Hanshan

This article is about the poet. For the Buddhist monastery, see Cold Mountain Temple.

Hanshan (Chinese: 寒山; pinyin: Hánshān; literally "Cold Mountain", fl. 9th century) was a mythological figure associated with a collection of poems from the Chinese Tang Dynasty in the Taoist and Zen tradition. He is honored as a Bodhisattva -figure in Zen-mythology in Japanese and Chinese paintings together with his sidekick Shide and with Fenggan.

Date

The collection of poems attributed to the "Hanshan-poet" may span the entire Tang Dynasty as Edwin G. Pulleyblank asserts in his study Linguistic Evidence for the Date of Hanshan.^[1] Wu Chi-yu's A Study of Hanshan ^[2] identifies him as the monk Chiyan (智岩, 577–654), but that has been disputed by Paul Demiéville among others. The Encyclopedia of China inferred and given his date to be around 712 and after 793.^[3] Jia Jinhua came to the conclusion, after a study of Ch'an-phrases in some 50 of the poems, that this particular group of poems may be attributable to the Ch'an-monk Caoshan Benji (840-901).

Translations

The poems have often been translated, by Arthur Waley (1954) and Gary Snyder (1958) among others. The first complete translation to a western language was into French by Patrik Carré in 1985. There are two full English translations, by Robert G. Henricks (1990), and Bill Porter (2000).

Little is known of his work, since his poems were written all around, and on, the mountains he called home, and little is sure about his life, apparently because he was a fugitive. Of the 600 poems he is known to have written at some point before his death, less than around 307 were collected and have survived. Our authority for this is a poem he wrote:

My five-word poems number five hundred,

My seven-word poems seventy-nine,

My three-word poems twenty-one.

Altogether, six hundred rhymes.

(The words refer to how many words in each line of the verse. All poems are Red Pine's (also known as Bill Porter) translation, except where noted.)

Biography

Hanshan lived in a cave named 'Hanyan' (寒岩, Cold Cliff), a day's travel from the founding home of the Tiantai Buddhist sect, Guoqing Temple; itself located within the Taishan Mountain range on China's southeast coast. At the time, he would have been 700 miles from the then-twin capitals of Luoyang and Chang'an. He is usually associated with two close friends ("The Tientai Trio"), Fenggan and Shide, who both lived in Guoqing Temple.

See Poem 44:

I usually live in seclusion

but sometimes I go to Kuoching

to call on the Venerable Feng-kan

or to visit Master Shih-Te.

But I go back to Cold Cliff alone,

obeying an unspoken agreement.

I follow a stream that has no spring

the spring is dry but not the stream.

The precise dates for Hanshan are much disputed due to textual inconsistencies and anachronisms (possibly due to attempts to give him greater stature, a not uncommon practice). But what is certain is that he can definitely be dated to either the 8th or 9th century CE. After Hanshan's disappearance, a Taoist named Xu Lingfu (徐灵府), a native of Hangzhou, apparently collected his poems from the various mountains, rocks, trees, and walls they were written on. This collection, however, is not mentioned in any of his written works, and as Xu ceased to write after 825 C.E., that puts a lower bound on the date of Hanshan's death, and an upper bound as Xu must have collected Hanshan's corpus before Xu's own death in 841. Legend has it that Hanshan disappeared 12 years before dying, which would bracket his death between 837 and 851 C.E. No information exists on his date of birth, so speculation is futile. There are some possible autobiographical details, from which one might infer that his home town was Handan, and that he was born to a wealthy or noble family.

Poem 28

This maid is from Hantan,

her singing has the lilt.

Make use of her refuge;

her songs go on forever

you're drunk don't talk of going

stay until the morning comes

where you sleep tonight

her embroidered quilt fills a silver bed.

Poem 47

Mistress Tsou of Tiyen

and Mistress Tu of Hantan,

the two of them equally old

and sharing the same love of face,

yesterday went to a tea.

But poorly dressed they were shown to the back.

