Cultural Approval And Cultural Control: A Study On The Folk Belief Of Qin And Han Dynasty

As an important component of the Qin and Han Dynasty's cultural history, the folk belief of the Qin and Han Dynasty had reflected the people's understanding and regarding for the universe and the life at that time. Conducting the deeper research to it has the folklore, the cultural history, the thinking history, the social history and the region cultural history and so on various important meanings for us to understand China traditional culture comprehensively.The votaries of the so-called folk belief of the Qin and Han Dynasty not only included the general public who were in the basic social units, but also including some local government officials and some members from imperial families or upper classes of the society. The Qin and Han Dynasty's folk belief played the positive role in the aspects of promoting culture approval and strengthening cultural control.The formation of the folk belief had its special historical background in the Qin and Han Dynasty, namely stable agricultural economy foundation and the deep historical culture accumulating and universal political contexts. Under such conditions, folk belief of the Qin and Han Dynasty presented four main features, namely traditional god and new-molding god coexisting; rank limit of belief object weakening and common custom characteristic enhancing; the regional characteristic of belief object relatively weakening and universal characteristic highlighting; god from different places and religious god's influence expansion gradually.The folk belief has very important cultural function, and the cultural approval and the cultural control are the important manifestations of its cultural functions. The cultural approval and the cultural control are two aspects which depend on each other mutually. The cultural approval is the premise of the cultural control, the cultural control is the result of the cultural approval. Both are also the important component of the cultural function which the folk belief displays. The function that folk belief displayed in the Qin and Han Dynasty was mainly culture approval and cultural control under universal cultural contexts and the mainstream culture's intense seepage. That was the folk belief playing the positive role in the two aspects of promoting culture approval and strengthening cultural control.The cultural approval function of the folk belief of the Qin and Han Dynasty mainly manifested in four aspects: region culture approval, ethnic group culture approval, historical culture approval and different cultural approval. First, in the Qin and Han Dynasty, the people in basic units took the regional society god as the belief object, or two or more regional communities took cross-regional person god as the belief object. Revolving their belief object's transformation symbol, by offering sacrifices and holding external ceremony activity and so on, the public thus had found their status ownership, namely having realized each other's cultural approval. This was the region culture approval function which the folk belief displayed. Next, the Qin and Han Dynasty's Huaxia - Han ethnic group took the first ancestor god as common belief object. Revolving the belief object's transformation symbol, by drifting myth and fable of creating the world by ancestor, the group thus had realized their cultural approval. This was the ethnic's group approval function which the folk belief displayed. Again, many social strata of the Qin and Han Dynasty took ancient saints and sages as belief objects. Revolving belief object's transformation symbol, by reconstructing the facts of the ancient saints and sages and disseminating it, the public thus had realized the common historical culture approval. This was the historical culture approval function which the folk belief displayed. Last, the various social stratums of the Qin and Han Dynasty carried on the processing creation of the West Queen the God who was from different place, being adopted by them in their understanding foundation. Along with the belief circle expansion, the West Queen became the belief objects of many social stratums, being the biggest God of folk belief for many people before the official religion birth or the popularization in China. It was also the West Queen that was been accepted and transformed by different culture. This was the cultural approval question of the folk belief.The cultural control types of the Qin and Han Dynasty folk belief were mainly divided into the taboo kind, the witchcraft kind, Confucianism ethics kind and the religion kind and so on. They played the positive role separately in relieving the anxious feeling of the people's daily life, maintenance family harmonious, protecting individual life and health, slowing down the society to be contradictory, relating between humanity and nature, reducing the difference of different social class stratums, clearing the status of the family members between high and low or old and young, realizing control to believes community, maintaining social stability and so on.The cultural approval and the culture control function of folk belief of the Qin and Han Dynasty were not still. They were changing along with time development. In this period, the folk belief's cultural approval function vicissitude presented as a whole the form of weakness of the region culture approval function and tending to be enhancement of the ethnic group culture approval function and the historical culture approval function and so on. Main performance of the vicissitude of the culture control function of the folk belief was, from pre-Qin to the Qin and Han Dynasty, the witchcraft class and the taboo class occupied the dominant position in the cultural control. But after the Western Han Dynasty intermediating stage, the Confucianism ethics class displayed the control function strengthens gradually. Along with Buddhism's east-pass-in in the late western Han Dynasty and the Eastern Han Dynasty firstly years and the primitive Taoism establishing in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, the religion kind culture control highlighted gradually in the folk belief's status. But the appearance of the new cultural control methods did not mean the vanishing of the old some cultural control methods. On the contrary, the former blended with the conformity unceasingly under the new historic condition. Thus they played the powerful culture control action to people's daily behavior and their inner world. Main agent causing vicissitude of cultural functions of folk belief of the Qin and Han Dynasty was, the intervention of national policy law, the influence of mainstream culture, the multiple actions of human's socialized way, the continuing of nature oppression strength and the appearance of survival crisis feeling, cultural exchange and particularly the impact and influence of different cultures to this culture.In brief, cultural approval and cultural control were the important manifestation of folk belief's culture function of the Qin and Han Dynasty. The folk belief's many kinds of cultural approval function and culture control function not only existed together in some time interval, but also changed with time pass. The function vicissitude was to be related with the history background.