TY - JOUR
T1 - SHAMANS, SOULS, AND SOMA
T2 - COMPARATIVE RELIGION AND EARLY CHINA
AU - Williams, Nicholas Morrow
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Johns Hopkins University Press and the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - One important innovation in twentieth-century sinology was the borrowing of the term “shamanism” to apply to early Chinese religion. While many scholars have employed this cross-cultural framework, others have rejected this use of the term “shamanism” for Chinese wu 巫 as excessively broad and ideologically biased. These debates too often are framed in broadly nationalistic terms as questions about whether “China” could have had something so exotic in a particular era. In fact, it is very often the case that a particular practice or belief is confined to a certain region at a particular time, or even to a specific substratum of a culture therein. This becomes clear when the “shamanism” problem of ancient Chu is reexamined in light of concomitant issues of personal identity, as represented by various terms for “souls,” or material culture, as represented by “soma” and other plants employed in religious ritual. I argue for the efficacy of cross-cultural analogies in understanding even phenomena which are singular to China. The limited but real utility of these analogies lies in their potential to help us construe the multiplicity within early Chinese religion that is obscured by a Sinocentric perspective.
AB - One important innovation in twentieth-century sinology was the borrowing of the term “shamanism” to apply to early Chinese religion. While many scholars have employed this cross-cultural framework, others have rejected this use of the term “shamanism” for Chinese wu 巫 as excessively broad and ideologically biased. These debates too often are framed in broadly nationalistic terms as questions about whether “China” could have had something so exotic in a particular era. In fact, it is very often the case that a particular practice or belief is confined to a certain region at a particular time, or even to a specific substratum of a culture therein. This becomes clear when the “shamanism” problem of ancient Chu is reexamined in light of concomitant issues of personal identity, as represented by various terms for “souls,” or material culture, as represented by “soma” and other plants employed in religious ritual. I argue for the efficacy of cross-cultural analogies in understanding even phenomena which are singular to China. The limited but real utility of these analogies lies in their potential to help us construe the multiplicity within early Chinese religion that is obscured by a Sinocentric perspective.
KW - Chuci
KW - comparative literature
KW - comparative religion
KW - shamanism
KW - soma
KW - soul
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M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85105369323
SN - 0737-769X
VL - 48
SP - 147
EP - 172
JO - Journal of Chinese Religions
JF - Journal of Chinese Religions
IS - 2
ER -