96
that the religion is of Han origin. e.g. the use of Han language in the manuals, especially when the Yao use it for ritual purposes alone; that the Southern Song Daoist's description, to be discussed later, of the "ancestry" of the sorcerers magic does not mention at all that this is the practice of a minority people; and that major elements of the tradition (though perhaps not ordination itself) is shared by the Fujian, Cantonese and Hakka ritual specialists.
Hakka genealogies have adopted different theories about those names. One asserts that those names were given by "Daoists". One example is a genealogy of the Lius, revised probably in 1920.
In the previous compilation names of ancestors from Song to Yuan times had names calling them fa and lang, with numbers involving ten, hundred, thousand to ten thousand, and disregarding seniority among brothers. It was because customs of those times gave Daoists considerable power, to the extent that names were given by Daoists."
Similarly, the genealogy of the Lins of Hang Ha Po explained that "during that time [which?] it was popular to be ordained by the Heavenly Master Zhang. Those who obtained such ordination are to be called by their famung and langhao, which is to be passed down to future generations and never forgotten." That such a claim cannot be wholly true can be shown easily by comparing the names with those found in Daoist ritual documents. There the Daoist names, although possibly different from the everyday names that they identify, are not different in form from ordinary names.
Another example, the Sixing He's 4th Genealogy, claimed that the eleven sons and one daughter of an ancestor Weitai, had all attained the status of immortals; they are therefore identified by langming ordination names in their entries. Yet another theory is proposed in the genealogy of the Luos of Luobo, compiled between 1914 and 1930. It contains a lengthy attempt to refute interpretation of lang names as ordination names. It objected to what it alleged to be popular belief that such names were religious names given by Shimu sorcerers. Basically, it brings our attention to lang being used as a rank during the Yuan and Ming dynasties, and numbers possibly used to refer to heads of household. This does not explain the combination of lang and the numeric expressions, especially those prefixed by a non-numeric character. Nor does it explain the ordination names of the other format. More importantly, his theory