Civil Daoism and martial Meishan : a textual study on the ordination rituals of the Lanten Yao in northwestern Laos

Abstract

This thesis is a textual study on the Chinese manuscripts of the ritual tradition preserved by the Lanten in the northwestern part of Laos—an ethnic group of Yao 瑤 whose population recently amounted to approximately ten thousand in the country, but are much more numerous in the southwestern borders of China. Judging by the dates of the manuscripts, it is fair to assert that the ritual tradition has survived at the periphery of China throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, enduring the historical transitions from the late Qing to the modern state of China and Laos. The ordination ceremony is well known for its performance of getting a young boy to jump off from a high stage into a net to demonstrate his readiness and qualities to become a mature man. This research will delineate the spiritual logic that compels the actions and visualizations in the ordination ceremony. The Lanten ordination comprises two distinct branches of ritual traditions—Daoism 道教 and Meishan Masters’ Teachings 梅山師教. Examining the Secret Words 秘語, Liturgy Texts 科儀本, Scriptures 經懺, and Documents 文檢, the body chapters of this thesis will offer an intertextual interpretation of the performance and spiritual meanings of the rituals, which stunningly reveal the procedures of alchemical production of the Dao Body 道體and Dragon Body 龍體to be adopted by the Disciple. It is inside the somatic existence of the Disciple that two distinct belief systems operate simultaneously to equip the novice with the ability to create his cosmos and maintain mobility in the spiritual realm. Preserving their own alchemical and meditation methods in the Secret Words, the case of the Lanten ordination adds an indispensable puzzle to the general picture of Chinese local ritual traditions—the duality of the civil and martial is the everlasting cognitive structure that produces and maintains almost every local society and its way of life in South China.