Ritual and Scripture in Chinese Popular Religion, is yet another book from my reading list. The book consists of 5 essays of varying lengths looking at different aspects of Chinese popular religion.
The first essay traces the history of the Stove God. From his earliest beliefs, through to the present day. He looks at the different ways and times the God was worshiped, and how these changed over time. He talks about the taboos against the stove, how you weren't supposed to do anything "unclean" in front of your stove as it would offend the God living in there and he would report it and shorten your life span. One of the most interesting things in this article, which he didn't go into enough detail for me, was the fact that the stove god used to be a woman. But that she was changed into a male deity, and later women were forbidden to participate in the rituals dedicated to her. (Though this was not always maintained) It was an interesting look at transference of power. The author Chard also looked at how people tried to depopularise the belief in the texts written about the cult, trying to incorporate him into the official religion and failing.
The secound essay was about Mu-Lien in Pao Chuan. At first I was a little skeptical about this essay. The author was talking about scriptures that were to be used as sort of a small group devotional, usually by woman that told a religious story. What made me biased initially was the evidence he used when talking about these was from the novel Chin Ping Mei, (golden lotus). Which is more famous as a work of pornography than anything else. (I've read an English translation and it's a pretty accurate assessment). But despite this, he then talks more detail about these sources, and their different formats. The most interesting thing in here though was the story of Mu-Lien, which somehow I'd managed to miss in my studies so far. But I'm very glad I came across the story, particularly in the version contained in the scriptures he was reading. The briefest version is that Mu-lien's mother forsakes her vows, stops being vegetarian, commits murder gets dragged off by demons to hell, and her son has to go and rescue her, letting out thousands of demons in the process. The last part I was aware of but had never heard the rest of the story. But I found it all fascinating. The author has a whole book on the Mu-Lien operas and popular culture. But it was 150 to buy, and i haven't checked to see if it's in the library yet!
The next essay was by Pat Ebrey. She looked at the Family Rituals as laid out by Zhu Xi, (a very famous neo-Confucian). How the dead were supposed to be remembered, and how these rituals were viewed as fairly flexible by the people who were trying to encourage them. She listed examples of many later books based on this work that disagreed with almost every minor one of Zhu Xi's points. Apparently she wrote a whole book on the subject which I wasn't aware of but will have to track down, she also referred several times to Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China which sounded fascinating and I will also have to track down.
The secound to last essay was by Ursula-Angelika Cedzich and was all about the origins of the Wutung cult and it's influence on the Journey to the South. Journey to the South is one of the four Ming novels of the cardinal directions, (Journey to the West being the basis for the later and more popular novel by the same name) I wish I could find a copy of it in translation as it sounded like lots of fun. The hero was a incarnated 3 different times, and had many supernatural battles, which also eventually ended in him rescuing his cannibalistic mother from hell. She combined the history of the cult, with descriptions in the novel, to show how the two were related. The cult had a fascinating history, starting as a local ecstatic cult, worshiping strange one legged goblin like creatures and getting adopted into the official religion in the song. Where they tried to cut off all contact with the Goblins, and led to two divergent religions, the popular one never being fully assimilated or stopped, despite interventions by the Buddhists and taoists. She also addressed the issue of converting the Gods, which apparently was a Buddhist tradition originating from India where they managed to "convert" the old Hindu deities. It was a fascinating read. Definitely the best of all of them, unfortunately it's a bit too late now to explain coherently why! I have a whole book waiting for me at home which I got from the UW library looking at this cult, it just came out and I'm very excited to compare the two and see how the scholarship has grown in the past 10 years.
The last article was a bit too much for 4.30am. It was just a brief look at the difference in Taoist scriptures when written in Mandarin versus local dialect for Taiwan. It was written by a native Chinese speaker, and me with only a few months didn't find it all that interesting. Except that it was important to note that not everything that got written down was in Mandarin, but that you had to change your writing for the audience you were trying to reach. Which makes a lot of sense.
All in all a wonderful book, I so regret having to give it back to the library!
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