Yesterday I read Great Perfection: Religion and Ethnicity in a Chinese Millennial Kingdom by Terry F. Kleeman. This is a one of the books my professor recommend we read for reading week. He also wanted us to write a 1500 word review of the book. But I don't think this will be quite that long.
The book was very good but not at all what I was expecting. I was thinking that it would be looking more at the religious aspects of a theocratic Taoist state and what they believed and practised and how they came to be etc. But the book went for a completely different approach. Kleeman started looking at the region in the Bronze age, the Ba, Shu and Chu kingdoms. (Shu kingdom is where the big masks of Sanxingdui are from.) and their traditions independent of Shang and Zhou culture. He analysed new archaeological artefacts and data, and the work of other scholars. One of the most interesting things was to see some of the inscriptions on bronze weapons and drums, of a completely unique Ba script. Scholars think the inscriptions were used to instil power in the items. In Kleeman's analysis of the ancient cultures he also looked at myths of the places and their relationship with the different "Chinese" society. The myths would explain things like tax exemption. It was surprising in a way how much detail he was able to draw out about the different minorities. He even included songs.
After looking at the archaeological evidence and written history Kleeman then compared what was known about the different minorities with anthropological work, particularly Steven Harrell's work with the Ye people, and looked at how this might be applied to the past. Particularly in their cultural intereaction with the Chinese. I realised how much I enjoy ancient Chinese history as I really like it when scholars are able to combine the written record with archaeological evidence. It always seems to add an extra dimension to their studies. Examining one text very closely can be enlightening however material objects can often give a much clearer example of the context for such works. I think without context it can be very difficult to figure out what was intended in a document. And I just love seeing the words "grave goods" in scholarly works.
Chapter two was about religion. Kleeman looked at the development of religion in the Han. I'm not sure I entirely agreed with the way he portrayed religion as developing in China. He seemed to look at religion as being purely a state institution until the arrival of Buddhism where upon people of all classes started participating in rituals. While this is what the evidence points to I think that is because of the particular evidence we have, being state records, that ignored other things, rather than that the other things weren't going on. I also think it is a problem of the concept of size. If you consider a big Imperial state then the Imperial rituals were done separately away from the people. However, if you look just at small tribes with a leader who does a ritual it's more likely the rest of the community was involved. I think it's too much to assume that indigenous Chinese religion suddenly invented itself fully formed as a reaction to Buddhism, but rather was going through it's own process of development for hundreds of years before hand.
I was hoping for more of a history of the millenarian movements themselves. While a brief background on them is given it tends to be historical in nature and without a great deal of detail. I just really want to find a study that someone has done on the apocalyptic movements in China. But so far I've not been able to find any reference to anyone who has done one. But Kleeman did give a good historically based overview of the Celestial Masters, and did include their beliefs and practices and how they fit into the later kingdom.
Chapter 3 looked specifically at the Cheng state in the 4th century. It introduced the background and context for the historical translations that formed the last half of the book. He looked at the specific developments that were brought about and how this reflected the bigger picture of his translations.
The translations were taken directly from two sources of work on the subject, the main source being the writings of Chang Hu. He traced the texts from their being written and edited to the versions that have survived today. He combined texts, using italics to show the different texts, to give a complete biography of the main leaders, the important Li's of the state. The texts were most interesting. It was a little challenging at times, despite all the background given, to be able to follow along the narrative of the history in the form of biography. Time frames overlapped and often the story wasn't consistent. (This was documented extensively in the footnotes which were particularly interesting and informative). Little attention was paid to any religious ideas in the texts themselves, being secular biographies, which probably explains the nature of the book itself. When reading the biographies things sounded surprisingly sinified so it was interesting to have all the additional cultural background information to understand a little more the conflicts which were going on. All in all a very enjoyable book despite being about something totally different than I was expecting.
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