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MARJORIE TOPLEY
village ran a lucrative cult to which outsiders were also admitted. Members of the village claimed the god as ancestor and wished him raised to the status of local worthy. But the kinship connexion was not accepted by outsiders and the village's attempts were also blocked by gentry members living in neighbouring communities and they failed.
But canonization could work against a community's cohesion as well as for it. It brought prestige first of all to the local worthy's immediate descendants: their offspring received official buttons in recognition and a tablet to the deceased was put in the local Temple of Worthies. It was usually the immediate descendants who initiated campaigns to support a canonization case, families competing in putting forward their fathers, mothers and paternal grandparents for spiritual promotion, and quarrels could strike up among them.
The State eventually attempted to prevent such situations by disqualifying the recently dead. The attempts also of rich scholars with high degrees, and officials, to seek canonization for their own ancestors sometimes resulted in conflicts with low-ranking poorer scholars and also with rich merchants. A case is cited by Hsiao of a deserving father of a low-ranking scholar being denied canonization, another concerns promotion of a merchant's deceased father whose claim had been supported by the local gentry of his village. High-ranking scholars in the area had protested against his inclusion and petitioned the administration to rescind their authorization.12
3. Local Gods, their Cults and Village Cohesion
Standing in a sense between the State cults described above and cults of purely local significance, and of less direct interest to the State, were those dedicated to a group of gods who formed a celestial system of government. This system included ministries and local government and was considered to be interdependent in its workings with the system of government by man (the emperor however had ultimate control over the appointment and dismissal of celestial recruits). Gods serving in the territorial administration were in charge of the same kinds of unit as their earthly counterparts — provinces, districts etc., and gods representing lower level units were under control of gods operating at higher levels. The State took great interest in these gods and