Rituals, Pantheons and Techniques: A History of Chinese Religion before the Tang
14-16 December | December 18-21 2007
Paris, France
International Conference Organized by the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE), Department of Religious Studies (Paris), and the UMR 7133 Centre de recherché sur les civilisations chinoise, japonaise et tibétaine and Sponsored by the following institutions:
Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange
The United Board of Christian Education
Earmarked Grant from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, "Local Religion and Society in Southeast China" (CUHK 4116/03H)
The Brill Publishing Company
The International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS)
Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) Section 32
Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO)
Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS)
For any queries with regard to the content and registration, please contact the main organizer and convenor Prof. John Lagerwey: john.lagerwey@neuf.fr
The intense study of Chinese religion over the last thirty years has led to fundamental changes in the way we see Chinese history and civilization. The traditional paradigm, that saw China as an empire governed by an agnostic, philosophically sophisticated elite and populated by superstitious masses, has been overturned, but nothing coherent has replaced it. The present undertaking aims at doing precisely that: create a new paradigm for the understanding of Chinese religion, starting with the ancient period and going down to the end of the sixth century, by which time the basic contours of Chinese religion had stabilized into the familiar configuration of the Three Teachings and what most students now call shamanism.
If this has not been attempted hitherto, it is at least in part because of the explosion of knowledge and the increasing specialization that accompanies it. But it is also because of the lack of a unifying theory or, at the very least, methodology. The answer of the present project to the first difficulty is to invite the best specialists to work together and, to the second, to propose a common approach. It is this common approach which will be the key to success or failure and which, therefore, requires explanation.
This approach is, in the first place, pluri-disciplinary, relying on philology, archaeology, and epigraphy as the foundations of any well-rounded account of an ancient society in which texts remain a primary source. In a certain sense, the key role is played here by archaeology, in part because of the vast range of new textual and iconographic materials it has provided, but also and perhaps above all because material remains, deposited in tombs whose shape and contents vary over time and space, offer hitherto unimagined, nearly direct access to daily life, actual practice (as opposed to ideological prescription), and regional cultural variety. The project will exploit all of these new resources.
The second critical feature of the approach adopted is that it is at once sociological and anthropological. The determined focus of the work on rituals, pantheons, and techniques reflects the weaning away of religious studies from philosophy, thanks in large part to the impact of the anthropological study of societies without written texts. Religion is now seen to consist in techniques of communication with the Invisible; it is about what people do, whom they address, and how. Mythology and other modes of discourse are implicit in ritual gestures, spatial dispositions, and iconographic traditions.
The search for meaning in Chinese religion must give pride of place to this implicit as opposed to the explicit discourse because it is through rituals and around specific gods that social groups are constituted and the empire defines itself. The discovery of the centrality of ritual in Chinese social and political life and elite discourse concerning them is relatively recent, but it has come increasingly to dominate the Sinological agenda. In organizing the chapters of each successive volume around the two basic issues of religion and society and religion and the state, the project aims at keeping the focus on the sociological dimensions of religion. Inclusion of chapters on hagiography, sacred geography, and festival calendars confirms the overriding emphasis on religion as practiced.
But perhaps the most important innovation of all is the inclusion of shamanism, because if the emergence of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism as China's three major religious traditions is the central subject of Chinese religious history from the founding of the empire in 221 BCE down to the end of the sixth century, this emergence goes together with a joint attack on traditional, shamanistic modes of interaction with the invisible world. But shamanism does not just go softly into the deep, dark night. It remains central to popular forms of religion to this day, and its Buddhist and Taoist rivals for ritual monopoly also integrated important aspects of shamanism into their own practices. Any history of Chinese religion which considers Chinese society to be its real subject ignores this dynamic interaction at its peril.
Conference I. Early China (December 14-16)
DAY 1
9 a.m. Welcome
Session 1 The archaic background
Chairperson:
9.30-10.30 Robert Eno (Indiana University), Shang State Religion and the Pantheon of the Oracle Texts
Discussant: Olivier Venture (École Pratique des Hautes Études)
10.30-10.45 Coffee break
10.45-11.45 Martin Kern (Princeton University), Bronze inscriptions and the Shijing: the evolution of the ancestor cult
Discussant: John Lagerwey (École Pratique des Hautes Études)
11.45-12.45
Kominami Ichiro 小南一郎(Kyoto University), The earth god cult in the Shang and the Zhou 社の祭祀とその機能
Discussant: Robert Eno (Indiana University)
12.45-14.30 Lunch break
Session 2 Religion and society in the Warring States and the Han
Chairperson:
14.30-15.30 Marc Kalinowski (École Pratique des Hautes Études), From scapulomancy and achilleomancy to calendarology: religious change and conflict (La divination sous les Zhou Orientaux)
Discussant: Martin Kern (Princeton University)
15.30-16.30 Mu-chou Poo (Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica), A typology of ritual and ritual texts: covenants, curses, and exorcisms
Discussant: Michael Puett (Harvard University)
16.30-16.45 Coffee break
Chairperson:
16.45-17.45 Yuri Pines (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Chinese history writing between the sacred and the secular
Discussant: Jean Lévi (Centre national de la recherche scientifique)
17.45-18.45 Jean Lévi (Centre national de la recherche scientifique), Philosophical debate in the Warring States: Dao, the rites, and the law (Le rite, la norme, le Tao: philosophie du sacrifice et transcendence du pouvoir en Chine ancienne)
Discussant: Yuri Pines (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
DAY 2
Session 2 Religion and society in the Warring States and the Han (contd.)
