Gendering Buddhism Miaoshan

JFSR 27.
1 (2011) –31
GENDERING BUDDHISM
The Miaoshan Legend Reconsidered

Sherin Wing
Buddhist studies has traditionally utilized androcentric and Eu-

rocentric approaches to its analysis of Buddhism. As a result, nor-
mative Buddhism has been configured as primarily monastic and
male and focused on canonical texts, while women’s Buddhism is
relegated to special studies. In the following pages, Wing exam-
ines how these assumptions are at play in the interpretation of the
well-studied, popular, “canonical” myth of Miaoshan. She further
explores the gender biases inherent in studies that attempt to
correct androcentrism in Buddhist studies. By forming a theoret-
ical matrix composed of feminist and colonial social critiques, the
author hopes to reconfigure the ways in which Chinese women’s
narratives and women’s Buddhist narratives are understood. She
broadens the discussion of what is understood to be “Buddhist”
and what is constructed as “special studies” within Buddhism,
as well as expands the larger discourses on gender in studies on
China. By using previous scholarship as a point of departure,
Wing reexamines the analytical taxonomies used in Chinese re-
ligion, Chinese Buddhism, and women in China. She scrutinizes
these analytical models by exploring their epistemological foun-
dations, revealing how discourses on Chinese (Buddhist) women
and female icons like Miaoshan have been shaped. Wing first
investigates the dominant views on women in historical records
and biographies, which were responding to the changing roles of
women in the Song dynasty. She then shows how these themes
are reflected or critiqued in the Miaoshan legend and reinter-
prets the themes’ meanings.
I thank Guy Horton for supporting the sabbatical during which I wrote this article. I also thank the
JFSR readers for both clarifying and supporting my arguments.
Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 27.1
Instead of noninterference and specialization, there must be interfer-

ence, crossing of borders and obstacles.
—Edward Said
The twelfth-century Chinese Buddhist legend of Miaoshan is about the

youngest of King Zhuangyan’s three daughters. A polemical tale that justifies
Buddhism in the face of dominant Confucian ethics, the legend portrays Mi-
aoshan as a woman who undergoes a series of trials and punishments that test
her Buddhist faith and ultimately prove the superiority of Buddhism over Con-
fucianism. The earliest complete version of the legend dates to 1164 CE and
was recorded by the monk Zu Xiu, whose rendition was closely based on a ver-
sion originally compiled and possibly primarily authored by civil servant Jiang
Zhiqi, who had the legend inscribed in stone, in 1100 CE. Prior to then, the
legend was not widely known and existed only in fragments.
Chinese Buddhology credits the legend with several achievements. First,
it provided a new locus for galvanizing Chinese women’s Buddhist practice on
a large scale and is therefore considered an authoritative, canonical Buddhist
text. Moreover, it represents a successful collaboration between a civil servant
and an abbot, hence between secular and religious society. Finally, Miaoshan
has generated substantial and varied analytical discourses for Buddhist scholars
as well as Chinese women’s scholars.
Framing both the genesis and textual precedents of the legend is, of course,
fundamental to understanding it. Yet the roles of politics, policy, and personal
agendas in shaping the narrative deserve equal inquiry. Rather than inserting
this woman’s narrative into a preconstructed, androcentric, or Eurocentric fem-
inist narrative, I will investigate the social, economic, and political influences on
the legend’s themes. I propose that the narrative clearly reflects the author’s
values. Additionally, the events and personas in the text are not just symbolic of
Edward Said, Reflections on Exile (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 145.
Glen Dudbridge, The Legend of Miao-shan (London: Ithaca Press for the Board of the Fac-
ulty of Oriental Studies, 1978).
Ibid.
P. Steven Sangren, “History and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy: The Ma Tsu Cult of Taiwan,”
Comparative Studies in Society and History 30, no. 4 (October 1988): 674–97, esp. 677.
Ella Shohat, “Area Studies, Transnationalism, and the Feminist Production of Knowledge,”
Signs 26, no. 4 (Summer 2001): 1269–72, esp. 1270.
Richard L. Davis has tracked funerary biographies and notable women entries in dynastic
histories from the Tang to the Ming and he concludes that their content was first thematic: they
circumscribed the moral ideals historians had for their contemporary women, projected onto the
supposed women of the previous dynasty (“Chaste and Filial Women in Chinese Historical Writ-
ings of the Eleventh Century,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 121, no. 2 [April–June
2001]: 204–18, esp. 213). Thus women were rendered as symbols of certain morals and values. The
author/compiler’s education, as well as the contemporary political arena, further inflected content
in these narratives (214–16). Finally, economics, particularly in the Song, wrought additional influ-
ence so that historians were textually controlling women’s economic power, which had suddenly in-
Wing: Gendering Buddhism
and for women, but of and for men, as well. Presuming that female icons “natu-
rally” inspire women results in a suspiciously synchronic homogeneity among
women. It reinforces an anachronistic construction of women’s Buddhism
in China by equating gender correlation with gender causation. While some
observe that to study gender is to study women, it is important to note that
the Miaoshan legend is, in fact, a male-gendered study. Using postcolonial gen-
der methodologies, I reevaluate the interpretation of Miaoshan in three areas:
(1) whether the narrative is about Miaoshan as the archetypal woman, (2) the
narrative’s audience, and (3) the forces shaping the narrative.10
Who Speaks: Methodology and Women

In this article, I examine the underlying agendas that foreground different
methodologies in historiography, generally, and in interpretation of the Miaoshan
legend, more specifically. Textual studies, privileged in both Chinese men’s his-
toriography and Buddhology, promote themselves as objective and apolitical
creased with the development of petty capitalism (see Hill Gates, “The Commoditization of Chinese
Women,” Signs 14, no. 4 [Summer 1989]: 799–832, esp. 813). The reinscription of meaning elabo-
rates upon (1) what the author/compiler values in women, which (2) is revealed in the narrative’s
themes.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty argues that Western feminist scholarship “colonizes” third-world
women in service to their own agendas: “liberating” these women by “exposing” a homogenous op-
pression: “feminist writings colonize the material and historical heterogeneities of women in the
third world, producing a composite . . . appearing arbitrarily constructed but (which) carries the
authorizing signature of Western humanist discourse” (“Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship
and Colonial Discourses,” in Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives,
ed. Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1997], 256). This directly results from Euro-androcentric theoretical models driven by unacknowl-
edged agendas. Reinforcing androcentric studies and consolidating the cultural hegemony of West-
ern women.
Anne McClintock offers a useful theoretical model by theorizing an anachronistic historical
space occupied by colonized men and women in relation to European men (Imperial Leather: Race,
Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest [New York: Routledge, 1995], 40). Contemporary
studies in Chinese Buddhology also configure women as occupying a natural, biologically defined
(and limited) space that is monolithic and transhistorical. As a result, Chinese women’s Buddhology
continues to be excluded from dominant Buddhological discourses.
As one scholar observes, the investigation of gender does not and should not simply “take
on women as its sole subject” (Jinhua Emma Teng, “The Construction of the ‘Traditional Chinese
Woman’ in the Western Academy: A Critical Review,” Signs 22, no. 1 [1996]: 115–51, quotation
on 130).
10 Richard L. Davis (review of Powerful Relations: Kinship, Status, and the State in Sung
China [960–1279], by Beverly Bossler, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 62,
no. 1 [1999]: 178–79) refers to this as documentary bias. The concept of documentary bias is simply
that using only one or two types of texts as the sole basis for analysis will skew one’s conclusions
(178). On postcolonialism, see, for example, Postcolonialism, Feminism, and Religious Discourse,
ed. Laura E. Donaldson and Kwok Pui-lan (New York: Routledge, 2002).
Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 27.1
because of the “public” and presumed objective nature of texts themselves.11

Equating them with an objective, accurate past equates the written word with
an authoritative referent against which all other activities are judged.12 Yet texts
reflect affiliations and values while they simultaneously construct an authorita-
tive stance that resists questioning.13 Defining texts as “public” privileges edu-
cated men of a particular economic and social class. Moreover, these texts were
often accessible only to certain classes of men, while more men than women
were literate. Regardless of its dissemination, however, a text would still have a
greater male audience. In sum, texts were not public. Nor were they objective,
since they most often privileged men’s narratives. Unsurprisingly, the discourses
texts generated—past and present—were androcentric, while those who stud-
ied them were overwhelmingly male.
Whether authors of scripture, apocrypha, or commentary truly represented
a majority opinion or movement is also questionable. Texts often contain a high
degree of hyperbole, symbolism, and prescription, which calls into question
their accuracy and objectivity. Authors are a self-anointed elite: they appoint
themselves uniquely qualified to guide the “masses” with their compositions.
Rather than representing a set of institutional guidelines and norms, texts—in-
cluding canonical ones—often outline guidelines and behaviors that their au-
thors value and therefore prescribe. The audience thus resembles the author
but requires guidance the author alone can offer.
Additionally, the valorization of texts as “canonical” is often conferred in
hindsight. Canonization results from successive generations realizing the ef-
fects of a particular text. Increased prestige, fame, institutional patronage, and
its success in generating discourses all cement a text’s status. In other words, a
text’s political, economic, and social effects on an institution are considered be-
fore it is bestowed authoritative status, while other texts remain in obscurity.
These conditions are particularly relevant to the Buddhist tradition where
predominantly men engaged in its prolific literary tradition.14 Indeed, Buddhol-
ogy has invoked analytical modes whose authority rests on an androcentric priv-
11 Gyan Prakash, “Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism,” American Historical Review

