Jade dynasty what makes life dreary

Central to the Chinese theme of retribution and the very Buddhist presentation of it as specifically karmic retribution , is reincarnation at the end of an erring soul's tribulations to a new life determined by its just deserts. Karmic retribution figures in most other popular morality texts. But that says nothing in itself about what deeds produce good or bad karma.

Here, as in so many other tracts, the anonymous authors and editors have been quite explicit in laying out dozens of explicit examples. They include doubting established religious teachings, or ignoring the constraints of social structure, or indulging in pornography, or concocting aphrodesiacs. But most importantly, the examples of sinful behavior relate to outrageous abuse of fellow human beings. We read here, for example, of men who trick gullible women into being their concubines and then dump them, or of scavengers of dead bodies who use them to stuff meat buns sold to innocent customers, or of those who mix random ingredients and sell them as medicine to the gullible.

What about the modern version? Some Chinese antiquarians are willing to be much more specific. However, the version offered here, which is the one that, with occasional variations, is most often distributed today in temples and by pious societies across China, does not seem to be written in eleventh-century prose, literary or vernacular, and it includes obvious later elements. It appears that, throughout the centuries, different editors have felt free to modify the text in minor ways, usually through linguistic or cultural modernizations —introducting penalties for careless driving or the misusing the Internet for example— or discrete omissions, such as references to multiple wives.

One nearly always senses that the editorial hand is attached to the body of a deeply conservative, extremely elderly, censorious, and rather grouchy self-appointed moralist. Indeed, as a translator Giles did some of this kind of modification himself, considering an occasional passage too disgusting to translate in detail. Giles' interest was essentially ethnographic. The goal of most Chinese editors today is pedagogical, with many printings being aimed at the ignorantly sinful, but perhaps almost as many intended for potentially sinful children.

But the Chinese text of his era appears also to have contained greater elaboration of a few passages than one finds today, and the version translated here has a few contemporary touches. For example, the present text condemns pornographic movies, a new feature, even though it refers to success in the long vanished imperial service examinations, and it appears that slaves and concubines appeared in earlier versions that are missing today.

Some versions are quite different, as though retold from scratch. For example, Wieger's bilingual version, presented in Moral Tenets and Customs in China is much more colloquial and uses simpler vocabulary, so that it differs in the wording of most of its sentences, even though it follows the same general ordering of the parts.

In some temples I have retrieved versions that are converted to comic book format, or that are severely shortened. Some texts update the crimes to include drunken driving, computer scams, or other iniquities of the modern era. An English translation is available on-line. Although extremely popular and quite innovative, this is not the first journey through hell. Story Link. A manga book on hell for children Katsusaki, n. I think it is fair to say that there is no definitive text of this work, despite the near universality —for the time being— of the version here.

Perhaps there is no earliest version either. Rather the Jade Guidebook is best seen as a genre of moral story-telling, at once traditional and flexible, carrying an aura of antiquity that is false in detail but authentic in the underlying message of both the cosmic legitimacy of human decency, and the desire for retribution to fall upon the perverse and depraved.

The Jade Guidebook has a seemingly clear organization, wherein each court of hell is presented with its location first, then the punishments administered therein or a listing of the dungeons specializing in particular punishments, next the types of sinners punished, and finally the way in which its horrors may be avoided, often in the form of a little exhortation.

However the admixture, sometimes chaotically, of material that does not follow the scheme suggests to me that the work now circulating may have originated, like so much of the text material important in Chinese popular religion, as trance writing or transcriptions of trance utterances. Other hints of such an origin are the repetition of material in more than one place, the hortatory asides, inconsistencies in the geography described, and the occasional descent into unintelligibility.

Representations of the courts of hell are common in Chinese folk art, where they are generally considered a bit morbid, but where they are found fascinating by children and foreigners and are widely thought to be edifying to the unwashed. For centuries large and wealthy temples have included models of some of the torments of hell, sometimes as life-sized dioramas.

Some of the illustrations used here come from modern equivalents, which today are sometimes animated. The picture at the right is an animated, near-life-sized diorama in central Taiwan. In this display, a demonic torturer is slipping a sinner over and over into and out of a wok of boiling oil. References to Hell are not wanting in politics either. Not surprisingly, such exaggeration tended to discredit the propagandist more than the intended object of hatred.

