The Bestowal of Noble Titles upon the Mountain and Water Spirits in Tang China

Yi Zhu

doi:10.3390/rel13030229

Abstract

In the Tang era, official sacrifices to mountain and water spirits became more methodical than those of the preceding dynasties. What deserves more attention is that the imperial court bestowed noble titles, which were normally awarded to aristocrats and powerful officials, on the twenty-eight mountain and water spirits, including the Five Sacred Peaks, Four Strongholds, Four Seas and Four Waterways. These practices reflected the two-sided attitude of the Tang rulers to the mountain and water spirits. When confronting violent political changes, the rulers yearned for blessings and protection from these natural deities. On the other hand, with the expansion of monarchical power in the secular world, they sought to establish their authority in the realm of divinity. Running parallel in most cases, the bestowal of nobility and the official sacrificial system constituted the official cult of mountain and water spirits, which survived until the first years of the Ming Dynasty.

Highlights

As a kind of natural deities, mountain and water spirits were worshipped from ancient times on
華山 and Mount Tai 泰山 described in the literary sketches (Dudbridge 1995, pp. 86–116; Jia 2002, pp. 13–52), the history of the Temple of South Sea Spirit (Zeng 1991, pp. 311–58; Wang 2006, pp. 55–97) and the contribution of Daoism and popular religions to the state sacrifices to mountain and water spirits (Lei 2009, pp. 39–50, 133–218)
In the Tang era, while the official sacrifices to these deities became more methodical than those of the preceding dynasties, the imperial court extraordinarily bestowed noble titles, which were normally conferred upon the consanguineous royal clan members and meritorious officers, on the twenty-eight mountains and water spirits listed in the Table 1

Summary

Introduction

As a kind of natural deities, mountain and water spirits were worshipped from ancient times on. In the Tang era, while the official sacrifices to these deities became more methodical than those of the preceding dynasties, the imperial court extraordinarily bestowed noble titles, which were normally conferred upon the consanguineous royal clan members and meritorious officers, on the twenty-eight mountains and water spirits listed in the Table 1 It was understood as the personification of natural deities, which was influenced by popular religions in the Tang era The idea of personification is not convincing enough to explain why the bestowal of nobility on these deities happened in the Tang era This phenomenon should be revisited in the contexts of state rituals and political changes of that time. In addition to whether the bestowal of nobility affected the state sacrifices to the mountain and water spirits in the Tang era, the last part of the essay examines the fate of the bestowal of nobility in the following dynasties

Reconstruction of the Relationship between Monarchical Power and Mountain and

Epilogue