Taishan shigandang 泰山石敢当 by Ye Tao 叶涛 (review)

Book Notes 157 Maoshan Daojiao zhi 茅山道教志 Edited by YANG SHIHUA 杨世华 and PAN YIDE 潘一德. Wuhan: Huazhong shifan daxue chubanshe, 2007. ISBN 978-7-5622-3518-7. RMB 28.00 hardcover. This is a much-needed gazetteer about one of the more famous mountains in Daoist history, Maoshan in Jiangsu province. It builds on a 1998 gazetteer, Jurong Maoshan zhi 句容茅山志 , which gave initial accounts of the mountain’s fate in the 20th century. Whereas the earlier gazetteer focused mostly on the destruction caused by Japanese troops in World War II, Yang and Pan’s new version gives invaluable information on the mountain’s arguably more severe destruction in the Cultural Revolution. It reveals for the first time that Maoshan’s signature five guan 观 and three gong 宫 were all functioning after the war, but that all five guan and one of the three gong were obliterated by the Cultural Revolution. Also unlike its predecessor, the new gazetteer includes temples outside the jurisdiction of Jurong County, thus giving a much more complete picture of the mountain’s Daoist life. The gazetteer also gives for the first time biographies of key actors in recent history and describes reconstruction efforts, which have restored the temple complex to one of the largest and most vibrant in China. Alas, temple reconstruction on Maoshan has proceeded so quickly that even this book is in some ways dated, missing completely three new temples that have opened. IAN JOHNSON, Beijing Taishan shigandang 泰山石敢当 Ye Tao 叶涛. Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe 浙江人民出版社, 2007. 180 pages. ISBN 978-7-213-03475-6. RMB 42.00 paper. This richly illustrated coffee-table book by folklorist Ye Tao presents many photographs of and much information on the apotropaic stone stelae known as shigandang, with a focus on Taishan and the surrounding areas. While the work is directed at a general rather than an academic audience, the material presented is based on many years of diligent fieldwork by the author, a researcher at the Institute of World Religions of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. It therefore provides a reliable and well-presented introduction to this subject matter. PHILIP CLART, Universität Leipzig ...