Ancestral Shrines Research Articles

From national capital to provincial capital: Transformation of Hangzhou’s political spaces in the Early Yuan Dynasty

After achieving the unification of all under Heaven, the early Yuan rulers began to reform the political space of the Southern Song capital. The evolution of their policies was closely related to the ruling situation in Jiangnan. After the Yuan army captured Lin’an, ritualistic buildings with strong overtones of imperial power within and outside the city were gradually abandoned or transformed; out of consideration for the political impact, certain protective measures were taken. Due to Kublai Khan’s apprehensions that the situation in Jiangnan would worsen, as well as Sangha’s administration, the transformation tended to be radical: The imperial palace, imperial Daoist temples, Circular Mound Altar of the southern suburbs, the mausoleums of the emperors and empresses, and so on were forcibly transformed into Buddhist temples, sparking violent unrest in Jiangnan society. The Yuan court later adjusted the relevant measures, assigning to Hangzhou the status of a provincial capital, respecting local cultural traditions, and building government offices, ancestral shrines, gate towers, and so on in accord with the Confucian code of etiquette. At the turn of the Yuan and Ming dynasties, the historical facts associated with the transformation of Hangzhou in the early Yuan Dynasty had gradually become obscured, and many mystical legends were later derived therefrom, becoming an important historical reference for governance of Jiangnan by the rulers of later generations.

Juxtaposition or integration: the formation mechanism of architectural form in a cultural transition zone

ABSTRACT This paper explores the formation mechanisms of various architectural forms in a cultural transition region. A field investigation involving 504 ancestral shrines with Guangfu and Hakka styles in Shenzhen was performed. Then, spatial distribution analysis was conducted to reveal the regional structure of aggregation, penetration and juxtaposition of the architectural forms. Case studies were adopted to explain the integration modes of the architectural forms. The results show that, juxtaposition, as a typical mode of coexistence of architectural forms in cultural transition zones, mainly occurs in regions dominated by weak cultures. Through gathering densely in a small region, a weak culture can gain the ability to compete with a strong culture, thus forming a basis for achieving an equilibrium state. The approaches to the integration of architectural forms are diverse. The transformation of the architectural plane involves changes in social organization and cultural essence. The alteration of construction details and decoration involves a compromise regarding noncritical elements adopted by the weak culture to maintain its original characteristics. Finally, their shared human and natural environmental “genes” give the buildings in the cultural transition region an underlying commonality. This study offers a significant addition to the cultural geography and architectural morphology literature.

RETHINKING THE ANCESTRAL SHRINES IN THE EARLY EMPIRES

AbstractThis article examines the development of early imperial ancestral shrines by exploring the Liye and Yuelu 嶽麓 Qin slips, along with other excavated texts and historical documents. It argues that Qin Shihuang's 秦始皇 court was the first to specify the regulations for the early imperial ancestral shrine, a crucial part of which was the establishment of the Taishang huang 太上皇 shrines throughout the realm, making the imperial ancestral cult part of the daily local administrative affairs. The Western Han courts largely adopted the regulations stipulated by Qin Shihuang in their commandery and kingdom shrines until late Western Han, when ritual reforms brought the imperial ancestral shrines closer to what Michael Loewe calls the Reformist vision, entailing potential conflicts between bloodlines and the hereditary order of succession. By no means did the early empires simply continue in the stipulations for the imperial ancestral shrines the royal practices of the pre-imperial period; instead, the precedents transmitted to Eastern Han reflected two major ritual reforms, with local ancestral shrines and personal participation by the emperor key subjects of debates.

From Long Barrows to Ancestral Shrines: Bell Beaker Monuments and Cosmology in Central Europe

From Long Barrows to Ancestral Shrines: Bell Beaker Monuments and Cosmology in Central Europe

Inheritance of Traditional Family Values: A Comparative Study of Family Ancestral Shrines and Related Paintings of Lee Family

Apart from providing a haven, a home serves also as a place where people can develop their personalities and temperaments. Traditions within families are an often-unseen force that has a profound effect on people. In this article, the authors explore the meaning and value of family traditional inheritance in the current context and what manifestations may occur. After reviewing the history and characteristics of ancestral shrines, this study further examined the forms of expression used to express “home” and “family traditions” from the creator’s perspective. A conceptual framework is provided for subsequent case studies. Considering the role and importance of different creations in the transmitting of family traditions, a family memorial hall named “Qiyun Residence” and a series of paintings called “Home: Sweet Home” were created by members of this family to analyze and interpret family traditions. The importance of family traditions cannot be overstated, but they must be appropriately expressed. It is our aim that the examples presented in this article show how “Traditional” can be transferred to “Modernity” for the sustainability of culture.

