Duhen Puti
度恨菩提
“She Who Ferries Regret Across”
Her Story
She is not of the mortal roster. No family, no household, no fate to be read in the registers — she is one of four attendants of the Fairy Disenchantment 警幻仙姑 in the Land of Illusion, and the novel affords her two sentences, both in Chapter 5, and neither of them hers alone.
In the first, the four come out to welcome a guest and find the wrong one. Baoyu has fallen asleep in Qin Keqing’s room and been led into the Land of Illusion. 「姐姐曾说今日今时必有绛珠妹子的生魂前来游玩，故我等久待。何故反引这浊物来污染这清净女儿之境？」 The soul they had waited for was Crimson Pearl’s — Daiyu’s. Disenchantment answers that the founding spirits of the Ning and Rong houses have charged her with waking the boy through desire, and the fairies let it go.
In the second, Baoyu asks their names and is told: 「一名痴梦仙姑，一名钟情大士，一名引愁金女，一名度恨菩提，各各道号不一。」 They are named and then dropped. The tea and wine that follow are brought by unnamed maids.
Her title is the strangest of the four. 度 is the Buddhist word for ferrying a soul over; 菩提 is bodhi, awakening itself. 恨 in this novel is less hatred than the ache of what did not happen — the register the whole book is written in, and the same word in 离恨天, the Heaven of Parting Sorrow where Crimson Pearl wanders. She is the last stage of the sequence the four names spell out: dream, love, grief, and then regret carried across to the far bank. The novel’s ending is her name.
In Xiang Li's Hands
The most openly Buddhist sheet of the group. A blue mark sits between the brows where a bodhisattva’s urna would be; a long-stemmed white lotus rises from the right hand; a jewelled pectoral hangs with pearl drops over a chest left bare in the Tang-Buddhist manner, gold bangles at both wrists. Turquoise line does all the work — sashes drifting to the floor in loops around an almost weightless body. The background is a dark storm-grey wash on every side, the only unlit ground in the group. She is painted as a deliverer, not as a fairy attendant.
The Calligraphy
度恨菩提, four characters running down the right margin — the reverse of her three companions, who are all signed at the left. It is a 道号 and only that: no surname, no personal name, nothing more familiar available. Two Buddhist terms and one word for grief, brushed in a compact upright hand and set on the side of the sheet the figure is turning away from.
Connections
- Jing Huan 警幻仙姑 — the Fairy Disenchantment, whose attendant she is.
- Chimeng Xiangu 痴梦仙姑 — one of the four, named in the same line of Chapter 5.
- Zhongqing Dashi 钟情大士 — one of the four.
- Yinchou Jinnü 引愁金女 — one of the four.
- Lin Daiyu 林黛玉 — as Crimson Pearl, the expected guest whose home beyond 离恨天 shares the 恨 of this fairy’s name; Baoyu arrives in her place.
Others of the same kind · mythic frame / immortal Kongkong Daoren 空空道人 · Jinghuan Xiangu 警幻仙姑 · Zhongqing Dashi 钟情大士 · Yinchou Jinnü 引愁金女 · Shenying Shizhe 神瑛侍者 · Jiangzhu Xiancao 绛珠仙草
Named on these pages Zhongqing Dashi 钟情大士 · Yinchou Jinnü 引愁金女
Dream of the Red Chamber
Xiang Li painted all 413 characters of the novel between 1975 and 1985, the first person to complete the entire cast. See the whole collection · Chinese Empresses
