A Study Of The Belief In Goddess Tian Hou's History In SiChuan

The culture of China is a centuries-old culture inosculated by multifold cultures. With the movement of 'Huguang people migrated into Sichuan' in the late Ming and the early Qing dynasty, a lot of immigrant from Min and Yue Provinces went to Sichuan Province and carried the belief of the Queen of heaven (Ma-tzu) with them. The representations of it were the Fujian Guild Halls, the drama of Fujian, the legend of the queen and dialects of Fujian and Guangdong etc. All of those formats either enriched the life and anamnesis of the local people or injected new energy to the culture of Sichuan. Many people had researched and developed in many parts about it such as architecture of the guild hall, immigrant economy, social and cultural lives through historical datum of chorography and stemmata and had got plentiful and substantial fruits. This article tries to dig it deeper to the promulgating courses and principal parts of belief and the historical datum of social life and thought of people which include the ceremony of the sacrifice, offering, article for remember and drama. Beside that this article will give the readers a plenty of resources about the experiences, believes and feelings of the investigative object. Just as the words of Liangqichao, this article will educe the affection by its result and make the appearance of the past rebirth on today.The idiographic research is structured by the following six parts.Chapter one, the introduction, summarizes the background and signification of the subject ,then introduces the thought and means of the research. The learning review pays attention on the extant achievement of the belief in the history of guild halls.Chapter two inspects the sources, times, courses, reasons and principal parts of this belief which was taken into Sichuan Province. It makes statistic to the number of the palace of Tianshang to pack up the cause and effect and bound of its spread.Chapter three discusses the attribute of this belief and the relationship of this belief among Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Through this discussion, the resolute comes: The Queen of heaven(Ma-tzu) is a god that is believed by both the people and government officials in the Qing dynasty. It was not belonged to the so called folk believes or folk religions. At the period of the government of Kuomintang, this belief was coming to a folk belief because of the movement of loose ancestral temple abolishment. At the last part of this chapter it was discusses that the reason of the losing of prohibit completely is that the absence of vocation in the government officials caused the losing of the custom in the folks.In chapter four, the writer makes a statistic the name of the Tianhou palaces (Fujian Guild Hall) varietiesand an introduction of the dramatic culture of the Tianhou palace. The most important part of this chapter is the compare of the different of the ceremony, article and sacrifice of the fetes in Beijing, Fujian and Sichuan of the Qing dynasty. From this comparings, we can find out the function of conformity of the belief in old and new cultures and in old and new social structures. Chapter five is a report of fieldwork which focuses on research of Tianshang palace in Jiangjin County and Yibin Citiy.Of all those researchs, the legend of "Lin-gugu" and adoration to females in Tianshang palace of Li-Zhuangzhen are noteworthy things. Beside that, this chapter also gives a simple research to three palaces of Suining Citiy, Tongliang Citiy and Zigong Citiy.Chapter six gives a macroscopical conclusion to the historical datum and theories of the history of how this belief came to Sichuan province. The believe of Tianhou together with other believes, made a great contribution to the formation of customs, holding of religious believes, constructing the ethos and shaping of the morale. Its history in Sichuan province would either emblazes the past or edifies the future.