Emperor Wu Zhao and Her Pantheon of Devis, Divinities, and Dynastic Mothers

1. Weinstein, Buddhism Under the T’ang, 38; Wang Shuanghuai and Zhao Wenrun, Wu Zetian pingzhuan, 179–80; Chen Jinhua, “Śarīra and Scepter. Empress Wu’s Political Use of Buddhist Relics,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 25 (2002): 33–150, esp. 109–12, in which Wu Zhao’s relic-veneration rites are seen as being linked by both dharma (Buddhist faith) and blood (kin ties to the Yang imperial family) to the Sui line of rulers. Both Wu Zhao and Sui Yangdi instrumentally used Buddhism for validation, to fend off the label of usurper, and to mute questions surrounding political legitimation. Both cast themselves as “restorers of Buddhism” following periods of repression, beings incarnated as living bodhisattvas taking the shape of an earthly sovereign to become “divine saviors of the Dharma.” Both also cast themselves as cakravartin kings.

2. Wang Shuanghuai and Zhao Wenrun, “Leaving the Palace to Become a Buddhist Nun” (Chujia dang nigu 出家當尼姑), chap. 3 in Wu Zetian pingzhuan, 21–24. Also see Forte, “Wu Zhao, A Buddhist Novice in Her Youth,” appendix C in Political Propaganda, 365–68.

3. Gernet, Buddhism in Chinese Society, 7–8.

4. ZZTJ 204.6473; QTW 95.981.

6. Ch’en, Buddhism in China, 255.

7. Chen Jinhua, “Tang Buddhist Palace Chapels,” Journal of Chinese Religions 32 (2004): 101.

8. For a summary of Wu Zhao’s many political and ideological activities involving Buddhist art and architecture, see Karetzky, “Wu Zetian and Buddhist Art,” 113–71. Among the many works on Dunhuang and Longmen, see Ning Qiang, “Gender Politics in Medieval Chinese Buddhist Art: Images of Empress Wu at Longmen and Dunhuang,” Oriental Art 49, no. 2 (2003): 28–39; MacNair, Donors of Longmen: Faith, Politics, and Patronage in Medieval Chinese Buddhist Sculpture (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007); and Zhang Naizhu, “Wu Zetian yu Longmen shiku fojiao zaoxiang” [Wu Zetian and the Buddhist Statuary of the Longmen Grottoes], in Su Jian and Bai Xianzhang, Wu Zetian yu Luoyang, 17–31.

9. Karetzky, “Wu Zetian and Buddhist Art,” 131.

10. For more on the ideological and political significance of Wu Zhao’s several mingtangs, see Forte, Mingtang and Buddhist Utopias.

11. See Dorothy Wong, “The Case of Amoghapāśa,” Journal of Inner Asian Art and Archaeology 2 (2007): 151–52; and Sherman Lee and Wai-kam Ho, “The Colossal Eleven-Faced Kuan-yin of the T’ang Dynasty,” Artibus Asiae 22, nos. 1/2 (1959): 121–37. Though Guanyin took on a feminine aspect in subsequent eras, Yü Chün-fang, Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteśvara (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), convincingly illustrates that “Kuan-yin was perceived as masculine and was so depicted in art prior to and during the Tang” (6). Though Guanyin, “like all great bodhisattvas . . . cannot be said to possess any gender characteristics,” the deity is usually represented as a princely and handsome young man (294). Wu Zhao did not bring about the feminization of Guanyin.

12. Zhiru Ng, The Making of a Savior Bodhisattva, Kuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism 21 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007), 118–20.

13. XTS 4.94, 76.3483; JTS 6.123; ZZTJ 205.6492.

14. XTS 4.95. Alternatively, this could be rendered “Compassionate One.” See chap. 11 in this volume; and Forte, Political Propaganda, 225–31.

15. See ZZTJ 205.6522 for Wu Zhao’s pañcāvarṣika of 694. See Rothschild, “Zhuanlunwang, yishi, ji huozai,” 101–13.

16. Chen Jinhua, “Śarīra and Scepter,” 127–45.

17. Jamie Hubbard, Absolute Delusion, Perfect Buddhahood: The Rise and Fall of a Chinese Heresy (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001), 203–8. Hubbard notes that neither of her two inexhaustible storehouses, one established in Luoyang in 692 and the other in Chang’an between 701 and 705, was successful. Also see Gernet, Buddhism in Chinese Society, 211–12.

