Analytic Essay on the Domestic Statuary of Central Hunan: The Cult to Divinities, Parents, and Masters

Abstract

Thanks to the financial support of the CCK Foundation and the Beaufour-Ipsen Tianjin Pharmaceutical Co., the Beijing centre of the Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient has engaged in a research project entitled "Taoism and Local Society," which began in 2002. The project was based on the computerized cataloging of three collections of polychrome wood statuettes originating in the Hunan region. Two are private collections and the third belongs to the Hunan Provincial Museum, the same that houses the Mawangdui relics. At this point, the cataloguing of two collections is complete, that of Patrice Fava (hereafter noted as PF) and that of the Museum (hereafter noted as MH) . Other than their differing origins, the particularity of these collections¬¬--compared to the one constituted by De Groot at the turn of the 20th century in the Fujian area, which one can visit in Lyon and in Leiden --resides in the fact that the statuettes have been consecrated and that they contain an yizhi (consecration certificates) precisely indicating the name of the statuette, those who commissioned it, and the sculptors, the precise location of the home where it was installed, the reason for the cult, the date of consecration, and generally a series of talismans intended to invoke the divinities . Based on the data currently at our disposal, we propose, first of all, to present these statuettes from a quantitative, temporal and geographical point of view, and secondly, to do a preliminary analysis of the three types of cults which are evoked in them: cults to divinities, parents and masters.