A Study Of The State Sacrificial System In The Ming Dynasty

The state sacrifice is a public divine worship activity presided by the emperor or officials in the name of the country. This worship reflects both religious connotations and the core of the political and social beliefs and the values of the attenders. It also contains a realistic intention to serve the community of the whole country.The state sacrificial system of the Ming Dynasty was set up in the Hongwu's reign and guided by the Confucian ideas. The content of this system follows the sacrificial tradition of the T'ang and Sung dynasty, and includes dozens of sacrificial activities in the different scales from the grand, the secondary to the lowest. Besides the routine sacrifices on the fixed dates, some provisional rituals offering sacrifice to the heaven and earth, the mountains, the ancestral temples, the god of the land and grain, and the god of the earth when the emperor was enthroned, the royal titles were conferred on the royal members, the royal marriages were held, the imperial pinces went to their own granted territories, the royal buildings were constructed, the army was going out to battle, the emperor looked around the country or the Confucian schools, and the abnormal astronomical phenomena or serious natural disasters happened also belonged to the state sacrificial system. Besides the central government's sacrificial activities presided by the emperor himself or the dispatched officials in charge, the sacrificial activities held by the local government also belonged to the state sacrificial system. The entire set of sacrificial activities was the important content of the political activities of the Ming dynasty.After Hongwu period, the sacrificial system was transformed from time to time. The original changes were mainly the sacrifice's spiritual deviation and the impact against the Confucianism's leading status caused by the Buddhist, Taoist and the folk religions' penetration into the state sacrificial system. The serious objections of the Confucian officials slowed this deviating process down. During Jiajing period, emperor Shizong changed the sacrificial system a lot during the Great Ritual Controversy. The changes included the reformation of the temple rites aiming to put Shizong's father Xingxianwang into the temple, the standard's reduction of the Confucian's sacrifice and the side sacrifice of the Confucian, and the alteration to the rituals of the heaven and the earth. In terms of the cultural connotation reflected by the sacrificial activites, these changes did not alter the fundamental nature and the leading cultural connotation of the Ming government's sacrifice. In the early years of Longqing period, emperor Muzong and his high officials limitedly readjusted the state sacrificial system formed in the Jiajing period and thus part of it was restored to the condition before Jiajing period. From that to the end the Ming dynasty, the state sacrificial system scarcely changed.This dissertation views the institution, the personnel administration, the ritual activities, the integral elements, the beliefs object world and the reflected realistic function of the Ming dynasty's state sacrificial system as a whole. On this basis, this dissertation analyses its political cultural connotations.In the view of the system, the Ming dynasty's state sacrificial system includes the Ministry of Rites (libu,礼部), the Court of Imperial Sacrifices (Taichangsi,太常寺), the Court of State Ceremonial (Honglusi,鸿胪寺), the Court of Imperial Entertainments (Guanglusi,光禄寺), the Directorate of Astronomy (Qintianjian,钦天监), the Grand Secretariat (neige,内阁), the Hanlin Academy (翰林院), and some other sections of the Ming government. Among them, the Ministry of Rites is the top administrative and policy-making body of the sacrificial system. The Court of Imperial Sacrifices is the direct administrative body of the sacrificial activities. The Ministry of Construction (gongbu,工部), the General Commission of Surveillance (duchayuan,都察院), and the Six Offices of Scrutiny (liuke,六科) were in charge of the assistance and supervision of the sacrificial ritual.As an important ritual activity, the sacrifice had some definite provisions of the procedure. From the preparing activities before the formal ritual, such as the choice of an auspicious day, fast, the practice of the ritual, preparation of the sacrificial utensil, informing the antecedents in the ancestral temple and the display of the sacrificial goods, to the procedures held on the formal sacrificial day, such as the welcome of the god, the offering of the food, the worship for three times and so on, they all reflected the symbolic significance of the sacrificial ritual. In the well-designed ritual space, a series of displays and utensils were endowed with the solemn significance and played an important role in the sacrificial ritual. The altars and the temples made the environment of the sacrificial activities more conspicuous, formed a comparatively isolated field and set off the sacred and solemn atmosphere of the ritual by contrast. The utensils and the foods of the sacrifice for the deities became one of the communicative mediums between the gods and the human beings. The dressing and the dance accompanied by music in the sacrificial rituals formed a solemn atmosphere to the human sensory organs and strengthened the sacrificial orientation. The sacrificial texts reflected the worshiper's purposes to worship the god and earth, to respect the deities, to warn against the ghosts, to pacificate the common people, and to govern the country.The state sacrificial objects of the Ming dynasty