Page 418 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

DONGYUE DA Dl 379

Yet, the mountain's religious significance for Chinese society at large went far
beyond the state liturgy. Under the Han, and probably earlier, it was believed
that the souls of the dead rested under Mount Tai, and sick people came to the
mountain to beg for a longer life span. Therefore, from antiquity onward, the
cult of the god of the Eastern Peak has had two facets, related to each other:
one is ethereous, imperial, and considers the god as a giver of immortality,
while the other takes a somber view of the god as the master of the dead.
That the God of the Eastern Peak meant different things to different people
is shown by the large number of divine beings credited with this function.
The *Zhuangzi, the "weft texts" (weishu *$1'=) of the Han (see *TAOISM AND
THE APOCRYPHA), the mirabilia of the Six Dynasties, Taoist works of various
periods, and many catalogues of popular gods provided different identities.
The god began to h.ave an institutionalized cult of his own, however, only
around the tenth century. Song Zhenzong (r. 997- 1022) acknowledged this in
lOll when he granted him the title of Benevolent and Holy Emperor of the
Eastern Peak, Equal to Heaven (Dongyue tianqi rensheng di *~7:.'f!f1f=~
1ff). This was neither the first canonization-which was bestowed under the
Tang-nor the last, but the god's accession to the status of di (emperor) was
momentous. Traditionally, he had been considered the "grandson of Heaven"
(tiansun 7:. I*) and therefore ranked below the emperor (the "son of Heaven,"
tianzi 7:. T). The new canonization drew criticism from Confucians but did
full justice to the real role of the god in popular religion. Buddhists had long
made him one of the Ten Kings of hell (Teiser 1993, 136), and later Taoist lit-
urgy placed him at the top of the whole otherworld: sinners and sick people
were advised to hold contrition rituals- like the fourteenth-century Dongyue
dasheng baochan * ~ *:1: jf 11 (Precious Penances for the Greatly Life-Giving
[Emperor] of the Eastern Peak; CT 54I)-dedicated to the god and mentioning
his numerous subordinates.
Although some shrines of the Eastern Peak were managed by Buddhist
monks, most housed Taoist priests. From the Song onward, these shrines,
known as *Dongyue miao, began to appear throughout China: any district
had at least one. The god, as master of life and death, was the most important
icon in the main hall, and his demeanor is usually described in inscriptions
as a fearful vision. He was accompanied by his hellish bureaucracy, most no-
tably the seventy-two (sometimes seventy-four, seventy-five, or seventy-six)
officers (si PJ), each managing a specific aspect of human life and behavior.
The small shrines of these less distant, if not always less fearful, deities were
lined up along the main courtyard. From the mid-Ming onward, another cult,
addressed to Dongyue dadi's daughter, *Bixia yuanjun (Original Princess of
the Jasper Mist), suddenly appeared in the various Dongyue miao of northern
China, and most remarkably in the great shrine in Beijing. As a child-giving