Traditional Chinese State Ritual System of Sacrifice to Mountain and Water Spirits

Dear Colleagues,

Sacrifice to mountain and water spirits was already a state ritual in the Shang dynasty (ca. 1600–1046 BCE) and continued in the Zhou to Qin dynasties (ca. 1046–206 BCE). From the Western Han to the Northern Song eras (206 BCE–1126 CE), imperial courts gradually formed a ritual system of mountain- and water-directed state sacrifices, mainly consisting of the five sacred peaks (wuyue 五岳— Mt. Tai 泰山, Mt. Hua 華山, Mt. Heng 衡山, Mt. Heng 恒山, Mt. Song 嵩山), five strongholds (wuzhen 五鎮— Mt. Yi 沂山, Mt. Wu 吳山, Mt. Guiji 會稽山, Mt. Yiwulü 醫巫閭山, Mt. Huo 霍山), four seas (sihai 四海— east, west, south, and north seas), and four waterways (sidu 四瀆— Yangzi River 長江, Yellow River 黃河, Huai River 淮水, and Ji River濟水). This system lasted through the end of the last imperial dynasty (Qing) in 1911.

As a state ritual, this sacrificial system was constructed by the Confucian ritual culture, while in practice it gradually interacted and integrated with religious traditions such as Daoism, popular cults, and Buddhism, especially in its local manifestation and dissemination. Those eighteen mountains and waters were a set of sacred, symbolic spaces, which symbolized the sanctioned political legitimacy of the imperium, and functioned as locations for communication with the divine and supernatural and as the media between religion and its secular context or between various ethnic groups. Together they mapped geographical-directional borders and territories modeled on the yin-yang and five-phase theory, and helped shape Chinese people’s cosmographical understanding of the world. In those mountains and waters, grand temples were built and rebuilt, state rituals of sacrificial ceremonies were performed year after year, local people’s religious worships and activities were routinely presented, and numerous essays and poems describing the landscapes and ceremonies were inscribed on steles preserved inside the temples. Thus, the theme of this Special Issue involves a broad scope, including Confucian ritual culture, state sacrificial ceremonies, Daoism, Buddhism, local cults, cosmography, religious and historical geography, and temple art and literature.

Modern scholars have studied the five sacred peaks from different perspectives and yielded fruitful results, but the whole sacrificial system of mountain and water spirits has not yet drawn sufficient attention. As the first issue to focus on this theme, we invite papers from across disciplines of religious, historical, geographical, and art studies.

Prof. Dr. Jinhua Jia
Guest Editor

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