Chinese Religion

I

Introduction

Chinese Religion, religious beliefs of the Chinese people. Confucianism and Daoism are often regarded or referred to as Chinese religions, but Confucianism is, and Daoism began as, a philosophy, albeit with ritual and cosmological accretions. Confucius and his successors disregarded the gods and were concerned overwhelmingly with practical action. The so-called “Confucian temples” are simply halls of fame for veneration of the founders of Confucianism. But the beliefs of the majority of the Chinese people have historically been very different from the philosophies of the Confucian ruling elite, so that native Chinese polytheism is sometimes termed “folk religion”. Later Daoists appropriated many of the cults and rituals of popular Chinese belief, and a religious institutional structure from Buddhism, after the 2nd century ad, so that a separate stream of “religious Daoism” arose in contrast to the original “philosophical Daoism” associated with the ancient Chinese thinkers Laozi (Lao-tzu) and Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu). The division was formalized within Daoism as that between the “little rites” of various mediums, exorcists, and cults of the folk Shenjiao (Gods and Spirits) religion, and the “great rites” of the Daoist priests.

II

History

From the earliest times, Chinese religion consisted of the veneration of a pantheon of gods nominally headed by Shang Di (“The Lord on High”), plus ancestor worship, and the prevalent form of worship was ritual offering of food and wine. The ancestor cults of the ruling houses of the Shang dynasty and Zhou dynasty consisted of sacrificial ceremonies in clan ancestral halls, usually employing elaborate bronze vessels. These sacrifices nourished the souls of clan ancestors and were regarded as essential to the continuance of a particular dynasty. The Zhou dynasty kings sacrificed both to their ancestors and to the Lord of Heaven, visualized in the abstract as Tian (“Heaven”), from which they conferred legitimacy on the rulers of vassal states, the so-called “Mandate of Heaven” (tian ming). State ceremonies were conducted in the mingtang, a mysterious building apparently round on top and square below to signify respectively Heaven and Earth, which the sovereign walked round in the course of a year. The vassal rulers and the common people sacrificed to their own ancestors, and to local nature and agricultural deities. In the anarchic Period of the Warring States (403-221 bc), when the Zhou dynasty decayed into impotent purveyors of legitimacy, the feuding princedoms stopped the sacrifices of conquered opponents as part of the process of conquest. During the Qin dynasty and the Earlier Han dynasty, the religious concerns of the ruling classes focused on the “Mandate of Heaven” and the legitimization of the political structure. Meanwhile, followers of philosophical Daoism's mystical, contemplative discipline often retreated to wild and mountainous areas where they mingled with the wu—shamans, mediums, and other practitioners of folk religion. Southern China in particular had a strong native tradition of shamanism, sorcery, and spirit worship, which became still more diverse as southwards expansion brought new peoples under Chinese rule.

Wider religious movements emerged under the Later Han dynasty. A Daoist called Zhang Daoling, who claimed to have received in ad 142 in the Sichuan mountains a revelation from the Daoist sage Laozi, founded the Tianshidao (Way of the Celestial Masters) movement. This revelation was supposed to supplant the corrupt popular cults under the aegis of Laozi (now deified as an immortal xian), and incorporated considerable emphasis on virtuous action and charity, in accordance with the Dao (Way) of Heaven. The cult proliferated throughout Sichuan, dividing its worshippers into parishes grouped round local temples, and became known as the Five Pecks of Rice Society after the tithe contributed by each household. Many of its doctrines and procedures, such as the burning of written prayers to appeal to a bureaucratic pantheon of gods, and allegorical reinterpretations of Laozi's Daodejing, continue in modern Chinese religion; others, such as carefully organized ritual orgies each new moon, were survivals of ancient agrarian traditions and have mostly died out. The gods were usually derived from folk tradition or local cults and co-opted into the new hierarchical pantheon. In 184 another cult with Daoist affiliations, the Yellow Turbans, started a rebellion in Shandong in the east. This was defeated, but the Tianshidao became the official creed of the Wei dynasty (220-265) which succeeded the Han, thus inaugurating organized “religious Daoism”. Based on Zhang Daoling's revelation, and led by his ostensible descendants, the cult rapidly spread through northern China.

The fall of the Western Jin dynasty (265-316) to northern invaders drove numerous refugees south, carrying the Tianshidao into new territory. The sect both fought and co-opted local beliefs, and converts from notable southern families began combining Tianshidao with southern cults. Between 346 and 370, the prophet Yang Xi, sponsored by displaced southern aristocrats, dictated a series of revelations supposedly granted by immortals from the highest Heaven. His Mao Shan cult brilliantly combined Tianshidao, southern beliefs regarding mountain deities in cave-heavens, Buddhist elements, and millennarian prophecies of a cataclysmic purification of the world. Some Tianshidao practices, such as the fertility rites and the temple tithe, were dropped, and local deities (such as the mountain spirit Mao who gave the cult its name) were absorbed. Other southern aristocrats developed a system which personified Daoist concepts as gods, and produced ceremonious liturgies, mostly intended to benefit dead and living worshippers, which came in the 5th century to dominate religious Daoism. Similar developments in the north, especially further revelations of Laozi to the Daoist Kou Qianzhi in 415, produced a reformed Tianshidao purged of sexual and other excesses and incorporating quasi-Buddhist celibacy which became the state creed of the Northern Wei dynasty (386-534).

