38
the divinity of these chthonic domains. That underworld was also the universe of the dead in their graves. In a sense the altar, or shrine, of the She (She Ji) may have been intuited as a symbolic epitome of the collective of graves, but this would then have been a synthesis of death and the dead with a difference. In grave worship it was explicitly dead individuals who were addressed, and possibly also a multitude of such individuals, all of whom were discursively brought together by a grammar of agnatic kinship. It may be significant that, as in Yuanjiang, the recently dead should be worshipped at their graves before the She Day—when they were still 'uncollectivized' individuals. Perhaps they were incorporated into the She and the common ground of the vicinage on this very day. In a social landscape filled with localized lineage communities, it may be that the dead of an area or a neighbourhood were always former members of a particular localized lineage. But that may not always have been true.
We might hypothesize that the She was a manifestation of the collectivity of the dead in an area, an aggregation of 'death force' without discrimination in terms of agnatic kinship. The She brought his worshippers the blessings of the vegetative power of the underground and its inhabitants for the coming crops, for the production of rice and the reproduction of society. This train of thought would also account for the political component, the She being the centripetal energy in a demarcated space—in contrast to ancestors and their cults which were articulated in idioms of time, to enhance various particularized claims of specific kinship communities. The She was, like the Imperial administration, for everyone and, in the final analysis, the Emperor was the mediator of the blessings of the underground for his Imperial realm.
About the same time, and in the same annual phase of spring and vernal tasks in the agricultural cycle, people in the Dongting area also celebrated the Flower Dawn. This was a festival of certain female presuppositions, being connected with the full moon. People observed the awakening Nature, the re-emergence of butterflies and other insects and the sprouting vegetation. They sought out areas outside of towns and villages for outings with picnics and games. On occasion, this seasonal striving upwards from the ground in the direction of Heaven, was made symbolically explicit by the flying of paper kites. The day was one on which initiatives were taken to betroth young women and,
Page 90
Page 91