Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 2 Page 3
Sometimes the deceased persuade underworld officials to let them come back to life to care for children otherwise made orphans, or for elderly parents, and in some cases the dead person exploits some personal contact (e.g., both being from the same home town) with someone inside the underworld bureaucracy who can turn a blind eye to the individual’s case, or with a relative or acquaintance who can exploit their own contacts to make that happen. One can even return to the living thanks to timely bribes to individuals occupying the lower echelons of the bureaucratic hierarchy, like guards or doormen (Campany 151). The individuals dispatched from the underworld to collect the spirit of scholar Du Jiuwan’s wife are dissuaded from carrying out their duty by bribes, which include a celebratory feast and the burning of paper money (in “The Ghosts Throw a Banquet” [gui zuo yan]), both suggestions coming from the spirits of Du’s dead mother and father, who possess their dying daughter-in-law’s body in order to communicate strategies to their son for protecting her.
Besides simply dying at their fated times, individuals in Pu’s tales can also find themselves suddenly transported to the underworld to discover that they have been recruited either for specific positions within the underworld bureaucracy, or to serve as local deities in the mortal world. It’s common for such characters to have been “struck unexpectedly by an illness that leads to a quick death. The individual is not immediately aware that he or she has died” (Cuevas 299). But since the prerequisite for such service is death,3 most characters are resistant to these unsolicited promotions. “The Imperial Censor in Fengdu” (fengdu yushi), Hua Gong, refuses to believe Fengdu county residents who claim that a nearby cave is an office of the Hell King, so when he enters the cave to investigate, he suddenly finds himself being welcomed by other underworld officials to join them. A surprise edict from the Hell King offers amnesty for underworld spirits, but Hua learns he can return to the mundane world only if he can keep chanting Buddhist sutras all the way back—which proves to be a real challenge for the lapsed Buddhist.
Perhaps the most surprising recruitment is the one conducted for individuals to take the place of the Hell King himself temporarily. An “honest and sincere” scholar named Li Zhongzhi, “who never did anything immoral,” seems to die every few days, and then return to life three or four days later (in “The Hell King” [yanwang]), and Zhang, another scholar in the same town who dies periodically, reports having seen Li in the underworld, serving as the Hell King. “Li Boyan” (li boyan) is also recruited to fill in briefly for the Hell King, although he makes the mistake of trying to ignore the misdeeds of Wang, a relative by marriage, with near-disastrous results. In his addenda to the story, Pu defends the severity of the underworld’s objective justice, adding that his only regret is “that there’s no fire to burn the living world’s government offices, where people are unfairly treated!”
What may initially appear to be arbitrary lapses in the underworld justice system, either through carelessness or malfeasance, or to be a capricious harvesting of talented individuals to serve the whims of the underworld powers, is ultimately a function of karma, the doctrine that what one does in one life will inevitably affect one’s lot in the next one. This is one reason that the Hell King permits no “exchanges” per se of a virtuous individual willing to undergo punishment in order to redeem someone convicted by the underworld court for her or his acts (Kapstein 357; Siklós 180), even as an ultimate expression of a positive ideal, like altruism or filial piety: it doesn’t change the fact that the guilty individual must balance her/his own karmic debt. The cruel magistrate responsible for ordering an unjust flogging that results in the death of an elderly man is consequently killed by a corpse—the body of the best friend of the old man’s son (in “Tian Qilang” [tian qilang]). A man who owes a considerable debt to official Li Jinzhuo is unable to repay it until the man’s spirit is reborn in a farm animal (in “A Donkey Repays a Debt” [jian changzhai]). “Li Sijian” (li sijian), arrested for the death of his wife, rushes into the temple of the city god, claims to be acting under the direction of the deity, and begins cutting off parts of his body as punishment for his act; by the time paperwork arrives for him to be tried and sentenced in a court of law, “Sijian had already received his punishment from the underworld.”
