Organizer: Juichih Lien, National Chiao Tung University
Chair: David W Faure, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Discussant: John R. Shepherd, University of Virginia
The four papers of this panel discuss the worship
of indigenous deities in southwestern China and the bearing of that worship
on the incorporation of local communities into the Chinese state. Nong Zhigao,
tribal chieftain on the Sino-Vietnamese frontier during Song dynasty, served
both as ancestor for the Nong surname as well as a deity worshipped as a community
god. In southwestern Guangdong, sacrifice for Madam Xian (Xian furen) spread
from Gaozhou to Hainan Island, serving as both community deity and an ancestor
to descendants of her Feng surname consort. In Yunnan’s Erhai Lake region
centering on Dali, the ancestors of kings and nobles of two successive kingdoms
lasting for over five hundred years (752-1254) were, after the Ming dynasty
conquest of the region, transformed into village gods. The broad questions
these cases raise are discussed in a covering paper that outlines the importance
of ritual in the extension of the Chinese state and why that implies a great
deal of fluidity about the idea of a center and its peripheries. Ritual reflects
the incorporation of local society by the state, in southwestern China, over
the millennium from the Song to the Qing, by more than one state.
Ya-Ning Kao, University of Melbourne
Commemoration of Nong Zhigao, a chief on the Sino-Vietnamese frontier
during the Northern Song dynasty, continues in today’s China. To Nong
surnamed families, including especially the Nong tusi family in Guangnan
County, Yunnan Province, Nong Zhigao is an ancestor and one to whom they
pay their respects in the family ancestral altars and halls. To Zhuang elites,
there is an identification of Nong Zhigao’s heroic image with the
eleventh-century defense of China’s territory against Vietnamese invasion.
Finally, to the Zhuang people in Ande Township, Jingxi County, Guangxi Province,
China, worship of Nong Zhigao is as of a community god. This paper illustrates
how the two different images of Nong Zhigao—both hero and god—were
represented in two important celebrations in Ande Township in 2005: first,
in a men’s commemorative ceremony where Nong Zhigao is remembered
as a hero, and second, in a women’s religious ritual that worships
Nong Zhigao as a god who is brought wine offerings. Unlike the Mongolian
and Manchu peoples to the north, who established their own empires and
worshipped their chiefs at their own courts, the Zhuang people in the south
never established their own state. Since the Chinese state prohibited public
commemoration, worship of Zhuang chiefs was necessarily clandestine. I argue
that representation of Nong Zhigao in contemporary Zhuang society is not
simply as chief, ancestor, hero, or god, with each representation having
its own separate genre of historical writing. Rather, representations of
Nong Zhigao as ancestor, hero, and god are interlocking and where establishment
of his modern significance requires further investigation of ritual performance.
Xi He, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Despite the recent interest in writing the history of ethnic integration
from the point of view of the indigenous people, little headway has been
made because of the shortage of indigenous sources which can be read in
local context. This paper draws on a variety of sources in the south-western
portions of Guangdong province (Gaozhou and Leizhou) and Hainan province
-- including official documents -- to voice the indigenous point of view.
The sources include a Song dynasty statement on rituals made by an indigenous
chief to an official, the continuation and changes in popular religious
ceremonies as currently observed and recorded in historical sources, and
the representation of the indigenous in statues (outside the principal temples).
By reconstructing the interaction between the indigenous and the Chinese
state over a long period of time from the Tang to the Qing dynasties, this
paper argues that the anomaly of indigenous contact with the state in the
southwest, unlike the Pearl River delta or even Fujian, is the very long
duration of contact and the persistent representation of the indigenous
as part of the dominant (Han) tradition, despite the Han claim to superiority.
The image of the subjection of the natives was a late development, principally
from the Ming dynasty, and represented a break with the past.
Jui-Chih Lien, National Chiao Tung University
This paper deals with the continuation of Dali society beyond the Ming
conquest. Well before the Ming conquest and the onset of the Buddhist
state, surnames were associated with chieftains. Stories about the kings
who carried these surnames also served as lineage legends for the king’s
subjects, and village religious worship expressed these ancestral connections.
With the introduction of Buddhism, the state ritual regime invoked Buddhist
ritual orthodoxy to elevate territorial gods and chieftains. Goddesses doubled
as fertility deities, while gods took charge of territoriality. That
is, reorganized as a Buddhist kingdom, there was a parallel reorganization
of the pantheon into territorial gods and ancestors for the nobility.
By the Ming dynasty, household registration and Confucian education changed
the competitive relationships among the great clans. On the one hand, Confucian
education led local elites to adopt the remote Ming capital of Nanjing as
their ancestral homeland. On the other hand, household registration reconfirmed
the indigenous territoriality as a unified political unit and by this route
incorporated village god cults within the Chinese Empire. Nevertheless,
as the local elites built ancestral halls to maintain their social status,
villages retained their allegiance to former kings by maintaining their
statues within the village temples. By virtue of their surnames, many territorial
deities were also ancestors. The continuation of village religious practices
therefore allowed Dali society to maintain its connection to its indigenous
past.
David W. Faure, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Southwestern China was made up of innumerable widely varied local societies
until the region was incorporated into the Chinese state at some time in
the Ming dynasty. This very successful process of empire building raises important
questions on the very nature of the Chinese state. Just what was the center
and where were the oft-cited peripheries in Chinese history? Just how and
how much was the neo-Confucian program the vehicle for imperial aggrandizement,
and, connected with that, where did Daoism and Buddhism come into the picture?
Certainly enough, there was migration into (and out of) these areas, but
how did that blend with ethnic reclassification in creating new local identities?
Economic development and the increasing presence of the state made huge impact
on land—its ownership, use, and registration—and how did this, in
turn, impact the structure of local society? This paper outlines these broad
questions which have to be answered in the light of detailed local studies,
some of which are contained in the other papers on this panel.
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