Categorization and Hagiography in Early Medieval China

Alan Berkowitz
Swarthmore College

Donald Holzman, among others, has noted that beginning in the early centuries of the Common Era the Chinese underwent “tremendous changes in the attitudes towards the world and towards themselves,” in large measure signaling the “gradual evolution of China from an ‘Antiquity’ to a ‘Middle Age’.” One aspect of these “tremendous changes” is evinced in the proliferation of compilations of categorized biographical accounts, a new interpretive textual medium in both form and function.

The relative stability of intellectual and literary attitudes during the Han and the longstanding perception of a moral order manifest in the written word all gave way in early medieval China to a new mindfulness to one’s own individual way of engaging with the world and with textual traditions and literary composition. Further, while during the Han, systematization and categorization is largely focussed on ordering the universe through correlative thought, in early medieval China much attention is paid to the grouping and critical evaluation of individual conduct and endeavor. Literary anthologizing was undertaken on a wide scale, not with the aim of preserving writings, but as a method of concretizing and formalizing personal and public taste. Men of the scholar-official class characterized individuals and compiled biographical and hagiographical accounts of secular and religious activity according to widely divergent criteria, and to various ends.

Categorized biographies and hagiographical writings have held a preeminent role in the dissemination of values, for normative patterns of exemplary conduct in large part were expressed through the collective exposition of the lives of particular individuals, centering the individual within the success formulae of the particular religious or cultural tradition. These writings necessarily reflect overt editorial redaction and interpretive strategy, and may evince the self-conscious invention of tradition.

This paper addresses the compilation of collected, categorized biography as an emerging hermeneutic tradition in early medieval China. The paper also addresses the formulation of the portrayal of individual and patterned traits, and the reinterpretation of textual traditions. The example of Shan Daokai is used as an epitome, both as an illustration of the problematic nature of simple generic categorization in early medieval China, and as a springboard illustration of an interpretive strategy for mitigating a variety of seeming contradictions in the portrayal of individuals in traditional China.