The Indigenous Religion

·期刊原文
The Indigenous Religion and Theravada Buddhism in Ban Da Tiu:
A Dai Lue Village in Yunnan, China
Reviewed by Anthony R. Walker
Asian Folklore Studies

Vol.53 No.2

Oct.1994

Pp.363-365

Copyrighy by Asian Folklore Studies

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It is still relatively rare to find modern anthropological studies,
based on fieldwork and written in English, by scholars from the
People's Republic of China. The present study is one of them. Guan
Jian has given us an extraordinarily valuable account of the
religious institutions of a Dai (Tai) Lue village, Ban Da Tiu, in
Mengla county, Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan
Province. The topic on which Guan has focused--the concomitance of
folk religion and Theravada Buddhism in a Tai-speaking
community--is, of course, not new to Southeast Asian anthropology;
we have a shelf of fine studies on the subject from Burma and
Thailand (e.g., BROHM 1963; KIRSCH 1977; PFANNER 1962; SPIRO 1967;
TAMBIAH 1970; TERWIEL 1975). The great value of Guan's work is that
it is from China, and postdates the Cultural Revolution.
Guan's "Background of Dai Lue Society" (chapter 2) is an excellent
adumbration of the traditional politico-administrative structure of
Xishuangbanna, from the ruling prince, the zhao pienling, through
the chiefs of the twelve panna (zhao panna), the lords of the
thirty-four muang (zhao muang), down to the village headmen (zhao
ban) and, finally, the household (hen) heads. Interestingly, though
the former princedom and its twelve panna were abolished by the
Communist regime when it assumed power in 1950, the old divisions of
muang (traditionally, the irrigation units) and ban (natural
villages) have been retained as the "township" and "village" units
in the present administrative structure of Xishuangbanna Dai
Autonomous Prefecture.
Chapter 3 is Guan's introduction to her study community, Ban Da Tiu,
located close to the Lao border and sixty kilometers from the
prefectural capital of Jinhong. The description gives the
impression, at one level, of a fairly typical seventy-six-household
Tai rice-farming village, such as one would expect to find all over
these Sino-Southeast Asian borderlands, from North Thailand through
the Burmese Shan State, northern Laos, and into Yunnan. But of
special interest is Guan's portrait of a vibrant on-going religious
tradition, in both its Buddhist and its folk dimensions. It is
difficult to remember how close we still are to that frenzied decade
(1966--76) of political turmoil and antireligiosity that marked
Chairman Mao Zedong's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
(Incidentally, I experienced something of the same sense of surprise
when, in Xishuangbanna and in neighboring Lancang County of Simao
Prefecture, I attended Lahu Shi and Lahu Na temple rituals and
soul-recall rites with Lahu friends who are card-carrying CCP
members--and proud of it!)
Ban Da Tiu is an exclusively Dai Lue community, with the exception
of a few inmarried Han carpenters. It is not, however, a
particularly isolated settlement. The paved highway from Jinhong to
Mengla's county seat, Menglun, passes right through the village; a
branch of the Han-dominated Menglun State Rubber Plantation is only
a few kilometers away; the Xishuangbanna Tropical Plant Institute
(employing almost a thousand people) is just across the river from
the village; and an office of the Hanstaffed Menglun Road Service is
only a kilometer from the village. In addition, most young people
speak Chinese in addition to the Dai language--all village children
advancing to senior primary and middle school attend institutions
where two-thirds of the student body and most of the teachers are
Han, and where Chinese is the sole language of instruction. Given
the circumstances of the recent past, along with the present
physical, economic, technical, and cultural proximity of modern Han
social-cultural institutions, it is remarkable just how very Dai Ban
Da Tiu remains.
Chapters 4 to 6 of Guan's study, dealing respectively with folk
religion, the contrast between folk religion and Buddhism, and the
coexistence of the two traditions, constitute the heart of her work.
Again, this reviewer was less struck by the ethnographic details
(though specialists will want to examine these carefully, e.g., her
report [50--51] of the recent institution of so anti-canonical a
practice as sacrificing buffaloes to the Buddha) than by the fact
that such a vibrant tradition appears to be enduring within a
politico-economic ambience that, officially at least, sees the world
