Daoist ritual in north Shanxi

CY

For Daoist ritual in north Shanxi, in addition to my works, and those of Wu Fan, the recent book of Chen Yu 陈瑜 is useful:

  • Jinbei Daojiao keyi yinyue yanjiu 晋北道教科仪音乐研究 [Daoist ritual music of north Shanxi] (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2015).

It provides details of groups in the counties of Yanggao, Datong xian, Guangling, Hunyuan, Tianzhen, Shuozhou, Yingxian, Shanyin, and Xinzhou, going beyond Part One of my In search of the folk Daoists of north China. I’ve introduced many of these groups in articles listed under Local ritual.

While written in the dry format of Yuan Jingfang’s “music-genre” system (see my book, p. 365), it gives details of ritual sequences, beyond the narrow pigeonhole of “music”.

Notably, for scholars of ritual texts, Appendix 5 (pp.282–377) contains a useful collection of manuals from various groups.

One little caveat: the title of the opening manual in the Li family collection is a fiction. Lacking a title on the cover (or any memory of one), they call it “hymn volume” (zantan ben), as I explain in my book (pp.208–9, 375); while it does indeed contain many texts related to the yankou, Chen’s title is made up.

There is still plenty more to explore in the region—even the Shuozhou Daoists deserve a multi-volume study of their own.