With the reunification of China in the 6th century under the Sui dynasty and Tang dynasty, religious Daoism spread across the vast empire and became virtually a national cult. The southern tradition of the Mao Shan cult predominated, and accepted the Tang dynasty's founder, Li Yuan, as its long-awaited messiah. Daoism coexisted with other religions in the empire, including Buddhism and Nestorian Christianity, and on some occasions, such as the anti-Buddhist persecutions of 845, was even forcibly promoted by pro-Daoist emperors. Some Daoist influence spread into Korea and Japan, although in neither area did Daoist worship become established. Religious Daoism continued to flourish under the Song dynasty, when the descendants of Zhang Daoling gained official recognition as nominal leaders of Daoism. The Mao Shan cult was renovated as the Zhengyidao (Way of Orthodox Unity), while new sects, such as the Zhentadao (Perfect and Great Dao) and the Taiyi (Supreme Unity), emerged in northern China after the Song dynasty was driven south of the Yangzi in 1126. The Mongol rulers of the Yuan dynasty particularly favoured the monastic Quanzhen (Perfect Realization) sect. Under later dynasties, religious Daoism developed the doctrine of the Three Religions (Sanjiao), which taught the essential unity of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Emperors of the later dynasties prayed to Heaven each year at the winter solstice, in the circular Altar of Heaven in Beijing. The roof of the altar building is open to the sky, and the ceremony represented a mixture of traditional religious and cosmological concepts.

Religious Daoism suffered persecution like most other traditional Chinese creeds after the Communist takeover in 1949. The 63rd Daoist patriarch, a descendant of Zhang Daoling, took refuge in Taiwan, a stronghold of Daoism since the 17th century. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and other areas of Chinese settlement outside Communist China are today the most important centres of active religious Daoism, though traditions have survived on the Chinese mainland and are reviving somewhat in the aftermath of dogmatic Communist persecution.

III

Practices

Religious Daoism is concerned with three classes of spirits: gods, ghosts, and ancestors. Ghosts were often neglected ancestors, while some great ancestors or historic figures could rise to become gods, such as the bean-curd seller Zhang who became the god of war Guan Di. Many Chinese gods have real or imaginary biographies giving their dates and deeds as mortals. The various greater and lesser gods of the Chinese pantheon vary considerably, some being local or regional deities, others enjoying tremendous popularity. The Chinese pantheon even boasts three Lavatory Ladies, divine guardians of the toilet.

Worship of gods and ancestors was traditionally a pragmatic search for divine help in pursuit of material ends; the effigies of gods and the spirit tablets of ancestors were sometimes destroyed if the spirits failed to help petitioners. Veneration of the gods usually involves prayer, offerings of food and incense, and the burning of invocations (modelled on secular judicial and official petitions) and “spirit money”. Much of this practice originated in the curative rituals of the Tianshidao sect, which appealed to various heavenly judges and officers in the elaborate bureaucractic hierarchy of deities in order to cure disease. The gods are also venerated through representations or small shrines, such as the posters of the door gods which flank shop or house doors, or the incense shrines to the Tudi (local earth gods) found in streets, bridges, and tower blocks.

The Daoist priesthood conducts highly codified ceremonies of veneration, traditionally called zhai (retreats) but now usually referred to as jiao (offerings), held in the open with chanting and burning of incense. These are usually supposed to benefit the living, and to intercede with the judges of the afterworld on behalf of the dead. The more spectacular rituals of early Daoism, such as penitential rites in which participants smeared themselves with ashes and wallowed in mud, have now mostly vanished. Held regularly in Hong Kong and Taiwan, the jiao vary in length and constituent rituals, most lasting three to five days. The greatest ceremonies, concerning the renewal of the community temple, take place only once every 60 years. Local deities may be venerated as well as the more widely worshipped gods such as the Fushoulu (Three Gods of Happiness) and Zao Shen, the Kitchen God who sits by the family hearth. Major ceremonies are conducted by the Daoist priests, lesser rites may be left to local specialist chanters who customarily lead funeral rites, and to the fashi (magicians). All these may be called on for exorcism and healing, though the superior knowledge and status of the Daoist priests is most respected.

Exorcism and communication with the dead occurs fairly often in Chinese religion. Daoist priests generally perform the most difficult exorcisms, such as driving demons out of the insane or cleansing haunted houses. Fashi work with mediums, who act as receptacles for gods or ancestral spirits, and whose words and acts are interpreted by the fashi. Automatic writing is also used to receive messages from the dead.

Ancestor worship involves offering food and prayer to the family's ancestral spirits (shen), to receive their assistance and to prevent them from degenerating into hungry ghosts, or gui. The shen needs ritual offerings by family members to ascend to heaven after death, else it will return as a vengeful gui. Ancestor worship broadly divides into domestic worship of ancestors from the most recent generations, whose names are written above the family altar, and worship of clan ancestors in important lineages (predominantly in south China), whose names are inscribed on tablets in the clan's ancestral hall. The latter worship often involves the assembling of clan elders at the hall, especially in the annual veneration ceremony in which roast pigs are offered to the ancestors. The ancestral hall, often a magnificent building, embodied the power and prestige of the clan. Promotion into the lineage cult (by paying a fee) was the only way to ensure permanent veneration of one's name. Names of the oldest ancestors are usually dropped from the domestic cult around five or six generations after death, when the family list of ancestors is rewritten after a new death.

Religious Daoism has its own tradition of contemplative mysticism, some of which derives from the ideas of philosophical Daoism. Breathing exercises and other activities resembling yoga are still practised in Taiwan and elsewhere, following a theory of internal alchemy which supposedly can make the adept immortal. Others involve a meditational search for the gods who dwell in the human body, which is held to be a miniature of the external world with the same deities presiding over corresponding parts of microcosm and macrocosm. Sometimes aiming at a transcendent or mystical religious state, such exercises are more usually part of the same quest for immortality which inspired some Daoists to develop early Chinese chemistry and poison themselves with spurious elixirs of life.