One year ago on Round and Square (22 October 2011)—Styling Culture: Overly Colloquial Language
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 other posts in Round and Square's "Rural Religion in China" series:
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Rural 25 Rural 26 Rural 27 Rural 28 Rural 29 Rural 30 Rural 31 Rural 32
Rural 33
Grounded Bodies
Earth was the essence of fertilization, and the two bookends of life (the “decisive moments” of which Granet writes) are connected intimately with it. Birth and death were validated by earth, and the placing of the body on the ground at birth and death are its essential features. Earth was the gateway to the family group, the domestic order. After fertilization near the seeds in the dark corner of the house, the human seed grew to fruition in the dark corner of the body. Only Earth, however, could determine whether the little seedling would become a part of the lasting domestic order. One came fully to natural membership before one could become an integral member of the social setting.
Contact with It was necessary at decisive moments of life: upon entering
the world and quitting it. The first act of attention was to place the dying
and the newborn on the ground. As the supreme domestic power, only
Earth could tell men whether a birth or death was valid. Only it could
withdraw or give the right to live within the family group.[1]
Son contact était nécessaire aux moments décisifs de l'existence :
quand on entrait dans ce monde où qu'on en sortait. Le premier soin était
de déposer sur le sol le mourant ou le nouveau-né. Suprême puissance
domestique, seule la Terre pouvait dire aux hommes si la naissance ou la
mort étaient valables. Elle seule pouvait reprendre ou donner le droit de vivre
dans le groupe familial.[2]
Upon leaving the social order at the time of death, the body was again connected to the ground. The gateway to the social world welcomed back the corpse as it left the closed structure of the domestic order. Returning to earth in this sense is far more than the Western “dust to dust” idea. It is a reintegration into the cosmic totality, an envelopment of the dead by heaven and earth, as we shall see. After spending a lifetime divided by gender and living in closed domestic orders with narrow kinship ties, the body returned to the yin essence of the soil, becoming in time the source (in a precise meaning of that term) of fertility on a larger scale. Earth was the receiver of human essence, but also the creator of it.
Earthly nourishment and the loud cries of infants drew the connection to that nourishing female figure, the mother. “Following the example of the earth,” she cared for the child. The grain the mother herself ate was converted by her own body into mother’s milk. Eventually, the child, too, would eat the life-sustaining grains. Entering the world of the living assumed a connection to the fruits of labor mixed with the soil. The rural agricultural world was thus what we would today call a natural, social, economic, and religious phenomenon, and the life that was generated was a product of mother and earth.
When, after three days of fasting upon the domestic earth, the infant
nourished by Mother Earth, had shown by its loud cries the power of life it
drew from her, its mother could carry it following the example of the earth.
She could feed it, and the child itself would later be able to eat grain. It had
entered into the group of the living.[3]
Quand, après trois jours de jeûne sur le sol domestique, l'enfant, nourri
par la Terre-mère, avait manifesté par des cris sonores la puissance de vie
qu'il tirait d'elle, sa mère, à l'exemple du sol, pouvait le porter ; elle pouvait
lui donner à manger et lui-même, plus tard, pourrait manger des grains. Il
était entré dans le groupe des vivants.[4]
More needs to be said about “entering the world of the living,” especially from the route through earth itself. The fertility of earth opened and closed life, but feeding (the sustenance of the social order) was connected to earth as well. The very grains that formed the foundation of the diet of human beings were a complex product of cosmic alternation and opposition. Stored and germinating in recessed yin shelters, they exploded into sustaining food in the pure yang light of the open fields. They, in turn, fed the human motors that would drive the domestic order in its own alternations through yang and yin. Thus, the cosmic opposition of yin and yang, of heaven and earth, worked its way into the very fabric of life, and sustained the human, social, and natural body.
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.
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| [a] Fertile RF |
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
Grounded Bodies
Earth was the essence of fertilization, and the two bookends of life (the “decisive moments” of which Granet writes) are connected intimately with it. Birth and death were validated by earth, and the placing of the body on the ground at birth and death are its essential features. Earth was the gateway to the family group, the domestic order. After fertilization near the seeds in the dark corner of the house, the human seed grew to fruition in the dark corner of the body. Only Earth, however, could determine whether the little seedling would become a part of the lasting domestic order. One came fully to natural membership before one could become an integral member of the social setting.
Contact with It was necessary at decisive moments of life: upon entering
the world and quitting it. The first act of attention was to place the dying
and the newborn on the ground. As the supreme domestic power, only
Earth could tell men whether a birth or death was valid. Only it could
withdraw or give the right to live within the family group.[1]
Son contact était nécessaire aux moments décisifs de l'existence :
quand on entrait dans ce monde où qu'on en sortait. Le premier soin était
de déposer sur le sol le mourant ou le nouveau-né. Suprême puissance
domestique, seule la Terre pouvait dire aux hommes si la naissance ou la
mort étaient valables. Elle seule pouvait reprendre ou donner le droit de vivre
dans le groupe familial.[2]
 |
| [b] Connected RF |
Upon leaving the social order at the time of death, the body was again connected to the ground. The gateway to the social world welcomed back the corpse as it left the closed structure of the domestic order. Returning to earth in this sense is far more than the Western “dust to dust” idea. It is a reintegration into the cosmic totality, an envelopment of the dead by heaven and earth, as we shall see. After spending a lifetime divided by gender and living in closed domestic orders with narrow kinship ties, the body returned to the yin essence of the soil, becoming in time the source (in a precise meaning of that term) of fertility on a larger scale. Earth was the receiver of human essence, but also the creator of it.
