Organizer and Chair: Julia Murray, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Invoking a Woman’s Identity: Naming Practices in Tang China
Ping Yao, California State University, Los Angeles
Exploring the selection process of names for elite women of the Tang dynasty (618–907) reveals cultural dynamics that informed the gender perceptions of the era. During the Tang, the practice of naming boys was well established. The majority of male’s ming (given-name) and zi (courtesy name) were chosen from classical works and often in accordance with the rule of zibei (same character usage within a generation). In contrast, women’s names were varied. Many female names used terms from Buddhist scriptures. Some names expressed Confucian and Daoist values. Some were given to commemorate special family occasions. Women’s names were also not restricted by the rule of zibei and were different from the post-Tang practice of using characters that bear feminine meanings.
By probing meanings of various women’s name, this paper argues that a woman’s name was not simply the determination by her parents, but it was the end product of a larger cultural, social, and religious matrix. Based on a survey of 3,542 epitaphs contained in the Collection of Tang Epitaphs, this paper investigates at what age girls were named, when a courtesy name was given, the frequency of xiaozi (nickname) and hao (title) for women, the method of paihang (name signifying seniority) for girls. The paper also examines who was responsible for selecting a girl’s name, what role did women play in the selecting and changing of names, and what factors influenced the naming process, making a contribution to the reconstruction of the social and cultural context within which women’s identities were manufactured.
Ancestral Portraits in Northern Song China
Helga Stahl, Universität Würzburg
Sources from the eleventh century quite often refer to the "new fashion" of having portraits of one’s ancestors painted in order to keep alive the memory of deceased relatives. In front of these portraits certain mourning rites were performed and prayers on the occasion of visits of condolence were said. Ancestral portraits were placed in the families’ ancestral temples high officials had to build since the 1040s. With the replacement of the Tang dynasty’s aristocratic clans by the new elite of scholar-officials, a need was obviously felt to remember and honour individual persons. The "new" families used portraits to help construct their genealogies and enhance the cohesion of the lineage. The paper will analyze the Song dynasty uses of ancestral portraits especially in respect of their importance for the development and legitimation of new familial and genealogical structures. This question will be dealt with by comparing the development of Song dynasty ancestral portraits with the very similar needs and aims which led to the development of portraits of Buddhist monks during the Tang dynasty.
Buddhist Laywomen and Their Eulogists in the Sung Dynasty
Mark Halperin, Lewis and Clark College
Scholars have long acknowledged that laywomen played a central role in Buddhist practice during late imperial China. Pious widows and devout mothers numbered among stock figures in Chinese families and communities. Yet just what sorts of women evinced a strong enthusiasm for the Buddhist faith? How did Chinese literati regard these individuals and, fit their Buddhist devotion within the general set of approved feminine traits? How did they choose to view women of strong Buddhist beliefs?
This paper seeks to answer these questions by analyzing epitaphs written for women in the Sung dynasty. The emergence of Neo-Confucianism in the Sung, we are told, led to unparalleled hostility toward Buddhism among educated Chinese men. Epitaphs, which sought to commemorate their subjects pitted, in theory, the Confucian values of the writer against the piety of the deceased.
In practice, these texts show how female piety related to female virtue in various ways. Women who rejected Buddhism won praise for their refusal to succumb to superstition. At the same time, however, those who chanted scriptures daily served as models of discipline and learning. Religious practice evoked a range of responses among literati, and writers parted company on whether a woman’s passionate Buddhist faith harmed or helped her household. The texts raise questions about the influence of radical Neo-Confucianism in the Sung and hint to the extent of spiritual autonomy allowed and asserted by contemporary women.
Re-dating Tang Hou’s Biography (1260s–mid 1310s) and his Huajian (Critical Notes on Paintings and Painters)
Yeongchau Chou, University of Kansas
Tang Hou (c. 1260s–1310s), a connoisseur and art collector during the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), is known to us today for his painting treatise, the Huajian (Critical Notes on Paintings and Painters). This text is an extremely important source for understanding the aesthetic taste of the period and is often cited by modern art historians.
However, there have been some misunderstandings of Tang Hou’s biography and his only surviving writing, Huajian. Many modern art historians place Tang Hou in the middle Yuan era, roughly between the 1320s and the 1340s. They surmise that Tang Hou composed his writing in the late 1320s. This misunderstanding may cause the misinterpretation of Tang Hou’s Huajian.
In order to correct misunderstandings and re-situate Tang Hou and his aesthetic ideas in his own time, Tang Hou’s biography and writing need to be re-examined. Through the literary evidence of Tang Hou’s contemporaries and local gazetteers, we are sure that Tang Hou was born in the very early 1260s and died by the end of the 1310s.
Tang Hou’s inclusion of the Yuan painters, Gong Kai (1222–after 1304) and Chen Lin (active in 1300–1301), in his Huajian suggests that he finished his writing no later than 1310. Moreover, Tang Hou conveyed his aesthetic taste by using the term "gu yi" (sense of antiquity). This term is traditionally credited to Zhao Mengfu (1254–1322), one of the most important painters in Chinese art history, but very likely it was Tang Hou who originated it.
Therefore, I propose that Tang Hou was not only born in the early 1260s, but was also active in the circles of early Yuan figures. His aesthetic ideas in his Huajian did not simply echo other painters’ ideas as presented by previous art historians, but were rather his original ideas that were often borrowed by his peers especially by Zhao Mengfu. The focus of this paper is to re-situate Tang Hou’s place in Yuan art history by examining his Huajian together with literary evidence provided by his contemporaries.
The Politics of Female Virtue: The Case of the Neixun
Mayumi Yoshida, University of California, Berkeley
The Neixun (Instructions for the Inner Chambers) by Empress Renxiao, consort of the Yongle emperor, was published in 1407 and became one of the standard texts for educating elite women. Unlike other texts of domestic instruction, however, the Neixun clearly reflects the concept of merit accumulation and cosmic retribution, demonstrating Renxiao’s debt to the tradition of shanshu, a late-imperial genre of didactic writing incorporating the teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. In the Neixun, Renxiao ostensibly advocates good deeds as a means whereby a wife, by accumulating blessings from Heaven, can contribute to the prosperity of her husband’s household.
But publication of the Neixun, and another text attributed to Renxiao entitled Quanshan shu (Text for Accumulating Good Deeds) took place during the formative stage of the Yongle era, when emperor Zhu Di was preoccupied with rectifying his image as a usurper. Imperial publication of didactic texts was one means of accomplishing this. In a unique way, the Neixun contributed to this wider agenda of self-serving propaganda, by means of which Zhu Di hoped to reform his image and establish the Yongle regime as one of moral legitimacy.
This paper compares the Neixun with the Quanshan shu, as well as with the Weishan yinzhi (Text on Doing Good Deeds and Its Secret Rewards), a didactic text attributed to Zhu Di, in order to expose the political and ideological motives behind what has always been assumed to be a simple didactic text of prescriptive domesticity for elite women.