A Study Of Land Faith In Ancient China

The dissertation focuses on a study of land faith in Ancient China, which discusses a faith system with the worship of the land god as a core idea with the documentation of land sacrifice and fairy tales about the mighty gnome in Buddhism and Taoism as carrier. The pristine form of land faith is the prehistoric land mother faith in the belief that everything has spirit. Traditional Chinese regard sky as father and land as mother which lays the philosophical base for the article. The thesis is composed of introduction, five chapters and postscript three parts.The introduction includes: 1. A philological retrospect on land faith — the article introduces existing research achievements both from home and aboard in 6 aspects and points out problems and scales to be studied. 2. Methods adopted in the article. 3. The significance of the topic. 4.Expecting purpose of the article.The first chapter is about the generation and evolvement of the gnome. Argumentation on the human cognition foundation for the evolvement of the gnome orientation is the chief term to be solved as the gnome worship is the inner idea in land faith research. 1.The generation of the concept----gnome. The concept of gnome comes from the primitive society natural religion period when people thought that everything had spirit and set land as their worship objective. At that time the worship objective was natural land without any idea of god. The gnome was personified as the primitive people linked the generative capability of female beingtogether with the productivity of land. Thus the idea of the gnome came into being. Production modes evolvement in human history determines the two periods of prehistorical land faith. In the period that collecting and fishing are the major modes of production, land which is just a common member or the universe as the rest of the world plays a minute role in human life. As human society stepped into the economical production period when adopted the production modes of primitive agriculture and pristine stockbreeding together, human being began to worship "land mother", Bumper or poor gain in land was of the utmost importance for human beings to survive so that people attempted to control the production in land by wizard and sacrifice to have bumper harvest, therefore the faith of land mother came into being. 2. Land faith changed nominally in the civilized times, human began to be faithful to "She" (a Chinese word which means the chief god, of land) and crown the person who contribute great to agriculture as "village god", which enhanced the personification tendency of "Village god". The issue of "She" contains: its exegesis, origination and its relation with "Ji"(the land of grain).The second chapter refers to the sacrifice system of gnome, which includes the ancient sacrifice system of the land god. According to recordation of Zhouli—(a classical book in ancient China) Chunguan Dazongbo and Zhouli Chunguan Dasile, the ancient land god is consisted of sacrifice objects, such as Sheji (the land of god and the land of grain), five great mountains, mountain forest, water god, god of all directions, varieties of things, the god of Shenzhou(another name of China), the god of Kunlong, Sizhen( the god of all directions), hill and grave as well. Generally speaking, the land god was provided with the characters of many gods amalgamation. In ancient China, there were at least four kinds god can be named after gnomes, namely, Diqihoutu, village god of narrow sense, Town god and Madam Houtu and mausoleum. Diqi was an abstract gnome, which developed into Beijiaofangzejidi in official sacrifice and Madam Houtu and mausoleum protecting god in folk tradition. Narrowly speaking gnomes originated from "She"in Pre-Qin period, which developed into Sheji (which means country) in official commemoration and Villagegod and Town god in civil. The second is the sacrificing system of gnome. In the ancient times, there were two types of the land faith and its sacrificing system— official and folk gnome sacrificing system — representing two different classes and two different groups of people; official She was organized by government and civil She was a civil sacrificing activity in a village.The third chapter presents different types and images of gnomes. 1. The image of gnome is after entitative symbol which enjoyed popularity in Pre-Qin period. According to documentation, the symbols of gnome includes: conferred land, big tree, stone piece, corpse and other images, which is the succession of primitive land faith as human being stepped into civilized times. 2.Personified gnomes can be classified into three groups; 1) heroes in fairy tales, such as Ju Long, Xiang Tu, Yu, Xiu Che. 2) historical celebrities as Jiang Ziwen, Han Yu, Yue Fei. 3) Some ordinary person. Diversified status of gnomes shaped variable images. The first type focused in Pre-Qin period, the last two types were quite common since Han dynasty.Sacrificing rituals of gnome were described in the fourth chapter, which involved the rules and evolvement of sacrificing alter which was used for sacrificing gnome. In the Pre-Qin period people sacrificed gnome in the open air; in the latter development, sacrificing palace took the sacrificing alter's seat. The increasing size and grandeur of sacrificing palace got rid of the original idea that all living things regenerated with the integration of the sky and the land as well as that of Yin and Yang. So the civil sacrifice sites of gnome became a sign that all demos prayed and sacrificed throughout villages. The second is about the sacrifice system of gnome. Generally speaking, the sacrifice system of gnomes consists official She—organized by government and civil She—a civil sacrificing activity in a village. Mostly official sacrifice is much more ceremonious than civil sacrifice either in the profound bearing or in rich offerings, sacrifice methods and its size. In the following development, official sacrifice became rigid, civil sacrifice was simple in form and not quite religious, but its entertainment and mutual-help spirit developed characteristic tradition.The fifth chapter narrates gnome's functions, which comprised the distribution of zone and space of gnome temple. According to recordation of ancient books and records, ancient gnome temples can be divided into five kinds: official gnome, academic gnome, temple gnome, house gnome and village gnome. Hereby gnome acted social functions from official court to houses in village. The second part is gnome's functions. As the saying: "no other gods in the country can be as respectful as "village god" goes, in Pre-Qin period, village god enjoyed superior status. People must sacrifice She in many activities as praying before, war, hunting, offering captives, making a pledge, solar eclipse and praying for good offspring, good weather for crops. Since Han dynasty people endowed the gnomes with many different functions as protecting counties, insuring host's official position, making vows to, avoiding diseases, announcing death, sending souls. These places that held sacrificing activities developed into commercial and entertaining center gradually.The postscript part comments on how land faith influenced the ancient society, which can be represented in religion, literature, art, politics and ethnical psychology five aspects. Some comments on how land faith influenced modern life was another part of postscript.