明ㆍ淸代 福建 宗族의 祖上祭祀 認識 ― 祈福避禍信仰과 관련하여 ―

Abstract

In Fujian, where folk faiths were prevalent, the ancestor-worship services was an official ceremony with strong religious nature in themselves. Also they were rituals that the lineage or family members could participate in relatively easily to know about their ancestors and identify their family lines, while acquiring family-related cultures and passing them down on. In Fujian where armed conflicts against nearby villages and lineages had occurred frequently while the custom of the lineage or family members living collectively was prevalent, various folk faiths had existed to ease off present tensions and possible future unrests. In these circumstances, ancestors became the object of worship as well as a god who would protect the family and lineage beyond that of respect, and people came to pray to their own ancestors for giving them fortune and protection from misfortunes, which had formerly been what people had prayed for in folk faiths. And the belief ‘The souls of ancestors are immortal and exert persistent effects on their descendents.’ made it possible. Each family and lineage wanted to thrive, and its own prosperity depended on the increase of the number of its own lineage or family members. It requires high birth rate and low death rate. And they thought, it was the matter belonging to spirits, so people prayed for helps to the souls of their ancestors which, they supposed, might know well about the circumstances their descendents were facing. Furthermore, every family and lineage competed to produce more national test passers than others. Under these severe competitions, with strong beliefs in Literacy Guardian Spirit playing important roles in them, people came to think that their ancestors’ souls living in spiritual world would know their descendents’ situation very well and give them helps. Also with a belief that, in achieving great fortunes, Wealth-God and Fengshui (Wind&Water) was important, they prayed to the guardian spirit and tried to possess good one, but they also believed that their ancestors’ helps were also important in it. These beneficial-for-all views toward ancestor-worship services and theology was a vital survival mechanism that people had acquired from living in the times of high tension and conflicts. Unlike common folk faiths, the ancestor-worship services had the principle of “keep close who deserves to be close”, and certain limits had existed on who could be worship-service attenders and worship-service hosts. The presence of the limits on the worship-service attenders and worship-service hosts implies that only those attenders and hosts could enjoy the exclusive rights to the Fortunes Attained-by-ancestors’ Assistance, and the Helps Given-By-Ancestors. For this reason, in the worshiping services, it became the most important to decide who would be the ancestor that deserves to be given services and who would hold the ceremony. Also it was the most important principle in unifying lineage or family members into one. Later, the principle of “keep close who deserves to be close” had been systematized further as the theories of the strict blood line, the inheritance of ancestors’ spirits and the possession of the same soul between ancestors and descendents, while the belief took roots that the spirits of ancestors would accept the services held by the descendents who succeeded their blood lines, sharing the same spirit. Also, people made it possible to unify lineage or family members together by describing the father-son and ancestor-descendent as ‘one soul’ or ‘one body’, distinguishing themselves from others. The principle of repaying, which had originated from the principle that ancestor-worship services should be given to the greatly contributed ancestors, applied to the ancestor-worship services of each family and lineage. Especially, the act of repaying done by descendents for the contributions done by parents had been systemized as filial-ism, and people were encouraged to practice it when their parents were alive and continue it by holding funeral ceremony and worship services after they had passed away. But if the deed of filial-ism, in other words, respecting their parents they were alive and holding worship services after they died, should have carried out only because of the sense of obligation and responsibility, it must have been difficult to continue it, Thus, the scholars and governors devised the logic of repaying, which has religious orthodox creeds such as Fortunes Attained-by-ancestors’ Assistance, and the Helps Given-By-Ancestors, and Retributive Calamity. These logical reasoning of repaying played as a core principle for unifying lineage members, leading them to build ancestrial shrines and hold worship services regularly for their ancestors like the lineage originators who had done great contributions for the family or lineageThe premise needed for ancestor-worship services to be continued is the presence of the descendents who would not forget the ancestors' and contributions. Since Zhu Xi (朱熹; 1130 ~ 1200) of the Chinese Southern Song dynasty argued about the principle “The nature of the spirits is the nature of the mind.”, the question of how to let the lineage or family members remember and pay service to their ancestrial contributions had been an important matter. Zhang Yue in the Ming dynasty insisted that, in the ancestor-worship services, the pivotal figure must be the eldest paternal descendent based on the lineage regulations. Later, Yi Guangdi in the Qing dynasty proposed that the gentry should take the pivotal role in the services, evoking the changes in the service holders. It shows the growing importance of the gentry and the changes in the social structure within the lineage and family as the results of social conflicts around the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Thinking that the gentry was a social status one could achieve whereas the eldest paternal descendent is the one given by birth, it meant opening up the status of the eldest paternal descendent to all the members belonging to that lineage or family, showing that the consensus among the members became much more important in uniting the lineage or family members because the gentry was only a part of the ones who would not forget their ancestors’ contributions. Ancestor-worship service is a form of social courtesy, which was recognized and used as the most effective means of governing by Chinese rulers from the early stage. Thus the codes related to the services can be found in many family regulations or lineage regulations. As time passed, the bonds between the members would grow weak, and severe competitions might occur even within a family or a lineage, causing various social unrests. So, they tried solve these social problems, by encouraging people to hold ancestor-worship services and implement the lineage regulations or family regulations. In other words, they controled families by enforcing people to include the description of ancestors as a living entity who could abide in shrines and tombs looking down and caring their descendents with so much impacts on their offsprings, asking them to implement the obligations or prohibitions written in the family and lineage regulations, and instigating them to hold ancestor-worship services to refresh the feeling of the presence of the ancestrial spirits and their patronages. Also among the gentry and intellectuals, many of them believed in the presence of their ancestors overseeing them. So they participated in the ancestor-worship services regularly while seeking to amend their conducts to produce great social achievements, and these are one of the notable things concerning the ancestor worship services.