Lineage Organisation in South-Eastern China by Maurice Freedman

Author:Maurice Freedman [Freedman, Maurice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General, International Relations, Social Science, Anthropology
ISBN: 9781000323405
Google: U7ISEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-01-07T05:06:35+00:00

10 Ritual Differentiation

The differences in status and power within the lineage which I have sketched depict a system in which those who enjoyed the greater privileges strove to protect them and those who were underprivileged aspired, at least in the long run, to the heights reached by their more successful kinsmen. In principle all men were equal in so far as their generation and age were equal. In real life equality consisted in being able legitimately to hope that one might overtake one’s successful neighbours. Both the protection of privilege and the aspiration towards it were reflected in religious life. Those with power and status tried to retain them by building their houses and siting their graves according to geomantic prescriptions. They attempted to underline their social position by assigning themselves special places and roles in the performance of large-scale ancestor worship. The humble, on their side, prayed for riches and hoped that their virtues would find a reward not only in their fate after death but also in the increasing prosperity of their descendants. By studying the social implications of geomantic burial and the stratification underlying ancestor worship in lineage and sub-lineage halls we can see how ritual life throws the differentiation of the lineage community into relief.

No law in China restricted the burial of the dead to specified places. In the south-east graves were scattered over the hillsides and rises, for the most part in plots belonging to individual owners. Sometimes the dead were buried in graveyards established by lineages or segments of lineages. I should be foolish to assert that the evidence on the point is clear and consistent, but I interpret the burial customs common in Fukien and Kwangtung to mean that very often the common graveyards were set up for the poor while the rich dispersed their dead in individual or ‘family’ sites. The significance of this is that, following the dictates of feng-shui, geomancy, the rich strove to site their tombs wherever the conformation of the landscape at a particular time promised to endow the descendants of the dead with the blessings flowing from favourable burial. The geomantic suitability of a grave site could change, either because of a change in the landscape or as a result of a new interpretation by a different geomancer. Moreover, a new site needed to be chosen if an old one had failed to induce the prosperity hoped for and previously predicted by the experts. De Groot tells us that in the neighbourhood of Amoy parties of men headed by a geomancer were to be seen every day wandering about in the open country in search of good sites for graves.1

1 The Religious System of China, vol. III, 1897, p. 1017.

The dead of the prosperous and influential did not lie compactly ordered in cemeteries. The coffins of the poor might be put into the large graveyards provided for them, but with a rise in fortune their immediate descendants would wish to transfer them to more propitious surroundings.2 Changes

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