by Livia Kohn
In all this I have barely touched on the diverse ways in which the many temple-cults of the region were drawn into the religious orbit of the Lingji gong and Patriarchal Temple.10 For the moment let me underscore the fact that the complex religious structure I have adumbrated formed the base from which the Zhou and Fang launched their campaign to bring their supernatural patrons to the attention of provincial and metropolitan officials. This campaign was wildly successful, in part, I believe, because the law of avoidance did not apply to Fujian. What this meant, of course, was that if one sought the ear of a prefect, that ear often belonged to a relative. This was particularly the case with respect to the Zhou, who counted many officials and “pre-
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sented scholars” among their numbers. However, even the lesser Fangs could be assured that their well-placed connection hailed from Min County. In Fujian, the bureaucratic and the personal were not in opposition (Hymes 1997, 130).
The Fangs of Min County
When we examine the role that the Lingji gong played in the lineage consciousness of the Fang and the Zhou, we might say that it functioned much like the Sacrificial Hall did for the Purple-Robed Fangs of Putian. This analogy is intended to suggest that the former were seeking an alternative way to distinguish themselves from their increasingly hegemonic cousins in Putian, who, by the way, had instituted a series of tomb sacrifices from which the throngs attending the Sacrificial Hall were excluded. In this scenario the Fangs of Min County were acting like the second, Baidu branch of the Putian Fangs, who devoted their ritual efforts to the patronage of the gods of the Xiangying miao (Auspicious Response Temple) in Putian, despite the inclusive claims of the Sacrificial Hall (Dean 1993, 35–37; 1998b, 27–
28).11 However, even if the Fangs of Min County were quite conscious of the ritual activities of their relatives farther south, they also had competitors much closer to home. At the end of the Song and beginning of the Yuan dynasties, a second-generation disciple of Zhu Xi named Xiong Qufei had built the Aofeng shutang (Turtle Peak Study Hall), in which he taught and worshiped before images of the “Five Worthies of the Orthodox Transmission of the Dao,” whose names I need not enumerate ( Minzhong lixue yuanyuan kao 37.4a–9a). No one in Xiong’s circle had anything to do with the Xu brothers, and vice versa. The Fangs of Min County, as we have seen, had their own orthodox transmission, so to speak, which derived from Liu Zongyuan and Han Yu.
At the very least, then, we can conclude that the three descent groups of the Fang lineage in Minbei constructed their identity along very different lines. And where the Purple-Robed Fangs supplemented their annual celebrations at the Sacrificial Hall with a tomb-cult to the pioneer ancestors of their descent group, which seemed only to emphasize their hegemony over the former, the Fangs of Fang Mountain turned to the “death site” of two other immigrants to Fujian to serve as stand-ins for their own pioneering ancestors and as foci for the accomplishments and aspirations of their own descent group. The analogy between the temple-cult to the Xu brothers and a cult to ancestors is strengthened by the fact that in the thirteenth century the cult
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to the Xu brothers absorbed the nearby temple-cult to an actual pioneering ancestor, Weng Chengzan, a man who had come to Aofeng in the late ninth century and was recognized as the one responsible for converting the area to productive use ( Xuxian hanzao 1.30–31; see Davis 1985, 48).12
Now, if the patronage of the Xu brothers was analogous to an ancestor cult, we might entertain the notion that it also represented an alternative way of constructing such a cult, and a way that was more in tune with the popular tradition of Fujian. Too much is often made of the categorical distinctions between gods, ghosts, and ancestors. In Fujian, at least, whose history can be traced in the single and multisurname settlements of Chinese immigrants since the Han dynasty, the cult to gods and the cult to ancestors were often conflated. This combination of temple ( simiao) and ancestral hall ( jiaci )—a persistent characteristic of many areas of Fujian from the Song through the Late Imperial and even Republican periods—was designated in genealogies as “household temples” ( jiamiao). They were dedicated either to one of the several salvific deities characteristic of Fujian (Mazu, Guanyin, Baosheng dadi, Qingshui zushi, etc.) or to an ancestor identified as a celestial emperor or lord (e.g., Wu[xing] dadi), but in both cases the temple might also include altars to other ancestors.