18. Chen Jinhua, “The Tang Buddhist Palace Chapels,” 102, shows that Wu Zhao had at least four palace chapels during her regency and reign and that her most important Buddhist propagandists worked in them, including the framers of the Commentary on the Great Cloud Sutra. Kenneth Ch’en, The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 106, provides a thumbnail institutional history of palace chapels and also mentions Wu Zhao’s role in expanding their importance.

19. Gernet, Buddhism in Chinese Society, 24, 281.

20. Chen Yinke, “Wu Zhao yu Fojiao” [Wu Zhao and Buddhism], Chen Yinke xiansheng quanji [The Complete Collected Works of Professor Chen Yinke] (Taipei: Jiusi, 1971), 421–36.

21. Rita Gross, Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis and Reconstruction of Buddhism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 10.

22. Hu Ji, Wu Zetian benzhuan, 165.

23. Weinstein, Buddhism Under the T’ang, 41.

24. Guisso, “The Reigns of Empress Wu, Chung-tsung and Jui-tsung,” 305. In his monograph Wu Ts’e-t’ien and the Politics of Legitimation in T’ang China, Guisso is more measured in his assessment of Buddhism’s role in Wu Zhao’s legitimation, remarking that it “was not negligible but neither was it predominant” (68).

25. Sen Tansen, Buddhism, Diplomacy and Trade, 95.

26. For a brief summary of Wu Zhao’s long, involved relationship with Buddhism, see Rothschild, Wu Zhao, 137–56.

27. Wang Shuanghuai and Zhao Wenrun, Wu Zetian pingzhuan, 205.

28. Bernard Faure, The Power of Denial: Buddhism, Purity and Gender (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 24–27.

29. This queen (or devi) was, in fact, known in China. Central Indian monk Guṇabhadra (Chinese: Qiunabatouluo 求那跋陀羅, 394–468) translated the second-century A.D. Indian text in which the Buddha grants a woman the ability to teach the dharma, the Sutra of the Lion’s Roar of Queen Śrīmālā (Shengman shizi hou jing 勝鬘師子吼經; Sanskrit: Śrīmālādevī Simhanāda Sūtra).

30. One might argue that there is another Buddhist mother. In 686, during Wu Zhao’s tenure as grand dowager, Indian Buddhist monk Divākara translated several brief sutras centered on Cundī (Chinese: Zhunti 准提), also known as the Buddhist mother goddess of the 70 million (Chinese: Qijuzhi fomu 七俱胝佛母; Sanskrit: Saptakoṭi Buddhabhagavatī). See Foshuo Qijuzhi fomu xinda Zhunti tuoluoni jing [Dhāraṇī Sutra of the Buddha’s Words on Saptakoṭi Buddhabhagavatī], trans. Divākara, T. 20.1077. Those who recited the sutra might slough off evil karma, receive protection from illness and harm, and encounter benevolent Buddhas and bodhisattvas. See Richard McBride, “Popular Esoteric Deities and the Spread of Their Cults,” in Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia, ed. Charles Orzech, Henrik Sorensen, and Richard Payne (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 219, who shows this divinity’s connections to the Hindu goddess Chandi. For additional information on Divākara’s importance as a Buddhist propagandist, see Forte, Political Propaganda, 50, 163–67. In “Icon and Incantation: The Goddess Zhunti and the Role of Images in the Occult Buddhism of China,” in Images in Asian Religions, ed. Phyllis Graff and Koichi Shinohara (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2004), Robert Gimello describes Cundī as an “unheralded” Buddhist goddess, a complex and “mysterious” being whom the faithful invoked with dhāraṇī recitations or vividly rendered in paintings. The “object of special or discrete veneration, the central focus of her own self-contained and self-sufficient cult,” she existed well outside the sphere of orthodox Buddhism (225–26). There is not sufficient material on Cundī to warrant a separate chapter.

1. Victor Mair, “The Narrative Revolution in Chinese Literature: Ontological Presumptions,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 5, nos. 1/2 (1983): 10 and 21.

2. This story is frequently retold with some variations in both primary and secondary sources. For instance, see Warren Matthews, World Religions, 6th ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2010), 105.

3. Mohe Moye jing [Sutra of Great Māyā], trans. Tanjing, chap. 2, in T. 17.815. In his article “Wang Chin’s Dhōta Temple Stele Inscription,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 83, no. 3 (1963): 346n63, Richard Mather translates a section of the sutra in which, centuries after the extinction of Buddhist law, several bhikṣus appear, promising to revive the faith and destroy heretical views.

