Visualizing the Afterlife: The Song Elite's Obsession with Death, the Underworld, and Salvation

42 Pages·2002·0.4 MB·English

BIBLID 0254-4466(2002)20:1 pp. 399-440
漢學研究第20 卷第1 期（民國91 年6 月）
Visualizing the Afterlife:
The Song Elite’s Obsession with Death,
the Underworld, and Salvation
Hsien-huei Liao＊
Abstract
This study explores the Song elite’s obsession with the afterlife and its
impact on their daily lives. Through examining the ways they perceived the
relations between the living and the dead, the fate of their own afterlives, and
the functional roles of religious specialists, this study demonstrates that the
prevailing ideas about death and the afterlife infiltrated the minds of many of
the educated, deeply affecting their daily practices. While affected by contem-
porary belief in the underworld and the power of the dead, the Song elite also
played an important role in the formation and proliferation of those ideas
through their piety and practices. Still, implicit divergences of perceptions and
practices between the elite and the populace remained abiding features under-
neath their universally shared beliefs. To explore the Song elite’s interactions
with popular belief in the underworld, several questions are discussed, such as
how and why the folk belief in the afterlife were accepted and incorporated
into the elite’s own practices, and how their practices corresponded to, dif-
fered from, or reinforced folk beliefs. An examination of the social, cultural,
* Hsien-huei Liao is a research associate in the Department of East Asian Languages and
Civilizations at Harvard University, U.S.A.
399
400 漢學研究第20卷第1期
and political impact on their conceptualization of the afterlife within the broad
historical context of the Song is key to understand their beliefs and practices
concerning the underworld.
Keywords: Song elite, popular beliefs, posthumous judgment, the under-
world, religious rites
1. Introduction
The elaboration of the concept of the underworld and its denizens during
the tenth century drastically reshaped the beliefs concerning the afterlife, cast-
ing long shadows over daily life in the Song. The underworld was configured
as an unavoidable purgatorial journey that everyone had to undergo after death;
a process whereby the spirit of the deceased was led through a series of ten tri-
bunals, at each of which gruesome and frightening punishments were inflicted
upon sinful mortals.1 Reinforced by pictorial presentations, the forbidding
images of the underworld and the unbearable tortures resulting from karmic sin
1 Stephen F. Teiser, “Having Once Died and Returned to Life: Representations of Hell in
Medieval China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies(HJAShereafter) 48,2(1988): 433-463;
“The Growth of Purgatory,” in Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Peter N. Gregory eds., Religion and
Society in T’ang and Sung China (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai’i Press, 1993), 115-145; The
Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism
(Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai’i Press, 1994); Richard von Glahn, “Changing Gods in Medieval
China, 1127-1276 [Review],” HJAS 53,2 (1993): 616-642; Shen Tsung-hsien 沈宗憲,
Songdai minjian de youming shijieguan 宋代民間的幽冥世界觀 (Taipei: Shangding wenhua,
1993), 144-175; Sawada Mizuho 澤田瑞穗, Jigoku hen: Chugoku no meikai setsu地獄變：中
國の冥界說(Kyoto: Hozokan, 1968). For belief concerning the life after death in earlier peri-
ods, see Yu Ying-shih, “O Soul Come Back! A Study in the Changing Conceptions of the Soul
and Afterlife in Pre-Buddhist China,” HJAS 47,2 (1987): 363-395; Poo Mu-chou 蒲慕州,
Muzang yu shengsi: Zhongguo gudai zongjiao zhi xingsi 墓葬與生死：中國古代宗教之省思
(Taipei: Lianjing, 1993), 193-225; In Search of Personal Welfare: A View of Ancient Chinese
Religion (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1998), 62-66, 165-177; Michael Loewe,
Chinese Ideas of Life and Death: Faith, Myth and Reason in the Han Period, 202BC-AD 220
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1982), 25-37, 114-126; Richard von Glahn, “Ancestors, Ghosts,
and Gods in Ancient China,”manuscript (1998).
Hsien-huei Liao∕Visualizing the Afterlife 401
profoundly affected human conduct in the living world. Just as commoners
were easily haunted with the burden of penitence, few educated Song men
were immune from the terrors inspired by these powerful images. The educat-
ed elite often displayed grave anxiety over the fate of deceased family mem-
bers, desperately attempting to secure a safe passage and a better rebirth for
them. Perhaps more often they were concerned about the conditions of their
own future afterlife.
However, their preoccupation with the netherworld and reliance on ritual
specialists in dealing with the interwoven concerns about the dead and the liv-
ing have been largely neglected or considered idiosyncratic by scholars.
