Ханьшань: Таң дәуірінің аңыздағы ақыны

Chinese monk and poet
the Tang dynasty poet

Hanshan (, ) is a Chinese Buddhist and Taoist figure associated with a collection of poems from the Chinese Tang dynasty in the Taoist and Chan tradition. No one knows who he was, when he lived and died, or whether he actually existed. In the Chinese Buddhist tradition, Hanshan and his sidekick Shide are honored as emanations of the bodhisattvas Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra, respectively. In Japanese and Chinese paintings, Hanshan is often depicted together with Shide or with Fenggan, another monk with legendary attributes. Little is known of his work, since he was a recluse living in a remote region and his poems were written on rocks in the mountains he called home. Of the 600 poems he is thought to have written at some point before his death, 313 were collected and have survived. Among the 57 poems attributed to Hanshan's friend, Shide,

In Lüqiu Yin's preface to Hanshan's poems, he claims to have personally met both Hanshan and Shide at the kitchen of Guoqing Temple, but they responded to his salutations with laughter then fled. Afterwards, he attempted to give them clothing and provide them housing, but Lüqiu Yin writes that the pair fled into a cave which closed itself and Shide's tracks disappeared. This led Lüqiu Yin, governor of Tai Prefecture, to collect Hanshan's writings, "the poems written on bamboo, wood, stones, and cliffs and also to collect those written on the walls of peoples' houses." However, Burton Watson is of the opinion that Lüqiu Yin did not exist in reality and that his preface to Hanshan's poems is nothing more than myth. In the introduction to his book, he says of Lüqiu Yin's preface to the poems:

If we follow Watson and discount the preface of Lüqiu Yin, accepting only the words of the poet himself, we see that Hanshan says only that he wrote his poems on the rocks. Nowhere in the poetry does he say that he wrote them on trees or bamboo or wood or the walls of people's houses. The collection of poems attributed to Hanshan may span the entire Tang dynasty as Edwin G. Pulleyblank asserts in his study Linguistic Evidence for the Date of Hanshan. Wu Chi yu in A study of Han shan identifies him as the monk Zhiyan (智岩, 577–654), but that has been disputed by Paul Demiéville among others. The Encyclopedia of China gives his date as around 712 and after 793. Jia Jinhua came to the conclusion, after a study of Chan phrases in some 50 of the poems, that this particular group of poems may be attributable to the Chan monk Caoshan Benji (840–901). However, the dates for both Zhiyan and Caoshan Benji contradict Hanshan, who says that he was much older than either.

Early translations include those by Arthur Waley 27 poems by Han shan, Gary Snyder Cold Mountain Poems, and Burton Watson Cold Mountain: 100 Poems. The first complete translation to a western language was into French by (Le Mangeur de brumes : l'œuvre de Han shan poète et vagabond). Stephan Schumacher translated 150 poems into German in 1980. There are four full English translations, by Robert G. Henricks, Red Pine, Paul Rouzer and Peter Levitt

Other translations: Encounters With Cold Mountain, by Peter Stambler (130 poems). Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry (96 poems) by Wandering Poet (2005, 2012).

The poetry from Cold Mountain has influenced the poets of many generations and cultures. He is especially loved by the Japanese, who know him as Kanzan. Hanshan was a sympathetic and important figure for Beat Generation writers Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac. In the introduction to his translation which appeared in the Evergreen Review, Snyder wrote of Hanshan, "He and his sidekick Shih te (Jittoku in Japanese) became great favorites with Zen painters of later days — the scroll, the broom, the wild hair and laughter. They became Immortals and you sometimes run into them today in the skidrows, orchards, hobo jungles, and logging camps of America." Kerouac's The Dharma Bums closes with a vision of Hanshan and, at Snyder's suggestion, Kerouac dedicated the book to the fabled poet. Paul Rouzer reads the poems as Buddhist teaching poems, referring to Hakuin Ekaku Kanzan shi sendai kimon 寒山詩闡提記聞 (1746) ("Notes on the Lectures on Cold Mountain's Poems at Icchantika Cave") that largely ignores the biographical reading most commonly found in other sources. Translations by Snyder and by Red Pine were influential in the work of the artist Brice Marden, who executed a large series of paintings, drawings, and prints themed around the poems. Poems by Hanshan influenced music by the Microphones and Mount Eerie, both fronted by Phil Elverum.