18
MARJORIE TOPLEY
were usually financed from donations.15 According to Arthur Smith, a well-known writer about rural China in the nineteenth century, money was sometimes raised by making assessments on the land of different households.16 A common practice was to inscribe the names of donors and the amounts donated on a tablet to be placed permanently in the temple built with the funds raised. This is still the practice in overseas Chinese society today.
The main finances for popular temples commonly came from a few wealthy individuals however. Donors of large sums were likely to be made members of a temple's board of trustees and would have a say in the running and management of some of its affairs, an attraction to those seeking influence in a community. The State despaired that people gave generously to funds for popular temples but were niggardly about funds required for temples for Confucius.17 Rich scholars were said to have much control of popular temples, and since they were largely outside State control, they might have given more opportunities for personal power than the more directly politically-influenced State cults.
Management of temples to popular gods would be unlikely to involve scholars in ideological conflict. They did not usually, as in the ancestral cults, concern themselves with the strictly religious activities taking place inside, and the cults themselves, and the gods they served, were not "owned", so to speak, by any particular religious system. Worship of them was open to all and did not commit the individual to membership of a wider religious organization. The question of who organized the religious activities themselves will be considered presently.
The extent that organization of temples to popular gods was used by individuals of means to increase power and prestige would depend perhaps on the alternatives the community could offer in this respect. But there is much evidence that temple organization could become quite extensive and provide a means for regulating some aspects of a community's life. The most favourable conditions for such development were probably found in the multi-lineage. Some mono-lineages had temples to popular gods certainly, and the temple to the god surnamed TAM referred to earlier owned property. But it was, in fact, promoted by the
18
MARJORIE TOPLEY
were usually financed from donations.15 According to Arthur Smith, a well known writer about rural China in the nineteenth century, money was sometimes raised by making assessments on the land of different households.16 A common practice was to inscribe the names of donors and the amounts donated on a tablet to be placed permanently in the temple built with the funds raised. This is still the practice in overseas Chinese society today.
The main finances for popular temples commonly came from a few wealthy individuals however. Donors of large sums were likely to be made members of a temple's board of trustees and would have a say in the running and management of some of its affairs an attraction to those seeking influence in a community. The State despaired that people gave generously to funds for popular temples but were niggardly about funds required for temples for Confucius, 17 Rich scholars were said to have much control of popular temples, and since they were largely outside State control they might have given more opportunities for per- sonal power than the more directly politically-influenced State cults.
Management of temples to popular gods would be unlikely to involve scholars in ideological conflict. They did not usually, as in the ancestral cults, concern themselves with the strictly religious activities taking place inside and the cults themselves, and the gods they served, were not "owned", so to speak, by any particular religious system. Worship of them was open to all and did not commit the individual to membership of a wider religious organi- zation. The question of who organized the religious activities themselves will be considered presently.
The extent that organization of temples to popular gods was used by individuals of means to increase power and prestige would depend perhaps on the alternatives the community could offer in this respect. But there is much evidence that temple organization could become quite extensive and provide a means for regulating some aspects of a community's life. The most favourable con- ditions for such development were probably found in the multi- lineage. Some mono-lineages had temples to popular gods cer- tainly, and the temple to the god surnamed TAM referred to earlier owned property. But it was, in fact, promoted by the
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