Early Chinese Religion Research Articles

Ancestors, Kings, and the Dao by Constance A. Cook

Reviewed by: Ancestors, Kings, and the Dao by Constance A. Cook Ori Tavor Constance a. Cook, Ancestors, Kings, and the Dao. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2017. x, 337 pp. US$49.95 (hb). ISBN 978-0-674-97695-5 The study of early Chinese religion presents a unique challenge. Unlike the organized religious traditions of Daoism and Buddhism, it lacks many of the features modern scholars view as fundamental for a “religion,” such as a canonical set of scriptures, an ecclesiastical system, and a fixed pantheon of gods. Much like the category of “popular religion,” the label of “early Chinese religion” does not refer to a single empirical institution. It is a heuristic device, a term coined by sinologists to help make sense of the ideas, beliefs, and practices that circulated in China between the Shang 商 and Han 漢 Dynasties. Despite the inherent ambiguity of this category, most scholars agree that ancestor worship, a set of rituals designed to commemorate and venerate the spirits of one’s deceased forebears, occupies a central role. While ancestor worship is often associated with the Confucian notion of filial piety, it crosses the boundaries of religious traditions, geographical regions, and socio-economic groups. Dating back to the Neolithic period, ancestor worship is perhaps the single most enduring element of Chinese religious culture. In Ancestors, Kings, and the Dao, Constance Cook offers an outline of the evolution of early Chinese religion from the Western Zhou (西周, 1046–771 BCE) to the Warring States (戰國時代, 481–221 BCE) periods through the prism of ritual performances related to ancestor worship. Cook divides this process into three distinct phases. During the first phase, which corresponds to the early Western Zhou period, ritual performances were part of a theocratic framework focused on the worship of royal ancestors. The demise of the central Zhou regime resulted in a shift to the worship of mythical founder deities that also served as paradigmatic models for moral behavior. Finally, in the third stage, the collapse of the ritual system that centered on the royal Zhou ancestors resulted in a turn toward self-cultivation practices aimed at achieving individual benefits. Cook identifies two key tenets that serve as a common thread connecting the changing social and religious landscape of early China: the claim that ritual practice results in the accumulation of an inner power (de 德) and the central role of music in both communal performances and individual self-cultivation as a vehicle for displaying this inner power. The book is divided into two parts. Part I focuses on the Western Zhou period and chronicles the rise of eulogies and communal ritual performances designed to display royal “awesome decorum” (weiyi 威儀), whereas Part II demonstrates how Western Zhou rhetoric and aspects of ritual practice were reimagined to fit the sociopolitical contexts of the Spring and Autumn (春秋時代, 770–481 BCE) and Warring States periods. One of the strengths of this book is its choice of primary sources. Wishing to avoid an idealized and erroneous reconstruction based on prescriptive Warring States and Han transmitted texts, Cook opts to draw mainly on bronze inscriptions, which she describes as “the purest lens through which to study Zhou ritual” (p. 7). These are supplemented in Part II by canonical [End Page 285] sources like the Book of Odes (Shijing 詩經), as well as recently excavated Warring States bamboo texts from the Guodian 郭店, Shanghai Museum 上海博物館, and Tsinghua 清 華 University corpuses, such as Human Nature Arises from the Decree (Xing Zi Ming Chu, 性自命出), Elder Rulers of Ancient Times (Xizhe Junlao, 昔者君老), and The Lute Dance of the Duke of Zhou (Zhougong zhi Qinwu, 周公之琴舞). Cook’s command of these challenging texts, which are not accompanied by centuries of commentaries and annotations, results in a comprehensive and highly persuasive narrative of the interplay between continuity and change in early Chinese religion. Part I offers close readings of Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, texts that were cast into the surfaces of vessels and bells used in ritual performances designed to nourish and communicate with ancestral spirits. These inscriptions, argues Cook, functioned as “physical memorials” of the link between their awardee and the ancestral spirits of their lineage. The sacrificial feasts in which they were presented took place in a...

