Confucian Rituals Research Articles

The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China: Ethics, Classics, and Lineage Discourse. By Kai-wing Chow. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. x, 344 pp. $45.00.

The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China: Ethics, Classics, and Lineage Discourse. By Kai-wing Chow. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. x, 344 pp. $45.00.

The rise of Confucian ritualism in late imperial China: ethics, classics, and lineage discourse

Reign periods of the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties Introduction 1. The crisis of the confucian order and didactic responses 2. Ritualist ethics and textual purism in the K'ang-hsi reign 3. Lineage discourse: gentry, local society, and the state 4. Ancestral rites and lineage in early Ch'ing scholarship 5. Ritual a nd the classics in the early Ch'ing 6. Linguistic purism and the hermeneutics of the Han learning movement 7. Ritualist ethics and the Han learning movement 8. Ritualism and gentry culture: women and lineage Conclusion Reference matter Notes Bibliography Character list Index.

The public good that does the public good: A new reading of Mohism

Abstract Mohism has long been misrepresented. Mo‐tzu is usually called a utilitarian because he preached a universal love that must benefit. Yet Mencius, who pined the Confucian way of virtue (humaneness and righteousness) against Mo‐tzu's way of benefit, basically borrowed Mo‐tzu's thesis: that the root cause of chaos is this lack of love—except Mencius renamed it the desire for personal benefit. Yet Mo‐tzu only championed ‘benefit’ to head off its opposite, ‘harm’, specifically the harm done by Confucians who with good intent (love) perpetuated rites that did people more harm than good. Mo‐tzu wanted his universal love to be the public good that would actually do the public good (i.e. benefit the collective). And he derived this from Confucius’ teaching of ‘Love (all) men’ and his Golden Rule: Render not what others would not desire. No man desires harm. As a critic of Confucian rites (especially the prolonged funeral), Mo‐tzu worked to replace the blind custom of rites with his rational measure of ‘rig...

Shamans, Housewives, and Other Restless Spirits: Women in Korean Ritual Life (review)

106BOOK REVIEWS more, are germane to the issue. However Hoyt's treatment is highly subjective, providing little more than his own opinions, unsupported by evidence or analysis. These criticisms notwithstanding, The Pusan Perimeter provides a handy one-volume narrative for the general reader. Colonel Donald W. Boose, Jr. United Nations Command, Korea Shamans, Housewives, and Other Restless Spirits: Women in Korean Ritual Life. By Laurel Kendall. Honolulu: University ofHawaii Press, 1985. xiii, 228pp. Plates, Appendixes, Notes, Glossary, Bibliography, Index. $20.00. Any strong bias held by a reviewer ought to be stated at the outset: I first read Kendall's work as a doctoral dissertation, later as a manuscript prepared for publication, and now in book form. I was impressed the first time, and subsequent reworkings have served to make it even better. This is a study of shamans (and of one shaman in particular), and of housewives and their families in a village not too far from Seoul. There Kendall reveals a side of Korean life not adequately covered by conventional scholarship. Her remedy is to provide "an ethnography of Korean women's ritual realm—the rites that demarcate it, the supernatural beings who inhabit it, and the shamans who diagnose its vicissitudes and heal its ills" (p. ix), for there has been lacking any "systematic ethnographic appreciation ofthe who, why, what, where, and when of women's rituals, a gap that precludes generalization on the role of women and shamans in Korean religious life" (p. 38). The book opens with a description of a ritual event, a kut (an elaborate shamanic rite) for Grandfather Chon to cure his nagging illness. Four shamans preside, and they are joined by members of the family and their friends and neighbors. Aside from the sickly old man and his son, the participants are females, and virtually all take some active role. The action commences in the late afternoon and terminates before lunch the next day with breaks for food and sleep. It is a dramatic ritual performance (or series of performances) ranging over a gamut encompassing solemnity as well as low comedy and farce. The remainder of the book may be seen as the unfolding of an explanation for that vividly described event. The following chapter provides a brief overview of the scholarly treatment of shamanism in Korea. Early ethnologists noted the dualism of religion in the family—the males engaging in solemn Confucian rites and the females expelling malevolence in rituals that involved pounding drums, spirit possession, and even raucous laughter. Not surprisingly, the former was viewed as orthodoxy, and the latter as something considerably less respectable, even as superstition. Kendall takes the position that these women's activities are a vital part of Korean ritual life—"Within this religious system, women and shamans perform essential ritual BOOK REVIEWS107 tasks that complement men's ritual tasks" (p. 25). She takes issue with the British social anthropologist I. M. Lewis, who contends that female participation in spirit possession rites throughout many parts of the world may be seen as a feminist outlet for protest against male domination; he terms these activities "peripheral." Kendall disputes this, contending that in Korea these rites comprise "integral components of Korean family and village organization" (p. 25), and hence are in no sense peripheral. The third chapter introduces Enduring Pine Village, a fictional name for her place of residence while conducting field research. Comprising 136 houses and a shifting population, this may be a not-so-typical village, ifindeed such ever existed. However, Yongsu's Mother, who serves as a principal informant, shamanizes over a territory considerably beyond the limits of a single village, taking in other rural villages, the county seat, and on occasion Seoul and its suburbs. In " The Mansin and Her Clients" (Chapter four), the working relationships between the shaman and herhousewife clients are outlined. Although the services of the shaman may be secured for a variety oftasks, in essence the basic function is one of helping to dispel anxiety by promoting the mental, physical, and spiritual wellbeing of the family. We also learn how one becomes a shaman and how shamans may team up to furnish special services such as were required in...

Confucian Rhetoric and Ritual as Techniques of Political Dominance: Yŏngjo's Use of the Royal Lecture

Confucian Rhetoric and Ritual as Techniques of Political Dominance: Yŏngjo's Use of the Royal Lecture

Portuguese and Spanish Rivalry in the Far East during the 17th Century

This brings us to the point where we must consider in more detail the action of the celebrated Dominican Friar Domingo Fernandez Navarrete, and his long-standing feud with the Portuguese Jesuits of the China Mission. Navarrete was born at Peñafiel and entered the Dominican Order in 1635, going to the Philippines in 1648, whence he proceeded to China ten years later. Unlike many of his Order, he was a cultured man of great ability, and a competent Sinologue for his century. Arrested on the occasion of the persecution of 1665, he was deported to Canton with the Jesuits and Franciscans from Peking and the provinces. Here he took a leading part in the ecclesiastical Junta held to discuss the controversial question of the Confucian Rites and allied topics in 1667–68. He escaped from Canton in rather equivocal circumstances in December, 1669, and after a short stay at Macao sailed to Europe by way of India and the Cape of Good Hope. On reaching Rome he was made Procurator of the Philippine Mission, and returned to Spain in 1674, publishing the first volume of his highly controversial Tratados Historicos, Politicos, Ethnicos, y Rdigiosos de la Monarchia de China two years later at Madrid. The work created a sensation on account of its outspoken criticisms of the Jesuits in China, but nowadays it is read more for the author's vivacious description of his own eventful odyssey in the Far East. A second volume entitled Controversias Antiquas y Modernas de la Mission de la Gran China was printed at Madrid in 1679, but never published, since the Inquisition suppressed it after the first 668 pages had been printed off.