Sun, Sep 23, 2001 page19

• China, where spirit possession never went out of style

  Edward L. Davis, one of the new breed of historicists, argues that, counter to popular opinion, Song dynasty-China did not cast off its superstitious baggage

  • By Bradley Winterton / CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
  • • 
    • 
    • 

  What is the meaning of spirit possession if you don't believe in spirits?

  The most common answer in anthropological circles in recent decades has been that it is a means of settling problems in social relations. The classic parallel is cock-fights in Bali that allow their participants to direct their rivalries into symbolic contests between two bird owners in which one wins, one loses, and many others win or lose by gambling on the outcome.

  Society and the Supernatural in Song China makes the case that social tensions were similarly relieved by spirit possession rituals in ancient China. People, he points out, are rarely possessed by spirits when alone. Such rites are social events that involve role-play. Aggressive emotion gets turned into culture, and symptoms (possibly, for example, the early signs of mental problems) become harmless symbols.

  Spirit possession, of course, is alive and well in modern Taiwan. Certain people, by means not altogether clear, go into trance states and then run barefoot across glowing coals. How this is physically possible is unfortunately not the subject of this book. Instead, it looks at why such things happen, and the evidence for their importance in China 1,000 years ago.

  This is a major work by a professional academic, and not easy reading. But the subject is nonetheless fascinating, and the author's style is such that the book is, for the most part, penetrable for the reasonably dedicated layman.

  The conventional view the author seeks to refute is that, during the Song dynasty (960 - 1279CE), Confucian ideas were revived, reformulated, and came to dominate the thinking of China's ruling elite. Daoist and Buddhist traditions were discredited among these high officials, it argues. And when the Jesuits arrived from Europe a few centuries later, their Christian ideas combined with Confucian ones to condemn popular religious forms to the status of "aberrant belief." Religious fervor of all kinds became deeply suspect. The destruction of temples in the Cultural Revolution, and the current campaign against Falun Gong, are in this view merely the logical conclusions of a very long process.

  The author of this book, associate professor Edward L. Davis, sees this analysis as simply wrong. He says it is a European view of Chinese history. In the same way that in France, for example, despotism and superstition were perceived as having been left behind at the French Revolution, with freedom, enlightenment and an equitable social order taking their place, so the same thing was understood as having happened in China, albeit earlier.

  In this context, it is significant that in 18th-century France it was China that progressive thinkers such as Voltaire and Diderot looked to as a shining example of a rational society not encumbered with superstitious baggage.

  No evolution of this sort ever took place in China, Professor Davis argues. Instead, spirit possession, shamanism, exorcism and other folk religion phenomena flourished, even among the government elites. Focusing on the Song Dynasty, he finds extensive evidence for this at the very time the conventional view of Chinese history claims that a largely non-supernatural Confucianism was beginning to rule the roost.

  The records have always been there for anyone to research, he states. The old school of scholars just failed to look in the right places.

  Professor Davis' book stands in the tradition of the school of "new historicist" writers led by Stephen Greenblatt, of Harvard University. Greenblatt's most recent book, Hamlet in Purgatory, also shows how popular religion continued until a relatively late date, in this case to 16th-century England. Looking, like Davis, at previously neglected archives, Greenblatt demonstrates how almost everyone in England, from the king down to the humblest workers, used a large portion of their assets on trying to ensure they spent as little time as possible after death in purgatory, where the ghost of Hamlet's father in Shakespeare's play says he is residing, "Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature, Are burnt and purged away."

  Some of the historical events described by Davis parallel Greenblatt's material closely, as do his more fundamental concerns. People are induced to pay money to assist their departed loved ones in a perceived afterlife, and religious organizations grow fat on land ownership and a monopoly of rites that cater to common, if irrational, human concerns.

  These scholars, incidentally, tend to dislike ideas of humanism and enlightenment in general, and, as a school, are eager to show that religious beliefs and practices continued long after 19th- and early 20th-century historians, who mostly believed in progress and enlightenment, claimed they had faded away.

  The conclusion you're forced to come to when reading a book like this is that the past offers a mass of documentary and other information, and a historian just seizes a few handfuls of it and writes a narrative of "what happened" based on that. In reality, so much happened, and in so many different places, that there is no such thing as "the truth" in any simple sense.

  The problem is, however, that given this situation, what is most likely to occur is that writers decide beforehand what they want to say took place, and then proceed to find evidence that supports that point of view. If you challenge them about this, they reply, not without justification, "Just tell me when was it ever any different."

  Davis brings his material up to date by considering whether China ever had what is known as a "civil society." By this term he means a society that contains checks and balances, and where the rulers do not enjoy absolute, unfettered power over their subjects.

  His answer is no. Instead, he claims, China displayed a society characterized by very complex obligations -- to family, patrons, work-givers and the like. Religions provided a safety net for when the observation of all these obligations fell short. In other words, give or take some regional variation in religious observation, little, it would appear, has really changed.

  Publication Notes

  Society and the Supernatural in Song China

  By Edward L. Davis

  356 pages

  University of Hawaii Press
• Most Popular

  • 1

    Control Yuan member quits over misuse of vehicle

  • 2

    Greek basketball finals suspended following scuffles

  • 3

    Taipei ranks 60 in ‘Global Cities Index,’ up five spots

  • 4

    Taiwan denies hacking, as China issues bounties

  • 5

    Woman sentenced to six years for recruiting for China