La Pensée Cyclique—Rural Religion in China (31)

One year ago on Round and Square (31 October 2011)—Middles: Middle of Nowhere 
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.

[a] Rural RF

Click here for other posts in Round and Square's "Rural Religion in China" series:

Rural 1          Rural 2          Rural 3          Rural 4          Rural 5          Rural 6          Rural 7          Rural 8

Rural 9          Rural 10        Rural 11        Rural 12        Rural 13        Rural 14        Rural 15        Rural 16

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

Herdboy and Weaving Maiden
Could there be a better picture in Chinese mythology of Granet’s cyclical theme than the legend of the herdboy and the weaving maiden?  Society is divided in half by gender, and that is reinforced by the necessities of labor, which keep the two sexes apart for much of the year (in the mythical case, for 364 days). Divided work lies at the very core of early society and early thought. The apportioning of tasks may well have been a necessity of human—and now divine—labor, but it was surely more than that, as well. It was the fundamental starting point for human society itself.

          The legend of the Weaving Maiden was born of a like transposition. Emblem 
          of young peasant women in times gone by, the Weaving Maiden is a 
          constellation which all through the year leads a life of lonely work; not far from 
          it but also alone, another constellation, the Cowherd, labors in the heavenly 
          fields: it was necessary everywhere for the sexes to remain apart and for their 
          tasks to be apportioned.[1]   

          C'est d'une transposition du même ordre qu'est née la légende de la 
          Tisserande. Emblème des jeunes paysannes du temps jadis, la Tisserande 
          est une constellation qui mène tout au long de l'année une vie de travail 
          solitaire; non loin d'elle, mais aussi solitaire, une autre constellation, le 
          Bouvier, travaille aux labours célestes : il faut bien qu'en tous lieux les 
          sexes restent séparés et se répartissent la besogne.[2]

[b] Slingshot RF

Society was grounded in the division (and coordinated labor) of men and women. They were divided by rivers and streams that separated the household from the raised fields in the distance. Society was renewed by their coming together, first in the festivals and then in the social practices that made the winter months the heart of human and natural fertility. It was as though the festival were a slingshot that propelled men and women together in profound union that would stimulate even more “gathering”—from festivals to marriage and birth.

For the herdboy and the weaving maiden, it is a different kind of river that divides them—the Milky Way. Their labors, however, are just as different in the sky as they are for human beings on earth. Divided by a river, they go about their tasks in isolation, just as do their human counterparts. They come together only for the briefest (but deepest) of periods in a powerful concentration of the human festivals.

          Between them, as a sacred frontier, flows the river known as the Milky Way. 
          Once a year, work stops and the constellations are reunited: at that point, to 
          celebrate her annual nuptials, the heavenly Maiden fords the holy river of 
          Heaven. As on earth, birds take part in the wedding festivals; magpies form 
          an escort at the wedding ceremony: if their heads are bare of plumage, it is 
          because, having gathered over deep waters, they have formed a bridge for 
          the procession to cross.[3]   

          Entre eux, frontière sacrée, coule un fleuve qui est la Voie lactée. Une fois 
          par an, le travail cesse et les constellations se rejoignent  alors, pour aller 
          célébrer ses noces annuelles, la Vierge céleste passe à gué le fleuve saint 
          du Ciel. Comme sur terre, les oiseaux participent aux fêtes nuptiales ; les 
          pies forment escorte à la pompe du mariage : si leurs têtes sont dégarnies de 
          plumes, c'est que, se réunissant au-dessus des eaux profondes, elles ont fait 
          un pont pour le passage du cortège.[4]

[c] Renewal RF

The wedding imagery and, indeed, the very feeling of the holy place, is part of the reconnection of the lovers on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. Here again, Granet waxes poetic as he describes the magpies—heads bare of plumage—that gather over the waters. It is a profound sense of gathering that grounds the legend, just as it is a similarly profound gathering that lies at the very heart of the social order and gives it renewal every spring and every autumn.

Without doubt, the weaving maiden is foremost the very picture of women’s work in the Chinese cultural world. She represents the ideals of staying in place and attending to domestic labor and conjugal responsibility. She also has an added image: that of fertility goddess. It should never be forgotten that women’s life “under heaven” was a combination of domestic labor, conjugal responsibility, and teeming fertility. Sexuality was not nearly as important as fertility, and it was the hope of families that their women would bear many sons who would, in turn, marry many daughters from beyond their villages.

