Arts & Sciences

Newsletter
Fall 1995 Vol. 17 No. 1

Buddhism and Popular Religion of the Bai People of Yunnan Province

John R. McCrea

Thanks in large part to the long-standing Bai devotion to Buddhism, contemporary Yunnan represents a treasure trove of art historical and textual evidence, of a scale much more limited than Dunhuang or Japan but similar in significance. That is, contemporary Yunnan has many resources that allow us a set of unique perspectives on Chinese religions and the religion of minority nationalities living in close conjunction with Han Chinese. Indeed, for a nationality now identified as separate from the Han majorit y, and one at or near the pinnacle of the local power structure for many centuries, it is ironic that one of the keys to the Bai claim to uniqueness was their ability to incorporate elements of Chinese and Buddhist international culture.

My own interest in the popular religion and Buddhism of the Bai people came from research on Ch'an or Zen Buddhism during the Tang dynasty, when I was examining the portrait of a particularly important Chinese monk that occurred in a magnificent scroll of Buddhist artwork from twelfth-century Yunnan. (The monk in question had first been studied by the man we in the East Asia Program consider to be Cornell's greatest alumnus, Hu Shih [1892-1961].) While exploring the background of this portrait, I read that a cache of handwritten manuscript texts had been discovered at a location near Dali, Yunnan, in 1956. Armed with a letter of introduction through a prominent Chinese scholar who was then visiting Cornell, I went to Yunnan for the first time in January of 1990. I have been back four additional times, and this coming academic year (1995Ð1996) I will spend most of my sabbatic leave there, working with colleagues at the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences in Kunming (the capital of Yunnan) and the Dali Prefectu re Museum.

During the Nanzhao and Dali periods (seventh to thirteenth centuries), when Yunnan was an independent state, the Bai were enthusiastic in their adoption of Buddhism. Although there is evidence that one important ninth-century king adopted a lineage identity based on Ch'an or Zen Buddhism, the type of Buddhism that most attracted the Bai and their contemporaries was esoteric or tantric Buddhism. Thus the museums of Yunnan hold literally hundreds of bronze ritual implements used in esoteric Buddhist ritual, including some interesting double vajra mortars with finger rings, bells with vajra candles, and the like. Stone cave sculpture and painted scrolls from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries depict numerous esoteric deities, some of them magnificent images of Vairocana and other Buddhas who would have been visualized in esoteric ritual contexts, and others, wrathful deities of terrifying visage, who wield various weapons in their many arms so as to dispel illusion and protect against the forces of ignoranc e. We also have fragments of ritual manuals (one of which was apparently translated by a ninth-century Indian monk who is depicted very prominently in the twelfth-century scroll alluded to above), indicating the popularity of building esoteric altars (known as "mandalas"), reciting incantations ("mantras"), and performing ritually meaningful gestures ("mudras"). Finally, there exist family genealogies of esoteric Buddhist ritual specialists active in Dali and elsewhere in Yunnan, some of which extend from the thirteenth century right down to the present. These specialists are known as Azhali, from the Sanskrit acarya, or "teacher." Unlike anywhere else in Asia, these Azhali from Yunnan were from the very beginning married practitioners who passed their religious expertise down from father to son. (Traditions of marriage in Tibetan and Japanese Buddhism are from later periods.) Hence Buddhism in Yunnan is often known as "Azhali Buddhism," a form of esotericism or tantrism different from those practiced elsew here in Asia.

In addition to their Azhali Buddhism, the Bai also propitiate local folk deities known as Benzhu, or "village lords," that function within society in ways similar to but in some ways intriguingly different from popular gods in Han Chinese communities. A village's primary Benzhu may have spouse and family (and some of the primary village Benzhu are female), and most often his (or her) identity is explained on the basis of a mythico-historical story of local significance. In some cases the Benzhu of neighbor ing villages are related, but there is no concept of a unifying celestial hierarchy as in Han Chinese popular religion. Offerings of sacrificed chickens and other animals are common, in search of all the most wished-for benefits of ordinary life -- health, longevity, wealth, and male offspring -- and although the overall structure of the offering rituals is similar to that of Han Chinese rituals, a unique assemblage is achieved through the use of chants in the Bai language, local dance and song forms, and traditional Bai foodstuffs.

What is most enticing about Yunnan (in addition to its wonderful year-round climate and excellent cuisine!) is the extent to which these different types of evidence for the study of Bai religion fit together with contemporary practice. We can travel to Dali and observe rituals performed by Azhali masters that they have learned from a centuries-old succession of teachers, and we can compare the texts they use with those their colleagues transmitted from centuries past. We can look at cave sculpture from a p eriod coeval with the Song dynasty and compare the rough-hewn hemp and papier mache images of local deities. And we can film the local religious observances of Benzhu worship and evoke the mythology surrounding the founding of the Nanzhao regime depicted in the painted scrolls. In a time when the label "multidisciplinary" is bandied about so freely, this is a project that cries out for the use of different approaches and perspectives. And this is precisely what my Chinese and American colleagues and I who are involved in the cooperative research project are working to achieve.