Karmically speaking, Pu’s Hell King, sitting before the underworld court, is the epitome of justice: the dead are rewarded in proportion to their good deeds, and punished in proportion to their evil deeds. That’s both fair and efficient, right? Just ask the scornful official who angrily has a Daoist flogged in “The Daoist of Jinan” (jinan daoren) for revealing the official’s covetousness: while the Daoist seems to suffer nothing at all, the official’s own buttocks begin to bleed from the beating.
Notes
1 Temple booklets, for example, can be obtained that allow the individual to calculate how much merit certain deeds can earn: “With this chart goes a table showing how many merit points you need to ensure rebirth in a wealthy family, or as a handsome and successful person” (Palmer 1996:61). But those booklets also emphasize that misdeeds can counteract positive works, and tables show the reader what punishments to expect, given what specific wrongs one has committed.
The actions of the living also have ramifications for the dead. Hence the development of a punitive/purgative underworld in Chinese Buddhism not only served to deter individuals from performing evil in their own lives, but also prompted actions to benefit deceased family members: the practice of “filial piety received the new dimension of compassion, and gave the impetus to devise methods to actively assist the ancestors in their fearful situation” (Pas 46). Hell money, a pseudo-currency that is “sent” to the dead in the underworld by living friends and family members who burn it sacrificially, is intended to be used to bribe underworld officials, and to make the existence of the dead more comfortable so they won’t return and haunt the living (Cline and Littlejohn 16).
2 The precise number of separate divisions within the underworld varies with different sources and local traditions. In one variation, there are eight hell divisions (the “hot hells”), each with specific oversight of the punishments for specific actions. The “hell of repetitions,” or “hell on earth,” forces the offender to repeat, over and over, the lives of those one has killed; in the “black rope hell,” one is tied to the objects one has stolen; the “crowding hell,” punishing adultery, crams the offender together with other sexual libertines; the “screaming hell” is loaded with obnoxious screamers, the punishment for intoxication; for embracing false truths, one is subjected to the “hell of burning heat”; acts performed in response to improper motives are punished in the “hell of great burning heat”; and the last and deepest of the hot hells is the “hell of no respite,” a seemingly unending torture for one of five premeditated sins, including the killing of a parent, or a holy person (Pas 48).
In many cases, the punishments within the hellish divisions are thematically related to the evil performed by the deceased: “Thieves had their hands and feet cut off. Saying bad things about others and talking behind their back was punished by having the skin peeled off of one’s back. Bragging about one’s good deeds was punished by being disemboweled. Those who wasted food were ground into meat jam” (Cline and Littlejohn 22).
3 Though there are always exceptions to any rule of underworld procedure: Ma Cheng, a horse groom in “The Chess Ghost,” for example, who is employed on occasion by the Hell King as a ghost-catcher, doesn’t die each time he makes the journey from the mundane world to the underworld.
The Tales
84. Official Lu’s Daughter
Zhang Yudan of Zhaoyuan possessed an indomitable personality that could not be restrained. He had been studying at a Buddhist monastery. At the time, his town was presided over by an official named Lu, who was from east of the Liao River, and whose daughter loved to hunt. Zhang was taking a walk in the countryside when he came across her, observing her gracefully refined beauty clothed in a luxurious sabl
e robe, lightly riding a small black horse, as if she were in a painting. He returned home, recalling the beauty he’d glimpsed in the valley, remembering her with admiration and fondness.
Later he heard that the girl had died of a sudden illness, and in his mournful sighing for her, he wanted to die. Because he was far away from his family, Lu put his daughter’s coffin in the monastery where Zhang was studying.
