Local religion and territorial development---beliefs in Madam Xian (Xian furen) and the God of Thunder (Leishen) in Gaozhou, Leizhou and Hainan, Guangdong Province, since the Song dynasty

In my visits to Gaozhou, Leizhou and Hainan, I was attracted by the interesting phenomenon that Madam Xian (Xian Furen) or the God of Thunder (Lei shen) is worshiped not only as a deity, but also as an ancestor. The deities had been blended in with the ancestor because in the late imperial period, local people had changed the foci of their territorial worship as they became become part of the Chinese polity.; By reconstructing the interaction between the indigenous people and the Chinese state over a long period of time from the Tang dynasty to the Qing, this thesis argues that the anomaly of indigenous contact with the state in the southwest, unlike the Pearl River delta or even Fujian, is the very long duration of contact and the persistent representation of the indigenous as part of the dominant (Han) tradition, despite the Han claim to superiority.; This paper draws on a variety of sources---including official documents, the images of the subjection of the natives, the temples, and the performance of ritual and so on---to voice the indigenous point of view. It goes into the history of Hainan, Leizhou and Gaozhou to relate changing religious practices with social changes and the contact between the indigenous and the state. It also relates history to ritual practices as they are currently observed. By bringing together published historical sources, steles and documents found in the field and current observations of ritual practices, this thesis shows that the imperial tradition was made up of many different strands.