Abstract
The life of Shan Daokai is remarkably well documented in post-359 ad Chinese texts. Descriptions of his activities and accomplishments were transmitted and reconfigured by proponents of Chinese Buddhist, Confucian classicist, and religious Daoist teachings within a few centuries after his death. This paper questions the many identities composed about Shan during the medieval and early-modern periods and investigates how various images served different, competing cultural, social, and religious interests. It argues that a careful study of the making and remaking of Shan’s life reveals ambivalences in the earliest descriptions, which created room for exclusive, partisan, and sectarian modifications of his image over time. The discursive branching out of Shan Daokai will be traced as a particularly clear and rich example of religious and hagiographic creativity, and as a potent reminder of the power of ambiguity in Chinese hagiography, the importance of comparative analysis, and the perils involved in the generic labeling of past holy persons who left little to no material traces.
Keywords
Shan Daokai, holy person, Dunhuang, Luofu, biography, Buddhist, transcendent, Daoist, adept of mantic and medical techniques, Chinese religion, narrative theory
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