[
    {
        "id": 208719,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1979",
        "page_number": 176,
        "title": "RAS-1979",
        "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION REDISCUSSED\n\nJULIAN F. Pas*\n\nThis is a review article partially intended as a book review of Philip Baity's Religion in a Chinese Town1 but also as a reopening of the discussion on Chinese religion, with emphasis on the popular religion. The setting is Taiwan, but the subject can hardly be contained to this small island and somehow reflects the problems of religion in China as a whole.\n\nIn recent years there has been a revival of interest in the study of Chinese religion. This monograph by P. C. Baity is a most welcome addition to the number of more serious works on the topic and shall have to be taken into account by all future researchers. Based on field work carried out in Northern Taiwan (Tamsui and Peit'ou) between 1968 and 1970, the present work is a reproduction of the author's doctoral dissertation. His viewpoint is primarily anthropological: besides summarizing his field work results, he also offers a new way of interpreting the paradoxical relationship between the three traditional religions of China and \"the array of folk religious beliefs and practices which are characteristic of the great majority of people in both villages and towns.” (p. vii).\n\nAlthough the author has done his research carefully and provides us with a mass of new information and new insights, I still have serious reservations about his overall thesis: a new interpretation of the relationship between the three classical religions and the folk religion. In this review I shall summarize and evaluate each chapter in turn, offering a more synthetic presentation of my views on the author's new interpretation.\n\nChapter 1, \"The Development of Temples in the Field Area\" (pp. 15-53), sketches the development of temples in the area under study. From the time of immigration to Taiwan on a more significant scale...\n\n* Julian Pas is Associate Professor, Department of Far Eastern Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada.\n\n1 Baity, Philip Chesley. Religion in a Chinese Town, (Asian Folklore and Social Life Monographs, vol. 64, edited by Lou Tsu-K'uang). Taipei: The Orient Cultural Service, 1975. (ix-307 pp.) U.S. $7.00.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 208760,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1979",
        "page_number": 217,
        "title": "RAS-1979",
        "content_text": "190\n\nJULIAN F. PAS\n\nbe followed. In other words, for the average Chinese, religion is a socially important value system to make for a smooth functioning of human relationships as much as it is a method to obtain divine favours to increase the effectiveness of human efforts toward the realization of a happy life.\n\nEND-NOTES\n\n1 This paper was first presented at the joint panel of the CASA and the CSSR on Chinese Religion at the Conference of the Learned Societies in Saskatoon, May 1979.\n\n2 Compare the five-volume work written by J. J. M. de Groot: The Religious System of China; although it is mainly based on his field work done in Amoy, it is considered to be a standard work on Chinese religion in general.\n\n3 See P. C. Baity, Religion in a Chinese Town (Asian Folklore and Social Life Monographs, no. 64), Taipei: The Orient Cultural Service, 1975. (See my review article pp. of this issue).\n\n4 See various ceremonial and memorial booklets issued by the Municipal Government of Taipei, Tainan and Taichung, e.g., Ta-ch'eng chih-sheng hsien-shih K'ung-tzu shih-tsun chien-shuo, Taipei, 1974, Ta-ch'eng chih-sheng hsien-shih K'ung-tzu shih-tsun chien-chieh (Memorial Service for Confucius on his Birthday), Taichung, 1977.\n\n5 See Y. Raguin, S.J., \"Buddhism in Taiwan\", pp. 179-185 in H. Dumoulin, ed. Buddhism in the Modern World, London, New York: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1976.\n\n6 Questions and Answers about the Republic of China (Taipei: Chung-hua Information Service, 1978), p. 17.\n\n7 W. L. Grichting, The Value System in Taiwan 1970: A Preliminary Report. Taipei, 1971. (Quoted by Y. Raguin).\n\n8 See for example Taiwan Tzu-miao ch'uan-chi, Ed. by Wang I-han, Taichung Luan-yu Journal Society, 1977. Lists of local temples issued by municipal governments follow the same pattern. However, the more scholarly but antiquated list published in the Taiwan Gazetteer and adopted by Lin Heng-tao divides the temples into three main groups: Taoist, Buddhist, folk-religion (t'ung-su).\n\n9 See Lin Heng-tao, Taiwan Szu-miao Ta-ch'uan, Taipei: Ch'ing-wen Publishing Company, 1974.\n\n10 See M. Saso \"The Taoist Tradition in Taiwan\", China Quarterly No. 41 (1970), 83-102.\n\n11 M. Saso, \"Red-Head and Black-Head: the Classification of the Taoists of Taiwan according to the Documents of the 61st Heavenly Master,\" Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica (Taipei), 30 (1970).\n\n12 See H. Welch, \"The Chang T'ien-shih and Taoism in China\", Journal of the Oriental Society 4 (1957-58), 188-212.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938",
        "rank": 0
    }
]