Zhang performed religious obeisance at the coffin as if the girl was a deity, always burning incense in the mornings and offering food sacrifices to her. Each time, he poured a ceremonial libation of wine on the ground and would say in benediction, “Despite having seen only the profile of your noble face, I’ve grown quite attached to you; I didn’t expect that you would die before I had a chance to get to know you. Now though you’re right in front of me, we’re as far apart as rivers and mountains, which drives me to distraction! Although in real life our behavior would have to be limited and restrained, there’s no need for a dead spirit to be cautious—so if, in the underworld, you understand my feelings for you, please take steps to come see me, which I would find comforting.” For several weeks, he spoke these words day and night.
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Zhaoyuan . . . Liao River: Zhaoyuan is located in Yantai county, Shandong province. The Liao River flows through Liaoning province and Inner Mongolia.
One night, having just studied under a lantern for his evening reading, he suddenly raised his head—and there was the girl wearing a smile, standing in the lantern’s light. Startled, Zhang jumped up and asked what had happened. The girl replied, “I could sense your feelings towards me, and I couldn’t help but forget the usual concerns about reputation and run here to meet you.” Zhang was overjoyed, and together they were rapturously in love.
From then on, he spent no more empty nights without her. The girl explained to Zhang, “I was born with a passion for hunting and riding, so shooting river deer and slaughtering stags always made me happy, but it was a great sin, and once I died, I wasn’t allowed to find peace. If you truly care about me and love me, please take the trouble of reciting the Diamond Sutra for me 5,048 times, which I shall never forget for generations.”
Zhang respectfully took her words to heart; each night he’d get up, come to her coffin, and expressively recite the scriptures while fingering his prayer beads. When it came time for a festival, Zhang wanted to take her home with him. The girl worried that with her tiny, weak feet, she wouldn’t be able to undertake a long journey. Zhang begged her to let him carry her, and with a smile, the girl agreed. It was like carrying an infant, except that she wasn’t heavy, and Zhang never got tired. Thus it became a common occurrence for them.
Even when Zhang was going to take the exams, he’d carry her with him, though he had to travel at night to do so. As Zhang was just about to leave to take the provincial examination, the girl told him, “You have no luck, so it will be a futile effort for you to go there and take the exam.” After listening to her words, he didn’t go after all.
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Diamond Sutra: In this sutra, the Buddha helps the monk, Subhuti, reconsider his beliefs about reality; in Section III, for example, he teaches about detachment from the notion of personality.
Four or five years passed, and Lu, no longer serving as an official, had become so poor that he couldn’t afford a carriage for his daughter’s coffin to be transported to his hometown and was just about to bury her near the monastery, but ran into trouble getting a place for her grave. Zhang then personally assured him, “I have some ground near the monastery, and I’d like to have her buried there.” This relieved Master Lu considerably.
Zhang did everything he could in managing the funeral. Lu was respectfully grateful for Zhang’s deeds, although he couldn’t understand Zhang’s motivation. Once Lu left, Zhang and the girl resumed their usual meetings as before.
One night, while she was turned towards Zhang and laying upon his chest, the girl’s tears fell like spilled beans as she cried, “Five happy years now come to an end! I’m so indebted to you that several lifetimes won’t be long enough for me to repay you!” Shaken, Zhang asked her what she meant. She explained, “I have received your favor and efforts at helping me as a spirit in the underworld. Now all your chanting has reduced my sins sufficiently for me to be reborn in Hebei to the family of Minister of Revenue Lu. In order not to forget our time together, fifteen years from now, on August 16, please make plans to meet with me again.”
Zhang wept as he said, “I’m over thirty years old; in another fifteen years I’ll be too old, so what’s the point of our meeting then?”
The girl, also crying, replied, “I wish I could repay you, even just by being your servant.” After pausing for a bit, she declared, “You can carry me for six or seven li. This route is full of thistles and thorns, and it will be very hard for me due to my long clothes.” Then she threw her arms around Zhang’s neck.
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Six or seven li: A distance equal to 2-2.33 miles.