Ritual, rejuvenation practices, and the experience of aging in early Chinese religion

Scientific advances in the field of biomedicine have fundamentally changed the ways in which we think about our bodies. Disease, aging, and even death, are no longer seen as inevitable realities but as obstacles that can be controlled, and in some cases even reversed, by technological means. The current discourse, however, can be enriched by an investigation of the various ways in which the aging process was perceived and explained throughout human history. In this article, I argue that in early China, the experience of aging and the challenges and anxieties it produced played a constitutive role in the shaping of religious culture. Drawing on a variety of medical, philosophical, and liturgical sources, I outline two models of aging: one that presented aging, and especially the loss of virility, as an undesirable but solvable condition that can be reversed with the aid of various rejuvenation techniques, and a more socially conscious model that depicted aging as a process of gradual social ascension, a natural but fundamentally unalterable condition that should be accepted, marked, and even celebrated through ritual. I conclude by demonstrating the legacy and lasting influence of these models on two of the most fundamental tenets of Chinese religion: the pursuit of longevity and the ideal of filial piety.

Excavating the Afterlife: The Archaeology of Early Chinese Religion. By Guolong Lai


 
 
 Excavating the Afterlife: The Archaeology of Early Chinese Religion. By Guolong Lai. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015. Pp. xi + 297. $65.
 
 

Excavating the Afterlife: The Archaeology of Early Chinese Religion by Guolong Lai

Excavating the Afterlife: The Archaeology of Early Chinese Religion by Guolong Lai

Excavating the Afterlife: The Archaeology of Early Chinese Religion. By Lai Guolong . Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015. 320 pp. $65.00.

Excavating the Afterlife: The Archaeology of Early Chinese Religion. By Lai Guolong . Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015. 320 pp. $65.00.

Excavating the Afterlife: The Archaeology of Early Chinese Religion

Funerary customs and concepts of the afterlife in early China have been topics of heated discussion over many decades. In recent years, the excavation of well-preserved graves in southern China, so...

Excavating the afterlife: the archaeology of early Chinese religion

AcknowledgmentsChronology of Early Chinese Dynasties Introduction1. The Dead Who Would Not Be Ancestors2. The Transformation of Burial Space3. The Presence of the Invisible4. Letters to the Underworld5. Journey to the Northwest ConclusionNotesGlossary of Chinese CharactersBibliographyIndex

Ge Hong’s Xian: Private Hermits and Public Alchemists

This article addresses the position of Ge Hong (283–343) in early medieval Daoism by provoking a reconsideration of earlier forms of Chinese religion. The article argues that Ge Hong’s greatest innovation was his bringing together two separate traditions of early Chinese religion, namely that of the xian (often translated as “immortal”) that I identify with early Daoism, and that of alchemy that somehow was related to the fangshi movement. The article examines the historical trajectory of these two traditions as Ge Hong received them by exploring two of his major works, the Baopuzi neipian and the Shenxian zhuan, and examines the ways in which he relates these two early traditions to each other. He does this by portraying and describing two kinds of xian, which I call “private” and “public.” The article shows that Ge Hong’s accomplishment had a deep and lasting impact of the future traditions of medieval Daoism.

Ritual Alliances of the Putian Plain. Volume One: Historical Introduction to the Return of the Gods by Kenneth Dean, Zheng Zhenman, and: Ritual Alliances of the Putian Plain. Volume Two: A Survey of Village Temples and Ritual Activities by Kenneth Dean, Zheng Zhenman (review)