Stereotypical images of the Confucian elite as rational and worldly oriented
may partly account for such a studied disregard. Convinced that the affairs of
the underworld were beneath the dignity of the men indoctrinated with
Confucian teachings, some scholars have paid more attention to the elite’s
roles in promoting Confucian-prescribed funeral rituals than to their concerns
over the fate and the abode of the dead. While the conflict and competition
between Confucian rituals and folk practices figured as the foci of their studies,
the elite’s own preoccupation with the afterlife has received little scholarly
consideration.2 Other scholars have examined the mentality of the Song elite
by taking funeral rituals and grave goods as the main sources for understanding
social practices, religious beliefs, and cultural formation. They attributed the
initiation of ritual standardization to the Song Confucian-educated elite, who
had not only revised and disseminated orthodox norms, but also vigorously
corrected the funeral customs among the people. As they have argued, the
2 Chiang Yi-pin 蔣義斌, “Songdai de zangsu: rujia yu fojiao de lingyi zhanchang 宋代的葬俗：
儒家與佛教的另一戰場,” in Guoji Songshi yantaohui lunwenji 國際宋史研討會論文集
(Taipei: Wenhua daxue, 1988), 613-627; Patricia Buckley Ebrey, “Cremation in Sung China,”
American Historical Review95(1990): 406-428; Xu Jijun 徐吉軍, “Lun Songdai huozang de
shengxing ji qi yuanyin 論宋代火葬的盛行及其原因,” Zhongguoshi yanjiu 中國史研究 3
(1992): 74-82; Zhang Bangwei張邦煒, “Songdai sangzang xisu juyu 宋代喪葬習俗舉隅,”in
Dierjie Songshi xueshu yantaohui lunwenji 第二屆宋史學術研討會論文集 (Taipei: Wenhua
daxue, 1995), 79-92.
402 漢學研究第20卷第1期
superimposition of a standard ritual form by the state and by the educated,
together with the mediation of religious specialists, had made Confucian funer-
al rituals widely accepted.3 The modification of Confucian funeral rituals by
Song Confucian philosophers through accommodating some popular practices
was crucial to the uniformity of death rituals during the late imperial period.4
Though the purposes of their studies differ, the aforementioned scholars
have perceived the functional role of the Song elite in a rather similar way,
arguing that the Confucian-educated ruling class, whether state officials or
local elite, exerted a strong top-down influence on commoners’ beliefs and
practices. The weaknesses of this approach become obvious when examining
the large volume of evidence which reveals that the Song elite embraced folk
beliefs regarding the afterlife no less enthusiastically than they tried to incul-
cate the populace with the Confucian rituals. The first group of scholars failed
to explain this contradiction, or they simply dismissed those material facts as
minor and insignificant. The second, though noting the Song Confucian
philosophers’ recognition of some folk customs, equally rejected the notion
that the elite might share the beliefs underlying those practices.5 Overall, these
studies have failed to delve into the Song elite’s beliefs in the afterlife, or their
association with the funerary specialists of various religious traditions, both of
which had been overtly rejected in Confucian thinking.
To point out the limits of the top-down approach by no means suggests
that a bottom-up approach is better suited to studying the elite’s beliefs con-
3 Susan Naquin, “Funerals in North China: Uniformity and Variation,” in James L. Watson and
Evelyn S. Rawski eds., Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China (Berkeley: Univ. of
California Press, 1988), 37-70; Rawski, “A Historian’s Approach to Chinese Death Ritual,”
ibid., 20-34; Stuart E. Thompson, “Death, Food, and Fertility,”ibid., 71-108. While holding a
similar idea, James L. Watson maintained that the process of acceptance remained largely
unknown. “The Structures of Chinese Funerary Rites: Elementary Forms, Ritual Sequence, and
the Primacy of Performance,”ibid., 3-19.
4 Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial China: A Social History
of Writing about Rites(New Jersey: Princeton Univ. Press, 1991).
5 Ebrey, Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial China,65-66, 85-98.
Hsien-huei Liao∕Visualizing the Afterlife 403
cerning the afterlife. In their studies of purgatory, karmic sin, and retribution,
many scholars have alluded to the far-reaching influence that the newly devel-
oped notions about the afterlife during the Song had exerted on Chinese soci-
ety. Generated from a mix of various indigenous concerns and Buddhist influ-
ences, these ideas attracted a broad audience across the boundaries of gender
and social strata. The elite and non-elite alike were subject to the same passage
of posthumous judgment in which punishments were meted out according to
misdeeds during one’s lifetime.6 As Teiser has argued, such ideas were so
widely held among the Song Chinese that “for the next thousand years [they]
constituted the definitive model for imagining and alleviating the fate of the
dead.”7 Though cogently argued, these studies neglect to distinguish the
nuances between elite and non-elite forms of piety, which were shaped con-
comitantly by many social and political factors.
