One year ago on Round and Square (27 October 2011)—Middles: Dropkick Me, Jesus
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 33
Earth Cults
The idea of “Mother Earth” was deeply tied to the festivals held in the holy places. Ancestral worship moved outside the closed domestic order, as it were, to connect with the other dead in the same manner as living humans came together for seasonal festivals. This is not a small statement. Here, Granet connects the profoundly important social ties generated between living human beings in the holy places to a more ethereal meeting of the dead in the same general location. “Seen” and “unseen” worlds each have their gatherings.
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] Earth 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
Earth Cults
The idea of “Mother Earth” was deeply tied to the festivals held in the holy places. Ancestral worship moved outside the closed domestic order, as it were, to connect with the other dead in the same manner as living humans came together for seasonal festivals. This is not a small statement. Here, Granet connects the profoundly important social ties generated between living human beings in the holy places to a more ethereal meeting of the dead in the same general location. “Seen” and “unseen” worlds each have their gatherings.
On the other hand, bound from the beginning to the agrarian cults, the
worship of the Ancestors always kept the appearance of a seasonal cult
whose chief ceremonies were performed in the spring and autumn, just
as the gatherings were held in spring and autumn in which the idea of
reincarnation was sketched in.[1]
D'autre part, lié dès le principe aux cultes agraires, le culte des Ancêtres
garda toujours l'aspect d'un culte saisonnier dont les cérémonies principales
se firent au printemps et à l'automne, comme se tenaient au printemps et à
l'automne les assemblées où s'ébaucha l'idée de réincarnation.[2]
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| [b] Interaction RF |
There are, in Granet’s estimation, twice-yearly public rituals for the ancestors that were connected to the festivals. We have already seen that the idea of reincarnation was growing in and above the soil in which the bones of the dead were interred. Carrying that to the holy place is an important step, for it seems that the dead “travel” to places imbued with sacrality in much the way that they did when they lived. The same holy places attracted them.
The result is an important merging of living society with dead society that goes well beyond the core idea of a closed domestic order’s dead interacting with the living family. An unseen world that is far larger than the family group is thus created, and new life (in a manner of speaking) was breathed into the corporate concept. We have the beginnings of a society (and political order, let us not forget) that is formidable. Moreover, we have the beginnings of a real concept of heaven that is filled with the same—but infinitely more powerful, for their profound linkage with the souls of other dead from afar—“indistinct mass” as was found hovering in the southwest corner of the house. Living and dead are forming societies, both separately and, far more profoundly, together.
The ancestral cult was never purely private for the same reason that the seasonal festivals kept the domestic order from being purely closed. The federal festivals, punctuated by powerful seasonal and temporal connections, gave a corporate unity to the rituals surrounding the dead and made them more public than they would have been had they remained an indistinct mass of previously living beings in the far corner of the house.
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| [c] Closed RF |
The seeds in the southwest corner, the roof in the center of the house, and the seasonal festivals guaranteed they would not be merely private cults connected to individual family practices. The closed domestic order cannot be sustained, either in death or in life. It is vital that it replenish and grow through the cyclical power and rhythm of gathering during the seasonal festivals. The Yellow Springs, then were as much the home of the ancestors as was the southwest corner of the house. They were their corporate home of the dead, linked to the festival cycle.
These gatherings were federal festivals: the cult of the Ancestors
succeeded only very late (and perhaps it never completely succeeded) in
taking on the appearance of a purely private cult.[3]
Ces assemblées étaient des fêtes fédérales : le culte des Ancêtres n'arriva
que très tard (et peut-être n'arriva-t-il jamais complètement) à prendre
l'aspect d'un culte purement privé.[4]
The dead were, in the first instance, members of a specific family. Granet has gone to great lengths to explain the “jealous” and closed nature of that social order. Yet, as his entire argument shows, even that order cannot remain closed in perpetuity. It needs to be refreshed through intermarriage and the seasonal festivals (which, of course, are in themselves profoundly linked). The dead, too, must be part of something more than the domestic order, or it would be impossible to sustain a belief in a world beyond that was of any complexity at all. In short, the corporate growth of the dead was necessary to the intellectual development of a concept of society beyond the smallest units.
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| [d] Family RF |
We arrive now at a connected idea, that of “family solidarity beyond death.” It is directly related in Granet’s thinking to the mass of ancestors in the earth and up above. Notice the manner in which Granet connects the “discarnate souls awaiting a new life around the conjugal bed”—the very picture of a reincarnation waiting line—and the solidarity of the group. Granet’s image is worth pondering, for it mixes (as earth with seed and spirit in the house’s southwest corner) the idea of a living unit, sexuality, and the souls of the dead waiting to take their place in a long line of rebirth. This is the very height of ancestral feeling within the closed domestic order. The dead, the fertile living, and a new generation awaiting (re)birth forms a powerful image of reincarnation under a single roof opening in the closed structure of the domestic setting.
If family solidarity beyond death was manifest in the incorporation of a
mass of ancestors into the domestic Earth, and if the discarnate souls
awaited a new life around the conjugal bed, the solidarity of local groups
required also that the many collectivities of ancestors in the land be brought
together at the Yellow Springs, and so that reincarnation might take place
in the flow of the sacred founts.[5]
Si, par-delà la mort, la solidarité familiale se manifestait par une
incorporation de la masse ancestrale au Sol domestique, et si les âmes
désincarnées attendaient une vie nouvelle autour du lit conjugal, la solidarité
des groupes locaux voulait aussi que les diverses masses ancestrales du
pays fussent réunies aux Sources jaunes, et que des réincarnations pussent
se faire dans, le courant des fontaines sacrées.[6]
If this concept is to grow (and it can do no other), it must connect, in the manner of living beings, at the seasonal festivals. The holy places are, of course, the very picture of sacrality on earth—for both the living and the dead. In fact, the dead souls brought together at the Yellow Springs provide a sense of ancestral regeneration that goes beyond the domestic unit. No longer do we have the closed and static idea of a particular ancestor awaiting rebirth in a particular family situation. We have masses of discarnate souls forming a collectivity in the seasonal rhythms of the festivals and forming a part of the rushing waters that flow in the uncultivated land that makes up the holy place. They bond to create a vision of society that is at least as large in death as the seasonal festival chants, sexual rites, and exogamous intermarriage are for the living.
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
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| [e] Unseen RF |
[1] Marcel Granet, The Religion of the Chinese People [Translated by Maurice Freedman] (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 53.
[2] Marcel Granet, La religion des chinois (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1922), 26.
[3] Granet, Religion, 53.
[4] Granet, La religion, 26.
[5] Granet, Religion, 53.
[6] Granet, La religion, 26.
Bibliography
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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