Reconstructing fourth century B.C.E. Chu religious practices in China: Divination, sacrifice, and healing in the newly excavated Baoshan manuscripts

This dissertation examines a set of bamboo slips discovered in a fourth century B.C.E. Chu tomb at Baoshan in China in 1987 that record multiple occasions throughout a three-year period (318 B.C.E.--316 B.C.E.) when Shao Tuo, identified as the tomb occupant, used divination and sacrifice to address anxieties about his illness. The manuscripts show an aspect of popular religious life that has been missing from the picture of fourth century B.C.E. China.;The composite nature of the practice also directs our attention to debates about magic, science, and religion that date back to the time of E. B. Tylor and Sir James Frazer. After describing the Baoshan manuscripts, I will use them as a case study to reconstruct the practice and interrogate the categories that anthropologists and theorists in religious studies often use to describe early societies.;Combining textual interpretation with phenomenological and comparative approaches, I argue for a more diverse picture of fourth century B.C.E. Chinese religions. The hybrid practice combining divination, sacrifice, and healing performs significant cultural, social, and psychological functions in the Baoshan context and argues against an evolutionary view that sequences early societies in an exclusive and hierarchical progression from magic, to religion, to science.