Dr. Andreas Janousch, Habilitationsprojekt/Research project

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1.        Summary
This proposed study is the attempt to write the history of the Temple of the Salt God in Hedong, based on nineteen little- or as yet unstudied official inscriptions, dating from 777 to 1918 A.D. It will be the first book-length monograph which examines a religious institutions in China in the context of the wider local religious landscape and which is guided by and engages critically with recently developed problems and methods in the fields of religious studies (Religionswissen-schaften) and historical anthropology.
The aim is to shed light on three main areas of research: first, how did local official religious cults emerge, develop, and fit into the larger framework of the state and its religious outlook and institutions; second, how did official cults shape and interact with local popular religious practices and local society over the period of late imperial China; and, third, what was the relationship between cultic practices and technology, especially salt production methods?
It can be expected that the findings will be a significant contribution to the lively theoretical discourse over the place of religion -- official and popular -- in Chinese culture through a thorough analysis of the mechanisms and strategies that religion offered for the expression of competing interests in local society and through investigation of the ways in which local elites sought to manipulate religious symbols to enhance their authority.

2.        Detailed Description of the Proposed Study
2.1        Topic and State of Research
2.1.1        General Introduction
The Salt Lake of Xiezhou in the south of modern Shanxi province is the most ancient salt production centre in China. Tradition has maintained that it had been the place where the mythical rulers of ancient China had set up their cultural and political centres. That the main lake -- around 25 km in length and 4 km in width -- had been the location of several ancient cultures is corroborated by recent excavations. During the period with which the proposed research is concerned, i.e., the second half of the eighth century to the early twentieth century, the Lake and the surrounding area lost some of its importance as a national salt production centre. However, although national revenue gained through the central salt monopoly became more dependent on the increasingly productive centres along the sea coast, salt from the Lake of Xiezhou remained not only crucial in financing the important border defense system in the north, but also had a tremendous symbolic significance for ruling dynasties. This symbolic significance was partly due to the traditional association of the area with the mythical sage rulers, partly due to the peculiar salt production method which were employed to extract salt from the Lake.
The state thus came to sponsor an official and permanent cult to the Salt Divinity which was centred at the Temple of the God of the Salt Lake, located on the northern shore of the Lake. In this proposed study I intend to explore the history and significance of this religious institution in various contexts which I will delineate below.

2.1.2        The Official Cult at the Salt Lake of Xiezhou
In the centre of this study will be the official, state-sponsored cult to the God of the Salt Lake which was one of the oldest official local cults maintained by the government. Although salt had been produced in Xiezhou from at least the Warring States period, the history of the official cult began only in the late eighth century. In 777, the Vice Director of the Ministry of Revenue, Han Huang reported to Emperor Daizong of the Tang (r. 762-780) that despite heavy rain, the Salt Lake of Xiezhou had spontaneously produced a great amount of auspicious salt. Doubting this report, the emperor dispatched Jiang Zhen to the lake to verify the report. Jiang confirmed Han's memorial and added a request for the canonisation of the God of the Salt Lake and the erection of a temple. Following Jiang's request, the emperor conferred the official name, Baoying lingqing chi, onto the Lake, and the title of Lingqing gong (Duke of Efficacious and Blessing Omen) onto the God. Furthermore, a temple was erected on the northern shores of the main lake.
This was the beginning of a sustained imperial and administrative effort to dominate the religious landscape around the salt lake, an effort which continued throughout the later imperial period. Emperors conferred further and ever grander titles onto the divinity, sponsored the regular performance of sacrifices, and repeatedly initiated the reconstruction and refurbishment of the temple buildings. The first of these refurbishment took place under Daizong's successor, Emperor Dezong (r. 779-805), when the temple was rebuild in 797 on a much grander scale at the site where it still stands to this day.
However, apart from the development of aggrandising this central cult, the Salt God Temple developed over time into a complex cluster of new official cults. In the Song dynasty under Emperor Huizong (r. 1101-1125) not only the God of the Salt Winds (Yanfeng shen) received imperial rank and title, but also the God of the Salt Lake split into two, one each for the Western and the Eastern Lake of Xiezhou. The Ming dynasty (1368-1644) saw the enfeoffment of the God of Zhongtiao Mountain Range (Tiaoshan shen), located just south of the lake, and the God of the Fresh Water Spring (Ganquan shen). This trend of expansion of cults continued in the early Qing dynasty (1644-1911), when halls and statues for the God of the Wind Cave (Fengdong shen), the God of Rain (Yu shen) and the God of the Sun (Ri shen) were added to the existing pantheon of the official Salt Cult at Xiezhou.
