The Peach Blossom Spring’s Long History as a Sacred Site in Northern Hunan

Though long seen uniquely from the perspective of the Chinese literary canon, Tao Qian’s 陶潛 (365?–427) famous “Record of the Peach Blossom Spring” (“Taohuayuan ji” 桃花源記) may find an even more fruitful disciplinary home in religious studies. The story refers itself to a grotto at Wuling 武陵 (present-day northern Hunan province), a site that has been associated with Daoist transcendents (shenxian 神仙) at least since the middle of the sixth century. A Daoist monastery on that same site, the Peach Spring Abbey (Taoyuan guan 桃源觀) or Peach Blossom Abbey (Taohua guan 桃花觀), became officially recognized in 748 and received imperial support not long after. This article studies the long history of Peach Spring as a sacred site, or, as Tao Qian referred to it in his poem, a “divine realm” (shenjie 神界).

Tao Yuanming in Recently Unearthed Epitaphs from the Sui and Tang

A recently discovered collection of epitaphs (muzhi 墓誌) reveals copious references to Tao Yuanming (Tao Qian 陶潛, 365–427), a writer of pervasive influence on Chinese culture. In recent decades, both English and Chinese scholarship has focused on Tao's literary and historical reception, with little attention paid to his representation in epitaph writing. This article, through an examination of these newly unearthed documents, presents forty-seven epitaph fragments with direct mention of Tao's name. Most were written in the Tang dynasty, when Tao was ardently appreciated as a poet, and his literary vocabulary was widely borrowed and imitated. However, a close reading of epitaphs illustrates that Tao's image as a moral exemplar was perhaps even more prominent than his role as esteemed poet. He was invoked to suggest the comparable personal traits of the tomb owner (muzhu 墓主), his name frequently juxtaposed with various historical figures renowned for their virtue. His name is also used as an adjective to modify carefully selected images to further characterize him as a moral exemplar. In Tang epitaphs, moral concerns together with philosophical contemplation on the motives of reclusion play a significant role, laying the foundation for the complexity of Tao's image in the Song period. Current research seeks to increase our understanding of the process behind the construction of Tao as a cultural icon.

The Song Reception of Earlier Literature

The literature of the Song dynasty was engaged with earlier literature, primarily that of the Tang, far more intensely than any earlier period had been engaged with the literary past. Scholarly editing and eventually widespread printing made past texts available on an unprecedented scale. They were relatively uninterested in pre-Tang literature, with the exception of the poetry of Tao Qian (Tao Yuanming, 365–427), but developed their own poetics through changing interpretations of the Tang literary legacy. The major change came in the early thirteenth century with Yan Yu’s Canglang shihua (Canglang’s Remarks on Poetry), which tied poetic composition to a literary historical curriculum of reading that did include pre-Tang poetry, with each period judged in relation to the whole. This set the model for the poetics of later dynasties.