by Livia Kohn
Very likely it was this aspect of their religious tradition that allowed the Daoists on Mount Jin’gai to accept the Jinhua zongzhi as a holy scripture. It might have been difficult, or even impossible, for them to separate their sense of identity as Longmen Daoists from their belief in Lüzu, because Lüzu was one of the five founding patriarchs of the Quanzhen school. However, considering that the belief in Lüzu combined with the activity of spirit-writing was widely shared among many groups and cults, independent of the Quanzhen school, his veneration and descents on Mount Jin’gai may also be seen as a religious activity that cannot be entirely reduced to the Longmen tradition. The Longmen tradition was a master–disciple lineage, developing as time passed and generating, or at least imagined to generate, an irreversible, straight, and direct line. Spirit-writing, unlike this lineage, made it possible for believers to skip its mediation and communicate directly with one of their founding patriarchs, reinforcing a feeling of belonging and ultimately strengthening the sense of lineage.11
Conclusion
The Jinhua zongzhi was first completed as a text of the Jingming lineage, but as it was transmitted to later editors, the exclusive relationship between the text and the Jingming lineage was denied. As new editors received the text, it was linked to different lineages through
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the arbitrary insertion of personal commentaries that served to establish a desirable relationship between the text and the various editors’ lineages. However, contrary to the fierce insistence of those competing editors, the Jinhua zongzhi was not transmitted along each lineage but was passed along a stratum running across them, the stratum of the spirit-writing cults of Lüzu.
Two facets of the religious identity of those who transmitted the Jinhua zongzhi become clear. On the one hand, they were members of one or the other spirit-writing cult of Lüzu, and thus each had a very basic sense of identity as the immortal’s disciple. On the other hand, they acquired a sense of lineage by placing the text and its transmission into a desirable sectarian context. In other words, the various prefaces and notes attached to the words of Lüzu correspond to the editors’ sense of lineage, while the words of Lüzu in the scripture match their common identity as the immortal’s disciples, an identity that underlies their lineage identity. It is difficult to explicitly point out this dual structure in just one text, but by comparison of those different versions, the distinction of the levels becomes perceptible.
Nevertheless, this does not necessarily mean that there is no sign of the two levels and phases of formation within each text. Especially as and when each version is linked to the past, to historical lineages such as Jingming or Longmen, it is easy to see indications of the two facets of the editors’ religious identities. Thus in Shao Zhilin’s version, the position of the cult to Lüzu is described as if it belonged to a different lineage than the Jingming or, at least, to a sublineage of it. In Min Yide’s case, the situation is more complicated. However, one can still extract an indication of both facets by pointing out that the traditions of both spirit-writing and the veneration of Lüzu had a base in the religious history of Mount Jin’gai and that it could not be reduced to the Quanzhen tradition. In both cases, the spirit-writing cult served to revitalize or reinforce its members’ sense of lineage, even though the foundation of the lineage depended on the members’ imaginative interpretation and pragmatic adoption of historical events rather than on an institutional transmission solidly established in history.
As Terry Kleeman has argued, from Song times onward, spirit-writing provided “improved access to the sacred realm” with which
“men and women without the status of religious professionals came to have a direct relationship with exalted levels of the sacred realm” (1993, 63). In the cases presented here, spirit-writing not only constituted a method to relate people to Heaven but also provided them with a lin-
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eage on earth, that is, a device that connected them with their preferred lineage context, where religion and history are not differentiated.
Notes
This paper is based on my presentation at the Toyo tetsugakkai (Society for the Study of Eastern Philosophy), June, 1997, where I compared the versions listed as numbers 1, 2, and 4 with Min Yide’s edition contained in his Gu shuyinlou cangshu. Here I first suggested that the text was originally edited by the Jingming school and that it was then taken over by the Tianxian school and the Longmen sect.
I have also touched upon similar issues in a recent article (Mori 1998). My special thanks go to Dr. Monica Esposito, with whom I have exchanged notes and opinions since December, 1997. She has given me most coherent advice, especially on the existence of certain versions of the Jinhua zongzhi I did not know previously.