Shishuo xinyu 世說新語 depiction of ‘‘raw’’ ingestion of talismans must be a polemic, a Buddhist fabrication. Yet the Dengzhen yinjue passage mentioned above clearly describes direct ingestion of talismans without burning or immersion. The concluding chapters provide important evidence for the earlier appearance in Buddhist texts of certain notions concerning scriptures and their power. Much has been written recently about the value of making cultural claims based on dating texts within which specific terms appear. These approach the problem from the perspectives of philology, and of circulation and influence of those texts within communities on the ground. Here I would simply like to point out that the argument structure of these chapters is, in the end, a genealogical one, namely, that such-and-such ideas were ‘‘originally’’ Buddhist. This thus leaves room for further studies of the processes of such adaptations in China, from the perspectives of syncretism, cultural translation, and cultural and technical knowledge formation. Empowered Writing will prove an important resource for these studies, and the arguments therein will have a lasting impact on the fields of Han and Six Dynasties studies, as well as Buddho-Daoist studies. It makes an unprecedented contribution to the material history of Chinese writing—political, economic, and religious—and the easy style of its prose mixed with sophisticated argument make it excellent material for undergraduate courses in these fields. MICHAEL STANLEY-BAKER Berlin Center for the History of Knowledge, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science KENNETH DEAN and ZHENG ZHENMAN, Ritual Alliances of the Putian Plain. Volume One: Historical Introduction to the Return of the Gods. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010. xv, 404 pp. J103, US$152 (hb). ISBN 978-90-04-17602-7 KENNETH DEAN and ZHENG ZHENMAN, Ritual Alliances of the Putian Plain. Volume Two: A Survey of Village Temples and Ritual Activities. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010. xxx, 1060 pp. J185, US$263 (hb). ISBN 978-90-04-17601-0 The two-volume set by Kenneth Dean and Zheng Zhenman 鄭振滿 is published by Brill in its authoritative, beautifully presented, black-clad Handbook of Oriental Studies (HdO) series (Section 4 on China), whose remit is to publish scholarly works that are of lasting reference value.1 More than 1000 pages long, volume 2 of this set consists of systematically organized data providing a large-scale survey of deities, temples, lineages, festivals, and, most importantly, the ritual alliances on the Putian (莆田) Plain (in northern Fujian Province), which the two authors, with 1 Other volumes in the same series relating to religion in China include, for example, Handbook of Christianity in China, 635-1800 (2001, edited by Nicolas Standaert); Daoism Handbook (2000, edited by Livia Kohn); Death in Ancient China: The Tale of One Man’s Journey (2006, Constance A. Cook); Early Chinese Religion. Part One: Shang through Han (1250 BC-220 AD), two volumes (2008, edited by John Lagerwey and Marc Kalinowski); Early Chinese Religion, Part Two: The Period of Division (220-589), two volumes (2009, edited by John Lagerwey and Lü Pengzhi); and Local Religion in North China in the Twentieth Century: The Structure and Organization of Community Rituals and Beliefs (2009, by Daniel L. Overmyer). 106 BOOK REVIEWS the help of a team of local researchers and assistants, carried out over many years.2 Depending on the importance of the village, each village receives coverage ranging from one page to a few pages. There are altogether 724 villages comprising 153 regional ritual alliances nested within three large irrigated-plain hydro-politicalritual systems. Volume 1 of the set (still quite hefty and slimmer only relative to volume 2), entitled Ritual Alliances of the Putian Plain Volume One: Historical Introduction to the Return of the Gods, provides a series of inter-linked chapters to help the reader make sense of what seems a morass of socio-political and ritual inventions superimposed upon one another over more than a thousand years. Because of the immensity and complexity of the data used and analyzed in this study—historical, geographical, epigraphical, archival, ethnographic, visual, statistical, cartographic, and so on—the volumes must have posed numerous organizational challenges for presentation. The separation of the survey data from the interpretations makes perfect sense, but the...

Imagining the World Beyond: Representations of Heaven and the Netherworld in Early Chinese Religion

Imagining the World Beyond: Representations of Heaven and the Netherworld in Early <scp>C</scp>hinese Religion

Early Chinese Religion: Part Two: The Period of Division (220‐589 AD) – Edited by John Lagerwey and Lü Pengzhi

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 38, Issue 1 p. 35-36 Early Chinese Religion: Part Two: The Period of Division (220-589 AD) – Edited by John Lagerwey and Lü Pengzhi Wendi Adamek, Wendi Adamek University of SydneySearch for more papers by this author Wendi Adamek, Wendi Adamek University of SydneySearch for more papers by this author First published: 13 March 2012 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-0922.2011.01586_5.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume38, Issue1March 2012Pages 35-36 RelatedInformation

Lagerwey, John, and Lü Pengzhi (eds.): Early Chinese Religion. Part 2; vol. 1: The Period of Division (220–589 ad)

Lagerwey, John, and Lü Pengzhi (eds.): Early Chinese Religion. Part 2; vol. 1: The Period of Division (220–589 ad)

Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China by Lian Xi (review)

