Yao folk religion is the

ethnic religion In religious studies, an ethnic religion is a religion or belief associated with a particular ethnic group. Ethnic religions are often distinguished from universal religions, such as Christianity or Islam, in which gaining converts is a prima ...

of the

Yao people The Yao people (its majority branch is also known as Mien; ; vi, người Dao) is a government classification for various minorities in China and Vietnam. They are one of the 55 officially recognised ethnic minorities in China and reside in t ...

, a non-Sinitic ethnic group who reside in the

Guangxi Guangxi (; ; alternately romanized as Kwanghsi; ; za, Gvangjsih, italics=yes), officially the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (GZAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China, located in South China and bordering Vietnam ...

Hunan Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangx ...

and surrounding provinces of

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

. Their religion has been profoundly intermingled with

Taoism Taoism (, ) or Daoism () refers to either a school of philosophical thought (道家; ''daojia'') or to a religion (道教; ''daojiao''), both of which share ideas and concepts of Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmony with the '' Ta ...

since the 13th century, so much that it is frequently defined as Yao Taoism ( ''Yáozú Dàojiào'').Alberts, Eli.
A History of Daoism and the Yao People of South China
'. Cambria Press, 2006. In the 1980s it was found that the Yao clearly identified with the Chinese-language Taoist theological literature, seen as a prestigious statute of culture ( ''wénhuà'').Litzinger, Ralph A. ''Other Chinas: The Yao and the Politics of National Belonging''. Duke University Press, 2000. Yao folk religion was described by a Chinese scholar of the half of the 20th century as an example of deep "Taoisation" ( ''Dàojiàohuà''). Yao core theology and cosmology is Taoist; they worship the deities of canonical Taoism (above all the Three Pure Ones) as the principal deities, while lesser gods are those who pertain to their own indigenous pre-Taoisation religion. The reason of this tight identification of Yao religion and identity with Taoism is that in Yao society every male adult is initiated as a Taoist, and Yao Taoism is therefore a communal religion; this is in sharp contrast to Chinese Taoism, which is an order of priests disembedded from the common

Chinese folk religion Chinese folk religion, also known as Chinese popular religion comprehends a range of traditional religious practices of Han Chinese, including the Chinese diaspora. Vivienne Wee described it as "an empty bowl, which can variously be filled ...

. A shared sense of Yao identity is based additionally on tracing their descent from the mythical ancestor

Panhu Panhu (hanzi: 盤瓠; pinyin ''Pánhù''; IPA: /pʰan³⁵-xu⁵¹/) is an important figure in Chinese and Yao mythologies. The Panhu mythological complex includes myths in Chinese and also other languages. This myth has a long history of being t ...

Social aspects

Yao Taoism has been seen as representing a conservative form of religious practice, exhibiting parallels with the communitarian Taoism that flourished with the earliest Taoist movements in China proper and the collective fasts of medieval China. Although the Yao are speakers of non-Sinitic

Mienic languages The Mienic or Yao languages are spoken by the Yao people of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Some of the Yao peoples speak Hmongic languages (Miao); these are called '' Bunu''. A small population of Yao people in Jinxiu Yao Autonomous Cou ...

, their Taoist liturgical tradition is in

Chinese language Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the ...

and

writing Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols. Writing systems do not themselves constitute h ...

.Davis, 2005. p. 190 The strong identity of Yao society as a Taoist Church, and their high literacy, are seen as the factors of Southeast Asian Yaos' proud resistance to Christian missionary penetration of their communities in the 1960s and 1970s.

Priesthood

In Yao religion all adult males are initiated to some degree into the Taoist clergy. The '' tsow say ong'' are high priests who perform rites for the higher gods of the pantheon ("above the sky") and officiate funerals. The Yao folk religion otherwise retains a class of lesser priests or

shaman Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spir ...

s, the ''sip mien'', who perform rituals for the lesser gods ("under the sky"). There are four levels of initiation into the Yao Taoist church, they are called: "hanging the lamps" (''kwa-tang''), "ordination of the master" (''tou-sai''), after which ordinates are given a sigil and a certificate to perform a variety of rites, and the two additional levels of "adding duties" (''chia-tse'') and "enfeoffing liturgies" (''pwang-ko''). The ''Sai nzung sou'' is the book of ceremonies for inviting the ', good spirits who protect the location. The ''mienv morh'' are instead angry spirits who cause sickness and tragedy.

House altar

The ''mienv baaih'' is the Yao household altar of the gods, in a place easily visible from the main door. Its aim is welcoming the spirits (''mienv''). The ''mienv kuv'' is a tablet with the names of the ancestors of the family placed upon the altar; another custom is the use of pictures of the ancestors instead of the tablets.

Rituals and psychology

After the death of a person, the priests perform the ', a ceremony to deliver the person's body from sin. Then the priest perform a water ritual, the ', for purifying the person's dead body from evil spirits. Subsequently, the priest performs the ''doh dangh caeqv jaiv'', a ceremony to purify the soul of the dead person from the influence of evil spirits. The ' is an ending ritual to give the spirit a peaceful after-life. Other practices involve

spirit money Joss paper, also known as incense papers, are papercrafts or sheets of paper made into burnt offerings common in Chinese ancestral worship (such as the veneration of the deceased family members and relatives on holidays and special occasions). Wo ...

and sacrifice.

References

Citations

Sources

* Edward L. Davis. ''Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture''. Routledge, 2005. * Eli Alberts.
A History of Daoism and the Yao People of South China
'. Cambria Press, 2006. * Litzinger, Ralph A. ''Other Chinas: The Yao and the Politics of National Belonging''. Duke University Press, 2000. {{religion in China Asian ethnic religion East Asian religions Religion in Laos Religion in Thailand Taoism in China