OTHER PARTS

Dividing out the various strands of Chinese religious thought, primarily Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism, is bound to be somewhat artificial, for they were always potent influences on each other. But I would suggest it is possible to look primarily at the Taoist and Buddhist texts and religious structure and consider what effects these might have had on the position of women in imperial China. Myth was part of the Taoist spiritualism which frequently came into conflict with Confucianism. After the Sung its richness and creativity were largely destroyed by the "heavy fist of Confucius" (or rather the neo-Confucians). But it no doubt retained popular appeal and many of the texts which have reached us date from this period, although the tales are many centuries older.

Taoism is particularly associated with a rich mythology in which Hsi Wang Mu, the Western Queen, is a prominent feature. In some sources she is "a fearsome creature with a leopard's tail and tiger's fangs ruling over plague and pestilence" but other times she is an "elegant and charming" character. She has an opposite but equal compatriot Mu Kung, the God of the Immortals formed out of the Eastern Air. Cooperating, the two principles are both the basis and substance of all that exist.

As Cahill has outlined, she was particularly popular with women and the special guardian of those who stepped outside the traditional Confucian role such as singing girls, nuns, adepts and priestesses. Significantly, she is never mentioned as a "granter of children" or a supporter of the traditional Confucian norms of obedience and self-sacrifice. The Taoist Western Queen not infrequently plays a warlike role in myth, as do many other goddesses and mythical human females. Thus in Creation of the Gods, a novel-style collection of myths formatted in the Ming but based on far earlier oral traditions, Zhang Kui returns depressed to his fortress after a defeat, but his wife has the answer. "She listened to his story and then proposed, `General! Why don't you assassinate King Wu and his high ministers tonight. Victory would then be ours and we would not need to waste time on the battlefield!" In the same tale many female immortals and spirits duel with the male on seemingly entirely equal terms.

One popular creation myth (although not the most popular) involved Nu Kua Shih, sister and successor of the mythical first emperor. She is credited with creating human beings as the world emerged from chaos. Later in the complex mythological history which grew up through Chinese history the Goddess Nu Wa saved earth after a demon damaged Buzhou Mountain and "the northwest section of heaven collapsed and the earth sunk down in the southeast. Chinese mythology had it own myth of virgin birth, in the person of a 40 year old, virgin, "saintly lady", Tai Yuan who lived on a sacred mountain, nourished only by air. Pan Ku entered her as a ray of light and 12 years later she gave birth to Yu Huang, the Jade Emperor, in later years a very popular god. Perhaps not surprisingly in view of the Confucian stress on family and children this myth never developed into a central one in Chinese religion, unlike in the Christian West, where it had many detrimental effects for the position of women.

Taoism has been characterised as a "feminine" theology, but I would agree with Ames' thesis that it would be better seen as "sexually-balanced". Thus in the Tao Te Ching a true sage says "I alone am different from others and value being fed by the mother." There is a strong emphasis on balance, although difference in translation produce interesting variations. Thus Book I, Verse 28 is translated by Ames as "One who knows masculinity and yet preserves femininity", while another translation produces "Know the male, but keep to the role of the female". For our purpose the finer distinctions are not important. What is clear is that there is considerable sympathy for the feminine in Taoism and it offers women at least potentially a great deal in both theological and psychological terms. Chinese saw the the universe as pervaded by the mysterious life force chi, which was made up of the "eternal mutual interaction of dual cosmic forces", yang (identified with male) and yin (female). These beliefs were particularly associated with Taoism. Sexual intercourse according to many Chinese texts, from the I-ching to, gives life to all things, but particularly to the participants. van Gulik provides many examples of this belief, well summarised in a letter by the great poet Hsu Ling, who wrote to a friend who had retired to the mountains "You have with you a Nung-yu to assist you in becoming an Immortal ... Why should you trouble with the Pill of Immortality, while you can drink from the Jade Fountain".

Many Taoist texts speak of the importance of intercourse for long life or even the ultimate goal of immortality, for example the Tung-hsuan-tzu, probably dating from the Sui: "Of all things that make man prosper none can be compared to sexual intercourse. It is modeled after Heaven ... Those who understand its significance can nurture their nature and prolong their years; those who miss its true significance will harm themselves and die before their time." In later years when the puritanism of Neo-Confucianism succeeded in suppressing and almost destroying many of the earlier Taoist sects the idea survived in a less sophisticated form.

Accompanying this is a stress on the need for the satisfaction of both partners, long before such an idea became widespread in the West. There is an expectation that women will enjoy intercourse. So for example The Before Midnight Scholar states "among one hundred women, there may be one who takes no pleasure in it". Most texts stress the importance for the woman of foreplay , while the Tung-hsuan-tzu says plainly "when the man feel he is about to emit semen he should always wait until the woman has reached orgasm".

From around the sixth century onward many Chinese women found solace in Buddhism. Kuan-yin, a bodhisattva, came to be particularly special to women and acquired a number of female forms. An example of the depth of feeling is shown in Kwei-li, the wife of an important official at the end of the Qing, who writes: "I feel her love for me. She shapes my way and I know it is to her I owe it that my life flows on as a gentle stream, and I know that she cares for me and guards me now that thou [her husband] art away and I have no one on whom to lean." She had a comparable form Tou Mu in Taoist mythology, said to have been the mother of the nine mythical human sovereigns of antiquity. As well as her celestial mysteries, she "had a kind heart for the sufferings of humanity".

What then are we to make of these female deities? A full exploration is outside the scope of this essay, but some useful comments may be made by drawing on the work of Gross. She suggests that the presence of a goddess "does indicate a tremendous respect for the feminine side of humanity and experience- whatever that may mean". More personally for women, a role which seems to have been occupied by Kuan-yin, "the Goddess imparts to women a certain sense of dignity, self-worth, personal assertiveness and simple visibility". As Cahill has said Hsi Wang Mu and her attendants the jade girls provided a model of female "beauty, sexuality and skill". These are models far from, and even opposite to, traditional Confucian ones.

As already mentioned, Buddhism tended to be particularly associated with women, gaining a particular boost during the reign of the Empress Wu. This seems to have been both for reasons of policy and the empress' personal beliefs. The was linkage not surprising, for it offered no theological support for male superiority, and a female Buddhist faced no doctrinal impediments to stop her being equally worthy as a male.

Buddhism, sometimes in interaction with Taoism, also offered a limited number of women the powerful and influential position of nun or adept. After a time the two came to be confused or mixed, so that works on Buddhist nuns include women from the pre-Buddhist period who were either Taoist or shamanistic women.

Nuns and adepts are regarded with awe and fear, so for example the biography of the great general Huan Wen (312-373AD) speaks of a Buddhist nun taking a bath "she first split open her belly with a knife and thereafter cut off her feet. ... Huan asked her to tell his fortune. The nun said: `If you would become Emperor, you would find yourself in the same condition as I' (ie better give up your plans for usurping the throne)". The mutilation might seem strange to us but was probably intended simply an indication of the strength of the nun's magical power in that she could do this without suffering lasting harm.

Buddhist nuns, although often regarded with suspicion by men, were able to bring news of the outside world into even the most cloistered women's quarters, where they also often acted as counsellors and de facto doctors. Monasteries also offered a refuge for women who objected to arranged marriages or who wanted to escape unhappy marriages. They were a refuge for homeless women in a society which offered virtually no other respectable alternatives to a women who found herself without family or disowned. There was the doctrinal factor that a female Buddhist order had technically anyway to be under the final control of a male order, but this was probably not so strong a limitation on their growth as the general opposition to choosing a celibate life.