Baijie Shengfei
Baijie is the most studied goddess of the Bai, worshipped only in the Dali region. Megan Bryson traces four historical guises: a Buddhist goddess and consort of Mahakala in the Dali-kingdom ritual text Dahei tianshen daochang yi; Baijie Amei, a plum-born maiden who conceived the dynasty's founder Duan Siping after touching a dragon, a legend that crystallised in the fifteenth century under the Ming; the chaste widow-martyr Cishan (Baijie Furen), who identified her burned husband by an iron bracelet after the Nanzhao king's massacre at the Pine-Torch Tower and then took her own life; and a tutelary village benzhu venerated chiefly by older women today. The widow-martyr account is preserved in the Bai song of the Burning of the Pine-Torch Tower, the legend that the Bai attach to the Torch Festival.
Children
Domains
- fertility motherhood
- chastity martyrdom
- buddhist tutelary
Powers
- to grant children and protect mothers and the newborn
Epithets
- 白洁夫人Megan Bryson, "Baijie and the Bai: Gender and Ethnic Religion in Dali, Yunnan," Asian Ethnology 72, no. 1 (2013): 3-31. (secondary)
Relations
- spouse: Mahakala, the Black Sky GodIn the Dahei tianshen daochang yi, the chief Mahakala ritual text of the Dali kingdom, Baijie Shengfei is named as the consort of the god Mahakala.Megan Bryson, "Mahakala Worship in the Dali Kingdom (937-1253): A Study of the Dahei tianshen daochang yi," Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 35, no. 1-2 (2012/13): 3-69. (secondary)
- parent of: Duan SipingIn her Ming-era form as Baijie Amei she is the mother of Duan Siping, founder of the Dali Kingdom, conceived after she touched a dragon.Megan Bryson, "Baijie and the Bai: Gender and Ethnic Religion in Dali, Yunnan," Asian Ethnology 72, no. 1 (2013): 3-31. (secondary)
Sources
- Baijie Shengfei is a multiform Bai goddess of the Dali region, attested successively as the Buddhist consort of Mahakala, as Baijie Amei the mother of the kingdom's founder Duan Siping, as the widow-martyr Cishan, and as a contemporary village benzhu.: Megan Bryson, Goddess on the Frontier: Religion, Ethnicity, and Gender in Southwest China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017). (secondary); Megan Bryson, "Baijie and the Bai: Gender and Ethnic Religion in Dali, Yunnan," Asian Ethnology 72, no. 1 (2013): 3-31. (secondary)