Chapter 22 Text Tradition and Field Research——An Investigation of Two Tendencies in the Study of Chinese Folk Religion (2)
Ma Xisha also objected to collectively calling the folk religions of the Ming and Qing Dynasties the White Lotus Sect, arguing that the White Lotus Sect created by Mao Ziyuan in the Southern Song Dynasty was very different from the so-called White Lotus Sect in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.But at the same time, he did not hold to the theory of two sect systems, but emphasized the diversification of folk religious sects in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, insisted on the unity of the three religions, and believed that the source of folk religion was the three religions of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.In "History of Chinese Folk Religion", starting from the most basic archival texts, he comprehensively and systematically sorted out the development of Chinese folk religions, especially the development of folk religions in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and attached a list of the origins of various sects at the end of the book.
Nevertheless, due to the Ming and Qing rulers’ policy of suppressing folk religion, a large number of treasure scrolls were destroyed, and the archival materials inevitably contained the views of the ruling class. Is it possible to completely sort out the line of folk religion in Ming and Qing Dynasties through these archives and treasure scrolls?In other words, because of the complexity and mixture of folk beliefs and folk religions, whether we can finally sort out their context is a problem.I feel that the research on folk religion in Ming and Qing Dynasties seems to be going the same way as the research on Boxers before the 1980s, that is, researchers generally have a professional obsession with "origin idols"-"according to the most distant The past is used to explain recent things.” Mark Bullock reminded, using the history of Christian canons as an example, “Understanding the origin of canons is essential to understanding real religious phenomena, however, it is not sufficient to explain real religious phenomena.” For religion "is like a knot which intertwines together a great number of disparate features of the social structure and the social spirit. In short, religious creeds touch upon the whole question of the human condition".Precisely because religion is a huge social and cultural phenomenon, simply tracing its origin will only simplify it, especially if we only move closer to institutionalized religion.Because the creation and dissemination of folk religion is not passive, it has its powerful driving force, that is, the widespread belief culture among the people.Absent this factor, explaining folk religion remains a great deficiency.
3. Folk Religion and Ming and Qing Society Folk religion had two notable characteristics during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. First, it flourished unprecedentedly in Chinese history, manifested in numerous sects and diverse beliefs, and its influence spread throughout the entire country. society; secondly, during this period, folk religion was increasingly associated with the peasant movement, teaching cases were continuous and occurred at a high rate, and peasants used folk religion to resist the government one after another.
For the prosperity of folk religion in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, researchers often start from the functional point of view.
Functional analysis is one of the earlier methodologies in the sociology of religion. Malinowski, its representative, believes that in the process of survival, human beings often encounter various difficulties and setbacks, such as disasters, diseases, casualties, etc., among which Death is the most destructive setback encountered in the course of life. Religious belief can give human beings a certain degree of help in a timely manner, so that human beings have the confidence to survive. Religious belief is rooted in the basic needs of human beings and enables individuals to Get rid of its spiritual conflict, and make society avoid the state of anomie.Li Yiyuan believes that religion plays at least three functions in human society: cognition, integration and expression.Expression is the joy of human beings towards life, fear of death, and ghosts and gods, and the transformation and expression of various human emotions through religious rituals; integration means that people have common emotions through religious beliefs, and have unity and cohesion through holding religious activities.Cognitive function is that human beings often use religious rituals to indicate their doubts about natural phenomena, social phenomena or life, especially before science is unknown.
Although folk religions in the Ming and Qing Dynasties were regarded as heresy by the rulers and were often banned, they were still very prosperous. The reason is that each sect played an important role in the local area and had certain positive social functions. It is divided into psychological comfort function, entertainment function, social function, relief function, medical treatment and fitness function, livelihood function, promotion function and so on.At the same time, the prosperity of folk religion also has its objective environmental factors and suitable basis for its survival. Means, so it can be deeply rooted and full of vitality."
There are quite a lot of research papers on folk religious resistance movements, and in recent years, the research perspective has tended to broaden, no longer limited to the elaboration of political events, but to reflect on the development of peasant religious movements from various aspects such as society, culture, and religion. The meaning of the times and its inner spirit.