99, no. 5 (1994): 1475–90, esp. 1485.
12 Kathleen Biddick (“Genders, Bodies, Borders: Technologies of the Visible,” Speculum 68,
no. 2 [1993]: 389–418, esp. 392) further notes that, “If we have only the textual effects of their
(women’s) practices, distributed across a range of genres with complicated authorship, how can we
read these texts?” (412).
13 According to Barbara Kruger and Phil Mariani, “Texts empower; they grant authority, and
their deconstruction from race-gender perspectives has become a kind of anti-imperialist strat-
egy that has reverberations for political action” (“Introduction,” in Remaking History: Discussions
in Contemporary Culture, ed. Barbara Kruger and Phil Mariani [Seattle: Dia Art Foundation,
1989], xi).
14 Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for the
‘Indian’ Pasts?” in “Imperial Fantasies and Postcolonial Histories,” special issue, Representations 37
(Winter 1992): 4–5.
Wing: Gendering Buddhism
ileging of texts, while claiming an apolitical objective authority. Such discursive

moves rely on gendered and colonial axes that highlight the “unique,” defined
in androcentric terms.15 The result privileges men’s hagiographies, biographies,
epigraphies, and institutionally sanctioned histories.
Different sources and methodologies have been used to prove that Chinese
women either were oppressed or fought oppression. I propose that many of the
methodologies used and the conclusions they generate must be recontextual-
ized when studying different subjects. The Western academic pursuit of the
other woman is not a disinterested, objective endeavor.16 My goal is to decolo-
nize the epistemology of Chinese women’s studies. I propose to dismantle the
notion of a singular, transhistoric Chinese “woman” who can be studied through
orientalist and Eurocentric missionary/feminist interpretive modes.17 Doing so
reveals the epistemological assumptions of feminist scholarship on China.18 At
stake is how we construct Chinese women of the past, which directly shapes
how Chinese women are perceived today.19
In an attempt to demarcate between the supposedly objective business
of academia from the supposedly invested business of political activism, intel-
lectual rigor has become of paramount importance. Studies on women often
are considered intellectually rigorous only if they replicate androcentric modes
of reading. If the primary agenda is combating a patriarchal culture that op-
15 Aamir Mufti and Ella Shohat, “Introduction,” in Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and
Postcolonial Perspectives, ed. Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat (Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press, 1997), 3.
16
In a study on Frantz Fanon, Diana Fuss defined “other” in a dialectic of self and other,
wherein the existence of the other defines the self. While Fanon initially draws this definition from
psychoanalytic theory, he complicates it with a dimension of subjugation, primarily signified by
space (“Interior Colonies: Frantz Fanon and the Politics of Identification,” Diacritics 24, nos. 2–3
[Summer–Autumn 1994]: 20–42, esp. 21). Therefore, the other signals an objecthood possessed by
women and men of color that then defines the subjectivity of the Euro-American subject. See also
Gyan Prakash, “Orientalism Now,” History and Theory 34, no. 3 (1995): 199–212, esp. 202.
17 I intentionally use the term decolonize to emphasize the fact that the epistemology of Bud-
dhology has been shaped by underlying colonial agendas within its traditional methodologies. See
Teng, “Construction of the ‘Traditional Chinese Woman,’ ” 133–35.
18 In a critique of the orientalizing scholarship of Rita Gross, Kwok observes that “she has
taken a culturally and religiously pluralistic approach without seriously interrogating the power dif-
ferentials undergirding the West’s fascination, re-presentation, assimilation, and alienation of the re-
ligious and cultural Other since the beginning of the comparative study in religion. Nowhere in her
book does she reflect on the epistemological assumptions of feminist scholars, the commonalities
and divergences between andro- and gyno-scholarship beyond the gender axis” (“Unbinding Our
Feet: Saving Brown Women and Feminist Religious Discourse,” in Donaldson and Kwok, Postcolo-
nialism, Feminism, and Religious Discourse, 65). While perhaps less extreme, much contemporary
scholarship falls along this continuum of scholarship that privileges Western definitions of social
agency.
19 Gyan Prakash, “Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from
Indian Historiography,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, no. 2 (1990): 383–408,
esp. 402.
10 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 27.1
presses women, then a study’s legitimacy is undermined.20 In replicating ana-

lytical modes by and for men, their accuracy, interpretive utility, and relevancy
for understanding women’s narratives become limited. Many androcentric
methodologies, if left unchecked, construct an ahistorical, characteristically flat
representation of women and a flat topography of their activity.21 What’s more,
using a Euro-androcentric framework does not account for the inherent privi-
leging of Eurocentric and androcentric definitions of agency, authority, gender,
and identity.
And yet modern Eurocentric feminist methods are often used to identify
and analyze historical sexist oppression of Chinese women. Contemporary val-
ues serve as both a starting point for critiquing source material as well as a point
of departure for excavating historical women’s agency.22 Exposing and right-
ing women’s victimization becomes prediscursive. By foregrounding this issue,
20 See bell hooks, “Sisterhood: Political Solidarity between Women,” in McClintock, Mufti,
and Shohat, Dangerous Liaisons, 397–38. This is specifically that feminism which has defined itself
in terms of a masculine-privileging view of women and the world, and moreover, that “sexist ideol-
ogy teaches women that to be female is to be a victim” (397).
21 As Sandra Harding observes, these “patriarchal theories were created to explain . . . the
experience of those men who are Western, bourgeois, white, and heterosexual” (“The Instability of
the Analytical Categories of Feminist Theory,” Signs 11, no. 4 [Summer 1986]: 645–64, esp. 646).
22 Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (New York: Aldine de
Gruyter, 1969), 3. Ironically, while Turner himself realizes this fact, his analysis also produces es-
sentialisms by basing his analysis on the singularity of rational humanism. Prakash argues that the
agency of individuals in colonized regions has been subordinated to a Marxist theory that encodes
not only “elite dominance” but those dominated as a theoretical, hence monolithic, singular person,
rather than a multitude of persons who have independent wills and reasons (“Subaltern Studies as
Postcolonial Criticism,” 1475, 1484). By relying heavily on Marxist theory, Western historians, both
religious and cultural, reinforce a Western methodological dominance by reading certain actions
that reject a Marxist definition of progress as backward, encoding an “elite dominance” through
such interpretations. For those studying women in China, whether in literature, history, or phi-
losophy and religion, women are viewed and portrayed from an elite point of view, assuming elite
dominance, and are theorized singularly based on Marxist theory that does not allow for nuances or
historical forces that have little to do with the socioeconomic “worker/machine/oppression” model
Marx emphasized.
Turnerian structuralism likewise limits analysis of women by consigning them to a singular
entity. By using such theories without acknowledging both their Euro- and androcentric narra-
tives, women, too, become assigned to being more “backward,” or at least less evolved, perpetuat-
ing the larger view of Chinese women as “more oppressed” than their Western counterparts. It is
useful, therefore, in reading critiques of Western-privileging methodology to apply it to the way that
women from those regions generating these critiques suffer not only from the Western- but also
male-privileging components inherent in these methods. Finally, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak notes
that feminist scholars such as Julia Kristeva also engage in conflating temporally disparate studies
with unsupported observations. The problem with this is that the conclusions are then presented as
solely based in fact, when they are subjective observations (“French Feminism in an International
Frame,” Yale French Studies, no. 62 [1981]: 154–84, esp. 159). The original work by Kristeva is
entitled “On the Women of China,” Signs 1, no. 1 (1975): 57–81. See also Teng, “Construction of the
‘Traditional Chinese Woman,’” esp. 120–31.
Wing: Gendering Buddhism 11
studies on women become constrained by a victimization framework within

which all other issues are addressed, thus creating reluctance amongst scholars
studying “mainstream” subjects to investigate women since men are implicated
in a global act of victimizing women.
First-wave feminist studies on Chinese women, which are often still cited,
particularly reinforce this transhistoric victimization. This Chinese woman is
similar to the third-world woman who, as one study observes, “leads an essen-
tially truncated life based on her feminine gender (read: sexually constrained)
and her being ‘third world’ (read: ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound,
domestic, family-oriented, victimized, etc.). This, I suggest, is in contrast to the
(implicit) self-representation of Western women as educated, as modern, as
having control over their own bodies and sexualities, and the freedom to make
their own decisions.”23 Discourses that highlight oppression or agency may also
“add” Chinese women to the contemporary Eurocentric feminist agenda: “Eu-
rocentric versions of global feminism . . . assume a telos of evolution toward a
reductive identity practice. Performed within the discursive framework of de-
velopment and modernization, the study of broad and in some ways fictive enti-
ties such as . . . ‘third-world women’ reproduces Eurocentric notions of culture
under the sign of global feminism.”24
Moreover, broad definitions of agency tend to elide historical and cultural
differences.25 “A certain strain of feminism has privileged a specific narrative
that revolves exclusively around European and Euro-American feminist [his-
torical] trajectories and that is cast exclusively around terms of sexual difference
[that elide cultural difference].”26 Such omissions result in a truncation of Chi-
nese women.27 Erasing cultural difference is exacerbated when combined with
privileging “gynocentric” taxonomies like chastity or reproductive rights over
“androcentric” taxonomies like economics and politics.
While recent Chinese women’s studies are more nuanced, they focus on
contemporary history, not imperial history. They often do not address religion,
either. Instead, their focus is on expressions of Western-defined agency such
23 Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes,” 256, quoted in Uma Narayan, “Essence of Culture and a
Sense of History: A Feminist Critique of Cultural Essentialism,” in Decentering the Center: Philoso-
phy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial, and Feminist World, ed. Uma Narayan and Sandra Harding
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 85.
24 Shohat, “Area Studies,” 1269.
25 In a related discussion, Sandra Harding critiques the tendency of feminists who, however
inadvertently, develop theories that provide a single feminist narrative (“Instability of the Analytical
Categories of Feminist Theory,” 647). In so doing, theories replicate the effect of their androcentric
counterparts, which is to provide a static set of problems that must be addressed by applying a static
set of solutions, the definitions of which are in essence arbitrary because they reflect a particular set
of agendas, often defined by Western, bourgeois, European women.
26 Shohat, “Area Studies,” 1270.
27 Narayan, “Essence of Culture and a Sense of History,” in Narayan and Harding, Decenter-
ing the Center, 86.
as “labor” and “reproductive rights.” In short, either studies have focused on

