Imploration and Moralization: the Theory and Practice of Worship Ceremonies Practiced by Regional Confucian Officials in the Tang Period

• Main Authors: Hu-chun Huang, 黃胡群
• Other Authors: Huai-chen Kan
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/13715436488160262039

碩士 === 東吳大學 === 歷史學系 === 95 === This thesis examines the concept of a Confucian State by inspecting Confucian worship ceremonies from the perspective of worship ceremonies practiced by local Confucian officials in the Tang period. In order to achieve this, three aspects in particular require close consideration, i.e. how Confucian ceremonies revealed state ideologies, how religious institutions were affected by such ideologies, and whether these institutions were thoroughly executed. Two sets of Confucian ceremonial ideologies could be discerned from previous works, one argued that blessings come naturally with the practice of worship ceremonies without having to make direct prayers to gods while the other envisioned worship ceremonies as a means to social moralization. The former I dubbed “the peculiar conception of worship” and the latter “the moral conception of worship”. According to this study, these ideologies originated from the Han Dynasty when Confucian worship rituals and ceremonies were established and documented in Li-ji or the Classic of Rites, the compiled writings of ancient rites and court ceremonies, which had pervading influence down to the Tang period. As noted in the Da-Tang-Kai-Yuan-Li, the most influential text of Tang rituals, local worships in the Tang period included she-ji, the land worship; shi-dian, the worship of Confucian saints; the worship of shrines; and occasional worships during flood and drought. I discovered that all these worships bore the abovementioned religious ideologies, which had not been fully fulfilled. However, it was the pursuit of personal happiness, a vision of Shamanism and not Confucianism that essentially determined how commoners conceptualize the metaphysical significance behind the acts of worships. Since the Han Period, the conflict between Confucian religious ideologies and that of Shamanism had compelled Confucian officials to batter unorthodox cults and unauthorized worships. Such conflicts were at times intensified when people’s livelihood and national security were in peril. In the Tang period, the conditions of these conflicts were heightened both in frequency and in scale with the emergence of civil society. In general terms, the attempt of the Confucian officials to foster a state religion wasn’t at all successful, instead of imposing an official tenet of god-worshipping on the people to alter their religious outlooks; they gradually came to acknowledge the imperative to compromise with regional worship traditions.