It is necessary to characterise these official cults in the context of other known cults associated with the salt industry in imperial China, not only in Xiezhou itself, but beyond it in the wider context of other salt production areas. Concerning the latter task Chinese and Japanese scholars have begun to gather important material, which has been submitted to a first analysis by Prof. Vogel in an yet unpublished paper. From this certain important characteristics of the official cult in Xiezhou have emerged. First, despite the official sponsorship of the cult in Xiezhou, the Gods had only local significance. Their reach of power and influence did not extend to other areas of salt production, and it seems that the state had no interest or indeed authority to enforce a standardisation of an empire-wide salt cult. Second, Xiezhou is unique among the salt production areas in that the state did dominate the religious landscape at the Lake. In other places of the salt industry, no dominant, exclusively official cult emerged. Third, what distinguishes all these gods of the official cult at the Salt temple in Xiezhou is their common characteristic as deifications and personifications of natural forces. This is opposed to the pattern observed at the areas of sea salt production. In these places it was more typical to find historical or semi-legendary figures, identified as discoverers of salt resources or inventors of technological innovations, elevated to the position of gods by apotheosis.
The local nature of the Salt Gods in Xiezhou and other areas of salt industry can be ascribed to various factors. The most important of all these factors lies undoubtedly in the profound differences of salt production methods in various areas of the Chinese salt industry. The salt production method at Xiezhou has traditionally been called lake or pond salt (chiyan), to distinguish it from the sea salt (haiyan) production along the seashores of China and the well salt (jingyan) production in the Sichuan and Yunnan region. Unlike the latter two methods it was perceived to require less sophisticated and potentially problematic technological methods in the salt production, but relied almost exclusively on favourable natural and climatic conditions of the locality (see below). Thus, the overlap in differences between production methods and the local pantheon points to a profound link between technological conditions and the specificity of the religious landscapes at the salines. The detailed exploration of the nature of this link will be an important aspect of the proposed study.
As indicated above, all the gods who, over the course of several dynasties, came to be included in the official cult at the Salt Temple, were deifications of those natural forces vital for the lake salt production at Xiezhou. This was a pattern which remained unchanged over the centuries and this continuity needs to be understood in the context of the comparative stability of the production process which continued with little change on a relatively low technological level. Unlike sea salt, production process of which involved the boiling of the brine, or well salt which was gained through digging or drilling and hoisting, lake salt at Xiezhou was formed spontaneously in a process of natural evaporation aided by wind and sun. Thus, the gods of Xiezhou were not those who had discovered or developed salt resources and technology. Figures such as Susha, Jiaoge, or Guan Zhong worshipped in other salt production areas fitted much more neatly into the pattern of deified historical or semi-mythical founders which characterised not only cults of other guilds and industries, but also those of local gods who were emerging at this period (such as the City gods, chenghuang shen). These other cults seemed to have anticipated the practice of later imperial times, as studied by Valerie Hansen, of historical figures worshipped in local cults which were acknowledge by the imperial centre through bestowal of titles and temple plaques. The Salt God cult in Xiezhou, even though sharing many features with these later cults, appears to belong typologically still to an earlier stage of development, and thus provides a missing link in our understanding, of how these later imperial religious practices had evolved from earlier ones.
This earlier type is the imperial and ancient sacrifices of the Mountains and Rivers. The ritual code of the Kaiyuan period (714-741) which regulated the ritual and sacrificial lay-out of the High Tang period and which remained highly influential throughout imperial history, made no provisions for the accommodation of local cults into the official ritual programme. Attitudes to such cults which undoubtedly proliferated in the countryside were at best ambiguous as is revealed by repeated purges which were frequently recorded in the historical records of the time. However, the only category which allowed a certain flexibility in accommodating local worship into the official ritual canon were the sacrifices, sanctioned by ancient precedents, which were offered to Mountains and Rivers. Hundred years before the Salt Temple in Xiezhou was erected under official auspices, Empress Wu had already incorporated sacrifices to many natural features of the Luoyang vicinities into the official ritual programme, such as offerings to Mt Song and to the Luo River. When the cult at Xiezhou was established during the Tang it was also fitted into this category. The sacrifices to the Salt God were placed in the dynastic Registers of Sacrifices (sidian) alongside those to the minor two rivers (Huai and Ji rivers) in the category of the Four Rivers.

The heavy presence of the imperial state in the religious landscape of the Salt Lake in Xiezhou can be ascribed at this preliminary state of research to two factors. First, to religio-political beliefs, second, to historical reasons.
For most of the period under study, lake salt at Xiezhou was perceived to crystallise spontaneously, with relatively little interference of humans and of technology when compared to the salt production methods at centres of sea salt and well salt. The maintenance of favourable conditions of lake salt production, especially those of a climatic kind (wind, rain), were thus perceived to be more decisive for high yields of good quality salt than technological innovation. These conditions were in turn thought to be directly related to the moral quality of the government of the emperor and his officials, representing him on the local level. Thus, the salt production at Xiezhou was conceptualised within the cosmic aspect of emperorship which was central to Tang ideas of rulership.