Other, more complex forms of combining territorial and ancestral cults were to be found in multisurname settlements (Lin and Peng 1993, 38–46). In Fujian, moreover, commoners regarded the most significant pre-Song temple-cults—to the three divinities of Mount Wuyi, for example, or to the four rulers of the early Han kingdom of Min-Yue —as both protectors and founding ancestors (Xu 1993, 141–160). These gods had secured the peace and prosperity of Northern Fujian while guaranteeing its independence, such that the people of Fujian could absorb and enjoy the benefits of the civilization of the Central Plain on their own terms. The Fangs, too, were expressing their own lineage consciousness through two gods that had protected Min County from internal tyrants and invading states, that had made the region safe for landownership and study, and that had allowed these landlords and their studious descendants to make a serious mark on the larger world without having to give up their own.
As such, the cult to the Xu brothers allowed this descent goup and others like them to negotiate, on the one hand, between the local and the global and, on the other, between the perspective of the commoners who worked for them and the perspective of their elite cousins who excluded them.
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This said, we must nonetheless insist that the temple-cult to the Xu brothers was not a “household temple,” nor for that matter should it be referred to as a Daoist temple or abbey. It was a community temple that served the illiterate peasants and petty merchants of the region as much as the literate commoners and self-conscious descent groups such as the Fang and Zhou. All strata, moreover, participated in the large-scale rituals performed at the temples by Daoist priests and Buddhist monks. And if it were the literati of the area who “composed” the commemorations of these rituals or even gathered in exclusive groups to perform their own, they did so in ways that were nothing but more-refined versions of the mediumism of their less-educated co-regionalists. That such commemorations achieved such a prominent place in the Daoist canon, along with a vast array of historical and Daoist liturgical texts, should not distract us from the largely ec-umenical identity of the temple-cult.
Notes
1. Liturgical texts include HY 468–475, while divination texts include HY
1291–1292. The Lingji gong on Aofeng has been under reconstruction since 1976, while the Lingji xinggong (Auxiliary Palace of Spiritual Succor) in the Forbidden City no longer survives. For evidence that the cult to the Xu brothers persists in some fashion on Taiwan as well, see Banck 1985, 191–192. The cult to the Xu brothers is discussed briefly in Boltz 1987, 91–93, 195–197; Lagerwey 1987, 260–264. See also Xu 1993; Liu and Peng 1993 on Fujianese religion.
Other original sources include: Houcun xiansheng daquan ji by Liu Kezhuang (1187–1269), ed. Sibu congkan 69–70 (HY 474); Liu Zongyuan quanji, ed.
Guangzhi shuju in Guangzhou; Mindu ji, compiled by Wang Yingshan in 1612; Minzhong lixue yuanyuan kao by Li Qingfu, dat. 18th c., ed. Siku quanshu zhenben erji 131–136; and Tie’an ji by Fang Dacong (1183–1247), ed. Siku quanshu zhenben erji 305–306.
2. Xu tentatively suggests that the cult to the Xu brothers derived from, or was modeled on, a cult in northwestern Fujian to two other generals of the southern Tang named Zhang and Chen (1993, 193–194). I would argue, rather, that the contemporaneity of the two cults and the similarities pointed out by Xu suggest that the cult to Zhang and Chen, like the cult to the Xu brothers, should be understood as a creative response to the Southern Tang’s absorption of northern Fujian.
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br /> 3. Fang Xun, Fang Xian, and Fang Zhong for the late twelfth; Fang Zhuangyou, Fang Fengwu, and Fang Ciweng for the early fourteenth; Fang Huan and Fang Wen for the late fourteenth; and Fang Wenzhao for the early fifteenth centuries.
4. Zhou Ruli for the eleventh; Zhou Yi, Zhou Shixiu, and Zhou Chong for
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the late twelfth; and Zhou Dinglai, Zhou Yue, and Zhou Sui for the thirteenth centuries.
