A study on the development of the Daoist Ye Fashan cult in Tang and Song period: Palace Chapel Daoist Priest, Ritual Master and local deity

This thesis endeavors to explore the development of the local cult of Daoist priest Ye Fashan from the Tang Dynasty until the Song Dynasty. It aims at tracing the cult's historical and religious background within an academic context, which emphasizes studying history of Daoism and Daoist immortals in local society.; This study begins with the attempts to reconstruct the history of Palace Chapel Daoist Priest Ye Fashan and his Daoist family through analyzing the epigraphies of Ye's father, grandfather and himself. Before he died, Ye donated his houses as Daoist monasteries, which earned the clan's social reputation in the local society of Chuzhou, as well as for his offspring and local Daoist priests in the monasteries. Between the late Tang and the Song period, Ye was later worshiped as both the ancestor and local deity by the Ye clan. Local people even built ancestral temple in the Daoist monastery. Furthermore, Ye also received ample worships in many Daoist monasteries across the Chuzhou region because of his typical cultural hero activities such as making rains and controlling drought.; Ye Fa-shan is revered as a Daoist deity in many hagiographical sources found in the Daoist canon. The image of Ye in the Daoist hagiography is deeply influenced by strange writings and novels flourished in Tang, which emphasize the esoteric activities and thaumaturgy of Ye. His image as a Ritual Master in such narratives actually reflects the religious memory of the Tang people. Ye's esoteric image was further re-figured by new schools of Daoist ritual in the Song period. Ye was believed to be an important initiator of the Fu and Fa which were Daoist techniques to summon spirits and exorcise evils. In this thesis, the purpose of a biographical study of Ye Fashan is to acquire an archeological understanding of a Daoist cult between the Tang and the Song periods. Through an in-depth understanding of the popular literature and Daoist canon, the dissertation will try to reconstruct Ye's multiple images in local imagination and Daoist sources.; Research materials will be drawn from four sources: various local historical resources, epigraphies, Daoist canon and popular literature like Tang strange writings. The project will make full use of epigraphies of local Daoist monasteries in the area of Chuzhou and local gazetteers of Zhejiang Province which inform historical development of the Ye Fashan cult in the region.