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always foretold by noise made automatically by a cane, presumably left by the monk, as if the uneasiness of the enlightened monk in the presence of his own folks continues even after his death."3
If the tradition of ordination was so persistent despite contact with "orthodox" Daoism and Buddhism, the sudden disappearance of the ordination names among ancestors from the 17th century, and the fact that the genealogist writing around the 1920s is apparently unaware of such practice, is all the more interesting. We may get hints from the genealogist who spent four pages to refute any connection of the lang names with priests/sorcerers. He lived between around 1856 to 1946, was appointed a jiaoshi (“professor”?) at the Jingshi Daxue (“Capital University”) of the Qing. Among the evidence he cited was that in his family that produced ten generations of scholar/bureaucrats it would have been an insult to accept ordination names from priests/sorcerers. He makes the point to prescribe omission of du (“ordination”) before the lang names in genealogies and spirit tablets, and adds di “number (")" before these names. One wonders if the opinion of people of such status as this genealogist would be sufficient to put a stop to the practice of ordination. But other genealogists mentioned above, some perhaps not so many decades before him, saw in those names indications that the ancestors had attained immortality. In any case, the opinion of this scholar/bureaucrat is a contrast to the sorcerer's view in which fangming and gongming were comparable as titles of prestige. Luo Xianglin, the Hakka scholar who wants the Hakka to be known as "Tarmei-scholars” and perhaps “farmer-nationalists” would not, similarly, want the Hakka to be thought of as “farmer-sorcerers". In a passage from the genealogy of the Lius explaining the two special styles of names among ancestors as given by “Daoists”, Luo inserted a note saying that "this is not correct, see the Genealogy of the Luos of Luobo ***.
But, as I have already mentioned, the two Hakka scholars do not have to look further than the Guangdong Xinyu and the local gazetteers to see that the villagers' beliefs are not "fictitious", as they claimed. Moreover, the practice of ordination continued well into the 19th Century according to county gazetteers. The absence in genealogies of ancestors born in that period bearing ordination names probably reflects the fact that ordination continues but is no...
113
always foretold by noise made automatically by a cane, presumably left by the monk, as if the uneasiness of the enlightened monk in the presence of his own folks continues even after his death."3
If the tradition of ordination was so persistent despite contact with "orthodox" Daoism and Buddhism, the sudden disappearance of the ordination names among ancestors from the 17th century, and the fact that the genealogist writing around the 1920s is apparently unaware of such practice, is all the more interesting. We may get hints from the genealogist who spent four pages to refute any connection of the lang names with priests /sorcerers. He lived between around 1856 to 1946, was appointed a jiaoshi (“professor”?) at the Jingshi Daxue (“Capital University”) of the Qing Among the evidence he cited was that in his family that produced the ten generation of scholar/bureaucrats it would have been an insult to accept ordination names from priests /sorcerers. He makes the point to prescribe omission of du (“ordination”) before the lang names in genealogies and spirit tablets, and adds di “number (")" before these names. One wonders if opinion of people of such status as this genealogist would be sufficient to put a stop to the practice of ordination. But other genealogists mentioned above, some perhaps not so many decades before him, saw in those names indications that the ancestors had attained immortality. In any case, the opinion of this scholar/bureaucrat is a contrast to the sorcerer's view in which fangming and gongming was comparable as titles of prestige Luo Xianglin, the Hakka scholar who wants the Hakka to be known as "Tarmei-scholars” and perhaps “farmer-nationalists” would not, similarly, want the Hakka to be thought of as “farmer- sorcerers" In a passage from the genealogy of the Lius explaining the two special style of names among ancestors as given by “Daoists”, Luo inserted a note saying that "this is not correct, see the Genealogy of the Luos of Luobo ***
But, as I have already mentioned, the two Hakka scholars do not have to look further than the Guangdong Xinyu and the local gazetteers to see that the villagers' beliefs are not "fictitious”, are they claimed. Moreover, the practice of ordination continued well into the 19th Century according to county gazetteers. The absence in genealogies of ancestors born in that period bearing ordination names probably reflects the fact that ordination continues but is no
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