Models in Taoist Liturgical Texts. Typology, Transmission and Usage
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Models in Taoist liturgical texts. Typology, Transmission and Usage : a case study of the Guangcheng yizhi and the Guangcheng tradition in modern Sichuan Fu-Chen Chiang To cite this version: Fu-Chen Chiang. Models in Taoist liturgical texts. Typology, Transmission and Usage : a case study of the Guangcheng yizhi and the Guangcheng tradition in modern Sichuan. Religions. École pratique des hautes études - EPHE PARIS, 2016. English. NNT : 2016EPHE5001. tel-02101619 HAL Id: tel-02101619 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-02101619 Submitted on 16 Apr 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Mention « Religions et systèmes de pensée » École doctorale de l’École Pratique des Hautes Études Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités (EPHE-CNRS) Models in Taoist liturgical texts: Typology, Transmission and Usage A case study of the Guangcheng yizhi and the Guangcheng tradition in modern Sichuan Par Fu-Chen CHIANG Thèse de doctorat d’études chinoises Sous la direction de : M. Vincent GOOSSAERT, EPHE Soutenue le 05. 01. 2016 Devant un jury composé de : M. Alain ARRAULT, DE, EFEO M. John LAGERWEY, DE émérite, EPHE M. Xun LIU, Professeur, Dept. Of History, Rutgers University M. Vincent GOOSSAERT, DE, EPHE Acknowledgement I am very honor to have such title, ritual of Guangcheng Yizhi, as the theme of my dissertation. The Taoist ritual text collection Guangcheng Yizhi is both rich in its literature and practice tradition. Thus it broadens my horizons lot. Firstly, I would like to give my sincere gratitude to my professor Vincent Goossaert. He is always positive and patient with my study, and gave me lots of guidance. I cannot finish this dissertation without his help. I am grateful for the comments and encourages from my defense committee members, professor Alain Arrault, Liu Xun and John Lagerwey. I would like to express my thanks to professors Chang Hsun, Lee Fong-Mao, Lai Chitim, Li Yuanguo, Zhang Zehong, Guo Wu and Gan Chaocheng, for gave me advices and information in many ways. To Taoists (mostly the Guangcheng Taoists, of course) whom taught me lots so generous and kindly. Volker Olles and Xu Fei interflowed their opinions and experiences in Sichuan. To my classmates Marc Lebranchu, Johan Rols and Wen Lingjun who helped me to translate the abstract into French. Thanks also to Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation profoundly for this scholarship (DF003-U-12). Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my parents for their support. They give me endless love and support to reach my goal. It is of great help for me to finish this thesis successfully. Contents Introduction 1 1 A Brief History of Taoism in Sichuan and the Publication of the Guangcheng Yizhi 8 1-1 A Brief History of Taoism in Modern Sichuan 8 1-2 A Brief Introduction to My Field and Main Informants 22 2 The Guangcheng Yizhi Collection 31 2-1 Editions of the Guangcheng Yizhi 31 2-2 Contents and Contours of the collection 41 2-3 Chen Fuhui: Editor and Corrector of Guangcheng Yizhi 47 2-4 Wenjian Ji 55 3 “Guangcheng Taoists” in Sichuan 65 3-1 Traditional Taoist classification 65 3-2 “Guangcheng Ritual” and “Guangcheng Taoists” 72 3-3 The Network of Guangcheng Taoists 74 3-4 Members of the AltarRitual labor and Training 81 4 The training of a Gaogong and the Basic structure of the ritual 86 4-1 Becoming a Gaogong 86 4-2 Two Special Secret Lineages of the Guangcheng tradition: “Xizhu Xinzong Lineage 西心” and “Lantai Lineage 蘭” 93 4-3 The Framework of Guangcheng Ritual 97 4-4 The Plain Rite 103 A Case Study: “Gongsi Zhutian 祀” 4-5 Gaogong: the Highest Authority in Ritual Performing and Arrangement 111 5 The Ritual Arrangement in Guangcheng Yizhi 116 5-1 Ritual Arrangement and its Classification 116 - i - 5-2 Setting a Ritual Rundown 122 5-3 Setting Process 128 Case Study: N Temple Accident 5-4 The Changeable Rundown 134 5-5 Modern Changes and Questions to Guangcheng Rituals 138 6 A Case Study: the Pay-back Ritua Past and Present 143 6-1 The Concept of “Pay-back” Ritual 143 6-2 Guangcheng Yizhi “Pay-back” Ritual Practice Nowadays 149 Case Study 1: A Shousheng Jiao of Guangcheng Ritual 6-3 Case Study 2: Considerations and Variations in Ritual Arrangement 160 6-4 The Ideal Form of Pay-Back Ritual (in Former Times) 164 Conclusion 170 Appendix 1: table of contents of Guangcheng Yizhi (Zangwai Daoshu edition) 174 Figures 191 Bibliography 195 - ii - Introduction Guangcheng Yizhi 儀 is a collection of Taoist liturgical texts that was written and compiled in Sichuan Province in the mid-Qing