Page 466 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

F U YI

which immediately arouses suspicion of exaggeration but which in this case
has been vindicated by finds such as those at *Mawangdui, which revealed
that Fu Yi's text is indeed close to early Han versions. The Southern Song
*Hunyuan shengji (Saintly Chronicle of Chaotic Origin; 3.20a) lists among his
sources (mainly transmitted manuscripts, for which the precise number of
characters are noted) one recovered in 574 from a tomb alleged to have been
that of the concubine of Xiang Yu :IJi~~ (7- 202 BeE) . Whether the identifica-
tion of the tomb was correct or not, such a site was still known in the seventh
century according to commentary in the Shiji (Records of the Historian; 7.334),
and may well have been early enough to contain an important find. Another
source he is said to have used was a Han text and commentary once owned
by *Kou Qianzhi (3657- 448).
The ease with which Fu was able to pursue such refined bibliographic re-
search is explained by his career as an astrologer, which in central government
started in the *Tongdao guan institute under the Northern Zhou, established
by the emperor Wu as a great center of religious learning in the service of
the state's Taoistic ideology In 593, under the Sui, he and a fellow-astrologer
applied for permission to become Taoist priests, perhaps to enjoy continued
access to the bibliographical resources of the Tongdao guan, which had been
inherited by the Taoist *Xuandu guano Using his predictive powers to avoid
trouble as the Sui fell into internecine strife, he briefly retired from government
service. But under the early Tang he became Grand Astrologer (taishi ling "* ~
4-), and used his position in 621 and again in 626, when the emperor Taizong
(again, as he had predicted) had usurped the throne, to launch choleric attacks
on Buddhism, as economically unproductive, unfilial, unpatriotic, politically
disruptive and, above all, foreign. His trenchant memorials may be found
in his official biographies in the Standard Histories; his lengthier polemics,
based on a series of biographies of anti-Buddhists, including himself, may be
found in the monk Daoxuan's J!! '§ (596-667) continuation to the *Hongming
ji (Collection Spreading the Light of Buddhism). For Buddhist counterblasts
to his writings soon appeared in the *Bianzheng lun (Essays of Disputation
and Correction) and other works, and these were not merely refutations of
the points raised, but more largely aimed at the Taoist religion as a whole,
which he quite clearly supported. During the more xenophobic latter half of
the Tang, Fu Yi was recalled in an number of improbable anecdotes as a hero
who pitted Chinese integrity against the mumbo-jumbo of foreign monks.
His official biographies duly make him a solely Confucian hero, and, to suit
the mood of the day, downplay his Taoist associations.
T. H. BARRETT
m Qing Xitai 1988-95, 2: 41- 43; Tonami Mamoru 1999, 35-46, 223; Wright 1951

* TAOISM AND CHINESE BUDDHISM