Finally, the prevailing scholarship’s focus on funeral rituals and practices
poses questions that this study will also address. It is undeniable that funeral
rituals and practices serve as a remarkable window on beliefs about the after-
life, revealing many shared notions between the educated and the populace.
But making funerals the center of attention usually resulted in the researchers
confining their visions to specific times, spaces, and objects. Temporally limit-
ed to mourning observances and periodic memorial services, this approach
tends to leave out the elite’s visualization of the underworld generated in daily
life. Spatially limited to graves, coffins, ancestor tablets, or ritual texts, this
approach fails to take their dream adventures and deathlike conditions into
account. Also, research limited to ancestors and deceased kin overlooks the
elite’s anxiety over their own deaths, as well as the deaths of strangers.
6 Teiser, “Having Once Died and Returned to Life,”433-463; “The Growth of Purgatory,”115-
145; Sung Kwang-yu 宋光宇, “Zhongguo diyu zuibao guannian de xingcheng中國地獄罪報觀
念的形成,” Shengli bowuguan kexue niankan 省立博物館科學年刊 26 (1983): 1-23; Liu
Ching-chen劉靜貞, “Songren de mingbao guan: Hong Mai ‘Yijian zhi’ shitan 宋人的冥報觀
—洪邁「夷堅志」試探.”Shihuo yuekan食貨月刊9(1981): 34-40.
7 Teiser, “The Growth of Purgatory,”115.
404 漢學研究第20卷第1期
To explore the Song elite’s obsession with the afterlife and its impact on
their daily lives, it is thus necessary to go beyond conventional approaches and
frameworks. Aside from funeral rituals and practices, I shall examine the ways
the elite perceived the relations between the living and the dead, the fate of
their own afterlives, and the functional roles of religious specialists and rituals
based on their own testimonies and daily experiences. Questions about how
and why the folk beliefs in the afterlife were accepted and incorporated into the
elite’s own practices, and how their practices corresponded to, differed from, or
reinforced folk beliefs, will also be addressed. Equally important will be an
examination of the sociopolitical impacts on their conceptualization of the
afterlife within the broad historical context of the Song. Furthermore, the role
that the Song elite had played in the evolution of beliefs about the afterlife and
rites of purification will also be reevaluated.
2. The Song Elite’s Contradictory Views and
Practices Concerning the Afterlife
In contrast to the many studies in which the educated elite has been
roughly categorized either as unbending critics of uncanonical practices or as
individuals more tolerant of them,8 this study suggests a more subtle inquiry is
required. An examination of their views and behavior concerning the afterlife
shows that it is not unusual to find folk beliefs imprinted in the minds of these
so-called uncompromising critics. As the line of demarcation is fuzzy, any
attempt to dichotomize or trisect the educated elite based on one-sided
accounts tends to blur, not clarify, their religious predispositions. In my
inquiry, I shall shift the center of attention away from devising classification
schemes to a more meticulous view of elite piety in light of their sociopolitical
8 Ebrey, “The Response of the Sung State to Popular Funeral Practices,”in Religion and Society
in T’ang and Sung China, 220; Leo Tak-hung Chan, “Narrative as Argument: The Yuewei
caotang bijiand the Late Eighteenth Century Elite Discourse on the Supernatural,”HJAS53,1
(1993): 25-62; Poo, In Search of Personal Welfare,179-204.
Hsien-huei Liao∕Visualizing the Afterlife 405
and cultural contexts. In this manner, no ardent Confucians will be arbitrarily
precluded from the investigation of their religious tendencies. Instead, a whole
array of views and practices expressed and embodied by the Song elite will all
come under close scrutiny.
