Dissertation Abstracts

Abstract

This analysis of the imperial ancestral temple in the Western Han (206 BC-8 AD) addresses the issue that this institution is generally considered, at least in part, as a religious institution; and yet the use of that relatively recent Western cultural category to analyze it cannot help but skew our understanding of it. After showing how this concept has long been a problematic area for Western scholarship and how using this concept may be inappropriate in this case, I present another way to understand the debates over the ancestral temple by using the terms institutional tradition and personal belief. To present the background of the imperial ancestral temple, I consider this institution prior to the Han, both as we currently understand it and as it was understood during the Han. Then the development of the institution during the Western Han shows the ways in which the earlier tradition was the basis for its reinvention in terms of the institutional tradition, and how its proper arrangement was contested at length between the emperor and his ministers. Finally, I demonstrate how the notion of personal belief can be seen in contrast to the institutional tradition and that the interplay between these two aspects of the tradition is critical for its formation. To show the context of this debate more completely, I include an annotated translation for the portion of the Honshu "Wei Xian Zhuan" chapter that is the major source of information on this topic.