year, describes the supposed author of the Daodejing as a god, to whom worship had been paid by the then reigning emperor. Texts on the cult of Laozi
One of the most complex and interesting phenomena in Chinese religious history is Laozi’s advancement from sage to god. A scroll found in the walled-up desert library at Dunhuang, the Book of the Transformations of Laozi (Laozi bianhuajing), shows him in cosmic perspective, omnipresent and omnipotent, the origin of all life. His human manifestations are listed, followed by his successive roles in legendary history, as the sage counsellor of emperors. Next, five of his more recent appearances are mentioned, dated 132–155 ce, and localized in west China, where a temple is said to have been dedicated to him in 185. Then the god speaks, to describe his own powers. He recommends to his votaries the recitation of “my book in 5,000 words” (the Daodejing) and enjoins a meditation on his own divine attributes as they appear within the adept’s body. Finally, he calls upon the faithful to join him, now, when he is about to strike at the tottering rule of the Han dynasty. Evidently the product of a messianic group in west China at the end of the 2nd century, this valuable fragment of only 95 lines is written in a strangely disfigured Chinese, in part a reflection of its popular milieu. But it still shows more clearly than many longer and better preserved texts the essential cohesion of the several aspects of esoteric Daoism: hagiography, recitation of scriptures, and visionary meditation, all of which are here given additional temporal unity by the messianic context. The Southern tradition
The political partition of China into three parts following the collapse of the Han dynasty in 220 ce, the so-called period of the Three Kingdoms, had its spiritual counterpart in certain well-defined regional religious differences. Against the independent dynasties in the north and west stood the empire of Wu, south of the Yangtze River. Developments in alchemical and other traditions
A region exposed comparatively lately to Chinese influence, this southeastern area had long been famous for its aboriginal sorcerers and dancing mediums. In the course of Chinese colonization, separate learned spiritual traditions developed alongside the ecstatic practices of the populace. To the court of the emperors of Wu came savants and wonder workers representing a variety of traditions that were to acquire lasting influence.
Among these personages was a certain Ge Xuan (3rd century ce), who was said to have been initiated into an ancient alchemical tradition. His great-nephew Ge Hong in the next century became one of the most celebrated writers on the various technical means for attaining immortality. In his major work, the Baopuzi (“He Who Holds to Simplicity”), Ge Hong expounded the alchemical formulas received and transmitted by Ge Xuan. In so doing, he took care to distinguish the divinely inspired “gold elixir” (jindan), or “liquefied gold” (jinyi)—i.e., preparations of true edible, or potable, gold, the consumption of which leads to immortality (aurifaction)—from the mere counterfeiting of the precious substance, with intention to deceive (aurifiction). These alchemical methods have been designated as belonging to the Taiqing (“Great Purity”) tradition, from the name of the heaven of the Immortals to which the elixirs were said to elevate their consumer. The chapters of alchemy in the Baopuzi are among the earliest documents to describe the art in detail.
Ge Hong enumerated an extensive selection of material substances and practical operations to which he attributed varying degrees of relative efficacy in the prolongation of life. Dietetics (grain and alcohol avoidance); ingestion of solar, lunar, and astral exhalations and their cycling within the body; gymnastics; and conservation of vital fluids through proper sexual techniques were all necessary and fundamental. The usefulness of written talismans and the performance of good works were also not denied. Above all, it was essential that all disease be eliminated from the body before undertaking more positive, specialized practices for achieving immortality. Herbs and plants were useful not only against disease, but in many cases (particularly in that of mushrooms) their use resulted in definite lengthening of life. For a definitive transformation into an Immortal (xian), with all the powers and prerogatives that implied, however, an alchemical elixir must be compounded and consumed. Ge Hong admitted, however, that he himself had never succeeded in making one. After a strenuous life in civil and military service, in the course of which he managed to write voluminously on many subjects, this great eclectic scholar is said to have undertaken a long journey to China’s colonial dominions in Vietnam in quest of the pure cinnabar found there. He stopped at Luofoushan, near Guangzhou (Canton), however, where he died.
The Baopuzi was nearly finished in 317, when Luoyang, capital of the Western Jin dynasty, fell to the Xiongnu. This event set off a considerable emigration to the unsubdued region south of the Yangtze River. The imperial household was followed in its flight by numerous high-ranking dependents and their spiritual ministers. During this period the Way of the Celestial Masters, established at the court of Luoyang since the early 3rd century, apparently first penetrated in force to the Southeast. While the secular, military menace remained in the North, and factional struggles raged among the emigrants, the Way of the Celestial Masters waged unremitting war against the indigenous sects and cults of demons of the Southeast. Many of the old established families, settled in the region since the end of the Han dynasty, turned away from local traditions to become members of the Daoist faith of their new political superiors. At first these converts were content to entrust the direction of their spiritual lives to the libationers of the movement, though these religious specialists were generally men of lower social standing than themselves. Among the second and third generation of converts from the old aristocracy of Wu, however, new and original impulses, which were to have most profound effects upon the development of Daoism as a whole, began to occur. The Maoshan Revelations