A Study Of Mazu Belief From Song Dynasty To Ming Dynasty

In Song Dynasty,to create a temple is not easy,and it is rare for a god to have two temples in one county.A temple almost always sacrifice many gods,so only the temple of major sacrifice Mazu can called Mazu's temple.With the development of Mazu belief,song other temples became Mazu's temples.Mazu belief has been introduced to Jiangnan area with the development of mari time transportation and trade in the Southern Song dynasty.Mazu belief has indeed b een spread and disseminated in those places.Compared to other regions,Jiangnan are a has a stronger religious atmosphere of worshiping the Dragon King,and naturally,it gives Mazu the reputation of the Dragon Maid in local areas.Lin'an,a city under thre at of tide disaster for a long time,enables Mazu the great ability of combating it.Thro ugh the principle of sacrificing within own territory in Confucian classics,Jiangnan na tives criticize the introduction of Mazu belief.In order to address those challenges,ge ntries of Putian were inclined to emphasize Mazu's title of Dragon Maid and her capa city of fighting tide disaster,according to local Mazu temples' notes and some relevan t poetry and essays.In the SouthernSong dynasty,when Mazu was frequently awarded by the imperial government,Zhuxi's theory also began to widely spread in Fujian and other areas.Due to different understandings in Confucian classics,the successors of Zhuxi's showed completely different attitudes towards Mazu belief:some applaud while others appose.To some extent,ZhenDexiu and other successors of Zhuxi's worship of Mazu belief its wide spread.Since the Song dynasty,Mazu keeps the image of the local protecting god.In the Yuan dynasty,sea transportation was mainly used in grain transferring from the southeast area to Dadu,the great capital city of Yuan dynasty.Mazu's efficacious image was prominently shown as safeguard on sea transportation.With the strong promotion from of imperial government,big scale of Mazu temples began to appear in the northen of the Huai River area and Mazu officially begun the symbol of sea god.In the Ming dynasty,canal became the main transportation way of grain transferring,Mazu's efficacious image was prominently shown as protcting angel of navigation.Thus the image of nationwide sea god on Mazu was continuously be approved by the imperial government.Besides,the non-official spiead of Mazu belief began to exceed the official spread and became the main strength in Mazu belief progradation.And Mazu changed the image from god of the symbol sea to the god of sea administration.