Conflicts between the views and practices of the Song elite were apparent
in several ways. The one most often remarked upon is the discrepancies found
in funerals. On one hand, strongly motivated by the perceived need to guard
the Confucian orthodoxy against folk contamination and to maintain an orderly
society, Song scholars devoted themselves to reform of the uncanonical funeral
practices pervasive in their time. Because of their efforts, many Buddhist,
Daoist, and folk services predicated upon popular beliefs in the underworld
purgatory and atonement were subjected to severe criticism and largely out-
lawed.9 On the other hand, however, rituals of redemption performed by vari-
ous kinds of ritual specialists had gradually become an integral part of funerals,
widely upheld by the populace and the Confucian educated as well. As Hu Yin
胡寅 (1098-1156) once lamented, few among his contemporaries could free
themselves from the intimidation of Buddhist ideas about life, death, and rein-
carnation.10
Song observers tended to explain these conflicts as mainly resulting from
the elite’s passive or expedient acceptance of folk practices. Uncanonical
funeral customs were so popular and functionally useful that no one could easi-
ly resist them.11 The son of the steadfast Confucian Huang Luo 黃犖 (1151-
9 Ebrey, Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial China,68-101; Li Tao 李燾(1115-1184),
Xu zizhi tongjian changbian續資治通鑑長編(Taipei: Shijie, 1961), 3: 65; Dou Yi 竇儀(914-
966) et al., Song xingtong 宋刑統 (Taipei: Wenhai, 1964), 18: 8a-9a; Tuo Tuo 脫脫 (1313-
1355) et al., Songshi宋史(Taipei: Dingwen, 1983), 125: 2917-19; and Wang Yong 王　(?-
after 1227), Yanyi yimolu燕翼詒謀錄(Beijing: Zhonghua, 1997), 3: 24.
10 Hu Yin, Feiran ji斐然集(Wenyuange siku quanshu[SKQS hereafter],v. 1137), 20: 7a-13a.
11 Sima Guang 司馬光(1019-1086) and Cheng Yi 程頤(1032-1085), for example, both had per-
sonal experiences of struggling to perform Confucian funerals against strong opposition from
other family members who preferred to follow folk customs. Ercheng ji 二程集, yishu 遺書,
22a: 290. Sima wenzhenggong chuanjia ji 司馬文正公傳家集(SKQS, v. 845), 65: 18a-20a.
406 漢學研究第20卷第1期
1211) exemplified submission of the elite to popular mores when pressed by
close relatives. When his father died, he tried in vain to eliminate Buddhist and
Daoist services from the funeral, since all members of his clan rallied to
oppose him. As a result, the funeral was a marriage of folk customs and classi-
cal rites.12 Che Ruoshui 車若水 and Zheng Xiongfei 鄭雄飛 typified elite’s
expedient acceptance of folk practices. Neither of them had faith in Buddhism,
yet both performed the Buddhist rituals of salvation, which they believed
served to express one’s filial piety and emotional attachment towards ancestors
better than Confucian rituals did.13 The central and local officials also often
sponsored salvation ceremonies to help untended ghosts enter reincarnation
and thus ensure security for the community at large. For example, in 1012
when numerous dead bodies were found drifting down the Bian River 汴渠,
Emperor Zhenzong 真宗 (r. 998-1022) immediately ordered Buddhist and
Daoist salvation ceremonies to be performed.14 Similarly, in 1167 Zhao Boxu
趙伯虛, the county magistrate of Wujiang 吳江(Jiangsu), assembled members
of the Daoist clergy to perform salvation rituals to relieve the ghosts of those
drowned in Shihtang 石塘 (adjacent to Lake Tai 太湖) from the fate of wan-
dering about the netherworld.15
In light of such observations by the Song elite, modern scholars invariably
have agreed that pragmatic concerns rather than religious piety spurred their
12 Yu Wenbao 俞文豹, Chuijian lu 吹劍錄 (Shanghai: Gudian wenxue, 1958), waiji, 58a-60b.
Han Qi 韓琦 (1008-1075) and Zheng Xie 鄭獬 (1022-1072) also acknowledged that it was
most difficult for living descendants to exclude Buddhist services from the mourning obser-
vances held for their deceased parents. Zhou Hui 周煇 (1127-?), Qingpo zazhi 清波雜誌
(Beijing: Zhonghua, 1994), 10: 436; Lü Zuqian 呂祖謙 (1137-1181), Song wenjian 宋文鑑
(Taipei: Shijie, 1962), 103: 2a-4b.
13 Che Ruoshui,Jiaoqi ji腳氣集(SKQS, v. 865), 41a-42b. On Che’s and Zheng’s biographies, see
Chang Bide 昌彼得and Wang Deyi 王德毅eds., Songren zhuanji ziliao suoyin(hereafter SRZJ)
宋人傳記資料索引(Taipei: Dingwen, 1974), 790, 3708.
14 Wen Ying 文瑩, Yuhu qinghua 玉壺清話 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1984), 4: 37; Xuzizhi tongjian
changbian,79: 12a.
