One year ago on Round and Square (8 October 2011)—Spring and Autumn Roles: Flatness in America
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Rural Religion in Early China."
Click here for the introduction to "La Pensée Cyclique" the "umbrella topic for this series.
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Rural Religion in Early China."
Click here for the introduction to "La Pensée Cyclique" the "umbrella topic for this series.
Ancient Beliefs
Many people have noted that the natural and social worlds
are closely linked in Chinese thought. Few people, however, have shown it with such
unrelenting enthusiasm and theoretical rigor as Marcel Granet. In the preceding
pages, he has shown a complex mix of agricultural work, social gathering, and
renewal of the domestic order. The spring and autumn festivals lie at the very
foundation of peasant thought, and they give shape, as it were, to time itself.
The rhythm of work is time for the
peasant, and the most basic division of the year is straight in half. It is
decidedly equinoctial.
The sense that the natural world and human society were
closely bonded
has been the basic element of all Chinese beliefs. We have been
able to
see how this sense could come about. Among Chinese peasants the life
of
feeling became intense, the creative power of the mind truly showed
itself,
only on the occasion of the Festivals of Spring and Autumn; now,
these
gatherings stamped time with the rhythm by which the work in the
countryside
was divided up and which coincided with the rhythm of the
seasons.[1]
Le sentiment
que le monde naturel et la société humaine sont étroitement
solidaires a été
l'élément de fond de toutes les croyances chinoises. On a
pu voir comment ce
sentiment a dû naître. La vie sentimentale des paysans
chinois ne prenait
d'intensité, la puissance créatrice de l'esprit ne se
manifestait véritablement
qu'à l'occasion des Fêtes de printemps et
d'automne ; or, ces réunions
marquaient les temps du rythme selon
lequel se distribuait le travail rural et
qui se trouvait coïncider avec le
rythme saisonnier.[2]
The rhythm of the year is the rhythm of intensity and
relaxation. Creativity flows directly from social gathering, and even “the
mind” of which Granet speaks is influenced powerfully by the fact of human
connection. Consciousness and gathering are intimately linked. The gatherings
occurred precisely when (because work was set aside…indeed, had to be set aside, for it was not a
conscious decision) the pressures of working the natural soil allowed for
respite. Consciousness of society flowed directly from enforced leisure and the
gatherings that grew out of them in an agricultural world.
The communities gathered together, at the very moment
when
consciousness of the social bond could surge up within them, noted
infallible recurrences in Nature: the thought of harmony dominating their
hearts appeared to them as a reality with two closely linked aspects, human
and
natural order. But they distinguished the Order of the world from the
desires
of their hearts no more than they thought of society independently
of its
natural setting.[3]
Les
communautés assemblées, au moment même où pouvait surgir en
elle la conscience
du lien social, constataient dans la Nature des
récurrences immanquables :
la pensée d'harmonie, qui dominait les
cœurs, leur apparaissait comme une
réalité à deux aspects étroitement
solidaires, l'ordre humain et l'ordre
naturel. Mais pas plus que la société
n'était conçue par eux indépendamment de
son milieu naturel, pas, plus
l'Ordre du monde n'était vraiment distingué des
vœux de leurs âmes.[4]
The cycles were those of nature. They were “infallible.” We are getting quite close to a sense of
causality here, but Granet backs away and moves toward a much more powerful
conception by noting that the social and natural orders were indistinguishable
for those human beings. Gathering was a natural process. Social interaction was
a natural process. The changes of the seasons and the greening of the
countryside were also natural processes, as were the rains that gave the fields
moisture and the warming sun that gained intensity as the second month passed
to the third. Blossoms on the trees were a sure sign, and that natural process
itself plays an enormous rhetorical role in Granet’s major source—the poems of
the Shijing— for his writings on
rural religion.
Let there be no mistake about it. The origins of complex
Chinese philosophy remains the social gathering and natural rhythms of the
universe. It took centuries to craft the basic cycles of social life and
emotional thought into a system such as that articulated in the Han by Dong
Zhongshu.
It was a completely emotional conception that was to be
turned into a
system of dogma only after a slow process of reflection. In
peasant
thought it was only the basis (scarcely perceived in itself) of the
efficacy
common to all the practices at the times of the festivals, an always
dual
efficacy, reaching men through things and conversely reaching things
through men, an indefinite and indeterminate efficacy in kind and essentially
religious.[5]
Conception
toute émotive, qui ne se transformera en système dogmatique
qu'après un lent
travail de réflexion. Elle n'était dans la pensée paysanne
que le principe
premier (à peine entrevu en lui-même) de l'efficacité
commune à toutes les
pratiques des temps de fête, efficacité toujours
double, atteignant les hommes
par l'entremise des choses et, inversement,
les choses par l'entremise des
hommes, efficacité de nature indéfinie,
indéterminée et d'essence religieuse.[6]
The holy place is the very core of the social and
religious function. It charges everything with positive energy and the acts and
formulae of the contests give order to the collectivity. The holy place and
everything within it both charges and constrains the heart of the social order.
