Taoism Under The T'ang: Religion And Empire During A Golden Age Of Chinese History

T. H. BARRETT TAOISM UNDER THE T' AN G RELIGION 6- EMPIRE DURING THE GOLDEN AGE OF CHINESE HISTORY o 9 wellsweep JUl 2 2 J9Il3 ILLUSTRA TIO NS Illustrations within the book on pages 7 , 53 .& 92 are sages and immortals taken from the Li-tIli shen-hsien t'ung-chien. Cover jacket artwork is based on the illustration to a poem by Ku K'uang in Huang Feng-chih ed. Ch'i-yen Tang-shih htla-p'lI. Copyright © T. H. Barrett First published in 1996 by The Wellsweep Press 1 Grove End House 150 Highgate Road London NW5 1 PD ISBN 0 948454 98 9 All rights reserved: no pan of this publication may be r ep roduced , stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo­ copying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher . BRIT ISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING -IN-PUBLICATION DATA A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Designed and rypeset by Wellsweep PREFA C E Students of mediaeval Chinese history in the West will be well aware that though the Cambridge History of China has already devoted a volume to the political fortunes of the Tang dynasty, the series still lacks a second volume on other aspects of the Tang experience, despite the completion of several fine chap­ ters for this project second part some time ago. This has led to the appearance already of two monographs based on the unpub­ lished chapters, both from Cambridge University Press, namely Buddhism under the Tang by my doctoral supervisor, Stanley Weinstein, and Statesmen and Scholars, by my undergraduate su­ pervisor, David McMullen. When I was first asked about fifteen years ago by Denis Twitchett to sketch out a companion chapter on Taoism under the Tang to go with the draft studies on which these monographs were based, it was understood in view of the dearth of publications available in the field of Taoist studies at that time that my own efforts would not aim at the same standard of comprehensive coverage as that achieved by my teachers. A5 a result, the outline history I eventually produced appeared at first a rather unlikely prospect for independent publication, and was merely circulated to the very limited num­ ber of persons who expressed interest in my work. They, in turn, it seems, have been asked by their friends for further copies, as over the past decade or so Tang Taoism has gradually become a more popular area for research, with the re­ sult that references to my draft have become increasingly com­ mon, and have even turned up in reading lists and bibliographic surveys. Yet since the distribution of copies has so far been a purely private matter, not everyone has had a chance to gain ac­ cess to this material, and many scholars directly involved in re­ search into Tang religion have been obliged in the absence of the second Cambridge History of China volume on the Tang to publish their own work without consulting my findings, thus 5 T A OI S M U N D E R T H E T ' A N G duplicating research efforts. In late 1994 I had the opportunity to discuss this situation with Professor Twitchett, who agreed that matters had developed so as to merit the separate publica ­ tion of this study, in order that my work, already drawn on by a number of researchers, might be open to wider scrutiny. My own feeling on reading through what I wrote in its original form was that despite