Page 726 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

T H E ENC YC LOPEDIA OF TAOI SM A-L

The biographies are found in the compendium roughly in the order their
subjects lived. However, there are places where this rule is violated, such as
the chapter of biographies of the inheritors of the title of Celestial Master
which immediately follows the single-chapter biography of *Zhang Daoling,
the first *tianshi. One of the difficulties with this work, as far as the recon-
struction of lost texts or the tracing of the development of biographies over
time is concerned, is that Zhao rarely noted his sources. It is clear that he
sometimes copied whole chapters of earlier collections which also upsets
the chronological arrangement in some cases. However, Zhao clearly did not
copy extant works or chapters of works unthinkingly, as, in some cases, he
replaced certain notable biographies from early collections with other, often
voluminous, versions written closer to his own time. An example of this is
the biography of *Huangdi which occupies the entire first chapter of the col-
lection. As a consequence, Huangdi's biography does not appear in the third
chapter of the compendium which was clearly taken from the *Liexian zhuan
(the early collection of biographies of immortals) in which he also received a
biography. The two chapter-long biographies of Huangdi and Zhang Daoling,
among others, indicate both the tendency toward more complex narrative
in immortals' lives and also an attempt at comprehensiveness, seen in their
incorporation of all the material from previous traditions into one record.
The two supplementary collections appear to derive from *Quanzhen circles.
Judith M. Boltz (1987a, 58) has observed that the Xubian begins with biographies
of Quanzhen patriarchs while the Houji, a collection devoted to women's lives,
culminates with the record of *Sun Bu'er, the Quanzhen matriarch.

Benjamin PENNY

W Boltz J. M. 1987a, 56-59; Chen Guofu 1963, 243; Ozaki Masaharu 1996;
Tsuchiya Masaaki 1996

* HAGIOGRAPHY

Liu Chuxuan

II47-1203; zi: Tongmiao :®:wj>; haG: Changsheng ~1:

Uu Chuxuan (Uu Changsheng), the son of a family of military officers, con-
verted to *Wang Zhe at the age of twenty-two, after Wang revealed himself
as the author of an anonymous piece of calligraphy that had appeared on a
wall predicting Uu's accession to immortality. Liu served as a novice to Wang
during the latter's last few months of life; he then mourned his master and led