Stupa inscriptions (t'a-ming) are tomb inscriptions for Buddhist monks. As we noted earlier, these stupainscriptions were typically written by
well-known secular scholar-officials. In a survey of authors of stupa inscriptions,[28] we noted that certain figures, generally secular
scholar-officials of great literary fame, appear to have been popular and willing authors of these inscriptions; among them Po Chü-yi figured prominently. In the Sung collection of the biographies of eminent monks, compiled by Tsan-ning (919-1001 ) in 988, Po Chü-yi's name appears four times as the writer of inscriptions (Ch'ung kuei, Taisho, 50, 765c;
Shang-heng, Taisho, 50, 806c; Shen-ts'ou, Taisho, 50, 807a; Chi-jan, Taisho, 50, 880a). Two of these[29] are preserved in
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Po Chü-yi's collected works. Further comparison of the text of the Sung collection with other inscriptions preserved in Po Chü-yi's collected works reveals that at least one other biography was based on Po Chu-yi's
inscription though his name was not mentioned explicitly.[30] Po Chü-yi's collected works contain our texts entitled stupa inscriptions and two others that are in fact biographies of monks in the manner identical with
regular stupa inscriptions. As I noted above, three of these six existing texts were used as the main source by Tsanning when he compiled the
biographies of the respective monks in his collection. Thus, there were at least two more stupa inscriptions that Po Chü-yi composed which were not collected in his works and are probably now lost, and there is the possibility that more biographies in the Sung collection are in fact based on Po
Chü-yi's stupa inscriptions though this dependence is not mentioned in the biographies and the original inscriptions have now been lost. It would be safe to conclude that Po Chü-yi was one of more popular compilers
of stupa inscriptions in his time.[31] Here I will examine a few examples of existing stupa inscriptions composed by Po Chü-yi paying special attention
to the relationship between the "structure" and "communitas" viewpoints in the descriptions of the lives of their subjects. We are particularly interested in the fact that stupa inscriptions were composed by secular scholar-officials.
In the final analysis these inscriptions, therefore, represent an view of the life of Buddhist monks seen from the outside. Po Chü-yi, though
sympathetic to Buddhism, was not a monk himself. How did he see the lives of the monks for whom he composed
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inscriptions? What were the important facts about their lives in Po Chü-yi's eyes? How do these facts differ from those noted in the tomb inscriptions of secular figures? These are the questions that we shall consider.
a)The inscription for the Transmission of the Law Hall (ch'uan-fa t'ang pei)[32]
This rather untypical inscription (PCYC, 911-913) is of particular interest in that it is written in the form of questions and answers, and these questions and answers in fact indicate the categories of facts that, in Po Chü-yi's mind, were particularly important in composing an inscriptional biography of a monk.
The inscription begins with a statement that next to the temple called Hsing-shan ("promoting good deeds") is a hall called Ch'uan-fa
("transmitting the Law"). The hall was given this name because the Ch'an master Ta-ch'e, the real subject of the inscription, had earlier preached there.
This brief introduction is followed by the first question concerning the names and basic facts of the master's life (ming-chi). The answer gives the following information. His style was Wei-k'uan and surname Chu. His place of origin was Hsin-an in the Ch'u-chou Prefecture. His grandfather was called An and father Chiao. He renounced the householder's life at age thirteen and received the complete precepts at age twenty-four. He lived thirty-nine years as a monk and died at age sixty-three in the Hsing-shan temple. He was buried in the field west of Pa-ling. The name of his stupa built by an imperial edict is given as "Ta-ch'e ch'an-shin Yüan-he
cheng-chih chih t'a (the stupa of Correct Truthfulness built for Meditation Master Ta-ch'e during the Yüan-he period").
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The second question is about the lineage of the teaching that the subject received (ch'uan-shou). The answer first mentions the transmission of the correct teaching to Mahakasyapa at the time of the Buddha's entry into final nirvana and traces the lineage of transmission from there through Indian and Chinese patriarchs until it reached Tao-i of Hung-chou, posthumous name Ta-chi, who was the subject's teacher.
The third question is about the relationship between the subject and other contemporary teachers (tao-shu, "relatives in the Tao"). The answer first states that the teaching has branched out into different streams ("main and secondary streams"; "major and minor schools") after the fourth patriarch.