women to the detriment of cross-cultural difference (labor, agency, reproduc-
tive rights) or internal social aspects have been glossed in a perfunctory manner
(religion, economics, politics). The process of “liberating” the Chinese woman
in terms of gender thus confirms Western cultural hegemony.28
Another field that has influenced Chinese studies is the study of missionary
writings. Most were anecdotal, documenting missionaries’ struggle not only to
“humanize” the Chinese but also to justify material, territorial, and economic
exploitation.29 Yet they profoundly shaped opinion because they were so prolific
in reports, characterizations, photos, and narratives, far outnumbering those
written by scholars. Not surprisingly, early scholarly interpretations drew heav-
ily on these reports.30
Missionary feminism, in particular, emphasized Chinese women’s victim-
ization.31 Missionary women perceived Chinese women as severely oppressed,
backward, and in need of the modernizing, salvific effects of Christianity.32 A
clear example is the Chinese trope of “10,000” (萬): in the context of missionar-
ies’ observations on the number of female babies in rural areas being killed, it
was interpreted as a literal number rather than an idiom for “many,” thereby
justifying their negative assessment of Chinese women and society.33 Such ob-
servations, authorized by constant recitation, have rendered two broad effects:
shaping perceptions of historical and contemporary Chinese women and fram-
ing studies on Chinese women in terms of oppression.34 The result constructs a
28 Teng, “Construction of the ‘Traditional Chinese Woman,’” 120–22; see also Kathleen Can-
ning, “Feminist History after the Linguistic Turn: Historicizing Discourse and Experience,” in His-
tory and Theory: Feminist Research, Debates, Contestations, ed. Barbara Laslett, Ruth-Ellen B.
Joeres, Mary Jo Maynes, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, and Jeanne Barker-Nunn (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1997); Jennifer Holmgren, “Myth, Fantasy, or Scholarship: Images of the
Status of Women in Traditional China,” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 1, no. 6 (1981): 147–
70; and Edward W. Said, Orientalism (1978; reprint; New York: Random House, 1994).
29 Donaldson and Kwok, “Introduction,” in Donaldson and Kwok, Postcolonialism, Feminism,
and Religious Discourse, 13.
30 Ibid.
31 See Holmgren, “Myth, Fantasy, or Scholarship”; and Teng, “Construction of the ‘Traditional
Chinese Woman.’”
32 Kwok also observes that “stereotypical images of brown women as ignorant, filthy, and poor
flooded missionary literature because of their appeal to the sensibilities of middle-class Christians,
who contributed generously to . . . missionaries in foreign lands” (“Unbinding Our Feet,” 67).
33 Holmgren, “Myth, Fantasy, or Scholarship.”
34 Donaldson observes that this process of perpetuating misinformation in a cycle of legitimat-
ing re-citation conceals the conventions the underlying assumptions (“The Breasts of Columbus: A
Political Anatomy of Postcolonialism and Feminist Religious Discourse,” in Donaldson and Kwok,
Postcolonialism, Feminism, and Religious Discourse, 47).
transhistorically oppressed Chinese woman.35 Finally, missionaries provided the

earliest English translations of texts.36 While contemporary scholars of Chinese
studies often use their own translations, most nonscholars, or scholars in other
fields searching for quick information, do not. These translations perpetuate the
Western bias about China and its people while rendering it invisible.
Defining gender using fixed, biologically based functions continues to po-
larize Chinese historiography.37 Such biological binarism fetishizes chastity,
motherhood, and filial piety as prediscursive taxonomies on Chinese women,
referencing texts like the Lienü zhuan. These prescriptive texts were intent on
specific agendas.38 Yet in recent years, their prescriptions have been interpreted
as defining women primarily biologically, fixing women’s subjectivity within the
physical sphere while men’s subjectivity remains primarily intellectual. To rely
solely on these valuations, constructed by historical men, produces an essential-
ized, synchronic Chinese “woman” perpetually defined outside history, prog-
ress, and is therefore irrelevant to authoritative studies.39 Moreover, to limit
women’s social production based primarily on their biology ignores the inherent
flexibility in both social production and agency.
Given the relative scarcity of texts on women, disparate sources can be
combined into a singular, comprehensive narrative. Legend, epigraphy, early
dynastic sources, and ethnography can thus form a single account about con-
temporary and historical women alike. Such methodological disjunctures pro-
mote a subtext of an essential Chinese culture.40 They dispense with difference
to generate a paradigm of universalized Chinese womanhood that transcends
geography, time, and politics.41 It is therefore important to distinguish sources
spatially and chronologically.42
The interpretation of Buddhist texts has been largely shaped by Buddhol-
35 Sanctioned ignorance is a term coined by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak to describe legiti-
mated forms of scholarly ignorance (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Responsibility,” Boundary 2 21,
no. 3 [1994]: 19–64, esp. 46).
36 Richard King, “Orientalism and the Modern Myth of ‘Hinduism,’ ” Numen 46, no. 2 (1999):
146–85, esp. 167.
37 See Drucilla K. Barker’s analysis on universally applying Cartesian analysis on women and
on non-Western cultures (“Dualisms, Discourse, and Development,” in Narayan and Harding, De-
centering the Center). Harding also provides an excellent analysis of Enlightenment thought and
its lasting effects on historical analysis, as well as gender analysis. Both argue that while Cartesian
and Enlightenment analysis are predicated on a specific set of sociocultural constructs, they have
been applied universally, and thus are seen as universally applicable. This results in a lens that views
women from non-Western societies as static, essentialized uniformities.
38 Davis, “Chaste and Filial Women,” 205–6.
39 Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes,” 272.
40 Teng, “Construction of the ‘Traditional Chinese Woman,’ ” 137.
41 Ibid., 136–38.
42 Kruger and Mariani proposed this approach as a “new historicism” that culls its most power-
ful tools from critical theory in feminist studies, cultural studies, and political studies (“Introduc-
tion,” x).
ogy, which has primarily focused on men and their narratives. Androcentric
Buddhology has established the comparative baseline that has become both the
norm and the authoritative epistemological referent. Yet interpreting textual
signifiers literally by deploying description “without interpreting, explaining, or
attributing causality” obscures that what texts often portray is prescription.43
Buddhology is further shaped by Indology, Protestantism, and Orientalism.44
Each contains elements of intellectual colonialism that appropriates the “oth-
er’s” history and language and thus the other.45 As has been observed about
Eurocentric methods, “the discouraging news for Enlightenment enthusiasts is
that being very smart and well intentioned has not been sufficient to prevent . . .
sexist and androcentric practices.”46
Women’s Buddhology also privileges texts. Many studies represent ideal-
izations as accurate, literal representations of fact. A linear progression from
textual idealizations to reality then becomes posited in which women exercised
agency by practicing Buddhism to trump Confucian oppression or by overcom-
ing obstacles within the Buddhist institution. Using structuralism to rectify a
patriarchal hierarchy, such studies propose that historically, women have inter-
nalized the misogyny of their male counterparts and are inspired by “heroines”
who reject that misogyny and that women are “naturally” drawn to female dei-
ties to address gynocentric concerns.47 Because of the relative paucity of texts
on women, certain nontextual taxonomies have also become prediscursive. They
include chastity, motherhood, or feminist “agency” (as it is defined contempo-
43 Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical

Review 91, no. 5 (1986): 1053–75, quotation on 1056. See also King, “Orientalism and the Modern
Myth of ‘Hinduism,’” 167; and Gregory Schopen, “Archaeology and Protestant Presuppositions in
the Study of Indian Buddhism,” in Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the
Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i
Press, 1997), 3, 7, 14. I term this an internal analysis because the historical signifiers within the
narrative are taken at face value and thus are considered accurate, reliable descriptions rather than
prescriptions.
44 On Indology, see Christian Karner, “Postmodernism and the Study of Religions,” in Writ-
ing History, Constructing Religion, ed. James G. Crossley and Christian Karner (Burlington, VT:
Ashgate, 2005), 35; and Said, Orientalism, 118. On Protestantism, see Schopen, “Archaeology and
Protestant Presuppositions in the Study of Indian Buddhism,” 3, 7, 14. On Orientalism, see Said,
Orientalism, 115.
45 Said, Orientalism, 115.
46 Narayan and Harding, “Introduction,” vii.
47 See Biddick, “Genders, Bodies, Borders,” for a thorough analysis on Turner’s structural-
ism in women’s religious studies. See also Caroline Walker Bynum, “The Mysticism and Ascetism
of Medieval Women: Some Comments on the Typologies of Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch,” in
Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New
York: Zone Books, 1992), 57.
rarily). Another tendency is to collapse sources transhistorically and cross-re-