15 Hong Mai 洪邁(1123-1202), Yijian zhi 夷堅志(Taipei: Mingwen, 1982), bing丙, 9: 443-4.
Hsien-huei Liao∕Visualizing the Afterlife 407
adoption of folk funeral rites. It is generally accepted that funerals in Chinese
society were undertaken through the collective efforts of kin groups. In this
process, group decisions generally outweighed individual preferences, espe-
cially when an individual was a junior member of a family. Moreover, in com-
parison to Buddhism and folk religion, Confucian funeral rituals offered little
spiritual comfort to those who had suffered loss, and showed limited emotional
concern toward the deceased.16 It is thus possible that the Song elite’s accom-
modation of folk funeral practices was driven by psychological needs that the
emotionally impoverished Confucian rituals could not offer. Justification for
the adoption of folk customs was also often made on the basis of a concern for
public welfare. Just as the imperial court and local governments frequently
undertook rituals of praying for rain to relieve the people from drought and
famine,17 the Song elite’s sponsorship of various salvation ceremonies was
considered appropriate so long as their purposes went beyond personal
interest.18
Despite the fact that in some instances passivity and expediency are useful
explanatory vehicles, there were many other cases in which they were not
applicable. Consider Zhu Xi’s 朱熹 (1130-1200) preparation for his son’s
funeral. In a letter to Chen Liang 陳亮 (1143-1194) written in 1191, Zhu
mentioned that he had already selected a gravesite. However, because the geo-
mancer instructed him not to excavate until next year, he delayed the burial of
his son’s coffin, storing it in a Buddhist monastery.19 This action utterly belied
his previous opposition to delaying burials, retaining coffins at home, or
16 Timothy Brook, “Funerary Ritual and the Building of Lineages in Late Imperial China,”HJAS
49,2(1989): 465-499.
17 Nakamura Jihei 中村治兵衛, “Socho no kiu ni tsuite 宋朝の祈雨について,” in Chugoku
Shamanism no kenkyu 中國シヤ—マニズの研究(Tokyo: Tosui shobo), 139-156.
18 Matsumoto Koichi 松本浩一, “Sorei, sairei ni miru Sodai shukyoshi no ichi keiko 葬禮, 祭禮に
みる宋代宗教史の一傾向,” in Sodai no shakai to bunka 宋代の社會と文化 (Sodaishi
kenkyukai hokoku, 1983), 169-194.
19 Zhu Xi, Huian xiansheng zhuwengong wenji, xuji,7: 8a-9a.
408 漢學研究第20卷第1期
depositing them at Buddhist institutions.20 His practices diverged so markedly
from his words that even modern scholars have found it difficult to give a
sound explanation for them. Chan Wing-tsit, for example, attributed this
instance of grave geomancy to Zhu’s daughter-in-law, stressing that Zhu gave
no credence to it.21 But this argument explicitly contradicts Chan’s earlier
acknowledgement that Zhu had admitted to following folk customs of divina-
tion for the gravesites of his family.22 However, Ebrey argued that Zhu’s inter-
est in geomancy grew in the 1190s, the exact same time when his son died,
explaining that his approach to geomancy was closely related to its metaphysi-
cal assumptions and to his own living environment.23
While Zhu’s resort to geomancy was largely accepted, his management of
his son’s funeral remained an issue of controversy. Given his seniority, Zhu Xi
likely dominated decisions about his son’s funeral. It was at least with his per-
mission, if not by his own decision, that the burial was delayed and the coffin
kept in a Buddhist monastery. The practice of individual preferences yielding
to group decision simply did not apply in this case. Neither were there any
expedient considerations involved, such as filial piety or public welfare, which
might justify his departure from his stated beliefs. We must seek other reasons
to explain the disparities found in this case and in that of Zhu’s contemporaries
as well. It could be simply a gap between ideas and practices, or a specific dif-
ferentiation of attitude between those emotionally attached to the deceased and
those emotionally distant from them that caused the discrepancies. It could also
be a manifestation of a religious piety that was usually concealed by the elite
themselves. Whatever the explanation, one should keep in mind that the intel-
20 When serving as the prefect of Zhangzhou漳州(Fujian) in 1190, Zhu gave specific instructions
on ritual rules and laws about mourning and burial to local people. Violators, he claimed, would
be subjected to the punishment of one hundred strokes. Huian xiansheng zhuwengong wenji,
100: 7a-b.
21 Chan Wing-tsit, Chu Hsi: New Studies(Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai’i Press, 1989), 119-120.
22 Chan Wing-tsit, Chu Hsi: Life and Thought(Hong Kong: The Chinese Univ. Press, 1987), 156.
23 Ebrey, Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial China, 102-144.