Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T01:06:39.420Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - The Emergence of Ghosts in Early China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2022

Mu-Chou Poo
Affiliation:
The University of Hong Kong
Get access

Summary

This passage is from the Book of Rites (Liji 禮記), a collection of Confucian teachings and anecdotes probably collected and redacted during the third century BCE.4 It is difficult to know to what extent the followers of the Confucian teaching would subscribe to this view, yet by virtue of its being recorded in the prestigious canon and regarded as the saying of Confucius, this passage tends to leave the impression that Confucius (or his disciples) regarded ghosts and spirits as invisible beings. In the Confucian Analects (Lunyu 論語), Confucius once said that one should “revere the ghosts and spirits but keep a distance from them.”5 The rationale of this statement seems to be that, as a humanist, Confucius encourages his students to pay more attention to the affairs of living people based on secular principles, rather than following the instructions of ghosts and spirits as propagated through those religious personnel such as shamans. However, this statement, as well as the Book of Rites passage quoted above, makes it clear that Confucius did not deny the power and efficacy of ghosts and spirits. We should also recognize that Confucius and his followers constituted only an extremely small group of intellectuals in their contemporary society. The majority of the people in pre-imperial China, from the tenth century to the third century BCE, would probably have had some idea of how a ghost should look like, though they might not have agreed with each other. To trace the origin and development of the concept of ghosts, however, it is necessary that we go back to the earliest documents.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×