Tanchao replied, "You, 'the patron of the monastic community', have the power to cause clouds to rise and bring down rain. How could I, a monk, do that? "The god said, "Those in my division are capable only of causing clouds to rise. We cannot cause rain to fall. This is why I have made this request. "In the end Tanchao acceded to the request. The god immediately disappeared.

Tanchao then travelled southward, and after five days reached Mt. Chiting. From a distance he uttered spells for the dragons and preached on the Buddhist teaching. In the evening numerous dragons took on human form and presented themselves to Tanchao to pay respects to him. Tanchao preached further. Consequently, the dragons begged him to allow them to take the Three Refuges. They declared themselves to be dragons. When Tanchao asked them to cause
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rain to fall, they looked at each other but did not say anything.

During the night they came again to Tanchao in a dream and said, "Originally, we were infuriated, and therefore made the oath. You, 'the dharma master', have guided us to a life of good conduct. We do not dare to disobey your order. At meal time tomorrow rain will fall."

The next morning Tanchao went to the Linquansi or "Facing the Spring" Temple. He sent a man to the District Magistrate, telling him to arrange a boat to be sent out into the Jiang river and the Dragon King Scripture to be recited on that boat. The District Magistrate asked the monk to go out in the boat himself. When he finished reciting the scripture, heavy rain came. Everyone, on every level of society, was satisfied, and the year's harvest was plentiful. Tanchao died in 492 at age 74. (400ab)

As I read this biography, one of its major concerns seems to be the preservation of the order of society. Tanchao is not a "mediator" in the same sense as in Peter Brown's analysis of Byzantine "holy men"; he mediates between the villagers in this world and the dragons who rule in the other world, and not between villagers. Nevertheless the Buddhist monk, a master of meditation and a kind of "holy man" is also called upon to secure the basic structure of society.

The story makes repeated references to worldly and otherworldly hierarchies. The worldly hierarchy, represented here by the Founding Emperor of the new Qi dynasty and the local official ("District Magistrate"), appears to be mirrored in the corresponding hierarchy of gods. The concerns of these two hierarchies overlap with each other. The emperor has the authority to send monks on missionary assignments to teach meditation; a local magistrate is obviously concerned about the drought and is willing to have a boat sent out into the river and a scripture recited from the boat. The impressive deity who visited Tanchao is informed about the human conduct that had angered the dragons and caused the drought; although he is concerned about the drought, however, he and his retinue of gods can only make the clouds rise. They cannot cause rain to fall, for it is the dragons that control the rain.

The rain miracle story that constitutes the main part of Tanchao's biography in the Biographies of Eminent Monks collection does not deny this basic structure of dual hierarchies in which the worldly hierarchy is implicitly supported by an
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other-worldly hierarchy. The situation that necessitated Tanchao's intervention was a malfunctioning or disorder of this structure. It was by accident that people disturbed the dragons' residence. When the dragons were infuriated and made an oath to stop the rain, a monk, who was an otusider and had a reputation for extraordinary spiritual power that reached even to gods, had to be brought in. Only after the monk had succeeded in coverting the dragons to Buddhism could the dragons be persuaded to abandon their oath and bring down rain.

Stories about encounters between Buddhist monks and beings of the other world (gods, mountain gods, ghosts, dragons, etc.) are found frequently in Huijiao's collection as well as in later collections of the Biographies of Eminent Monks series. I am inclined to interpret these stories as stories connected with missionary works carried out by Buddhist monks, a point to which I shall return below. Monks in these stories succeed in establishing Buddhist centers by converting local deities. The situation appears to have been somewhat analoguous to that of winning the support of secular rulers and government officials. What monks win from secular rulers and officials is patronage; what Tanchao obtains after converting the dragons was their obedience. Tanchao does not challenge the dragons' control over rain. Once the monks' supernatural power was recongized, representatives of this-worldly and other-worldly hierarchies are free to come to them for help when the normal course of events has been disturbed by accident.

Focusing our attention on this basic pattern, which appears to be found frequently in stories about the exercise of supernatural power by Buddhist monks in medieval China, I want to try to speculate about the "function" of these monks, in a way similar to that in which Peter Brown has described the function of "holy men" in Byzantine culture. I would like to suggest that in the Chinese case, the monks might have helped to maintain the social order by providing what was understood to be be emergency solutions to the crises that arose from its malfunctioning. Under normal circumstances the virtue of the officials of this world and the power of officials in the other world, that included creatures like dragons, are believed to make certain that everything worked smoothly ─ for example, that rains came at the appropriate time. Unpredicable occurrences such as drought threaten the society by undermining the credibility of this entire