4. See Sonya Lee, Surviving Nirvana: The Death of Buddha in Chinese Visual Culture (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010), 94–98. Ch’en, Chinese Transformation, 34–35, notes that in this sutra the Buddha, to refute the oft-repeated Confucian charge of unfiliality, plays the role of a dutiful and filial son.

5. Māyā appears in this capacity in both the sixty-chapter Eastern Jin translation by Buddhabhadra, Dafangguang Fo Huayan jing [Flower Garland Sutra], chap. 57, in T. 9.278, and in Śikṣānanda’s Dafangguang Fo Huayan jing [Flower Garland Sutra], chap. 76, in T. 10.279, from Wu Zhao’s reign as emperor. See translation in annotations of the Samguk Yusa [Omitted Events of the Three Kingdoms Period], comp. Iryeon, 4.15, in Collected Works of Korean Buddhism, Volume 10: Korean Buddhist Culture—Accounts of a Pilgrimage, Monuments and Eminent Monks, ed. Roderick Whitfield, trans. and annotated Matty Wegehaupt, Michael Finch, and Sem Vermeersch (Seoul: Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, 2012), 343n524.

6. Serinity Young, Courtesans and Tantric Consorts: Sexualities in Buddhist Narrative, Iconography and Ritual (New York: Routledge, 2004), 23–24.

7. Wu Hung, “Buddhist Elements in Early Chinese Art (2nd and 3rd Century AD),” Artibus Asiae 47, nos. 3/4 (1986): 271.

8. Sherman Lee, “The Golden Image of the New-Born Buddha,” Artibus Asiae 18, nos. 3/4 (1955): 225.

9. Dorothy Wong, Pre-Buddhist and Buddhist Use of Symbolic Form (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004), 99.

10. Wang, Shaping the Lotus Sutra, 47–50.

11. Katherine Tsiang, “Monumentalization of Buddhist Texts in the Northern Qi Dynasty: The Engravings of Sūtras in Stone at the Xiangtangshan and Other Sites in the Sixth Century,” Artibus Asiae 56, nos. 3/4 (1996): 236.

12. Da Tang Neidian lu [Great Tang Catalog of Scriptures], comp. Daoxuan, in T. 55.2149. Chap. 4 mentions a two-chapter Sutra of Great Māyā, remarking that it was also known simply as the Sutra of Māyā; chap. 8 also mentions a Sutra of Great Māyā; chaps. 6 and 9 give the same name, adding that it was the translation of Southern Qi monk Tanjing; chap. 10 notes that there was a three-chapter copy of the sutra.

13. Da Zhou kanding zhongjing mulu [Great Zhou Catalog of Buddhist Scriptures], comp. Mingquan and others, chap. 13, in T. 55.2153. Here, the Sutra of the Great Māyā is recorded as a two-chapter or twenty-five-page text.

14. TPGJ 441.3599.

15. Livia Kohn and Michael LaFargue, eds., Lao Tzu and the Tao-te-ching (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 53. The early sixth-century History of the Southern Qi (NQS 54.931) contains a version of the story in which Māyā’s name Jingmiao is given.

16. Kristof Schipper, “Purity and Strangers: Shifting Boundaries in Medieval Taoism,” T’oung Pao 80 (1994): 72.

17. Samguk Yusa, 211n107 and 215n117. Clearly Seondok herself was heir to a longer Buddhist lineage. Kang Woobang, in Korean Buddhist Sculpture, trans. Choo Yoonjung (Chicago: Art Media Resources; Gyeong-gi: Yeolhwadang, 2005), 209, mentions that the convention of Buddhist terms appearing in the names of Sillan kings dates back to King Jabi (Compassionate King; Chinese: cibei wang 慈悲王) in the mid-fifth century.

18. Samguk Yusa, 4.6, “The Nine-Story Pagoda at Hwangnyongsa,” 219. For more on the vital role that the idea of “receiving the prophecy” (shouji) played in Wu Zhao’s ideological campaign to establish the Zhou dynasty, see Forte, Political Propaganda; and chap. 12 in this volume.

19. Whitfield, Collected Works of Korean Buddhism, 219n128.

20. Pan Yihong, Son of Heaven and the Heavenly Qaghan, 209–17.

22. Wang Shuanghuai and Zhao Wenrun, Wu Zetian pingzhuan, 180.

23. See, for instance, Da Tang Da Ci’ensi Sanzang Fashi zhuan [Biography of Dharma Master Sanzang of the Great Ci’en Temple of the Great Tang], written by Yan Cong in 688 (chap. 9 in T. 50.2053). The single-chapter Si shamen Xuanzhuang shang biao ji [A Record of Petitions Presented by the Buddhist Monk Xuanzhuang] (T. 52.2119) contains Sanzang’s petition inviting the newly born future emperor to enter the Buddhist orders as his disciple.