Then the relationships are given between the subject and other well-known teachers, using the metaphor of family relationships.
The fourth question concerns the subject's career as a monk (hua-ynan:
"circumstances of spiritual instruction"). The answer begins with an anecdote. When the subject was a young boy he saw someone killing an animal and could not eat its meat. This gave him the desire to renounce the householder's life. He had his head shaven by Seng-t'an, received the precepts from Seng-ch'ung, studied the monastic rules with Seng-ju, mastered the Mahayana teaching through the T'ien-'tai meditation of
cessation and contemplation, and realized the Way of the Supreme Vehicle under Ta-chi Tao-yi. In the sixth year of Chen-yuan (791) he began his teaching in the Min and Yüeh region. In a little more than a year between one hundred and two hundred people became monks under his influence.
The next year he tamed wild tigers in K'uai-chi and performed an eight day session of intensive cultivation (tao-chang) at the residence of the T'eng family. He conferred the Eight Precepts on a mountain deity in P'o-yang and performed a session of Pure Land practice (hui-hsiang tao-chang ).[33] In the thirteenth year (798) he encountered a supernatural
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being at the Shao-lin temple. In the twenty-first year (806) he performed the yu-wei kung-te[34] ceremony at the Wei-kuo temple. In the following
year heper formed the wu-wei kung-te ceremony at the T'ien-kung temple.
In the fourth year of Yuan-he (810) the Emperor Hsien-tsung granted an audience to him in the An-kuo temple. In the fifth year (811) the Emperor asked him questions about Buddhist teaching in the Lin-te Hall. In the same year the subject restored the spring at the pond of Tripitake Pu-k'ung
(Amoghavajra, 705-774). In the twelfth year (818) in the last day of the second month, the subject preached in the hall, and after the sermon was over, he died.
The fifth question is about the essence of the subject's teaching (hsin-yao).
The answer first states that it is impossible to summarize the essence of his teaching, for he meditated and lectured on Buddhist teaching for thirty years and brought salvation to a very large number of monks and lay people. His teaching was adjusted to the capacities and circumstances of those whom he taught in the same manner as different medicines that doctors give depend on the nature of the disease. Nevertheless, the answer continues, when Po Chü-yi was serving as the Grand Master Admonisher, he once asked four questions about his teahcing ("the Way"). The inscription then gives the four questions and the answers that the subject gave to them in detail. Po Chü-yi first asked why a meditation master, who sits quietly in practice, preaches using words which by definition cannot adequately express the truth realized in meditation.
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The subject answers that the three branches of Buddhist practice, i.e.,
precepts, teaching, and meditation, are in fact one, since the underlying truth is the same, though the common truth is differently practiced. This
relationship is compared to the relationship between rivers or lakes–though they are called by different names they are one in that they are all bodies of water. In terms of their real nature as water, they are the same. We should avoid making deluded distinctions. Po Chü-yi next adked, how is one to practice if there are no distinctions? The master answers by denying the need for cultivation, saying that the mind is fundamentally free from all flaws. He says that we should not entertain thoughts either of impurity or purity. Accepting the command not to entertain thoughts of impurity, Po Chü-yi then asks if it is permissible not to entertain thoughts of purity. The master answers with an illustration: even though scraps of gold are valuable, if they were placed directly on a person's eye, his eye will be damaged.
Similarly, attachment to purity (or pure practice), through entertaining thoughts of purity, constitutes a state of delusion. Finally, Po Chü-yi asks where does the difference between the true practitioners and ordinary men lie if the former are not to practice cultivation and entertain any special thoughts. The master answers, saying that ordinary men are ignorant, followers of the two inferior vehicles suffer from attachments (to specific
"pure" forms of practice and thought), and the true cultivation transcends these shortcomings. The true practitioners should not "move" (ie, make self-conscious efforts of cultivation?) and should not "forget", because
"movement" is close to attachment and "forgetting" results in ignorance.
