CHINESE RELIGION AND RURAL COHESION
15
The success of such cults depended on such things of course as the degree of participation in their rituals in an area; the efficiency in management of the rites and temples; and the spirit in which they were carried out. The main promoters from the non-official side were mostly the gentry. Villages were less likely to have flourishing cults if they lacked such persons to explain their purpose and organize them. They were less likely also to get their local worthies represented in them. The people the State wanted particularly to bring under ideological control by such means were those probably least able to participate in fact: those living in villages remote from the local seat of administration, and the dislocated peasantry living outside villages.
Although it was not the intended purpose of the cults, they brought varying degrees of power and prestige to their promoters and to the descendants of the deceased worthy. This was not without its effects on village cohesion as well as integration with the wider organization of the State. Gentry members would probably be attracted to the cults because of opportunities they offered for meeting with officials and furthering interests of their families as well as villages. Well-financed temples for the cults would also offer opportunities for personal gain.
The canonization of a local worthy could be important for community solidarity through the prestige and power it could bring. But it came to depend largely on recommendation and support of either socially prominent persons or a large number of neighbours or kinsmen. It came also to rest on payment of bribes to local officials putting the names forward, and sometimes connexion with a kinsman or locally born official working in the capital and who had control over local “appointments” of deceased worthies.10
A village without rich or socially prominent and well-connected members or where kinship did not play an important role in local affairs would be less likely to get the names of their local candidates accepted. But surrounding communities, jealous of a village's potential power, could sometimes act as a check to its ambitions through canonization. In one case brought to my attention by an informant in Hong Kong, a mono-lineage in Tun-kuan, Kwangtung, built a large temple to a local hero in the nineteenth century who possessed their own surname, TAM.
CHINESE RELIGION AND RURAL COHESION
15
The success of such cults depended on such things of course as the degree of participation in their rituals in an area; the efficiency in management of the rites and temples; and the spirit in which they were carried out. The main promoters from the non-official side were mostly the gentry. Villages were less likely to have flourishing cults if they lacked such persons to explain their purpose and organize them. They were less likely also to get their local worthies represented in them. The people the State wanted particularly to bring under ideological control by such means were those probably least able to participate in fact : those living in villages remote from the local seat of administra- tion, and the dislocated peasantry living outside villages.
Although it was not the intended purpose of the cults, they brought varying degrees of power and prestige to their promoters and to the descendants of the deceased worthy. This was not without its effects on village cohesion as well as integration with the wider organization of the State. Gentry members would probably be attracted to the cults because of opportunities they offered for meeting with officials and furthering interests of their families as well as villages. Well-financed temples for the cults would also offer opportunities for personal gain.
The canonization of a local worthy could be important for community solidarity through the prestige and power it could bring. But it came to depend largely on recommendation and support of either socially prominent persons or a large number of neighbours or kinsmen. It came also to rest on payment of bribes to local officials putting the names forward, and sometimes connexion with a kinsman or locally born official working in the capital and who had control over local “appointments" of deceased worthies.10
A village without rich or socially prominent and well-connected members or where kinship did not play an important role in local affairs would be less likely to get the names of their local candidates accepted. But surrounding communities, jealous of a village's potential power, could sometimes act as a check to its ambitions through canonization. In one case brought to my attention by an informant in Hong Kong, a mono-lineage in Tun- kuan, Kwangtung, built a large temple to a local hero in the nineteenth century who possessed their own surname, TAM. The
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