The Sinister Way: The Divine and the Demonic in Chinese Religious Culture

5. The Song Transformation of Chinese Religious Culture

chapter 5 The Song Transformation of Chinese Religious Culture The rise of the Song dynasty (960–1276) was accompanied by epochal changes in all aspects of Chinese society and culture, changes sufficiently great to mark the transition from Tang to Song as the turning point between China’s early imperial and late imperial eras. The growing power of the imperial state eroded the aristocratic order of the early imperial era, giving rise to a more fluid hierarchy within the elite. Economic expansion generated abundant wealth, and possession of wealth endowed greater social distinction. Confucianism recaptured the intellectual allegiance of the ruling class, yet at the same time Buddhism became fully domesticated within Chinese society and culture. New social and cultural opportunities afforded by the growth of cities, burgeoning merchant and artisan classes, and the dissemination of printing gave birth to an intensely vital “commoner culture.” All of these developments reshaped religious life. Most profound of all of these changes was the shift in the center of gravity of Chinese civilization from the Yellow River valley in the north to the Yangzi valley in the south. Civil war and invasions of steppe nomads wracked north China from the onset of the An Lushan rebellion (755–63) to the turn of the eleventh century, provoking massive migrations to theYangzi River basin and the southern coast. In 750, two-thirds of the population of the Chinese empire lived in the north, and only onethird in the south; by 1100, that ratio had reversed, and the south has remained more populous than the north to the present day. The primacy 130 of the south reached its apogee following the conquest of north China, including the whole of the Yellow River valley, by Jurchen invaders in 1127. Remnants of the imperial family continued the Song dynasty after reestablishing their court at Hangzhou, at the southern terminus of the Grand Canal. During the Southern Song period (1127–1276), which ended with the even more humiliating conquest of all of China by the Mongols, the Chinese empire barely extended beyond the northern bank of the Yangzi River. Intensive settlement and domestication of the southern frontier transformed the livelihood and material culture of the Chinese people. Rice replaced wheat and millet as the staple food; the abundant natural and man-made waterways of the south encouraged mobility and trade; and southern products like tea, sugar, porcelain, silk, and later cotton engendered new industries and new patterns of consumption. The unprecedented growth of cities and towns, which widened circulation of goods and enabled the acquisition of great fortunes through landowning and commerce, exerted a profound impact not only on social and economic life, but on religious culture as well. Economic change also wrought a wholesale transformation of the social order. The aristocracy that had dominated Chinese society and government since the Han dynasty lost its political and economic privileges in the aftermath of the collapse of the Tang imperium. Most aristocratic families failed to adapt to the rising market economy, and the establishment of the civil service examinations as the primary instrument of official recruitment inhibited perpetuation of social station through hereditary rights to political office. The dissolution of the medieval aristocracy strengthened autocratic rule at the center and fostered the development of provincial elites whose social base remained rooted in local society, not the capital. Like the aristocracy of yore, these provincial elites derived their social status from landed wealth, investment in education, and endogamous marriage alliances. But henceforth the social and spatial dimensions of elite power were more spatially circumscribed, and often confined to the local level. Although these provincial elites exhibited remarkable durability and stability, the vicissitudes of examination success precluded the re-creation of aristocratic society, either at the national or at the local level.1 One consequence of the spatial transformation of the Chinese empire was the emergence of the Jiangnan region—the southern half of theYangzi Delta, stretching from Nanjing on the bank of the Yangzi River southward to Ningbo on the seacoast—as its economic heartland (see map 2).2 Song Transformation of Religious Culture 131 Although Nanjing had served as capital of the Chinese dynasties during the Era of Disunion, the delta’s economic potential was not fully exploited until massive waves of immigrants from the north arrived in the late Tang and early Song periods.The infusion of human capital made possible reclamation of...