Chen Meiwen-Gendered Ritual and Performative Literacy
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Cover Page The handle http://hdl.handle.net/1887/41195 holds various files of this Leiden University dissertation Author: Chen Meiwen Title: Gendered ritual and performative literacy : Yao Women, goddesses of fertility, and the Chinese imperial state Issue Date: 2016-06-29 Gendered Ritual and Performative Literacy Yao Women, Goddesses of Fertility, and the Chinese Imperial State Cover illustration: Dimu (Mother of Emperors) Photographed by Meiwen Chen Designed by Jonah Joshua Harmsen Copyrights © 2016 Meiwen Chen, Leiden, The Netherlands. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission of the author. Gendered Ritual and Performative Literacy Yao Women, Goddesses of Fertility, and the Chinese Imperial State Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden, op gezag van Rector Magnificus prof.mr. C.J.J.M. Stolker, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen op woensdag 29 Juni 2016 klokke 13.45 uur door Chen Meiwen geboren te Taipei, Taiwan in 1975 Promotor: Prof. dr. Barend J. ter Haar Co-promotor: Dr. Robert Parkin (Universiteit van Oxford) Promotiecommissie: Prof. dr. Philip Clart (Universiteit van Leipzig) Prof. dr. Elisabeth Hsu (Universiteit van Oxford) Prof. dr. Frank Pieke Table of Contents Lists of Maps, Illustrations and Tables viii Chapter 1. Introduction: Gendering Yao Ritual Tradition 9 Issues and Theories 12 1. Religion, State and Local Reaction 13 2. Models for Understanding Cultural and Religious Hybridization 20 3. Gender and Women in Ritual and Religion: A Focus on the Yao 23 Mixed Methodologies: Library Survey and Fieldwork Investigation 34 Introduction to Each Chapter 37 Chapter 2. The Yao Existed Before the Court Appeared: The Yao, the Chinese Imperial State, and Yao Manuscripts 38 Introduction 38 The Yao People: From A Chinese Perspective 39 Mien and Mun: A ‘Society of Escape’ 47 Yao and the Chinese Imperial Courts: A Mythologized Past 53 The Collections of Yao Manuscripts Studied 57 1. Scriptural and Ritual Practices among the Yao 61 2. Temporal Aspect 70 3. Textual Aspect 73 4. Linguistic Aspect 77 Conclusion 82 Chapter 3. The Civilizing Project and Its Social Consequences: Ordination, the Manuscript as an Object of Value, and the Male-Female Relations in Religious Domain 85 Encompassment of the Values of Androcentrism and Filial Piety 88 1. A Ritual Imbued with a Chinese Imperial Metaphor 90 2. A Rite of Patrilineal Ancestor Worship 93 3. Yao, She and Hakka: Ordination and Lineage Society 96 v 4. Filial Piety as a Motivating Force 100 Encompassment of the Values of Manuscript-as-Object-of-Value and the Making of a Yao Ritual Household 102 1. The Origin of Literacy 102 2. Literacy as Something Foreign 106 3. Ritual Manuscript as ‘Object of Value’ 110 Social Consequences of the Imperial-Patrilineal Values on Male-Female Relations in the Religious Domain 112 Conclusion 118 Chapter 4. Local Negotiations with the Civilizing Project: A Focus on Goddesses of Fertility 122 Flower Symbolism in the Flower Cultural Sphere 124 Goddesses of Fertility in the Flower Cultural Sphere 126 1. An Overview of Goddesses of Fertility and Their Abodes 126 2. The Different Sources of Potency Shared between Chinese Female Deities and Goddesses of Fertility in the Flower Cultural Sphere 130 Yao Personhood and Gender Relations 134 1. The Corporeal Dimension of a Person: Bone, Blood and Breast-Milk 134 2. The Cosmological Dimension of a Person: Flower Deities as ‘others’ 136 3. The Cultivated Dimension of a Person: A Ritual Rebirth 138 The Mother of Emperors: A ‘Trans-Hybrid’ Fertility Deity 141 1. Who is the Mother of Emperors? 142 2. Mother Hāritī and the Mother of Emperors 146 Conclusion 152 Chapter 5. Performative Literacy: Women, Singing, and Subjectivities 154 A Focus on Women: Women as Authors 156 1. Interchangeability of Writing and Singing 159 2. Women as Inventors of Singing 165 3. ‘Mother of Singing’ 167 Females’ Subjectivities: Women who Died Young 174 vi 1. ‘Bad Deaths’: Discontented Marriage 177 2. Women’s Cultivation and Transcendence 182 Conclusion 185 Chapter 6. Conclusion: A View From Below 187 The State and Society: The Position of Women 190 Gender and Religion: Seeking Women’s Hidden Agency 191 Bibliography 193 Glossary 215 Manuscripts Utilized in This Thesis 228 Notes on Terminologies and Languages 234 Appendix 1: Twenty-four narratives, including twelve ‘roaming deities’ and twelve ‘flower names’ 235 A. Twelve Roaming Deities (Shi’er Youshen ) 236 B. Twenty-four Flower Names (Ershi si huaming) 261 Summary 281 Samenvatting (summary in Dutch) 283 Curriculum Vitae 285 Acknowledgements 286 vii List of Maps Map 1 Language Distribution of the ‘Yao’ 45 Map 2 ‘Yao’ Migration 46 List of Illustrations Illustration 1 Incense Burner in Dingcao, Guangxi 84 Illustration 2 Incense Burner in Jinping County, Yunnan 84 Illustration 3 Jiaxiandan of Huang Jingui, Jinping County, Yunnan 121 Illustration 4 Zongzhibu of Huang Jingui, Jinping County, Yunnan 121 List of Tables Table1 Exonyms for Mien and Mun 47 Table 2 A Comparison of the She, Hakka and Yao on Ordination 100 Table 3 Syllables for ‘reading’, ‘writing’, ‘book/writing’ and ‘character’ in the Mien Language 107 Table 4 Syllables for ‘reading’, ‘writing’, ‘book/writing’ and ‘character’ in OC, MC and MP 107 viii Chapter 1. Introduction: Gendering Yao Ritual Tradition This research presents a number of Yao perspectives, especially those embodied in their ritual tradition, in their historical experiences of encountering the others; above all, a powerful Other, the successive Chinese imperial states. 