The Water God's Temple of the Guangsheng Monastery: Cosmic Function of Art, Ritual, and Theater

Sinica Leidensia #53

by Anning Jing

The 14th century dragon king temple in Southern Shanxi is the only known intact survivor of this ancient Water God institution once existing in every Chinese agricultural community. After describing the history, lay-out and mural paintings of the building, its original Yuan time mural paintings enable the author to depict the ritual of praying for rain, and the actual rain-making of the god. The meaning of the unique painting of a theatrical company is interpreted as to subject and its connections with the ritual of praying for rain. Rainmaking magic is compared with similar practices in other parts of the world (India), and thus suggests a common cosmological basis of Chinese and Indian cultures, and a common pattern of human behaviour and mode of thinking concerning human procreation and food production.

304 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2001

Reviews

[Mel]

For the most part this book was very good, though I did have a couple of issues with some of the interpretations. It was written by an art historian, not a religious historian, and because of that I think that there were some areas that became a bit confused. However the book overall was very informative and contained lots of historical background and descriptions of the temple. The physical description of the temple was discussed, as well as a great detail on Yuan dynasty murals that were found within the temple and the interpretations of these murals. A lot of historical context was given for the scenes and the temple. The temple is supposedly part of the "popular religion" of China, however, the author talked about how the temple god was given official status and titles by the Emperors and Officials, which to me would make it included in the state religion. However, it was unclear sometimes whether the stories in question were about the dragon god or the god of the mountain. In other books I've read Mountain dieties aren't usually dragon kings (as these are associated with water) and so I wondered if there were two deities under discussion, but this wasn't really something that was addressed but they seemed to be used interchangeably. He talked a lot about different rain making activities, but he only looked at official and Buddhist rituals and totally ignored the thunder rituals of the Taoists. This was evident when he was talking about how plays had replaced women shaman in the rain rituals. However, at this time the Taoists were still using rituals that many have interpreted as shamanistic. Therefor it seemed strange to say that something had replaced something that was still going on. Indeed his perspective focused more on Indian Buddhism rather than local Chinese religion. While he did discuss yin and yang cosmology in quite a bit of depth, his conclusion seemed to be that water should be associated with "seed" (ie male sperm) which was based on Indian (and other countries) mythology and seemed rather out of place in Chinese cosmology where water is one of the ultimate sources of yin! These problems aside it was still an interesting and scholarly look at the temple, including reproductions of all the murals, with a great deal of discussion of the historical context. An interesting read with lots of fascinating information about the religion in one of the few (or only) surviving temples to a dragon king in China today.