Page 127 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

OV E RVI EW

concerned, among other aspects, various methods for the attainment of life
everlasting (e.g., *waidan) as well a rich lore concerning immortals and the
fantastic lands they inhabited.
The juridical features of the Chinese afterworld, though they may be
traced back to Warring States precedents (von Falkenhausen 1994; Harper
1994), are best exemplified by first and second century CE documents placed
in tombs, known as grave-securing writs (zhenmu wen ~£ )(). These set out
the orders of a Celestial Monarch (Tiandi *"in relayed through his Envoy
(shizhe {~11f) to an elaborate spirit-bureaucracy of the tomb. The cosmology
thereby implied suggests a prototype of later Chinese notions of hells and
other underworld domains (see under *HELL). The deceased is placed under
the jurisdiction of the Lord of Mount Tai (*Taishan) and subject to a regime
that includes population registration, corvee labor, and taxation.
Early Taoism's fusion of the immortality cult with the "religion of the
Celestial Monarch" (Seidel 1987e) is evident already in the *Xiang'er com-
mentary. It states that the Great Darkness (Taiyin ::t ~) is where advanced
Taoists, feigning death, "refine their forms" (*lianxing) in order to be reborn
with perfected bodies. Those who are less virtuous are "taken away in service
of the Earth Offices" (Rao Zongyi 1956, 22, 46, and 77; Bokenkamp 1997, 102)
The text expresses both the alchemical metaphor of refining the body through
smelting away the grosser form (thus attaining prolonged life) and the juridical
notion of the underworld as a place of incarceration.
Administering the dead. Fourth-century materials collected in the *Zhengao
(Declarations of the Perfected) evince how such ideas were expanded upon.
The center of the administration of the dead has shifted to the Six Heavens of
*Fengdu (on the Six Heavens see *santian and liutian). All the newly dead pass
through Fengdu and are judged and sent off to appropriate afterworld destina-
tions depending on the contents of their files, which record their (and their
ancestors') merits and demerits. Those who are virtuous- but not virtuous
enough to have attained immediate transcendence-may become officials in
Fengdu, advancing by steps to immortal realms. Others, such as great gener-
al and dynastic founders, their files having been stained by too much blood,
are conSigned to demonic office in Fengdu forever. Developing the notion of
"release from the corpse" (*shijie) already suggested in the Xiang'er, the Zhengao
also provides for the possibility that a person who had accumulated "hidden
merit" in his or her family for generations might simply provide a bone from
his or her foot to the Three Offices (*sanguan, of Heaven, Earth, and Water)
of Fengdu. Then one could eventually-possibly after having been reborn
into a different clan- feign death, avoid the land of the shades altogether, and
achieve transcendence (Zhengao,j. 15- 16).
By the end of the fourth century or early fifth century, a variety of materi-