The Institution of Daoism in the Central Region (Xiangzhong) of Hunan.

In recent years there has been an outpouring of studies on local religious traditions found in different regions of China. That scholarship—which has uncovered new religious traditions and lineages—invites us to revise many earlier narratives about the contours of Chinese religious history and has helped to challenge problematic earlier assumptions of Chinese Religions as monolithic entities that were largely the same across the length and breadth of China. One of the areas for which there remains a paucity of local studies, however, is the Hunan region. This essay aims to provide a local geographical study of the Daoist history in the Hunan region, from its inception up to the present day. While I attempt to provide a history of general contours, the focus is primarily on early developments and what can be gleaned from the textual record. The earliest phase of Daoist history in the central Hunan region is difficult to assess, but it appears that Buddhism and Daoism both developed and took root in this region from the third century to the fourth century. The initial center of Daoist activity in Hunan was at Nanyue, and Daoism is found at the Qingxia guan (originally called the Dongzhen guan) in Baling, which was built in the Liang dynasty (535--546), and the Dengzhen guan in Liling. During the Tang dynasty many new abbeys were built in the central Hunan region (including Nanyue, Chenzhou, Ningyuan, Changde, Liuyang, Chaling, Xiangyang, Wuling, Shaoyang, Xinhua, and Yueyang). Since it is not plausible in the confines of this essay to attend to the history of each of those sites I have focused my attention on the Daoist history of Wenxian shan, one of the significant early Daoist sites in the Xinhua region which some have described as being the birthplace of Daoism in the central Hunan region. By the Ming dynasty Zhengyi Daoism had become particularly influential in the Xiangtan region. Although Zhengyi Daoists became dispersed throughout the villages of Hunan, from the Ming into the Qing dynasty, it was, however, Quanzhen Daoism that came to assert its influence at the major Daoist institutions in the central Hunan region— including those in Changsha, Nanyue, Yueyang, Liuyang, Taoyuan, Taojiang, and Liling. The present focus here on the largely institutional history of Daoism in central Hunan is not meant to preclude, however, the importance of local vernacular and exorcistic traditions, but in attempting to establish the early history of Daoism in Hunan—at least prior to the Ming dynasty—it is very difficult to say anything for certain about those local vernacular traditions. In order to begin to fill in some of the history that might be missed due to an emphasis on institutional history, the final section of this paper discusses the value of a rich body of material that comes from the interiors of statues from the Hunan region relating the history of the main deity of Nanyue and his transformation into a popular god named Nanyue shengdi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]