He accompanied her to the main road, where he saw a cluster of vehicles and horses nearby, with one or two people on each horse; there were three or four people in each carriage, and ten or so other people of various sorts; there was a single carriage decorated with patterns of inlaid gold and a red-tassled, embroidered curtain at the front, attended only by an old lady. She saw the girl arrive and cried, “Are you coming or not?”
“I’m coming,” the girl responded. Then she turned back to Zhang and told him, “This is it, we have to part now; don’t forget what I told you.” Zhang promised. She walked over to the carriage, where the old woman put out her hand to help her up, then the carriage wheels began to turn as the vehicles and horses noisily departed.
Downhearted, Zhang returned home, writing down the date of their rendezvous on the wall. Because he realized that the reciting of the Diamond Sutra had been effective, he offered even more sincere recitations of the scriptures. He dreamt that a holy man announced to him, “Your devotion is to be commended, but you must go to the south sea where the goddess Guanyin assigns activities to priests.”
“How do I get to the south sea?” asked Zhang.
The holy man replied, “It is as close as your own heart.” Zhang woke up, understood the meaning of his dream, and decided to devote himself to the Buddhist scriptures with a renewed conviction.
Three years went by and his two sons successfully passed the civil service examinations with top rankings. And though Zhang quickly rose in social status and wealth, he didn’t lose his focus on performing benevolent deeds.
One night he dreamt that someone dressed as a servant requested that he follow, till he saw a person sitting in a palace who looked like the bodhisattva, Guanyin, and who welcomed him by saying, “Your deeds really deserve to be rewarded, so it’s a pity that you weren’t going to have a longer life. Fortunately, I reported this to heaven and you’ll be allowed to live longer.”
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Guanyin: The goddess of mercy, also known as Avalokiteśvara.
Zhang prostrated himself and kowtowed. He was told to rise and was given a place to sit, where he was provided tea to drink that smelled as fragrant as orchids. Then a boy was directed to lead him to a pond where he could bathe. The pond water was so perfectly clear that one could count the number of fish swimming in it and he entered its pleasant warmth, smelling its lotus fragrance when he scooped some up into his hands.
After a few moments, as he began moving about, he lost his footing, went under, and consequently drowned. He was startled awake from a deep sleep and thought it all rather strange.
Henceforth, his body began growing stronger, as did his eyesight. When he stroked his beard, the white hairs all came out, and after quite a while, the black hairs that took their places fell out as well. The lines in his face also gradually relaxed. After several months had passed, his jaw became as bald as a boy’s face, just
like a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old. He often wandered about carefree and made fun of things, also like a boy. He was no longer particular about the way he dressed; his two sons often redressed him.
Shortly after this, his wife succumbed to the illness from which she’d long been suffering and died. His sons urged him to search for a new wife among the wealthy families. Zhang replied, “Wait for me to go to Hebei, and once I return, I’ll marry.”
He calculated the time remaining until the appointed day, then arranged for servants and horses to accompany him to Hebei. He searched for information about Minister of Revenue Lu and found that there was such a person for sure. A daughter had been born to the Lu family who at birth was already able to speak, and who had grown increasingly wise and beautiful, so her parents loved her very deeply.
Though wealthy families inquired about marriage arrangements, the girl always refused them. Surprised, her parents asked her why and she frankly told them she was waiting for Zhang to appear for an appointment that had been set up in her previous incarnation. When they totaled up his age, her parents roared with laughter and said, “How silly of you! Master Zhang is already fifty and naturally will have changed greatly, his very bones having become decrepit; even if he’s still alive, he’ll be balding and toothless.” The girl wouldn’t listen to them.
Her mother could see she was determined not to budge, so she conferred with Master Lu and warned the gatekeeper not to allow any visitors to enter, and once the date of the appointment had passed, her daughter would give up because of her disappointment in Zhang. Soon afterwards, Zhang arrived and the gatekeeper refused to admit him.
He left and returned to his inn, disappointed that there was nothing he could do about it. He loitered at the outskirts of town, making private inquiries while wandering about.