Organizer: Lowell Skar, University of Pennsylvania
Chair: Vivian-Lee Nyitray, University of California, Riverside
Discussant: Robert P. Weller, Boston University
Recent scholarship on socioreligious developments in early modern China has begun to focus on the contributions of religious practices to the formation of local society and local identity. This panel presents four distinct approaches to the study of these phenomena. Katz uses microhistorical analysis of one sacred site to address the problems of text and textuality, and hegemony and resistance. Szonyi examines the tensions between official ideology and local identity by studying the changing pressures on Fujian’s ancient agricultural sacrifice from within and outside of its communities. Gerritsen suggests that locally produced religious texts often fostered a specifically local religious culture, thereby enabling local elites to shape and order their communities. Skar makes the long-term study of one legacy of inner alchemy the focus for exploring literati strategies for locating themselves and their traditions in a changing sociopolitical environment. Each paper explores aspects of change in the relationships between religion, society, and the state between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. At the same time, each will also grapple with the methodological issues affecting our assessment of these relationships. After briefly presenting his or her research (summaries will be available at http://sun.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/SSCR/ prior to the conference), each panelist will suggest how it represents a new approach to the study of religion (40 minutes). The discussant will then comment on the papers and presentations, identifying the most central issues and questions (15 minutes). The second hour will consist of exchanges between panelists and the audience, mediated by the discussant.
On the Textuality of Sacred Sites in Early Modern China: A Case Study of the Palace of Eternal Joy
Paul Katz, National Central University
This paper, a microhistorical study of the cult of Lü Dongbin at the Palace of Eternal Joy (Yongle Gong), discusses several methodological issues surrounding the study of Chinese sacred sites. In researching the history of the Palace, I have attempted to supplement previous research on such sites, which has frequently imposed a unitary view on them, interpreted them from the perspective of an "implied pilgrim," or reconstructed the beliefs of "ordinary pilgrims." In contrast, my research stresses the diversity of ideas, values, and beliefs which flourished at sacred sites like the Palace of Eternal Joy. My emphasis on cultural diversity suggests that studying texts produced at sacred sites involves much more than simply reading, translating, and analyzing their contents in order to recover the past. Texts also need to be studied in terms of their textuality, that is, the ways in which they were produced, transmitted, and understood. In exploring the textuality of the Palace’s texts, I also use the concepts of hegemony and resistance to examine the ways in which the Taoists and elites who patronized the Palace attempted to impose their representations of this site’s history and Lü Dongbin’s cult on other members of the community, as well as the successes and failures these efforts encountered.
"She" Altars and Local Cults: Official and Popular Religious Organization in Fujian
Michael Szonyi, University of Toronto
This paper studies the changing meaning of the ‘she’ in Fujian from Song to Ming times. In antiquity the ‘she’ denoted an altar for sacrificing to the local god of the soil. In the Song, previously anonymous ‘she’ deities in some areas were replaced by identifiable, named gods closely associated with the particular locality. As part of his broad attempt to regulate rural social life, the first Ming emperor tried to revive the ancient practice of village sacrifice at the ‘she’, and prohibited worship of most other cults. The paper examines the implications of this development on village religious life in Fujian. With the tremendous social and economic changes of the mid-Ming, popular temples replaced or displaced the ‘she’ altars mandated by the state. Such temples, while theoretically illicit, became important sites of local organization. The writings of cult members show that they were anxious to link their temples to the ‘she’ tradition. Tracing the history of one’s ‘she’ thus became an important part of community strategies of legitimation. By the end of the dynasty, claims to a ‘she’ could even be bought and sold. The paper thus considers the articulation of official ideology and state structures with local community organization and identity in the realm of religious life. It underscores the difficulties in distinguishing normative and descriptive in representations of Chinese religion.
Shaping One’s Place: Ji’an Inscriptions and Images of Local Community
Anne T. Gerritsen, Harvard University
The many temple inscriptions included in local gazetteers and literary collections are among the obvious sources available for the study of local religion. They are particularly useful for the study of the nexus between state and society, as their literati authors often had ties to the local community as well as connections to the central government. Temple inscriptions reflect the literati’s changing concerns, and their shifting alliances with members of the local community and representatives of the state. During the early Ming, local literati wrote many inscriptions to celebrate the rebuilding efforts that took place after the widespread destruction caused by warfare at the end of the Yuan. These early Ming inscriptions invoke the influence of the central government much more frequently than similar texts dating from the Song and Yuan dynasties. This suggests that the state’s heightened efforts at shaping local culture during the reigns of the early Ming emperors were successful. Early Ming literati seem to agree with, or at least pay lip service to, nation-wide efforts at eradicating local differentiation. I will argue, however, that a careful reading of literati inscriptions in combination with other materials originating at the local level, such as biji collections and religious materials that circulated amongst members of religious associations, shows that local distinctiveness was not lost. This reveals that local texts both reflected and created specifically local cultures, and that local elites often attempted to use such texts as a means of shaping and ordering their own communities.
Putting Perfection in Place: Projections of Golden Elixir Alchemy in Society from Song to Ming Times
Lowell Skar, University of Pennsylvania
This paper studies how a body of contemplative teachings became embedded in Southern Song elite society, rose to national recognition in the Ming reunification, but remained throughout a way to embody spiritual perfection in local communities. Twelfth-century heirs to the widespread teachings of Golden Elixir alchemy increasingly portrayed themselves as part of a single line of patriarchs well-known to their peers and patrons. These southeastern itinerant adepts made their spiritual self-cultivation available for community-building, boasting their ability to forge ties among other literati, improve community cohesion, and elevate less refined therapeutic traditions. Their individual practice, group initiations, and therapeutic rituals for personal, communal and state benefits communicated new visions of self, community, and world to their elite followers and supporters. The social network underlying this spiritual tradition strengthened locally and regionally between the mid-thirteenth and mid-fourteenth centuries, as its adepts became intertwined with the regional Dao Learning and northern Quanzhen movements. Some southeastern literati who reconstituted China’s cultural institutions in early Ming times elevated the Golden Elixir tradition above the Quanzhen movement (using the Southern-Northern Lineage cultural model derived from Chan Buddhism), while also promoting Dao Learning as state orthodoxy. These cultural politics manifest the desire of early Ming advisors to highlight the continuity of southern traditions with the mainstream of Chinese civilization reassessed in the Northern Song, while surpassing the humiliating Mongol conquest. While marking a return, at the national level, of Golden Elixir alchemy, literati continued to use these teachings to project spiritual perfection into various southeastern locales.
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