          By her fidelity to ancient usages, the Weaving Maiden deserved to become 
          and to remain the patron of women’s work and of conjugal life: on the night 
          of the heavenly nuptials, Chinese women, in order to promote pregnancy, 
          float little figures of children on the water, and in order to become skillful, they 
          thread their needles by the light cast by the holy Constellation.[5]   

          Par sa fidélité aux vieux usages, la Tisserande a mérité de devenir et de 
          rester la patronne du travail féminin et de la vie conjugale : la nuit des 
          Noces célestes, les femmes chinoises, pour favoriser les grossesses, font 
          flotter sur l'eau des figurines d'enfant, et, pour devenir adroites, elles enfilent 
          des aiguilles à la lueur qui descend de la Constellation sainte.[6]

[d] Linked RF

Just as women would thread their needles by the light of the constellation—a particularly poignant image that mixes many of the themes we have seen—so, too, would they thread their sexual futures to her stars. Who would think of a domestic laborer as an image of fertility?  The two are intimately connected in the early Chinese social world of Granet’s text.

Just as the herdboy and the weaving maiden would come together for the briefest of periods during the year, so, too, was the window for living men and women quite narrow. Hoping to make the most of their own opportunities—which were deeply linked to the success of the closed domestic order and, if one can individualize at this point, the woman’s success within it—they connected themselves to the weaving maiden by sending figures down their own Milky Way. The fertility images are embedded, and are interwoven with the legends themselves.

Divided labor supports them. Fertility windows drive them.

[e] Glue RF

Human sentiment and even profound desire for fertility are incapable of cementing these beliefs, however. That can only be done with the glue that is the calendar. The weaving maiden, far more than her partner, was to be found in the detritus of tradition—on tomb walls, on statuettes, and in fragments of legends. The calendar, and the resonant combination of seven and seven—with the yin essence it embodies—is what gives the weaving maiden her power in the cultural tradition. Even in times when women kept to their domestic labors, they were as though surrounded by a holy place of their own. 

They were “fertilized,” as it were, by their contact with the holy places, even as the men labored in their fields far away from them, divided by the rushing rivers that separated the agricultural fields from the households where the women spent the late spring and summer months.

          But if in the whole course of Chinese history, the Weaving Maiden has had 
          offerings of fruit and flowers set before her, if her graven image is to be found 
          on the walls of funerary chambers, and if she has come to the aid of filial piety 
          in difficulty, it is because the calendar has given her a place and because, even 
          in times when and places where women remained always shut up, there were 
          gardens made up of water, rocks, and venerable trees between the walls of the 
          noble residences recalling the ritual landscape of the Holy Places. There the 
          memory of the ancient Festivals could be preserved by carrying out some of 
          the seasonal rites that originated from them.[7]   

          Mais si, dans tout le cours de l'histoire chinoise, la Tisserande s'est vu 
          dresser des offrandes de fruits et de fleurs, si l'on trouve son image gravée 
          sur la paroi des chambres funéraires, si elle est venue en aide à la piété filiale 
          dans l'embarras, c'est que le calendrier lui avait assigné une place et que, 
          même aux temps et dans les milieux où les femmes restaient toujours cloîtrées, 
          il y avait, entre les murs des résidences nobles, des jardins, composés avec 
          des eaux, des roches et des arbres vénérables, qui rappelaient le paysage 
          rituel des Lieux Saints. Là, le souvenir des vieilles Fêtes pouvait être conservé 
          par la pratique de quelques-uns des rites saisonniers qui en dérivaient.[8]

The very rocks and gardens were more than symbols of the holy place: they were the holy place, and the women were imbued with their presence. In those gardens, amidst running waters and rocks, the women carried out the patterning of the seasonal festivals, just as the weaving maiden did the same in her constellation in the sky. When their own window of sexual opportunity would open in the cold months of late autumn and winter, they would be ready, with all of the power or ancestral presences hovering near the germinating seeds and the astral influence of the heavenly constellation of fertility, the weaving maiden.

Click here for other posts in Round and Square's "Rural Religion in China" series:

Rural 1          Rural 2          Rural 3          Rural 4          Rural 5          Rural 6          Rural 7          Rural 8

Rural 9          Rural 10        Rural 11        Rural 12        Rural 13        Rural 14        Rural 15        Rural 16

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

[f] Astral RF

Notes

[1] Marcel Granet, The Religion of the Chinese People [Translated by Maurice Freedman] (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 53-54..