25. Wang Yongping, “Tang Gaozong, Wu Zetian shiqi yu Linyi de guanxi” [Foreign Relations with Champa During the Reigns of Tang Gaozong and Wu Zetian], in Conference Proceedings from the 11th Conference of the Wu Zetian Research Association (Guangyuan, Sept. 2013), supplemental essay, 4–5.

26. Nanditha Krishna, Sacred Animals of India (New Delhi: Penguin, 2010), 119–28.

27. Wang Yongping, “Tang Gaozong, Wu Zetian shiqi yu Linyi,”, 3.

28. TPYL 890.3955. This was possibly an incarnation of rain god Indra’s famous mount Airavata. In Sacred Animals of India, Nanditha Krishna notes that the Iravati (Irrawaddy) River in Burma means “produced from water” and echoes the name of Indra’s sacred mount. Associated with water, this divine white elephant is symbolized by huge rain clouds that might anoint the populace with their salubrious precipitation (127).

30. ZZTJ 205.6492. For more on Wu Zhao’s identification as a cakravartin, see Forte, subchapter titled “Wu Zhao, Cakravartin of the Golden Wheel,” in Political Propaganda, 204–14.

31. XTS 4.95, 76.3482–83; ZZTJ 205.6492; JTS 6.123.

32. T. 55.2153, preface. Translation from Forte, Political Propaganda, 219 (parenthetical notations omitted).

33. For the origins of the Nine Tripods as symbols of virtue and legitimacy, see Kwang-chih Chang, Art, Myth and Ritual, 95–97.

34. For the completion of Communing with Heaven Palace, the mingtang complex finished in 696, see ZZTJ 205.6505. For the grand ceremony to install the tripods, see ZZTJ 206.6517; XTS 4.95; TD 44.254; THY 11.279–80. For detail on the manufacture and design, see JTS 22.867–68.

36. Forte, “The Two Mingtang Compared,” in Mingtang and Buddhist Utopias, chap. 3.

37. Rothschild, subchapter “The Nine Tripods,” in “Rhetoric, Ritual and Support Constituencies,” 309–23. In contrast, Ricardo Fracasso, in his essay “The Nine Tripods of Empress Wu,” contends that Wu Zhao had tripods manufactured to placate an anti-Buddhist faction while buttressing her political authority with a traditional symbol of legitimacy.

38. Tang liudian, 4.114–15.

39. JTS 198.5312; XTS 222.6308.

40. XTS 222.6308. These white elephants must have been considered sacred in this region of Southeast Asia, for according to the New Tang History, they were thought to be highly intelligent and awe-inspiring. When a person had a legal complaint he or she would kneel before the massive white pachyderm of judgment and burn incense. The elephant would render a verdict and then leave.

41. See Chen Jinhua, Philosopher, Practitioner and Politician, esp. appendix C, “Biankongsi and Śikṣānanda’s Translation Bureau,” 367–76.

42. QTW 97.1001–02.

43. T. 10.279, chap. 74. Wu Zhao’s propagandists expanded upon a shorter, sixty-chapter version of the Flower Garland Sutra composed in the Eastern Jin (T. 9.278).

44. Ann Heirman, “Yijing’s View on the Bhikṣunīs’ Standard Robes,” Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal 21 (2008): 150–54.

45. Yijing refers to Māyā in the opening chapter of Genben shuo yiqie youbu Binaiye chujia shi [Matters of Renunciation in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya], in T. 23.1444.

46. Genben shuo yiqie youbu Binaiye [Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya], trans. Yijing, preface, in T. 23.1442.

47. T. 23.1444, chap. 1.

48. Genben shuo yiqie youbu Binaiye zashi [Miscellany from the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya], trans. Yijing, chap. 20, in T. 24.1451.

49. See ZZTJ 205.6442; XTS 4.85, 76.3479, 35.910, 37.962–63; TPGJ 397.3176–77.

51. See Forte, Political Propaganda, 197, 269, 318. Both of these texts will be discussed in more detail in chap. 12.

53. ZZTJ 204.6462; XTS 76.3481.

54. Yijing not only mentions “Divine Mother” in the opening chapter of Matters of Renunciation in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya (T. 23.1444), as mentioned above, but he also uses the term in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya (T. 23.1442, chap. 39) and in Miscellany from the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya (T. 24.1451, chap. 37).