The symbols thus generated were then brought to new life through language, a
point to which Granet returns in many of his later writings. Just as people are
set into motion at the festivals, so too, are words set into motion through
speech. Indeed, the very songs that are the focus of the spring festival show
the original motion and intensity of nature itself.
Everything in the Holy Place, everything in the Festivals
was indifferently
good for everything; all the acts and formulae of the
contests were signals
and orders for the collectivity of beings; all things to
be seen in the Holy
Place were constraining symbols for men.[7]
Tout dans le
Lieu Saint, tout dans les Fêtes était indifféremment bon pour
tout ; tous
les gestes, toutes les formules des joutes étaient, pour l'ensemble
des êtres,
comme des signaux et des ordres, toutes les apparences du Lieu
Saint étaient,
pour les hommes, des symboles contraignant.[8]
All of it was charged, and all of it was
“religious.” The language that gave rise
to the gatherings and the chants were the nascent form of the language that
would, by being worked and reworked by many thinkers over the centuries of the
first millennium, give shape to complex systems of yin-yang and five phase categorization.
There are no distinctions in the human and natural
symbols that emerge from the festivals and the holy places. There is no
hierarchy. They had, as Granet notes, no particular value. At the same time,
they possessed complete value. The jumping of grasshoppers is precisely the
kind of independent observation (directly from his sources, of course) that
gives liveliness to Granet’s account of early society. The jumping grasshoppers
create for Granet a natural connection to social rules and social order. From
those jumps, he begins to see marriage celebrations, exogamy, dances, and
contests.
But whether human or natural emblems, none appeared
endowed with a
particular value, none was conceived for a special end. The
jumping of
grasshoppers seemed to govern a whole body of social rules: the
season
of marriages in common, their celebration in the sacred vales, the
practice
of marrying out of the family and within the same stock, the dances of
the
contests, the courting procedures, the prohibition of jealous behavior, the
rules of fertility.[9]
[M]ais,
emblèmes humains ou naturels, aucun ne paraissait avoir de valeur
singulière,
aucun n'était imaginé pour une fin spéciale. Le sautillement
des sauterelles
semblait commander tout un ensemble de règles sociales :
la saison des
mariages en commun, leur célébration dans les vallons sacrés,
la pratique
d'épouser hors de la famille et dans la même race, les danses de
la joute, les
procédés de la cour, l'interdiction des mœurs jalouses, les règles
de la
fécondité.[10]
Granet’s mention of jealous behavior is extremely
significant, and perhaps not noted enough in these passages, which tend to
focus on harmony at the cost of conflict. There must have been a good deal of it in
such settings, just as one sees the same at hoedowns and prom dances in American culture. There is enormous potential for discord at
such gatherings, and the sexually-charged and age-divided nature of them makes
it all the more dangerous in that regard. Ultimately, for Granet, all of this
is just part of the dance, the contests, and the jumping grasshoppers. Conflict and harmony are more closely wedded than most readers might think.
And the crossing of the stream by young people achieve
all in one the
lustration necessary for all fertility, the reincarnation of
souls floating down
the stream, the arrival of the rains, and the transition
from one season to
another. Fed by strong and confused emotions, an emblematism
was the
core of all beliefs and worship.[11]
Et le passage
de la rivière par les jeunes gens réalisait tout à la fois la
lustration
nécessaire à toute fécondité, la réincarnation des âmes flottantes
au fil des
eaux, l'arrivée de la pluie et le passage d'une saison à l'autre. Un
emblématisme,
nourri d'émotions fortes et confuses, était l'âme de toutes
croyances et de
tous cultes.[12]
The passage comes to a conclusion with an aura of
lustrous fertility and crossing of streams by the young people. Even more
telling, for it opens a new theme in Granet’s argument, is the mention of
reincarnated souls floating down the stream. The young people merge with a
setting in which generations who came before them to these very same holy
places float confusedly in the streams. As the rains arrive, society and nature
merge, and the individual is fueled by strong emotions that go far beyond what
anyone might feel “on one’s own.
Click here for other posts in Round and Square's "Rural Religion in China" series:
Rural 17 Rural 18 Rural 19 Rural 20 Rural 21 Rural 22 Rural 23 Rural 24
Rural 25 Rural 26 Rural 27 Rural 28 Rural 29 Rural 30 Rural 31 Rural 32
Rural 33
[1] Marcel Granet, The Religion of the Chinese People [Translated by Maurice Freedman] (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 46.
[2] Marcel Granet, La religion des chinois (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1922), 20.
[3] Granet, Religion, 46.
[4] Granet, La religion, 20.
[5] Granet, Religion, 46.
[6] Granet, La religion, 20.
Bibliography
[7] Granet, Religion, 46.
[8] Granet, La religion, 20.
[9] Granet, Religion, 26-37.
[10] Granet, La religion, 20.
[11] Granet, Religion, 47.
[12] Granet, La religion, 20.
Bibliography
Granet, Marcel. The Religion of the Chinese People [Translated by Maurice Freedman]. New York:
Harper & Row, 1975.
Granet, Marcel. La religion des chinois. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1922. Harper & Row, 1975.
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