Demonic Warfare: Daoism, Territorial Networks, and the History of a Ming Novel by Mark R.E. Meulenbeld

Author:Mark R.E. Meulenbeld [Meulenbeld, Mark R.E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780824838447
Google: rB_HDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0824838440
Barnesnoble: 0824838440
Goodreads: 25264631
Published: 2017-05-07T13:46:01+00:00

Demonic Warfare during the Yuan

125

It is thanks to the fi nal ban on dramatic per for mances that a substantial basis for further analysis is provided. Th

is last ban, applied to Jiangnan, comes in

1336 and refers to a genre I explored in chapter 2, namely the “Plain Tale.”

Th

is reference limits the range of (known) stories to such narratives as the Plain Tale of King Wu’s Conquest of King Zhòu or the Plain Tale of the Th ree

Kingdoms. Interestingly, the ban addresses the most basic form of military self- strengthening on the local level: the use of metal pitchforks by rural folk in the south. Th

e law is designed “in order to prevent [southerners] from staging rebellions.”109 It is in this context of war and rebellion that the ban furthermore specifi cally prohibits three performative genres of the kind discussed earlier: “theatre scripts” ( xiwen), “variety theatre” ( zaju), and, most signifi cantly, the “Plain Tale.” Remarkably, less than fi fteen years after the publication of those Plain Tales that include King Wu’s Conquest and Th ree Kingdoms, the Yuan fi nd it a narrative genre that needs to be declared illegal.

Much of it must have had to do with its content.

Th

e Plain Tale of King Wu’s Conquest of King Zhòu features a protagonist, Yin Jiao, who is part of Daoist exorcist ritual in the region of Huguang, as well as part of local exorcist networks in the Hangzhou region. We know that very generally speaking, Yin Jiao’s Plain Tale explains ways in which armies may be or ga nized on the basis of cosmological principles that correspond to the scheme of the Five Quarters. Th

e armies in question, moreover, consist of

plague gods or spirits that are known from Daoist liturgies of the period preceding the publication of the Plain Tales. Demonic warfare looms large.

Th

e other “Plain Tale,” Th ree Kingdoms, similarly relates to the notion of supernatural powers that may assist the living at times they are threatened by alien invasions. Even more concretely than the narrative of King Wu, the Plain Tale of the Th

ree Kingdoms contains specifi c references to militias such as the “Righ teous Troops” ( yibing) and “Righ teous Armies” ( yijun)— terms that clearly do not belong to the time in which the story is set, the aftermath of the Han collapse. Th

ey clearly correspond to the parlance generally used for the militias of the territorial cult during the early fourteenth century.

It is possible to be more specifi c: what the Plain Tale of the Th ree Kingdoms is written to convey, among other things, is the claim that these local militia are supervised by gods— in the fi rst place Guan Yu, then Zhang Fei, and Liu Bei. Th

e foundation of their three kingdoms (another story of spatial conquest and dynastic establishment) is premised on the presence of Daoist divinities: Emperor Guangwu is said to be the Great Emperor of the Purple Tenuity (Ziwei Dadi), and the Jade Emperor is another point of reference early on in the story.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.