55. T. 10.279, chaps. 47, 58.

56. T. 50.2053, chap. 3.

57. Chen Jinhua, Śarīra and Scepter, 113.

58. Fo benxing ji jing, comp. Jñāngupta, chap. 7, in T. 3.190.

59. Fayuan zhulin, comp. Daoshi, chap. 9, in T. 53.2122.

60. Fangguang da zhuangyan jing, trans. Divakara, chap. 3, in T. 3.187.

61. Patricia Karetzky, Early Buddhist Art: Illustrations from the Life of the Buddha (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2000), 140–41.

62. Ibid., 138. See ZZTJ 167–68 for more on Li Zu’e’s rise to become Emperor Qi Wenxuan’s (r. 550–559) empress and empress dowager, followed by her demise after her son, bearing the apt and depressing posthumous name Emperor Fei (r. 559–60), the Deposed Emperor, was killed. She was forced into a sexual relationship with her brother-in-law Emperor Wucheng (r. 561–65) and eventually became a Buddhist nun.

63. See Alexander Soper, “A T’ang Parinirvāṇa Stele,” Artibus Asiae 22, nos. 1/2 (1959): 159–60; Karetzky, “The Representation of Women,” 226; Karetzky, “Wu Zetian and Buddhist Art,” 117–20.

64. ZZTJ 204.6449. For more on the pivotal role that these Great Cloud temples played in the establishment of Wu Zhao’s Zhou dynasty and their ideological significance, see chap. 12 in this volume.

65. Soper, “A T’ang Parinirvāṇa Stele,” 160.

67. Mary Anne Cartelli, “On a Five-Colored Cloud: The Songs of Mount Wutai,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 124, no. 4 (2004): 737. Cartelli maintains that, reflected in the poetry of the era, a full-fledged cult of Mañjuśrī developed on Mount Wutai.

68. Weinstein, Buddhism Under the T’ang, 37; Ch’en, Buddhism in China, 276–77; Ch’en, Chinese Transformation, 172. Forte, Political Propaganda, 129–36, has made some preliminary observations about Wu Zhao’s patronage of the Mañjuśrī cult on Wutai as emperor. Degan, one of the monks who presented the Commentary to Wu Zhao in 690, heralded from Bingzhou and helped elevate the Wutai cult of Mañjuśrī during the female emperor’s final years on the throne.

70. Chen Jinhua, “Śarīra and Scepter,” 106–07. Chen maintains that “the geographical proximity between Wutaishan and the Wu family’s ancestral homeland (i.e., Wenshui in present-day Shanxi) suggests that the Buddhapālita legend was probably a strategy on the part of the empress and her ideologues to tout her family’s divine origin by establishing its intrinsic ties to this sacred mountain and the principal Buddhist deity dwelling there, Mañjuśrī” (109–10). Also see Forte, Political Propaganda, 126; and James Benn, Burning for the Buddha: Self-Immolation in Chinese Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007), 135.

The Dhāraṇī Sutra of the Buddha’s Crowning Victory is contained in T. 19.967.

71. Isabelle Charleux, “Padmasambhava’s Travel to the North,” Central Asian Journal 46, no. 2 (2002): 187. This grotto was sacred in Mongolian and Tibetan Buddhism.

74. For more on Xuanzong’s adversarial posture toward the Buddhist establishment, especially early in his reign, see Tonami Mamoru, “Policy Towards the Buddhist Church,” 29–32. Xuanzong issued a series of imperial pronouncements that forced monks to pay obeisance to parents and ruler, drastically reduced fashioning of Buddhist statuary, prevented Buddhist monks from mingling with officials and nobles, laicized irregularly ordained Buddhist clergy, abolished supernumerary temple offices, forbid excessive propagation of sutras, prohibited construction of new temples, and brought requests for repairs and improvements to existing temples under close state scrutiny.

1. Forte, Political Propaganda, based on his reading of Dunhuang document S.6502.

2. Gernet, Buddhism in Chinese Society, 288.

3. Forte, Political Propaganda, chap. 1, appendix A, has shown that there is ongoing confusion as to the translator—it might be either Dharmakṣema (also Tanwuchen 曇無讖, 385–433) or Zhu Fonian 竺佛念. Both translated the sutra independently, but it is unclear whose version survived. From the late seventh century forward, Dharmakṣema is credited as the translator of the extant rendition of the sutra. For a more extensive study on Dharmakṣema, see Chen Jinhua, “The Indian Buddhist Missionary Dharmakṣema (385–433): A New Dating of His Arrival in Guzang and of His Translations,” T’oung Pao 90 (2004): 215–63.

