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symbolic order. This was the moment for Buddhist monks to step in: Buddhist monks were then requested to perform their "rain magic". We can imagine that the risks might not have been very high for either the monks concerned or for the members of local society. Monks were brought in from the outside. If the rain failed to come, they could simply return, or made to return, to where they came from. The credibility of the local order was also not likely to have been affected further by this failure. If the rain in fact came, as invariably it does in the monks' biographies, the credibility of the local order would have been restored, and, in fact, strengthened by incorporating the role of the monk into the order itself.

This speculative analysis of the role of Buddhist monks would suggest that there must have been constant demand for supernatural feats by Buddhist monks. It is in the nature of things that many events of diverse kinds threaten the order of this world in a way similar to drought; people must have been tempted to turn to Buddhist monks to neutralize the challenges that these events presented. Buddhist monks appear to have responded to these requests as they expanded their influences in rural and mountainous areas outside of major cities. A pressure for the "overproduction of the holy", to return to Peter Brown's language, might have resulted from this.

In theory there was no inherent reason that indicates that Buddhist monks alone were capable of performing this function, and I assume that appeals to other religious figures were also made frequently. It might be important, however, to remember that Buddhism was a foreign religion, and Buddhist monks came to local communities from "outside", particularly during the time when Buddhism was beginning to penetrate local communities in medieval China. As the "outsiders" par excellence they might have had a particularly strong appeal in this regard. More detailed descriptions of other-worldly hierarchies often appear in Daoist sources. With a closer relationship to local deities, who formed part of the local other-worldly hierachy, Daoist priests might have been less suited to perform the function that we are attributing to Buddhist monks here.

As I noted above I also read the story of Tanchao as a story about the spread of Buddhism, and in support of this reading I consider some of the geographical information given in the story. In the table of contents that is attached at the end
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of the Taisho edition of Huijiao's collection Tanchao is identified as a monk at Mt. Lingyin in Qiantang (421b17).(12) But in the table of contents that Sosho reproduced of Baochang's collection Tanchao is identified as a monk at the Longhuasi temple. Moreover, Huijiao mentions explicitly that Tanchao was affiliated with the Longhuasi temple in the capital city and that he kept returning to the capital over and over again. As we noted above, Huijiao also notes explicitly that when the rule of the new Qi dynasty began, Tanchao was sent to Liaodong to engage in missionary activities. Tanchao was a monk who frequently moved between the flourishing Buddhist temples in the capital city and areas near and far where Buddhism was not as securely established.

With this in mind it seems natural to read the story of Tanchao's miraculous feat at Mt. Lingyin, with its emphasis on converting local dragons, as a story that describes how Buddhism came to be accepted locally in an area that was not very far from the capital. This story of Tanchao's feat at Mt. Lingyin forms a coherent whole by itself; it probably first circulated as an independent miracle story rather than as a part of a biography. At some later point this miracle story was incorporated into the biography of Tanchao, who must have been fairly well known as a monk in the Longhuasi temple in the capital city. Or it might be more accurate to say that the miracle story was transformed into a biography by adding a short introductory paragraph, and a sentence at the end giving the date of his death and his age.

The name Qiantang appears in the annal of the Founding Emperor of Qin dynasty in Sima Qian's Book of History completed around 90 B.C. (13) In 907 Qian Liu founded the kingdom of Wuyue with the capital in Hangzhou; this kingdom came to be known for its generous support of Buddhism. Later in 1127 the Song dynasty lost its Northern capital and moved its captial to this same city, which was then called Lin' an. Thus, in later years this area became an important center of Buddhism in South China.

In spite of its early origin and later renown as a major Buddhist center, Huijiao's collection contains only two biographies that mention gthis location: the

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　　   (12) It is possible  that  this  table  was prepared

　　　　   by someone other than Huijiao.

 

　　   (13) Shiji fascicle 6 (Zhonghua shuji edition,