Nikolas
Broy. “Consuming Rice Cakes, Sailing to Salvation: The Taiwanese
Longhuapai Initiation Festival and the Question of Buddhist Orientations among Zhaijiao
(Vegetarian Sects).” Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and
Folklore 222 (2023.12): 135-85.
百可思。〈吞噬糍粑，駛往救世：關於臺灣龍華派過光場儀式以及齋教之佛教導向問題〉。《民俗曲藝》222 (2023.12): 135-85。
Abstract
This paper explores the seven-day initiation
festival known as guoguangchang 過光場 (“passing the place of
light”) performed by the Taiwanese Longhuapai 龍華派 (“Dragon Flower Sect”) as an intersection of not only sectarian
but also Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian, and popular religious teachings, rituals,
cosmological notions, moral values, cultural idioms, and material religion.
Drawing on a 2010 case study of the Audience at Heaven Hall (Chaotiantang 朝天堂) in Changhua City (彰化市), as well as Qing-period
source material, this paper supplements existing research in situating the
festival in both the sectarian repertoire and the larger religious landscape of
Chinese societies. By picking three rituals as case studies, I demonstrate the
synthetic fusion of various elements that cut across established scholarly
categories, such as Buddhist, Daoist, or sectarian. I look at (1) Altar arrangements
that theatrically reenact cosmogenesis according to native Chinese and Daoist
cosmologies; (2) The Collective salvation of neophytes in the “dharma boat” (fachuan
法船) ritual; and, (3) The ritual preparation of a rice offering,
which, in its most recent variant, explicates a fusion of native and Buddhist
cosmological concepts.
This paper thus seeks to contribute to the
long-standing scholarly discussion of conceptualizing some religious group as
“Vegetarian Sects,” zhaijiao 齋教, an umbrella term used in
Taiwan to denote the Longhuapai and two other sectarian traditions. While
earlier studies priorities their purportedly Buddhist orientation, including
the late Danial Overmyer’s pioneering characterization of Chinese sects as
“folk Buddhist religion,” I draw attention to other diverse religious elements
in the Longhuapai’s initiation festival, and thereby seek to highlight the
highly “synthetic” nature of its teaching and practices.
本文擬探討臺灣龍華派「過光場」的七天入教儀式，認為它作為齋教以及佛教、道教、儒家與民間宗教教義、儀式、宇宙觀、道德價值觀、文化成語和物質宗教的交集。通過於2010年在彰化市的朝天堂的田野調查以及清朝時期的資料，本文以齋教及中國宗教史為背景，分析該儀式來補充現有的研究。本文以七天道場的三個儀式作為個案研究，顯示各種宗教元素的合成融合，如此跨越了既定的學術類別，如佛教、道教，甚至是民間教派。這三個案包括：⑴祭壇安排，反映出傳統中國和道教的宇宙觀；⑵「法船」儀式中對新齋友的集體救世；以及⑶準備供飯的小儀式，尤其最近闡述了傳統中國與佛教宇宙觀的融合。
因此，本文試圖對龍華派以及類似民間教派構想的悠久學術問題做出貢獻。早先研究者平常以佛教導向的假設來分析這些民間教派，這種觀點原歸功於已故的歐大年教授在其對中國民間教派的開創性研究中對他所謂的「民間佛教」的探索。相比之下，本文提請注意龍華派入教儀式中的各種宗教元素，從而試圖強調該教派的教義和實踐的高度「合成」性質。