Healing Practices and Religious performances of Ancient China, as seen through the NUO Ratuals of GUIZHOU

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The tradition of the Nuo rituals is still alive in villages in the mountainous region of Guizhou. The main purpose of this research is to collect basic data on film audio-tape, written references, concerning oral traditions and the Nuo performances, using an inter-scholastic approach from a variety of academic backgrounds, in order to investigate the kinds of roles playd by healing practices and religious performances when an individual or a group of people suffer some illness or other physical disorder.The areas covered by the research were those of Pan Prefecture and Anshun District in the western part of Guizhou in 1995, and Weining in the west and Cengong in the east of Guizhou in 1996.The research covered a wide range of tribes including the Han, Yi, Buyi, Miao tribes, and others, and Yi tribe in particular proved to have both a wealth ancient materials and deep insights into the practice of the Nuo rituals.In a village called Daxicun, in the Anshun district, we were fortunate to … More be allowed to investigate some hundreds of masks which have been used in Nuo performances since the old days.In Weining Prefecture, some research was done on "cuoteji, " the Yi-tribe drama using masks, which is said to follow the original tradition of performance. Cuoteji is a Yi-tribe word meaning the transformation of a human into something else (an ancestral spirit, ancestral god, or devil), or vice versa. One style shows an ancestral god visiting people to expell illness and to bless a rich harvest, and another describes a human being pretending to be the ancestral god, recounting the tribal history. The research concentrated on the relationships involved in expelling illness, the ancestral spirits and devils, and the mask plays.In Cengong district, research was done on three topics, as follows :1) so-called superhuman powers in Nuo performances,2) Nuo dance steps and finger-signs,3) Transmission of the rituals from masters to disciples.The results of the research will be assembled into a paper for a symposium to be held in China. Less