With Celestial Masters, Terry Kleeman provides a much-needed, comprehensive study of the earliest communal organization of Daoism. The work is based on a careful, exhaustive reading of all currently available primary sources. Although many of these are beset with difficulties of historiographic bias, undocumented transmission, and obscure terminology, they present a rare and invaluable window into the beginnings of organized religion in China. Scholars have grappled with the identification and interpretation of this corpus for more than half a century. Building and expanding upon their work, Kleeman offers an admirably clear and complete account of the foundation, early development, and ritual organization of Celestial Master communities from the Eastern Han to the end of the Six Dynasties.
The Way of the Celestial Masters (tianshi dao 天師道)—translated “Heavenly Masters” by some authors—originated in the second century CE in Yizhou 益州 (Sichuan). The organization of the early Celestial Masters community seemingly replicated the administrative functions of local government, earning it a reputation for fomenting rebellion. The historiographic bias of the early official records stems from that association. They were written as the declining authority of the Han was increasingly challenged by regional governments slipping into autonomy. Terry Kleeman addresses this issue by separately considering the movement's foundation narrative based on “external evidence” and on “internal documents.”
The main external sources are found in 1) Sanguo zhi 三國志, 2) Dianlüe 典略, 3) Huayang guo zhi 華陽國志, and 4) Shenxian zhuan 神仙傳, dating from the third and fourth centuries. The first of these is an account of the activities of Zhang Lu 張魯 (d. 215), grandson and heir to the first Celestial Master, Zhang Ling 張陵, as a minor local official and warlord in Hanzhong 漢中 on the border between Sichuan and Shaanxi. Zhang Lu occupied this region for nearly thirty years up to 215, duly paying tribute to the central government, and precariously maintaining an alliance with two successive governors of Yizhou, Liu Yan 劉焉 (d. 194) and his son. For Liu Yan, having set his sights on independence, a relatively autonomous but friendly Hanzhong was a welcome buffer between his territory and the court. The account in Huayang guo zhi (ca. 350) bears this out. Kleeman plausibly argues that the pejorative reports about the Hanzhong community originated with Liu Yan, whose strategy was to cease communications with the court while blaming the disruption on Zhang Lu. It was Cao Cao曹操 (155–220) who finally moved to subdue Zhang Lu and end his occupation of Hanzhong in 215. Lu's surrender to Cao was rewarded with a title of nobility. Cao Cao also accepted the members of Zhang Lu's community once it had been dislodged from Hanzhong and deported into Shaanxi and eastern Gansu. The third-century Dianlüe and Ge Hong's 葛洪 (283–343) Shenxian zhuan add to this historical outline details about the early movement's religious practices, Ge supplying a Daoist—if not Celestial Master—hagiography of the founder and his disciples. The earliest glimpses of the religious life of the community in this set of sources reveal that it was founded on ethical principles, practiced healing through confession, and offered absolution of sins by written petition. Its scriptures included the Laozi and unspecified revelations to the founder Zhang Ling. We learn that the latter was a native of the principality of Pei 沛 (Jiangsu), who undertook the journey to Sichuan in the reign of emperor Shun 順帝 (126–44 CE) in order to cultivate the Dao on Mount Crane Call 鶴鳴山. His son Zhang Heng 張衡 assumed the mantle of second Celestial Master; Heng's son and successor Lu established a theocratic state administered by libationers 祭酒 in Hanzhong.
To fill the gaps in this bare sketch, and rebalance the external viewpoint of its authors, Kleeman next turns to the early internal accounts of the founding events and first institutions (Chapter 2). The oldest text in this category is the Zhang Pu 張普 stele of 173 CE, announcing the transmission of revealed scriptures to libationers charged with spreading the Celestial Master ritual system. This brief inscription, which is dated thirty years after the presumed founding revelation and was discovered at a site not far from Mount Crane Call, provides the first evidence of the existence of a text-based liturgical organization named the Way of the Celestial Masters in that area. Next, in chronological order, is the Xiang'er 想爾 commentary and recension of the Laozi. This text, whose post-Tang transmission depended on Dunhuang manuscript S 6825, probably dates to the late Han. It is variously attributed to Zhang Ling or Zhang Lu. In keeping with Han interpretations of the Laozi, the Xiang'er emphasizes nurturing life (yangsheng 養生) techniques, including the practice of visualizing the five viscera (wuzang 五臟), along with moral precepts and heavenly score-keeping—using “counters”—of the followers’ merits and defects. The Yangping zhi 陽平治 (ca. 220–31 CE) contains the earliest known reference to the exact date of Zhang Ling's founding revelation, namely the first day of the fifth lunar month in the year 142 CE. Significantly, it makes clear that the five pecks of rice paid by members of the early congregation constituted a faith pledge (xin 信) (rather than unauthorized tax-collection, as claimed by others).
