On the Relationship between Material Culture and Communal Identification: The Case of the Iron Incense Burner with Eight Trigrams Motif Preserved at Yin-shan Temple
Resource
美術史研究集刊, 22, 091-190
Journal
美術史研究集刊
Journal Issue
22
Pages
091-190
Date Issued
2007-03
Date
2007-03
Author(s)
Chen, F.M.
Abstract
The ritual paraphernalia of the Yin-shan Temple includes an iron three-legged incense burner. This tripod dates to the temple’s early founding in the first part of the nineteenth century. Its style is distinct from that of incense burners found in Taiwanese temples of the same period, and while it bears some relation to the archaistic style of early Chinese censers, it is not a completely faithful reproduction. It was also damaged and discarded after a hundred and fifty years of use. Nevertheless, its form was subsequently reproduced, rectified, and used again. Accompanying the members of a small, peripheral community, who identified themselves as the people of Ting-chou (a prefecture in western Fukien), it survived the competitive temple building and other conflicts that characterized the relationship between this community and other, more powerful immigrant communities.
The censer existed alongside the rare emphasis on the Sung dynasty found in paired inscriptions of the same period mounted on pillars in the temple, and was used in rites dedicated to a Northern Sung monk recognized as the incarnation of the D?pamkara Buddha, whose cult was centered in the distant region of western Fukien. How was it distinguished from other local styles in Taiwan? To what extent did it follow long-standing traditions in western Fukien? What sort of immigrant community used it? What was the relative position of this immigrant group vis-?-vis other immigrant groups? How was it used? Does its archaism and discrepancies reflect this minor immigrant community’s attempt, when first constructing their temple, to capture and reproduce a vague memory of the incense burners used in the temples of their homeland? Does its recent reproduction and rectification represent the repetition of a previous attempt to preserve a record of the past? By exploring these and other questions, the present essay explores explores the possibilities and limits of the relating material cultural to communal identification.
Subjects
八卦文
鄞山寺
族群識別
物質文化
Eight trigrams d?cor
Yin-shan Temple
communal identification
material culture
Type
journal article
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