From royal court to ancestral shrine: transposition of command documents in Early Chinese epigraphy

While the earliest attested Chinese manuscripts date only from the late fifth century BC, bronze inscriptions cast between the tenth and eighth centuries BC provide abundant evidence of the administrative use of manuscripts at the royal court, especially during the appointment ceremonies in which the royal secretaries read out the king's command to the aristocratic elite. These command documents were sometimes quoted at length in inscriptions cast on the ritual bronze vessels by these appointees, who had them displayed in their ancestral shrines and used them in ancestral sacrifices and ensuing feasts. Based on the epigraphic evidence, this paper explores various aspects of manuscript production in the Western Zhou administration (1045--771 BC) and investigates the complex editorial process behind the textual transfer from the command documents onto bronze ritual paraphernalia. Through an analysis of various editorial approaches to the composition of bronze inscriptions, the value and status imputed to manuscripts by Western Zhou aristocracy has been further discussed. Such reconstruction of lost manuscript practices can enrich our understanding of textual production not only during the Western Zhou period but in Early China in general.

Christ’s Seer Office in the South Sudanese Context

Christ's Seer Office (CSO) has a hotchpotch of controversies encompassing it. Among these polemical trajectories that obtains in these controversies is the African’s prophetic office. This is certainly due to the close parallelism that CSO matches the prophetic office of Christ. In the South Sudanese context, some African communities view Christ as a magician, medicine practitioner, or a traditional healer. This misconception should not be taken lightly. It needs a deeper introspection from the African Christian theologians, as the concerned communities may abandon the church and revert to their ancestral shrines for worship. The Nuer in South Sudan has embraced prophet Ngundeng as their Christ just because of some similarities that exist between Christ’s Seer Office and Ngundeng. This article fully reconnoitered the two prophetic offices by comparing them by using the principle of Nexus mysteriorum and Analogia entis to enhance the Nuer understanding of Christ. In its findings, this article reveals Christ as a prophet; the whom all the Old Testament prophets prefigured in their speeches and actions. Moreover, the study concluded that Jesus is Nuer’s Ngundeng par excellence.

Sylvan Memories of People, Place, and Trees in Nangodi, Northeastern Ghana

AbstractPeople's relationships with trees reflect the landscape histories associated with distinctive forms of political and religious authority and the moral imaginings of people in Nangodi and its environs in the Upper East Region of Ghana. Their memories of particular trees serve as historical evidence of overlapping yet specific forms of political authority exercised by chiefs, earth priests, past colonial officers, and present-day Ghanaian government officials. In Nangodi, individual family ancestral tree shrines, clan tree cemeteries, and sacred groves associated with earth priests and chiefs coexist with the Red Volta West Forest Reserve and with a succession of tree-related development initiatives. While these relationships are often considered as separate claims to political authority, spiritual power, or scientific knowledge, this paper argues that these relationships of people and of trees are better conceptualized as historical accumulations that represent intersecting and contested forms of authority and political rule continuing into the present. Indigenous tree species such as ebony are associated with sacred groves controlled by chiefs, silk-cotton trees with earth priests’ cemeteries, and baobab trees with particular families coexist with foreign teak trees associated with colonial forestry. This situation suggests how institutions of governance as well as the actions of individuals have environmental consequences. A consideration of historical memories of people and trees in places such as Nangodi enables a rethinking of political and environmental dichotomies, and complicates the social dynamics of` the preservation and destruction of trees and forests around the world.

Qing dynasty market towns and society on the Chengdu Plain: The example of Zhenzichang in Jian prefecture

The author proceeds from reconsideration of G. William Skinner’s theory of the “standard marketing community” to propose an alternative understanding of a “marketing community” on the Chengdu Plain, through a concise analysis of guild halls, ancestral shrines, Buddhist and Daoist temples, academies, and other social organizations in Zhenzichang, Jian prefecture, during the Qing dynasty. The establishment of social organizations in market towns on the Chengdu Plain during the Qing dynasty was closely associated with the brokerage system and the appointment of administrative bailiffs: through the intervention of government authority, these social organizations integrated the market towns with the surrounding villages, gradually forming a community identity. Between the late 18th century and the early 19th century, a number of distinct social units centered on market towns, or marketing communities, took shape on the Chengdu Plain. The logic of “standard marketing communities” as established by Skinner is untenable: the marketing communities must be understood on the basis of the formation and significance of social organizations within the market towns.