gionally, representing narratives, behaviors, and taxonomies synchronically.48
Such approaches have not only rendered a static gaze on what comprises
women’s Buddhism but they have also coded “gender” solely to mean “women.”
These modalities construct Chinese women, especially within Buddhology, as
a “cultural” category of epistemology.49 As a result, women’s Buddhism contin-
ues to be “unique” and nonprogressive, remaining on the margins while men’s
Buddhism and Buddhology continue to occupy the authoritative and “normal”
position vis-à-vis the dominant discourse.
I neither define “gender” solely with “woman” nor define religion by using
gender symbols.50 Gender is a relational construction of identity that produces
and is produced.51 People’s actions afford their religious symbols meaning, nei-
ther of which are necessarily predetermined by gender.52 Indeed, all Buddhol-
48 The result, of course, is that women occupy an archaic, irrational time that is removed from
authoritative, historically progressive time (McClintock, Imperial Leather, 38–41). The implications
of such interpretive moves transcend academic discourses since many of these transhistoric opinions
are used in classrooms and therefore replicate unchecked.
49 R. Radhakrishnan, “Postcoloniality and the Boundaries of Identity,” Callaloo 16, no. 4
(1993): 750–71, esp. 751. To explain the distinction of Chinese women as a cultural category, Rad-
hakrishnan continues, “the implication is that whatever distances, differences, and boundaries
cannot be transcended or broken down politically can in fact be deconstructed through the uni-
versalist agency of Culture and Cultural Theory. . . . Culture is set up as a non-organic, freefloat-
ing ambience that frees intellectuals and theorists from their solidarities to their regional modes of
being.” In other words, political hegemony is exercised intellectually by co-opting the other as an
epistemological subject of study that transcends particularities and which assumes the academician
is a nonpolitical, nonpartisan entity who can objectively and fairly analyze this subject.
50 See, for example, Bynum’s treatment of gender symbols in religion (“Introduction: The
Complexity of Symbols,” in Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols, ed. Caroline
Walker Bynum, Stevan Harrell, and Paula Richman [Boston: Beacon Press, 1986], 4). In response,
however, Biddick notes that in Goody’s reading of Holy Feast and Holy Fast, while Bynum may dem-
onstrate an extensive and sympathetic understanding of the symbols she studied, she has little of this
same patience for their applicability in the present (“Genders, Bodies, Borders,” 398). In Buddhol-
ogy, scholarly analyses may show adroit handling of translation, and even some contextualization,
although these components are supposedly representative of the past only. Because the study is on a
moment in the past, it is only relevant when studying the past—it does not reflect current scholarly
topographies, biases, or concerns.
51 Tani E. Barlow, “Theorizing Woman: Funnü, Guojia, Jiating,” in Body, Subject, and Power
in China, ed. Angela Zito and Tani E. Barlow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 256;
Biddick, “Genders, Bodies, Borders,” 399; and Susan Stanford Friedman, “‘Beyond’ Gynocriticsm
and Gynesis: The Geographics of Identity and the Future of Feminist Criticism,” Tulsa Studies in
Women’s Literature 15, no. 1 (1996): 13–40.
52 This is especially the case in that the “complex fears that Chinese men feel about women
influence the kind of ghosts they see” (see Bynum, “Introduction,” 7). Additionally, says Stevan Har-
rell, the gender of the person is important in determining their behavior toward religious symbols,
including ghosts (Stevan Harrell, “Men, Women, and Ghosts in Taiwanese Folk Religion,” in Gender
and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols, ed. Caroline Walker Bynum, Stevan Harrell, and Paula
Richman [Boston: Beacon Press, 1986], 101).
ogy entails a gendered viewpoint: types of Buddhism, practices, and textual de-
bates reflect gender and identity, both of the practitioner and the scholar.
In sum, I have reexamined some fundamental assumptions that shape Chi-
nese studies on women, as well as Chinese Buddhist studies. These assump-
tions include the equation of textual narratives with an accurate and objective
representation of a single reality. Typically defined in Euro- and androcentric
terms, this “reality” further privileges specific geographic and temporal under-
standings of what comprise authoritative and canonical narratives. These con-
clusions have been further inflected in Chinese studies by Eurocentric feminist
studies and missionary writings, as well as the narrowly defined epistemological
boundaries of biology and its utility in understanding the experiences of Chi-
nese women in the past.
Secular Themes in the Miaoshan Legend

In secular terms, Miaoshan provides the location to contest and resolve
Confucian-defined economics, politics, as well as filial piety and patrilineality.53
These are represented in the marriage theme of the legend, itself compris-
ing three components that privilege men: (1) economic benefits, (2) political
benefits, and (3) social benefits (filial piety).54 Specifically, Miaoshan defies her
father’s demand that she marry according to Confucian norms, instead choos-
ing to withstand punishment and ultimately seclusion to pursue her Buddhist
practice. By resituating the meaning of Miaoshan’s marriage rejection as a po-
lemic against Confucianism, we see the narrative both criticizes these Confu-
cian goals, as well as resolves the tensions of Confucian filial piety versus Bud-
dhist practice within the larger framework of Buddhism itself.55 In other words,
Miaoshan provides the stratification between indigenous, secular, and religious
traditions and a foreign religion, Buddhism. The tensions are evident in the nar-
rative, which attempts to resolve them by positing that different levels of goals,
both secular and religious, are achieved through Buddhist practice.
53 Continuing the patriline was especially important, since that ensured posterity (James L.
Watson, “The Structure of Chinese Funerary Rites: Elementary Forms, Ritual Sequence, and
the Primacy of Performance,” in Death Ritual in Later Imperial and Modern China, ed. James L.
Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988], 8).
54 I include filial piety as a social benefit if viewed from a male perspective because not only
does it (re)enforce social stability (from the bottom to the top of the social hierarchy), but it symboli-
cally perpetuates the life of the patriarch.
55 I term this marriage rejection rather than resistance because resistance implies a conscien-
tious attempt to assert social agency. But Miaoshan primarily rejects marriage as a component of an
inferior way of life: Confucianism.
Song Economics, Politics, and Confucianism

The period between the legend’s inception and the beginning of the South-
ern Song dynasty (1127–79 CE) coincided with significant political and military
upheaval. In just twenty-seven years, enormous changes would ensue, begin-
ning with the defeat of Emperor Huizong (徽宗 r. 1100–26 CE) by the invading
Jurchen and Huizong’s subsequent abdication to his son, Emperor Qinzong (欽
宗 r. 1126–27 CE). Emperor Qinzong’s short-lived reign resulted from another
defeat by the Jurchens who captured both Huizong and Emperor Qinzong.
Another of Huizong’s sons escaped and later established the Southern Song as
Emperor Gaozong (高宗 r. 1127–62 CE) in Hangzhou (杭州). This military and
political turmoil was accompanied by a significant loss of territory, illustrating
the military weakness of the Song dynasty.
Yet socially, the Song was advancing considerably. First, civil servant exams
became more accessible to different classes of men. No longer was the gov-
ernment hierarchy limited to certain families with a long-established lineage.
As for those families who were ousted from the government, they established
economic outposts in their home towns, creating a new class of local gentry
engaged in promoting the local economy.
Economically as well, the Song was gathering strength. Early in the dynasty,
Wang Anshi instituted a fiscal policy to foster economic development. This in-
cluded nationalizing money printing and markets, creating a vibrant new mid-
dle class.56 Additionally, the Song government increased its coffers even more
by redefining inheritance: new rules and regulations were installed that allowed
the state to benefit from those lineages that had gone extinct. To strengthen the
economy further, the emperor’s own personal storehouse of money was linked
to the Finance Commission’s supply.57 When the Finance Commission’s stock-
pile ran low, the emperor’s personal stash made up the shortfall. All this resulted
in a dramatic increase in the Northern Song’s money supply.
Why was amassing a cash surplus necessary? One issue was defense.58 Only
with a surplus of cash could the state mount an effective, defensive military
strategy. Increased money meant greater regional influence to combat or neu-
56 See, for example, Xiao-bin Ji, Politics and Conservatism in Northern Song China: The
Career and Thought of Sima Guang (A.D. 1019–1086) (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press of
Hong Kong, 2005), 139–40; Ann Gerritsen, review of Beamtentum und Wirtschaftspolitik in der
Song-Dynastie by Dieter Kuhn, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 41, no. 4
(1998): 521–24; and Valerie Hansen, Changing Gods in Medieval China (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1990), 20.
57 Kathryn Bernhardt, “The Inheritance Rights of Daughters: The Song Anomaly?” Modern
China 21 (1995): 269–309, esp. 279.
58 Ibid. Specifically, Bernhardt convincingly argues, with the support of statistics by Paul
Smith, that the Song state expended enormous amounts of cash maintaining a standing army be-
cause of the necessity of defending itself against invading armies.
tralize potential foes in the near abroad as well as more distant enemies. If the
emperor’s personal storehouse of money functioned as an emergency fund for
the Finance Commission, then keeping those personal accounts flush would
be of the utmost importance. Given this, the goal of consolidating the ruler’s
monetary resources would become paramount. All officials knew of these poli-
cies, regardless of their own involvement in implementation or enforcement,
including local civil servants like Jiang Zhiqi.
Not unexpectedly, aristocratic marriages provided a venue to exchange and
amass significant amounts of cash and goods.59 Indeed, the exchange of money
was an important component of Song marriage that included both dowry and
bride-price. Marriages could also increase territorial holdings since dowries and
bride-price often comprised property as well. Especially for aristocrats, this
could strengthen one’s overall presence with near-abroad threats in neighbor-
ing states.
Additionally, policies instituted by various statesman of the period sup-
ported reverting the dowry to the patriline.60 A woman who married into a
family lost control of her dowry because it became the head-of-household’s
property.61 There was a shift amongst Song elite and aristocratic circles from
bride-price to large dowries, but a woman’s father retained that wealth in a
uxorilocal match.62
Marriage was thus an arena in which men could create mutually benefi-
cial ties economically, politically, and socially.63 While these conditions do not
imply the commodification of marriage, the exchange of money and goods was
a significant component. This approach to marriage was particularly rampant in
the upper classes, which set examples for the general populace. In fact, it led
to statesman Sima Guang’s criticism that marriage consisted of a betrothal con-
tract that delineated dowries and bride-price, prompting the need to proscribe
socially acceptable parameters of marriage.64
In response to these dramatic military, political, and financial vicissitudes,
new public policies sought to concentrate resources to buttress men’s agency
59 Patricia Buckley Ebrey, “Marriage Finance from the Sixth to the Thirteenth Century,”
in Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society, ed. Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Rubie S. Watson
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), 106–8. Ebrey says that dowries
were specifically enumerated with the initial proposal, even in the case of uxorilocal marriages.
60 Patricia Buckley Ebrey, The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in
the Sung Period (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 111–13.
61 This was not always the case, since in the Qin and Han, records show that it was the norm
for property, including the dowry, to individual families since there were taxes on families that had
more than one adult son remaining in the household (Jennifer Holmgren, “The Economic Founda-
tions of Virtue: Widow-Remarriage in Early and Modern China,” Australian Journal of Chinese
Affairs, no. 13 [January 1985]: 1–27, esp. 4).
62 Bernhardt, “Inheritance Rights of Daughters,” 271.
63 Ibid.; see also Ebrey, “Marriage Finance from the Sixth to the Thirteenth Century,” 106.
64 Ebrey, “Marriage Finance from the Sixth to the Thirteenth Century,” 106.
and power. One of neo-Confucianism’s primary objectives became stabilizing

