Daoist Identity Read online

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  Terry F. Kleeman

  and equality, enjoying the limited government and lenient punishments associated with Daoist rule.12 But it is important to note that the Ba did not lose their own ethnic identity in the process of adopting their new Daoist one. Instead, Daoism seems to have functioned effectively to create a new community, establishing interpersonal ties and patterns of cooperation that spanned the divide of ethnicity.

  Daoist Views of Non-Chinese Ethnic Groups

  Looking outside that original community at the way non-Chinese were portrayed in Daoist scriptures and essays, we find a certain ambiva-lence. From the Dadao jia lingjie (Family Commands and Precepts of the Great Dao),13 we know that Zhang Lu continued to keep watch over his flock from the other world and communicated through spirit possession, as did the Dao (i.e., the Supreme Lord Lao himself ). The official in charge of these divine communications was the Determiner of Pneumas ( Jueqi) or Controller of Determinations (Lingjue). A Tang encyclopedia of Daoism, the Sandong zhunang (Bag of Pearls of the Three Caverns , HY 788) records this official’s duties as follows: He is in charge of ghostly pneumas. When a man or woman is possessed by this pneuma and transmits words, the Controller of Determinations is instructed to distinguish whether [the revealing spirit] is Chinese, Yi, Hu, Rong, Di, Dia, or Qiang, and whether the message is authentic or not. (7.19a)14

  Here we see that communications from non-Chinese peoples were not rare. Moreover, while the source of such communications had to be determined, there is no blanket statement that messages from non-Chinese were to be excluded from consideration. This reflects a continuing openness toward non-Chinese peoples during the mid-third century.

  There is also evidence that the Daoists did not believe their message was disseminated only to the Chinese. The great cultural hero Shun is said in a Daoist scripture to have received an esoteric work on alchemy from an enigmatic western barbarian ( ronghu).15 Further, in describing the entire corpus of sacred scriptures revealed from the beginning of time up until its end, the Zhengyi fawen jingtu kejie pin (Chapter on Codes and Precepts of Scriptures and Diagrams from the Zhengyi Canon), quoted in the Daojiao yishu (Nexus of Meaning for the Teachings of the Dao, HY 1121; ca. 700 c.e.), lists 123,000 chap-

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  ters of scriptures revealed to the Chinese and 84,000 chapters revealed to the barbarians of each of the four directions (2.11b). These scriptures entrusted to the non-Chinese are described as being composed of “overlapping principles, the same words expressed differently.” This same viewpoint is expressed in the early literature on the conversion of the barbarians ( huahu) and in the polemical debates of the fifth and sixth centuries. There Buddhism is often viewed as a deviant and inferior form of Daoism. Laozi, having proceeded into the Western Regions, found it necessary to modify his teachings in view of the lust-ful, avaricious character of the native peoples, resulting in the strict discipline of the Buddhist path, with its stress on celibacy, vegetarianism, and asceticism. While this position is a rejection of certain aspects of the foreign faith, it affirms the basic value of Buddhism much as Zhiyi’s “discrimination of the teaching” ( banjiao) affirmed while simultaneously denigrating all the other types of Buddhism abroad in his day. The passage from the Zhengyi fawen would seem to take a further step, arguing that all barbarians in every direction have been vouchsafed holy scriptures with the same basic message as the sacred tomes of the Daoist canon.