Changes in the Nature of Yangban and the Establishment of Ancestral Shrines in the Late 20th Century －Focused on the Case of Suya-ri Village of Cheongdo County in Gyeongbuk Province

이 연구는 동성촌락인 청도군 수야리 박씨마을에서 재실의 건립과정과 ‘양반화’의 실상을 관련지어 신분적 불평등을 논하기 어려운 현대사회에서 여전히 양반이기를 고집하는 이들과 경제적 손실을 감수하면서도 양반이 되려하는 이들의 역동성이 지역사회에 미치는 영향과 그 문화적 원리를 검토한 것이다. 청도지역에서 ‘양반화’ 양상은 비향원집이 향교에 가입하여 향원집이 되는 현상으로 나타나는데, ‘위보(僞譜)’의 사례는 나타나지 않지만 ‘투탁(投託)’을 통한 양반화의 양상도 간혹 나타나고 있다. 이러한 양반화의 양상은 향원집 즉, 양반의 증가를 초래하였다. 특히, 재실은 양반이 되고자 하는 문중과 이미 양반이 된 문중 사이에 타협이 이루어진 정치적?역사적 구조물로서 기존양반은 자신들의 지위를 확고히 다지기 위한 수단으로, 신생양반은 자신들의 지위를 상승시키기 위하여 재실을 이용한다. 따라서 지역민이 인식하는 양반수의 증가는 재실건립의 증가로 나타나고 있다. 이는 재실이 ‘양반화’의 조건이기도 하거니와 양반으로의 입지를 다지는 정치적 전략으로 재실을 이용하기 때문이다. 재실과 같은 문화적 자본을 갖춘다는 것은 지역의 상위계급으로 존재할 수 있는 문화적 기반과 정체성을 구성하는 요건이 되기 때문에 청도의 지역민들은 재실의 건립에 노력을 기울이고 있다. 청도지역에서 양반의 성격변화는 ‘신양반’의 대두로 대변되는 ‘양반화’ 양상으로 파악이 되며 재실은 사회적 지위의 확보와 확립이라는 정치적 전략으로 이용된다.

Medical herbalism in Malawi

Medical herbalism is the most widespread and the most ancient form of medicine. This paper offers an account of medical herbalism in Malawi, and discusses the role of medicines – both plant and animal substances – in the social life of the matrilineal peoples of Malawi. It aims to counter the widespread tendency to interpret medical practices in Africa solely in terms of a spiritual or religious metaphysic. After critiquing some early approaches to African medicine, the paper discusses the nature and role of medicines in Malawi, the main forms of therapy, and the relation of medicine to the ancestral shrines.

How popular Confucianism became embarrassing

In the past, most farmhouses in central China had an ancestral shrine and a paper scroll with the Chinese letters for "heaven, earth, emperor, ancestors, and teachers" on the wall opposite the main entrance. The ancestral shrine and paper scroll were materializations of the central principles of popular Confucianism. This article deals with their past and present. It describes how in everyday action and in ritual this shrine marked a spatial and moral center. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) the ancestral shrines and paper scrolls were destroyed, and replaced by a poster of Mao Zedong. Although the moral principles of popular Confucianism were dismissed by intellectuals and politicians, Mao Zedong was worshipped in ways reminiscent of popular Confucian ritual. The Mao poster and the paper scroll stand for a continuity of a spatial-moral practice of centering. What has changed however is the public evaluation of such a local practice, and this tension can produce a double embarrassment. Elements of popular Confucianism (which had been forcefully denied in the past) remain somewhat embarrassing for many people in countryside. At the same time urbanites sometimes inversely perceive the Maoist condemnation of popular Confucianism as an awkward survival of peasant narrow-mindedness—all the more so as Confucian traditions are now reinvented and revitalized as cultural heritage.

