Medieval Buddhist of the Day

[Twitter, 5/29/19] Medieval Buddhist of the Day: Feng Bao 封抱, who died in 695, during the Zhou interregnum of Empress Wu. His age at death is given as 68 sui, so he was most likely born in 628, during the Tang. His epitaph is known from at least one rubbing, at Kyoto University. Here’s a link to a blurry picture of the rubbing, and here’s a transcription.

As with other MBODs, I haven’t researched him in depth, but in this case encountered him in the context of Liu Shufen’s 劉淑芬 work. Liu has written extensively on exposure burial 露尸葬 in Tang Buddhism, including some work on burial caves 瘞窟 at Buddhist cave temple sites, which she considers to be a subset of exposure burial. Most of the examples of exposure burial she found were burials of women. Feng Bao was the only man she found whose epitaph records his burial in an as yet unidentified cave or niche somewhere at Longmen 窆於龍門山之懸巖. According to Liu, women who sought such burials may have done so to try to mitigate the impurity of a female incarnation. But what about men?

Feng Bao’s epitaph suggests he was a serious Buddhist. Was he trying to mitigate the impurity of incarnation in general? Did he seek a monastic burial? The location of his tomb is described as “overlooking the sacred chamber of Pinggong” 睇平公之神室. Liu suggests Pinggong may have been a monk or hermit and Feng Bao his lay disciple, and that Feng wanted to be buried near him. It’s hard to say for sure. In any case, I’d love to know what kind of a person Feng was, to have resisted convention to this degree.

One feels a certain sympathy for his relatives, who assure us that all the obsequies required by filial piety have been observed: 卜其兆域。奉安神靈。孝子之事終矣。禮之畢也。It must have been a challenge, given the eccentric location of his tomb. Women who chose exposure burial were sometimes subject to secondary burial in a family tomb after time had passed. No such reburial is recorded for Feng Bao, but I wonder if his relatives considered it, or if they were happy to leave the family eccentric where he was.