Shilian Dashan: 3 Takes

Shilian Dashan, artists' depiction by Lu Zhenhuan 盧鎮寰 (stored in the

Guangzhou Museum of Art)

Take 1:

Shilian Dashan (1633-1702) is one of the 'self-portraitists' described in Wu Pei-yi's The Confucian's Progress that really left an impression on me. To me, he seemed the ultimate 17th-century Chinese answer to the phrase "fake it till you make it" :

Appearing in Guangzhou around 1670 from complete obscurity, he eked out a living by selling his portraits of Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy. His artistic and literary skills, his wit and imaginativeness as well as his claim -- discredited later by his detractors -- to have been designated by the long-dead eminent master Juelang (d. 1648) as his heir impressed members of the local literati, who took him in as one of their own. With their help and the connivance of local officials who appreciated generous gifts of fine furniture and porcelain, all designed by him and manufactured under his supervision, he took possession of the Changshou Temple, which he completely remade by renovating the buildings, replanting the gardens, and adding streams and ponds. His exquisite taste and great ingenuity were praised even by his critics.

What's so interesting here is that in this world of (Lingnan Chinese) Zen/Chan Buddhists, so much is placed on the lineage of the master, and this is precisely what Shilian was able to "fake." His life as a successful Chan master, fabulous as it was, also seems not to have been enough for him. Right around 1700, after 30 years of faking and making it, he seems to have suddenly been called cold.

Shilian was accused of breaking every vow of the priesthood, making false pretensions to imperial patronage, swindling the ignorant with his fraudulent claim of rainmaking powers, smuggling luxury goods from Vietnam, buying boys and girls and selling them to theatrical troupes, and numerous other crimes. Convicted and sentenced to be exiled to a northern city, Shilian died on the road.

What a fascinating case! What interests me here is that I cannot say for sure how "unusual" Shilian really is. As Wheeler's article below shows, Shilian was just one of many Chan masters who served as something like community organizers, enlisting patronage of the rich and powerful, and providing in return a kind of product -- it could be a temple, a ceremony, making it rain, a young boy perhaps -- that is in some respects inherently fantastic, in the sense that these things stage and fulfill fantasies. Wheeler concentrates on the positive side of this organizing: the building up of Chinese communities abroad, the solid foundation for long-distance networks, and the amazing boost to cultural interchange.

Master of temptation: Shilian winning against Lust (drawing by Shilian)

Take 2:

Journal of Global History (2007), 2:303-324 Cambridge University Press

Copyright © London School of Economics and Political Science 2007

"Buddhism in the re-ordering of an early modern world: Chinese missions to Cochinchina in the seventeenth century"

---

Charles Wheeler

Professor Wheeler describes the contents of Shilian Dashan's memoir along with other historical materials as just the most complete illustration of the important role of Buddhist monks in constructing "long-distance networks of merchant colonies." Wheeler really wants us to picture these 'networks' as three overlapping, interacting social structures: the merchants, who connect the "East Asia littoral" in a "triangle" with corners in Tokugawa Japan, China's Fujian Province, and Cochinchina under the Nguyễn Lords in the 17th century. This was a time when powerful merchant networks (just think of Zheng Chengguo) sailed along the triangle making money, establishing ethnic Chinese communities, and, less directly, leaving major impacts on the politics and society of the Cochinchina and Japan. Shilian Dashan is a case that helps us understand the impact and the lasting connection between religious, mercantile and political traditions:

Money was raised, land was appropriated, monks were recruited, temples and other structures were built, disciples were anointed, and traditions reified, bestowing legitimacy and status upon merchant and sangha alike.

A special feature of the Cochinchina setting was the unique status given to Ming Loyalists, who managed to compromise with the Nguyen Lords to share the area.

Ming Loyalists disappeared as a social category in Japan, but survivedin Cochinchina, albeit transformed by transferring their political loyalties to Nguyen overlords....They ... retained their Ming hairstyle and dress, and continued to pray for the resurrection of the fallen dynasty in their Guandi temples.

After the fall of the Ming in 1644, many loyalists of means (I suppose merchants were a large portion of this population, though it seems gentry and even upper-echelon elite were there too) came down to live in southern Vietnam, but they seem to have maintained some contact with China, along the trade routes. Buddhism was also a major tool of keeping connected:

Dashan's Changshou monastery reportedly hosted gatherings of local literati that included well-known Ming sympathizers.

I guess the main point here is that monk and merchant were 'interdependent':

Temples played a vital role in holding this society together, underscoring the importance of religion to the daily strategies of Chinese merchants overseas....Indeed the interdependency between monk, merchant and monarch delineated here resembles longstanding general models of religion's function in merchant networks and state formation during the early modern era.

Take 3:

From Dashan's first collection, drawn by Dashan. Can't make out the colophon -- is it a merchant with a little good or demon behind him?

Dashang Heshang ji 大汕和尚 [The Monk Dashang Collection], 2007. This book is from Sun Yat Sen University Press' series on early Qing Buddhists of the 'Lingnan' region; the series preface celebrates the historical 'brilliance' of a Buddhist tradition fostered among Chan and Confucian thinkers as one of three main sanctuaries of Ming loyalist thought. It seems to have been a grand collaboration between the SYS University's Graduate Institute of Classical Literature (古文獻研究所) and the Macao temple that is descended somehow from the one that Dashang owned back in the 17th century.

Dashang's memoir appears to be about one hundred pages long -- much longer than I imagined it would be. The text here is based on very good editions in the Shanghai Library and Tokyo's Oriental Library. In a brief notice about the text, the editors remark that these old editions are of the highest quality, no doubt because Dashan was a very rich man who employed professional editors and the very best plate technology available for printing. A third pre-1700 edition that comes from Taiwan (Taiwan's Central Library has one) is much more inferior.

In a brief note near the end of a laudatory preface, this book allows that Dashan was arrested before the end of Kangxi's reign and died in exile. Oh, ye eliders!