The Cultural Environment of Maogusi's Origin (Part 6)
The deities of Maogusi are dual in nature. Before performing Maogusi, one must first honor the Eight Great Kings, the revered gods of the Tujia. People first pay proper respects to win the gods' approval, then pray for their blessing and protection. The atmosphere when honoring the Eight Great Kings is especially solemn, and the worshipper's heart is devout.
This article has been compiled from historical materials on 'Zhangjiajie Tour Guide Network' (33519.com · Specialty Foods / Cuisine / Customs section). Prices, business hours, administrative divisions, and statistical data mentioned in the text may already be outdated. Before traveling, please refer to the latest announcements from merchants, scenic areas, and local competent authorities; the parts involving folk legends and folk customs are local historical and cultural anecdotes, provided for cultural reference.
The deity of Maogusi also has a dual nature. First, before Maogusi is performed, the Eight Bu Kings must be worshipped. The Eight Bu Kings are the revered deities of the Tujia people. People must first worship the revered deities well, seek the recognition of the spirits, and then pray for the spirits' grace and protection. Especially when worshipping the Eight Bu Kings, the atmosphere is solemn and the worshippers' state of mind is devout. In front of the statues of the Eight Bu Kings are placed colorful Tujia brocade, and offerings include baba, tangsan (a special Tujia food), pig head, pig blood, pheasant, muntjac meat, white flour meat, animal skins, golden pheasant crests, marten skins, wild boar tusks, dried chun buds, dried fern moss, dried wild onion, and so on. The Tujia tima, wearing an eight-panel skirt, sings in the ancient Tujia language the true song of sacrificing to the Eight Bu Kings. The participants all listen solemnly and quietly as the tima sings the "maga" (equivalent to a spell):
I call to heaven, oh heaven, oh, three times,
Great deity, fly down from the sky.
I call to earth, oh earth, oh, three times,
Great deity, push up from the earth.
Heaven is great, earth is great, but none is as great as you, deity.
Your head is like a tree stump,
Your mouth is like a water gourd,
Your arms are like tree roots,
Your legs are like pillars. You wear clothes of iron,
You wear a hat of copper,
You ate three dou and six sheng of rice,
And still were not full.
You drank thirty-six bowls of wine,
And still were not drunk.
You killed your way to Reli Kuli (an ancient Tujia place name) until the knives were blunt and chipped,
You killed your way to Alongku (an ancient Tujia place name) until the blood flowed like a river.
You ate human flesh without your mouth moving,
You drank human blood and it is still in your throat.
The garlic bulbs are being chewed,
Tree leaves wiped your mouth.
Great deity, you are incomparably wise,
You can see through mountains as you walk,
You can hear a mosquito fart.
Sons and grandsons dance the Baishou,
Today we invite you to set out on your journey.
You have come with a face full of smiles,
If you want to eat, eat your fill,
If you want to drink, drink your fill.
(Note: This song was sung by Tian Zongtong, the master priest of the Baishou dance at Shuxike Village, Pojiao Township, Longshan County, during the author's interview in 2003.)
Before performing Maogusi, in addition to honoring the Eight Great Kings, one must also honor the deities Meichang, the Tuwang, and others. We call these deities primordial gods, or the eternal gods of the Tujia people. The Tujia people honor them not only when performing Maogusi but also on other important sacrificial occasions. Second, once Maogusi begins its performance, Maogusi itself also becomes a deity. The audience no longer regards Maogusi as a character in a drama but sees Maogusi as a god. For example, elders from Pojiao Township, Longshan County, who have performed Maogusi, say that the face of Maogusi must not be seen by others, otherwise it will bring misfortune to the performer. This is because the person playing Maogusi is no longer an ordinary natural person but has become a god, and since he is a god, he cannot be casually seen by others. Furthermore, during the performance of Maogusi, Maogusi deliberately uses the "crude stick" (male phallus) to make contact with female audience members. The women not only do not feel offended but are actually very happy, because having their bodies touched by Maogusi makes them feel especially joyful—it is a gift from the god and the god's will, and from within they feel an auspicious atmosphere descending upon them. They believe their luck for the year will be especially good. In other words, to be touched by Maogusi is to be touched by a god, and since it is a god touching them, people are of course very willing. Therefore, we also call a deity like Maogusi a reborn god. Through the initial honoring of the primordial gods, the spiritual power of the primordial gods is then transmitted to Maogusi, and thus Maogusi also becomes a god. Maogusi thus becomes not a performer for people's entertainment but a god that people yearn for and revere.