Because their skirts were frayed,

they had to eat leftover cake.

It is worth noting that Handan is the only city besides the twin capitals mentioned in all the poems, and that there is a hill outside Handan called, very similarly to himself (but with a different 'han'), 'Cold Mountain'. Basis for thinking Hanshan well-born comes from Poem 101:

I recall the days of my youth

off hunting near Pingling.

An envoy's job wasn't my wish.

I didn't think much of immortals;

I rode a white horse like the wind!

Chased hares and loosed falcons-

suddenly now with no home,

who'll show an old man pity?

Note that riding white horses and hunting with falcons near Pingling were all reserved to nobility. One might also infer that he did not advance very far in the bureaucracy, because the higher levels of the official examinations required not only a sound mind and a very sound grasp of the classics, but also an unblemished body. He tells us of a foot injury in several poems:

Poem 71:

Someone lives in a mountain gorge

cloud robe and sunset tassels

holding sweet plants that he would share.

But the road is long and hard

burdened with regrets and doubts,

old and accomplished,

called by others crippled,

he stands alone steadfast.

Poem 113:

My writing and judgment aren't that bad;

but an unfit body receives no post-

Examiners expose me with a jerk.

They wash away the dirt and search for my sores,

of course it depends on Heaven's will.

But this year I'll try once more,

a blind man who shoots for a sparrow's eye

just might score a hit.

Poem 259:

I love the joys of the mountains,

wandering completely free,

feeding a crippled body another day,

thinking thoughts that go nowhere.

Sometimes I open an old sutra,

more often I climb a stone tower

and peer down a thousand-foot cliff

or up where clouds curl around

where the windblown winter moon

looks like a lone-flying crane.

(Cranes are common symbol of Taoist transcendence.)

Taking all this, along with two other poems (below) together, Hanshan's premier English translator, Red Pine, favors a biography that places him in the 8th and 9th centuries CE, as a son of a noble family who, due to a foot deformity, perhaps caused by a riding accident, never advanced very far in the bureaucracy, only up to a clerk or such. Implicated in the An Shi Rebellion, he fled, changing his name and seeking anonymity, eventually settling down far from the capitals, out in the hinterlands of the Taishan mountains, where he would spend his time as a hermit, writing the poems for which he is remembered. This theory is highly speculative and not accepted by all scholars. The latter part of Red Pine's theory stems from these poems:

Poem 26:

Since I came to Cold Mountain

how many thousand years have passed?

Accepting my fate I fled to the woods,

to dwell and gaze in freedom.

No one visits the cliffs

forever hidden by clouds.

Soft grass serves as a mattress,

my quilt is the dark blue sky.

A boulder makes a fine pillow;

Heaven and Earth can crumble and change.

Poem 81:

I labored in vain reciting the Three Histories,

I wasted my time reading the Five Classics,

I've grown old checking yellow scrolls

recording usual everyday names.

"Continued Hardship" was my fortune

"Emptiness" and "Danger" govern my life.

I can't match riverside trees,

every year with a season of green.

(Yellow scrolls could refer to population records, and the astrological quarters 'Emptiness' and 'Danger', which pertains to the Palace and tragedy, respectively, aptly describe the An Lushan's rebellion.)

Poetry

Hanshan's poetry consists of Chinese verse, in 3, 5, or 7 character lines; and never shorter than 2 lines, and never longer than 34 lines. They are notable for their straightforwardness, which contrasts sharply with the cleverness and intricateness that marked typical Tang Dynasty poetry.

Poem 283:

Mister Wang the Graduate

laughs at my poor prosody.

I don't know a wasp's waist

much less a crane's knee.

I can't keep my flat tones straight,

all my words come helter-skelter.

I laugh at the poems he writes-

a blind man's songs about the sun!

(All these terms refer to ways a poem could be defective according to the rigid poetic structures then prevalent.)