The research on the peasant movement caused by folk sects mainly focuses on the three relatively large movements, Wang Lun Uprising, Bailian Sect Uprising, and Lin Qing and Li Wencheng Uprising.Past studies have mostly emphasized the importance of socioeconomic factors, and adopted class analysis methods. In the end, they often came down to the established theory of peasant life distress and class oppression, thus ignoring the role of religion in it, and viewing religion only as the impact of peasants on society. An expression of general dissatisfaction.
American scholar Han Shurui was the first to reflect on this issue. Taking folk religion as the starting point, she systematically studied the Wang Lun Uprising and the Lin Qing and Li Wencheng Uprisings. In the late 1970s, she published two monographs, The Millennium Kingdom Movement: The Eight Diagrams Rebellion in 1813 and The Wang Lun Uprising in 1774 elaborated on the role of folk religion in the peasant movement, and thus drew different conclusions.
In the first half of Han Shurui’s research on the Eight Diagrams Rebellion, he spent a lot of pen and ink discussing and sorting out the system of the White Lotus Sect. Compare.From this, she believes that the uprising is not so much a peasant uprising against social oppression as it is a religious uprising similar to the Millennium Movement.While the uprising exposed the weaknesses of Qing rule, it did not suggest that the latter part of Qianlong's reign was the beginning of what some had said was the end of traditional China.Then, when Han Shurui discussed Wang Lun's uprising, he used the records of eyewitnesses, the confessions of rebels, and local reports to explore the background of Wang Lun's organization and the process of the uprising.She examines the role of the White Lotus sect in Qing society, and shows how these sects provided meaning and social organization to believers who lived everywhere.After investigating the social, economic, political and military conditions at that time, her opinion is that the cause of the uprising was more due to the internal motivation of the religious organization and the belief in the pursuit of a millennium prosperity, rather than the crisis of the society itself. .
Similar conclusions also appeared in the research on the 1796 White Lotus Rebellion.Based on materials from Hubei Province, Liu Guangjing explained the importance of Wusheng Laomu and Maitreya Buddha in the belief of the White Lotus, focusing on the religious factors in this uprising.Japanese scholar Tetsuro Noguchi also emphasized the religious nature of the White Lotus Rebellion, especially the driving force played by folk religion itself in the movement.
There are few discussions on folk religious movements from a cultural perspective, but some scholars have begun to get involved.Liu Ping's doctoral dissertation "Cultural Tradition and Social "Rebellion"——From the Perspective of Qing Dynasty Secret Society" is an example.This article explores the cultural connotation of the secret society in the Qing Dynasty—including secret religion and sect—from the perspective of folk culture and belief.He believes that "peasant movements do not always occur in the poorest and most exploited areas, that is, the causes of peasant movements are too complex to be summed up by a simple formula... Peasant rebellions borrowed extensively from their The 'cultural' factors of the society in which we live, especially the 'religious' factors... Belief - the cloak of religious superstition plus various 'cultural' factors such as witchcraft spells, five elements and gossip, qigong and martial arts, etc., not only help farmers become rebels It also made the rebels show great courage and strength in the process of rebellion."
4. Going beyond the text tradition to study folk religion, the texts mainly refer to archives and treasure scrolls.The Ming and Qing dynasties, when folk religions were relatively prosperous, happened to keep a large number of files about secret religions, which were formed during the suppression of various secret religions by the Ming and Qing governments, most of which were official documents, including local governors and other officials The memorials and inscriptions and the emperor's decree.At the same time, there are also a large number of confessions recorded during the interrogation of Lijiao missionaries, as well as announcements and scriptures circulated by various sects in some major secret religious uprising cases. In the 1930s, the Palace Museum at that time sorted out and published a batch of archives, which involved the contents of the cases of Luojiao, Hongyangjiao, and Linqingjiao.By the 1960s and 1970s, the National Palace Museum in Taipei gradually published the archives of folk religions collected. For example, the two works of American scholar Han Shurui were mainly completed based on these two batches of archives.Since the establishment of the First Historical Archives of China, it has also released its collection of folk religious archives in stages and batches.Especially since the 1980s, many scholars began to pay attention to the factors of folk religion instead of focusing on the peasant movement. The History of Chinese Folk Religion written by Ma Xisha and others authoritatively sorted out the The origins of folk religion.