society by outlining men’s roles through situationally dependent codes of be-
havior. This ideological and political renewal of Confucianism was promoted by
several statesmen, including Cheng Yi (程頤 1033–1107 CE) and his brother
Cheng Hao (程灏 1032–85 CE), Ouyang Xiu (歐陽修 1007–72 CE), Sima
Guang (司馬光 1019–86 CE), and later, Zhu Xi (朱熹 1130–1200 CE). Their
individual reinterpretations of Confucianism centered on strengthening the
state and were aimed primarily at men. If heeded, they believed, these neo-
Confucian policies and prescriptions would create better social cohesion in a
rapidly shifting society.
Studies that conclude neo-Confucianism oppressed women often rely on
mining sources for any mention of women. In most of the Confucian narratives
that feature women, women are not the protagonists and their constraint is not
the focus of the narrative.65 Instead women function as didactic symbols and
negative metaphors to teach men lessons because the primary audience of these
texts was men.
Moreover, when neo-Confucian writings specifically addressed women,
they were censorious. While the Song was in a weakened military state, it was
experiencing rapid capitalism, which spurred men of letters to proclaim that
wealth was the primary responsibility and privilege of men.66 If women were
engaging in this new marketplace, the argument went, then they were com-
peting with men, which would diminish men’s ability to succeed. Additionally,
constraining women was justified because “indulging” them by allowing them
too much freedom to pursue their interests without male supervision might
result in men’s loss of state and self. That is, if women’s energies were “allowed”
to focus on making money, both they and their activities could not support men
in their pursuit of money, power, and prestige. According to androcentric neo-
65 In works on early Confucianism, scholars studying Chinese women often emphasize the
inherent misogyny or sexism contained in the narratives and pronouncements (see, for example,
Richard W. Guisso, “Thunder over the Lake: The Five Classics and the Perception of Woman in
Early China,” in Women in China, ed. Richard W. Guisso and Stanley Johannesen (Youngstown,
OH: Philo Press, 1981), 47–62; and Bret Hinsch, Women in Early Imperial China (Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield, 2002). The problem with these analyses is that they overstate the impor-
tance of women in these Confucian dialogues. Thus in the yin/yang configuration (which was not
originally a Confucian discourse but one that was attributed to Confucianism later), the emphasis
is not on women’s passivity to men’s activity but that a successful relationship requires complemen-
tariness (Alison H. Black, “Gender and Cosmology in Chinese Correlative Thinking,” in Bynum,
Gender and Religion, 166–95). Women are not necessarily yin—depending upon specific situations,
they can occupy the yang position as easily as a man can. These guidelines were about achieving
equilibrium through complementary relations. This is also true of the Five Bonds principle (ruler/
subject, father/son, husband/wife, older sibling/younger sibling, and friend/friend), which is less
about oppressing women to their husbands, but again, it is about stabilizing relationships between
positions one might occupy in different situations.
66 See Gates, “Commoditization of Chinese Women,” 813.
Confucian prescriptions, women needed to focus their energies on supporting

men’s endeavors.
Marriage, Money, and Politics
Unique to Miaoshan, and in contrast to the majority of women presum-
ably inspired by her (whether religious or secular), is that she is portrayed as
a member of royalty. Confucian mores dictated that a woman in her position
display exemplary behaviors. Her purpose was to reinforce the king’s sovereign
legitimacy and consolidate his power, rather than to pursue her own goals.67 It is
against this topography that we must understand Miaoshan and marriage, which
reflects specific, contemporaneous Song issues about politics, as well as social
and fiscal policy. By rejecting marriage, Miaoshan significantly undermined the
Confucian goals represented by her father, King Zhuangyan. What’s more, she
renounced all these gains—which were primarily for her father since she clearly
did not desire them—without his consent.
In real terms, a marriage to Miaoshan contained not merely vague “Confu-
cian values” but transactions that reflected the fiscal policies outlined previously.
Because her marriage was to be uxorilocal, both dowry and bride-price would
devolve to her natal family.68 Her union would have resulted in more money for
King Zhuangyan’s personal reserves, because while it was ideally possible for
women to control their own dowry, this was not necessarily practiced.69 Instead,
the dowry would have been controlled by her husband joining her family, while
bride-price would have devolved outright to the king. Practically speaking then,
Miaoshan’s refusal to get married70 denied her father money.71 By refusing to
marry, Miaoshan also precluded the possibility of her family building political
67 Katherine Carlitz, “Desire, Danger, and the Body: Stories of Women’s Virtue in Late Ming
China,” in Engendering China: Women, Culture, and the State, ed. Christina K. Gilmartin, Gail
Hershatter, Lisa Rofel, and Tyrene White (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 105;
and Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Peter N. Gregory, “The Religious and Historical Landscape,” in
Religion and Society in T’ang and Sung China, ed. Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Peter N. Gregory
(Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. 1993), 30–31.
68 Ebrey argues that, indeed, in many cases women did maintain control of their dowries
(Inner Quarters, 111–13).
69 At issue are the rules of patrilineal succession, which designate a male heir from outside the
patrilineage when there is none (Bettine Birge, review of Gender, Property, and Law in China, by
Kathryn Bernhardt, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 44, no. 4 [2001]: 575–
99, esp. 576). See also Ebrey, “Marriage Finance from the Sixth to the Thirteenth Century,” 121.
70 “As she grew, the Bodhisattva became naturally kind and gentle. She dressed plainly and ate
only once a day. In the palace she was known as ‘the maiden with the heart of a buddha.’ By her good
grace the ladies in waiting were converted: all turned to the good life and renounced their desires.
The king took exception to this and prepared to find her a husband. Miao-shan, with integrity and
wisdom, said, ‘Riches and honour are not there for ever, glory and splendour are like mere bubbles
or illusions. Even if you force me to do base menial work, I will never repent’” (lines 14–21).
71 Ibid. Although the specifics of uxorilocal marriages are different from virolocal ones, the
objective is the same: patrilineal continuity and control over the younger generation (Sangren, “His-
liaisons. Aristocratic marriages were intricate contract agreements between two

