QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA
63
will have had close associations with rice production, the festival being focused on the theme of the transplantation of the young shoots. My suggestion was that the visit paid by the ancestors to the world of the living might be regarded as return visits in response to the visits paid to the dead by the living at the Qingming festival. Qingming is an occasion for visiting the tombs of the dead. Again, it may be hypothesized that the autumnal festival of Chongyang implies another visit to the ancestors. Qingming is correlated in the agricultural calendar with sowing, Chongyang with harvesting. In such calendrical events ritual concerns with ancestry become fused with practical interests in rice production. I suggested that we may look upon the calendrical system of at least Central China in terms of the following scheme:
Qingming Duanwu Chongyang New Year Ancestors producing Ancestors reproducing Ancestors stop producing Ancestors not producing Sowing Transplantation Harvest FestivalIn this essay, I will try to carry this argument one step further by way of a close examination of such data as we have on traditional life in the Dongting Lake area in Central China, which concern the spring celebration of the Qingming festival.
3. The Grave Rituals
The main ritual focus of Qingming is the ancestral graves.10 In Wuling, people prepared wine and food which was brought to the graves. The latter were swept with bamboo branches. Bamboos were inserted in the graves, and on these branches were hung paper money. This practice was called biao fen 'top branch grave' or perhaps 'to mark the grave'. Another note tells us that the women of that town went out on strolls and ‘climbed the graveyards' 上塚.2 In Tauyuan 桃源, it was recorded that people made ji 祭 offerings on the graves before the Qingming day. They erected top branches, biao, presumably of bamboo, and hung paper on them.13
12
QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA
63
will have had close associations with rice production, the festival being focussed on the theme of the transplantation of the young shoots. My suggestion was that the visit paid by the ancestors to the world of the living might be regarded as return visits in response to the visits paid to the dead by the living at the Qingming festival. Qingming is an occasion for visiting the tombs of the dead. Again, it may be hypothesized that the autumnal festival of Chongyang implies another visit to the ancestors. Qingming is correlated in the agricultural calendar with sowing, Chongyang with harvesting. In such calendrical events ritual concerns with ancestry becomes fused with pragmatical interests in rice production. I suggested that we may look upon the calendrical system of at least Central China in terms of the following scheme:
Qingming
Duanwu
Chongyang
New Your
Ancestors producing
Ancestors reproducing
Ancestors
stop producing
Ancestors not producing
Sowing
Transplantation
Harvost
Fellow
In this essay I will try to carry this argument one step further by way of a close examination of such data as we have on traditional life in the Dongting Lake area in Central China, which concern the spring celebration of the Qingming festival.
3. The Grave Rituals
The main ritual focus of Qingming is the ancestral graves,1o In Wuling people prepared wine and food which was brought to the graves. The latter were swept with bamboo branches. Bamboos were inserted in the graves, and on these branches were hung paper money. This practice was called biao fen top branch grave' or perhaps 'to mark the grave'. Another note tells us that the women of that town went out on strolls and ‘climbed the graveyards' 上塚 2 In Tauyuan 桃源 it was recorded that people made ji 祭 offerings on the graves before the Qingming day. They erected top
L
12
branches, biao, presumably of bamboo, and hung paper on them.13
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.