The historical factors of the special imperial interest in the salt from Xiezhou has been clearly articulated by contemporary scholars. In the aftermath of the An Lushan Rebellion (755-763) which had profoundly shaken northern Chinese society and polity, the government was faced with two major financial problems: first, the shift of the economic centre of the empire to the south, and second, the need to find new sources of revenue. The latter problem had become a particularly pressing issue when the empire needed to finance new troops to fight the rebels from 755 onwards, but remained problematic in the following period, because of the major redistribution of the Chinese population and the devolution of central authority to the provinces. Thus, in 758, initially as an emergency measure but soon to remain a permanent feature of financial government, the government appointed a Commissioner for Salt and Iron to control the new salt monopoly. This was in fact a new tax passed on to the consumers, via the merchants. This new tax was administered through central control of the areas of salt production rather than through official interference with the transportation and distribution. Xiezhou, being conveniently located between the two capitals of Chang'an and Luoyang, unlike other areas of salt production, remained during and after the rebellion firmly under the control of the central government. For this reason, and because of the relative low costs of transportation to the two metropolitan centres, it became thus, in the late eighth century one of the main financial pillars of the harassed Tang dynasty. The institution of official cult at Xiezhou has been explained in the sources as a way of acknowledging the region's vital contribution to the continuation of the dynastic house. But we should not overlook that this measure could also represent a form of dynastic control of this important area.
This latter issue became increasingly pressing in the decades after the An Lushan Rebellion, when important political power and authority devolved onto the provinces. It was a time when regional identities were affirmed through new forms of expression. In the case of Hedong, nobody less than the famous Confucian revivalist and essayist Liu Zongyuan (773-819) articulated the historical, political, economic and cultural significance of this area, in a little studied essay entitled "Jin Wen". Liu Zongyuan was a member of the eminent Hedong Liu clan, that could trace its origins back to the Xiezhou of the late third century B.C., and that had subsequently become one of the leading clans of the whole Hedong region. Although the author had himself never lived in his "home" area, he displays considerable knowledge and pride in its resources and traditions. What is important in the present context, is the role Liu assigned to the Salt Lake in relation to the cultural and political heritage of the area. The salt lake itself and the salt production are described, in great if poetic detail. He makes it amply clear that the presence of salt in Hedong was one of the most important economic factors which helped to sustain the cultural and political prominence of the region in history. This prominence is epitomised in the claim, that the lingering traditions of the ancient Sage Ruler Yao remained present even in the province of his own time.
In other respects, Liu Zongyuan's essay is also relevant to our study of religious and cultural traditions around the Salt Lake. It provides the earliest evidence of a perception of the area which repeatedly informed approaches to salt production and administration by the educated local élite and contributed to the formation of the specific religious landscape of Xiezhou in later imperial times. The perception of the special cultural heritage of the area found expression in the establishment of a Confucian academy in the late thirteenth century which was run by the salt administration. Although this school was abolished for many years during the early Ming dynasty, it was still a significant and unique institution, since the Hedong salt administration was the only of the six salt offices in the whole empire that was granted permission to support such an academy. Furthermore, many of temples and religious establishments of the area, and indeed one of the halls in the Temple to the Salt God, were devoted to the worship or commemoration of the ancient Sage Kings. They dotted the landscape and provided spaces where the memory of their acts were being kept alive.

2.1.3        Guandi and Chiyou
Among religious institutions almost invariably found in economic central places were temples of the popular religion, some of them centres of cults that were shared by or adopted into the religion of the state. Two such were the cults of Guandi, god of trustworthiness and loyalty in war and trade, and Tianhou, goddess of seafarers. Both deities were very popular as patrons for merchant associations in the Qing period, Tianhou more so in coastal than in inland regions. Thus, it comes as no surprise to find in later imperial times around the Salt Lake alongside the official cult to the Salt God a variety of cults to other popular deities. The most important and interesting of these is that to Guan Yu, i.e., Guandi. During the Yuan dynasty (1264-1368) or early Ming dynasty, at the latest, an important shift happened which led to the inclusion of this new type of god into the official cult at the Salt Temple. Thus during the late imperial period, the cult to Guan Yu was regularly being conducted in a shrine within the Salt Temple complex.
There are several reasons for this early rise of a Guandi cult around the Salt Lake. One is social, the other local.
