"Confucian Student" and "Daoist Master": Scholarly Daoists in Quanzhen Daoist Communities during the Jin-Yuan Transition

Abstract

The Mongol conquest dramatically altered the existing Chinese social structure in north China during the Jin-Yuan transition. Literati lost their earlier status as the political and social elite, and many of the former Jin literati joined the Quanzhen Daoist order, marking a significant social change. Using the term “scholarly Daoists” to refer to this special group, this paper focuses on their daily life in Quanzhen Daoist monastic communities to examine the continuities and changes to their social and cultural identities, from Confucian students to Daoist masters. A close reading of Quanzhen inscriptions about scholarly Daoists demonstrates that some distinctive behaviors—including studying and writing—that had defined Confucian students continued in these men’s everyday lives in Daoist monasteries. Command of both Confucian and Daoist textual knowledge gave scholarly Daoists special distinction within Quanzhen communities. In addition, scholarly Daoists played particularly important roles in the development of school education in north China during the Jin-Yuan transition. On the one hand, leading scholarly Daoists like Li Zhichang and Feng Zhiheng cooperated with a few Confucian scholar-officials to establish and run the National University of the Mongol State, in which Confucians and Quanzhen Daoists educated the Mongolian and Chinese ruling elite together. On the other hand, scholarly Daoists played a major role in the development of the Quanzhen Daoist school of Mysterious Learning. Joining a tradition that did not rely on written materials, these scholars contributed to a shift to a reliance on texts in the transmission of Quanzhen teachings. At the same time, however, tension between Quanzhen and Confucian ideals appeared in scholarly Daoists’ daily lives, especially in relationships with their lay families. For their obligations to forebears, scholarly Daoists found acceptable solutions by entrusting lineage members or religious communities to take care of their ancestral tombs. Yet in terms of their responsibility of supporting their wives and children, Quanzhen monastic rules—particularly celibacy—resulted in almost irreconcilable conflicts.