Study On The Custom Of Praying For Rain With Dragon In Shanxi Area

Prayer for rain has been around since ancient times.Shanxi is arid with little rain.Precipitation is related to people’s livelihood and has natural conditions for praying for rain.The geographical unit of this region is relatively isolated,and its profound historical and cultural deposits provide a certain geographical basis for the preservation of traditional customs.The custom of praying for rain took a long time to form,and the dragon gradually became the main god of praying for rain from the tool in the custom of praying for rain,which prompted the construction of a large number of Dragon King Temple.Religion,politics and other factors played an important role in it.This paper looks at the image of the dragon from a religious perspective,and takes the change of this image as the research clue,with the purpose of clarifying the origin and evolution of the dragon king as the main god praying for rain,as well as the changes in the custom of praying for rain with the dragon king as the object of praying for rain in different times,and demonstrate the secularization process of religion and its impact on local society through these changesThis paper uses literature analysis method,field investigation method,comparative analysis method,double evidence method and other research methods to restore the historical and cultural situation at that time as best as possible,and to deeply understand of the social environment where the god praying for rain lives,and gradually transition from the object of praying for rain to the spiritual belief and social belief reflected behind it,step by step.In this paper,the time nodes of three important changes of rain-praying objects are taken as the watershed of the research.One is that before the Tang Dynasty,dragons were mainly used as the noumenon in the ceremony of praying for rain.At that time,dragons still kept their original animal image.The second is the development of religion in the Tang Dynasty.Buddhism,dominated by Tantric school,processed the Dragon King in Buddhist classics,which made the religious Dragon King gradually become the folk "rain god" with personification characteristics.Third,the royal enfeolment of the Dragon King in the Song and Yuan Dynasties gradually recognized the identity of the Dragon King as"king",and the Dragon King became more political and secular.The Dragon King was widely worshipped in the Temple of the Dragon King to pray for rain,and the number of Dragon King Temple was increased.The transformation of the dragon from "beast" to "god" and finally to"king",religion and politics played an important role in the process of dragon’s transformation from beast to god and finally to king.Religion creates the dragon god and politics creates the dragon king.The Dragon King in the religious classics has the characteristics of sacredness,while the Dragon King enshrined in the Dragon King Temple shows both sacredness and secularism.The latter attributes are endowed by both politics and the public.The formation process of the Dragon King is the concrete manifestation of the secularization of religion and the result of the mutual adjustment of religion and politics in the grass-roots society.The transformation of Dragon King Temple from a religious temple to a custom temple,and the transformation of rain-praying masters from Taoist monks to local officials,represents the gradual strengthening of political control over religion,and also represents the control of feudal autocracy in the field of people’s thoughts.The development of the Dragon King is of reference significance to the development of local shrines and the construction of local belief system,and the formation process of the custom of praying for rain with dragons has universal value in thought.This paper is divided into five parts.The introduction part reviews previous studies on rain praying through academic history,sorts out the evolution of the custom of rain praying,and clarifies the issues to be studied in this paper.The first part discusses the origin of praying for rain and the well-known objects of praying for rain in Shanxi before Tang Dynasty.The second part analyzes the establishment process of the behavior of praying for rain by dragon in Tang Dynasty from the perspective of religious teaching.The third part analyzes the development of the custom of praying for rain by dragon in Song and Yuan Dynasties and discusses the origin of Dragon King from the relevant objects in Dragon King Temple.The fourth part analyzes the changes of the custom of praying for rain with dragons from the interaction between"sacred"and "secular".The Dragon King and Dragon King Temple have both sacred and secular attributes.The conversion of sacred and secular causes the change of the custom of praying for rain with dragons and then has an impact on the local society.The fifth part is a summary of the custom of praying for rain with a dragon,analyzing the performance of the integration of the three religions in praying for rain with a dragon,and comparing various images of the Dragon King during the important transformation period,analyzing the change of the image of the dragon king and the reasons behind the phenomenon,and understanding the custom of praying for rain in Shanxi from the perspective of religious secularization.