118 Journal of Chinese Religions category “belief” the base upon which so many descriptions of religiosity are built? While Early Chinese Religion does not answer these questions, it is nevertheless a superb collection of essays that will shape the field for years to come. MICHAEL J. WALSH, Vassar College Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China LIAN XI. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. xiii, 333 pages. ISBN 9780 -300-12339-5. US$45.00, £30.00, hardcover. Lian Xi 連曦 has written an unusual book in that it makes an academic study of popular Christianity in China. A number of church publications have described individual Chinese church leaders and revival movements, but hardly any comprehensive academic works have dealt with this topic. Lian contributes not only to Chinese church history with this book, he also adds new dimensions to modern and contemporary general Chinese history through his analysis of several important individuals and his description of indigenous movements with a large following. All too often religious factors in social change are played down in historical analysis, and this is generally also the case with regard to China. In the introductory chapter Lian defines the framework for his book and gives a brief historical overview, beginning with Catholic efforts at indigenization. He continues with a chapter on early 19th century developments such as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom 太平天國 and Hong Xiuquan 洪秀全, as well as “The Overcomer of Demons,” Xi Shengmo 席勝魔. Here Lian sets the tone for the whole book by linking Christian developments with the context of popular Chinese religion while also noting their disassociation from missionary Christianity. Subsequent chapters are arranged more or less chronologically and deal with the True Jesus Church 真耶穌教會 (Zhen Yesu jiaohui), the Jesus Family 耶穌家庭 (Yesu jiating), John Sung (Song Shangjie 宋尚節), Wang Mingdao 王明道 and Watchman Nee (Ni Tuosheng 倪柝聲), respectively. There are also separate chapters on larger revivals primarily during the 1920s and 1930s, the situation of the indigenous churches during the civil and external wars in 1930s and 1940s, and a final chapter on popular indigenous movements during the People’s Republic. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 34. Book Reviews 119 Lian Xi has done meticulous research on the described individuals and movements, and even for an initiated reader the book presents a number of new facts and interesting details. He has used archival material in China and abroad, conducted many interviews and accessed the most current Chinese research on these topics. Lian tells full stories of these revivals and their leaders, also pointing out individual shortcomings and failures, including serious financial and sexual errors. The accounts of lesser known preachers and leaders such as True Jesus Church founder Wei Enbo 魏恩波, or Jing Dianying 敬奠瀛 of the Jesus Family, and the analysis of the influence of Witness Lee (Li Changshou 李常受) on Watchman Nee sets a high standard for research on Christianity in China. However, here and there Lian Xi seems to lose something of his objective historian’s gaze, falling into more subjective assessments and repeating accusations by others that the book would have fared better without. Both the chapter “The Smitten Land” and the chapter on Wang Mingdao give the reader some contrast to the fiery revivals and sweeping movements around charismatic leaders as described in other parts of the book. Here we meet some alternative figures such as the Norwegian woman missionary Marie Monsen, who led a revival in Shandong in the late 1920s and early 1930s, “the Christian General” Feng Yuxiang 馮玉祥, and also theologian and church leader Zhao Zichen 趙紫宸. Lian presents this wider context as an important backdrop to the popular movements, and shows how the urge for salvation of both people and country, focusing on indigenous expressions, would take quite different paths. The chapter on developments during the early years of the People’s Republic, the Cultural Revolution, and after mentions all the major revivals and movements of the period. As a historian, Lian’s focus is naturally not primarily on the contemporary scene, but considering his capacity for detail I would have liked to have seen more on very recent developments. As it is, this chapter gives inspiration for others to continue the work, but it would...

Early Chinese Religion: Part Two: The Period of Division (220–589AD) ed. by John Lagerwey, Lü Pengzhi (review)

Early Chinese Religion: Part Two: The Period of Division (220–589AD) ed. by John Lagerwey, Lü Pengzhi (review)

Early Chinese Religion: Part One: Shang through Han (1250 BC-220 AD) ed. by John Lagerwey, Marc Kalinowski (review)

