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words. The Ch'ing-ming festival, now usually seen as a festival to commemorate the dead, was in its origin a celebration of spring: all the fires, including the kitchen fires, had to be extinguished in the country; only cold food was used for two or three days. On the third day, new fire was struck, and the spring festival taking place was called “pure” and “bright”: the new fire was pure since taken directly from the source of light, the sun, and bright since it symbolized the growing strength of sunlight that was on the increase after the equinox. This interpretation of the Ch'ing-ming makes better sense than the more usual and popular explanation.14 Although the old name was retained, the meaning of the festival shifted at a later time, probably due to Buddhist influence.
De Groot sees this relighting of the fires in ancient China as a parallel with the Easter festival and with similar celebrations taking place in the ancient world, where every year the god's ritual death was followed by his resurrection:
All those legends speaking of death and resurrection, all those feasts passing from mourning to the most exuberant joy have all had one only purpose: the symbolical reproduction of the history of the sun's light and of the phases through which it passes on earth. What one worshipped was this sacred fire of Nature, which is the soul, the life of the universe, and which finds itself engaged in an ever recurring struggle against the god of Darkness, of Death, which exerts itself incessantly to obstruct it in its dispensation of benefits to man. The most significant of all the phases in this solar cycle is the one when the sun reaches the spring equinox, celebrates its victory over darkness and the days grow longer than the nights. The whole earth then starts a new life.15
Whereas in many societies the god's death and resurrection was thus ritually enacted, the Chinese example is characterized by a more rationalistic, naturalistic tendency: the object of the cult was not a particular god for whom a new name was created, but was the sun itself, as one of the heavenly bodies without strong supernatural overtones.
That this ancient custom might have inspired the Taoist priesthood to introduce it in their own rituals is not unlikely. The relationship between imperial sacrifices, Buddhist rituals, and Taoist practices is not an exception: the eclectic nature of Taoism has
98
JULIAN F. PAS
words. the Ch'ing-ming festival, now usually seen as a festival to commemorate the dead was in its origin a celebration of spring : all the fires including the kitchen fires, had to be extinguished in the country; only cold food was used for two or three days. On the third day new fire was struck, and the spring festival taking place was called “pure” and “bright”: the new fire was pure since taken directly from the source of light, the sun, and bright since it sym- bolized the growing strength of sunlight that was on the increase after the equinox. This interpretation of the ch'ing-ming makes better sense than the more usual and popular explanation.14 Al- though the old name was retained the meaning of the festival shifted at a later time, probably due to Buddhist influence.
De Groot sees this relighting of the fires in ancient China as a parallel with the Easter festival and with similar celebrations taking place in the ancient world, where every year the god's ritual death was followed by his resurrection:
All those legends speaking of death and resurrection, all those feasts passing from mourning to the most-exuberant joy have all had one only purpose: the symbolical reproduction of the history of the sun's light and of the phases through which it passes on earth. What one worshipped, was this sacred fire of Nature, which is the soul, the life of the universe, and which finds itself engaged in an ever recurring struggle against the god of Darkness, of Death, which exerts itself incessantly to obstruct it in its dispensation of benefits to man. The most significant of all the phases in this solar cycle is the one when the sun reaches the spring equinox, celebrates its victory over darkness and the days grow longer than the nights. The whole earth then starts a new life 15
Whereas in many societies the god's death and resurrection was thus ritually enacted, the Chinese example is characterized by a more rationalistic, naturalistic tendency: the object of the cult was not a particular god for whom a new name was created, but was the sun itself, as one of the heavenly bodies without strong super- natural overtones.
That this ancient custom might have inspired the Taoist priest- hood to introduce it in their own rituals, is not unlikely. The rela- tionship between imperial sacrifices, Buddhist rituals and Taoist practices is not an exception: the eclectic nature of Taoism has
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