Ji’an Literati and the Local in Song-Yuan-Ming China by Anne Gerritsen (review)

Abstract

106 Journal of Chinese Religions Altogether the work, a revised dissertation (first published in Stockholm: Stockholm University, Department of Oriental languages, 2004), serves as a highly informative introduction to a new, prominent field of Chinese academic discourse which had not been treated in monograph-length in Western scholarship before. It is highly recommended not only for students and scholars in the field of Christianity in (East) Asia but also for all those who seek to understand contemporary discourses on modernity in China. CHRISTIAN MEYER, Universität Leipzig Ji’an Literati and the Local in Song-Yuan-Ming China ANNE GERRITSEN. Leiden: Brill, 2007. xiv, 258 pages. ISBN 978-90-04-15603-6. €104.00, US$155.00, hardcover. In this ambitious study Anne Gerritsen uses literati writings about Ji’an Prefecture 吉安府, Jiangxi 江西, to explore ways in which literati identified with their locale, community, and institutions, across five hundred years of the Song 宋, Yuan 元, and Ming 明. Her focus is on discourse, especially dedicatory inscriptions for temples, but she also studies pieces written for local schools, genealogies, and community covenants. Unlike previous studies that examined in depth the actual workings of particular local institutions during shorter time spans, this study strives for a better understanding of long-term trends in Ji’an literati rhetoric about the locale. Gerritsen identifies three periods during the span from 1100 to 1600: The first is the Southern Song and Yuan, which she views as one continuous period. During this time, Jizhou 吉州 (the former name of Ji’an) was not densely settled and, Gerritsen argues, was viewed by contemporaries as a dangerous place in which awesome powers threatened humans’ fragile existence. To “tame” this landscape, people “inscribed” it by building temples, monasteries, and shrines, which were sites of interaction between humans and forces of the higher realm (p. 35). Literati were asked to write inscriptions for these religious sites, and their representations of the changing landscape can be read as a record of the religious world of the Jizhou residents. Although previous authors have been skeptical of the value of literati temple inscriptions for understanding religion, Gerritsen “takes seriously” literati religious belief and argues that these writings shed light on both literati religious views and their places in religious communities (p. 5). Literati, she argues, had a deeply felt need to belong to their local communities and play significant roles therein. By describing and framing encounters with higher forces, literati asserted some thin human control over them and created a role for themselves in their local communities. Literati authors saw their role as “explanation and Book Reviews 107 translation,” to represent their local practices as consistent with broad elite discourse (p. 68). By taking on this role, Ji’an literati identified themselves as being in some sense “members” of the local religious communities for which they wrote, even if their membership did not include full participation in ritual life (pp. 74-77). Literati recognized that their elite status was fluid, and in some cases, they did participate in concrete ways along with common people. Scholars and commoners alike congregated regularly at temples of regional cults, such as those for Kang Wang 康王 and the Three Huagai Immortals 華蓋三真君 (pp. 41-44). This, Gerritsen argues, “may have been part of a unifying local identity” (p.42). During this period, literati saw temples as one of the foremost spaces for community construction and they were more interested in writing about them than about local educational and lineage organizations. For literati, she argues, elite status was fluid, and they attempted to claim membership or ownership of the communities around territorial cults. Thus, she rejects Barend ter Haar’s argument that elites were not part of cult organizations (p. 58).1 The second period was the early Ming. Gerritsen argues that the devastation in Jiangxi that accompanied the Yuan collapse, and the subsequent rise of a strong central state, caused a sharp break with the previous period. In the early Ming, Ji’an men served at court in great numbers, in fact, Ji’an had more jinshi 進士 than any other prefecture. This success changed literati attitudes towards the local community. Leaders of local temples who needed inscriptions now journeyed to the capital to...