North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence (review)

Reviewed by: North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence Mark van de Logt North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence. Edited by Richard J. Chacon and Rubén G. Mendoza . Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8165-2532-4. Photographs. Figures. References. Index. Pp. ix, 283. $50.00. This book is an important contribution to the study of Native American warfare. It is the first volume of a collection of papers presented at a symposium at the 2003 American Anthropological Association meeting in Chicago. It is published simultaneously with a separate volume that discusses indigenous warfare and ritual violence in Latin America. The papers presented here effectively dispel the myths that native societies in North America coexisted peacefully before the arrival of the Europeans and that native warfare was uncommon and relatively bloodless. The contributors to this volume show that warfare and ritual violence were of "considerable antiquity," widespread, and often very intense and quite lethal. The papers cover nearly every cultural area in North America and provide some surprising conclusions. While it is generally asserted that native warfare increased after the arrival of Europeans (as among the Iroquois, for example), it appears that warfare between tribes in the Arctic region actually decreased as a result of European contact. Other interesting observations concern the various causes of intertribal warfare. Although the desire for revenge was almost universal, there were also causes that were more culturally specific. Witchcraft accusations played important roles among the Cree, the Iroquois, and among certain Californian tribes. Among the peoples of the Northwest Coast, warfare was also "considered the means to satiate the spirits of cannibalism, war, and death" (p. 70). Among the Pueblos, long considered to be among the most pacifist peoples in North America, warfare and sacrificial killings were associated with fertility and subsistence, and essential to ensure the survival of the people. Nation-building and territorial expansion through warfare characterized the ancient civilization that built the Cahokia mounds. Among certain southeastern tribes the desire to extend political influence and power caused chiefs to destroy the ancestral shrines and temples (which were sources of supernatural power) of neighboring rivals. Prestige and the quest for captives to be adopted into the tribe were important incentives for Iroquois men to take to the warpath. Taken together, the papers in this volume remind military historians that warfare is a cultural, as much as a social and political, phenomenon. As is often the case, myths do not die easily and it is doubtful that the conclusions reached in this book will be readily accepted in certain circles outside of academia, where they might be misconstrued as a sinister attempt to provide after-the-fact justifications for the Euro-American conquest of the Americas. To avoid such false accusations, the editors added a concluding chapter discussing the ethical issues raised by this book. [End Page 561] All chapters are, without exception, readable, engaging, and free of the professional jargon that often characterizes the work of anthropologists and archaeologists. The introduction by editors Chacon and Mendoza provides excellent brief overviews of every chapter. Researchers will also find the bibliography comprehensive and very useful. Mark van de Logt American Indian Studies Research Institute Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana Copyright © 2008 Society for Military History

Archaeological Discovery and Research into the Layout of the Palaces and Ancestral Shrines of Han Dynasty Chang'an –A Comparative Essay on the Capital Cities of Ancient Chinese Kingdoms and Empires

The principal function of the ancient Chinese royal capital city was political. From the perspective of archaeology, the physical manifestation of this is primarily revealed through palace buildings and ancestral shrines. Chang’an was the capital city of the Western Han Empire. After extensive excavation and research into the sites of palatial structures and ancestral shrines of Han Dynasty Chang’an city, it is clear that the two are distinct in form. Also, comparative research into the layout of the palaces and ancestral shrines of Han Chang’an that have undergone excavation beside those palaces and shrines of the capital cities of the kingdoms of the pre-Qin era also reveals that the two architectural forms have clear differences. The difference in architectural form between palaces and ancestral shrines reflects the difference in function they performed, between rule through territorial authority and rule through kinship. From the side-by-side placement of palaces and ancestral shrines within the royal precincts of capital cities of the kingdom era (the pre-Qin period), to the separate placement of palaces and shrines in the capital cities of the imperial era (Qin-Han to Ming-Qing periods), as well as in the formation of the system centered on the royal palace, whereby the “ancestors occupy the left, while the altar of soil occupies the right,” the difference in the layout of palaces and ancestral shrines in the capital cities of the kingdom era and those of the imperial era clearly explains how the palace, which represents rule by territorial authority, and the ancestral shrine, which represents rule by kinship, wax and wane in the strength of their social function with the development of society and the change in societal configuration. Archaeological discovery and research into the architectural sites of palaces and ancestral shrines of Han Chang’an city reveals that the kingdom era of ancient Chinese society was a time for the integration of rule through kinship and rule through territorial authority, while from the Qin-Han period to the Ming-Qing era was a time of centralized imperial power, where rule by territorial authority was primary, and rule through kinship was secondary.