The deity Maogusi has a tremendously functional role for the Tujia people and their society. The Tujia are an extremely law-abiding and rule-abiding ethnic group in Chinese history. They generally cooperate with the imperial court and rarely cause trouble for it. Occasional battles and frictions were extremely few and can be counted on one's fingers. In historical records, the accounts of wars between the Tujia ancestors and the imperial court number only a scant few examples: the most famous was in the fifth year of Tianfu of the Later Jin (940 CE), when Peng Shichou, the Cishi (prefect) of Xizhou, fought a famous Battle of Xizhou with Ma Xifan, the King of Chu at the time. Although Peng Shichou was later defeated, it was not a rout as in ordinary battles. Instead, Ma Xifan negotiated peace with Peng Shichou, swore a blood oath, and erected a bronze pillar at Huixiping in Guzhang County to commemorate it. That is the renowned Xizhou Bronze Pillar later recognized by academia (now a national cultural relic protection unit, moved to Wangcun in Yongshun County). Another was in the second year of Jingde of the Song Dynasty (1005 CE), when Peng Rumeng, the Cishi of Xizhou, took the initiative to attack Chenzhou. In the second year of Zhihe of the Song Dynasty (1054), Peng Shixi, the Cishi of Xizhou, fought with Song Shouxin, the Zhizhou of Chenfazhou. The cause of the war was not on Peng Rumeng alone; both sides bore some responsibility. To put it in the most extreme terms, the above two wars were not the Tujia opposing the imperial court but frictions between local regimes, conflicts that arose from competition for the interests of their respective small groups. One cannot say who was righteous and who was not. Apart from these two exceptions, the Tujia ancestors of successive dynasties basically cooperated with the imperial court in perfect harmony. Especially by the Ming Dynasty, many internal and external wars of the imperial court involved Tujia ancestors. Particularly in the fight against Japanese pirates, the Tujia ancestors made great contributions. There emerged anti-Japanese pirate national heroes like Peng Yinan, Peng Jinchen, and Luo Rongguang, who struck terror into the hearts of the enemy.
When the Tujia encounter unpleasant matters, they often use shamanic practices to restrain themselves, being good at finding the cause within themselves rather than venting their grievances on society or others. Within the Tujia community, they are also harmonious and friendly, and major armed conflicts and mass disturbances rarely occur. When the Tujia sometimes encounter unreasonable provocations, they do not first resist with violence but handle things with self-comforting thoughts, such as "On a narrow path, let others pass; I would rather bump into someone else." "The tolerant tolerate and the forgiving forgive; the word 'tolerate' is not as high as the word 'forgive.'" In this way, weapons can be turned into jade and silk. The originally foggy and hazy scene instantly becomes a bright and sunny clear world.
If some unexpected disaster befalls the Tujia, such as minor illnesses and pains, they will not sigh and lament or feel pessimistic and despairing. Instead, they believe their luck is bad and that they should honor the gods more in the future, finding shamanic support and striving for good luck thereafter. Some families without children first actively seek medical treatment. If treatment fails, they use shamanism to correct their thinking, using the self-amusing notion that "one's fate is meant to be so" to console themselves. They will not, like some people, scheme by every possible means to achieve a goal. This may seem like a myth, but it is a living reality.
With gods, myths naturally evolve. Joseph Campbell, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, gave this incisive summary of myth: "Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation." Richard Slotkin put it even more concisely in Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860: "A people's mythology is the comprehensible veil spread over the enigma called 'national character.'" Richard White said in an interview with Roger Mudd: "A person who does not understand mythology cannot understand history, because people shape their lives according to events that actually happened. People arrange their lives according to events they imagine happened, and the events that happened in imagination are contained within myth." These classic remarks by great historians provide us with the best key to understanding myth.
Moreover, when natural disasters occur, such as crops in the fields being harmed by natural disasters or ravaged by birds and beasts, the Tujia absolutely will not blame heaven or others. Instead, they believe they have not honored the gods properly, and they draw lessons from it, resolving to honor the gods well in the future and then seek the gods' protection to achieve a new wish.
The above matters may seem somewhat superstitious and ignorant, but in fact they embody the noble style and special humanistic spirit of the Tujia people—a cohesive force of positive thinking seeking harmony. For thousands of years, the Tujia people have relied on this bond to maintain their ethnic spirit and continue their ethnic style. As Zhou Yang said: "Whether myth or superstition, both originally reflected a naive understanding of the world by ancient people, a belief in supernatural forces." Zhou Yang's words hit the vital point of Tujia gods. Jian Bozan, standing from a historical perspective, said that although gods are not history, they may be the shadow of history, "a record of outstanding fragments in history." Sometimes they even hint at cultural exchange between the "Zhuxia" peoples and the "Zhuqiang" peoples.