in very different terms. The details of local beliefs in
soul-essence, deities, and spirits; of medicine men, spirit
specialists, and ritual bards; of monasteries, monks, and
merit-making; of recalling lsot souls, honoring protective deities,
and propitiating malevolent spirits--and of the Dai Lue villagers'
ability to accommodate two sets of beliefs and ritual
practices--must all be very familiar to anyone conversant with Tai
ethnography. But with these as the backdrop, it is sometimes hard to
recall that only a few years ago Buddhist temples were being
destroyed, and Buddha images desecrated, by young Maoist
proletarians who included (so this reviewer was told in
Xishuangbanna) goodly numbers of Dai in their midst. Today, as Guan
tells us in her introduction, not only is there "a marked revival of
Buddhism [as evidenced by the] reconstruction of monasteries,
building of images of Buddha, training of monks, copying of Buddhist
texts and setting up of monastic libraries," but the "indigenous
[folk] religion has also become more active. Instead of the
traditional bamboo temples for the village gods, the villagers ...
[have] rebuilt these temples with cement and bricks [and] the
sacrificial ceremonies for the indigenous gods tend to be more
frequent and more serious" (3).
Guan's characterizations of Buddhism and folk religion, and her
explanations of why they are able to coexist among the Dai Lue, are,
in this reviewer's mind, just a little too much those of the
outsider ("etic" in current--and ugly--anthropological jargon). One
may, like Guan, "definitely distinguish these two beliefs and
practices, and state where Buddhism ends and where the indigenous
religion begins" (44). But is this also invariably true of the
participants themselves? Moreover, although the search for
characteristics common to both systems (such as tolerance and
respect for all forms of life) is important, it does not seem to
tell the entire story. I suggest Guan is more truly on the mark when
she cites her informants as saying:
It is better to worship both in our village temple [of the village
guardian deities! and the Buddhist temple as well ... When we have a
new baby or marriage or travel we pray to our village gods; when
somebody dies we ask monks for chanting because Buddhism is very
helpful for the death.
In effect Buddhism and folk religion fulfil different,
nonconflicting functions. The one deals essentially with the
hereafter, the other with the here-and-now.
Altogether there is much in Guan's book to interest and excite
specialists on the Tai-speaking peoples, as well as those more
generally concerned with China's minority peoples. It is a pity,
however, that the work was not better edited before being placed in
the public domain. It seems to me that in view of the enormous
effort Guan made to present her research in English (the
Chinese-language literature is voluminous), she should have been
entitled to receive, in return, some competent editorial assistance.
As it is, the publication is plagued with typographical, spelling,
grammatical, and factual errors. A few samples: the area of
Xishuangbanna is given as "nineteen square kilometers" (7); the Aini
(Akha) are referred to as "a branch of the Hans" (for Hani!) (20);
and the annual monastic retreat is described as a "three-month
festival" (37). In addition, British and American standard spellings
are intermingled, and Tai words are rendered in a sometimes
confusing mix of Hanyu pinyin and other romanizations. These are all
items that a conscientious editor should have caught and addressed.
Thanks then to Ms. Guan for this valuable sample of post-Maoist
Chinese scholarship, but less thanks to her publishers for the final
production (which, incidentally, would have benefited enormously by
maps and photographs, particularly of Buddhist and village temples
and their associated rituals).
REFERENCES CITED:
BROHM, John 1963 Buddhism and animism in a Burmese village. Journal
of Asian Studies 22: 155--67.
KIRSCH, A. Thomas 1977 Complexity in the Thai religious system: An
interpretation. Journal of Asian Studies 36: 241--66.
PFANNER, David E. 1962 Rice and religion in a Burmese village. Ph.D.
dissertation, Cornell University.
SPIRO, Melford E. 1967 Burmese supernaturalism: A study in the
explanation and reduction of suffering. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall.
TAMBIAH, Stanley J. 1970 Buddhism and the spirit cults in northeast
Thailand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
TERWIEL, B. J. 1975 Monks and magic. An analysis of religious
ceremonies in central Thailand. Scandinavian [Institute of Asian
Studies Monograph Series 24. London: Curzon Press.