vested parties. Strategic alliances transcended mere money or military materiel.
Not only did they create political liaisons and allies but marriages also offered
an opportunity to neutralize enemies by marrying one’s daughter to potential
foes. By rejecting marriage, Miaoshan also (at least symbolically) undermined
her father’s power and legitimacy. After all, if he could not garner respect and
obedience from his own daughter, should he receive these from his subjects?
Previous studies have ignored this subversive element of the legend by
instead suggesting that Miaoshan exemplifies a unique example of medieval
Chinese feminism. Assuming that the self-proclaimed transmission of this tale
is at least true in part, we know that Jiang Zhiqi had at least some contact with a
monastery and presumably with female Buddhist practitioners. He would have
had opportunity to observe their rituals and what they valued in worshipping
Guanyin. In other words, Jiang’s purpose was not to advocate medieval femi-
nism through Miaoshan’s actions but to project a series of androcentric monkish
behaviors onto Miaoshan. If Jiang were truly advocating medieval feminism by
portraying an empowered woman, he would have portrayed Miaoshan’s agency
in ways that were uniquely gynocentric. That the narrative merely transfers
androcentric, cenobitic behaviors onto Miaoshan reveals what Song men and
monks valued in women, especially Buddhist women; it does not necessarily
indicate what Buddhist women themselves either did or valued in Buddhist
practice as has been suggested by other studies.
In a rush to identify Miaoshan as a medieval feminist, prior investigations
have also ignored the role of the Miaoshan narrative in the debate between
the legitimacy and dominance of Confucianism over Buddhism. Yet the fact
remains that Jiang was a civil servant, aware of contemporary economic, mili-
tary, and government policies and debates.72 Presumably, as I propose, if he was
truly advocating for Buddhism, then one function of the narrative was as a site
to resolve tensions between Confucianism and Buddhism. Specifically, the nar-
rative highlights certain secular, androcentric aspects of the Confucian system,
a system that values material pursuits in opposition to the androcentric, Bud-
dhist system, which rejects material pursuits. In essence, Miaoshan’s marriage
rejection is a rejection of a Confucian value system that advocates consolidating
men’s monetary resources and power.
Buddhist Polemics: Politics, Filial Piety, and Subverting Confucianism
Song Confucian mores demanded obedience by aristocratic offspring to-
tory and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy,” 682). Thus, in this case, the groom would be incorporated into
Miaoshan’s natal lineage, serving to reinforce and validate the existence of the king’s patriline.
72 I reiterate that though it is reported that Jiang only had the legend inscribed, there is no
evidence he did not embellish the original narrative. Indeed, in later renditions, the legend’s themes
change, which argues for an author, rather than just a “compiler.”
ward those occupying a superior social position to them, meaning that Miaoshan
was expected to obey her father’s demands, in turn setting an example for all
his subjects. It is therefore significant that Miaoshan is portrayed as an aristo-
crat.73 Her behaviors contained both symbolic and practical components, which
her social position heightened.74 She represented Confucian-defined expecta-
tions that reinforced the social structure upon which her father’s sovereignty
was legitimized. Practically, as I have already argued, she was to provide access
to additional financial, military, and political resources. She was to model ap-
propriate, respectful behavior toward her father. Ultimately, she was expected
to produce offspring to ensure the king’s posterity. Her actions also held a cos-
mological element: defying expectations threatened the social order, rendering
her actions cosmically disruptive.
Given this, Miaoshan’s behaviors defined filial impiety. Other than being
described as being “naturally kind and gentle” and as having the heart of a Bud-
dha, she was steadfastly confrontational and defiant in her pursuit of Buddhism.
When her sisters and mother attempted to persuade her to acquiesce to her
father’s demand to get married, she was consistently disobedient. Miaoshan’s
defiance in the narrative symbolizes a rejection of the Northern Song economic
and political system. In the negative portrayal of an obdurate, obstinate father,
the narrative rejects the Confucian value system. Miaoshan merely provides the
site for this dialogue. Indeed the narrative functions as a polemic like the Mouzi
Lihuolun, an early Buddhist text that argues that it is possible to demonstrate
filial piety in nonconventional ways, thereby satisfying Confucian objections.75
Behaviors that initially appear disrespectful such as flipping one’s father upside
down can have greater filial piety ramifications: the context is that the son flips
his father upside down to save him from drowning in a river. The seemingly
unfilial act thus saves his father’s life. Larger contexts therefore dictate the as-
sessment of what is truly filial and what is not.
The same is true of Miaoshan’s defiance toward her father, which initially
appears disrespectful but will later prove filial because she, too, will be in a posi-
tion to save his life through her defiance. Therefore, while Miaoshan’s behavior
was distinctly disrespectful according to the Confucian model, it demonstrated
a more powerful filial piety through Buddhism. By following a Buddhist path
rather than simply obeying her father and getting married, Miaoshan ultimately
73 Carlitz, “Desire, Danger, and the Body,” 105; and Ebrey and Gregory, “Religious and His-
torical Landscape,” 30–31.
74 While most analyses of Miaoshan have literally conflated her with historical women, this is
not what I am proposing. Rather, I argue that, as a literary device, portraying Miaoshan as a member
of royalty held symbolic value that heightened the impact of her actions and choices. In other words,
because she is royalty, Miaoshan’s actions have greater consequences because they can potentially
affect not only her own family’s status but also the well-being of the entire state.
75 Jiahe Liu and Dongfang Shao, “Early Buddhism and Taoism in China (A.D. 65–420),” Bud-
dhist-Christian Studies 12 (1992): 35–41.
saves not just her father physically, but spiritually. In so doing, she demon-
strates the superiority of Buddhism.
To reiterate, by denying the king’s right to demand Confucian-defined
social expectations from her, Miaoshan undermined the validity of his Confu-
cian beliefs, positing the superiority of Buddhism in their stead. As such, her
defiance signals the tension between Buddhism and Confucianism, subverting
Confucian expectations altogether. Moreover, Buddhist advocates like Jiang
Zhiqi were certainly aware of Confucianism’s ever-present accusation regard-
ing Buddhism’s inherent unfiliality. Miaoshan’s insubordination acknowledges
that accusation and then ultimately trumps it with Buddhist filial piety, proving
Confucianism’s inferiority.
Reauthorizing Stereotypes of Women
Studies often read Miaoshan as representing women of the Song dynasty.
Her behaviors provided a positive role model for historical women and as such
are predictive and accurately representative of historical women’s actions. I
find, however, that in a secular context, she is actually portrayed negatively.
Miaoshan is defiant and disobedient, she undermines authority by modeling
subversive behavior, and she is, initially, unfilial. Her parents are suspicious of
her and scorn her, a fact that studies emphasizing her physical sacrifice and her
marriage rejection mask.76 Moreover, she is unrepentant no matter how harshly
her father punishes her.77 She is reprimanded not just by her father but her
mother and sisters as well.78 She is then banished in her own home, and later to
a convent for her continued disobedience. There she is forced into hard labor.79
76 Contrast this with the story of Mulian, an equally popular Buddhist legendary narrative,
who, relative to Miaoshan, fulfills his filial debt easily. He does have to drink from a river of men-
strual blood, but he does not have to transform his state of being. Miaoshan however needs to trans-
form her fundamental state completely, in essence transcending her femaleness.
77 “When the king and his lady sent for her [Miaoshan] and tried to coax her, she said: ‘I will
obey your august command if it will prevent the three misfortunes. . . . The first is this: when the
men of this world are young their face is fair as the jade-like moon, but when they grow old their hair
turns white, their face is wrinkled; in motion or repose they are in every way worse off than when
they were young. The second is this: a man’s limbs may be lusty and vigorous, he may step as lithely
as if flying through the air but when suddenly an illness befalls him he lies in bed without a single
pleasure in life. The third is: a man may have a great assembly of relatives, may be surrounded by
his nearest and dearest, but suddenly one day it all comes to an end; although father and son are
close kin they cannot take on another’s place. If it can prevent these three misfortunes, then you will
win my consent to a marriage. If not, I prefer to retire to pursue a life of religion.’ . . . The king was
angry. He forced her to work at gardening and reduced her food and drink” (lines 23–36).
78 “Even her two sisters went privately to make her change her mind, but Miao-shan held firm
and would not turn back. The queen personally admonished her” (lines 42–44).
79 “The king was angry. He called for the nuns. He charged them to treat her so harshly that
she would change her mind. The nuns were intimidated, and gave her the heaviest tasks to do—
fetching wood and water, working the pestle and mortar, running the kitchen garden” (lines 51–54).
Finally, she demonstrates a glaring lack of concern about the welfare of the five
hundred nuns whose deaths, along with her own, the king orders.
Although Buddhism’s superiority is ultimately proven by Miaoshan’s self-
less gesture in which she gives her eyes and arms for a decoction to save her
father’s life at the end of the legend,80 until that time, Miaoshan is portrayed
as receiving censure from her entire family. Her father, mother, and sisters all
remonstrate her for pursuing Buddhism.81 This undermines the suggestion that
Miaoshan was an exemplary figure for historical women unless they too desired
such responses, though some may argue that these initial reactions heighten her
dramatic “redemption” or apotheosis.
The degree of punishment and reprimand bears note as well: they are vari-
ous, severe at times, and administered by everyone else in the narrative. They
include scolding, banishment, enforced labor,82 and even an execution order.83
That Miaoshan undergoes extensive and myriad punishments and reproach for
her defiance reinforces the idea that women deserved harsh punishment for
defying social norms. In short, the narrative sanctions severe punishment for
women who transgress against androcentric goals.
What’s more, to overcome her infractions, unfiliality, and female limita-
tions, Miaoshan first engages in male protocols and then sheds all semblances of
earthly gender qualities by apotheosizing into a deity. That she is female is less
important than that she is a deity who opted out of the cycle of human gender
and existence altogether.
In this way, Miaoshan provides a convenient forum within which to critique
women. The narrative reinforces and reauthorizes qualities of female willful-
ness and subversiveness. So too does the theme that women must be harshly
punished for their transgressions. Why? Because the author was a civil servant,
trained in the biases and political agendas of the time. The legend is similar to
80 “The monk said, ‘On Hsiang-shan, in the south-West of Your Majesty’s dominion, there is a
bodhisattva engaged in religious practices. If you send a messenger to present your request to her
you can count on obtaining two things.’ The king had no choice but to command a palace querry to
go and convey his message. Miao-shan said: ‘My father showed disrespect to the Three Treasures, he
persecuted and suppressed the True Doctrine, he executed innocent nuns. This called for retribu-
tion.’ Then she gladly cut out her eyes and severed her arms. Giving them to the envoy, she added
instructions to exhort the king to turn towards the good, no longer to be deluded by false doctrines”
(lines 76–87).
81 “The king took exception to this and prepared to find her a husband” (line 18); “Even her
two sisters went privately to make her change her mind, but Miao-shan held firm and would not turn
back” (lines 42–43); and “The queen personally admonished her” (line 44).
82 “The king was angry. He called for the nuns. He charged them to treat her so harshly that
she would change her mind. The nuns were intimidated, and gave her the heaviest tasks to do—
fetching wood and water, working with the pestle and mortar, running the kitchen garden. . . . Much
time went by, and Miao-shan still held firm to her purpose” (lines 51–57).
83 “The king heard about the miracles of the vegetables and the spring of water, and was furi-
ous. He sent soldiers to bring back her head and to kill the nuns” (lines 58–60).
contemporary Song didactic texts for women, which clearly reflected that elite
men felt women were exercising too much power. Their purpose was to con-
strain women, if not in reality, at least textually.
Second, by propagating such a text, the author successfully indoctrinated
men who were learned, lettered, and could formalize such notions into policy.
This entire sequence dramatizes the author’s concern that women were poten-
tially subversive and were best when they modeled male protocols in specific,
limited situations, namely idealized, religious ones. As such, Miaoshan func-
tions as an androcentric instrument, significantly undermining her status as a
symbol of Chinese feminism. Thus on a secular level, the legend reifies women’s
negative characteristics while also controlling them. It simultaneously proposes
a religious superiority of Buddhism over Confucianism, portraying Miaoshan
positively where she models male-gendered religious behaviors.
Religious Themes
Inspiring Men
Here I explore two issues: (1) how Miaoshan primarily provides a positive
religious male role model, and (2) the resemblance of Prince Siddhartha’s leg-
endary life to Miaoshan. Gender biases that treat gender as a complete and lit-
eral analytical parameter limit the relevance and influence of Miaoshan.84 Such
studies often conclude that causality exists between Miaoshan’s gender and her
intended/actual audience and her influence on them. I have argued that neo-
Confucian policies were primarily concerned with stabilizing a society that was
thriving and volatile, economically, militarily, and politically. They were meant
to regulate men’s interaction in those public spheres. Within this context, it is
conceivable that men from all classes, for different reasons, experienced a great
deal of pressure to achieve social, economic, and political success.
I have further proposed that the audience of Miaoshan resembled the au-
thor, namely elite, lettered, gentry, and aristocratic men. For them, there would
be considerable pressure to fulfill secular obligations rather than pursue Bud-
dhism. At stake were social position and power, family obligations, and eco-
nomic considerations. In this context, rejecting the pressures and prestige of
secular life would require great fortitude. And yet a successful rejection would
also prove the depth of one’s Buddhist piety.
Given this, Miaoshan’s circumstances can be seen as paralleling the secular
position of aristocratic men who might pursue Buddhism but who also possessed
84 These biases operate by basing the effect, meaning, and relevance of texts, rituals, behav-
iors, and signifiers to gender alone. According to this approach, if we are discussing a woman’s narra-
tive, then we must necessarily look solely to other female narratives as models. That has inordinately
limited the types of analysis performed on subjects like the Miaoshan narrative, which, to a large
degree, is an androcentric narrative.
significant secular social responsibility. This is especially true at the end of the
legend, which not only proves Buddhism’s superiority over Confucianism but
also does so in a way that justifies the pursuit of Buddhism over secular, Confu-
cian-defined endeavors.85 I propose that again, this theme resonates with men
who chose to pursue Buddhism over a secular life. Miaoshan’s dramatic display
of faith—her initial renunciation, her solitary practice, and the sacrifice of her
arms and eyes—would resonate with such men. Her eventual triumph—vindi-
cation-as-apotheosis—also provides the ultimate justification for her prior ac-
tions. Conveniently, she not only exemplifies and resolves the dilemma between
secular and religious life but she also justifies rejecting a conventional, Confu-
cian secular life. In so doing, Miaoshan reinforced the male position within an
androcentric Buddhist institution.
Miaoshan also rejected her mortal, female gender by enacting male pro-
tocols.86 She behaved like an aristocratic man pursuing Buddhism through so-
cial inversion.87 She inverted her gendered position into that of a male ascetic,
which then allowed her to produce the Buddhist piety of a male renunciant.88
85 “Then she gladly cut out her eyes and severed her arms. Giving them to the envoy, she
added instructions to exhort the king to turn towards the good, no longer to be deluded by false
doctrines. When the two things were submitted to him the monk made them into a medicine. The
king took it and instantly recovered. He generously rewarded the monk-physician. But the monk
said: ‘Why thank me. You should be thanking the one who provided the arms and eyes.’ Suddenly, he
was gone. The king was startled by this divine intervention. Ordering a coach, he went with his lady
and two daughters to the hills to thank the bodhisattva. They met, and before words were spoken
the queen already recognized her: it was Miao-shan. They found themselves choking with tears. . . .
Miao-shan said: ‘Does My Lady remember Miao-shan? Mindful of my father’s love, I have repaid
him with my arms and eyes.’ Hearing her words, the king and queen embraced her, bitterly weeping.
The queen was about to lick the yes with her tongue, but before she could do so, auspicious clouds
enclosed all around, divine musicians began to play, the earth shook, flowers rained down. And then
the holy manifestation for the Thousand Arms and Thousand Eyes [was] revealed, hovering majesti-
cally in the air. Attendants numbered tens of thousands, voices celebrating compassion resounded to
shake the mountains and valleys. In a moment, the Bodhisattva revered to her former person, then
with great solemnity, departed” (lines 85–108).
86 See Barlow, “Theorizing Woman,” 10, 258.
87 Bynum describes social inversion as an inversion of gender: a man will “invert” his gender
into that of a female by adopting certain “female” qualities such as vulnerability and submission
(“Female Imagery in the Religious Writings of the Later Middle Ages,” in Bynum, Gender and
Religion, 270–73). In this way, men are able to enact their piety by becoming a bride of Christ,
indeed becoming more pious and submissive toward God. Because abjection and submission were
not normally associated with men in secular realms, nor did men see themselves in this way, they
had to “invert” their gender and become “women” in order to be truly submissive to God. This was
necessary for men because they held a great deal of secular power and to be truly pious was to give
up power. Therefore, given their social expectations, resources, and access to agency in secular so-
ciety, men designated qualities of humbleness and abjection—associated with women—as the most
effective means toward true and effective piety (274–76).
88 Again, Bynum offers a useful heuristic analogue of this phenomenon in her studies on medi-
eval Catholic men and women in Italy (ibid., 274–76).
Later, Miaoshan rejected her female gender completely. Through her apotheo-
sis, she removes herself altogether from being a conventionally defined woman
or man. While Miaoshan-as-Guanyin is gendered female, she is, after all, a deity
and thus is not bound by human gender definitions.
The other significance of her apotheosis is that it provides a compelling cli-
max for any Buddhist practitioner, not just women. Miaoshan’s apotheosis pro-
vides the decisive demonstration of Buddhism’s superiority. With its symbolic
promise of recognition,89 resolution, and apotheosis within the public sphere,
her apotheosis is surely the most powerful theme in the narrative. Not coinci-
dentally, such a public reconciliation between competing social systems was as,
if not more, powerful to men than women.
If we accept that men were also an intended audience of this legend, then the
ways in which Miaoshan is inspirational shift away from women and their agency.
Rather, we see that Miaoshan modeled the pursuit of male, hermitic solitary prac-
tice. She sanctioned rejection of Confucian values. She proved that Buddhist prac-
tice simultaneously fulfills Confucian filial piety. Finally, she confirmed that Bud-
dhist practice would be rewarded in ways that could not be defined by conventional
Confucian social structures. After all, even a man who sacrifices five hundred nuns
is saved through the grace of Buddhism, regardless of his prior transgressions. This
theme alone seems to argue for Miaoshan as a patroness for men.
Prince Siddhartha
Thus far, I have argued that Buddhist texts and Buddhology often confer
authority by invoking androcentric protocols.90 To combat androcentric privi-
leging, Miaoshan interpretations have focused almost exclusively on gynocen-
tric texts and interpretations, often using a combination of structuralist-Marxist
analysis.91 Moreover, in seeking thematic analogies for the Miaoshan narrative,
studies limit themselves to scriptures, precious scrolls, or miracle tales about
89 That is, recognition of her ultimate position as a deity who symbolizes a superior religious
and cultural pursuit.
90 In other words, male narratives and the methodologies used to examine them are consid-
ered authoritative based on the volume of their production in primary texts and subsequent scholar-
ship. However, this phenomenon merely indicates a greater number of men who are willing to write
on particular subjects, either as authors of apocryphal or indigenous texts or as scholars of history.
That fact in itself does not confer objective authority. The reluctance of scholars to address female
narratives stems not solely from an objective state—there are fewer women’s narratives, women
were not dominant in the monastic institution, concerns about over-theorizing material—but rather
indicates the willingness of scholars to replicate conventional methodologies: translation and philo-
logical analysis.
91 Two distinct issues must be corrected when using these interpretive methodologies. First,
both structuralism and Marxism, which are designed to analyze social and power structures using
Western European definitions of the individual, are commodified or not. As a result, they are con-
text specific and when applied to different cultures, Western-privileging definitions must be ac-
counted for. Second, these methodologies are also used only to explicate Chinese women’s behaviors
women. Analogies with the Prince Siddhartha narrative have thus been over-
looked because of gender biases.
The issue is not whether other texts can be proven to have had direct in-
fluence on the text, since that cannot be achieved. Indeed, other studies have
focused on contemporary Song texts or texts on women to suggest possible
influences because they have drawn an erroneous causal connection between
Miaoshan’s gender and that of protagonists in earlier Buddhist narratives. How-
ever, I suggest that we look to male narratives for different forces on the Mi-
aoshan legend, namely the narrative of the original Buddhist figure, Gautama
Buddha before he became a Buddha, the narrative of Prince Siddhartha.
For one, the progression of the Miaoshan narrative bears a strong resem-
blance to Prince Siddhartha’s: royal family, early understanding of deeper truths,
rejection of secular life, solitary asceticism, and then apotheosis. All these ele-
ments within the Miaoshan narrative highlight qualities and behaviors which
were as, if not more, persuasive to men. Indeed, there is little evidence that
women sought the kind of religious solitude found in either of these (or other)
narratives, whose audiences were most likely primarily men.
Moreover, Chinese translations of the biography of Gautama Buddha were
available and presumably circulated amongst male scholars.92 In fact, one of the
translations of the Buddhacarita, which relays the story of Prince Siddhartha,
was translated into Chinese during the Song dynasty by Ratnamegha, a com-
panion of Faxian.93
In fact, many themes in the Miaoshan legend form a metaphorical rework-
ing of the Siddhartha narrative, such as the miraculous circumstances of her
birth, the vision, the earth quaking at birth, and divine marks on the body. While
the details do not exactly correlate, the Miaoshan legend was likely inspired
by Siddhartha’s story. They also shared an aristocratic background. That status
heightened the consequences of their pursuit of Buddhism by specifying exactly
what was at stake in renouncing secular life: a high degree of political, social,
and material responsibility.
A minor deviation on the same theme takes place when the author of the
Miaoshan legend truncates Prince Siddhartha’s encounters with the four men in
various stages in life into a dialogue with her father. The dialogue in which Mi-
aoshan acquiesces to marry only if her father can prevent what are here called
the “Three Misfortunes” of sickness, old age, and death.
and their roles. While this in itself is not problematic, the limitation of analysis to these Eurocentric
modes is.
92 For example, Samuel Beal finds that Asvaghośa’s major contribution to Chinese Buddhist
literature was the “Life of the Buddha” in verse, in the Buddhacarita (Literature in China [1882;
reprint, Delihi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1988], 97).
93 Ibid., 98. Faxian is a well-known monk whose biography is included in the volume Lives of
the Eminent Monks. Huijiao, Gao seng zhuan (A.D. 530), reproduced in Taisho Shinshu Daizokyo
no. 2059 (50:322c–423a) (Tokyo: Society for the Publication of the Taisho Edition, 1924–1932).
Miaoshan’s pursuit of solitary practice and her apotheosis model Prince

