Miraculous Portraits of Confucius: Images and Auspicious Presences

Images and Auspicious PresencesEarly accounts describe heavenly omens surrounding the birth of Confucius, claim that his body exhibited forty-nine supernatural features, and attribute extraordinary abilities to him.Later, he became the focus of an official cult that expressed religious veneration through regular sacrifices at government-funded temples.Located in administrative centers all over China from the Tang period onward, these temples housed figural icons until a major ritual reform in 1530 replaced them with spirit-tablets inscribed with names and titles.However, many schools and private academies displayed a three-quarter standing portrait of Confucius.Usually incised on stone tablets, such portrayals reproduced a seemingly miraculous prototype that had become famous in the hinterlands of fourteenth-century Yuan China.According to a 1326-or 1327-dated inscription, this tablet had been placed facedown in a stone bridge near Jiangling, in western Hubei.When the prefect's horse reared up and refused to cross the bridge, the tablet was discovered and taken to the local Daoist temple.Only later was it identified as Wu Daozi's portrait of Confucius and moved to the Jiangling prefectural school, where rubbings were used to make replicas for other schools.The supernaturally tinged account of its discovery suggested that the image had a numinous aura, which could be spread elsewhere through reproductions that shared its efficacy and were similarly associated with uncanny phenomena.Another set of miracle tales concerns wooden votive figurines of Confucius and his wife, which were treasured by his descendants and allegedly protected by divine forces during the flight from Qufu to escape the Jin invasion.Such stories reveal little-known religious aspects of the veneration of Confucius in China.