The Concept of Soul in Chinese Folk Religion

¹ Because “soul” is merely a convenient and approximate conventional gloss for ling-hun, rather than an exact translation, I use quotation marks when speaking of the Chinese concept of “soul.”

² By “folk religion” I mean the religious beliefs and practices of the peasantry and other non-elite classes in late traditional China and in modern Chinese society outside the People's Republic. This term specifically excludes the textual religions (the State Cult, Buddhism, and Taoism) and also the beliefs and practices of religious specialists.

³ Wolf, Arthur P., “Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors,” in Wolf, Arthur P., ed., Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press), 1974, pp. 131–82;Jordan, David K., Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1972), pp. 31–41;Hsiao-t'ung, Fei, Peasant Life in China (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1939), p. 168;Johnston, R. F., Lion and Dragon in Northern China (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1910), p. 362;Shyrock, John, The Temples of Anking and Their Cults (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Guethner, 1931), pp. 45–6.

⁴ “Gods” is a bad translation for most shen, who are usually limited in power and of human origin. “Saints” would be better, but I retain “gods” because it is conventional.

⁵ Ahern, Emily M., “Sacred and Secular Medicine in a Taiwan Village,” in Kleinman, Arthur, et al., eds., Medicine in Chinese Cultures (Washington, D.C.: Fogarty International Center, 1975), pp. 91–113; Katherine Gould-Martin, “Medical Systems in a Taiwan Village,” in Kleinman, Medicine in Chinese Cultures, pp.115–41.

⁶ Gould-Martin, Katherine, “Women Asking Women,” Diss. Rutgers University 1976, pp. 100–101.

⁷ Elliott, Alan, Chinese Spirit Medium Cults in Singapore (London: Athlone Press, 1955); Jordan, pp. 67–84.

⁸ Ahern, Emily M., “The Power and Pollution of Chinese Women,” in Wolf, Margery and Witke, Roxane, eds., Women in Chinese Society (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 196–97; Gould-Martin, Women Asking Women, pp. 120–27.

⁹ Gould-Martin, Women Asking Women, pp. 100–101; Jack Potter, “Cantonese Shamanism,” in Wolf, Religion and Ritual, p. 212.

¹⁰ Ahern, Emily M., The Cult of the Dead in a Chinese Village (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1973), pp. 229–35;Fielde, Adele M., A Corner of Cathay (New York: Macmillan, 1894), pp. 152–58.

¹¹ Elliott, Chinese Spirit Medium Cults; Jordan, pp. 67–84; Potter, “Cantonese Shamanism.”

¹² Fukutaro, Masuda, Taiwan Hontojin no Shukyo (Tokyo: Meiji Seitoku Kinen Gakkai, 1935), p. 61; Wolf, “Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors.”

¹³ For a good general account, see Maurice Freedman, “On the Sociological Study of Chinese Religion,” in Wolf, Religion and Ritual, pp. 19–42.

¹⁴ The beliefs of Chu Hsi, for example, are described in DeGroot, J. J. M., The Religious System of China (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1901), IV, 75.

¹⁵ This is not to deny the importance of ritual and even, in some cases, direct experience amongelite believers in both these traditions. But the experience itself is necessarily made part of ananalysis. Geomancy and ancestor worship are Confucian practices illustrating this point, and the use of the five-Element cosmology (though not apurely Taoist concept) in chiao rituals (Saso, Michael, Taoism and the Rite of Cosmic Renewal [Pullman, Wash.: Washington State Univ. Press, 1974] provides a Taoist example).

¹⁶ Wolf, Eric, Peasants (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), p. 99; Stevan Harrell, “Belief and Unbelief in a Taiwan Village,” Diss. Stanford Univ. 1974.

¹⁷ DeGroot, p. 75.

¹⁸ DeGroot, pp. 70–76.

¹⁹ DeGroot, p. 57.

²⁰ Jordan, pp. 31–36.

²¹ Jordan, pp. 33–36; Wolf, “Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors,” pp. 169–75.

²² DeGroot, pp. 70–82.

²³ Saso, pp. 12–13.

²⁴ Gould-Martin, Women Asking Women, p. 300 n.

²⁵ Rev. Doolittle, Justus, The Social Life of the Chinese (New York: Harper, 1865), II, 401–2.

²⁶ Ahern, The Cult of the Dead, pp. 229–35.

²⁷ Jordan, p. 31.

²⁸ See Gould-Martin, Women Asking Women, pp. 120–27; Ahern, “Power and Pollution,” pp. 196–97; and Marjorie Topley, “Cosmic Antagonisms: A Mother-Child Syndrome,” in Wolf, Religion and Ritual, p. 237, for somewhat contradictory opinions. Topley refers to the T'ai-shen unambiguously as the “fetal soul.”

²⁹ Wolf, “Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors,” p147.

³⁰ Potter, p. 212.

³¹ Gould-Martin, Women Asking Women, pp. 92–93.

³² Wolf, “Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors,” pp.169–75.

³³ Fielde, A Corner of Cathay, pp. 152–57; Potter, “Cantonese Shamanism.”

³⁴ Ahern, The Cult of the Dead, pp. 228–35.

³⁵ Ahern, The Cult of the Dead, pp. 228–35.

³⁶ Jordan, p. 32.

³⁷ In the part of Taiwan where I worked, mediums are rarely female. But Arthur Kleinman reports (personal communication) that about 20–25 percent of Taipei city mediums are female. See also Potter, “Cantonese Shamanism.”

³⁸ Jordan, pp. 78–84.

³⁹ Freedman, Maurice, Lineage Organization in Southeastern China (London: Achlone Press, 1958), p. 82.

⁴⁰ Ahern, The Cult of the Dead, p. 200.