A Study Of Prayer Ritual For Disease Being Recorded In Chu Bamboo Slips In The Warring States Period

The ritual of praying for diseases was a very popular means of disease prevention and treatment during the pre Qin period.It was practiced since the Shang and Zhou dynasties to pray for the blessing of gods and ghosts and to cure diseases.In recent years,a large number of simplified books directly related to the ritual of praying for diseases have been unearthed from newly excavated Chu tombs in the Warring States period,making the ritual of praying for diseases,which was popular at various levels in the pre Qin period,appear in a more complete appearance before the world.This article centers on the three core links of the prayer ceremony seen on Chu bamboo slips-divination,sacrificial prayer,and reward.It analyzes the main content of the prayer ceremony as a whole,and is divided into four chapters.The first chapter is an overview of the prayer ceremony seen on Chu bamboo slips during the Warring States Period.It first sorts out the records of the prayer ceremony in Chu bamboo slips excavated since the 1960 s,and then goes deeper into the text content and structure of the simplified text,Taking two relatively complete bamboo slips from the Chu bamboo slips of Baoshan as an example,this paper analyzes the process of the prayer ceremony,which can be divided into three stages in chronological order: divination,prayer offering,and reward.The second,third,and fourth chapters follow the previous chapter and conduct textual research on the divination,sacrificial prayer,and reward links in the prayer ceremony.The second chapter mainly discusses the content and role of divination,introducing the role of divination in predicting the life and death of the sick person,the development of the illness,and the source of the illness,and exploring the impact of the results of divination on the subsequent prayer ceremony;The third chapter first analyzes the objects of ghosts and gods in the prayer ceremony,and studies the three main rituals of prayer,sacrifice,and attack;The fourth chapter introduces the reward link of the prayer ceremony in two parts,namely,re-occupation and competition prayer,and successively analyzes the role of re occupation and competition prayer as the closing link and ending sign of a prayer ceremony and a coherent prayer ceremony.