In primitive society, the Tujia ancestors had extremely backward relations of production. As mentioned earlier, because the geographical location of the Tujia ancestors was blocked by high mountains with crisscrossing streams and gullies, their production tools were simple and crude, and their productive forces relied on human strength to struggle against nature. Their production objective was simply to fill their stomachs. All of this could not resist the erosion of nature. To survive and develop, people had to find a magic weapon to overcome nature. Regardless of the actual value of this magic weapon, as long as it was recognized in thought and spirit, it was enough. In primitive society, the Tujia ancestors first had an economy based mainly on fishing and hunting, primarily engaging in hunting in the mountains and fishing in the rivers. But their production tools were extremely simple: for fishing, they relied on their bare hands to grope in the water, or used stones to strike fish in the water. Although the methods were primitive, people also accumulated some fish-grabbing skills. In Tujia mountain villages, there were often expert fish-grabbers. Such primitive methods were a kind of utilization-based protection of the ecology. The natural ecological environment in the streams and rivers was still very good. While people could obtain some fish from nature as their food, they could also maintain natural balance without posing a threat to the natural environment. Therefore, the rivers in Tujia areas had an abundance of fish. When people went into the river to bathe, fish would often come to their bodies looking for food, and fish could be seen everywhere. Unlike other places that use modern methods to catch and poison fish, which not only destroys the ecology but also drives some species to premature extinction.
The hunting tools of the Tujia at that time had nothing modern about them—just wooden sticks and stones. The hunting level with wooden sticks and stones can be said to be quite backward, and the hunting results were not very good. It was inevitably unrealistic for an individual to rely on hunting to make a living. To resolve this contradiction, the Tujia ancestors found a way: they mobilized everyone, with men, women, young, and old all joining in. With many people, strength is great; they waged a people's war, relying on human-wave tactics, and thus wild beasts were trapped in the desperate situation of a people's war. Therefore, to this day, Tujia areas still preserve the custom of "Yangshan (generally referring to hunting grounds) driving game (hunting)—all who see get a share." That is, when hunting, regardless of whether you contributed effort or not, as long as you were present at the scene, you got a share (meaning a share of the captured game after distribution) of the victory fruits. Even so, the risks for Tujia ancestors during hunting were still very great, because large wild beasts attack people mercilessly, posing a serious threat to people during hunting, and sometimes people might even pay with their lives.
To solve this problem, the Tujia ancestors had to find a magic weapon, and that magic weapon was shamanism. The concrete manifestation of shamanism was performing Maogusi—using Maogusi to fulfill wishes they could not otherwise fulfill. Therefore, before performing Maogusi, they had to honor the gods, and in the Maogusi performance scenes there absolutely had to be the "Shijie" (hunting) scene, so that in real hunting activities they could also, like in the Maogusi performance, have a great harvest.
In honoring the gods during Maogusi, besides honoring the Eight Great Kings and one's own ancestors, there is another important deity: Meichang (a goddess). Meichang was specifically in charge of the wild beasts in the mountains (she was also an ancient Tujia hunting expert). In legend, Meichang was a heroine of the Tujia ancestors who was brave and enterprising and dared to struggle against wild beasts. She could not only lead the Tujia ancestors in tenacious struggle against wild beasts, obtaining much game food for the Tujia people, but she also often went alone into deep mountains and old forests to wage resolute struggle against wild beasts, securing many benefits for the Tujia ancestors. Later, during a solo hunting trip, she finally exhausted her strength and gloriously sacrificed her life. After Meichang's death, she was revered and believed in by generations of Tujia people. Besides honoring Meichang when performing Maogusi, the Tujia must also honor Meichang first when conducting hunting activities in ordinary times. Without honoring Meichang, one cannot go up the mountain to hunt. Thus, honoring Meichang before hunting became an established rule of the Tujia for thousands of years. Later this rule evolved into a belief in the deity Meichang. Therefore, the procedure of honoring Meichang absolutely cannot be omitted, and even more so cannot be casually abolished. Belief is the strong pillar of an ethnic group; belief is the bond that maintains the ethnic spirit; belief is the best spiritual foundation for ethnic stability.
Meichang is a symbol of the primitive productive capacity of the Tujia ancestors and became the representative of their primitive productive forces. The Tujia believe that honoring Meichang means asking her to bestow more wild beasts upon the Tujia; honoring Meichang gives the Tujia people a reassurance in their hearts and the confidence that they will surely obtain many prey. This is a kind of psychological self-consolation, an extremely important yet very ordinary spiritual sustenance that the Tujia people have found. With this confidence, it compensates for the innate inadequacy of the Tujia ancestors' productive forces, can strengthen the effectiveness of using backward production tools, and can obtain a certain invisible power.