The Eminent Monk: Buddhist Ideals in Medieval Chinese Hagiography

When Huijiao compiled the Liang Biographies, he divided the 257 biographies into ten categories: (1) Translators (yijing); (2) Exegetes (yijie); (3) Divine Wonders (shenyi), devoted to wonder-workers; (4) Practitioners of Meditation (xichan); (5) Elucidators of the Regulations (ming-Iii), devoted to scholars of the Vinaya; (6) Those Who Sacrificed Themselves (wangshen),27 devoted to monks who sacrificed their bodies to feed animals, or as offerings to Buddhas or bodhisattvas; (7) Chanters Monastic ideals of asceticism, thaumaturgy, and scholarship permeate Buddhist literature of all sorts and appear in various guises.Even when we focus our attention on hagiography, the expression of these ideals is not entirely consistent.Nevertheless, when we draw together the hundreds of examples of stories involving these three areas of monastic life, patterns begin to emerge, and it becomes possible to trace the emergence and development of these ideals in one particularly influential body of writings.The components of these ideals are many, and each raises its own set of questions.What forms did asceticism take in China, and how was it received by those outside the clergy?