2 - Li Bo and Hu Ziyang: Companions of the Way

Summary

Abstract

Kroll’s essay explores a series of poetic and prose compositions by High Tang poet Li Bo dedicated to Hu Ziyang, a Daoist master who transmitted to Li Bo the esoteric technique of absorbing solar essence and conferred Daoist registers on other of Li Bo’s companions. Li Bo’s most extensive composition on Hu Ziyang is an inscribed stele erected at his tomb site, again alerting us to the significance of materiality in discussing the effect and efficacy of texts. As Kroll reminds us, Li Bo was asked to eulogize Master Hu by the Buddhist monk Zhenqian, revealing the close personal links among Buddhist monks, Daoist priests, and poets.

Keywords: Li Bo, Tang poetry, Tang Daoism, stele inscriptions, Buddhist monks, Daoist priests

The most often and most warmly mentioned person in Li Bo’s collected works is Yuan Danqiu 元丹丘, a friend from his youthful days in Shu with whom he maintained close relations for over three decades, seeing each other in various places throughout China, and with whom he shared an abiding interest in Daoist matters. We do not know Yuan’s personal name; Li Bo invariably refers to him as Danqiu (Cinnabar Hill), which was likely his Daoist religious sobriquet. He is addressed or mentioned in at least a dozen different works, always with affection. The scholar Yu Xianhao 郁賢皓 has made a detailed study of Li’s and Yuan’s relationship as documented in the former’s poems and prose, so there is no need to go farther into this here.

We shall turn instead to another figure with Daoist credentials, prominently mentioned in several works of both prose and verse of Li Bo, a certain Hu Ziyang 胡紫陽, “Hu, of Purple Yang.” At some time (we do not know exactly when) he bestowed Daoist registers (we do not know exactly which) on Yuan Danqiu. He was also known to Danqiu’s cousin, Yuan Yan 元演, about whom more of which anon. And he also transmitted to Li Bo himself, so the poet says, the esoteric technique of absorbing solar essence. Master Hu, like Yuan Danqiu, is referred to only by his religious name, one that also has resonance in the history of Daoism. He is associated particularly with Suizhou 隨州, in north-central Hubei (present-day Suixian 隨縣).