The name Han Shan literally means “cold mountain,” and it is unclear whether the eccentric Zen
recluse traditionally associated with that name was
in fact a real person or a legendary figure around
whose name the 300 poems attributed to him were
assembled during the TANG DYNASTY of medieval
China. Regardless of their author, however, the
poems themselves have come to be much admired
outside of China, particularly in Japan and the
United States.
The poems seem to have been originally collected sometime late in the Tang dynasty. A preface
to the collection purports to be written by a Tang
official named Yin Luqiu (Yin Lü-ch’iu), who describes his meeting with the strange hermit Han
Shan and his fellow recluse, Shide (Shih-te). According to Yin Luqiu, no one knew anything about
where Han Shan came from, but he lived a reclusive life at a place known as Cold Mountain in the
Tiantai (T’ien-t’ai) Mountains, from which he occasionally visited the nearby Guoqing (Kuoch’ing) Temple. After relating stories of Han Shan’s
unusual behavior, Yin Luqiu describes how both
Han Shan and Shide disappear into a cave. After
this, Yin Luqiu says, he gathered together poems
that the two recluses had carved into trees, or written on rocks or the walls of houses, and he presents
the collection as those very poems.
Yin Luqiu’s preface is suspicious for a number
of reasons, not the least of which is that there is no
record of any Tang bureaucrat of that name. It
seems likely that the entire story is the product of a
fertile literary imagination. It is even uncertain
whether anyone existed by the name of Han Shan,
though there are several mountains by that name,
and one does have a temple. Nor do we have a date
for the poems: Yin never gives a date, and estimates
of dates for the poems’ production range from the
late sixth to the early ninth centuries.
Nevertheless, though the quality is uneven,
many of the poems themselves make worthwhile
reading. They are written in a simple, often colloquial language, and most are in a traditional Chinese eight-line form with five characters to a line,
where even lines rhyme. The lyrics cover a wide
range of topics: Some satirize greed, pride, or the
corruption of the Buddhist clergy; some complain
of poverty, of life’s brevity, or of the difficulties of
official Chinese bureaucracy in the Tang dynasty.
Some of the most effective, and the basis of Han
Shan’s popularity, involve vivid descriptions of
Cold Mountain itself, or of the natural world
around it, often with an application to individual
spiritual life. One such poem is the following:
Here is a tree older than the forest itself;
The years of its life defy reckoning.
Its roots have seen the upheavals of hill and
valley,
Its leaves have known the changes of wind
and frost.
The world laughs at its shoddy exterior
And cares nothing for the fine grain of the
wood inside.
Stripped free of flesh and hide,
All that remains is the core of truth.
(Watson, 1970, 111)
The poems are available in several English
translations, including some by award-winning
American poet Gary Snyder. They speak to a modern environmentalist mood, but also to a spirituality that sees in nature a way of expressing the
inexpressibility of the transcendent God.
Bibliography
Han Shan. Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T’ang
Poet Han-shan. Edited and translated by Burton
Watson. New York: Columbia University Press,
1970.
Henricks, Robert G. The Poetry of Han-shan: A Complete, Annotated Translation of Cold Mountain. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990.
Snyder, Gary. Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems. San
Francisco: Grey Fox Press, 1965.