Mao Ying茅盈

Style & Daoist names

style name Shushen, Great Lord Mao, Perfected Lord Overseer of Destiny, Perfected Lord of Great Origin

Period

(Traditionally dated to) the Western Han

Dates

(Traditionally dated to) 145 BCE — ?

School

Shangqing (Highest Clarity) School, Maoshan Lineage

Role

Legendary ImmortalTutelary Deity of the Shangqing SchoolEldest of the Three Mao Lords

Birthplace

(Traditionally) Xianyang Nanguan (present-day Xianyang, Shaanxi)

Places of activity

Mount Mao (Maoshan)

Life

Mao Ying, styled Shushen, was the eldest of the Three Mao Lords of Daoism, venerated by the Shangqing school as the Perfected Lord Who Controls Destiny (Siming Zhenjun) and the Perfected of Grand Origin (Taiyuan Zhenren). According to the Inner Biography of Lord Mao (Maojun neizhuan, preserved in various editions of the Yunji qiqian and the Daozang) and Tao Hongjing's Zhengao, Mao Ying was a native of Xianyang in the Western Han who, at eighteen, left his family to cultivate the Dao at Mount Heng, where he met Lord Wang and the Lord Wang of the Western City, who transmitted to him the Way of the Jade Pendant and Golden Earplug. He later travelled south to cultivate on Mount Goujü (present-day Mount Mao in Jurong, Jiangsu). His younger brothers Mao Gu and Mao Zhong left their official posts to follow him, and all three brothers in turn attained the Dao — known together as the "Three Mao Lords" — after which Mount Goujü was renamed Maoshan (Mount Mao) in their honor. The Shangqing scriptural corpus places Mao Ying as the Perfected Lord Who Controls Destiny, in charge of the registers of life and death in the human world, ranking above the Eastern Peak; the Three Mao Lords recur repeatedly in the revelations received by Yang Xi and Xu Mi, and are central deities in the Shangqing narrative of scriptural revelation. One distinction must be made clear: Mao Ying's identity as "a native of Xianyang in the Western Han" appears only in Daoist hagiography and has no basis in the standard histories; his image is the result of a sacred genealogy progressively constructed by the Eastern Jin Shangqing school for Mount Goujü. But the historical significance of Maoshan as a Daoist sacred site, and of the Three Mao Lords as objects of local worship in the Jiangnan region, is real and enduring — the Three Palaces of Maoshan still worship the Three Mao Lords as their principal deities to this day.

Contributions & Influence

• As the Perfected Lord Who Controls Destiny of the Shangqing school, forms the core of the sacred genealogy of the Maoshan sacred site
• The cult of the Three Mao Lords gave Mount Goujü its name Maoshan, making it the ancestral court of the Shangqing school
• The sequence of cultivation and the rites of transmission described in the Inner Biography of Lord Mao influenced the Shangqing school's institutions for transmitting scriptures

Legends

Episodes such as entering Mount Heng at eighteen, receiving the Way from the Lord Wang of the Western City, returning home riding clouds and dragons, feeding a thousand people from a single sheng of wine and food, and ascending to Heaven in broad daylight, all derive from Daoist hagiographies such as the Inner Biography of Lord Mao and the Zhengao, and belong to the realm of religious legend; his Western Han birth date and specific age are likewise tradition internal to the religion, without corroboration in the historical record.