RAS-1984 — Page 42

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Table 1: Registered Temples in Taichung City

(112 temples with 115 oracles)

B-1 B-2 B-6 B-9 Not Avail. Other Total

(Confucian) Taoist

1

43 15

11

Buddhist

14 6

6

18

57

21 6

1

30

1

70

44

115

occasionally the temple management was unwilling to oblige. The other "not available" temples are the ones where no oracles are being used:

six are of Buddhist affiliation;

-two are folk religion temples, but closely related to the state cult, and therefore, as in the case of the Confucius temple, no oracles are used;

-one is an earth-spirit shrine, (T’u-ti-kung miao) not using

any oracles;

-in ten Buddhist temples no oracle samples could be ob- tained, because the personnel were unwilling to give them out;

-two other temples were not visited: one was a Buddhist monastery; the other, an earth-spirit shrine which do not always carry oracles.

Finally two temples presumably have B-2 oracles, but are not included in the results. Five temples, one Buddhist and four Tao- ist, had been moved to other locations, mostly because of urban- ization but sometimes because a larger building was needed and the original site was not spacious enough.

The above Table 1 clearly indicates that the temples in Tai- chung show very little diversity: among the 85 temples where oracles were found, 67% use the B-I type (“Matsu" oracle); 24.7% use the B-2 type ("Kuan Ti" oracle), while only 7%, all of Buddhist affiliation, use the B-6 type ("Kuan Yin" oracle). The only other type is unique in the city: the B-9 type. It is a variety of oracles found in temples dedicated to the legendary deified doctor, Pao- sheng Ta-ti; other varieties of this god's oracles were spotted out-