A presentation on documents inside statuettes<\/p>\n
From around the 8th and the 9th century, icons, especially statues, were submitted to consecration rituals (aka as the so called \u201copen eyes ritual\u201d) to make them come alive. According to the earliest written literary sources<\/a> and archeological discoveries on this practice, it seems that in addition to the consecration ritual itself it was usual to put things inside the statues (in the \u201cbelly\u201d fu \u8179) a variety of items such as sutras, dharanis, prints, pearls, materia medica, cloth pieces, a list of donors, and so on<\/a> . In Japan and in Korea, many such Buddhist statues dating from the 13th century onward\u2013 for reasons of repair and restoration \u2013 have been opened and their insides analyzed and studied in the past few decades<\/a>. Curiously enough, this kind of field work and research have never been done in Mainland China and we have only some vague historical testimony about the inside contents of statues and minimal evidence about the same practice and procedure in China. An international research program conducted by the EFEO began in 2002 to catalogue three statue collections with a total number of some 3000 pieces<\/a>. Nearly all these Chinese statues come from Hunan Province, more precisely from the central part of Hunan (delimited in the south by Shaoyang \u90b5\u967d, in the north by Yiyang \u76ca\u967d, in the east by Ningxiang \u5be7\u9109 and in the west by Xinhua<\/a> \u65b0\u5316). Like the Buddhist statues elsewhere in East Asia, these Hunan statues contain items like written documents (a kind of \u201cconsecration certificate\u201d with a precise address, identity of statue, of donors and sculptors, also indicating date and reason of consecration), materia medica, talismans, and paper money<\/a>. The oldest one is dated to the 17th century, the newest to the beginning of 2000<\/a>. Hunan statues represent not only Buddhist and Taoist deities, but also local deities, ancestors and religious masters<\/a>. They do not belong to community religious\u00a0establishments but to domestic altars<\/a>, giving us for the first time the possibility to examine familial worship and local religious practices. We examined three of these \u201cconsecration certificates\u201d dated respectively to the end of 19th century, the beginning of the 20th century and a last one to just before 1949. By chance, they also contain economic data<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n Presentation of Ningxiang County religious From the end of Qing dynasty to the early years of the Republican government, many laws, rules and edicts were promulgated to control temples, monasteries and shrines (miao si guan \u5edf\u5bfa\u89c0). For instance, from1915 to 1936, the Republican government very clearly issued a series of administrative rules aimed at registering all religious\u00a0establishments as well as their religious staff and their property, including lands, buildings, liturgical instruments, and so on. One point, the obligation to open schools in temples (miaochan xingxue \u5edf\u7522\u8208\u5b78), has been interpreted differently by scholars: some of them have seen in this rule the wish to destroy temples and transform them into schools that would profess \u201cnormal\u201d education, while others prefer to see in these rule and edicts the Republican government\u2019s wish to promote education throughout China. In fact, most studies have reached their conclusions on the basis of written rules and laws, official statistics and unfortunately far too few personal testimonies and primary source documentation<\/a>.<\/p>\n During our fieldwork trip to Hunan in 2004, James Robson and I fortuitously had the opportunity to conduct research in the Bureau of the Archives of Ningxiang county \u5be7\u9109\u7e23, and acquired permission to photo documents related to this issue.\u00a0 We found in this Bureau\u2019s archives 749 registration forms dating from 1940 and 1941, that provide an inventory of 9 cantons\u2019 religious\u00a0establishments in Ningxiang county and thus the possibility of learning the exact number and identity of the religious\u00a0establishments in this county. In fact, most religious\u00a0establishments appear to have been functioning ancestral halls (citang<\/a> \u7960\u5802).<\/p>\n This project is still in the exploratory stage and for the time being it is still difficult to draw definitive conclusions.\u00a0 But these archives present very concrete economic data on the value of these ancestral halls\u2019 estates, the amount of their rents and taxes, the name of the halls\u2019 managers, the names of the sharecroppers and other tenants, etc.\u00a0 There is no doubt that by combining our findings from these registration forms with additional information from new fieldwork as well as from other local sources like genealogies and local religious statuettes (and their databank), in the future we shall be able, to establish a detailed account of the economic aspects of Ningxiang\u2019s local religious\u00a0establishments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A presentation on documents inside statuettes From around the 8th and the 9th century, icons, especially statues, were submitted to consecration rituals (aka as the so called \u201copen eyes ritual\u201d) to make them come alive. According to the earliest written literary sources and archeological discoveries on this practice, it seems that in addition to the … Continuer la lecture de Hunanese popular religion (Arrault)<\/span>
\nestablishments\u2019 registration forms<\/p>\n