Daoist Ritual, State Religion, and Popular Practices: Zhenwu Worship from Song to Ming (960–1644) by Shin-Yi Chao (review)

Abstract

100 Journal of Chinese Religions Daoist Ritual, State Religion, and Popular Practices: Zhenwu Worship from Song to Ming (960–1644) SHIN-YI CHAO. Routledge Studies in Taoism. London and New York: Routledge, 2011. xii, 158 pages. ISBN 978-0-415-78066-7. US$130.00,£80.00 hardcover. As Shin-yi Chao, the author of this dense and impressive piece of scholarship, remarks, Zhenwu 真武 – the “Perfected Martial,” a.k.a. Xuanwu 玄武, the “Dark Warrior” – is “one of a handful of deities in modern China who can justly claim nationwide worship” (p. 3). Until now, however, there have been few studies in Chinese, Japanese, or Western languages that might adequately explain the history, popularity, and multi-vocality of this Chinese deity. The best recent studies have all focused on the pilgrimage site of Mount Wudang 武當山, where Zhenwu worship was subordinated to the lavish patronage and political concerns of Yuan 元 and Ming 明 emperors (see the works of Lagerwey, de Bruyn, Mei Li, and Yang Lizhi cited in the Bibliography). Yet Zhenwu’s association with Mount Wudang may be traced back to the Northern Song 北宋, and it was during the Southern Song 南宋 that the mountain developed as a site of Daoist monasticism and empire-wide pilgrimage. The independence of the Zhenwu cult from the state and state actors is one of the recurring themes of this monograph. In this history of the cult to Zhenwu during the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, Shin-yi Chao has isolated three thematic strands: Zhenwu as symbol (chapter 1, “A god in formation”), Zhenwu as object of worship (chapter 2, “A god in full” and chapter 4, “A god and his mountain,”), and Zhenwu as focus of Daoist ritual (chapter 3, “A god in transition”). In each of these strands, the author maintains a strict chronology, and by inserting the chapter on Daoist ritual, whose focus is on the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, between the two chapters on the development of the temple cult, she manages to preserve an overall chronology as well. This is both ingenious and satisfying, but it means that evidence is almost never repeated, and the reader must pay close attention throughout. The three strands necessarily produce some loose ends, which Chao ties together in the last chapter, “The whole and the parts.” In chapter 1, Chao isolates two distinct traditions that contributed to the formation of Zhenwu’s symbolic identity by the Song dynasty: a classical tradition and a Daoist tradition. From the first, Zhenwu derives his name and initial identity from Xuanwu, the Dark Warrior, one of “Four Animals” (sishou 四獸) cited in the Book of Rites that are “zoomorphic representations of the four cardinal directions” (p. 11). By the Eastern Han 東漢, Xuanwu was described as the “spiritual turtle” (linggui 靈龜) or represented as a figure encircled by a turtle and snake. Under the influence of correlative cosmology, Xuanwu was equated with the north, the power of water, and other aspects, while the “Four Animals” provided the structural Book Reviews 101 framework for creating an orderly cosmos.” In the ninth century this cosmological framework was absorbed within a Daoist tradition, which provides an alternative genealogy of Zhenwu’s symbolic identity. Zhenwu appears in the Daoist tradition by his association with the spiritgeneral Tianpeng 天蓬, aide-de-camp or senior captain of Beidi 北帝, Emperor of the North, who governs the land of the dead and its disease-causing demons. By the tenth century, Zhenwu and Tianpeng become two of the “Four Saints,” all commandants of the Emperor of the North, who head a Department of Exorcism (Quxieyuan 驅邪院) and were worshipped in temples in Kaifeng 開封 and Hangzhou 杭州 during the Song dynasty. By the twelfth century, the new Celestial Heart (Tianxin 天心) lineage of Daoist priests placed the cult to Zhenwu at the very center of its exorcistic rituals. Chapter 3 is devoted entirely to tracing the historical roots of these rituals. Here, Chao identifies three components of these Zhenwu-centered rituals: thunder rites (leifa 雷法); the transformation of the body of the priest (bianshen 變神) in which the Daoist practitioner becomes Zhenwu; and the assimilation of popular cults in the Song by Daoist priests. Each of these components is analyzed in great detail. The analysis of bianshen and the...