**5. Comparison with the Jingjiang Practice**

One can find a similar case of the use of the Mulian narrative in the "telling scriptures" (Jingjiang dialect: kaƾ35 ݺiƾ44) tradition of the nearby city of Jingjiang 靖 江, located on the opposite bank of the Yangtze River from Changshu and Zhangjiagang. Similarly with Changshu, telling scriptures in Jingjiang takes place at religious assemblies, mainly arranged in the believers' houses nowadays. Presumably, recitation of precious scrolls originally was introduced to this area from the lands south to Yangtze (Suzhou area), where many settlers in Jingjiang, originally an island in Yangtze, came from.<sup>48</sup>

The *Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond* is a prominent text of "telling scriptures" there.<sup>49</sup> Similar with the variant, represented by the manuscript of Li Desheng, the Jingjiang version of this text combines the Mulian story with the references to the ritual practice aimed at the salvation of a female soul. At the same time, many details of the narrative in the Jingjiang version are different from the version of Li Desheng's manuscript.

In this connection, one needs to note that the texts of precious scrolls performed by professional storytellers in the Jingjiang area (locally known as "fotou" 佛 頭 [Jingjiang dialect: v2di31; lit. "the Buddha's head"])<sup>50</sup> in the modern period (1950–2000) existed primarily in the oral form, originally transmitted from masters to their disciples through oral instruction.<sup>51</sup> This implies the existence of multiple varying recensions of the same text as recited by individual performers. For example, the text of the *Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond*, labeled as been recorded from an audio tape of a live recitation session, was deciphered and published by the local scholars.<sup>52</sup> Besides, the performative context of the *Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond* in the Jingjiang practice is different from the Changshu ritual assemblies.

In Jingjiang, telling scriptures is not performed during funerals or memorial days of the dead. Instead, it takes place during the assemblies held for living people, usually on occasions of anniversaries (sixty or seventy) and thus is known as the "assembly of prolonging one's life" (*yan sheng hui* 延 生 會). The repentance of sins of physiological impurity is performed for a still living woman, but also with the aim of preventing her from falling down into the Blood Pond after death. The reason for such difference with the Changshu area is not clear; it may be explained by the special features of local culture. In the modern period, the funerary (and memorial) rituals in the Jingjiang area are conducted by the local Daoist priests, but it is not clear whether this situation was the same in the past. The Daoist priests in Jingjiang also perform the ritual of "breaking the Blood Pond" on the female funerals (similar with their colleagues in the Changshu area), but in this case it is considered to be an afterlife ritual in comparison with the "present-world" ritual by the performers of "telling scriptures".

As I have witnessed both forms of this ritual in the Jingjiang area, I can describe their main difference as "narrative" (didactic) versus "action" (spectacular and dramatic). While performers of precious scrolls obviously emphasize didactic meaning of the Mulian story, the Daoist priests concentrate on the physical destruction of objects, symbolizing the Blood Pond (special scheme of hell drawn on the ground and the bowl placed in the middle of it). While the precious scroll is understandable for the local audience, the Daoist ritual spells are not, and the meaning of the Daoist ritual is mainly embodied in the "action" part. Still, "telling scriptures" with the topic of destruction of the Blood Pond also involves ritual action; which makes two rituals variants of similar practice of a woman's soul salvation.

Despite the significant textual differences between two narrative variants of the *Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond* from Jingjiang and Changshu that I have mainly consulted for this research, they presumably have the common source, namely the *Precious Scroll of Three Rebirths of Mulian*. Though, as has been already noted, the texts of telling scriptures in Jingjiang have been transmitted primarily in the oral mode in the modern period, there have been suppositions of the original existence of written texts in Jingjiang. Chinese scholars Che Xilun and Lu Yongfeng, who specially studied the modern variants of precious scrolls in Jingjiang, have supposed that the majority of texts there with the religious contents (the so-called "sacred scrolls" [*shengjuan* 聖卷]),<sup>53</sup> originally were adapted from the written texts of precious scrolls, transmitted to this area either in the form of printed copies or manuscripts (Lu and Che 2008, pp. 436–37). Leaving aside the discussion of whether this hypothesis is correct, we can note that several major texts in the Jingjiang tradition, including especially the *Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond*, indeed can be traced back to the written versions.

First, comparison with the old printed editions of the *Precious Scroll of Three Rebirths* demonstrates their close affinity with the *Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond* (Jingjiang version). Of course, many elements have been added by the local performers, especially as concerns the ritual practice with which this text is associated in Jingjiang. Second, written materials in possession of modern *fotou* can prove that these printed copies may have reached Jingjiang quite long ago. For example, one *fotou* owned the printed copy of the *Precious Scroll of Three Rebirths*, the lithographic edition made by the Hongda Morality Bookstore (宏 大善書局) in 1922.<sup>54</sup> It is unclear, though, when this copy was transmitted to the Jingjiang area, similarly with the copies of the old printed texts of the *Precious Scroll of Three Rebirths*, discovered in the Changshu area.

