Guidance through seduction: the Precious Scroll of Fish-Basket Guanyin in the recitation practice of Changshu in Jiangsu, China

Abstract

ABSTRACT The story of Bodhisattva Guanyin with a Fish Basket (or Fish-monger Guanyin) has already attracted attention of scholars of Chinese literature and religion, as it represents an indigenous modification of the Indian Buddhist deity; but until now scholars mainly have studied textual variants of this story in the late imperial period. At the same time, the precious scroll (baojuan) devoted to the story of Fish-Basket Guanyin is still recited by local performers in the Changshu city area in Jiangsu now. The analysis of the Yulan Baojuan 魚籃寶卷 [Precious Scroll of Fish-Basket (Guanyin)] in the context of “telling scriptures” in Changshu allows a demonstration of the special features of functioning of a Chinese Buddhist narrative in the local religious-oriented storytelling. The Precious Scroll of Fish-Basket Guanyin formed around the nineteenth century, but it used much earlier materials, originating in the Buddhist “miracle tales”. This text attests to preservation of connections between the baojuan literature and Buddhist narratives in the later period. In the local variant of this precious scroll the story of Bodhisattva Guanyin is combined with the veneration of local tutelary deities, placed on the “family altars”; thus representing the secularized “grass-root” form of Chinese Buddhist devotion.