Daniel Burton-Rose (Chinese History; IKGF Visiting Fellow at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg)

Peng Shaosheng (1740–96; dharma name Jiqing) is best-known for his hagiographical collections of male and female Buddhist lay devotees, and also occupies an important place in Qing intellectual history due to his role in the defense of Song Learning against Evidential Studies. In this lecture Dr. Burton-Rose focuses on Presenting Oneself to the Spirits (Zhishen lu, preface 1773), Shaosheng’s compilation of the divine communications of the previous four generations of his male relatives. In Presenting Oneself, Shaosheng developed the theological justifications for spirit-writing practice formulated by his great-grandfather Peng Dingqiu (1645–1719) into a method for reuniting Heaven and Man. He thereby claimed a place for his own patriline in a chain of divine revelations from the high deity Wenchang that first began in the Song dynasty (960–1279).