1. Lüzu shi xiantian xuwu taiyi Jinhua zongzhi, in Gu shuyinlou cangshu, ch.
5 Zangwai daoshu 10, 327–343. The extant version of the Gu shuyinlou cangshu as included in the Zangwai daoshu does not contain any publication information, but recent research suggests that the text was first published in 1904 (Hu 1995, 232). However, the constitution of the text itself suggests an earlier date. That is to say, most of the texts preserved in the anthology seem to have been completed by the end of the Daoguang era (1821–1850). Of its thirty-eight titles, those that have datable prefaces are no later than 1839
or 1840 (that is, those by Xue Yanggui, a disciple of Min, and his friend Li Wenyuan). In his 1834 appendix to the Tianxian xinzhuan (Heart Transmission of the Celestial Immortals), moreover, Min Yide mentions that he himself was the publisher of the basic edition of the Gu shuyinlou cangshu (8.35).
2. In fact, Shao Zhilin confesses that he was embarrassed by the appearance of the former version that could be regarded as Jinhua keyi (Rules and Observances of Golden Florescence) by future readers (Pref., 1.2a).
3. It was probably no coincidence that both this lineage and the scripture shared the name “Taiyi,” but it is not clear what exactly the connection was to the deity.
4. I am deeply indebted to Monica Esposito for providing information on Chen Mou’s text.
5. We can identify them because he referred to himself in several combinations as follows: Guanghuazi Huijue, in in the commentary to the Jinhua zongzhi (see Quanshu zhengzong, Jinhua zongzhi 63a); and Huijue dizi Jiang Yupu shouzhong shi, in the postscript to the Shiliu pinjing (see Quanshu zhengzong 1; Shiliu pinjing, 108a).
6. It is not entirely clear why the members of the Tianxian lineage call themselves by this name. However, it seems that they regarded tianxian (celestial immortals) as the highest rank among the xian and found in Lüzu and his teacher Zhongli Quan masters who would teach people the way to attain this exalted level. Enhong (a member of Jiang’s altar group) in this context refers
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to the significance of the transmission of the “celestial immortal” ( Zhong-Lü chuandao ji, afterword; Daozang jiyao, Weiji 2.58a). In the first chapter of the same work, moreover, the first five ranks of the immortals are discussed, with tianxian at the top.
7. At the end of this preface, the names of nine members of Jiang Yupu’s cult are given: Huijue ( Jiang Yupu), Enhong, Dagu, Zhiqiu, Tongren, Deming, Daqi, Zhixi, and Zhizhuo. See Quanshu zhengzong, Pref. 35ab.
8. On the expression “Jueyuan tan,” see Quanshu zhengzong 9.14a, 25ab.
Other variations are Jueyuan baotan (Precious Altar of the Source of Awakening), Juetan (Altar of Awakening), and Jueyuan jingshe (Chapel of the Source of Awakening). See Quanshu zhengzong 9.2b, 13.18b.
9. As this type of variations there are Diyi tan (First Altar), Diyi juetan (First Altar of Awakening), Diyi kaihua tan (First Altar of Opening Transformations).
See Quanshu zhengzong 13.15b, 19b, 26a; Pref., 38a. On the superior position of the Jueyuan bentan (Primary Altar of the Source of Awakening), see Quanshu zhengzong 13.23a.
10. On the development of the Longmen lineage, se
e Chen 1988 and 1990; Tsui 1991; Esposito 1993; Mori 1994; and Wang 1995a and 1995b.
11. I have not been able to fully describe Min Yide’s spirit-writing in this section. For more details on his ideas and practices, see Mori 1999.
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Baldrian-Hussein, Farzeen. 1986. “Lü Tung-pin in Northern Sung Literature.”
Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 2:133–170.
Chen Bing. 1988. “Qingdai Quanzhen dao Longmen pai de zhongxing.” Shi-jie zongjiao yanjiu 1988/2:84–96.
———. 1990. “Ming Qing Daojiao liang da pai.” In Zhongguo Daojiao shi, ed.
by Ren Jiyu, 627–682. Shanghai: Renmin.
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Esposito, Monica. 1993. “La Porte du Dragon—l’école Longmen du Mont Jin’gai et ses pratiques alchimiques d’après le Daozang xubian (Suite au canon taoïste).” Ph.D. diss., Université de Paris VII, Paris.