This text is the first of several surviving admonitions from unidentified leaders to the dispersed remnants of the Hanzhong community under the Wei. Kleeman initially characterizes these missives as “encyclicals, authoritative pronouncements from a supernatural source circulated by the central church to all its branches,” citing them as evidence of the movement's continuing vibrancy in the third century (pp. 112–13). Further on, however, he concedes that we see here “the breakdown in central authority caused by the uprooting of the Hanzhong community and the scattering of its inhabitants” (p. 117; see also pp. 137–38). The present reviewer inclines to the second reading: the third-century texts clearly reflect the discouragement of the diaspora. They speak disparagingly about the decline and palpable disorder of the movement. Any form of social and institutional organization, let alone central authority, remain putative in the third and fourth centuries, while fifth-century sources firmly condemn the decline and disorganization of the movement after the departure from Hanzhong.
A second admonition, the Dadao jialing jie大道家令戒, carries the internal date 255. This text contains the earliest reliable confirmation that the original revelation included a Correct Unity Covenant with the Gods (Zhengyi mengwei 正一盟威) and instituted twenty-four parishes (ershisi zhi 二十四治) to govern the people. The missive refers to the founder as Zhang Daoling, a name later given currency by Ge Hong's Shenxian zhuan. The last of the third-century internal documents discussed, the Demon Statutes of Nüqing (Nüqing guilü 女青鬼律), offers a starkly fearsome, if jumbled, catalogue of taboos, interdictions, and banned cults, together with accounts of the early movement's cosmogony and demonology. Several of the earlier Celestial Master writings explain that Laozi initially manifested himself as a demon in order to instill fear among the godless and decadent populace, an affirmation not found in more established texts. Chapter 3 is entirely devoted to the third-century aftermath of the fall of the Han dynasty, a crucial turning point in the Way of the Celestial Masters. The reader is also introduced to the organizational principles of the movement (congregation, offices, parishes) as gleaned from the earliest sources. The discussion of these institutions is more fully developed, drawing on later sources, in the second part of the book.
Chapter 4 is titled “Daoism under the Northern and Southern Dynasties.” The dispersal of the community by Cao Cao, far from suppressing the movement, had sown the seeds of its propagation in the north, and from there to the southeast. Many of the households displaced from Hanzhong remained faithful to the religion, along with new converts joining it in northern China. When the north was lost to invading non-Chinese peoples in 317, a wave of refugees emigrated to the south that included many Daoist households. Others remained behind and in time gave rise to the Northern Wei Daoist theocracy under Kou Qianzhi 寇謙之 (365–448), amidst growing rivalries with Buddhism for the hearts and minds of the people as well as state patronage. At the same time, Celestial Master Daoism spread to the Lower Yangzi valley and into Zhejiang. The eventual meeting of northern and southern currents of Daoism, and their interactions with Buddhism, engendered the Shangqing 上清 and Lingbao 靈寶 textual corpora and the ritual reforms of Lu Xiujing 陸修靜 (406–77). In a brief conclusion to this first, historical half of the book, Kleeman considers that new developments of that kind did not pose a real challenge to Celestial Master Daoism until the appearance of the Quanzhen 全眞 order, i.e., the twelfth century (p. 218). This question clearly falls outside the scope of the book under review, but the brief answer given surely underestimates the reach of the Lingbao transformation of Daoist ritual and the associated rise of monasticism and development of communal liturgies, as well as the effects of the late Six Dynasties/Tang synthesis of all the main currents of early and medieval Daoism. That synthesis stood indeed under the Celestial Master banner of Correct Unity (zhengyi 正一), yet it relegated Celestial Master features to the bottom rung of the ordination system and hierarchy of scriptures. Celestial Master Daoism itself became transformed in all but name after the rise of the new Longhu shan 龍虎山 line of succession in the late Tang. If Celestial Master Daoism nonetheless remained pervasive in Chinese society, this was no doubt due to the fact that it continued to provide the entry-level ordinations for both laymen and future clergy: Celestial Master Daoism became the door through which every Daoist passed on entering an increasingly elaborate edifice comprising hierarchical canons, compartmentalized orders, and separate cults.
The second part of the book is titled “Ritual and Community.” Here the author discusses the seasonal rhythm, institutions, and paraphernalia (mainly vestments) of the ritual life of Celestial Master communities, beginning with rules for establishing the mandatory household oratories and public parish sanctuaries. As Kleeman explains, research on these subjects relies on liturgical manuals that often evolved over the centuries. Some attained the form we now know as late as the Tang, yet circulated and were in active use through much of the Six Dynasties period. This complicates the task of assessing their value as sources of information regarding specific times, places, or social contexts. An added difficulty is the normative character of certain texts. What appears like a detailed architectural description of a Daoist sanctuary and its facilities, for example, may in fact be a theoretical model, possibly of Indian origin disseminated to China via vinaya monastic codes, and relevant to the historical reality of Daoist institutions only to the uncertain extent that it was emulated.
