Seeking the Blessing: Social Change in Central Hunan from Song to Qing Dynasty

Being attracted by the special phenomenon that family gods [Jiazhu] are worshiped widely in the local society, during my visits to the Central Region [Xiangzhong] of Hunan, I became interested in how that phenomenon was formed in a historical context. Jiazhu is treated as a member of the same clan with the highest spiritual power, showing its close identification with shamans and territorial gods. This pattern is very different when compared with the merging of ancestor with deity in Hainan and Leizhou, and the separation of ancestor and deity in the Pearl River Delta and the Putian Plain. This thesis thus focuses on how the pattern had evolved. Drawing on a variety of sources, including official documents, local materials, and Taoist ritual texts and so on, it studies the relation between religious practices and social changes that shaped the local “cultural traditions” and “living space”.;The history of the Central Hunan from the Song to the late Qing can be expressed as a story of the encroachment on territory vis-a-vis competitions among natives, newcomers, Buddhist monks, and Daoist ritual masters. In Tang-Song period, Buddhism had great influence on the local society. During the Northern Song dynasty, the Meishan region, then the frontier of Han China, was forcibly “opened” by the imperial government with the assistance of Buddhist monks. Meishan was hereafter not only as a geographical label but also generally identified with the indigenous people and local spirits. In the early Ming period, newcomers used “spiritual power” [Fashu] which co-worked with Lüshan Daoist traditions to sanctify their landownership. Applying Fashu became a predominant approach to open up primitive land. This is a significant period when the Meishan tradition and the Lüshan Daoist traditions mixed together. In local belief, both Jazhu and Dizhu were deities of the highest spiritual power. Dizhu was one who opened up primitive land. From the Late Yuan to the early Ming period, the dynasty established the social order by recognizing the interests of the local chiefs. This situation changed when the local government reformed the taxation system in the mid-Ming.;This thesis shows the dynamics of ritual representation of local society from the Song to late Qing period. During the Ming-Qing period, powerful hereditary families used Buddist monasteries to protect ancestral graveyards and the hill cemeteries. This tradition continued to the late-Qing. In addition, the City God, a symbol of the imperial government, was incorporated into the belief system of local society with the spread of the Orthodox Oneness Sect [Zhengyi sect]. The highly educated gentries began to promote state rituals in the locality for reconstructing their own traditions, with limited success. During the mid-Qing, building ancestral halls became a popular trend of housing the ancestral spirits.;This thesis argues that in understanding the shaping of the local society, one should not miss the timing of it being incorporated into the state, since the ideologies sanctioned by the state had a considerable and persistent impact on the integrated society. On the other hand, the persistence of the local and indigenous should not be underplayed. Ritual transformation and social restructuring vary with different social and ecological environments. State institutions and orthodox ideologies cannot work successfully unless they combine with indigenous traditions and deity systems. In such process, various religious groups and ritual masters played a leading role.