———. 1996. “Il Segreto del fiore d’oro e la tradizione Longmen del Monte Jin’gai.” In Conoscenza e interpretazione della civiltà cinese, ed. by P. Corradini, 151–169. Rome: Ubaldini Editore.
———. 1998a. “The Different Versions of the Secret of the Golden Flower and Their Relationship with the Longmen School.” Transactions of the International Conference of Eastern Studies 43:90–110.
———. 1998b. “Longmen pai yu Jinhua zongzhi banben laiyuan.” Paper Presented at the Research Meeting on Daoist Culture, Waseda University, Tokyo.
Hu Fuchen, ed. 1995. Zhonghua daojiao da cidian. Beijing: Zhonggou shehui kexue chubanshen.
Kleeman, Terry. 1993. “The Expansion of the Wen-ch’ang Cult.” In Religion
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and Society in T’ang and Sung China, ed. by Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Peter N. Gregory, 45–74. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
Miyuki, Mokusen. 1967. “The Secret of the Golden Flower: Studies and Translation.” Diploma Thesis, Jung Institute, Zürich, Switzerland.
Mori Yuria. 1994. “Zenshinkyo ryumonha keifu ko.” In Dokyo bunka e no tenbo, ed. by Dokyo bunka kenkyukai, 180–211. Tokyo: Hirakawa.
———. 1998a. “Taiitsu kinke shushi no seiritsu to hensen.” Toyo no shiso to shukyo 15:43–64.
———. 1998b. “Kyuso goroku ni tsuite.” In Dokyo no rekishi to bunka, ed. by Yamada Toshiaki and Tanaka Fumio, 257–273. Tokyo: Yuzankaku.
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Needham, Joseph, and Lu Gwei-djen. 1983. Science and Civilisation in China vol. 5.5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schipper, Kristofer M. 1985. “Taoist Ritual and Local Cults of the T’ang Dynasty.” In Tantric and Taoist Studies in Honour of Rolf A. Stein, ed. by Michel Strickmann 3:812–834. Brussels: Institut Belge des Hautes Etudes Chinoises.
Seidel, Anna. 1995. Taoïsme: religion non-officielle de la Chine. Trans. by Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein. Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 8:26–27.
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Wang Zhizhong. 1995a. “Lun Mingmo Qingchu Quanzhen jiao ‘zhongxing’
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Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
9
Manifestations
of Lüzu in Modern
Guangdong and Hong Kong
The Rise and Growth
of Spirit-Writing Cults
Shiga Ichiko
Introduction
The mention of Daoism in Hong Kong usually brings to mind territorial temples ( miaoyu), Daoist temples ( daoguan), or large-scale jiao festivals and Daoist priests performing rituals in such festivals. The religious organizations called daotan or daotang, discussed in this article, are also one form of Daoism in Hong Kong, or they can be described as occupying the most important place in the Daoist community of Hong Kong. However, only a few studies have so far been made of them, perhaps because most of them are inconspicuously located in buildings in urban areas.
A daotan or daotang (hereafter referred to as daotan) is a religious organization centered on spirit-writing and the worship of Daoist deities. Its beliefs are primarily based on Daoism but also include various elements of other religious traditions such as Confucianism, Buddhism, and folk religion. In this sense, a daotan is highly syncretistic.
Its main ritual activities include spirit-writing séances, annual festivals to celebrate the birthdays of gods, and large-scale ritual celebrations called fahui. The daotan also provides death-related services, such as merit rites ( gongde fashi), services for worshiping spirit tablets ( lingwei),1
and the spaces to deposit ashes of the dead ( kanwei ). In addition, several daotan undertake social-welfare activities, such as running schools, nursing homes, and clinics and helping victims of natural disasters in mainland China. Most daotan are registered as non-profit, charitable associations with the government (Shiga 1995).
