A History of Cultic Images in China: The Domestic Statuary of Hunan by Alain Arrault, trans. Lina Verchery

Abstract

Reviewed by: A History of Cultic Images in China: The Domestic Statuary of Hunan by Alain Arrault, trans. Lina Verchery Mario Poceski A History of Cultic Images in China: The Domestic Statuary of Hunan by Alain Arrault, trans. Lina Verchery. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2020. Pp. x + 188. $60.00 hardcover. An important part of religious life in China is the veneration and supplication of various deities, who are typically represented in the form of statues or paintings. These ubiquitous objects of worship can be found in various temples and shrines across China (and other areas where traditional Chinese culture is present), as well as in the homes of individual families and places of business. They are associated with a wide range of beliefs, practices, and traditions. Some of them are primarily linked with one of the three teachings—Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism—which over the centuries have exerted enormous influences on various facets of Chinese life, within and outside of the religious sphere. There are also many deities associated with what scholars often label popular religion (also referred to as common or folk religion), a heuristic category that covers a diffuse plethora of beliefs and practices, local as well as national in scope. Well-known examples of such deities are the ubiquitous earth god (tudi gong 土地公) and kitchen god (zaoshen 灶神). Additionally, objects of cultic adulation include the images of various saints (such as prominent Buddhist monks or Daoist masters) and ancestors. Among the key features of Chinese religious life, past and present, are the manifold points of intersection among the various systems of belief and ritual, which occasionally give rise to distinctive types of religious hybridization. In relation to the cultic use of images, the embrace of a pluralistic outlook and the blurring of boundaries among distinct religions are manifested in the common placement and worship of some of the same deities in a variety of contexts and across a [End Page 145] spectrum of diverse traditions. For instance, a statue of Guanyin 觀音, the Buddhist bodhisattva who embodies the virtue of compassion, can be found in innumerable temples belonging to Buddhism, Daoism, and popular religion, as well as in shrines located in family residences, often alongside the statues of other deities with dissimilar origins or associations. The same goes for Guandi 關帝 (or Guan Yu 關羽), the widely worshiped god of war (who also performs several other ancillary roles, depending on context). The comprehensive history of cultic images in China is yet to be written. Alain Arrault's noteworthy book is a valuable step in that direction, even if its scope is much more limited than what its title indicates. While this book makes constructive contributions to scholarship, it is not a history of Chinese cultic images in any meaningful sense. The subtitle helps clarify its scope a bit, by pointing out that the book is only about the domestic statuary of Hunan. But the book is even more limited than this purported subject, as much of its focus is primarily on three collections of statues from Hunan, produced from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. While these collections represent important sources of information about local religious beliefs and practices, as well as the social and cultural contexts that have framed them over the centuries, they do not necessarily cover everything that needs to be known about Hunanese statuary, not to mention the long, rich, and complex history of Chinese cultic images. Arrault's book overlaps with the works of several other scholars. It can be viewed as part of a growing trend within European and American academic circles toward the exploration of local religion and society in Hunan. Its closest predecessor is Patrice Fava's pioneering Aux portes du ciel: La statuaire taoïste du Hunan (2014), which can be read in close conjunction with it.1 Both books are written by French scholars with years of fieldwork experience in Hunan, much of it dedicated to studying the consecrated statues and the various objects placed inside them, which include documents that shed light on their provenance and usage. Other new publications, with a somewhat similar focus on Hunan and local religion, include David J. Mozina's...