The picture, like the diorama, shows an ill-omened sinner about to be fried in a wok of boiling oil. The same anti-communist tract contains a picture of water-boarding as another "demonic" torture [p. So hell imagery has clearly been very much alive in modern politics. Americans may remember Vice-President Cheney's defense of water-boarding as a legitimate technique of "enhanced interrogation" in the "war on terror," its subsequent abolition by Congress, and Donald Trump's campaign promise to resume the practice upon becoming president.

In Taiwan, paintings representing the torments of the damned have long been a preferred wall decoration for funerals and memorial services. Murals representing these realms can be found in the rooms of local temples that are dedicated to memorial services, and scrolls showing them are hung up along the walls of temporary tent-chapels used for street or home-courtyard funerals.

The psychodynamics of the entire fascination with representations of hell, including the misfit between the forgiving text and the terrifying pictures and sculptures, calls for analysis. But considering the funeral chapels, it is a special challenge to interpret the possible psychodynamics of the juxtaposition of the image of the punishment of the dead with the grief expressed in a funeral for a beloved family member.

My article on that subject is listed at the bottom of this page. Each of the courts of hell in the present text is illustrated. The anonymous woodcut illustrations have been distributed with the majority of different editions I have in my collection, sometimes very slightly modified when recopied from one booklet to another.

Except for being better printed, they are similar to illustrations made for many centuries to illustrate such tracts. As happens in heavily patronized temples, within a decade they were so begrimed by incense smoke as to have become nearly invisible, and they have no doubt been replaced several times since these pictures were taken.

I have supplemented these with additional pictures from various sources as indicated, especially from a set of anonymous s-vintage printed scrolls intended for the use of funeral officiants which reversed the names of the kings of halls 8 and 9 , and photos of other artwork as I have occasionally encountered it.

Although scenes of torture in the various dungeons are favorites with illustrators, they receive only very brief mention in the text, normally only in the titles of the dungeons. But also important are a few of the "landmarks" of the infernal realms, such as the great mirror that reveals the transgressions a sinner has just denied Court 1 , or the terrace where the deceased may watch his family betray the legacy he sought to leave to them Court 5.

The bridges crossed to a new life make fine material for a theme park, but are mentioned only briefly in our text in Court 10, although they are located near the entry to the first court.

Some of the prisons from which memorial rites seek to liberate trapped souls are discussed in other parts of the text than the descriptions of the ten courts. And so on. Illustrators have, it seems, felt relatively free to move some infernal landmarks from one court to another to achieve a better distribution of material across a series of pictures.

For example, the text describes The Dungeon Where Carts Crush People as part of the Eighth Court, but the mural painter deliberately places it in the Ninth, where I have situated his mural, since it clearly shows the crushing occuring directly under the gaze of the lord of the Ninth Court.

This displacement is true of many of the dungeons, but also of the famous six bridges of reincarnation, which may be at the beginning or end of the whole series. Although Chinese artists, unlike Dante, have not made use of hell scenes to suggest the fate of contemporary political figures, some known figures do turn up in hell who are not part of the text itself. His descent into the dark regions to save his mother as a filial son provides a vivid example of why being a Buddhist cleric is not unfilial, whatever skeptics may say, and is thus an inherent part of the rhetoric that defends Buddhism against its constant Chinese critics.

Shaw Danon and Bilu spent much of their time digging through the treasures left behind in the Bloodrop Cave. There were amazing artifacts in the cave, but nothing at all to eat. When it became obvious they would not find any food, Bilu resigned herself to her fate. As the days drew on, she began to tell Shaw Danon stories about her life, starting with her childhood. She related the story of her mother's death and explained how cold her father was toward her. When Shaw Danon fell ill he spoke of the massacre at Grasstemple Village that he witnessed as a child.

Sharing their pasts brought them closer together. What formed between them was rare. Even after escaping, they shared an unbreakable bond.

Speak with Negar in Sunstream City to hear the rest of the story.