In Hong Kong, the term “daotan” is usually used for a small Daoist organization with only an altar and for spirit-writing in a cramped room 185
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of a residential or commercial building. The term “daoguan, ” on the other hand, is commonly associated with Daoist organizations that maintain great shrines in large suburban sites. But such daoguan were also originally small organizations called daotan, and they are substantially the same. I will use the folk term “daotan” to refer to the Daoist organizations with these features regardless of their size. It is not clear precisely how many organizations like these there are in Hong Kong today, but according to my research, it can be conservatively said that there are more than fifty.
From a historical point of view, daotan originated from spirit-writing cults that arose in Guangdong, particularly in the Pearl River Delta, since the mid-nineteenth century. Table 9.1 lists spirit-writing cults established in Guangdong and Hong Kong before the 1950s.2 As it indicates, since the oldest group, the Yunquan xianguan, was established in Nanhai County in 1848, many cult groups arose and spread from Guangdong through Hong Kong in the beginning of the twentieth century. Although the cults listed show some variation in scale, social background of their members, and choice of emphasis in activities, there is one common feature. As I shall examine in more detail, their activities consisted largely of relief work, such as providing free medical services, funeral services, and self-cultivation based on the moral and religious ideas of the three teachings, particularly Daoism. It is also clear that most of them worshiped Lüzu, that is, Lü Dongbin, as their patriarch. Some of the associations in the list have grown and adapted to the social changes in modern Guangdong and Hong Kong and are still active today. Others were more short-lived and have van-ished again. In other words, daotan today are the successors of religious movements that began in the latter half of the nineteenth century in Guangdong. The purpose of this chapter is to consider how the daotan movement developed in modern Guangdong and Hong Kong.
In the late nineteenth century, not limited to Guangdong and Hong Kong, spirit-writing cults emerged in various places on an almost country-wide scale, spreading to such a degree that scholars studying the same phenomenon in Taiwan speak of “the nineteenth-century spirit-writing movement” (Fan 1996, 116; Clart 1996, 16). Various movements, emerging in different areas of China, provide fragmentary but significant information about nineteenth-century spirit-writing movements. For example, the first spirit-writing cult in Taiwan was the Puquan she
(later renamed Yixin she), established in 1853 by the local elite of Magong, the capital of the Penghu Islands. Their founding medium had learned a spirit-writing technique in the Gongshan she,
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a charitable society in Quanzhou (Fujian), and their main activities were spirit-writing séances, public lecturing sessions ( xuanjiang), and the publication of morality books ( shanshu). Following their founding, other spirit-writing cults were organized in Magong, while similar organizations also sprang up in northern Taiwan, soon leading to their spread throughout the island (Wang 1996; Clart 1997, 4–5).
In Sichuan, in the gengzi year of the Daoguang reign (1840), divine revelations were received in the Longnü si (Temple of the Dragon Maiden), leading to the revelation of more than ten spirit-writing texts, such as the Guansheng dijun mingsheng jing zhujie (Explanation of the Holy Scripture of the Imperial Lord Guandi). This shows that spirit-writing cults not only spread gradually through southwestern China, but that they were also influential among sectarian groups (Wang 1996, 124–127; Takeuchi 1990). It is fair to say that the Cantonese spirit-writing movements of the nineteenth century form part of this overall tendency.
To understand these movements of the nineteenth century properly, one should know that they were inseparably linked with an eschatological sentiment, involving the idea of salvation from the “kalpa catastrophe” ( jie) that had arisen especially among local elites in response to the rapid social change of the time. Yamada Masaru, a specialist in the settlement history of Sichuan, points out that in certain new settlements, the local elites established social-welfare societies often associated with spirit-writing. One example is the Shiquan hui (Society of the Ten Perfections), which was established after a spirit-writing séance revealed that goodness needed to be practiced in order to escape the coming great catastrophe (Yamada 1995, 249–251). Local elites worried about social and moral disorder in the time and not only actively practiced goodness as a group but also encouraged the masses to do so by establishing charitable societies or publishing morality books. As Phillip Clart points out in his study of Taiwanese spirit-writing movements, local elites “shared a consciousness of belonging to a religious movement that had as its aim the moral reformation of a decadent age by means of instructions and exhortations handed down by the gods” (Clart 1996, 16). Such consciousness was shared not only by the local elites in Sichuan and Taiwan but also by the majority of elites in other parts of China, including that of Guangdong.