Lives of Confucius by Michael Nylan

Author:Michael Nylan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307590220
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-10T05:00:00+00:00

Imperial Ancestors

A cult of the imperial ancestors also held exalted status within the highest tier of the ritual hierarchy. Five times a year the emperor offered a carefully prepared feast of an ox, goat, pig, and other foods to the dynastic founder and his empress, accompanied by as many as six generations of the reigning emperor’s most recent ancestors, in the Great Shrine inside the high walls of the Forbidden City. The emperor’s ancestors exerted auspicious power over the throne and imperium, and afforded him access to the larger spirit world. At least since the Tang, the spirit of the dynasty’s founder shared a portion of the ritual feast offered at the Altar of Heaven, even before similar offerings were extended to Sun, Moon, and Five Planets. Before leaving the palace to perform any Great Sacrifice, the emperor went to Revering Ancestors Hall to inform the ancestors of his intentions and to beseech them to intercede on his behalf to ensure the ceremony’s success. Although the imperial cult system divided the cosmos into ostensibly discrete spheres over which the gods ruled, this principle of the interaction of spirits—particularly ancestral spirits—across intersecting spheres informed the entire cult system.

The ancestors’ omnipresence during the emperor’s contact with the highest gods underscored the central importance of filial piety, or filiality (xiao)—an abiding reverence toward one’s forebears—in all imperial sacrifices. Manuals on imperial rites often invoked the canon to describe the purified state of reverence and piety with which the filial son entered the temple, even when a person performed rites to nonancestral gods. Filiality imbued an ancient king’s every move in the ancestral hall; “on the day of the sacrifice,” the Record of Rites says,

…he certainly catches faint glimpses of the spirits upon entering the shrine and a gentle sense of their murmuring at every point during the rite until he turns to leave. He listens after leaving the hall and indistinctly hears the spirits sigh. In this way the filiality of the former kings is such that they never forget the sight of their ancestors’ visages, nor the sound of their voices.

Ritual purity of the filial son can be characterized as an undivided state of concentration on the spirit. According to ancient statutes still observed during the Ming and Qing, ritual celebrants observed a simple diet of food and drink without strong flavor or intoxicating effects, and secluded themselves for two or three days to prepare for the ceremony and to think of nothing other than the spirit. The Ming ritual code affirmed the filial son’s unfaltering cognizance of the spirit’s constant presence as the ideal state of the person who offers the sacrifice:

To concentrate and unify the mind with solemn reverence and meticulous care; if one has any thoughts, one visualizes the spirit that is to receive the sacrifice as he is immediately above or on one’s left or right; pure and with complete sincerity, without a moment’s lapse: this is what purification accomplishes.

Even when offering cult to Confucius, the celebrants must concentrate on the spirit as living, in the same way that descendants imagined their deceased kin.

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