Jerome Yuchien's Ph.D Thesis
Chapter Three: the Land God in Chinese Popular Religion (part V)
(note.10)
Schipper (1977:660) also says that the image of the God in a historical Taiwan city is always seated, since in the urban area he does not need to walk a lot.
(note.11)
Schipper (1977:660) says that the Land God wears a "dragon robe". However, I have not found any depiction like this, it seems unlikely, which is not surprising because only an emperor could wear this.
(note.12)
Interestingly, since modernization, the Land God seems to be less territorially bound. In Taipei though he is still district guardian to an extent, today one finds its statues carried in pilgrimage all over the island when the people associated with such a Land God temple decide to organise a pilgrimage (Jordan 1994:153).
(note.13)
Therefore, such a territorially bound deity is regarded unsuitable for adopting children since he is powerless outside of the small territory. We shall discuss the topic in Chapter Six.
(note.14)
The red table is divided into two zones. One of these, the area at the left, where the ancestral tablets are placed, is devoted to ancestral worship. All the rest of the altar is devoted to the worship of gods. Worship is private in these cases. Normally only family members worship at the altar and are unable to name the deities whose pictures are placed over the altar table. They identify them simply as deities (Shenming) (cf. Diamond 1969:100).
In front of it is a lower table, square on top, and cubical in general appearance. This is called a "table of the eight immortals". It can be used to hold sacrificial food during sacrifices. The red table, on the other hand, is a far more sacred object, on which one does not carry out activities other than worship and does not normally store goods, and which one does not readily move about the room. When sacrifices take place outdoors for some reason, neighbors will sometimes carry their eight immortals tables outside to make temporary altars there (cf. Jordan 1985:93).
(note.15)
In some cases, several important people will host the ceremony together. Above all, these people should be very auspicious, to bring fortune for the ceremony.
(note.16)
Therefore, he is less important in fishing villages. Diamond (1969:99) reports that there is no specific shrine for him such as are found in agricultural communities.
(note.17)
The worship of Emperor Shennong is widespread in Taiwan. For instance, in Yilan County, there are six temples dedicated to him, one was initiated by government in 1812 and the others sponsored by common people. We shall discuss the topic in Chapter Eight.
(note.18)
The ritual is intended specifically to benefit the person who has just died, though ancestors who died earlier and have not yet received a rite like this may also benefit (Ahern 1973:222).
(note.19)
The term "earth-god" is Ahern's translation of "Tho.-ti-kong" which I translate as "the Land God".
(note.20)
The temple is located beside the Stone God Khe-te Hamlet (#S34; see figure 36).
(note.21)
This is a Taiwanese saying (cf. Baity 1975:275f).
(note.22)
The cooperation may sometimes give way to conflict. Please see Ahern (1973:71) for the discussion of the topic.
(note.23)
In Taiwan, many gods are associated with particular ethnic groups and are believed to act as patrons of their constituencies in the celestial bureaucracy. "Kai-chiang seng-ong" is a patron of Taiwan's Zhangzhou people. Gods with clear ethnic connections were usually found in communities dominated by a single ethnic faction but not now (cf. Wang Shih-ch'ing 1974:89; Sangren 1987:73).
(note.24)
The god is sometimes thought as a god connected with gambling. On inquiring why a statue of the Land God in Weihaiwei was accompanied by two female images, R.F. Johnston (1910: 374; qtd. in Wolf 1974:145) was informed that "the lady on his left (the place of honour) was his wife and the lady on his right his concubine." Two explanations were offered as to why the Land God of this particular place had been allowed to increase his household in this manner: one was that he had won the lady by gambling for her, the other was that the Land God of this place had appeared to one of the villagers in a dream and begged him to provide him with a concubine as he had grown tired of his wife.
The Land God of a corner in Peking City was reported that at a gambling match with the Land God of another Ward, he staked and lost his wife. It is also reported in Hong Kong that fortuitous contact with a Bo Gong (the name of the Land God of in Hakka) might lead to remarkable blessings. One villager tells the story of a man who saw a Bo Gong and then won first prize at the horse races (Berkovits and others 1969:76). See also Chapter Seven of this thesis.
(note.25)
Normally, when a new temple is built, a tree is planted beside it. I shall study the custom in Chapter Eight.
(note.26)
DeGlopper (1974:47) observed that those who showed signs of possession were immediately replaced and left behind by the rest of their group.
(note.27)
Houtu originally always meant a male god (Fitzgerald 1961:36). The change of sex from a male to a female deity, Houtu Nainai, is thought to have been made in the early part of the Ming Dynasty. It is quite natural that Land, representing Yin (negative energy) and the productiveness of nature impregnated by the life-giving sunlight and rain from Heaven, or Yang (positive energy), should be worshipped as the Goddess-Mother. This shift took place quite late, however (Day 1974:59).
(note.28)
Another version of this story has it that the bones which would absorb her tears of mourning would be her husband's (Feuchtwang 1992:95).
(note.29)
Ahern (1973:203), when inquiring why the Taiwanese must open the graves of their ancestors six or seven years after death to "pick up the bones" (khio-gut) and arrange them in a ceramic pot, was told by one old man a similar legend that a long time ago an emperor wanted to build a great wall around his kingdom. To provide a labour force, he conscripted thousands of young men. Conditions were so terrible for the workers that many men died and were buried under or within the wall. When one young worker had not returned home for some time, his wife set out to find him. When she learned that he was dead, she cried until the entire wall fell down. Then in order to find her husband's bones, she bit off her finger tip and let the blood flow onto the ground. Whenever the blood hit one of her husband's bones, that bone came up and joined together with the others until the skeleton was complete. People told her to carry the skeleton in her arms so that her tears would fall on it, making veins of blood on the bones, and resulting perhaps in a return to life. Just then, the wife of the Land God offered different advice. She said it would be better if the woman were to carry the skeleton on her back. But as soon as the wife did this, for she readily accepted the advice of a goddess, the skeleton fell apart. The wife of the Land God gave this bad advice because she was feeling evil-hearted and thought that there were enough people in the world already. After the bones fell apart, the woman put them in a pot and buried them, marking the place with a stone. Thereafter, people continued doing this. Today, our picking up of the bones is equivalent to the wife's using her bleeding finger to find her husband's bones. We pick up the bones in order to let the dead live again.
(note.30)
The term and notion "semantic chain" is created by Duara 1988:778- 795) to explain the historical development of the myths and symbols of Guandi (Guan'gong). However, when I use the term in this thesis, I do not necessarily mean the traits and functions of the Land God have developed historically, since they are not derived from a definable original text (cf. Katz 1990:217).
(note.31)
Moreover, in the next chapter we will find that different versions of legends portraying the God also have common features and these versions can be linked by a semantic chain.
