Chapter One: Introduction (part I)
Field Methodology:
This study is based primarily on field research conducted in Taiwan. In the summer of 1991, I returned to Taiwan from England to visit my parents, and did the preliminary fieldwork in northern Taiwan where my family lived. Even though the work lasted only two months, I took many pictures, wrote a field report and took all of these materials to Britain to show my supervisor. He found it was worthy of study and advised me to devote a year's library work to this subject to prepare the intensive fieldwork.
The intensive fieldwork was carried out between 1992 and 1994 in the widest range of villages and towns on the island -- chosen at random -- that I was able to visit, given the time and resources at my disposal. Usually, when I first arrived at a site, I would talk informally with people to get them to "open up" and to encourage them to express themselves in their own terms, and at their own pace. If possible, I would start a semi- structured interview in which I used a written list of questions and topics that I had arranged in a particular order. I used neither structured questionnaires nor tape-recorders in order not to exercise excessive control over people or even get them nervous.
I conducted interviews with the shrine staffs and with many of the believers in the neighbourhoods; and got to know them more as I established friendly relations with them. Since I did not assume that I had an automatic right to carry out the investigations, the research was a reciprocal one. Every time I went to a shrine, I prepared to offer something (e.g. the photos I took and the results of my research) to thank the people I interviewed. (note.1)Because I am a native Taiwanese, I did not find it difficult to explain my presence or the nature of my investigations to the people concerned.
In the first half of 1996 I visited the field sites again to do supplementary fieldwork, that is, to ask the questions that I missed in intensive fieldwork, and to make sure of those things I was uncertain of when writing the thesis draught. (note.2)
The first scholar who did research of the worship of stone and tree in Taiwan and its relation with the "She" Cult is Ling Shun-sheng. (note.3)He started his study on Chinese classics and Occidental works of this subject in 1955. In total, he produced five monographs (1958; 1959a; 1959b; 1964; 1967) on this subject and received many compliments from scholars concerned with the subject (cf. Mabuchi 1970:349; Pearson 1970:317).(note.4) In November 1963, Ling Shun-sheng received a letter from his daughter Ling Manli from Oregon, USA, in which were enclosed two colour photos of a dolmen. He was surprised and sent her a letter immediately, inquiring about the origin of these two pictures. In her reply, she said: "The two pictures were given to me by a missionary by the name of Rev. Robert P. McKinnen. He said the two pictures were among the photos of local scenes taken by a photo studio at Taizhong (Tai-chung) County of Taiwan for one of his friends, but he does not know himself the exact location of the dolmen." Later, the dolmen in these two pictures was found located in Taizhong City through some field search by Ling Shun- sheng and his colleagues (Ling Shun-sheng 1967:136). He claimed that over 80 dolmens were discovered by him and, in his estimation, there should be approximately several thousand dolmens existing on this 30,000 sq-kilometre island of Taiwan (Ling Shun-sheng 1967:134). Since he was well versed in Chinese classics, his study on them is trustworthy and thus I will apply them in my investigation in the following chapters.
Unfortunately, his interpretation of the divine stones and trees has left much to be desired. He found a number of divine stones and trees in both east and west Taiwan. He claimed that these natural objects worshipped by aboriginal tribes (both Plain and Mountain Aboriginals) were dolmen and menhir-like and signified the genital organ of both sexes. He then maintained that these traits revealed that they were not only merely similar but also virtually identical with Chinese "She" Cult (esp. Ling Shun-sheng 1958:56f; 1959a:178; 1964:41).
