Investigation Of Daogong Population In Taiping Town,Lingshan County,South Guangxi

In Taiping Town,Lingshan County,South Guangxi,there is a group with a large number and strong particularity,known locally as "Dao Gong" or "Dao Gong Lao".No matter praying for good luck,repaying wishes,weddings,funerals,moving to new homes and other events,or encountering bad luck and other problems,Taiping people will ask the public to do things.Dao Gong occupies an important position in folk belief by virtue of its profound ritual tradition.They are interpreters and practitioners of Taoist and ritual activities,and have an irreplaceable role in the transmission and development of local culture.From the point of view of the reasons,the road is often a combination of many factors,such as ancestral inheritance,fate,moral cultivation,interest and so on.To become a Lord of the Tao,one must perform a rite of abstinence.Through the self-abstaining ceremony,Dao Gong realized his transformation from an ordinary person to a ritual expert.While acquiring ritual knowledge and techniques,he also invisibly continued the cultural tradition of respecting teachers and teaching.Taiping Town road public has a strong organization,to the large side of the road pavilion to define self-identity,to the small side is the "road public class".A Daogong organization has a Daogong head,who is responsible for contracting business and distributing work.Every time a large ceremony is held,the Daogong head is responsible for discussing the scale and duration of the ceremony with the master family.In the Dao Gong organization members,except the Dao Gong head is fixed,other organization members are free to flow,not restricted by the organization.Therefore,the identity of Tao Gong does not remain unchanged all the time,it will gradually blur with the growth of Tao Gong groups and the flow of members.In Taiping town,there is a kind of male ritual experts who are closely related to Tao Gong--ghost masters.Their number is small,and they mainly do rituals related to the exorcism of ghosts.Tao Gong from the text,mainly to recite,ghost division from the martial arts,mainly to sing and dance.In some large ceremonies,Tao Gong had to cooperate with ghost masters,who had a clear division of labor and shared the ritual practice.Therefore,while studying the Daogong group in Taiping Town,we should pay attention to the ghost teachers group and clarify the relationship between Daogong teachers,which is conducive to deepening our correct understanding of Daogong as a special group and understanding the strategy of local ritual experts actively participating in local cultural inheritance in a broader sense.Tao Gong often claimed to be the "secretary" or "central leader" who issued the official orders,and regarded ghost teachers as the "armed forces department" to follow the command or the "police station" to protect the public order.He also emphasized the "orthodoxy" of his own origin through oral inheritance.In this regard,ghost teachers admitted that"the Lord of Tao is the greatest and the literary world is the main",but they also believed that they could not be underestimated,and continuously highlighted their own uniqueness through oral expression,ritual text and ritual practice.In addition,the"two precisations of civil and martial arts" popular in Taiping Town reflects that Taoist officials and ghost teachers can be combined into one,with both functions.It also shows that the literary world cannot imitate the ceremonies of the Wu world,nor can the Wu world simulate the ceremonies of the upper level,and "Wen" and "Wu"should be two independent systems.Tao Gong and ghost masters interact and complement each other.There is no attempt to "standardize" the ritual traditions of ghost masters.While adhering to their own ritual traditions,ghost masters cooperate with Tao Gong to promote local cultural inheritance.