The portrayal of women in the poetry of Jing’an Eight-Fingers

ABSTRACT The last three decades have seen the emergence of a rich literature on the role of gender and sexuality in Buddhism. Compared to the lively debates surrounding the ordination of nuns, and the role of lay women in different Buddhist traditions, the attitudes of male monastics toward their female devotees have attracted little attention. In late imperial China, the discourse on monks and their women lay-supporters emphasized transgression. It was often dominated by the anti-clerical polemics of concerned Confucians, who worried that deviant monks might compromise the chastity of their wives and daughters. Very little attention has been paid to the actual exchanges and the modes of communication between monks and their female supporters. In this article, we discuss how the renowned Qing dynasty poet monk Jing’an Eight-Fingers (1851–1912) communicated with and about women. Jing’an’s poems show him as an intellectually astute monastic, who cared deeply about his supporters and their relatives. Although he was not involved in what today would be considered social activism, his views on gender (in)equality were moderately progressive. How are the roles of women in late imperial China reflected in the writings of this elite monk, poet, and administrator?