Formation of the Traditional Chinese State Ritual System of Sacrifice to Mountain and Water Spirits
Sacrifice to mountain and water spirits was already a state ritual in the earliest dynasties of China, which later gradually formed a system of five sacred peaks, five strongholds, four seas, and four waterways, which was mainly constructed by the Confucian ritual culture. A number of modern scholar...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2021
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| In: |
Religions
Year: 2021, Volume: 12, Issue: 5 |
| Further subjects: | B
four waterways
B state ritual system of sacrifice B five strongholds B Chinese historical geography B five sacred peaks B Chinese religion B four seas |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | Sacrifice to mountain and water spirits was already a state ritual in the earliest dynasties of China, which later gradually formed a system of five sacred peaks, five strongholds, four seas, and four waterways, which was mainly constructed by the Confucian ritual culture. A number of modern scholars have studied the five sacred peaks from different perspectives, yielding fruitful results, but major issues are still being debated or need to be plumbed more broadly and deeply, and the whole sacrificial system has not yet drawn sufficient attention. Applying a combined approach of religious, historical, geographical, and political studies, I provide here, with new discoveries and conclusions, the first comprehensive study of the formational process of this sacrificial system and its embodied religious-political conceptions, showing how these geographical landmarks were gradually integrated with religious beliefs and ritual-political institutions to become symbols of territorial, sacred, and political legitimacy that helped to maintain the unification and government of the traditional Chinese imperium for two thousand years. A historical map of the locations of the sacrificial temples for the eighteen mountain and water spirits is appended. |
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| ISSN: | 2077-1444 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religions
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.3390/rel12050319 |