The last section of the inscription comments on the subject's disciples and the circumstances that led Po Chü-yi to compose the inscription. The subject had nearly one thousand disciples of whom thirty-nine attained an advanced state. Yi-ch'ung and Yüan-ching, who had received the highest teaching from the master in the latter's own room, knew that their master had
instructed Po Chü-yi. When the subject died Po Chü-yi had been assigned to a post in the South, and he was requested to compose the inscription from a distance. The text of this inscription does not restore the master's teaching nor does it
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console the disciples. It records that (through the teaching of the Master) his followers received a prediction of future salvation by Dipamkara Buddha and that (they shall all meet together?) at the future sermon at the Vulture Peak.[35] Therefore, Po Chü-yi did not hesitate in producing a lengthy text.
The inscription ends with a short verse which states that the teaching of the Buddha has been transmitted through fifty-nine generations of teachers from the Buddha to the subject of the inscription and that for this reason the hall of the subject was called the "transmission of teaching".
The first three questions describe the life of the subject from the viewpoint of "structure". Basic facts of the subject's names and family background are given in a standard form found in all tomb inscriptions. The attention given to the details of the steps that led to the subject's ordination parallels the emphasis on state examinations in secular tomb inscriptions and may also be seen to reflect the "structural" viewpoint that sees the society, in this case the Buddhist monastic order, in terms of different ranks and positions. The
description of the subject's death and burial again is a universal feature of all tomb inscriptions.
The "structural" view of the Buddhist community is most notable in the second and third questions and answers. Here the question of the
authenticity of the subject's religious attainment is dealt with as a matter of lineage of transmission and his relationship with other teachers is explained by the model of complex relationships in an extended family. These
metaphors place the subject within a large framework of relationships spelled out in detail–clearly a "structurally" oriented viewpoint. The emphases in these two sections in this inscription indicate how far the process that transforms a spiritual "communitas" experience (for example, enlightenment) into organized institutions ("structure") noted by Turner has proceeded in the Chinese Buddhism that produced this inscription.
It is also possible that this emphasis on a "structure" viewpoint appears in stupa inscriptions because they were so often composed by secular scholar-officials
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using the basic format of tomb inscriptions. The conventional form of tomb inscriptions, as we saw above, tended to emphasize the "structure"
viewpoint in describing the life of the subject. It is possible that the life of the monk glorified in the stupa inscription was very often his life as seen by an outsider who could not really empathize with the inner dimensions of the monk's life.
The emphasis in the fourth question and answer on different stages in the subject's progress under different teachers, on his imperial audience and his role as an instructor to the emperor in a particular palace building may also be seen as reflecting the "structural" viewpoint. There are, however, other elements in this question and answer that point in a different direction. The story of taming wild creatures usually in a mountain far away from human communities appears frequently in biographies of monks as an illustration of their extraordinary powers. Here, as elsewhere, this story may be read as a description of the extraordinary ability of the subject to create a
"communitas" with dangerous and feared creatures. The story of taming a mountain god and converting him to Buddhism, again not unique to this
biography, may also be interpreted in a similar manner. The two subsequent references to miracles point to "liminal" experiences, since miracles imply that something extraordinary, not a part of the "structure" of this world, occurred. the experience at the Shao-lin temple is described briefly as "he was affected by a non-human being" ( ). The term "affected" (kan) usually signals a supernatural experience and the specification of the being as
"non-human" probably means that it was a god. For the reason mentioned above one may regard this experience too as a "liminal" experience[36]. The incident at the Pu-k'ung pond uses the expression
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"restore" (fu) and suggests that he was able to reenact the miracle of
producing water in a spring, originally performed by a famous translator of esoteric Buddhist scriptures, by connecting with the miracle's supernatural source.
The teaching of the subject described in the fifth question and answer is characterized by the emphasis on transcending distinctions. Thus, in his answers the subject of this inscription equally rejects the distinction between precepts, teaching, and meditation (first question), the distinction between impurity and purity (second and third questions), and attempts to go beyond the dilemma created by the distinction between ignorance of the truth on the part of ordinary beings and attachment to truth on the part of the followers of two inferior vehicles (four the question). These answers may be
interpreted as negating the conventional "structural" view of the Buddhist teaching which, for example, classifies the practitioners into practitioners of precepts, those of doctrines, and of meditation. The teaching in contract is described as one truth that transcends all these distinctions and
classifications, which suggests a vision of "communitas"[37].
