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I first read Society and the Supernatural in Song China by Edward Davis back in October 2003. As every time I asked Professor Ebrey for book recommendations she always mentioned how good it was I thought I should go back and re-read it. The first time I read it I thought it was the hardest book about China I had ever read. It was definitely one of the first I had read that was scholarly and not for the general public. I liked the book very much the first time I read it, it was he first look I had into the supernatural in China and I was struck by the way exorcism rituals there were really possession rituals, and the way the Taoists and Buddhists and spirit mediums borrowed from each other. And also the different uses of the word demon were confusing to me. This time I think I got a lot more out of it.
This book I think will remain one of my all time favorites. Going back and re-reading it I was amazed by how much was in there, and what an in-depth analysis it really was. He looked at the role of spirit mediums, taoist priests, taoist exorcist specialists and Buddhist monks. How these came to be interrelated in the Song, and what factors were affecting them. One of the things I appreciated the most was the way he'd go back and look at how the rituals were done in the Tang and how these were changed. I was especially pleased by this as the Tang is what I hope to study. He mentioned a Tang work on exorcism that had been translated by the professor I hope to study with at SOAS. I got so excited! That's exactly the kind of thing I'm interested in. Now I need to see if I can track down the relevant articles written by T.H. Barrett. It was nice to read a book that was able to find out what was going on in the Tang, too often it seems authors just dismiss it saying there's not enough surviving evidence to say much about what was happening then.
Davis used a lot of stories about possession and exorcism to illustrate his point, these stories coming from a variety of sources from the time. Unlike Campany he didn't spend a great deal of time validating these sources or discussing why they were written leaving such things to the footnotes, rather he took the stories as true accounts and was able to draw interesting social conclusions based on these texts. One thing that struck me about these texts was often times, about half of those quoted when referring to a spirit medium the spirit medium was a woman. However, none of the Daoists or Buddhists were women. They also removed the possession element from women and instead would have young boys act as child mediums for the rituals. I found this to be an interesting gender transference, however Davis did not address it in his book at all.
Davis did however look at a lot of interesting topics. He looked at the different way child mediums were used in the Song. To start with he looked at the way it was commonly used in villages and towns, rather than starting with the elite. His focus on the more everyday and wide-sweeping nature of the phenomena was both interesting and refreshing. He also tried to show similarities between the different tiers of Chinese society, as well as how the literati practices were different. In most cases the biggest difference seemed to be that the literati had much greater trust in the practitioners and would never complain when their sons became possessed, unlike the villagers. He also showed some of the conflict between the bureaucracy of the Song and the local inhabitants. How cases of possession could reflect social conflict that was otherwise going unspoken. This was also not only confined to the literati but was also illustrated as taking place among the rising merchant class.
The secound to last chapter looked at the use of spirit possession, particularly the use of Child mediums in funeral practices. A son, frequently the youngest would take his fathers place during the funeral ceremony and would become possessed by his father. Davis linked this back to a similar practice in the Zhou times. Rather than a natural evolution of the practice, Davis saw this as a conscious effort on the part of the literati who wished to revisit the old ways and return to the past. He also looked at the different rituals used for bringing back the dead. How people would spend great quantities of money on these ceremonies but when the dead actually did show up they were terrified and fled. This was very interesting to me and I wish he'd talked a little more about it.
His last chapter I'm going to have to reread as it was a very in-depth look into the state of historiography in China. He talked about what scholars of Chinese religions can learn by looking at the debate facing more modern scholars of the the 19th and 20th century as they search for evidence of a civil society existing in Chinese culture and whether the idea is really relevant. He also questioned the idea of focusing on the elite culture of China, and the idea of a separate culture between the elite and the populous. He also questioned a bureaucratic analysis of the Chinese gods and made claims against the ideas of celestial hierarchy and earthly hierarchy being interconnected.
I think this book is going to remain one of my favorites for years to come. I'm so glad I was able to reread it. I don't think it was especially hard this time but it was still so enjoyable. It was one of those books that just has so much in it you worry that your not paying enough attention to everything that's being said. It was interesting to look at the way the different religions of Daoism and Buddhism and Local religion interacted and affected each other. It was also interesting to see how among the people there was very little preference between them. Practitioners would be called in frequently on the basis of familiarity and expense, and if one didn't work then you could call in someone else. It is such a joy for me to read a book that talks about ghosts and spirits and possession in such an insightful and scholarly way. Really I just can't say enough nice things about this book, and am not at all surprised that Patricia Ebrey mentioned it to me every time we talked.