The parish center was the unquestionably Daoist institution where each community assembled on feast days and heads of households delivered their annual offerings, where priests maintained household registries and, importantly, communicated them up to heaven (again, procedures oddly resembling those of civil tax registration and collection). Parishioners also came here to request rituals of healing and deliverance or to settle disputes. A grid of parishes initially mapped the spatial dimension of the entire community's liturgical organization. Each of the hierarchically ordered sites also had a cosmological counterpart. The Yangping parish, at the top of the hierarchy, corresponding with the stellar lodge Jiao 角, was theoretically the seat of the direct descendants of Zhang Daoling. The removal of the third incumbent of this office to Hanzhong, followed by the resettlement of the community to locations further north, progressively unmoored the parishes from the real and mythical geographies of Sichuan. Their cosmological correspondences with the stellar lodges, on the other hand, opened a path for the spiritualization of the parishes’ topography and enabled an affiliation of the parishioners based on their astrological birth data.
“Seed citizens” (zhongmin 種民) were the utopian elect who would survive the cataclysm accompanying an impending apocalypse. Translating the word min 民 as “citizen,” Kleeman underscores the administrative dimension and terminology of Celestial Master communal organization. He defines as citizens individuals registered by government census and liable to the state for taxation and corvée labor (p. 240). The communal identity of members of the Celestial Master congregation was, in fact, not determined by government census but by registration in their assigned zhi 治, literally “local administration,” rendered here as “parish.” By choosing these contrasting translations, Kleeman makes Celestial Master followers into “parish citizens.” The apparent incongruity (a nod to Calvin's Geneva?) is a telling reflection of the ambiguity cultivated by the Celestial Masters with regard to the state. Did the administrative metaphor indicate an actual desire on the part of the community to be a polity? Their detractors certainly thought so. Or was the provocative language on the contrary designed to throw into relief the otherness of the realm of the elect from the domain that belonged to Caesar, in other words the otherworldly nature of their religious quest? Kleeman embraces this ambiguity when he writes “citizenship in a Celestial Master community meant a permanent break with the profane religious world [sic], and divine tribunals punished apostasy” (p. 242). He estimates that “many, perhaps most” (p. 273) members of the community were Daoist citizens (Daomin 道民). As such, they adhered to a minimal set of precepts, participated in communal rites, and practiced the observances of the domestic oratory. Non-believers, by contrast, were classed either as profane (su 俗) or as practitioners of false arts (weiji 偽技) (p. 96). As for novices (lusheng 籙生), they prepared for ordination and priesthood. Clarifying these divides in primitive Daoist society is instructive in light of subsequent developments. With the further stratification of the Daoist ordination system and corresponding registers (lu 籙) from the fifth century onwards, the Celestial Master registers became the reserve of childhood and lay ordinations, whereas access to the priesthood required higher qualifications. This opened a clearly circumscribed space for lay members in a Daoist community—perhaps in response to the importance accorded to the role of lay religion in Mahāyāna Buddhism. The question of lay Daoism, manifestly not an issue for the early Celestial Master community, is briefly touched on in the epilogue.
The final chapter is a full study of the office of the libationer, a title held by regional prefects or community leaders under the Han. By analogy, Celestial Master libationers served as the appointed heads of zhi-parishes. Ordained with an advanced register, they were parish priests exercising stipulated ritual and pastoral functions. Here and throughout, the book assumes that the Celestial Master community in fact resembled a church, endowed with ecclesiastic officers and institutions controlled by a centralized authority, a question that is, once again, difficult to settle conclusively given the normative nature of the relevant sources.
Specialists may find less novelty in the second half of the book. The ritual order of the Hanzhong community and the central petition ritual, in particular, have been thoroughly studied. Several of the key texts for Parts 1 and 2 are also available in excellent translations. This does not, however, detract from the immense achievement of Kleeman's thought-provoking book. Its bipartite plan encompasses a remarkably complete presentation of the formative period of Daoism as an organized religious movement within Chinese society. Historians of China and of religion will find here detailed, authoritative, and comprehensive assessments of the early community's dogma and practices (subjects that have, up to now, defied global treatment), all backed up by extensive new translations of exceptional quality. While scholars will continue to debate points of philology and interpretation arising from the challenging sources behind this book, Kleeman's Celestial Masters: History and Ritual in Early Daoist Communities will stand as a milestone of Daoist and Chinese studies for many years to come.
