The elusive crane: Memory, metaphor and a stone monument from sixth century China

An inscription carved on a cliff of Jiaoshan Island in the Yangzi River, Yiheming, or "Eulogy on burying a Crane," traditionally has been dated to 514 CE and attributed to the Daoist master Tao Hongjing (456-536). It is one of the most famous works of Chinese calligraphy and has been the focus of extensive epigraphic research since it was discovered in the eleventh century. Despite a long history of scholarship, its mysterious origin and the formation of its canonical status still await a critical examination and contextual interpretation.;The analysis in my thesis unfolds in two sections. The first inquires into the origin of this inscription and argues that it was not a real tombstone for a crane, as most scholars have believed, but a symbolic monument erected to convey the discontent of a group of Daoist adherents. Placing its text and visual form into historical context, I demonstrate that the eulogy should be read as a literary concoction rather than a historical document: the burial of the crane was a metaphor rather than an actual event. The ostensible theme of the inscription, a lamentation for a bird, was rooted in the earliest history of Chinese poetry and was a rhetorical device through which writers expressed personal or political views. At the same time, although the inscription adopts the form of a conventional epitaph, its unusual calligraphy and placement in a landscape signified to its original audience that this was not a conventional funerary monument. Based on this new interpretation, I investigate a little studied episode in the history of medieval Chinese Daoism---the persecution of the Highest Clarity Sect---and suggest that members of this sect were the authors and patrons of the inscription.;The original meaning of Yiheming had been completely forgotten by the time it was discovered in the eleventh century. Since then, however, it has gained new significance as a canonical model of calligraphy. The second section of my thesis reexamines the aesthetic discourses around the inscription and demonstrate that its exalted status as a masterpiece of calligraphy arose from the interaction of two fundamentally different attitudes toward the physical remains of the past: a desire to venerate ancient objects for their aesthetic value and a tendency, especially in the late imperial period, to treat ancient inscriptions as documentary sources. I also look into a paradox in the perception of the calligraphic style of the inscription: some found it useless owing to the badly damaged state of the monument, whereas others found it a superb model for practicing calligraphy. Through a historical examination of this paradox, I reconstruct the process of the canonization of Yiheming and use it as a lens through which to view the history of Chinese calligraphy as an ongoing process deeply embedded in socio-cultural realities of different periods.