  Whatever the utopian dreams of Great Peace, we should not imagine that the early Daoist church itself was a wonderland where traditional views of class and race were wholly forgotten. A good corrective is to be found in the instructions for ordaining menials and non-Chinese in the Zhengyi fawen taishang wailu yi (Ceremony for External Registers of the Most High, from the Zhengyi Canon, HY 1233), in which Daoist openness is tempered by traditional Chinese ideas of the relationship of barbarians to non-Chinese culture (4a–5a).16 In addition to expressly linking non-Chinese with slaves, maidservants, and retainers, this document advises the supplicant to admit plainly his or her origin among the Man, Mo, Di, or Lao and to proclaim that although sins in previous lives led to this mean birth, he or she bears no resentment. Note the explicit acknowledgment that the non-Chinese involved may be from outside the borders of the state or from the wild, uncivilized regions within a Chinese county. It was the individual’s ugly, evil nature that caused him or her to be born in the border wastes, where the rites and morality are unknown, yet even in this muck and mire their “good roots,”17 sown through meritorious actions in a previous life, still survive and have led them to live among the Chinese, where they will be nurtured by the Daoist codes ( daoke). Beyond adopting a Chinese surname and personal name, the aspiring Daoist

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  had to learn to write proper ritual petitions.18 Thus although membership was open to all, there were yet some elements of Chinese culture that non-Chinese had to be prepared to master in order to join the Daoist community.

  Is there a pattern in these early relations with non-Chinese peoples?

  One might expect that attitudes and policies that were appropriate in second-century Sichuan, where there was comparative peace between settled indigenous ethnic groups and Chinese inhabitants of long standing, would be abandoned or transformed in the volatile atmosphere of post-317 China, when the northern half of China had been lost to a variety of non-Chinese forces that periodically menaced the remnant southern territories. Kristofer Schipper discerns a pattern of interaction whereby Daoism initially conceived of itself as a universal religion that saw Buddhism as a sibling faith but gradually moved to a position that saw all foreign religions as antithetical to its message while fostering a rapprochement with Confucianism (Schipper 1994, 63). He sees the culmination of this trend in the mid-Tang dynasty, at the time of the composition of the Yuqing jing (Scripture of Jade Purity, HY 1300)19 during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712–755), and notes that by late imperial times, relations between Daoism and Confucianism had again worsened to the point that arguments originally directed toward Buddhism were then targeted at the Daoists. This at least provides a working hypothesis to test and refine. Future research should focus on confirming and specifying more accurately these transition points, then delving more deeply into the reasons behind this transformation.

  There are, of course, many more points worthy of study with regard to the ethnographic history of Daoism. The period of the Song, when Neo-Confucianism assimilated elements of Buddhist and Daoist doctrine to produce an intensely nationalistic, antiforeign philosophy, and the Yuan, when the Complete Perfection Daoists were actively court-ing the Mongols while many officials retired rather than serve a foreign conqueror, would be particularly interesting objects of study in this regard.

  Daoism and Modern East Asian Ethnicities

  The final topic I would like to broach involves the role Daoism plays among the non-Chinese peoples of modern China. The most dramatic example is the Yao people, who once lived in south China but now are also found in the hilly regions of Southeast Asian countries like Thai-

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  land, Laos, and Vietnam.20 The Yao people maintain a universal Daoist priesthood; every member of the community passes through successive ordinations confirmed by an ever more exalted register, just as the Celestial Masters Daoists once did. Social position within Yao society is based on one’s position within the church. Although there is not a complete identity of secular and ecclesiastical authority, the highest-ranking secular and religious figures within a village are pretty much on a par in terms of power and influence. The Yao incorporate certain indigenous gods, notably the founder Panhu, within their pantheon, so there has been a certain amount of adaptation over the centuries to specifically Yao cultural patterns. However, it is still remarkable that they have maintained a non-Chinese society over an extended period based up
on the strictures and beliefs of a distinctively Chinese religion.