4. Forte, Political Propaganda, 48, 321.

5. Ibid., 342–43; cf. T. 12.387.

6. Forte, Political Propaganda, 215.

7. Ibid., 342–43, 348.

9. THY 48.847; and Henan zhi [Treatise on Henan], comp. Xu Song (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1994), 1.34.

10. Forte, Political Propaganda, 50.

11. Dunhuang document S.6502, “Commentary on the Meaning of the Prophecy About Shenhuang in the Great Cloud Sutra,” translated in Forte, Political Propaganda, 260.

12. Ibid., 301. In “Daojiao tu Ma Yuanzhen yu Wu-Zhou geming” [Daoist Ma Yuanzhen and the Wu-Zhou Revolution], Zhongguo shi yanjiu (2004): 73–80, contemporary scholar Lei Wen has shown that Master Ma was likely Ma Yuanzhen, head of a Daoist abbey in Chang’an and that the prophecy was composed after Gaozong’s death.

13. Ibid., 308–09. Though Ziwei 紫薇, often rendered “Purple Tenuity,” is part of one of Wei Huacun’s titles on one of Yan Zhenqing’s stele inscriptions, this is not a reference to her. Rather, this is likely Divine Lady Wang of Ziwei whom Robert Campany, in To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth: A Translation and Study of Ge Hong’s Traditions of Divine Transcendents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 134n4, describes as “a colleague of Lady Wei Huacun of the Southern Peak.”

14. Translation from Forte, Political Propaganda, 276.

16. Forte, Political Propaganda, 265, 271–72n79. The discovery of the stone is mentioned in XTS 4.87 and ZZTJ 204.6449.

17. Translation from Forte, Political Propaganda, 271, 273.

18. Ibid., 274. According to Wu Zhao’s biography in the New Tang History (XTS 76.3474), Taizong bestowed the name Enchanting Wu upon her when she was his concubine. In New Tang History (35.918) and the TPGJ 163.1182, it is noted that during the Yonghui era (650–656) at the beginning of Gaozong’s reign, when Wu Zhao was brought back into the palace and rose to become empress, everyone sang “Enchanting Miss Wu.” The song was composed earlier, by courtier Tang Lingze 唐令則 in the late Kaihuang 開皇 era (581–600) of the Sui, likely to the accompaniment of the pipa 琵琶. The song “Tangtang” was often written as homophone 堂堂.

19. Though Jambudvīpa, the southern continent of the four lands in Buddhist cosmology, was more closely associated with India than China, Wu Zhao’s propagandists blurred the distinction—for a cakravartin governed all four continents.

20. Forte, Political Propaganda, 271.

21. Forte, “The Maitreyist Huaiyi and Taoism,” Tang yanjiu 4 (1998): 22.

22. Forte, Political Propaganda, 216 and 281–83.

23. Diana Paul, Women in Buddhism: Images of the Feminine in the Mahayana Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 186; Gross, Buddhism After Patriarchy, 62.

24. Patricia Karetzky, Guanyin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 24. This process may just, as Suzanne Cahill suggests, “represent the dual nature of Guanyin in China” (epistolary correspondence, 1 July 2013).

25. Forte, Political Propaganda, 279–80. For more on the five bodhisattva precepts (pusajie 菩薩戒), prohibitions against killing, theft, harming living beings, and bad conduct, see the two-fascicle Fanwang jing [Sutra on Brahma’s Net], trans. Kumāravjiva, T. 24.1484. For secondary sources on the precepts, see Martine Batchelor, The Path of Compassion: The Bodhisattva Precepts (Walnut Creek, Calif.: Altamira, 2004), 19.

26. See chap. 2 in this volume.

27. Forte, Political Propaganda, 285–87.

29. Ibid., 296–97. The Illustrations of Opposing Backs was likely written by astronomer and horological specialist Li Chunfeng (602–670); see 295n192.

31. JTS 6.121; XTS 4.90; ZZTJ 204.6466. All of these Confucian sources mistakenly refer to the source as either the Great Cloud Sutra, or, alternatively, a “falsely compiled” (wei xuan 偽選) or “apocryphal” (wei zao 偽造) version of the sutra.

32. XTS 4.91; ZZTJ 204.6469.

33. T 19.1024, 717–21. Timothy Barrett has studied this text extensively, with special attention to its role in the development of printing technology. He shows that the text built on the earlier “Indian practice of combining text and stupa” (The Woman Who Discovered Printing, 26) to create a mass-produced stand-in for Buddhist relics. This gave these texts a talismanic force. See The Woman Who Discovered Printing; and Barrett, “Stūpa, Sūtra and Śarīra in China, c. 656–706 CE,” Buddhist Studies Review 18, no. 1 (2001): 1–64.

