University of Virginia Library

PREFACE

A millennium and a half ago there lived in China some remarkable
women who cast aside the fetters of the world to become Buddhist
nuns. Lives of the Nuns preserves the memory of their lives and deeds
and gives us a look into a world that is foreign, exotic, and now vanished;
yet, that world is far less alien than we might first think, for it is
people with men and women who express the same emotions—the
same desires, aspirations, or longings for spiritual enlightenment—as
those found at all times and in all places. Furthermore, the character
of these nuns who lived during dangerous and chaotic times can
instruct us who also live in such times. We need not be Chinese Buddhists
of the sixth century to be charmed by the nun Hui-chan's insouciant
bravery (no. 7), or to be moved by Chih-hsien's fearless integrity
(no. 3), or to smile at Ching-ch'eng's clever ruse (no. 28). And we who
have in this generation seen Buddhist monastics offer their bodies as a
sacrifice by fire will feel kinship with the religious and laity of long ago
who, when they learned that T'an-chien (no. 46) had offered her body
by fire to the Buddha, "lamented, their cries reverberating through the
mountains and valleys."

This translation of Lives of the Nuns, a major revision of an original
translation done as part of my doctoral dissertation for the University
of Wisconsin, was prepared with both the general reader and the
scholar in mind in the hope that those who have no special background
in the subject may take up the material and read with pleasure
and understanding, while the scholars in the field may also enjoy the
Lives.

The Translation

Because the biographies are often concise to the point of obscurity,
and because allusions, references, names, and places familiar to the
Chinese reader of nearly fifteen hundred years ago are simply not
going to be clear to the present-day English-speaking reader, the translator
has taken the liberty of adding to the text of the biographies

bracketed phrases or even sentences necessary to provide a smoother
narrative. Any material that cannot be worked into the biography
itself is found in the notes.

To provide a sense of geographic direction, place-names are supplemented
with brief phrases indicating where they were in China or
where they were in relation to the southern capital, which, as the
major city of the southern dynasties, makes an obvious reference
point. A map of China, showing many of the places mentioned in the
biographies, is also included. It should be kept in mind that, whenever
a biography mentions the place where the woman's family came from,
it frequently means the place from which the family had emigrated
several generations previously. When a place-name cannot be located
with reasonable certainty, no attempt is made to locate it.

To clarify relationships or to bring out more clearly the point of a
nun's connection with particular individuals, named persons, whenever
possible, are identified by a brief phrase in the translation. Additional
information, if any, appears in the notes. Those individuals
who are otherwise unknown will not be annotated.

To help readers fix the events in time, dates of birth and death are
given when known and, for emperors, dates of birth, beginning of
reign, and death.

The bibliography of sources, reference works, and readings describes
the books mentioned in the notes, those used as sources and
references for the preparation of the translation, and those that readers
might find of further interest.

Appendix A is a more technical discussion of the history, sources,
and literary prototypes for the text of the Lives.

The romanization system used for transcribing the Chinese characters
is a modification of the Wade-Giles system, chosen because the
English-language references and suggested further readings also use
this system, thereby creating a consistency that the reader might find
helpful.

Words of Sanskrit origin are transcribed using the long marks
(macrons) over the vowels but not the retroflex marks under certain
consonants. The letter combination sh represents both the consonant
often transcribed as an s with the acute accent and the consonant s
often transcribed with the retroflex dot underneath. The letter combination
ch represents what is often written only as the letter c. The letter
n before g, k, or h represents what is often written as an m. These

differences should be noted when trying to find in other readings the
words or titles of Sanskrit origin used in the Lives of the Nuns.

The nuns' personal names have been transliterated, with a translation
of the name appearing only in the glosses that begin the individual
biographies. Names of convents and monasteries have been translated
to provide the reader with a respite from the many Chinese names and
in some instances to make clear the point a biography is trying to
make concerning the choice of a name for the convent, as for example,
biography 5. Place-names have been transliterated, except for some
names of mountains that can be straightforwardly translated into
English. The names of the two most famous rivers in China are given
in the form familiar to English-speaking readers—that is, the Yellow
and the Yangtze rather than the Ho and the Chiang.

Thanks are due to the late Arthur E. Link for having introduced
me, many years ago, not only to the Pi-ch'iu-ni chuan but also to the
world of medieval China, to the late Richard H. Robinson for having
supervised my initial work, and to the late Holmes Welch for having
provided opportunities for further study and research.

I must also thank a colleague whom I have never met, Li Jung-hsi,
of the Chinese Buddhist Association in Peking, whose own English
translationof the Pi-ch'iu-ni chuan I reviewed in 1985. Although I
would have preferred speaking with him personally, having his translation
at hand meant that I was able, in a sense, to ask his opinion
about any phrase or sentence in the text. Because we are working with
difficult and often ambiguous material, it is to be expected that we will
not always agree.

A heartfelt thank you I offer to Sharon Yamamoto of University of
Hawaii Press not only for her initial interest but also for her encouragement
and for her well-chosen suggestions for improving the book.

To my husband, Tsai Hsiang-jen, I owe deep and deserved thanks
in recognition of his patient endurance as well as his very concrete help
in more ways than I can count.

To the late Anna Katharina Seidel of the Institut du Hōbōgirin in
Kyoto, for her help, criticism, and especially for her unfailingly kind
generosity, I owe a debt of gratitude that can never be adequately
repaid. Whatever is good in this work is hers, and to her I dedicate
Lives of the Nuns.