is a whole system which with the "heaven" at the core, concluded the other deities, ghosts, ancestors, sages, and the men making great achievements for the country. The abstract "heaven" had the highest and absolute authority, standing for the ultimate order of the nature and the human beings and working as the origin of all the ethic relations in the world. Under the heaven, various gods and deities had their individual duties and symbolic meanings and so had their own specific political functions. The worshipped objects, such as the ancestors, sages, the men making great achievements for the country, the heroes and so on, showed the full concern for the human affairs in the conception of Ming people. A part of the lower-leveled ghosts and deities in the folk society were also brought into the sacrificial system, which mainly reflected the idea of human being's managing the ghost. The Ming government's basic attitude to the state sacrificial system is to be respectful, cautious and moderate, while Shendao-Shejiao (神道设教) and the tradition of paying most attention to the human affairs and respecting the gods and ghosts at the same time were kept. This formed a profound difference with the institutionalized religion, which worshipped the supernaturalism blindly, and the folk superstious beliefs, which contained too much sorcery. The fact that the objects of the sacrifice were classified reflected the social stratum of the realistic world.The dominant ideology of the state sacrificial system of Ming dynasty was the Confucians ideas, which are a set of philosophies and ideologies about the county's governing. Therefore, the functions and the intentions of the sacrificial system had the characteristics of paying close attention to human affairs. That is to say, the sacrificial activities had a clear secular orientation. The worships for the heaven and earth, the god of the land and grain, the god of the agriculture, and the god of the silkworm reflected the concern about the agriculture and the people's livelihood. The sacrifice for the ancestral temple reflected the promotion of the filial piety and the stress on the emperor's blood line according to the idea that the home and country were a whole body. The worships for the mountains, hills, rivers and seas reflected the domain ideas of Ming. The sacrifice for the city god and ghosts which had no places to go showed the realistic authority towards the local society. The worships for the emperors and the men making great achievements for the country reflected the identification for the succession of the sage and virtuous emperors, and set examples for the people to make great achievements for the country. The worship for the Confucius meant to educate the Confucian officials and the common people with this symbolized sage's morality. The worships for the army's flag and the god of horse expressed the stress on the military affairs and the will to defend the country. Besides the above-mentioned implied meaning of the institutional sacrificial system, each sacrificial affair was endowed with a respective function, which reflected the mingle and magnanimous characteristics in the Ming people's sacrificial ideas.The state sacrificial system of the Ming dynasty created a divine world and prayed to it, which made this system bear obvious religious characteristic. However, the dominant ideology of this sacrificial system was the Confucian ideas, which were different from the pure religion, so it was different from the institutionalized religion, the primitive religion and the folk religions. Therefore, this dissertation defines the characteristic of the state sacrificial system as the quasi-religion. The key points of it were as follows: the state sacrificial affairs of the Ming dynasty focused on the human affairs, paid much more attention to the people's livelihood and therefore reflected a certain rational color. The sacrificial activities focused on the rituals instead of the sorceries. The concerns of the state sacrificial system were the welfare and the order of the national community instead of the interests of the individuals and the small group, which made it highly public. The sacrificial objects and their status were not absolutely unchangeable and were selected deliberately by the humans in the real world. So, the appealing objects were the deities as well as the human beings themselves. The sacrificial activities pointed to the Ren (Kindness,仁) policy and were regarded as the expression of the will to govern the country rationally instead of the process of simply giving the realistic things to the gods to determine. The basic spirit of the sacrifice was to be respectful and moderate instead of praying purely or using the sorcery. The principle of the sacrifice made it exclude the Buddhist, Taoist and folk religious deities.The state sacrificial system of the Ming dynasty developed on the basis of the traditional Chinese ritual and sacrifice, which made it have the obvious characteristic of the succession. The core of this feature is to review and identify the Confucians state political ideas and political culture. There were complex relations between the state sacrificial system and the folk believes. This is an important point of view to comprehend the relationship between the state and the society of the Ming Dynasty. The state sacrificial system of Ming dynasty served for the imperial power, and also had the functions of interpreting the Confucian orthodoxy and limiting the emperor's power. These characteristics are important to comprehend the connotation of the political culture in the state sacrificial system of the Ming dynasty.