Page 745 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

LONGHU SHAN 703

upon Zhang Daoling in 142 CE is hereditary also seems to be its own invention.
The first known official title of a Zhang from Longhu shan as Celestial Master
was granted in the mid-tenth century. The Zhangs' and Longhu shan's prestige
and official patronage reached new heights with the thirtieth Celestial Master,
*ZhangJixian (I092-II26), arguably the most charismatic ever. The precise title
and the level of honors conferred by the court to the Zhangs changed every
so often under successive dynasties (the word tianshi was not used in official
titles after 1368, and replaced by the more modest *zhenren), but the principle
remained, upheld by the state until 19II, that the Zhang family had inherited
Zhang Daoling's role as overseer of Taoism and protector of its orthodoxy.
For more than ten centuries, until 1949, the aristocratic and very well-con-
nected Zhang family held court in Longhu shan, supported by a large retinue
of elite Taoist priests serving as the Celestial Master's officials. During the Ming
and Qing periods, these priests were known collectively as faguan it 1-r (lit.,
"officers of the [exorcistic ] ritual") and held official, but not paid positions in the
imperial bureaucracy. The function of Celestial Master has been transmitted,
usually from father to son, occasionally to nephews, and the published history
of the family (the *Han tianshi shijia or Lineage of the Han Celestial Master) as
well as private genealogies document the fully reliable history from about the
twentieth generation to the present contested sixty-fourth successor living in
Taiwan, Zhang Yuanxian ~ ~ 7t. Some members of the family today play
leading roles in Taoism in continental China.
Celestial Masters travelled to the imperial court for audiences and to vari-
ous places (especially in Jiangnan rI l¥J by the Ming and Qing) when invited
to perform rituals. They held ordination, selected new faguan, and sent their
faguan on missions. They spent most of their time on Longhu shan, however,
and resisted attempts by the court to fix them under closer control in the capital
city. They sometimes managed to defuse such attempts by delegating at court
trusted and gifted Longhu shan officials, like *Zhang Liusun (1248-1322) or
*Lou Jinyuan (1689-1776).
The real basis of the Longhu shan institution is the ordination of priests
(and the canonization of gods, which works the same way, i.e., through the
conferral of liturgical registers or *w, which gives one a rank within the spiri-
tual hierarchy of the universe). These ordinations took place in the mountain's
major temple, the *Shangqing gong (Palace of Highest Clarity). During the
Song, Longhu shan shared the privilege of being an official ordination center
with *Maoshan and *Gezao shan, but by the Ming it had gained an undisputed
monopoly. The reason Longhu shan emerged as the ultimate source of author-
ity in premodern Taoism is that its ordinations very early on included registers
needed to master the newly revealed Thunder and exorcist rites (*leifa) along
with the classical *Lingbao liturgy (this synthesis is called in modern times
Qingwei Lingbao r~ j~ JI.; see under *Qingwei). Ordinations on several