Mountains, as the places where immortals attain the Dao and achieve their transcendence, are one of the most significant natural beings for Daoists and are positioned in the core of Daoist practices. In the theory of religious Daoism, such transcendental recluses are often named as “True-man”(Zhenren真人) or “Immortal” (Xian Ren仙人), who are Daoist practitioners having attained the Dao. It implicitly signifies a picture on which a recluse is meditating by a mountain cave. Another form of this word in Shuowen Jiezi is 僊, which is glossed as “long-lived and ascended”. The word Xian仙, by its graphic form recorded in Shuowen Jiezi (说文解字, the earliest Chinese Dictionary), is glossed as “man in mountain”. Their position betwixt and between physical forms and realms of existence was the basis of their spiritual power, enabling them to assist the deceased in their transcendent journey to paradise. This paper analyzes the physical hybridity of immortals, their transitory existence, and their role as shaman-like intermediaries, demonstrating that Eastern Han representations of immortals repeatedly emphasize their liminal nature and close connection to the animal world.

Such imagery is based upon and expands Western Han (206 BCE–8 CE) prototypes and suggests an important association between these figures and the afterlife that is not discussed in textual sources. Possessing iconographic uniformity in a time of growing regionalism, these images represent immortals as transient figures moving through an intermediate realm where they are often joined by deer, tigers, dragons, birds, heavenly horses (tianma 天馬), and other animals. Immortals (xian 仙) are depicted as feathered sprite-like or dragon- or snake-tailed figures climbing stylized mountains or floating in swirling cloudscapes on tomb reliefs from the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 ce). Yet it continues its important task of maintaining territorial relations indirectly-through rituals at sacred sites.

The study further argues that Daoist sacred geography after the Han continues the cosmological ideals of the Shanhai jing but without the original administrative purposes. The cosmological model of the Shanhai jing stands in opposition to that promoted in the Yugong (Tribute of Yu), a text on geography in the Confucian classics.

After analyzing the structure, contents, compilation history, and dates of this complex text, I argue that the Shanhai jing originally was intended as a guidebook for administrating resources and territorial relations at the Qin and early Han courts, and followed a specific cosmological model similar to that found in early Daoist texts. This study argues that the later Daoist sacred geography of sacred mountains and grotto-heavens is a continuation and elaboration of the one envisioned in the Shanhai jing. The Shanhai jing (Classic of Mountains and Seas) is a description of the sacred geography of early China.

Shan hai jing english pdf