RAS-1984 — Page 43

22

JULIAN PAS

side Taichung, especially in Tainan City.

The majority of temples using the B-1 oracle (Matsu) are not dedicated to the goddess Matsu, but to a variety of gods and god- desses of the popular cult. In most cases Matsu has her image in these temples as well, but many deities do not have a particular set of their own and borrow the most commonly used one. Most of these oracle slips are printed in Taichung by a local printing shop, which also publishes the Matsu, Kuan Ti and Kuan Yin oracles in booklet form. (See Appendix I and bibliography).

Besides the above listed temples, duly registered in the city hall of Taichung, I discovered during my marathon walks crisscross through the city, a considerable number of smaller temples, often essentially private family shrines to which the public are allowed access, which also contain temple oracles for the use of worship- pers. These temples are not found in the City Hall list since the owners do not wish government interference in their operations. Moveover, there is no strict rule that these semi-private shrines have to be registered. It is also possible that these smaller shrines do not fully satisfy some of the conditions outlined by the govern- ment.

Table 2: Non-registered temples or shrines in Taichung City (36 temples: 37 oracles)

B-1 B-2 B-6 B-43 Not Avail. Total

Taoist Buddhist

26

6

1

1

2

1

28

7

1

1

34

3

37

The grand total of Tables 1 and 2 combined are as follows:

Table 3: Registered and Non-registered Temples in Taichung City

B-I B-2 B-6 B-9 B-43 Other Not Avail. Total

Confucian

1

1

Taoist

69

21

1

1

11

104

Buddhist

16

7

6

18

47

85

28

7 1 1 0

30

152

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