Chairperson:
9.00-10.00 Alain Thote (École Pratique des Hautes Études), An Archaeological Approach to Religion: Major Changes in the Burial Practices and Religious Iconography during the Warring States Period
Discussant: Mu-chou Poo (Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica)
10.00-11.00 Li Jianmin, Etiology, the Medical Canon and the Transformation of Medical Techniques (Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica)
Discussant: Catherine Despeux (University of Paris-Dauphine)
11.00-11.15 Coffee break
11.15-12.15 Shamanism: its gods, rituals and role in society 先秦至兩漢時期的巫者與巫俗 (Fu-shih Lin, Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica)
Discussant: Kominami Ichiro 小南一郎 (Kyoto University)
12.15-14.00 Lunch break
Chairperson:
14.00-15.00 Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) Ritual practices for the construction of terrestial space
Discussant: Marianne Bujard (École française d'Extrême-Orient)
Session 3 Religion and the state in the Han
15.00-16.00 Marianne Bujard (École française d'Extrême-Orient) The official pantheon and state sacrifices; state policy and local religion (Cultes d'Etat et cultes locaux dans la religion des Han)
Discussant: Fu-shih Lin (Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica)
16.00-16.15 Coffee break
Chairperson:
16.15-17.15 Michael Nylan (University of California, Berkeley), Learning and legitimacy; the emergence of a Canon and commentarial traditions
Discussant: Grégoire Espesset (Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica)
17.15-18.15 Michael Puett (Harvard University), Ritual compendia: emergence, status, commentaries
Discussant: Michael Nylan (University of California, Berkeley)
DAY 3
Session 4 Religion and society in the Han
Chairperson:
9.00-10.00 Michèle Pirazzoli-t'Serstevens (École Pratique des Hautes Études), An Archaeological Approach to Religion : Burial Practices, Beliefs in the Afterlife and Religious Iconography in the Han Period (Autour de la mort et des morts: pratiques et images à l'époque des Qin et des Han)
Discussant : Lothar von Falkenhausen (University of California at Los Angeles)
10.00-11.00 Mark Csikszentmihalyi (University of Wisconsin), Ethics and their relationship to self-cultivation practice
Discussant: Romain Graziani (École Normale Supérieure)
11.00-11.15 Coffee break
11.15-12.15 Liu Tseng-kui (Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica), Festivals, customs, and taboos
Discussant: Michèle Pirazzoli-t'Serstevens (École Pratique des Hautes Études)
12.15-14.00 Lunch break
Chairperson:
14.00-15.00 Ken Brashier (Reed College), Eastern Han commemorative stelae: Laying the cornerstones of public memory
Discussant: Alain Thote (École Pratique des Hautes Études)
15.00-16.00 Grégoire Espesset (Institute of Humanities, Kyoto University), Later Han Taoist Movements and Their Sources
Discussant: Terry Kleeman (University of Colorado
16.00-16.15 Coffee break
Session 5 Religion and the Individual
Chairperson:
16.15-17.15 Romain Graziani (École Normale Supérieure), The Subject and the Sovereign: Defining the Self in Early Chinese Self-Cultivation
Discussant: Mark Csikszentmihalyi (University of Wisconsin)
Conference II. The Six Dynasties (December 18-21)
DAY 1
Session 1 Religion and the state
Chairperson:
9.00-10.00 Li Gang李刚 (四川大学宗教研究所 ), State policy toward religion 魏晋南北朝政府宗教政策
Discussant : Liu Shu-fen (Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica)
10.00-11.00 Chen Shuguo陳戍國 (湖南大學嶽麓書院), Confucian rituals of the state religion 魏晋南北朝儒家宗教礼仪
Discussant: Keith Knapp (Citadel)
11.00-11.15 Coffee break
11.15-12.15 Sylvie Hureau (University of Paris-Dauphine), Translations, apocrypha, and the emergence of the Buddhist canon
Discussant: Dan Stevenson (University of Kansas)
12.15-14.00 Lunch break
Chairperson:
14.00-15.00 Wang Chengwen王 承 文 (广州中山大学历史系) , Revelations, classification systems, and the emergence of the Taoist canon 道经的降世和道经分类体系的形成及其意义
Discussant: Stephen Bokenkamp (Indiana University)
15.00-16.00 Mugitani Kunio麦谷邦夫 (Kyoto University), Relations between the Three Teachings魏晋南北朝における三教関係
Discussant : James Robson (University of Michigan)
16.00-16.15 Coffee break
Session 2 Religion and society
Chairperson:
16.15-17.15 Liu Shu-fen (Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica), Ritual, charity, and the spread of Buddhism in medieval Chinese society
Discussant: Hou Xudong 侯旭东 (中国社会科学院历史研究所 )
17.15-18.15 Lai Chi Tim (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Taoist contrasts: North and South, elite and popular
Discussant: Wang Chengwen王 承 文 (广州中山大学历史系)
DAY 2
Session 2 Religion and society (contd.)
