Lineage and Community in China, 1100-1500 by He Xi; He Xi;

Author:He, Xi; He, Xi;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Local temples and popular religion

Not only were Buddhists and Daoists tracking genealogies and building halls, so were the sorcerers, those religious practitioners looked down upon by Buddhists, Daoists, and scholars. Liu Song recorded the story of one, a sorcerer by the surname Hu, who appeared in the marketplace of Taihe County city in the drought year of 1360 claiming that he could pray for rain. The magistrate having sought the help of the Daoist priests to no avail, gladly built him an altar in the marketplace, and the man posted a notice to say that he had reached agreement with the gods to the effect that from a certain day heavy rain would fall for three days. When rain did not come for an entire week after the appointed day, he came up with the story that one of the five sons of the dragon who was to come to the rescue had been detained by the investigation commissioner of the Nine Heavens (Jiutian shizhe, whose temple was located on Lushan Mountain near Jiangzhou). He offered more prayers, but there was still no rain. Thereupon, he produced the drawing of a god and prayed to it, but still to no avail. In desperation, he grovelled on the road, praying as he went along, bared his torso, kowtowed so hard that blood poured from his head, begging finally for the watching crowd to burn him to hurry the rain along and breaking down in tears. Liu Song then said, almost to clinch the story, that the people asked him who he was, and he said he was the grandson of the sorcerer Hu who for generations had served a god of Wuyuan County to the very north of Jiangxi.20

Liu Song, the scholar, presented Hu as a charlatan, someone who pretended he had powers. Readers of his story, however, might draw other conclusions, as suggested by the reference to Hu’s family and the god that they had served. Would Hu as a charlatan perform in public to his own mutilation without some belief in his own powers? Could it not be that either the god of Wuyuan had no authority over rain in Taihe, or, that maybe the god did have that power, but Hu was not the right person to call upon it for its aid? The bond between the family and the god suggests charisma, and Hu’s claim to descent – from his sorcerer grandfather, perhaps also his master of sorcery – implies transmission. Either Hu knew he did not have such powers (in that case, he was a charlatan), or the god did not have the power, or his ancestors were not the chosen ones, or Hu the grandson had not received the transmission.

Charisma can be illustrated by the story of the two doctors, surnamed, respectively, Wang and Li, told by Hong Mai (1123–1202) in his stories of the uncanny collected in Stories as Heard (Yijian zhi). Li was a Fuzhou man well known for his medical skills. He was so good that he accumulated great wealth in ten years.

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