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Religious Experience and Lay Society in T'ang China By Glen Dudbridge might be my new favourite book. It has Everything I love, ghost stories, possessed women, religious cults, discussions of death and resurrection .and all set in Tang China. Dudbridge was teaching at Oxford, I'm not sure if he's retired now, but oh how I would love to get a PhD studying with him. He seems to have exactly the same interests as me. I must read everything he has written, and then write to him.
The book starts with a tale of a young woman becoming possessed by the spirit of a dead scholar who composes poetry and joins in discussions with her father's literary friends. The story is taken from Tai Fu's Kuang-I chi (Dudbridge uses wade Giles transcription, rather annoyingly). The collection was written in the late 8th century, after the An Lushan rebellion. Tai Fu was a moderately successful scholar and minor official, the preface of his book written by his friend described him as an "expert in the occult". The work was over 300 stories long, Dudbridge did not try and attempt to translate all the stories, rather he gave full translations and discussions on only a few, roughly 20 at a guess, and then included a brief description of the plot, and useful information about the events, verification of people or places etc. His approach to these stories was dual layered he looked at the inner and outer story. The outer story was the actual, non supernatural events, as witnessed as happening to the person in the story by his friends family, and the inner story, the one the person told of the supernatural events he experienced. While these events are relayed second hand Dudbridge concluded that they could be viewed as presenting an authentic view of what people thought and felt at the time, he compared them to the use of eyewitness accounts today in oral history. They were indeed a rare insight, Dudbridge also was able to use his historical knowledge in interpreting these events, and showing how they fitted in with the culture and knowledge of the time, what could be learned from both the inner and outer stories. While he clearly did not believe anything supernatural was taking place he offered an insightful view into the culture of the time.
The section on the Worshipers at Mount Hua was the most interesting to me. He looked at the role of women as spirit mediums for the God of the mountain. They met travellers on the road, selling charms, and performing rituals. The word used to describe these women was wu, which is usually translated as shamans. The wu were involved in court rituals during the Han dynasty but lost favour, and by the Tang were seen as part of the dangerous local cults. Beyond the stories Dudbridge supplements his knowledge of these women with examples from poetry and prose written during the same time period. These women were professionals who had access to the god through ritual. While condemned Officially, there seemed to be examples of even the elite patronising them at times. This chapter as well as showing insight into religious roles of women during this time, also descries some of the tensions between government and local religions, official and personal practice.
Dudbridge also looks at the role of female demons in tempting men into sexual liaisons, it is interesting to see the huge diversity in these stories. Sometimes it is demons pretending to be goddesses, sometimes it is the goddesses themselves. Often they seem to be simply interested in sex, but other stories there seems to be marriage, love and children. In the outer story, the family and friends always view these liaisons as bad and therefore try and use some spell on the person's behalf, often with the victim not kmowing, to break the influence of the supernatural. It's interesting to note that there were both Buddhist and Taoist methods employed.
There were many interesting points raised by this book, he frequently referred to the work of De Groot which I greatly enjoyed. There seems to be so much I didn’t manage to retain, as I was reading it mainly for my essay on women in religion. I don't want to return it to the library, I will have to get myself a copy of it eventually and go through it more carefully as I mentioned earlier, it does seem to have everything in it that I really love.
The book starts with a tale of a young woman becoming possessed by the spirit of a dead scholar who composes poetry and joins in discussions with her father's literary friends. The story is taken from Tai Fu's Kuang-I chi (Dudbridge uses wade Giles transcription, rather annoyingly). The collection was written in the late 8th century, after the An Lushan rebellion. Tai Fu was a moderately successful scholar and minor official, the preface of his book written by his friend described him as an "expert in the occult". The work was over 300 stories long, Dudbridge did not try and attempt to translate all the stories, rather he gave full translations and discussions on only a few, roughly 20 at a guess, and then included a brief description of the plot, and useful information about the events, verification of people or places etc. His approach to these stories was dual layered he looked at the inner and outer story. The outer story was the actual, non supernatural events, as witnessed as happening to the person in the story by his friends family, and the inner story, the one the person told of the supernatural events he experienced. While these events are relayed second hand Dudbridge concluded that they could be viewed as presenting an authentic view of what people thought and felt at the time, he compared them to the use of eyewitness accounts today in oral history. They were indeed a rare insight, Dudbridge also was able to use his historical knowledge in interpreting these events, and showing how they fitted in with the culture and knowledge of the time, what could be learned from both the inner and outer stories. While he clearly did not believe anything supernatural was taking place he offered an insightful view into the culture of the time.
The section on the Worshipers at Mount Hua was the most interesting to me. He looked at the role of women as spirit mediums for the God of the mountain. They met travellers on the road, selling charms, and performing rituals. The word used to describe these women was wu, which is usually translated as shamans. The wu were involved in court rituals during the Han dynasty but lost favour, and by the Tang were seen as part of the dangerous local cults. Beyond the stories Dudbridge supplements his knowledge of these women with examples from poetry and prose written during the same time period. These women were professionals who had access to the god through ritual. While condemned Officially, there seemed to be examples of even the elite patronising them at times. This chapter as well as showing insight into religious roles of women during this time, also descries some of the tensions between government and local religions, official and personal practice.
Dudbridge also looks at the role of female demons in tempting men into sexual liaisons, it is interesting to see the huge diversity in these stories. Sometimes it is demons pretending to be goddesses, sometimes it is the goddesses themselves. Often they seem to be simply interested in sex, but other stories there seems to be marriage, love and children. In the outer story, the family and friends always view these liaisons as bad and therefore try and use some spell on the person's behalf, often with the victim not kmowing, to break the influence of the supernatural. It's interesting to note that there were both Buddhist and Taoist methods employed.
There were many interesting points raised by this book, he frequently referred to the work of De Groot which I greatly enjoyed. There seems to be so much I didn’t manage to retain, as I was reading it mainly for my essay on women in religion. I don't want to return it to the library, I will have to get myself a copy of it eventually and go through it more carefully as I mentioned earlier, it does seem to have everything in it that I really love.