[2] Marcel Granet, La religion des chinois (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1922), 24.

[3] Granet, Religion, 54.

[4] Granet, La religion, 25.

[5] Granet, Religion, 54.

[6] Granet, La religion, 25.

[7] Granet, Religion, 54.

[8] Granet, La religion, 25.

[9] Granet, Religion, 54.

[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.

La Pensée Cyclique—Rural Religion in China (30)

One year ago on Round and Square (30 October 2011)—Hurtin' Country: I Fall to Pieces
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.

[a] Replete RF

Click here for other posts in Round and Square's "Rural Religion in China" series:

Rural 1          Rural 2          Rural 3          Rural 4          Rural 5          Rural 6          Rural 7          Rural 8

Rural 9          Rural 10        Rural 11        Rural 12        Rural 13        Rural 14        Rural 15        Rural 16

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

Playing With Words  

Language was not a serious impediment to individualization. It only reinforced a tendency that was already shown much more powerfully in the nature of society. There was a rich storehouse of language capable of describing individuals, if only there were a reason to do so. As long as Granet focuses upon the unifying power of the festivals and the periodic enrichment of society, the need for individualization is relatively small. When he turns to thought, however, a need develops to articulate the way in which a mind conceives of an object of thought, even as that thought is shaped by social life.

          As soon as people conceived the idea of individualized powers they 
          easily enough found the means of designating them in their language: 
          many myths owed their existence if not to a play upon epithets, then at 
          least to a play upon words.[1]

          Dès que l'on conçut l'idée de puissances individualisées, on sut bien 
          trouver dans la langue le moyen de les désigner : bien des mythes durent 
          l'existence sinon à des jeux d'épithètes, du moins à des jeux de mots.[2]

[b] Nuanced RF

Granet’s point about “play(s) upon words” here is important. The way that language is generated is much like the way that social interaction is created. Language consists of cyclicality and gathering, as well as return—a point that Granet alludes to here and in several other provocative asides in this work. Suffice it to say at this point that the play of words is fundamental to the creation of lively and nuanced religious feeling. Words are generated in interactions with others, and contain a flow and rhythm that has the miniature effect of a gathering—a verbal communion between people.

The individualized ideas that had their roots in the social practices of the rural peasants were eventually destroyed along with their lifestyle, which became more complex as domestic units were attached to cities, as we shall see. Granet notes the connection of the peasant cults to other cults and the rich (presumably oral) traditions surrounding them.

Without the rhythm of social life, however, there was no need to continue many of the traditions. When social life changed profoundly, the individual legends that had been connected to cult practices were lost, and what was recorded was only an echo of former practices. Memory is rooted in routine and interaction, and a partly forgotten legend is almost certainly a reflection of an unpracticed cult or ritual. Destroy the practice and the ideas will fragment.

          The majority of them were attached to the local cults that perished 
          when feudal society was destroyed; as creations of vanished settings, 
          these myths, deprived of support in the system of worship, likewise 
          disappeared from memory and with them a number of legends from which 
          they had drawn their substance. The same fate probably befell many 
          remaining peasant legends that the literati in their disdain would not 
          collect.[3] 

          La majeure partie d'entre eux étaient attachés à des cultes locaux qui 

          périrent quand fut détruite la société féodale ; créations de milieux 
          évanouis, ces mythes, privés d'un support cultuel, disparurent eux aussi 
          de la mémoire et avec eux nombre de légendes dont ils avaient tiré leur 
          substance. Même sort fut, sans doute, celui de beaucoup de légendes 
          restées paysannes que, par mépris, les lettrés ne voulurent point recueillir.[4]

[c] Core RF

A fascinating idea is only touched upon here—the unwillingness of the literati to see the peasant traditions as part of their own tradition. The rituals, it was often said, do not reach down to the common people. Disdain on the part of the literati would make sure that they never did. Marcel Granet, on the other hand, was determined to remedy the situation by creating a foundational chapter on the social, rural, and, indeed, peasant nature of all Chinese religious life. Indeed, so far does he go with his argument that much of his career was based on this core idea (even when it was not explicitly stated, as in his later works).

