Research On The Evolvement Of The Sacrifice To The Five Marchmounts

Sacrifice to the Five Marchmounts is one of the important rituals in ancient China.Official history series and ritual books contain many details about this sacrifice that itcould be easy to investigate the evolvement of it, but how to explain this evolvement isstill a question. First, as a ritual, this sacrifice is inseparable from Confucian classics.Second, as the Five Marchmounts are located in different areas, geographic factor canaffect the ritual. So Confucian classics and knowledge of Historical Geography are allnecessary for this research. This research starts from the worship of mountains andrivers in pre-Qin era, and it is obvious that Kings of feudal states maintained close tie toholy mountains and rivers, which accorded with “treat the Five Marchmounts as dukes,and treat the Four Rivers as marquises” as Confucian classics describe. In Qin andWestern Han Dynasties, though the Five Marchmounts were on the list of the first classof mountains and rivers, they were mostly not supernormal until the Emperor Xuan setup the ritual of sacrifice to them. In Eastern Han Dynasty the governors were in chargeof the ritual, replacing the officials from the court. Besides, the Five Marchmounts hadinvolved other rituals of the empire. In middle-ancient period, China was split intodifferent empires and the Five Marchmounts showed their geographic feature. One caseis that Liu Cong the leader of Tuge sacrificed to Mount Song while he was directing abattle. Another case is that Emperor Mingyuan of the Northern Wei Dynasty sent anofficial to sacrifice to Mount Hua in enemy-occupied zone. For the Northern WeiDynasty, Mount Heng (the North Marchmount) was the most important one in the FiveMarchmounts. Sui Dynasty sacrificed to one of the Five Marchmounts when seasonbegins to follow the rule of Northern Zhou Dynasty. The Five Marchmounts were theforemost in the ritual of preying for rain in Sui Dynasty. Sui Dynasty set officials andsecond mountains for the Five Marchmounts. The spirit of all these changes was fromZhou Li，especially from Zheng Xuan’s annotation. During Tang and Song Dynasties,the Five Marchmounts were conferred the title of monarchs, and this had a connection with the downward expansion of national rites. Tang Dynasty allowed people to erectTaoist temples on the Five Marchmounts for the Taoist gods of the Five Marchmounts(named Zhenjun). Song Dynasty got the gods together in one Taoist temple (namedWuyue Guan) in Kaifeng. In addition to the evolvement of the ritual, the identity of theFive Marchmounts also changed. The first change took place during Sui and TangDynasties, and it was that Mount Heng in Hunan Province replaced Mount Huo inAnhui Province as the South Marchmount. The second change took place during Mingand Qing Dynasties, and it was the transfer of North Marchmount from Hebei Provinceto Shanxi Province. The first change was the fruit of the studies of Confucian classics，but the transfer of the North Marchmount was a victory of political power. Besides, thechanges of the identity had influenced the worship of the Five Marchmounts. Forexample, many temples for North Marchmount sprout out in Northern Shanxi, and thiswas a incidental factor in the contest of scrambling the culture of North Marchmount.