The Divine Woman: Dragon Ladies and Rain Maidens in T'Ang Literature

by Edward H. Schafer

Book Overview

This important exploration of Chinese mythology focuses on the diverse and evocative associations between women and water in the literature of the T'ang dynasty as well as in the enormous classical... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 086547009X
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: North Point Press
• Length: 239 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Majestic beauty in the waters

Schafer presents a world of wondrous beauty, where ancient goddesses live on in medieval literature. The stories and poems combine shamanism with eroticism, and devotion with adventure. The goddesses appear in the forces of nature, and seldom in world mythology do we see nature treated with such tender admiration. No wonder Gary Snyder wanted to write the foreword. Over the centuries down to through the T'ang dynasty, Schafer shows the powers of Chinese nature goddesses in decline. From primordial deities wearing feathers or shells, they slowly fade into ghostly, silken-gowned courtisans. A poem attributed to the "Maiden in the Mist of the Hsiang" [River] reads: That red tree -- the color of intoxication in autumn, That blue stream -- a string strummed at night. A delightful meeting that may not be repeated: This wind and rain are blurring them, as will the years. In this medieval literature, the beauties of nature evoke reverence and pleasure, as they still do. And the book focuses on only one class of Chinese goddesses, namely the sacred powers of waters, seas, rivers, and the mountain sources of cloud and rain. Besides these are other goddesses and divine women of Daoism, Buddhism, and popular religion, many of them revered by millions of people today.