Dry Spells

State Rainmaking and Local Governance in Late Imperial China (review)

Datos Bibliográficos

ID23174644
AutoresKathryn Edgerton-Tarpley (autor de correspondencia)
Año2010
Volumen70
Número1
Páginas209-220
Fecha de publicación2010-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaHarvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0073-0548 • E-ISSN: 1944-6454
EditorialProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/jas.0.0032
OpenAlexW1498665837
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas11
Referencias citadas12

Reviewed by: Dry Spells: State Rainmaking and Local Governance in Late Imperial China Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley Dry Spells: State Rainmaking and Local Governance in Late Imperial China BY Jeffrey Snyder-Reinke. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009. Pp. xii + 314. $45.00. In Dry Spells: State Rainmaking and Local Governance in Late Imperial China, Jeffrey Snyder-Reinke puts religion and rainmaking rituals at the center of local governance in late imperial China. He explains the origins of official rainmaking activities, places them in the context of Chinese understandings of disaster causation, and demonstrates how important they were to good governance in the late imperial period, particularly the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). In doing so he contributes to current debates about orthopraxy and the role of ritual in the standardization of culture, and raises questions about "the relationship between state ritual and local governance" (pp. 18-19). Rainmaking activities, he argues, problematize the common characterizations that official religion is largely Confucian and that Chinese officials are "orthodox Confucians" who "identified closely with the ritual prescriptions of the Chinese state and actively sought to impose them on local communities" (p. 177). By showing convincingly that the Qing state and its officials took religious beliefs and practices extremely seriously, Snyder-Reinke challenges modern scholars of late imperial China to do the same. Snyder-Reinke draws on an impressive array of primary sources, ranging from the detailed administrative codes and ritual guides published by the Qing state to rain prayers, sutras, statecraft documents, biographies of respected officials, famine relief texts, local gazetteers, [End Page 209] unofficial histories, and newspaper reports. In the lengthy appendix he goes to the trouble of providing his own translations of Dong Zhongshu's fascinating piece on rainmaking, as well as two versions of Ji Dakui's rainmaking text, complete with multiple prefaces. After laying out the parameters of the book in Chapter 1, Snyder-Reinke devotes Chapter 2 to exploring the cultural understandings of drought in ancient and imperial China and introducing three particularly important early rainmaking accounts that provided officials in late imperial China with "a basic repertoire of rainmaking procedures and routines" (p. 24). In Chinese cosmology the human and natural worlds were inextricably linked. Chinese rulers, officials, and commoners believed that natural disasters were brought about by human actions that displeased heaven and disrupted cosmic forces; therefore, when drought struck, it was important for rulers and officials to make a "self-accounting" and show contrition for possible offenses. Moreover, classic writings on governance conceptualized the proper relationship between an official and his people in familial terms, so officials were expected to behave as "fathers and mothers" who could not help but be moved to action by the people's suffering during a drought. Recent works by historians Lillian Li, Pierre-Étienne Will, and R. Bin Wong have described in detail the impressive array of practical strategies the Qing state employed in order to prevent a disaster from resulting in a famine. Qing officials sought to restore agricultural production and avert social disorder during a drought by selling grain from massive state-run granaries at below-market prices, offering tax remissions or substantial reductions, personally investigating disaster areas, giving relief according to the degree of disaster, encouraging local elites to operate soup kitchens or charitable granaries, and setting up public shelters for famine refugees.1Dry Spells demonstrates convincingly that conducting rainmaking rituals to move the heart of heaven played an equally crucial role in official responses to drought. "The sharp distinction modern scholars might make between ritual [End Page 210] performances and 'utilitarian' behavior simply did not exist for most Qing officials," he writes (p. 73). During the late imperial period many officials followed one or more of three classic rainmaking exemplars, which Snyder-Reinke terms the "mourner," the "martyr," and the "magician." The mourner, purportedly based on King Xuan of Zhou (r. 827-782 B.C.E.), responds to a severe drought through an emotional outpouring of grief, engages in self-examination, and offers sacrifices to a wide variety of deities in an attempt to bring rain. The martyr rainmaker, exemplified by King Tang, the founder of the Shang dynasty (1766-1050 B.C.E...

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