Siddhartha’s example as much as any contemporary Song Buddhist woman’s
narrative. Admittedly, these are stock elements in many Buddhist narratives of
exceptional, iconic figures. What is important, however, is that these are stock
elements for men’s Buddhist narratives. Because the majority of Miaoshan dis-
courses have focused on women’s narratives as they have shaped the Miaoshan
legend, the fact that it resembles the narrative of Prince Siddhartha has been
ignored. The value in recognizing this is that not only is her praxis trajectory
modeled for and on men generally but that she also reinforces androcentric
Buddhism. This may appear obvious since it was written by two men, but previ-
ous studies have not examined these observations.
If the Miaoshan themes are modeled on the inspirational aspects of Gau-
tama Buddha’s biography, then the primary themes in the Miaoshan legend ad-
dress the concerns of educated, elite men engaged in Buddhist and Confucian
dialogic debates. The narratives’ audiences reflected its author. As such, the
author represents a self-selected elite within his own demographic, uniquely
positioned to instruct the “rest” of that demographic, as well as the larger popu-
lation, through a prescriptive text.
Generally, Miaoshan’s actions model Prince Siddhartha’s in that both un-
dermine the old/dominant value system of the upper classes symbolized by
their parents. Both question their parents’ governing legitimacy in general and
authority over them in particular.
Revisiting Past and Current Epistemological Models