Profoundly Durkheimian, but with great care for his Chinese texts, Granet’s work raised rural social practices to a level that would have shocked any literatus in premodern China. For Granet, the rites go up from the foundations of the seasonal gatherings themselves.

We have seen that memory is fragile and powerful at the same time. Details are forgotten quickly, and fade even before the passing of rituals and social practices into oblivion. The powerful feelings connected to those practices, however, are something else. They are not, Granet argues here, merely the sensations that are aroused by coming together with other people—the momentary thoughts of individuals encountering other individuals. They are charged by the very social power of unification and gathering that grounds them. Such sensations are not easily forgotten, and have an endurance that goes well beyond their seemingly transitory nature. They have a lasting “social memory” that is deeper than an individual’s, and works its way into the very social fabric. 

          The only myths from the earliest times whose memory has been preserved 
          are those in which the feelings characteristic of the ancient festivals were 
          directly recorded, and their conservation is due to the fact that those 
          emotions answering to everlasting ideals, something of the festivals survived 
          in the popular calendar.[5]

          Les seuls mythes du premier âge dont le souvenir ait été conservé sont 
          ceux où s'étaient enregistrées directement les émotions caractéristiques des 
          fêtes anciennes, et leur conservation est due a ce que ces émotions répondant 
          à des idéals de nature permanente, quelque chose de ces fêtes subsista dans 
          le calendrier populaire.[6]

[d] Preserved RF

These “directly recorded” feelings “characteristic of the ancient festivals” were fundamentally religious feelings. Following Granet’s quotation above, it is surely important that they answer to everlasting ideals. What lies behind them, however, is truly the power of their seasonal rhythm, and the “textual memory” of that rhythm that is preserved in the popular calendar. Indeed, in the popular calendars we have a connection to the gathering power of society in time. Through the notation of festivals and other occasions we can see a glimpse of a profoundly religious rhythm that constituted the year and influenced the direction of popular cultural belief. 

Granet backs up his calendrical and social points with the story of the herdboy and the weaving maiden. The tale reflects far more than the love story of herdboy and weaving maiden that is related in contemporary versions. It is an example that links both time and space, and points directly to the “gathering momentum” of early society. It is connected to fertility issues and the regeneration of the social group. In short, it is a stellar model of religious organization that both reflects and gives new impetus to the cycles of life and work.

               Such is the case with the myth of the Heavenly Weaving Maiden. It is a 
          stellar myth; along with the fact that bright Heaven and Dawn were perhaps 
          already for the peasants invoked in oaths, it is the only indication we have 
          of a rural cult of the stars.[7]

          Tel le mythe de la Tisserande céleste. C'est un mythe stellaire ; il est le 
          seul indice que nous ayons d'un culte rural des astres, avec ce fait que, 
          peut-être, le Ciel lumineux et l'Aurore étaient déjà pour les paysans les 
          divinités du serment.[8]

[e] Bonding RF

Note Granet’s connection of the myth to a “rural cult of the stars.”  The herdboy and the weaving maiden are the very personification of the heavens, but their myth had profound connections to issues at the heart of the social order. That they were used in oaths is already an example of their social bonding effect, but that was only a small part of the matter. Those practices were, in turn, grounded in the calendar, even before it was a printed object of daily perusal and veneration that could be found in almost any home in China.

          But the elaboration of a calendar by people for whom it was a deep 
          conviction that nothing human could be without resonance in the whole 
          of nature, could not be carried out without all the habits of men being lent 
          to the constellations and meteors: we have already seen it happening with 
          the rainbow, the resplendent nuptials of Nature.[9]

          Mais l'élaboration d'un calendrier par des gens dont la pensée profonde 
          était que rien de ce qui est humain ne peut être sans retentissement dans la 
          nature entière, n'a pu se faire sans qu'on prêtât aux constellations et aux 
          météores tous les usages des hommes : on l'a déjà vu pour l'arc-en-ciel, 
          noces resplendissantes de la Nature.[10]

After a somewhat clumsy aside dealing with language and individuality, Granet is back in his element here, as he notes the connection of social practices to the very patterning of the constellations. As can be seen with the image of the rainbow, nature both reflects and moves the society of which it is, ultimately and integral part.

