Explorations on Rain-praying Rituals and the Cultural Spirits in Geography Records between A.D.265 and A.D.581
Rain-praying rituals in geography records can be traced back to Shang,Zhou,Qin,and Han Dynasty.These recordings,in comparison with rain-praying history,biographies,poems,and proses more directly and vividly presented social customs and folk worships of common people at the bottom of society.These rituals not only involved various forms such as whipping rocks to pray for rain,offering ox sacrifice or irritating dragon gods,sacred mountains and spiritual birds,and monarchs and subjects sacrifices in terms of contents,but also closely relied on Yin-Yang and Five Elements theories in terms of thinking.Following the"rain worship"ceremonies of Shang and Zhou Dynasty,these rituals have distinctive features of Yin-Yang rain-shine thoughts,various rain-praying elements,psychological punishment/self-punishment,human affairs-nature connection,and striking pantheistic thoughts,deeply embody the pluralism,functionality,and secularity of folk worships,and centrally display the cultural faiths and spiritual worships of common people.Meanwhile,various rain-praying rituals top-down in the geography records also displayed subjective initiative of people at that time and the compilers'people-oriented thoughts,which fully demonstrated the reference value of geography records as a special kind of literature.
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