  The Yao case raises an important question for the history of Daoism as a whole: when did the uniquely Daoist type of social organization, typical of the earliest Daoists and now found among the Yao, disappear among the Chinese? Today, Daoist priests in Chinese communities are priests without a congregation, hired on an ad hoc basis by members of the community to perform periodic and occasional rites. The Yao must have learned their Daoism when the old system was still intact. The scriptures and god images used by the Yao point to a date no earlier than the Song; rituals of the Tianxin zhengfa (Correct Rites of the Heavenly Heart) heritage seem to loom large among their practice. The Song and Yuan periods also saw the establishment of numerous large Daoist abbeys ( daoguan) in Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou (Duan 1992, 71). If this dating is correct, we can assume that the original Daoist social order must have survived in recognizable form until the eleventh or twelfth century in parts of South China. Because of the paucity of records concerning Daoism in standard sources, we have heretofore largely relied on the dating of scriptures and other religious documents to trace the development of Daoism through the ages. If our tentative conclusions concerning the Yao are correct, this suggests that we may be able to date developments in Daoist practice by looking at Daoism’s diffusion into new regions and its acceptance by non-Chinese peoples.21 A similar study might be conducted by looking at elements of Daoist culture that were transmitted to neighboring cultures like those of Korea and Japan.

  Although the details are not nearly so well known as in the case of the Yao, Daoism is found among many of the ethnic minorities who currently live or once lived within the borders of modern China. One

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  of the more prominent examples is the group meetings in Yunnan centering on the recitation of Daoist scriptures, sometimes referred to in the literature as Grotto Scripture Congregations (Dongjing hui) or August Scripture Congregations (Huangjing hui), depending on whether their primary scripture is the Dadong zhenjing (Perfected Scripture of the Great Grotto) or the Yuhuang benxing jing (Scripture of the Original Actions of the Jade August One; see Song 1985; Yang 1990). At present there are no Daoist priests associated with these groups, but their history remains unclear, and it seems unlikely that they chose such key Daoist scriptures by chance.

  The status of Daoism, including the presence of ordained Daoist priests and Daoist scriptures, among the ethnic minorities of China and mainland Southeast Asia is perhaps the most exciting aspect of this problem. We are still at the beginning stages of this study, and so far most of our information comes from anthropologists with limited expertise in Daoism. Hence, what information we have is not always reliable. Still, surveys of the religions of ethnic minorities seem to find some Daoist influence among most of the peoples of Southwest China.

  There are major surveys of the region under way that bring together ethnographers and experts in Chinese religion, including one led by John McRae at Indiana University and another based in Japan in which Maruyama Hiroshi is participating. We can look forward to better, more sophisticated data in the near future. We should start honing our questions. We would profit by knowing in each case: How long have the members of the ethnic group been in contact with Daoism? What elements of Daoist belief and practice have they adopted? What accommodation has been made to indigenous gods and beliefs? Is knowledge of spoken or written Chinese necessary to participate in Daoist-derived activities? How do living practitioners understand their role as non-Chinese vis-à-vis this originally Chinese religion? Is Daoist influence among their people growing or waning? Have Daoist beliefs and practices in any sense facilitated their interactions with the Chinese?

  Conclusion

  For most of human history, the nature of ethnic identity has gone un-examined. Born into a given milieu, one adopted the prevailing definitions of one’s region, one’s social class, and one’s family in sorting out the complex questions of who belonged with whom. In recent years, we have come to question most of these assumptions. We now

  Ethnic Identity and Daoist Identity in Traditional China 35

  assume that ethnic identity is culturally constructed, that it bears only a tenuous relationship to genetics, language, and history. Still, China challenges the limits of our understanding of ethnic identity. The development of a Chinese identity based primarily on cultural assumptions, the variety and diversity of non-Chinese peoples who came into contact with the Chinese over time, the complex interaction of cultural borrowing in both directions that took place among these peoples, all give pause to even the most limited definitions of ethnic identity. And yet, to understand the Chinese cultural experience, we must try to make some sense out of the rich record of interaction among the peoples of East Asia.

  Religion is no less problematic a term when applied to this region.

  Although as an analytic category, its existence cannot be denied, there is no single emic category that is coterminous with what we mean by

  “religion” in the Western academy. Even foreign religions such as Buddhism transformed in a variety of ways when they entered China, and we are coming to talk about Chinese Buddhisms that vary internally to a surprising degree over time and space. Daoism is no simpler a concept, even in the narrow definition advocated in this chapter. The early Daoists drew upon a number of diverse intellectual traditions and incorporated elements from the religious practices of a number of dis-parate groups.