‘No condition is permanent’: ethnic construction and the use of history in Akuapem

AbstractThis article concerns a recent political crisis which led to the fragmentation, in the main along ethnic lines, of the small Ghanaian kingdom of Akuapem. The situation is complex, though one may choose to frame it too simply in terms of hegemony (Akan vis-à-vis Guan) or even as a double hegemony in the sense that arguments on both sides appeal to ‘modern’ notions, to law courts, the constitution and ‘freedom’, and to newspapers in order to propagandise a position rather than to appeal to the authority of ‘traditional’ arbitration, destoolment, ancestral shrines and gods. Ethnicity and identity are notions with many and ill-defined meanings that fragment when separated from the specific situations in which they are used or constructed. To examine ethnicity one must see how ethnicities are ‘entangled’ and relate to each other; one needs, too, an historical perspective, for, whatever selfhood was in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, it is obviously different today. The dense historical and ethnographic details in the article are essential to point to the shape of the social order and to reveal in all their complexity the factors behind the recent fighting and continuing tension in the kingdom.

Mbeere Ancestors and the Domestication of Death

This article examines both traditional belief and practice regarding death and the ancestors and the transformation in the 'ancestor complex' resulting from sweeping changes in land tenure among the Mbeere of Kenya. Corpses were customarily exposed in the bush with little attendant ritual. The unceremonious disposal of corpses by highly mobile, weakly corporate descent groups made for a weak relationship between lineages and territories, and thus militated against the development of ancestral shrines as centres for sacrifice and collective observance. Since all land, including bush, is now claimed by lineages or individuals, burial effectively dissociates death from the previously unclaimed wilderness, which was the traditional abode of the shades. Since it occurs in land claimed by agnates of the deceased, burial also provides evidence supporting arguments about the ownership of disputed territory. First mandated by the colonial Government, burial has domesticated death and created more tangible connexions between a social group and a land parcel. Traditionally, shades beyond three generations corporately and capriciously afflicted individuals and communities. The shades identified as fathers and grandfathers, by contrast, acted for specific, discernible reasons in harming individual kin. The distinction between the amoral corporate action of the genealogically distant shades and the more comprehensible punishments emanating from the recently deceased has been reinforced by the recent quest for land titles under the new land tenure rules.

House of Stones: Memorial Art of Fifteenth-Century Sierra Leone

In Sierra Leone, West Africa, hundreds of miniature stone figures have been discovered: What is their origin? The figures have been dated, largely through stylistic analysis, to a period prior to the mid-16th century, a time of major ethnic migrations in which the indigenous “Sapi” peoples were infiltrated by the “Mani” originating from the Mande peoples of the Upper Niger River. This paper attempts to attribute the figures to the Sapi through an iconographic analysis and an investigation of early European literature on the area, and to suggest a continuity of function in the modern ancestral shrines of the Temne people, descended from the Sapi.

The Savage Critic: Some European Images of the Primitive

In Martin Fernindez de Enciso's Suma degeographia of 15 19, there is a story of an Amerindian chieftain converted to Christianity by a shipwrecked Spanish sailor. The sailor stages a trial ofstrength between the Virgin and the Indians' tribal deity 'Zemi'. The Virgin, of course, wins the contest and the chieftain, overwhelmed by superior magic, pulls down his ancestral shrines and replaces them with altars to the Mother of God. Some weeks later a ship reaches the island with a priest on board. He completes thejob the sailor had begun, by instructing the chief and his followers in the mysteries of the Christian faith. The chief immediately perceives the truth of all he is told. Only one thing puzzles him. Every night in their paganism the Indians would bring to the image of'Zemi' food for the god to eat. In the morning it would be gone. Now they bring food for the Virgin. But in the morning it is still there. Does the Virgin not eat, asks the chief, or is she offended by their offerings? No, replies the priest, the Virgin does not eat. But the church eats for her. 'Y tomo delo que le tenian puesto a sancta Maria para que comiesse y lev6 selo y comia dello y [the Indians] lo quissieron matar y dezian que [the priest] era malo y no era de sancta Maria sino del Zemi.'1 This little tale, apocryphal, anticlerical, presents the American 'savage' in a familiar role. He is a 'natural man' who, because he has been born into a world both morally and intellectually free, is able to see through the delusions with which civil men cloud the human intelligence so that it can no longer, in this case, distinguish between theft and sacrifice. Like the Brahman chieftain, Dindimus, who lectured Alexander on the virtues of asceticism,2 and Beowulf among the Danes, such men embody an ethical code which is ignored, or wilfully rejected, by those among whom they find themselves, but whose cogency, it is assumed, the reader will feel compelled to accept. The current ethnographic image of the savage was, it need hardly be said, very different. Far from being the enlightened and enlightening child of nature, he was, for most Europeans, a debased creature who had clearly