### **6. The** *Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond* **in the Ritual Practices of Southern Jiangsu**

Comparison with the Jingjiang materials demonstrates that the story of Mulian, embodied in its late precious scroll version, has been widely used in the ritual practices of the southern Jiangsu areas. This is further collaborated by other data on the precious scrolls recitation in the Suzhou area in the first half of the twentieth century. While nowadays "masters of scroll recitation" (*xuanjuan xiansheng* 宣卷先生) in Suzhou suburbs mostly do not recite either the *Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond* or *Precious Scroll of Mulian* and even do not participate in the funerary (memorial) rituals, like their colleagues in Changshu; the situation must have been different in the past – the period before 1950. Besides, the available historical evidence on scroll recitation in the Suzhou area suggests an alternative performative context for the *Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond* and *Precious Scroll of Mulian*, namely collective ritual assemblies organized by local women praying for their afterlife salvation "in advance".

According to the information from the old master of scroll recitation Jin Wenyin 金文胤 (1926-?) from Shengpu 勝浦, a town near Suzhou,<sup>55</sup> such "assemblies of the Blood Pond", known under the name of "submission of the Blood Pond" (*jiao Xue hu* 繳血湖) once were comparatively common in the broader Suzhou area.<sup>56</sup> They were organized on the village basis and required participation of the majority elderly women in these communities. These communal assemblies usually took three days, including performance of various rituals; and in the evening recitation of precious scrolls in the individual households took place. Unfortunately, not much evidence of these assemblies is available now. No doubt, texts devoted to Mulian once were widely used on these occasions. Such texts also circulated in the Suzhou area. For example, the manuscript of the *Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond* by Gao Zhuqing 高竹卿, dated 1922, was preserved in the collection of Suzhou Museum of Chinese Drama (Guo 2018, p. 258). Precious scrolls in the collection of this museum (mostly manuscripts of the late nineteenth – early twentieth centuries) were gathered from local scroll recitation performers during expeditions in the early 1960s. Among them, there is also a considerable number of manuscripts titled the *Precious Scroll of Mulian*, mostly closely following the contents of the *Precious Scroll of Three Rebirths* (Guo 2018, pp. 121–22).

According to the evidence of Jin Wenyin, the big assemblies of the Blood Pond declined since the 1930s because of the damage caused by the Japanese aggression; but some relevant ritual elements, including recitation of precious scrolls, were transferred to the meetings in private houses that are usually dedicated to the anniversaries of old women (mothers of families). Still, the tradition of communal assemblies in the Changshu area can be regarded as a vestige of this old tradition. According to Yu Dingjun, such "assemblies of the Blood Pond" (*Xue hu hui* 血 湖 會) are still occasionally held in Changshu. These are also communal rituals, in which all elder women in a community take part (Yu 2015, pp. 2584–85). These also involve recitation of the *Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond*, *Penitence of the Blood Pond*, *Precious Scroll of Mulian*, and *Precious Scroll of the Penitence Rites of the Liang King*. Apparently this assembly has to do with the preservation of custom of "telling scriptures" during communal "Buddhist assemblies" (*Fohui* 佛 會), including temple celebrations for various deities, which still survives in the Changshu area.

Similar to the Jingjiang tradition of the private assemblies of "prolonging one's life", as well as the big assemblies in the Suzhou suburbs, these assemblies of the Blood Pond represent the "advance" performance of the rituals of post-mortem salvation, which are followed by the Daoist rituals of the "destruction of the Blood Pond" during funerals of local women. Such assemblies are similar to the "advance rites" performed for the women in rural areas of southern China, including Guangdong and Fujian (e.g., Ma (2007); Cheung (2008)). In traditional society, these rituals also have meaning of purification and protection of women who have reached the menopausal age. However, in southern China these assemblies do not involve recitation of precious scrolls. The form of "telling scriptures" (or scroll recitation), which combines the vernacular narratives of precious scrolls with the ritual action, seems to be peculiar of southern Jiangsu areas, now best preserved in the Changshu, Jingjiang, and Wuxi areas.

Despite the grea<sup>t</sup> popularity of the *Precious Scroll of Three Rebirths* and its derivatives in the Suzhou area in the modern period, one should not overemphasize its impact on the local culture. This is well observed in the discrepancy between local ritual practice and values propagated in the written texts. While the *Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond* by Li Desheng, same as the *Precious Scroll of Three Rebirths*, encourages audiences to keep vegetarian diet,<sup>57</sup> this prohibition does not have much impact on the real-life practice of "telling scriptures". Though it is common in Changshu to abstain from meat on the day before the ritual assembly, funerary recitations of precious scrolls usually use meat offerings, which contradicts mainstream Buddhist practices.<sup>58</sup> Apparently, though the *Precious Scroll of Three Rebirths* was adapted for ritualized recitations in the Changshu area, the religious injunctions of this text were not accepted by the local society in Changshu. Major religious values and symbols of this text were not absorbed in the local ritual practice of "telling scriptures".