The study of Baojuan was initially treated as literature. For example, Zheng Zhenduo and others believed that Baojuan was a form of folk literature.However, Zhou Zuoren discovered the folk religious beliefs such as "the old mother without birth" in "Baoxie Detailed Discrimination" with the eyes of a folklorist, which aroused the attention of folk religion researchers on Baojuan.However, the lack of treasure scrolls restricted the research at that time, so before the 1950s, it was mainly a collection of treasure scrolls. Later, Japan became the center of Baojuan research. The most representative one is Mizuho Sawada's "Research on Supplementing Baojuan", while in China it is mainly represented by Li Shiyu's "Comprehensive Record of Baojuan".However, a very strange phenomenon is that the researchers of Baojuan are mainly concentrated in historians and literature researchers, and the religious scholars who are the most qualified to conduct research are extremely neglected.Even if there are religious scholars who study Baojuan, they mostly explain the origins of folk religious sects from a historical perspective, but rarely analyze their internal context and religious thoughts.Recently, more and more studies have been made on Taoism's good books and meritorious deeds, but Baojuan has always been neglected by religious scholars and has not been included in the category of religious history documents.
One consequence of studying folk religion from the perspective of text alone is that “researchers of the history of religion in China have a deep-rooted ‘historical’ tendency, and always regard the history of religion as the history of the past, and the study of religious history seems to be backward Look, they basically don’t pay attention to the remains of historical religions in modern times, so they rarely consider the combination of documents and field investigations; they just explore the history of religions in order to explain a certain historical phenomenon.” So Ge Zhaoguang appealed: “If we change With a narrow view of religious history, many materials can enter the field of religious history research... Existing folklore materials can prove many ancient historical facts for us after statistics and analysis; many of them may be just a few abstract historical materials in the brains of researchers It is possible that the ancient religious phenomena can be recombined into understandable facts in the living investigation data."
The tradition of conducting fieldwork on Chinese folk religions has been intermittent.As mentioned earlier, the Dutch scholar Groot was the first to start this tradition. At the end of the 19th century, he had the opportunity to conduct on-the-spot investigations in places such as Xiamen on the southeast coast of China. In "China's Religious System", it can be seen that he had a deep understanding of the Chinese funeral system. In "China's Sect Religion and Religious Persecution", there are his investigations on the rituals and sacrifices of Longhua Sect and Xiantian Sect. Many foreign scholars started their research on Chinese folk religions on this basis.
In the 1930s, some Chinese anthropologists began to intervene in rural surveys, only to find that there were folk religious associations in many villages, and they were widely popular in towns.Among the larger sects discovered at that time, Xiao Changming's "Chinese Religious Philosophy Research Society" centered in central and southern China, and Zhang Tianran's Guandao centered in North China were the most. In 1947, Li Shiyu, who was a postgraduate student at the Institute of Anthropology at Fu Jen Catholic University in Peking, conducted a field investigation of the secret religions in 62 villages in North China, including Huangtiandao, Yiguandao, Fuyiyi, Yixintiandao, Longhuasheng Church and other sects. , and published "Modern North China Secret Religion" the following year. This is an epoch-making work. It not only provides the most important text on folk religion in the Republic of China, but also systematically demonstrates the importance of studying Chinese folk religion in an anthropological way. The possibility provides a practical model for later scholars to continue this tradition.
However, due to various reasons, this tradition was interrupted for more than 20 years.It was not until the 1960s and 1970s that Taiwanese scholars began to use anthropological methods again to conduct a series of investigations on Taiwan’s folk religions. investigation.At the same time, Dong Fangwan's "Overview of Taiwan's Emerging Religions" (1982) and Li Yiyuan's "Taiwan Folk Belief Development Trend" (1982) have also noted other folk religious associations in Taiwan. Unfortunately, there are few specialized treatises.