5. See Houcun xiansheng quanji 93. Liu Kezhuang’s son was married to a daughter of Fang Dacong’s brother, just as Liu himself was married to women of two lineages, the Chen and the Lin, who customarily provided wives for the Fangs. The Purple-Robed Fangs are a good example of the Southern Song’s “national elite” as described by Bossler 1998, 204.
6. Hugh Clark, who is working on the Fangs of Putian among other descent groups, assures me that they were, though I have yet to see the document that confirms this. In the meantime, see Clark 1998.
7. See also Xuxian hanzao 6.1ab for a short meditation on the meaning of
“fellowship” and on the Confucian symbolism of their floral titles. Helen Siu (1990) describes one such elite social club from late-imperial Guangdong.
The Chrysanthemum Festival in Xiaolan in the Pearl River Delta involved floral displays, drinking, and poetry competitions. It was held in front of an ancestral hall and formed an elite supplement and counterpoint to the jiao-
offerings performed at the community temples, in which the elite also participated, but which were open to all. The floral displays and poetry competitions were closely related: “These poetry couplets centered on Tao Yuanming, a fourth-century official who retired to the life of a hermit in his chrysanthemum gardens because he refused to serve another master at a time of rapid dynastic transition” (Siu 1990, 777). This might warrant an interpretation of the festival as a confirmation of the identity of the participants as “local gentlemen.” As Helen Siu points out:
The chrysanthemum, together with the plum, orchid, and bamboo, was a popular topic of artistic representation among scholars in Xiaolan and elsewhere. Since the Song period, the flower was seen as expressing the ideals of the hermit, the elevated distance of the scholar from mundane political affairs. However, retreat continued to affirm attachment to the imperial order. Participation in literati culture, even at a distance from the court, was an important asset in local politics, where the authority of the imperial bureaucracy was often brought to bear. (1990, 777–778)
In other words, the symbolic capital of the floral symbol, its linking of the user to a literati culture that extended far in time and space, trumped the content of the symbol and could bring its users influence with the magistrate and other officials, as Siu demonstrates, because these also recognized the value of such symbols. The same might be said for elite patronage of cults to immortals, which had come to form an integral part of high literati culture since the Six Dynasties. For a well-argued alternative viewpoint, see Hymes 1997.
8. These titles refer to facts in the life of Zheng Zichan, who was thought to be the last incarnation of the Buddha Dingguang fo. Zheng was born in Tong’an County in 934. In 1004 he moved to Mount Pangu in Nankang, Jiangxi, where he became the abbot of a Chan cloister. While there he was also thought to have fulfilled a prophecy concerning the appearance of a
“white-clothed bodhisattva.” See Lin and Peng 1993, 281–293. The authors
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also present a short, but quite commendable, introduction to the Xu brothers (1993, 204–216). For the most recent, in-depth study of the cult to Dingguang fo, see Lagerwey 1998.
9. Dingguang fo, along with another prominent god of the region, the Great Emperor of the Eastern Peak, memorialized the Jade Emperor in the early months of 995, bringing to the latter’s attention the meritorious deeds of the Xu brothers. As a result, the Jade Emperor granted the Xu brothers the titles “Perfected Lord of the Jade Portal” and “Perfected Lord of the Golden Portal,” titles that were actually conferred on them during the performance of a Yellow Register Retreat later that same year, i.e., 995 ( Xuxian zhenlu 1). The prominent role of Dingguang fo is subsequently reflected in the Hong’en lingji zhenjun miaojing (HY 317), a fifteenth-century text.
10. See Xuxian zhenlu 1.8a for an indication of the geographical extent of this orbit. These temple-cults, the result of a “division” or “borrowing” of incense, are discussed at length in Davis 1985, 17–21, citing Xuxian zhenlu 1.7:
“Each year the elders would escort the gods [of these temples] to have an audience in the Ancestral Temple [of Spiritual Succor]. They would sacrifice and hold zhai to demonstrate that they had not forgotten their origin.” This clearly refers to the processions on the anniversaries of the Perfected Lords when the large-scale jiao, mentioned above, would be performed by Daoist priests and Buddhist monks.
