Priests and Other Xian 祆 Ritual Performers in Medieval China*

Abstract

While the documentation concerning Zoroastrian clergy in pre-Islamic Central Asia is scarce, it is comparatively abundant in medieval China. Priests and ritual performers, that in some cases clearly followed Central Asian Zoroastrian rituals, are depicted in funerary art and are associated in Chinese sources with a religion named Xian 祆 . However, in some Chinese sources, the character xian is also used to describe Altaic rituals, and this has led to some confusion as to what religion this term refers to, and consequently to the status of the ritual performers—learned priests or laymen—that are associated with it. This paper aims to investigate these ritual performers in order to understand their status within the Central Asian diaspora, and how Xian clergy functioned within Chinese religious regulations.