This book I think will remain one of my all time favorites. Going back and re-reading it I was amazed by how much was in there, and what an in-depth analysis it really was. He looked at the role of spirit mediums, taoist priests, taoist exorcist specialists and Buddhist monks. How these came to be interrelated in the Song, and what factors were affecting them. One of the things I appreciated the most was the way he'd go back and look at how the rituals were done in the Tang and how these were changed. I was especially pleased by this as the Tang is what I hope to study. He mentioned a Tang work on exorcism that had been translated by the professor I hope to study with at SOAS. I got so excited! That's exactly the kind of thing I'm interested in. Now I need to see if I can track down the relevant articles written by T.H. Barrett. It was nice to read a book that was able to find out what was going on in the Tang, too often it seems authors just dismiss it saying there's not enough surviving evidence to say much about what was happening then.
Davis used a lot of stories about possession and exorcism to illustrate his point, these stories coming from a variety of sources from the time. Unlike Campany he didn't spend a great deal of time validating these sources or discussing why they were written leaving such things to the footnotes, rather he took the stories as true accounts and was able to draw interesting social conclusions based on these texts. One thing that struck me about these texts was often times, about half of those quoted when referring to a spirit medium the spirit medium was a woman. However, none of the Daoists or Buddhists were women. They also removed the possession element from women and instead would have young boys act as child mediums for the rituals. I found this to be an interesting gender transference, however Davis did not address it in his book at all.
Davis did however look at a lot of interesting topics. He looked at the different way child mediums were used in the Song. To start with he looked at the way it was commonly used in villages and towns, rather than starting with the elite. His focus on the more everyday and wide-sweeping nature of the phenomena was both interesting and refreshing. He also tried to show similarities between the different tiers of Chinese society, as well as how the literati practices were different. In most cases the biggest difference seemed to be that the literati had much greater trust in the practitioners and would never complain when their sons became possessed, unlike the villagers. He also showed some of the conflict between the bureaucracy of the Song and the local inhabitants. How cases of possession could reflect social conflict that was otherwise going unspoken. This was also not only confined to the literati but was also illustrated as taking place among the rising merchant class.
The secound to last chapter looked at the use of spirit possession, particularly the use of Child mediums in funeral practices. A son, frequently the youngest would take his fathers place during the funeral ceremony and would become possessed by his father. Davis linked this back to a similar practice in the Zhou times. Rather than a natural evolution of the practice, Davis saw this as a conscious effort on the part of the literati who wished to revisit the old ways and return to the past. He also looked at the different rituals used for bringing back the dead. How people would spend great quantities of money on these ceremonies but when the dead actually did show up they were terrified and fled. This was very interesting to me and I wish he'd talked a little more about it.
His last chapter I'm going to have to reread as it was a very in-depth look into the state of historiography in China. He talked about what scholars of Chinese religions can learn by looking at the debate facing more modern scholars of the the 19th and 20th century as they search for evidence of a civil society existing in Chinese culture and whether the idea is really relevant. He also questioned the idea of focusing on the elite culture of China, and the idea of a separate culture between the elite and the populous. He also questioned a bureaucratic analysis of the Chinese gods and made claims against the ideas of celestial hierarchy and earthly hierarchy being interconnected.
I think this book is going to remain one of my favorites for years to come. I'm so glad I was able to reread it. I don't think it was especially hard this time but it was still so enjoyable. It was one of those books that just has so much in it you worry that your not paying enough attention to everything that's being said. It was interesting to look at the way the different religions of Daoism and Buddhism and Local religion interacted and affected each other. It was also interesting to see how among the people there was very little preference between them. Practitioners would be called in frequently on the basis of familiarity and expense, and if one didn't work then you could call in someone else. It is such a joy for me to read a book that talks about ghosts and spirits and possession in such an insightful and scholarly way. Really I just can't say enough nice things about this book, and am not at all surprised that Patricia Ebrey mentioned it to me every time we talked.