There are at least two objections which can be raised against Ling Shun-sheng's interpretation of these natural objects. First of all, the worship of genital, menhir, and dolmen-like stones is a universal phenomenon (Hartland 1917b; Graesser 1972; Edsman 1987; Mohen 1989), many peoples in the world, including Taiwan Aboriginals and Han-Chinese, practice such worship, the evidence he presents does not prove that they are virtually the same as the Chinese "She" Cult.(note.5) Second and most vitally, as I will explain in the following sections, neither Plain nor Mountain Aboriginals had any contact with China until the coming of Chinese in the seventeenth century. This contact remained very limited (certainly not sufficient to account for major cultural phenomena); and even until the beginning of the twentieth century, within the overall frame of East Asia culture history, Taiwan Aboriginals had relatively little contact with the Han-Chinese population. In fact, Taiwan Aboriginals were outside the cultural and religious orbit of China (Herz 1986:19; Copper 1990:17). Therefore, a different interpretation from that of Ling Shun-sheng is needed.(note.6)
Affected by these considerations, I decided to do a fresh round of field research and find the sites of divine stones and trees by myself. Since I was born in Yilan County (located in the northeast Taiwan) and is currently a consultant of religious policy of the County Government, I am sure that I have visited all the stone and tree deities in this county. Moreover, the study of Lin Mei-rong (1987:53-81) on the worship of the Land God of her hometown (Chhau-tun Town of Nantou County, central Taiwan) includes a preliminary report on all divine stones and trees of the town. Therefore, I am sure that I have included all divine trees and stones of these two areas in this thesis. Additionally, both the gazetteer of Lam-tau County written by Liu Zhiwan (1961) and an article on the tree worship of Taiwan written by Yuan Chang-rue (1993) were helpful for my field work.
I limited myself and did field research only on the stones which were not hewn or inscribed with any characters such as Shi Gandang or stone lions and others, although they were also regarded as divine. I believe that the divine stones and trees I researched belong to a single category. Moreover, I exclude the stones and trees which are not worshipped by the public. (note.7)In total, I researched 61 stone and 39 tree shrines in Taiwan (see also Appendix). I would not affirm that I have visited all the divine stones and trees of the single category, but I am certain that those I have researched are typical for the purpose of my study.
Objectives:
In preparing the thesis, I have had two objectives. Most obviously, the thesis is a description of a feature of Chinese religion, that is, the worship of three natural objects -- land, stone, and tree. Although scholarly works dealing with community religious organisations, calendrical festivals, and family rites have become a great concern over the past thirty years, the discussion of the worship of natural objects has been almost neglected in the anthropological and sociological literature (cf. Yang 1961:353; Feng 1970:21; Allan 1979:5). However, I believe that the study of the three deities is also important in a number of ways that are easily missed if we limit our consideration to colourful festivals and household rites which are easier to field research (cf. Jordan & Overmyer 1986:8; Lin Mei-rong 1991.).
The second objective in studying these three deities arises from the fact that believers in them are relatively low on the social scale and have little political power. For this reason their beliefs are often misunderstood. Once, I had lunch with a friend in the Academia Sinica. He asked what subject I was studying for my Ph.D. thesis. I answered: "The worship of stones and trees." He immediately replied: "People even worship stones and trees! Do they worship chamber pots?" Moreover, it is often heard in Taiwan within intellectual circles that many religions in Taiwan are superstitious: "The veneration of cultural heroes seems reasonable because of their virtues. However, the worship of stones and trees is extremely superstitious since they cannot even speak!"
The religious beliefs of common people does not have official spokespersons or theologians to explain and defend their beliefs and practices. One of my reasons for writing this thesis is to demonstrate the seriousness of these religious beliefs and practices and to correct the misunderstanding of the religious beliefs that is common, even in Taiwan itself.
In order to achieve these two objectives, in the rest of this chapter, I give a geographical and historical introduction and a general view of Chinese popular religion of Taiwan, the island where I did my fieldwork. In Chapter Two, I review the textual data relating to Chinese worship of natural objects, especially divine stones and trees. Chapter Three portrays the images, functions, and traits of the Land God in order to offer a setting for the following chapters. In Chapter Four, by using the data collected from my fieldwork, I examine how the divine stones and trees are identified with the dates for annual birthday festivals and why some of them do not have any birthdays attached. Chapter Five discusses the religious custom of nominal adoption, the most traditional and distinctive role that the deities play in popular religion. In Chapter Six, I illustrate that some natural objects are themselves regarded as deities or as possessed by certain supernatural beings while others are not. Chapter Seven analyzes why in some places the divine stones and trees get involved in the "Everybody Happy Lottery" while in some places they do not. It is also argued that the prevalence of the Lottery, together with the transformation of roles of these deities, can be read, to a certain degree, as a resistance against or even a subversion of the contemporary social order in Taiwan. In Chapter Eight, by applying the theories of paleographic and historical studies, I demonstrate that aspects of modern stone and tree worship are closely connected with the "She" Cult but are not inevitably surviving examples of it. In the final chapter, I conclude that sacred trees and stones worshipped as the Stone and Tree Gods can be distinguished from the Land God that is represented by a tree or stone. The distinction between the Land God and the Stone and Tree Gods can also be applied to the study of legends, traits, functions, images, deification stories, the dates for birthday festivals etc. Moreover, I reiterate that common people have their own mechanism to sustain their religious culture and have their own authorities to follow.