For most studies, Miaoshan provides a converging site in three discursive
arenas. Within the context of the legend, she functions as a receptacle for con-
temporary Song mores. On an institutional Buddhist level, Miaoshan represents
gender-specific (read: female) secular and religious achievements. Finally, on
an academic level, scholars anxious to rectify misogyny in the Buddhist tradition
as well as in Buddhist studies proffer Miaoshan as a triumph over the limitations
on women. Since she is a woman in the narrative, her fortitude is understood
as secularly and religiously inspirational, for women, intent on asserting their
agency against a patriarchal social structure.
Yet contemporary effect does not address meaning. Specifically, an ahistori-
cal, geographically nonspecific analysis does a disservice on three fronts: (1) it
assumes a static influence on women by the Miaoshan legend that can be gen-
eralized temporally, (2) it thus surveils Chinese Buddhist women through an es-
sentialized lens, and (3) it assumes a causal relationship between the gender of
Miaoshan and women. Miaoshan is different, however, from most real women
of the Song dynasty, who supposedly viewed her as a model for agency. She
primarily engaged male protocols and as such, the text is androcentric, reify-
ing androcentric ideals, prescriptions, and values. The legend’s themes focus
on male monastic Buddhist practice, establishing Buddhism’s superiority over
Confucianism, and critiquing women’s potential for social subversion. Thus as
an androcentric narrative, the Miaoshan legend, although ostensibly about a
woman, re-presents an ideal of male monasticism. The reprimands and punish-
ments she endures symbolize the polemic about Buddhism’s inherent preemi-
nence over Confucianism as they underscore the primacy of male protocols.94
Also important is how dominant discourses in Chinese women’s Buddhol-
ogy have contributed to women’s continued marginalization in historiography.95
In investigating the privileging of texts, I propose that textual study on women
frequently entails translation followed by comparisons with “similar” texts, predi-
cated on a shared gender, or confusing thematic signifiers with fact.96 Conversely,
woman’s (rather than women’s) agency is examined, producing a synchronic Chi-
nese “woman” perpetually defined outside of history and progress and is there-
fore irrelevant to authoritative studies.97 Reexamining the utility of dichotomiz-
ing gender, which normatively configures men as institutional practitioners (read:
canonical, authoritative, positive, normal) and women as lay practitioners (read:
non-canonical, non-authoritative, negative, abnormal), exposes “gender biases”
that collapse source materials into a synchronic, transhistoric interpretation and
adds to our understanding of “the historical construction of the maintenance of
sexual boundaries” within Chinese historiography and Buddhology.98
In general, reinterpreting the Miaoshan legend brings into question the
concept of “normative” in scholarship and forces scholars to reevaluate the cri-
teria on which authority is defined. Texts, especially canonical ones, are often
prescriptive rather than descriptive. Too often, texts are interpreted as com-
plete, accurate representations of fact, rather than abstractions: ideals meant
to regulate actions that should be engaged and are not or that should not be
engaged and are. An author’s gender, economic standing, and political affilia-
94 On male protocols, Barlow proposes that women can enact protocols that are primarily asso-
ciated with men, and thereby occupy a “man’s position” in relation to others (“Theorizing Woman,”
10, 258). Another study on foot binding, by C. Fred Blake, argues that the neo-Confucian body is
defined by its relationship to others and this relationship, I would further argue, is determined situ-
ationally (“Foot-Binding in Neo-Confucian China and the Appropriation of Female Labor,” Signs
19, no. 3 [Spring 1994]: 676–712, esp. 679). Depending upon the context, women could exercise
considerable personal agency. But agency was not necessarily a concern for historical women in the
way it is configured in contemporary discourses.
95 As Scott has observed, “the discrepancy between the high quality of recent work in women’s
history and its continuing marginal status . . . points up the limits of descriptive approaches that do
not address dominant disciplinary concepts” (“Gender: A Useful Category,” 1055).
96 That assumption coincidentally heightens the relative lack of texts on women and justifies
their continued marginalization (ibid.).
97 Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes,” 272.
98 Biddick, “Genders, Bodies, Borders,” 393. See also Vron Ware, “Moments of Danger: Race,
Gender, and Memories of Empire,” History and Theory 31, no. 4 (1992): 116–37, esp. 117.
tions, combined with other contemporary social forces, are equally influential
in shaping narratives.
Moreover, the methodologies scholars use to determine the subject of
study become as important as the subject itself. Methodologies privileging ab-
stract and idealized narratives are as political as those openly engaged in politi-
cal agendas.99 Indeed, politics are an integral component to scholarly analysis,
rather than an “illegitimate intrusion” that undermines academic rigor:100 that
position assumes that analytical Eurocentricity and androcentricity are not so
overpowering that they obscure a fair recapitulation of historical fact.101 Politi-
cal agendas exist in narratives as well.102 Indeed, different analytical modalities
reflect specific ideologies, politics, agendas, and values.103 Often the politics
contained in androcentric analyses are obscured because their methodologies
have been authorized by time and use, rather than any proven set of objective
criteria. Those characteristics, however, are not in themselves sufficient to con-
fer authority. Their usefulness and relevancy depend upon the subject matter.
In short, that the majority of scholars whose “normative” subjects do not declare
a political stance does not, in fact, mean they don’t hold one. Rather, it merely
indicates that the underpinnings of traditional analysis have been elided.
As such, contemporary studies reflect an interpretive subjectivity and invest-
ment.104 These agendas do not necessarily undermine the utility or elucidative qual-
ity of an investigation. Nevertheless, a value-free, prepolitical, “objective” reading
is, I argue, not possible. Integrating Buddhology with cultural and feminist cri-
tiques can re-position women integrally to a new historical reading of Chinese Bud-
dhism,105 rather than partitioning women into a specialized analytical taxonomy.
99 Said, Orientalism, 15.

Prakash, “Orientalism Now,” 202.
100
Prakash notes that “the persistence of racist stereotypes and politically-motivated distor-
101
tions is readily conceded, but not the . . . Orientalist tradition as a whole of being complicit with
Western power” (ibid.).
Said notes that “culture works to make invisible the actual affiliations that exist between
102
the world of ideas and scholarship and the world of brute politics, corporate and state power, and
military force” (Orientalism, 135). This pretense of apolitical objectivity replicates in the Euro-an-
drocentric methodologies used most often in Buddhology.
Michael Awkward, “Race, Gender, and the Politics of Reading,” Black American Literature
103
Forum 22, no. 1 (1988): 5–27, esp. 5–6. What is most provocative regarding Awkward’s observation
is, as he quotes Carolyn Gerard, “Afro centric reading attempts to counter the negative effects on
the black psyche of . . . ‘white racial projection of its own best image upon the universe,’ both by
demonstrating the falsity of ‘the white man[’s] . . . myth of superiority’ (352) and by, as Gayle puts
it, ‘unearth[ing] the treasure of beauty lying deep in the untenured regions of the Black experience’
(45)” (6). This is interesting because it underscores the agendas inherent in any reading: the projec-
tive, Eurocentric reading as well as the counternarrative of an Afrocentric reading.
Awkward, “Race, Gender, and the Politics of Reading,” 12.
104
As Scott reminds us, “the discrepancy between the high quality of recent work in women’s
105
history and its continuing marginal status . . . [does indeed] point up the limits of descriptive ap-
proaches that do not address dominant disciplinary concepts” (“Gender: A Useful Category,” 1055).
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JFSR 27.

The Miaoshan Legend Reconsidered

Buddhist studies has traditionally utilized androcentric and Eu-

Instead of noninterference and specialization, there must be interfer-

The twelfth-century Chinese Buddhist legend of Miaoshan is about the

Who Speaks: Methodology and Women

because of the “public” and presumed objective nature of texts themselves.11

11 Gyan Prakash, “Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism,” American Historical Review

ileging of texts, while claiming an apolitical objective authority. Such discursive

presses women, then a study’s legitimacy is undermined.20 In replicating ana-

studies on women become constrained by a victimization framework within

as “labor” and “reproductive rights.” In short, either studies have focused on

transhistorically oppressed Chinese woman.35 Finally, missionaries provided the

43 Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical

rarily). Another tendency is to collapse sources transhistorically and cross-re-

Secular Themes in the Miaoshan Legend

Song Economics, Politics, and Confucianism

and power. One of neo-Confucianism’s primary objectives became stabilizing

Confucian prescriptions, women needed to focus their energies on supporting

liaisons. Aristocratic marriages were intricate contract agreements between two

Miaoshan’s pursuit of solitary practice and her apotheosis model Prince

Revisiting Past and Current Epistemological Models

99 Said, Orientalism, 15.

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