Dynasty. Nowadays, it contains over three hundreds texts, and some of them are still used by Sichuan Taoists for their ritual performances, in various contexts, from temple celebrations to funerals and offerings within the homes of laypeople. The compiler, Taoist Chen Fuhui陳慧 (1734-1802), included different liturgical traditions current in his time into the newly edited texts and into the collection; moreover, he also created a new practice style with local Taoist music, tunes, and wenjian to match the liturgical manuals. This practice tradition – which I here refer to as “Guangcheng rituals” and “Guangcheng tradition”, was soon accepted by Sichuan Taoists and gained the most popular and important position among Sichuan local ritual traditions. It took Chengdu city and its surroundings as its center, achieved dominant position in western Sichuan, and spread out to the whole Sichuan and other provinces. I have long been interested in Taoist ritual codification and written documents (wenjian). I chose to study the Guangcheng tradition because it offers an original perspective: here we have a living ritual tradition for which all the liturgical manuals, plus collections of model wenjian documents, have been codified into one collection and printed (a rather rare situation indeed for Taoist liturgy, outside the Taoist canon), and thus made widely available, during the modern period. My aim was thus not to pursue a focused study on one temple or family, or one ritual, as is often done in contemporary scholarship on Taoist ritual, but rather to understand the larger logic and operation of a local ritual tradition. How was this ritual tradition codified? And how do Taoists use it, balancing respect for the printed texts, and their own creativity? While exciting, this research question was also daunting, not only because of the vast amounts of liturgical texts involved, but also because there is very little secondary literature to rely on. Another local Sichuan ritual tradition, the Fayantan 法言壇, has been studied by Volker Olles and Xu Fei, providing many clues and stimulating ideas.1 The Guangcheng tradition has never been seriously studied as such. Li Yuanguo, with whom I have discussed my work, is in the process of writing on the topic, but it has not been published yet as I finish writing this dissertation. 1 Olles 2013, Xu Fei 2013. Introduction 1 More generally, even though Sichuan University has a major research center on Taoist studies, precious little work has been done on Sichuan Taoism in the modern and contemporary period.2 The Daozang Jiyao project and other work, notably by Mori Yuria, on the publications at the Erxian An, have helped me understand the context of the publication of the Guangcheng Yizhi during the early twentieth century.3 Structure of the dissertation There are two main parts in my dissertation. First, I devote two chapters to the history of Sichuan Taoism and the Guangcheng texts. I focus on local Taoist history from the Qing Dynasty, to the Republican era and the PRC period. I divide this time frame into three periods according to historical events, especially those related to the Guangcheng tradition. By following in parallel the larger course of local history and that of Taoism, we can see both the development of Guangcheng ritual in its loc al social context and, how Taoist activities were deeply influenced by political and social change. After laying out this historical context, I examine the Guangcheng Yizhi itself, its textual history and editions. I address some fundamental issues that have been so far ignored by scholars. First of all, as a huge text collection it has no final and decisive catalog left; as a result, we cannot be sure neither of its exact contents, nor of the total numbers of texts included. I obtained two copies and three catalogs of the Guangcheng Yizhi to compare their contents, and came to the conclusion that there were probably no final edition ever made, no matter in Chen Fuhui’s time or during the late Qing when this collection was woodblock-printed. Most Guangcheng Yizhi texts we can see today are from the “Erxian An kanben 菴刊” in late Qing Dynasty (the very source of the modern reprint in the Zangwai Daoshu collection, 1992-94). They had fixed wood-cutting style and copies are still printed out of these woodblocks nowadays. The other few extant Guangcheng Yizhi texts are small-scale sections of the larger collection, or individual texts. And among them, very few extant copies predate the Erxian An kanben. Generally speaking, the origins and early history of the Guangcheng Yizhi are not much documented; today, almost every Taoist use the edition from Erxian An.