Religious Ritual And The Inheriting Of Culture

By examining various sources collected from field work in Indonesia, this dissertation aims to explore Indonesia Confucianism (Kongjiao, the Teaching of Confucian, or Agama Kongfuzu), a topic that has drawn the attention of scholars, domestic and abroad, from different disciplines, and tries to discuss the inheriting of culture and its mechanism among Overseas Chinese through analyzing the history, institution, rituals, and other aspects of Indonesia Confucianism. It is divided into 9 chapters and includes about 220,000 characters.Indonesia Confucianism has its origin in Chinese Confucianism. It has been taken along into Indonesia by the Chinese emigrants. At first, Indonesia Confucianism was inherited and diffused through the familial education, the sacrifices in temples and ancestral halls, and cultural education by oversea Chinese.Founded in 1900, the Chinese Assembly Hall was the first public, official institution of Indonesia Confucianism in Indonesian history. It clearly stated that Indonesia Confucianism was a religious order and the most important part of oversea Chinese culture, and set up the basic doxy of Indonesia Confucianism. Meanwhile, it is also the symbol of the nationalism arousal among the Indonesian oversea Chinese.Indonesia has changed from a western colony to an independent "Republic of Indonesia" in the last century. Within this frame of modern nation-state, the status of Indonesian Chinese had transformed from "the Oversea Chinese" to "Chinese" or "Ethnic Chinese", and "Foreign Citizen of Chinese Origin." At the same time, Indonesia Confucianism has developed into one of the Indonesian "Agama" (religion), an institutional religion, which is more mature and self-contained than before after a huge of difficult tries.The Indonesia Confucianism has a complete organizational structure, which has two levels: the central and the regional. The central institution is "the Top Council of Indonesia Confucianism." There are expert clergies in the institution. They practice the institution of missionary grades, and the top leading institution is the "Committee of Preachers."The doxy and canon of Indonesia Confucianism are clear, systemic and creedal. Its canons are the well-known canons of the Chinese Confucianism, which are the Four Books (Si shu) and Five Classics (Wu jing). The sovereign "Heaven" is the uppermost god of Indonesia Confucianism. As a "sacred" or "prophet," Confucius received the mandate to preach the doxies of Indonesia Confucianism among the Chinese. Also, Indonesia Confucianism set a systemic canon whose core contents are "Eight Honest Admonitory Regulations".Indonesia Confucianism has a complete system of rituals and ceremonies, including the rites for saluting, sacrifice, preaching, wedding and funeral, and other rites of life cycle. The places of their worship, which is called the "hall," are often the traditional Chinese temples. There is a Surabaya Confucius Temple existing for 400 years.There are two kinds of the collective worship ceremony, the divine service preaching held every week and the sacrifice ceremony performed on important festivals. The sacrifices are offered to the Heaven, Confucius, deities, and ancestors. They incarnate the doxies and the faith of Indonesia Confucianism, and are thus its most important part. It should be noted that Indonesia Confucianism adopts the Confucius Calendar all the time. They arrange their sacred schedule according to the traditional Chinese solar term and festivals.The rites of life cycle of Indonesia Confucianism has several distinguished characteristics. In addition to the birth, wedding, and funeral ceremony, etc., they also set special obligatory rites that Confucius prescribes for different phases of one person in the Analects, which are named "self-cultivation ceremonies" in this dissertation. They also prescribe some special ceremonies for the liturgy which is performed on the national commemoration or the day for the followers to take the oath of allegiance, which are named "social role ceremonies" in this dissertation.The dissertation illustrates that Indonesian Confucianism is originated from Chinese Confucianism. It is the Indonesianized or localized form of Chinese Confucianism. The history of the development of Indonesia Confucianism is the process by which Chinese Confucianism continued to localize in Indonesian. This is also a process in which cultural elites of Indonesia Confucianism are constantly involved in cultural practice and cultural invention in the special environment of Indonesia.Indonesia Confucianism reflects the way in which part of mid-low class of native Chinese express their cultural identity in religious way, insist on their Chinese identity, and preserve the features of Chinese nationality. Its ceremonies make use of the Confucian Calendar to fit almost all of Chinese traditional festivals into ceremonial system and embody the integrity of culture. Based on the daily life of its followers, it facilitates the formation of comprehensive practice memory that is composed of symbolic (physical) system and bodily performance ("incorporation"), and thus provides the mechanism and means by which native Indonesian Chinese transmit their culture.