| This dissertation is a history-part cultural, part political, and part religious---of contacts between the Chinese state and autochthonous peoples (identified since the 11th century as Yao people) in what is now South China. It also explores the specific terminology, narratives, and symbols (Daoist/imperial) that represent and mediate these contacts.; Although pre-Qing sources do not shed much light on the question of Yao Daoism, or on any other aspects of Yao religion, they do contain a great deal of information about contacts between Yao and the Chinese state, as well as with other socio-political entities in what is now South China. By "Chinese state" I mean the administrative network that linked diverse regions with the capital, as well as the official bureaucrats and military commanders who, as representatives of the emperor, controlled individual administrative units and pacified autochthonous populations who threatened them. One of the central concerns of authors who we might now call geographers and ethnographers was the detailed documentation of this administrative network. What was important to them was determining exactly what counted as state/government territory---that is, what were the limits of the Emperor's realm. Throughout this dissertation I am interested in how the state was constructed, both as a physical, territorial entity, but also as a virtual one represented in various textual and visual media, and delineated by such terms as: the Central State (Zhongguo ) and the Nine Continents (Jiuzhou)---terms which pre-figure a dichotomy between center and periphery, inside and outside, civilized and wild. |