Geography and Ethnicity:
Taiwan is an offshore island in the western Pacific and 100 miles southeast of the Chinese mainland. The island, which is approximately 245 miles long and 85 miles across at its widest point, has one of the highest population densities in the world - - about 1285 persons per square mile in a 14,000 square mile area. Over half the island is mountainous with few inhabitants; the other half, to the west, is fertile with more than 3,000 people per square mile (cf. Wu Lien-chin 1987:111; Copper 1990:1).
Some geologists say Taiwan was originally part of the Asia mainland. Others argue that its volcanic soil and the fact that it is part of the long chain of islands extending from the Alaskan Aleutans indicate that the island's origins are similar to those of Japan, the Philippines, and other islands off the eastern Asia coast. This evidence suggests either a more distant time connection - or none at all - to the Asia mainland. Recent geological studies reinforce the latter view, suggesting that Taiwan rose from the sea rather recently - a million years ago (Copper 1990:2).
Taiwan has abundant rainfall year-round; the mean annual precipitation is 102 inches. Generally the east coast receives more rain than the west, and the mountains more than the lowlands. One odd feature about Taiwan's rain patterns is that the dry season at one end of the island coincides with the rainy season at the other. In the north the heaviest rainfall is between October and March; in the south the rainy season occurs between April and September (Copper 1990:4). The plentiful rain supplies water for irrigation of agriculture in rainy seasons and for streams lakes and reservoirs when needed in dry times. Besides, much of Taiwan's soil is either volcanic or partly volcanic and thus is fairly fertile despite centuries of farming.
Although the Daoyi (Island Savages) in the Shangshu (the Book of History), the Dongdi of the Han Dynasty, the Yizhou of the Three Kingdoms, and the Liuqiu of the Sui Dynasty, are generally believed by historians to refer to Taiwan, it is now known that there were no Han Chinese people settled on the island (Chen Chi-lu 1972:119). But knowledge of the island probably existed already a long time before at such early times. Fishermen or merchants, driven from the China coastal waters by storms, told tales of a beautiful island far off in the ocean (Proksch 1984:13). Until the collapse of the Ming Dynasty in 1662, rulers of mainland China had by and large ignored Taiwan. The island was seen by Chinese as part of the Ryukyu chain, and, in the dynastic records of the sixth century Sui dynasty, was referred to as "Tai Liuqiu" or "Great Ryukyu" (although, later it was also known as "lesser Ryukyu") (Long 1991:4). In 605 one official was dispatched by the Emperor Yangdi of Sui Dynasty to investigate reports that in clear weather a smoky haze could be seen across the Taiwan strait (Long 1991:4f).
Copper, a historian of Taiwan, states that "in 1517 Portuguese vessels en route to Japan sighted Taiwan and named it "Ilha Formosa" (1990:18). But Proksch, another historian, maintains that the Portuguese sailors named the island "Ilha Formosa" in 1590 and the name "Formosa" was since introduced to the Western world (1984:13). However, the exact date is not vital, because the Portuguese did not lay claim to the island, nor did they try to colonise it. Besides, the name "Ilha Formosa" only means "beautiful island" in Portuguese language and the sailors could have dubbed many islands "Ilha Formosa", when they saw beautiful islands on their voyages.
Ironically, even though the island was only 100 miles away from the Chinese world, it was not until the Ming Dynasty (1368- 1644) that its exact location was known by them and the name Taiwan used by Han Chinese (Baity 1975:16; Copper 1990:18). Like Copper (1990:1), many historians do not know the origin of the name "Taiwan" which literally means "terraced bay". However, benefiting from his long-term field study in Taiwan, Schipper (1977:771) considered that:
