Li Babai李八百

Style & Daoist names

Li Tuo, Li A (sometimes conflated with him)

Period

Han–Wei–Jin

Dates

? — ?

Role

Fangshi (Master of Methods)Patriarch venerated by the Li Family Way

Birthplace

Shu

Life

Li Babai is an immortal of Sichuanese legend, so named because people called him eight hundred years old; one account gives his name as Li Tuo. The Biographies of Divine Immortals records that he tested his disciple Tang Gongfang by making him suck the pus from his sores, and eventually transmitted to him an elixir scripture. The "Discourse on the Dao" chapter of the Baopuzi: Inner Chapters records that in the Wu region there was a man named Li Kuan who called himself a disciple of Li A, or borrowed the name of Li Babai, and "healed illness with water," so that gentry and commoners flocked to him and "called him Li Babai," at one time gathering several hundred followers into what became known as the "Li Family Way"; Ge Hong criticized it as a "heterodox way." The Li Family Way was an early Daoist tradition popular in Jiangnan and Sichuan during the Wei–Jin period, distinguished by healing with talisman water, a branch of Daoism separate from the Way of the Celestial Masters. All accounts of Li Babai himself belong to legend, and cult remains associated with him survive in Chengdu and other parts of Sichuan.

Contributions & Influence

• Honored as founding patriarch of the Li Family Way, one of the early Daoist traditions of the Wei–Jin period

Legends

According to legend, Li Babai lived to eight hundred years of age and could travel eight hundred li in a single day; he tested Tang Gongfang before transmitting to him the recipe for the golden elixir; the people of Sichuan built shrines to worship him.