Click here for other posts in Round and Square's "Rural Religion in China" series:

Rural 1          Rural 2          Rural 3          Rural 4          Rural 5          Rural 6          Rural 7          Rural 8

Rural 9          Rural 10        Rural 11        Rural 12        Rural 13        Rural 14        Rural 15        Rural 16

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

[f] Individuality RF

Notes

[1] Marcel Granet, The Religion of the Chinese People [Translated by Maurice Freedman] (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 53-54..

[2] Marcel Granet, La religion des chinois (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1922), 24.

[3] Granet, Religion, 54.

[4] Granet, La religion, 25.

[5] Granet, Religion, 54.

[6] Granet, La religion, 25.

[7] Granet, Religion, 54.

[8] Granet, La religion, 25.

[9] Granet, Religion, 54.

[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.

La Pensée Cyclique—Rural Religion in China (29)

One year ago on Round and Square (29 October 2011)—Middles: World Series "Three All"
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.

[a] Mythology RF

Click here for other posts in Round and Square's "Rural Religion in China" series:

Rural 1          Rural 2          Rural 3          Rural 4          Rural 5          Rural 6          Rural 7          Rural 8

Rural 9          Rural 10        Rural 11        Rural 12        Rural 13        Rural 14        Rural 15        Rural 16

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

Language and Myth 

Having fully established the structure and patterning of early rural society in China, Granet begins the final section of this foundational section with an interesting problem, one with which students of China have long been familiar—the lack of “meaningful” mythology in the Chinese tradition. Indeed, it is just short of shocking that the Chinese tradition has so few genuine myths, and that the Chinese would (for millennia) be so little interested in the origins of the universe and the concept of creation. Granet rightly points out that those origin myths that eventually took root were rather late creations of a different intellectual universe than the one covered in his earlier pages. This is, indeed, the very opposite of the Indian case, as well as that found in southern Europe. Indeed, across the globe, most human societies have been fascinated with the origin of the world around them. 

          One might imagine that at the time when the cults destined to a long fortune 
          were born and in a period when the religious festivals aroused so much 
          poetic feeling, a powerful mythological creation was carried out. Yet, if we set 
          aside the myths of belated and quite artificial invention, China’s poverty of 
          myth and divine figures seems extreme, and it contrasts with the richness 
          shown in this field by the Mediterranean and Indian world.[1]   

          On pourrait croire qu'au moment où naissaient des cultes destinés à une 
          longue fortune, et à une époque où les fêtes religieuses excitaient tant 
          d'émo­tions poétiques, il se fit un puissant travail de création mythologique. 
          Pourtant, si l'on ne compte pas ceux qui sont d'invention tardive et tout 
          artificielle, la pauvreté de la Chine en mythes et en figures divines paraît 
          extrême, et fait contraste avec la richesse qui signale en ce domaine le 
          monde méditerranéen et le monde indien.[2]

[b] Sketch RF

Granet looks to the Chinese language for part of the answer, but it is not deeply persuasive. In fact, I suspect that his playful (as I take it) approach in the passage below is meant to sketch the parameters of the situation rather than create an argument. It more akin to broad early brush strokes on a blank sheet than a carefully honed set of arguments, and this is in keeping with Granet's sometimes perplexing (but always incisive) approach to Chinese social life.

          Does the reason for that poverty lie in the Chinese language?  It is true that 
          the language, in which no differentiation so to speak is made among verbs, 
          substantives, and adjectives, is ill-adapted to the play of epithets which 
          appears to be one of the primary conditions of mythic invention.[3] 

          La raison de cette pauvreté est-elle dans la langue chi­noise ? Il est vrai que 
          ce langage, où l'on ne différencie pour ainsi dire pas verbes, substantifs, 
          adjectifs, se prêtait mal au jeu des épithètes qui semble une des conditions 
          premières de l'invention mythique.[4]

[c] Context RF

The reality is that China is mythically impoverished, but historiographically rich. That is something that has roots in the way that the social order developed. The public cults became a part of a broader political unit that, ultimately, would take a very great interest in documenting its activities in detail. How the people got to that point—how they climbed down out of their trees and began tilling the fields in social union—is left to only vaguely constituted beliefs and sayings.

Government is recorded, but not social life in the fields. The social life from which higher forms of order would spring was left to collections of folk sayings that were eventually collected in poetry anthologies such as the Shijing. On the other hand, the recording of government activities would soon become an enormous undertaking, with a comprehensiveness and detail that would dwarf other genres in prestige. 