110 Journal of Chinese Religions Early Chinese Religion: Part One: Shang through Han (1250 BC220 AD) Edited by JOHN LAGERWEY and MARC KALINOWSKI. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2009. 2 volumes. Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section Four: China, Volume 21-1. xvi, 1256 pages. ISBN 978-90-04-16835-0. €249.00, US$369.00 hardcover. Reading through these two massive tomes evokes pleasant memories of a highly stimulating conference held in Paris in December 2006, during which the majority of the twenty-four studies assembled therein, most of them still in very preliminary draft form, were discussed under the benevolent gaze of the portrait bust of the great Fustel de Coulanges.12 At the time, the task of pulling them together into a book appeared sisyphean if not hopeless, and skepticism seemed in order as to whether the planned compilation would be ready for publication while its contents were still up to date. But John Lagerwey and Marc Kalinowski have achieved the impossible: the work under review—the first part of what Lagerwey has informally dubbed the “Paris History of Chinese Religion”—has come out after less than three years; and it is a masterpiece. Despite the rapid turnover, it shows no signs of haste. The texts are expertly edited, with just enough unity imposed on the rendition of Chinese terms while the substance of the authors’ often conflicting interpretations is left untouched; the translations of those chapters originally written in French,13 Chinese, and Japanese are competently done and often elegant; typos and mistaken characters are few and inconsequential; and an ample index (v. 2, pp. 1213-1256) facilitates accessing the heterogeneous contents making it possible to use the work as the handbook it is intended to be. The level of scholarship is almost uniformly excellent, as indeed one would expect from the roster of authors included—a virtual Who’s who of leading Sinologists in Europe, North America, Taiwan, and Japan (none, alas, from mainland China). In spite of the diversity of the approaches taken by the authors, the work, at least for the most part, carries the scholarly authority the reader expects from a handbook, justifying its formidable price. In short, Early Chinese Religion: Part One stands as a triumphal achievement. Even the briefest digest of the contents would exceed the space allotted to this review; providing such a digest would also be superfluous as the editors in their long introduction (v. 12 I participated in this conference as a discussant. For full disclosure, I should reveal that I was invited to contribute to the handbook, but to my great and enduring regret felt unable to do so due to overcommitment. 13 The French versions of the chapters by Thote, Kalinowski, Lévi, Bujard, and Pirazzolit ’Serstevens are published, together with three other chapters concerning the period covered in Early Chinese Religion: Part One, as well as a group of papers concerning the period between Han and Tang, in John Lagerwey (ed.), Religion et société en Chine ancienne et médiévale (Patrimoines— orientalisme—Chine; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, Institut Ricci, 2009). The latter work is reviewed in the present issue of the Journal of Chinese Religions by Barbara Hendrischke. (See pp. 123-127) Book Reviews 111 1, pp. 1-37) lucidly summarize each of the chapters and point out the connections among them, thus placing them in a wider context of synthesis. Meritorious above all for bringing out the breaks and transitions in the long and tortuous development of religious phenomena in early China, as well as the methodological problems involved in their study, this introduction is an extremely impressive summation of the state of the field that any student of Chinese civilization should read. Rather than repeating what is already stated in it, I will limit myself here to a more general characterization of the work—both of what it delivers and of what, for perfectly justifiable reasons, it does not. Anyone expecting a systematic presentation of deities, beliefs, rituals, and associated priestly personnel in early China will be frustrated by this work. Coherence is not a goal, and the nature of the subject matter, inasmuch as it is even knowable today, would not...

An Ancient Chinese Horse Ritual

This article examines a section in the Shuihudi 睡虎地Rishu日書 (Daybooks) entitled “Horses” (ma馬) which describes the instructions for the performance of a ritual to propitiate a horse spirit. The text is one of the earliest transmitted ritual liturgies involving the treatment of animals. It reveals a hitherto little known aspect of the role of animals in early Chinese religion; namely, the ritual worship of tutelary animal spirits and the performance of sacrifices for the benefit of animals. Furthermore, it corroborates the existence of magico-religious rituals involving the treatment of animals, and demonstrates that cultic worship of animal spirits, criticized by some masters of philosophy, was part of the religious practices of the elite in the late Warring States and early imperial period. The article presents an annotated translation of the “Horses” section, discusses its contents and significance in relation to equine imagery documented in received sources, and examines its value as a source for the perception of animals and animal ritual in late Warring States and early imperial China.