The content of this stupa inscription may thus be analyzed as representing both the "structure" and "communitas" viewpoints. Chinese Buddhism in Po Chü-yi's time had become a complex institutional organization representing an important part of the world of "structure", and the inscriptions of the monks, written by secular writers using conventions of tomb inscriptions which always emphasized the facts of the subjects, life from the "structure"
point of view, accordingly emphasized the place they occupied within this massive framework
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or "structure". This emphasis is clearly identified in the inscription here under examination. At the same time, certain themes, many of them highly rhetorical, appear in the description of the lives of monks that presuppose a different viewpoint of "liminality" and "communitas".
In the tomb inscription for Wu Tan, Po Chü-yi presented the life of his subject first in "structural" terms, following the conventional format of tomb inscriptions, and then introduced passages that represent the "communitas"
viewpoint. This shift in viewpoint was most notable in that the biography from the "structure" viewpoint described his public life in government while the biography from the "communitas" viewpoint described his Taoist
cultivation. In the stupa inscription here under examination, both the
"structure" and "communitas" accounts describe the life of the subject as that of a Buddhist monk. Yet, our analysis above showed that the accounts of the' subject's life that appear at the beginning of the inscription
presuppose the "structure" viewpoint, while those that appear toward the end stand closer to the "communitas" viewpoint. It is interesting to note that Po Chü-yi himself appears to have been sensitive to this difference and used specific Chinse terms to describe the different ways in which the biography of the monk could be drawn, terms like "ming-chi" and "hsin-yao" which have been given above at the appropriate places in my account of the inscription.
The same pattern of describing the lives of Buddhist monks first from the
"structure" viewpoint and then from the "communitas" viewpoint may be seen in other stupa inscriptions in Po Chü-yi's collection. For example, in
"The stupa inscription for the Honorable Ts'ou, the vinaya master of the Hsing-kuo temple of Chiang-chou Prefecture during the T'ang period"
(T'ang chiang-chou Hsing-kuo ssu lu ta-te Ts'ou-kung t'a-chieh ming) (PCYC, 916-918) Po Chü-yi first gives the outline of the subject's life primarily from the "structure" viewpoint and then gives a longer description of his religious life that ends with an anecdote about his death. When his sickness became severe and he was about to die, he was free from
attachment to life and from the desire to avoid death; when the governor of the commandary and his disciples brought medicine,
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he said, "As the result of my past deeds I have received this body, which is now to be dissolved. It is a natural process and has nothing to do with sickness. I have therefore no use for medicine" (a loose translation of the compact original sentence, pao-shen fei ping; yen yung shih-wei). After saying this the subject died peacefully (t'ien-jan). Po Chü-yi comments here that this illustrates the completeness of his enlightened understnading
(liao-wu). This account of the subject's death is designed to show that he was completely free from attachment to life in this world ("structure"). It also demonstrates his greatness by describing how he happily and peacefully accepted death, a negative value from the viewpoint of the "structure". The viewpoint behind this account of transition from life to death is that of
"liminality" and "communitas"[38].
In the "Text for the flag at the Cremation Site of the master Chih-ju, Hea of the Po-t'a Hall in the Sheng-shan Temple, Leader of the Ten Greatest
Vinaya Masters in the Eastern Capital (Tung-tu shih lu ta-te-ch'ang Sheng-shan-ssu Po-t'a-yuan chu Chih-ju he-shang t'u-p'i-ch'uang Chi)
(PCYC, 1462-1463) Po Chü-yi begins with an introductory comment saying that he proposes to describe the accomplishments of the subject and the circumstances that led to erecting a flag, based on the cremation rites described in detail in the Nirvana sutra and the merits
of fo-ting-chou dharani described in the Ts'un-sheng chingscripture (T. no.
967-971 ). An account of the subject's life with emphasis on basic facts from the "structural" viewpoint is then followed by a religious portrait of the subject. This description then ends with an account of the subject's death and his instructions not to build a stupa or a tomb but, following the order of the former resident of the hall, to raise a flag with the dharani of fo-ting
ts'un-sheng written on it. He then expresses the wish that p. 425
after his body is gone he continue to be present, for ever benefiting all
sentient beings through the "shadow of the dust of the flag". Here the subject is advising, just as Po Chü-yi himself did in his own tomb inscription, that he does not wish to have a funeral and burial that are considered appropriate from the "structure" point of view. Instead, he expresses the wish to
continue bene-fitting sentient beings for ever, using the humble symbol of