Earthly nourishment and the loud cries of infants drew the connection to that nourishing female figure, the mother. “Following the example of the earth,” she cared for the child. The grain the mother herself ate was converted by her own body into mother’s milk. Eventually, the child, too, would eat the life-sustaining grains. Entering the world of the living assumed a connection to the fruits of labor mixed with the soil. The rural agricultural world was thus what we would today call a natural, social, economic, and religious phenomenon, and the life that was generated was a product of mother and earth.
When, after three days of fasting upon the domestic earth, the infant
nourished by Mother Earth, had shown by its loud cries the power of life it
drew from her, its mother could carry it following the example of the earth.
She could feed it, and the child itself would later be able to eat grain. It had
entered into the group of the living.[3]
Quand, après trois jours de jeûne sur le sol domestique, l'enfant, nourri
par la Terre-mère, avait manifesté par des cris sonores la puissance de vie
qu'il tirait d'elle, sa mère, à l'exemple du sol, pouvait le porter ; elle pouvait
lui donner à manger et lui-même, plus tard, pourrait manger des grains. Il
était entré dans le groupe des vivants.[4]
 |
| [c] Earthly RF |
More needs to be said about “entering the world of the living,” especially from the route through earth itself. The fertility of earth opened and closed life, but feeding (the sustenance of the social order) was connected to earth as well. The very grains that formed the foundation of the diet of human beings were a complex product of cosmic alternation and opposition. Stored and germinating in recessed yin shelters, they exploded into sustaining food in the pure yang light of the open fields. They, in turn, fed the human motors that would drive the domestic order in its own alternations through yang and yin. Thus, the cosmic opposition of yin and yang, of heaven and earth, worked its way into the very fabric of life, and sustained the human, social, and natural body.
After analyzing life’s earthly beginnings, Granet proceeds to its conclusion. The opposing bookend of the life spirit of earth was its receivership of the dead body, the body that had left the social order. The dying were placed on the ground—just as they had been at birth—and to the ground they were given after death. Leaving the domestic order, the deceased was reacquainted with the earth that had been his keeper from a time even before birth, and extended through the agricultural labor and harvests that had occupied and sustained him throughout his life. His body became earth again.
When the dying man placed upon the ground could no longer revive,
despite the wailing of all the family, three days after his death, now finally
cast out from the group of the living, his body was put into the earth.[5]
Quand le moribond, déposé sur le sol, n'avait pu y ranimer sa vie, malgré
la criée de toute la famille, trois jours après la mort, définitivement expulsé
du groupe des vivants, on mettait son corps dans la terre. Il y avait une
double cérémonie d'enterrement.[6]
 |
| [d] Environment RF |
Family graveyards were “private soil,” and they retained the unique sense of family connection that was a quintessential reflection of the domestic order, with all of its particularism and its jealousies. The earth itself, however, could not remain particular. Within a generation or two, the earth returned the man to the wider category of “human,” and the soil that he nourished provided fertility for all living things.
There was a double ceremony of burial. In historical times, the second
interment was carried out outside the towns and villages, and the family
graveyard was then forbidden ground to all who were not of the family.[7]
Le second enterrement se fit, aux temps historiques, hors des villes et
des villages, et le cimetière familial fut alors une terre interdite à tout ce qui
n'était pas de la famille;…[8]
 |
| [e] Continuing RF |
Earth sustained the particularities of the closed domestic order, but was ultimately a giver of life and fertility to all things, from humans to the natural environment that was the very center of their continuing existence.
Burial began as a closed family process. Originally in the house itself, the body was allowed to merge with the soil. The rotting of the flesh allowed the dead to enter the soil of the domestic compound. Sheltered within the already powerful cosmic ordering of even the simplest shelters, the dead were given their new place in the domestic order. So closely was this tied to the order of death and newly fertilized soil, that the dead were interred near the site of seed germination in the southwest corner of the house.
In ancient times the burial was within the domestic compound. The first
interment was always in that compound and in the house itself; it lasted
the time it took for the flesh to rot. The stuff of the dead entered the
domestic Soil. It shook off its flesh near the dark corner where people kept
the seed that germinated when placed in the ground. And in that same
corner the conjugal sleeping-place was situated where the women
conceived new lives.[9]
[A]nciennement, il se faisait dans l'enclos domestique. Le premier
enterrement se fit toujours dans cet enclos et dans la maison même ; il
durait le temps de la décomposition des chairs. La substance du mort
pénétrait dans le Sol familial. Il se désincarnait près du coin sombre où l'on
conservait les semences qui, mises en terre, germeraient ; et, dans ce
même coin, était disposée la couche conjugale où les femmes concevaient
des vies nouvelles.[10]
Note the connections that Granet makes in this highly compressed by vitally important passage. The dead rotted into the soil in the “same” place that couples had sexual relations and that the seeds for the coming spring’s planting germinated. The dead were part of the natural order, then, in very specific and practical ways. Their flesh nourished the soil in the manner of a spiritually endowed mulch. Their decaying flesh, in the recessed, yin essences of the house’s southwest corner, created an energy that fertilized all seeds, from the grain that would be planted to the women who would give birth. In a more ethereal sense, the essences of the dead fertilized human and social life in numerous other ways, both supporting the jealousies of the closed order and rising beyond them toward higher social conceptions.
From this spiritual mulch would spring new eras of social life.
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| [f] Organic RF |
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Rural 33
Notes
[1] Marcel Granet, The Religion of the Chinese People [Translated by Maurice Freedman] (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 51.
[2] Marcel Granet, La religion des chinois (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1922), 24.
[3] Granet, Religion, 51-52.
[4] Granet, La religion, 25.
[5] Granet, Religion, 52.
[6] Granet, La religion, 25.
Bibliography
[7] Granet, Religion, 52.
[8] Granet, La religion, 25.
[9] Granet, Religion, 52.
[10] Granet, La religion, 25.
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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