Thematically, Hanshan draws heavily on Buddhist and Taoist themes, often remarking on life's short and transient nature, and the necessity of escape through some sort of transcendence. He varies and expands on this theme, sometimes speaking of Mahayana Buddhism's 'Greater Vehicle', and other times of Taoist ways and symbols like cranes.

Poem 253:

Children, I implore you

get out of the burning house now.

Three carts await outside

to save you from a homeless life.

Relax in the village square

before the sky, everything's empty.

No direction is better or worse,

East just as good as West.

Those who know the meaning of this

are free to go where they want.

This influence is probably due to the high preponderance of Taoists in the area; the eminent Taoist Ge Hong acclaimed Tiantai as 'the perfect place for practicing the arts of immortality.'

Poem 13:

"Brothers share five districts;

father and sons three states."

To learn where the wild ducks fly

follow the white-hare banner!

Find a magic melon in your dream!

Steal a sacred orange from the palace!

Far away from your native land

swim with fish in a stream!

Many poems display a deep concern for humanity, which in his view stubbornly refuses to look ahead, and short-sightedly indulges in all manner of vice, like animal flesh, piling up sins 'high as Mount Sumeru'. But he holds out hope that people may yet be saved; 'Just the other day/ a demon became a Bodhisattva.'

Poem 18:

I spur my horse past ruins;

ruins move a traveler's heart.

The old parapets high and low

the ancient graves great and small,

the shuddering shadow of a tumbleweed,

the steady sound of giant trees.

But what I lament are the common bones

unnamed in the records of immortals.

While Hanshan eschewed fancy techniques and obscure erudition, his poems are still highly evocative at times:

Poem 106:

The layered bloom of hills and streams

Kingfisher shades beneath rose-colored clouds

mountain mists soak my cotton bandanna,

dew penetrates my palm-bark coat.

On my feet are traveling shoes,

my hand holds an old vine staff.

Again I gaze beyond the dusty world-

what more could I want in that land of dreams?

He is hard to pin down religiously. He was not a Chan monk, though Chan concepts and terminology sometimes appear in his work. He criticized the Buddhists at Tiantai, yet used many Buddhist ideas and formulations. He was not a Taoist either, as he directed criticism at them as well. But he had no problem bringing Taoist scriptural quotations, and Taoist language when describing his mountains, into his poems. He seems simply to have been himself, avoiding easy answers that he did not obtain himself.

Poem 117:

I deplore this vulgar place

where demons dwell with worthies.

They say they're the same,

but is the Tao impartial?

A fox might ape a lion's mien

and claim the disguise is real,

but once ore enters the furnace,

we soon see if it's gold or base.

Poem 246:

I recently hiked to a temple in the clouds

and met some Taoist priests.

Their star caps and moon caps askew

they explained they lived in the wild.

I asked them the art of transcendence;

they said it was beyond compare,

and called it the peerless power.

The elixir meanwhile was the secret of the gods

and that they were waiting for a crane at death,

or some said they'd ride off on a fish.

Afterwards I thought this through

and concluded they were all fools.

Look at an arrow shot into the sky-

how quickly it falls back to earth.

Even if they could become immortals,

they would be like cemetery ghosts.

Meanwhile the moon of our mind shines bright.

How can phenomena compare?

As for the key to immortality,

within ourselves is the chief of spirits.

Don't follow Lords of the Yellow Turban

persisting in idiocy, holding onto doubts.

Poem 307:

Whoever has Cold Mountain's poems

is better off than those with sutras.

Write them up on your screen

and read them from time to time.

Notes

• ^  Studies in Chinese poetry and poetics, Vol I. Edited by Ronald C. Mioa, 1978; San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center.
• ^  T'oung pao vol 45 p 392-450. - Leiden, 1957
• ^  Sun, Wang and Yu, Xianhao, "Hanshan". Encyclopedia of China (Chinese Literature Edition), 1st ed.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, Red Pine, Copper Canyon Press 2000, ISBN 1-55659-140-3.

External Links

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