11. A Xiangying miaoji (Record of the Temple of Auspicious Response) was composed in 1138, after the completion of a major restoration, by two officials of the Baidu line, Fang Lue and Fang Zhao. The Xiangying miao was also known as the “Temple to the Great Official,” whom Dean, following Hugh Clark, has tentatively identified with Fang Jun, an eleventh-century “presented scholar” of the Baidu Fangs (Dean 1998b, 27–28 n 23).
12. Aofeng was also the site, in 1600 and 1637, of two successive Three-in-One temples, for which see Dean 1998a, 131, 134–135.
Bibliography
Banck, Werner. 1985. Das Chinesische Tempelorakel, II. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz.
Boltz, Judith M. 1987. A Survey of Taoist Literature: Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries.
Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, China Research Monograph 32.
Bossler, Beverly. 1998. Powerful Relations: Kinship, Status, and the State in Sung China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Clark, Hugh. 1998. “The Development of the Ancestral Offering Hall in the Kinship Tradition of Minnan (Southern Fujian) in the 10th–13th Centuries, and the Family Rituals of Zhu Xi.” Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, Washington, D.C.
Davis, Edward L. 1985. “Arms and the Tao, 1: Hero Cult and Empire in Traditional China.” In Sdodai no shakai to shukyo, ed. by Sodai kenkyukai, 1–56.
Tokyo: Kyuko shoin.
Dean, Kenneth. 1993. Taoist Ritual and Popular Cults of Southeast China. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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———. 1998a. The Lord of the Three-in-One: The Spread of a Cult in Southeast China.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
———. 1998b. “Transformations of the She (Altars of the Soil) in Fujian.”
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Feuchtwang, Stephan. 1992. The Imperial Metaphor: Popular Religion in China.
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Hansen, Valerie. 1990. Changing Gods in Medieval China, 1127–1276. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hymes, Robert. 1986. Statesmen and Gentlemen: The Elite of Fu-Chou, Chiang-Hsi, in Northern and Southern Sung. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1997. “A Jiao Is a Jiao Is a ? Thoughts on the Meaning of Ritual.” In Culture & State in Chinese History: Conventions, Accomodations, and Critiques, ed. by Theodore Huters, R. Bin Wong, and Pauline Yü. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Hymes, Robert, and Conrad Shirokauer, eds. 1993. Ordering the World: Approaches to State and Society in Sung Dynasty China. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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In Chugoku chuseishi kenkyu zokuhen, ed. by Chugoku chuseishi kenkyukai, 503–526. Kyoto: Kyoto daigaku gakushu shuppankai.
Lagerwey, John. 1987. Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History. New York: Macmillan.
———. 1998. “Dingguang gufo: Oral and Written Sources in the Study of a Saint.” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 10:7
7–129.
Lin Guoping and Peng Wenyu. 1993. Fujian minjian xinyang. Fuzhou: Fujian renmin.
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Siu, Helen. 1990. “Recycling Tradition: Culture, History, and Political Econ-omy in the Chrysanthemum Festivals in South China.” In Comparative Studies in Society and History 32.4:765–794.
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8
Identity and Lineage
The Taiyi jinhua zongzhi
and the Spirit-Writing Cult
to Patriarch Lü in Qing China
Mori Yuria
The Taiyi jinhua zongzhi (Great Unity’s Instructions on [Developing]
Golden Florescence), ever since its translation by Richard Wilhelm and C. G. Jung under the title The Secret of the Golden Flower (1929), has been one of the best-known Chinese religious classics in the West.
However, as Daoist historical studies grew, it received less attention from scholars, because they tended to concentrate more on the formative period of the religion in the middle ages. Also, the text was thought spurious. As the late Dr. Anna Seidel remarked, “The text of this movement [of inner alchemy] translated by Richard Wilhelm is unfortunately of a rather recent date and of doubtful transmission”