Abstract
This article sheds light on the sophisticated funeral process set up by the Cao Đài religion (or Caodaism), combining both a theological and an ethnographical analysis. After introducing how Cao Đài theology represents both the body and the spiritual components of each individual in the specific millenarian conception of existence that characterizes Cao Đài, we trace the ritual process of funerals from the altar and coffin preparation to the collection of prayers and talismanic rituals conveyed to save souls in a Cao Đài manner. Read together, these sources present a genuine project and spirit of reform in the ideas, imaginaries, and practices related to death in Vietnam from the 1920s onwards, crystallizing a specific Cao Đài identity in Vietnamese and also East Asian redemptive societies’ deathscapes.
Highlights
Being important social actors and mediators in the process of decolonization1, believers of the Cao Ðài religion are well-known for having created a strict hierarchical and politico-military organization in Cochin China (Southern Vietnam), largely in the hands of a group of spirit-mediums and leaders educated at French colonial schools.In the 1920s, under French colonial rule (Cochin China), the “Master [living in the] High Tower”(Thầy Cao Ðài) is held to have introduced himself through spirit-mediumship to Vietnamese civil servants and spiritists and to Chinese–Vietnamese redemptive societies in Saigon
Caodaism as a religion did not have a single impact on the process of decolonization but included people on many contrasted political sides and practices
Following the intuitive and comparative work of Williams and Ladwig (2012, p. 5), we find it stimulating to include in this term all the “abstract discursive and subjective spaces which death ‘inhabits’: texts, stories, emotions and rites and social practices”
Summary
Being important social actors and mediators in the process of decolonization , believers of the Cao Ðài religion (or Cao Ðài hereafter) are well-known for having created a strict hierarchical and politico-military organization in Cochin China (Southern Vietnam), largely in the hands of a group of spirit-mediums and leaders educated at French colonial schools. Cao Ðài doctrine and political ambitions were first meant to address the Vietnamese people who were assigned the mission of spreading a syncretic, humanistic, and millenarian message all over the world for the acquisition of merits and less heavy punishments at the time of the Last Judgment (cuộc dại phán xét or cuộc Phán Xét Cuối Cùng) and the End of the World (tận thế) This millenarianism follows a three-stage eschatology (tam kỳ mạt kiếp; 三期末劫 Sānqımòjié) borrowed from the Chinese Xiāntiān Dào 先天道 tradition The text Lónghuájıng 龍華經 (“Flower of the Dragon Book”; Vn. Kinh Long Hoa), dating from the seventeenth century, strongly influenced the vocabulary as well as the mythological and the millenarian themes of Cao Ðài, its spirit-writings and its funeral doctrine and practice (as well as of Chinese redemptive societies). After having introduced how the Cao Ðài theology represents both the body and the spiritual components of each individual in the specific millenarian conception of existence that characterizes Cao Ðài, we study the step-by-step process of funerals—from the altar and coffin preparation to the collection of prayers and talismanic rituals conveyed to save souls in a Cao Ðài way—-offering a genuine project and spirit of reform in the Vietnamese deathscape and in the ideas, imaginaries, and practices related to death in Vietnam from the 1920s onwards
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