General Zhang Buries the Bones
Early Qing Reconstruction and Quanzhen Daoist Collaboration in Mid-Seventeenth Century Nanyang
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 15027784 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Xun Liu (0000-0003-4732-5390, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 67-98 |
| Publication date | 2006-12-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Late imperial China (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0884-3236 • E-ISSN: 1086-3257 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/late.2007.0002 |
| OpenAlex | W2087317467 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 5 |
General Zhang Buries the Bones: Early Qing Reconstruction and Quanzhen Daoist Collaboration in Mid-Seventeenth Century Nanyang Xun Liu The relationship between Daoism and the imperial state has been an important subject in Daoist studies. Since Anna Seidel's pioneering work on the Daoist role as the counsel to the throne, the dynastic legitimizer, and the model for sagely kingship,1 the Daoist involvement in Chinese imperial politics and society has been one of the scholarly focuses for the field. Daoist connections with various imperial courts were investigated in several excellent studies during the 1980s and 1990s.2 Other Daoist ties with the imperial [End Page 67] state's governing elite have also been examined in recent scholarship. With a few exceptions, the general tendency of these studies has been to focus on the Daoist interaction with the imperial state either at the high court level or with the literati elite, and most of the work has concentrated on the early and medieval periods.3 But we still know very little about how the imperial state interacted with Daoism at the local level during the late imperial (especially the Qing) period. Only recently, scholars have begun to focus on Daoist lineage formation and transmission, and monastic revival at several known centers of Daoism during the Qing,4 and on the political, cultural, and religious ties between Daoist monasteries and local political power structures in the Ming.5 This recent scholarship has begun to change a long-held but untested view that Daoism, along with other religious institutions and practices, played only a marginal, if not outright dubious or even negative, role in shaping the political, social, and cultural order of late imperial China. [End Page 68] In this article, I seek to further examine the role of Quanzhen Daoism in the early Qing consolidation and reconstruction in Nanyang, Henan province, immediately after the 1644 conquest. For that purpose, I focus on the close collaboration between the early Qing local officials and the Quanzhen Monastery of Mysterious Wonder (Xuanmiao guan) in Nanyang in the mid-seventeenth century.6 Central to this preliminary study of the local interaction between Quanzhen Daoism and the Qing state are several temple steles which I have found on my recent field trips to the region. By recapturing from these steles and other primary sources the vibrant Quanzhen monastic life and activities in Nanyang in the immediate aftermath of the Qing conquest, I hope to highlight the dynamic and vital role which Quanzhen clerics at the monastery played in the political consolidation and physical reconstruction of Nanyang, and demonstrate the importance of the Monastery of Mysterious Wonder as a major universal institution (shifang cong lin) in the Quanzhen monastic revival during the early Qing era. Further, while earlier studies of Qing Quanzhen history have suggested that the Quanzhen monastic revival had resulted directly from the infusion of late Ming loyalist scholars and officials into its ranks,7 this study shows a different trajectory of the Quanzhen revival in early Qing. Indeed, the vibrant Quanzhen monastic life in Nanyang was inextricably tied to the Qing state's tasks of moral legitimization and civil reconstruction of the new body politic there. Lastly, the early Qing Quanzhen cooperation with the Nanyang local officials created a precedent and context for understanding the pattern of the close official-monastic ties in the late Qing period. New Sources on Quanzhen Daoism in Nanyang: the Steles During my fieldwork in Nanyang in the summers of 2004 and 2005, I located several temple steles with the help of a local informant at and near the site of what used to be the Monastery of Mysterious Wonder. Three of the steles, dated respectively 1658, 1659, and 1665, provide the primary sources for this study. Except for part of the 1658 stele, these stele inscriptions have never been published before.8 Two of them, entitled respectively "Chongxiu [End Page 69] Xuanmiao guan Sanqing dian ji
Ancient history · Archaeology · China · Elite · History of China · Monarchy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Scholarship · State (computer science) · State formation · Zhàng · Chinese history and philosophy · Classics · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
| Citations per year | 0.13 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2011 - 2016 (6) |
| Highly cited | No |