34. Chen Jinhua, “Śarīra and Scepter,” 111–12. Mitraśānta likely worked with brilliant Sogdian ideologue-thaumaturge Fazang and Khotanese Śikṣānanda to complete this work in 704 or 705. See also Barrett, The Woman Who Discovered Printing, 93–94, 99.

35. Barrett, “Stūpa, Sūtra and Śarīra, 53.

36. Chen Jinhua, “Śarīra and Scepter,” 132.

37. Barrett, The Woman Who Discovered Printing, 94–95. For a more detailed account of the content of the spell, see Chen Jinhua, “Śarīra and Scepter,” 112–14.

38. Michael Welch, “Fa-tsang, Pure Light and Printing: An Inquiry Into the Origins of Textual Xylography” (Master’s thesis, Library Sciences, University of Minnesota, 1981), 101–02.

39. Song gaoseng zhuan [Biographies of Eminent Monks, Compiled in the Song Dynasty], comp. Zanning, chaps. 2, 34, in T. 50.2061.

40. Du Doucheng, “Guanyu Wu Zetian yu fojiao de jige wenti” [Several Issues Concerning Wu Zetian and Buddhism], Zongjiao xue yanjiu (1994): 31.

41. Forte’s interpretation (Political Propaganda, 357) of Wu Zhao’s name is illuminating:

42. Hu Ji, Wu Zetian benzhuan, 170.

45. Ibid. Cui Shu was a native of Songzhou (modern-day Dengfeng, at the foot of Mount Song) who never rose very high in bureaucratic rank.

46. The Duke of Zhou.

47. QTW 192.1936. Paoxi is another term for Fuxi.

48. T. 52.2118, chap. 5. This was a way of attempting to subordinate Daoism to Buddhism in the ideological rivalry of the time. The Dajiaye bodhisattva was Mahākāśyapa, one of the Buddha’s great disciples. If Laozi were merely the Buddha’s disciple, then the Daoist faith would be nothing more than a derivative subset of Buddhism.

49. ZZTJ 205.6494, 6499–6500. Zhang Naizhu, “Luoyang xinji shike suojian Tangdai zhongyuan zhi fojiao” [Tang Buddhism of the Central Plains as Reflected in Recently Compiled Stone Carvings from Luoyang], Zhongyuan wenwu no. 5 (2008): 81, observed that as in 663 the discovery of the hoofprint of a qilin in front of the newly constructed Hanyuan Basilica in Chang’an prompting Gaozong and Empress Wu to change the name of the reign era to Unicorn Virtue, the same auspicious event prompted construction of the Unicorn’s Hoof Buddhist temple.

50. ZZTJ 205.6494.

52. Ibid., 205.6499–6500.

53. Forte, Political Propaganda, chap. 3, esp. the appendix, “The Translators of the Ratnamegha Sutrā in 693,” 246–53.

54. Baoyu jing, T. 16.660. Translation from Forte, Political Propaganda, 196. Lunar Radiance likely appeared in a Buddhist-related title ten years earlier. Inspired by popular millenarian Buddhism, a charismatic local leader may have taken the title Yueguang (Candraprabha) in a revolt of his Jihu people in Shaanbei in the early 680s. Also see Rothschild, “Emerging from the Cocoon,” 257–82.

55. Forte, Political Propaganda, 196n30.

56. Ibid., 196–97; Chen Jinhua, Monks and Monarchs, 117.

57. ZZTJ 205.6492.

58. Chen Jinhua, Monks and Monarchs, 114–15. See also Tambiah, “The Galactic Polity in Southeast Asia,” 252–86. Though this work focuses on kingship in a different region in a later era, the idea of a Buddhist (or Hindu-Buddhist), “galactic polity” with a ruler—cakravartin, dharma wielder, and living bodhisattva—situated at the cosmological, topographical, and political center that he describes was not unconnected to developing notions of Buddhist sovereignty in early medieval and medieval China.

59. Forte, Political Propaganda, 287.

61. Doran, “Insatiable Women,” 197–98. The Vimalakirti Sutra (Weimojie jing 維摩詰經, T. 14.475) was translated into Chinese by Kumarajiva in 406.

62. The Vimalakirti Sutra, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 90–91. This translation is based on Kumarajiva’s.

