Confucian Literati and Karmic Plots: An Analysis of A Slave to Money Buys a Creditor as His Enemy

I use Chinese popular Yuan drama (zaju 雜劇) as primary sources to examine how Confucian literati employed Buddhist ethical principles such as karma in their writing of popular plays. The play I will describe and analyze in my presentation is Kanqiannu mai yuanjia zhaizhu看錢奴買冤家債主 (A Slave to Money Buys a Creditor as His Enemy), which emphasizes karma and “blessing power” (fuli 福力). The plot concerns a transfer of blessings based on karmic retribution that connects two unrelated families. One family loses the blessing power and goes into decline after one of its members demolishes the local Buddhist temple to build himself a house. After the intervention of a deity, the Lingpai Marquis靈派侯, the family’s blessing power is transferred to another person whose family emerges from poverty into a prosperous life. The plot, created by a Confucian dramatist, shows how the Confucian value of collective family moral responsibility was promoted through the adoption of notions of Buddhist karma and the contrast in the karmic fates of two unrelated families.

I argue that against the backdrop of the Yuan Mongol court’s demotion of Confucian literati and support for Buddhist monks, Confucian literati turned to Buddhist notions of karma to promote their family-oriented social ethics as their own traditions declined. Additionally, the Confucian use of karmic tales to promote their values, signals an important phase in the broader cultural development of an ethos of collective family karma as a means to maintain social order.

Let me begin by describing how karma is dramatized in the play A Slave to Money. The play recounts the story of two unrelated families, that of the Zhou clan and Jia clan, who end up connected by karmic retribution. The rise and fall of the Zhou family hinges on whether the family members behave well and properly. In the prologue to the play, the main character Zhou says:

My ancestors had a lot of money. Since my grandfather, Zhou Fengji, worshiped Buddhism, he built a Buddhist temple and prayed for peace by reading and chanting every day. When my father wanted to rebuild the house but lacked wood, stone, and brick, he destroyed the Buddhist temple. By the time the construction of the house was completed, my father became ill and hundreds of medicines were ineffective. People thought that it was my father’s non-belief in Buddhism that was to blame…I think my ancestors believed in Buddhism, my father did not believe in Buddhism, today there is a karmic retribution!

The play introduces an outside actor-deity to demonstrate the bad fortune that a family member’s misdeeds bring to the entire family:

The blessing power accumulated by his family could have benefited three generations, but because of a bad intention of the father, he demolished the Buddhist temple, and thus the entire family was punished together (hezhou zhefa 合受折罚).

In this play, Confucians creatively introduce “blessing power” to connect the Zhou family with the Jia family. When the father of the Zhou family demolishes a Buddhist temple, the gods transfer the Zhou family’s blessing power to the Jia family as a means of karmic retribution. The fate of the two families thus changed dramatically. With the Zhou family now in decline, the son of the Zhou family fails the imperial examination and loses his money, resulting in familial poverty and destitution. Since Jia received the blessing power that originally belonged to the Zhou family, he became rich and his family began to prosper.

The phrase heshou zhefa (receive the punishment together) deserves additional attention. This phrase evinces the acceptance and interpretation of Buddhist karma by Confucians in the Yuan dynasty. The Zhou father’s destruction of the Buddhist temple resulted in bad karma, consequently he died of an incurable illness, which demonstrates that evil acts result in bad karmic outcomes. Not only was the father subject to retribution, bad fortune was visited upon the entire Zhou family. In a word, the entire family was collectively punished as a result of this temple destruction. This demonstrates that Yuan dynasty Confucian literati interpreted Buddhist karma not only in individual terms, but also emphasized the effect of individual actions on the entire family and promoted family-oriented collective karma.

Confucian conventional ethics emphasize filial piety toward parents and filial sons also shoulder the responsibility for the rise and fall of the entire family. The play A Slave to Money provides some evidence for the Yuan Confucian creative use and interpretation of Buddhist karma. I argue that Confucian dramatists were able to promote their own family-oriented collective values by linking Buddhist notions of karma to family members individually and collectively. And by introducing the transfer of blessing power akin to the transfer of merit, though in this plot a deity enforces the transfer, introducing yet another plot element that is not central to normative Buddhist notions of karma, yet simulates the Buddhist transfer of merit which the deity uses as a form of skillful means.

In 1336 and 1339, Emperor Toghon Temür, Chinese imperial name, Huizong (r. 1333-1370), even closed the imperial examinations based on Confucian classics, thus Confucian teachings and values declined. Instead, the emperor and his court supported Buddhism. Monks enjoyed the privilege of entering officialdom. In the context of the flourishing of Buddhism, Confucian literati turned to Buddhist ethics to promote Confucian values. Yuan dramas were written by Confucian literati who were intent on promoting collective family moral responsibility and common family values. Therefore, I argue that individual acts affecting the collective karmic fortunes of the entire family, as presented in the body of this play, exhibit the acceptance and interpretation of Buddhist karma by Confucians in the Yuan dynasty.