  In this chapter, I have focused on how Daoism as a Chinese religious tradition interacted with the indigenous beliefs of the non-Chinese ethnic groups who have since its inception constituted a significant portion of its followers. I believe that further progress in this respect will require careful attention to all of these questions: What did it mean to be Chinese, and how was this cultural identity defined against that of non-Chinese peoples? What elements of individual and communal worldview, moral values, and practice were religious in nature, and did they, in fact, as a whole, constitute a religion or religions? Finally, what did it mean to be Daoist? What portions of the totality of religious experience were subsumed under this rubric, what beliefs or practices observed by those who were at least nominally Daoist should be excluded from their Daoist identity, and what beliefs or practices followed by other members of the community were eschewed by those claiming to be Daoists? I have offered here, and in my other published work, some suggestions concerning each of these questions. I hope that this will provide a starting point for further discussion of this important topic.

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  Notes

  1. This was one of the themes of the presentation by Andrew Chittick,

  “Xiangyang Local Society under the Liu-Song Regime,” at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., March 1998.

  2. The two ethnonyms most closely associated with them at this time were Banshun Man or Board-shield Man-barbarians, referring to a distinctive feature of their traditional armament, and Zong, referring to their special tax status.

  3. Stein points out the military significance of these people to the fledg-ling state (1963, 21–23). He also provides an able refutation of claims that these people were in any sense Tibetans, though I think he still gives too much credence to the consistency in usage of some more general ethnonyms.

  4. On the Ba Yu dances, see Jinshu 12.693–694; Dong 1987, 167–177.

  5. The original text of this inscription can be found in Lixu 3.8a–b. See the discussion of its interpretation in Kleeman 1998, 69 n 28.

  6. Zhongguo ge minzu zongjiao yu shenhua dacidian “Gelaozu bufen.” Schafer notes that during the Tang, the leaders of the Cuan people of Yunnan were

  “Great Ghost Masters” (1967, 49). On the Gelao and their relationship to the Lao, see Rueh 1957; Pulleyblank 1983.

  7. The Yi are a particularly apt comparison because they, like the Ba, were famed primarily as warriors and practiced
only limited agriculture, yet maintained a relatively robust culture, which included their own written language, and a distinct ethnic identity that resisted assimilation for many centuries. The Ba did not, so far as we know, become wealthy by subjugating another ethnic group and using them as agricultural slaves or serfs, as the Black Tribes Yi did with the White Bones, a group composed primarily of Lao and other conquered Yi tribes. See Von Glahn 1987, 24–26, 33–38.

  8. This translation is adapted from Von Glahn 1987, 26. If the Ba followed a similar system, the annual tithe of five bushels of rice must have seemed a good equivalent to the contribution of meat to the sacrifice. There was also a distinction among the Black Man between the Great Lord of Ghosts who ministers to a large settlement and the normal Lord of Ghosts for smaller groups; this parallels the Celestial Masters hierarchy of Great Libationers and Libationers.

  9. A good example of the difficulties in transmitting this sort of message is found in the documentary Between Two Worlds: The Hmong Shaman in America (Taggart Siegel and Dwight Conquergood, producers 1986). When a Christian missionary lectures a Hmong shaman on humankind’s sinful nature and the need for Christ’s redemption, the shaman turns to one of his family members and says in Hmong, “I have committed no sin.” That the message eventually penetrates is shown by the high rate of conversion to Christianity by the Hmong in America.

  10. On the seed people ( zhongmin), see the classic article by Yoshioka Yoshitoyo (1976).

  11. The following account is based primarily upon Kleeman 1998.

  12. On this topic of early Daoist utopias, see Stein 1963.

  13. Contained in Zhengyi fawen Tianshi jiaojie kejing (HY 788); see Bokenkamp 1997, 149–185. This text dates to 255 or shortly thereafter.

  14. This passage, though from a Tang compilation, seems early, particu-