Chairperson:
9.00-9.45 Fu-shih Lin (Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica), Shamanism: its gods, rituals and role in society六朝時期的巫者與巫俗
Discussant : Li Gang李刚 (四川大学宗教研究所)
9.45-10.30 Yen Chüan-ying (Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Buddhist sculpture 中國佛教雕刻史
Discussant: Li Yuqun 李裕群 (中国社会科学院考古研究所)
10.30-11.15 Terry Kleeman (University of Colorado) Community and Daily Life in the Early Daoist Church
Discussant: Lü Pengzhi (四川大学宗教研究所)
11.15-11.30 Coffee break
11.30-12.15 Zhang Xunliao 張 勳 燎 (四川大学考古学系), Taoist zaoxiangbei道 教 造 像 碑
Discussant: Lai Chi Tim (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
12.15-14.00 Lunch break
Chairperson:
14.00-15.00 Li Yuqun 李裕群 (中国社会科学院考古研究所), The iconography and spatial organization of Buddhist caves and temples 佛教石窟和寺庙的图像与空间布局
Discussant: Yen Chüan-ying (Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica)
15.00-16.00 John Kieschnick (Bristol University), Buddhist Monasticism in Early Medieval China Discussant: Kuo Li-ying (École française d'Extrême-Orient)
16.00-16.15 Coffee break
Chairperson:
16.15-17.15 Keith Knapp (Citadel), Borrowing Legitimacy from the Dead: The Confucianization of Ancestral Worship in Early Medieval China
Discussant: Bai Bin白彬 (四川大学考古学系)
17.15-18.15 Bai Bin白彬 (四川大学考古学系), Religious Beliefs in Grave Materials from the Six Dynasties 坟墓建筑、方向及墓葬出土材料中的宗教信仰
Discussant: Alain Thote (École Pratique des Hautes Études)
DAY 3
Session 2 Religion and society (contd.)
Chairperson:
9.00-10.00 Dan Stevenson (University of Kansas), ‘Doing the Work of the Buddhas': Buddhist Liturgy, Liturgics, and Liturgists in Early Medieval China
Discussant: Sylvie Hureau (University of Paris-Dauphine)
10.00-11.00 Lü Pengzhi 吕鹏志 (四川大学宗教研究所), The types and history of Taoist ritual
Discussant: Maruyama Hiroshi丸山宏 (University of Tsukuba筑波大学)
11.00-11.15 Coffee break
11.15-12.15 Hou Xudong 侯旭东 (中国社会科学院历史研究所 ), The Buddhist pantheon佛教神系
Discussant: Françoise Wang-Toutain (Centre national de la recherche scientifique)
12.15-14.00 Lunch break
Chairperson:
14.00-15.00 Stephen Bokenkamp (Indiana University), The Taoist pantheon
Discussant: John Lagerwey (École Pratique des Hautes Études)
15.00-16.00 Mu-chou Poo (Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica), Images and ritual treatment of dangerous spirits
Discussant: Christine Mollier (Centre national de la recherche scientifique)
16.00-16.15 Coffee break
Chairperson:
16.15-17.15 James Robson (University of Michigan), Pre-Tang Buddhist Sacred Geography in China
Discussant: Mugitani Kunio麦谷邦夫 (Kyoto University)
17.15-18.15 Gil Raz (Dartmouth College), Worlds Within: Daoist Sacred Geography
Discussant: Ian Chapman (Princeton University)
DAY 4
Session 2 Religion and society (contd.)
Chairperson:
9.00-10.00 Ian Chapman (Princeton University), Festivals
Discussant: François Martin (École Pratique des Hautes Études)
10.00-11.00 Robert Campany (University of Southern California), Adepts and Their Communities (pre-350 C.E.)
Discussant: John Kieschnick, Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica)
11.00-11.15 Coffee break
Session 3 Religion and the individual
Chairperson:
11.15-12.15 Catherine Despeux (University of Paris-Dauphine), Representations of the body; techniques of long life; the internal pantheon; meditation, imagination, and contemplation
Discussant: Gil Raz (Dartmouth College)
12.15-14.00 Lunch break
Chairperson:
14.00-15.00 François Martin (École Pratique des Hautes Études), Lay Buddhism and poetry
Discussant : Paul Kroll (University of Colorado)
15.00-16.00 Paul Kroll (University of Colorado), Taoism and literature
Discussant: Robert Campany (University of Southern California)
Terry Kleeman (University of Colorado) Community and Daily Life in the Early Daoist Church