It was not until the 1980s that mainland China gradually resumed on-the-spot investigations of folk religions, including Ma Xisha’s investigation of Chengdu’s Liumen religion, Lin Guoping’s investigation of Fujian’s Trinity religion, and Lu Yao’s investigation of Shandong’s secret folk religion. The significance of the latter is particularly important. It can be said that it follows the "Shandong Secret Sect" (1886) by the American Congregationalist missionary DH Porter at the end of the last century and the "Sects in North China" by the British missionary Joseph Edkins. (1886), after Li Shiyu's "Modern North China Secret Religion" in the 1940s, is another masterpiece of investigating folk religions in North China by way of fieldwork.As early as the 1960s when Professor Lu Yao led the investigation of the Boxer Rebellion, he began to pay attention to the secret religions of the North China folk.During the ten years from 1990 to 1999, he and his student Dr. Kong Xiangtao traveled to more than 70 counties in the province, conducted a systematic and comprehensive investigation on the evolution of folk religion in Shandong over the past three hundred years, and obtained a large number of firsts. Hand word-of-mouth information from the field clarified many historical questions.Professor Dai Yi once commented, "If you don't do any more investigations, future generations will have no way to start. You have unique insight and shoulder the heavy responsibility. You persisted in your work under difficult conditions, rescued precious living materials, made research results, and contributed to history. learning to fill important gaps".
Wu Zelin once placed such expectations on Li Shiyu's work, "I hope that similar attempts can be extended to other regions in China, and a comprehensive conclusion can be sorted out from various reports, which will definitely have great implications for sociology and anthropology. contribute".From today’s perspective, such field investigations are still too few, and such regional investigations are mostly concentrated in North China and the southeast coast, and it will take time for field investigations that can reflect the overall situation of folk religion in China.
V. Summary The importance of the text in the study of the history of Chinese folk religion is self-evident. It can be said that the research results of the history of Chinese folk religion in the past are mainly based on texts based on archives and treasure scrolls, while the field of anthropology The literature provided by the survey seems to provide only a circumstantial evidence.Moreover, it is still difficult to find a book on Chinese folk religion that combines text and fieldwork well.There are two reasons for this: first, as in the preface, the study of folk religion in textual studies has always carried out the value of political judgment, instead of adopting a value-neutral concept like anthropology.Value-neutrality in academic research is an objective research attitude and a prerequisite for interdisciplinary dialogue, otherwise the confluence of text and fieldwork is just empty talk.Second, the study of folk religion in the textual sense also implies a deep-rooted overlooking attitude of "elite culture" to "grassroots culture".When it organizes the origins and teachings of folk religion, it always traces back to institutionalized religions such as Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Existence is only the result of the extension of institutionalized religion among the people.This actually affirms the initiative of institutionalized religion to influence folk religion and the passiveness of folk religion in accepting the influence of external factors.
So, in this way, where is the subjectivity of the people?What are the central issues of folk beliefs and people's concerns?Why did the people of Ming and Qing recognize folk authority instead of state authority or traditional authority?All these questions require us to change our perspective when studying folk religion.The emergence of folk religion in the Ming and Qing Dynasties "is an epoch-making product, and it is completely different from the secret religions we knew in the past."If we consider the flourishing of folk religion in the Ming and Qing Dynasties as an overall cultural phenomenon in social change, it can be said to be a religious revival movement, which represents an attempt by the people of the Ming and Qing Dynasties to change the culture they are currently dissatisfied with .The investigation of "religion as a cultural system" requires a "revolution with a downward vision". In the process of studying the history of folk religion, in addition to the tradition of texts, it is also necessary to learn from the achievements of folklore and combine the methods of anthropological fieldwork. It tries to make a "thick description" of the past civil society and "reconstruct the experience of ordinary people in a changing world", so as to achieve a broader and deeper analysis of folk religion, rather than just stop at folk religion itself.
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