1 Nowadays the Yao are one of the fifty-six nationalities officially recognized by the communist Chinese state since the 1950s. The majority of their population lives in the mountainous areas of South China.2 As are many ritual traditions of non-Han Chinese people in South China, Yao ritual tradition has been regarded as a hybrid tradition composed of many Daoist, Buddhist, even Confucian ritual and cultural elements, that have become intermingled with indigenous beliefs and practices.1 Since the 1980s, their highly Daoism-laden ordination ceremony and their ritual manuscripts written in Chinese have often been singled out to use to support scholarly discussions about Yao sinification.3 The imperial Chinese state expansion into South China that began in the Song (960-1279 AD) has been argued to have been the major facilitating force in the Yao’s conversion to Daoism and their subsequent sinification. 4 In this sense, the Daoist-imperial religious and ritual heritage can be considered to have been a ‘civilizing project’ whose aim was to bring the Yao closer to the centre of Chinese state civilization. 5 The goal of this research is to make the discourse of Yao 1 In this research, I use the capitalized Other to specifically refer to the Chinese imperial states. 2 Yao are also resident in some Southeast Asian countries and in American and European countries. More details see Chapter 2. 3 Jacques Lemoine, Yao Ceremonial Paintings (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1982). Hu Qiwang, ‘Lun yaochuan daojiao’ (A Discussion of Yao Daoism), Yunnan shehui kexue ( Social Sciences in Yunnan), 1 (1994), 61-69. Guo Dalie et al. (eds), Yao wenhua yanjiu (A Study of Yao Culture), 100. Guo Wu, Daojiao yu Yunnan wenhua: Daojiao zai Yunnan de chuanbo, yanbian ji yingxiang —˙ (Daoism and Yunnan Culture: The Diffusion, Transformation and Influence of Daoism in Yunnan), 228-233. Xu Zuxiang, Yaozu de zongjiao yu shehui: yaozu daojiao jiqiyu Yunnan yaozu guanxi yanjiu (The Religion and Society of the Yao: Yao Daoism and its Influence on the Yao in Yunnan). 4 Michel Strickmann, ‘The Tao among the Yao: Taoism and the Sinification of South China’, in Rekishi ni okeru minshû to bunka-Sakai Tadao sensei koki jukuga kinen ronshû ― (Peoples and Cultures in Asiatic History: Collected Essays in Honour of Professor Tadao Sakai on His Seventieth Birthday), 23-30 at 27-28. 5 Here, I adopt Stevan Harrell’s definition of a ‘civilizing project’. By ‘civilizing project’, Harrell means ‘a kind of interaction between people, in which one group, the civilizing center, interacts with other groups (the peripheral peoples) in terms of a particular kind of inequality’, as ‘inequality’ refers 9 sinification initially more abstruse but eventually more unambiguous by adding a gender dimension to the understanding of Yao ritual tradition. Yao Daoist ordination is a ceremony whose performance bestows the qualification of a ritual specialist on a Yao man. There is no equivalent ordination ceremony specifically held for Yao women. Women can only participate in the ordination in which their husbands are the participant ordinands. By undergoing ordination, a Yao man is entitled not only to the privilege of assuming the role of a ritual specialist, he is also able to access both the repertoire of Yao ritual knowledge and Chinese literacy. In other words, Yao men are born with the right to gain access to the ritual world and are also encouraged to acquire Chinese literacy. However, the privileges accruing from ordination can be conferred on women only through marriage and they are not granted accessibility to either the ritual repertoire or Chinese literacy. This palpable gender difference in the Yao people’s experience of ‘being sinicised’ and its social consequences is an issue that has rarely been touched upon in previous discussions of Yao religion. The gendering of Yao ritual tradition elucidates the ways in which the specific gender ideologies are articulated and how male-female relationships are formed in the Yao religious domain. Moreover, it reveals why these are significant to the enrichment of our understanding of the historical experiences the Yao have undergone in their encounter with imperial Chinese state incorporation. Cogently, the research also highlights the positions of women in the Yao ritual tradition and their importance to the Yao’s reactions to their incorporation into the dominant imperial Chinese state and the subsequent Han-Chinese cultural intervention.