23
In this 2nd table all temples have oracles since I left out the very few cases of a non-registered temple where no oracles are being used. Moreover, it appears that almost no Buddhist shrines omit official registration: therefore I found only three shrines of Buddhist affiliation in this category.
The relative frequency of the oracles in Taichung City is that the 60-slip Matsu oracle (B-1) is used three times as much as the runner up: B-2: 85 vs 28; on the other hand, B-2 is used three times as often as all the remaining ones combined: 28 vs 9. There is, of course, no guarantee that the city of Taichung is representative of Taiwan as a whole. To determine the relative spread of the temple oracles in the whole of Taiwan would be an enormous task, even if only representative samples were taken in each area. My own field work was not done systematically enough in this regard but I shall indicate the results for what they are worth: I collected 207 oracle samples from 195 temples around the island. The selection was rather casual, only on five occasions did I visit a temple mainly to collect their oracle set, (after I had found the information in Banck's publication); this was the case for B-6, -17, -24, -32, and -40; all the other ones I discovered myself.
Table 4: Temples in Taiwan, not including Taichung City (195 temples with 207 oracle sets)
B-1 B-2 B-3 B-4 B-6 B-7 B-8 B-9 Other-B Not in B Total Confucian Taoist 89 50 8 12 3 2 101 Buddhist 53 8 3 1 1 53 3 3 6 6 3 1 1 21 5 5 187 I 2 19 3 23 6 207The overall picture of Taiwan oracles shows that B-1 and B-2 still carry the great majority: B-1 reaches almost 50%, B-2 ca. 25% with no other serious contenders competing. However, a great diversity can be noticed; many more different sets are to be found than in Taichung City, even if many sets are only found in one temple (B-5, 6, 10, 11, 13, 17, 19, 21, 24, 27, 31, 32, 34, 40, 43, 44,