The Emergence of Daoism: Creation of Tradition by Gil Raz (review)

Abstract

136 Journal of Chinese Religions The book also leaves a key question unanswered. If the state did not always have an upper hand in its reform efforts, and was only half-heartedly committed to the secularization project, one then has to ask: how can the drastic shrinkage of religious space in Republican Guangzhou be accounted for? The book itself provides plenty of evidence that the dream of a modern and secular China was shared by some urban dwellers in Guangzhou, who constantly pressured the government to hold true to the secularist objective. Material of this kind indicates that the most significant negotiation over Guangzhou’s religious landscape might not have been between the state and society, but between different social forces. The book’s failure to allow any consideration of this possibility leads one to wonder whether Poon has applied the dual construct of “state vs. society” too rigidly to her subject matter. YA-PEI KUO, Independent Scholar The Emergence of Daoism: Creation of Tradition GIL RAZ. Routledge Studies in Taoism. Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 2012. 292 pages. ISBN 978-0-415-77849-7. £95.00 hardcover. This stimulating work on the competition and retroactive construction of Daoist traditions during the first five centuries A.D. is one of the rare Western attempts at describing the complex relationship network formed by Celestial Master (Tianshi 天師) communities, antagonistic lineages within and around it, and the later currents known as Highest or Upper Clarity or Purity (Shangqing 上清, whose translation varies in the book) and Numinous Treasure (Lingbao 靈寶). Raz asks many right questions, some of which he admits cannot be satisfyingly answered for lack of material evidence. His lucidity in dealing with primary sources and his caution towards modern hypotheses are praiseworthy. Reading the core chapters of the book, sophisticated and often allusive, will be a challenge for lay readers as well as undergraduate students.1 Due to this complexity, this review can merely touch a very few points. The book partakes in a current trend of reassessment of received Sinological scholarship. Readers should therefore not expect materials hitherto undisclosed, but rather a fresh, critical approach, based on renewed methodology and problematics, to documents and issues debated 1 Some technical terms would have benefited from explanatory footnotes; e.g., mingtang 明堂 and benming 本命, translated without further elaboration (p. 148), and missing in the index. Book Reviews 137 in the past decades, sometimes ad nauseam. A case in point is the daojia 道家 / daojiao 道教 debate, skillfully dealt with by the author, who shows how “the earliest use of daojiao indicates distinction, competition and contestation among Daoist lineages,” and certainly not “integration” (pp. 13–14). The theme remains prominent throughout the book. The first part of the Introduction, called a “chapter” at some point, which it really is, discusses definitions (“Part I: the Dao that can be spoken of”) then offers an overview of Daoism from the origins to the era under consideration (“Part II: an episodic history of Daoism”). These classic opening pages soon disclose some of the work’s main arguments, namely that the label “Daoism” and its retrospective use betray the intrinsic complexity of historical phenomena, an argument I voiced earlier,2 and that coexisting Daoist lineages should be defined as “communities” advocating different practices claimed to be efficient in “attaining the Dao and restoring harmony” (pp. 4–5). Raz invites the reader to shift her focus from the names, rites, and texts of traditions to their social nature, arguing that early canons did not include several texts later deemed fundamental (see examples on p. 16). Nevertheless, Raz himself remains tempted to define communities on the sole basis of extant texts, for instance the Scripture of the Transformations of Master Lao (Laozi bianhua jing 老子變化經), whose authorship remains unknown (pp. 26–27). A survey of modern attempts at defining Daoism, from Strickmann in 1981 to Liu Yi 劉 屹 in 2005 (pp. 14–17), leads to a “polythetic definition” based on five criteria: (1) preeminence of the Way (dao 道), (2) which can be “approached” through rites; (3) secrecy and (4) rejection of other practices, in particular blood sacrifice; and (5) eschatological concerns. Not all five criteria are required simultaneously by this “dynamic” definition, which can in effect “accommodate...