Granet’s next statement is more difficult to handle, but it makes sense in the context of his other writings. His discussion of language quickly goes well beyond impersonal verb forms and connects with the very foundations of the social gatherings themselves. Language is never isolated, never a thing in itself. Granet continues in this vein by noting that the earliest feelings that he calls “religious” were rooted in the “confused emotions” at the heart of the gathering forces of the festivals. 

[d] Gathering RF

The language clearly did not need verb forms that were more specific if people lived their roles within the family and even beyond it. As long as differentiation by gender and age occurred (and that was only divided three or, at most, five ways), there was little need, in Granet's imaginative argument, to give a sense of individual personality at the most basic level of family life. Terms such as "father," "mother," "eldest brother," "youngest sister," and "grandmother" served that function already, and (so Granet's thinking seems to go) specificity at the local level was superfluous.

          Furthermore, in ancient Chinese the verb was thoroughly impersonal; 
          nothing predisposed people to conceive of active forces in the form of 
          individualized agents. Why should they have personified them?  Actually, the 
          earliest religious beliefs were scarcely differentiated from the confused 
          emotions, from the complex images when they sprang.[5]   

          Bien plus, dans l'ancien chinois, le verbe est foncièrement impersonnel ; 
          rien ne prédisposait à conce­voir, sous forme d'agents individualisés, les 
          forces agissantes : pourquoi les eût-on personnifiées ? Précisément les 
          premières croyances religieuses se différenciaient à peine des émotions 
          confuses, des images complexes dont elles procédaient;…[6] 

Just as Granet argues that the movements, sharing, and gathering at the seasonal festivals were about more than individuals—groups move and “think” differently than the sum of their parts, as Durkheim often wrote—so, too, were beliefs about forces that connected people to the outer world. They need not be individualized. Indeed, as Granet argues, there was little way they could have been. Personification of the “unseen world” is something that only grows out of a very different set of social relations. It is not the engagement with that world that we see in the closed domestic unit or the gatherings at the festivals. Granet uses social and linguistic evidence to argue against the individualization (and personification) of the ancestors at this early point. The evidence goes far beyond the linguistic, however, as we have seen in Granet’s argument up until now.

[e] Entwined RF

The religious imagination was profoundly social. The ancestors, almost as soon as their flesh merged with the soil and their essences penetrated the Yellow Springs, lost their particularity, their sense of individuality, and entwined with the mass of spirits hovering over the flowing waters of the large rivers near holy places where people gathered in the spring and the autumn. They became a society of ancestors, just as vague as—yet arguably even more powerful than— the living society that was created by the seasonal gatherings. 

          No sacred force appeared in an individual form; neither the Holy Places nor 
          even the Ancestors were thought of as distinct substances endowed with 
          personal attributes.[7] 

          [N]ulle force sacrée n'apparaissait sous un aspect individuel : ni le Lieu Saint, 
          ni même les Ancêtres n'étaient imaginés comme des subs­tances distinctes 
          pourvues d'attributs personnels.[8]

The same is true of the holy place itself. There is a sense of its difference, and that is profoundly important. But it is the holy place’s melding with the broader concept of “nature” that truly set it apart. It is somewhere and everywhere at the same time. It is not the land under cultivation (that had a particularity that anyone could notice), but it was not marked with any more specificity than that. I would argue that it was marked by its reverent potential, and that almost any place that was not under cultivation had the potential to be considered sacred. The lands bore potential, and they reached that potential when their natural elements—the springs and vales, the large trees and flowing rivers—merged with the gathering force of human society.

Click here for other posts in Round and Square's "Rural Religion in China" series:

Rural 1          Rural 2          Rural 3          Rural 4          Rural 5          Rural 6          Rural 7          Rural 8

Rural 9          Rural 10        Rural 11        Rural 12        Rural 13        Rural 14        Rural 15        Rural 16

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

[f] Potential RF

Notes

[1] Marcel Granet, The Religion of the Chinese People [Translated by Maurice Freedman] (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 53-54..

[2] Marcel Granet, La religion des chinois (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1922), 24.

[3] Granet, Religion, 54.

[4] Granet, La religion, 25.

[5] Granet, Religion, 54.

[6] Granet, La religion, 25.

[7] Granet, Religion, 54.

[8] Granet, La religion, 25.

[9] Granet, Religion, 54.

[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.