106 Systemizing Martial Practice
Avîci Hell. His staff enables him to rescue his mother, just as Moses’ permitted
the prophet to deliver his people.
One of the earliest performance versions of Mulian’s journey is the Tang
period alternating prose and verse narrative Transformation Text on Mahâmaudg-
alyâyana Rescuing His Mother from the Underworld (Damuqianlianmingjian jiumu bi-
anwen). Originally performed by storytellers, the narrative explained how to
activate the staff’s magic. To release his emblem’s formidable force, Mulian “rat-
tled” (yao) or “shook” (zhen) its rings. When the monk “rattled the ring staff,
ghosts and spirits were mowed down on the spot like stalks of hemp.” Similarly:
With one shake of [Mulian’s] staff, the bars and locks fell from [hell’s]
black walls, On the second shake, the double leaves of the main gate
flew open.^61Mulian’s legend has enjoyed tremendous popularity in Chinese drama, where
its performance has been invariably embedded in a ritual complex. Mulian
plays are usually performed on the occasion of the Ghost Festival (Guijie), also
known by its Buddhist name Yulanpen, where they are intended for the salva-
tion of community members who died prematurely. Otherwise they are staged
as part of an individual’s funerary rites, for the redemption of his soul.^62 Some-
times the mortuary play is performed by ritual specialists, Buddhist or Taoist,
instead of professional actors. The priest dons Mulian’s robe and, wielding his
divine staff, smashes a sand or paper replica of hell, thereby delivering the de-
ceased.^63 Thus, the ring staff still figures as a magic weapon in Chinese religion
today.
Whereas Mulian wielded the ring staff in his harrowing journey to hell,
others flew on it to heaven. Like European witches who were believed to ride
on sticks and brooms, Chinese monks were imagined soaring on the ring staff.
As early as the fourth century, Sun Chuo (ca. 310–397) compared the Taoist
mode of flying on a crane to the Buddhist style of riding the staff:
Wang Qiao drove a crane and soared to the heaven,
The Arhats flung their staffs and trod the air.^64In medieval poetry the flying staff became a symbol of liberation from
earthly toils. Du Fu (712–770) dreamed of “flying the ring staff away from
the world of dust,” and in Liu Zongyuan’s (773–819) vision:
The Immortals’ Mountain isn’t subject to the appointed officials,
There you can freely soar to the sky, flying the ring staff.^65The term “flying staff ” (feixi) figured so prominently in medieval litera-
ture that it was eventually applied to itinerant monks. In his encyclopedic
Buddhist Essentials (Shishi yaolan) (preface 1020), the Buddhist lexicographer