Sacralisation of a Deity in the Tense of Popular Religion and Official Cult. The Case of Jinlong Si

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In accordance with the first phase of the sinological project, notions of sacrality as well as the process of sacralization in Late Imperial China are again in the focus of interest but are now to be ex amined from new perspectives. Therefore a closer look is to be taken on the development of the cult of Jinlong Si Dawang which should be analyzed as a process leading to sacrality. Here the figure of Xue Xu is of great importance. He is to be taken as an example for the sacrality of a person in the Chinese context but also as a line of inquiry to ask about the way a person actually became holy. This is a promising approach to a fruitful comparison of Chinese and Christian concepts of holy persons (“saints”). The development of a theoretical conception of personal holiness and related processes in Late Imperial China will be one of the objectives for this part of the study. Furthermore the cult of Jinlong Si Dawang is also to be analyzed in terms of the relation of orthodoxy influenced both by the imperial state and popular religious beliefs. The tensions resulting from these relations, which can also be examined in the context of normative religious guidelines (issued by the state) and actual cultic practice (popular religion in a broader sense), can be used to describe differing ideas about sacrality and its respective demands.