64. Doran, “Insatiable Women,” 198.

65. Forte, Political Propaganda, 264.

66. Ibid., 230. Forte provides a summary of the Sutra of Attestation (358–64), with a partial translation including boldface print of every section that was used as evidence in the Commentary.

67. Ibid., 263–64. Forte notes that in 594 Buddhist compiler Fajing had placed the one-chapter Attestation Sutra on a list of false works.

68. Ibid., 265. Xue Huaiyi was the architect of the mingtang complex and the Attestation Sutra likely served as a loose ideological architectural blueprint for Wu Zhao’s Divine Palace of Myriad Images (Wanxiang shengong 萬象神宮), completed in 689—see 234–35.

69. Ibid., 362, translation of Zhengming jing, T.85.2879.

71. ZZTJ 205.6497.

72. Forte, Mingtang and Buddhist Utopias, 114–15.

73. Ibid., 205.6502.

74. Forte, “Wu Zhao de mingtang yu tianwen zhong” [The Mingtang of Wu Zhao and Her Armillary Sphere], in Zhao Wenrun and Li Yuming, Wu Zetian yanjiu lunwenji, 142.

75. Gao Junping, “Shi lun Wu Zetian shiqi Longmen shiku,” 141.

76. Amy McNair, in Donors of Longmen, devotes an entire chapter (111–22) to the Vairocana image at Longmen. She has translated the inscription (115–16, 177).

77. For instance, Gong Dazhong, Longmen shiku yishu [The Art in the Longmen Grottoes] (Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin chuban she, 1981), 141–42.

78. Gong Dazhong, Longmen shiku yishu, 142. Also see Ning Qiang, “Gender Politics in Medieval Chinese Buddhist Art,” 29.

79. Karetzky, “Wu Zetian and Buddhist Art,” 121.

80. McNair, Donors of Longmen, 117.

81. Guo Shaolin, “Longmen Lushena fo diaoxiang zaoxing yiju Wu Zetian shuo jiumiu” [Correcting Misconceptions That the Longmen Vairocana Is Modeled on Wu Zetian], in Sui-Tang lishi wenhua [Culture and History of the Sui and Tang] (Beijing: Zhongguo Wenshi, 2005), 162–63.

82. Zeng Qian, “Wu Zetian zaoqi de zongjiao qingxiang yu Lushena dafo de xiujian” [Religious Tendencies in the Early Period of Wu Zetian and the Construction of the Giant Rushana Buddha], Qianyan no. 8 (2009): 182–83.

83. McNair, Donors of Longmen, 118.

84. Forte, Political Propaganda, translation of Dunhuang S.6502, 260. Translation is slightly modified.

85. Doran, “Insatiable Women,” 353–54.

1. For an examination of the coexistence of the “three faiths” and a brief overview of some of the ideological shifts during Wu Zhao’s regency and reign, see Chen Meilin, “Zhou-Tang zhengquan de gengdie yu Ru-Dao-Shi xingshuai” [Shifts in Political Authority of the Zhou-Tang and the Rise and Fall of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism], Hebei shiyuan xuebao no. 3 (1997): 38–43; and Kou Jianghou, “Wu Zetian yu Zhongzong de sanjiao gongcun yu foxian daohou zhengce” [The Policies of “Coexistence of the Three Faiths” and “Buddhism before Daoism” Under Wu Zetian and Zhongzong], Shaanxi shifan daxue xuebao (1999): 19–22.

2. Forte, Mingtang and Buddhist Utopias.

4. JTS 47.2046, 78.2707, 97.3050, 104.4014; XTS 59.1563.

5. Birrell, “Gendered Power,” 1.

9. Chen Jo-shui, “Empress Wu and Proto-Feminist Sentiments,” 90.

10. Karetzky, “The Representation of Women,” 227–28, 243.

11. Gao Shiyu, “A Fixed State of Affairs and Mis-positioned Status,” 292–93. Most famously, in the early seventh century, the Turkish empress of Emperor Sui Yangdi refused to allow him to have any concubines. When he commented upon the exquisite hands of a palace maid, the empress had the girl’s hands cut off and served at his next meal.

12. James T. C. Liu, “Polo and Cultural Change: From T’ang to Sung China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 45, no. 1 (1985): 203–24; Rong Xinjiang, “Nüban nanzhuang: Sheng Tang funü xingbie yishi” [Donning Male Attire: Gender Consciousness of Women in the High Tang], in Abstracts and Papers from the Tang Women’s Studies Conference (Beijing University, 2001), 320–44.