First: The long tradition of salt production and salt trade centred in this areas, led to a high concentration of merchant families and small traders. They came to play significant roles in the running of the salt monopoly, since they were responsible for the distribution of the government salt within the officially designated Consumption Area. However, beyond this they began to play an increasingly central role in local society as negotiators vis-à-vis the salt administration officials of the production area. From the late Ming dynasty onwards merchants had replaced the government as organisers of the salt production by hiring the labourers at the salines. As the stelae from 1313 indicates from at least the Yuan dynasty onwards merchants were also sponsoring the upkeep of the official Salt Temple. Their role was being recognised by the officials who allowed the names of these merchant donors to be inscribed on the back of the official stelae which on the front bears the inscription by the Salt Commissioner commemorating the restoration of the temple. However, the special link with merchant organisations that the cult to Guan Yu enjoyed elsewhere in the empire, suggests that merchants had become, by Yuan times, powerful enough to place their own cult alongside the official one. This needs to be explored in more detail.
Second: The tremendous importance of Guan Yu in the Salt Lake area is presumably linked to that the historical figure of Guan Yu himself. According to the relevant historical sources, he was a native of Xiezhou, and the temple there devoted to his cult had been an important local centre for a long time at Xiezhou city, some 15 km west of the Salt Temple. Official recognition of this local Guan Yu temple is said to have dated back to the Northern Song (960-1127), but it remains unclear for how long the cult and the temple had already existed, before it was being taken note of in the official sources. According to the founding myth of this temple, a temple to the legendary Yellow Emperor had originally been built by the lake. However, soon afterwards a demon who turned out to be Chiyou, leader of the Miao tribes which had been defeated by the Yellow Emperor earlier, began to menace the area. In 1014, the Daoist Master Zhang of the Heavenly Master Sect was instructed by the imperial court to find a way to exorcise this demon who desecrated the imperial honour. Thus the Master invoked the assistance of Guan Yu, who dispatched shadow soldiers to fight and vanquish Chiyou. A few days afterwards a black cloud rose over the demon-haunted area, and for a brief period there raged a violent thunderstorm. The people of the district were greatly alarmed, especially when they heard the clashing of arms in an aerial battle and the charging of invisible horses. In due course the storm quietened down and the air cleared. After this successful battle against Chiyou, the grateful emperor ordered Guan Yu's principal temple at Xiezhou City to be restored and a special service of thanksgiving to be held in honour of the victorious god.
The link between the Salt Lake and Chiyou appears to have been an ancient one and the very name of the area was thought in the Han dynasty to have derived from the event of Chiyou's destruction. The Kongzi sanchao ji reported that "When the Yellow Emperor killed Chiyou at Zhongji, the limbs, trunk and head of Chiyou [were dispersed] to different places, yet his blood became brine, which is now the Salt Lake of Xie. Since his corpse was cut apart (jie), therefore this area is called Xie." This link was repeatedly invoked by educated observers in later times who recorded a local tradition that ascribed a natural phenomenon at the Salt Lake -- i.e., the reddening of the brine in the Lake which occurred regularly under certain climatic and microbiological conditions -- to the blood of the demon. Some sources also suggest the existence of popular sacrifices to Chiyou at Xiezhou celebrated on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month. The later version of the myth of Chiyou's slaughter associated with Guan Yu, rather than the Yellow Emperor himself, might possibly be a conflation of two popular ancient traditions.
The story of Chiyou's defeat by Guan Yu was popular enough by Yuan times to merit a version in the theatrical genre of the time. A play in the zaju genre became popular around Xiezhou and beyond in the whole Hedong area; it was entitled: "The Leader of Clouds Guan [Yu] Completely Defeats Chiyou," Guan Yunzhang dapo Chiyou. Such a play could be performed during temple festivals which were regularly held at the Salt Temple. During one of the restoration attempts of the Ming dynasty, a house that had been up for sale was converted into a permanent theatre for such regular thanksgiving entertainments. From the sources we know that previously brokerage establishments (yadian) had been responsible for erecting a decorative awning in front of the Temple each time there was festival, at a cost of "two hundred strings" of cash each year. From now on they would be spared the expenditure.
Such dramatic performances in the Ming indicate that the official Salt God Temple did not remain aloof from popular uses, but provided a space for officials and non-official to meet. Thus it needs to be studied to what exact uses the Salt Temple came to be put, besides the officially sponsored sacrifices which carried out by the officials of the Salt Administration in relative dignified seclusion. We know, e.g., that by the early 19th century, the Salt Merchant Guild would hold their annual banquets in the second and sixth lunar months at the Temple. On these occasions the merchants took over the Salt Temple and as hosts would entertain the officials with plays, food, and drink.
The appropriation of the Guan Yu cult into the official Salt Temple needs, furthermore, to be interpreted in the context of a long-standing rivalry between Xiezhou City and Yuncheng City. Xiezhou City at the western end of the Salt Lake had been up to the Yuan dynasty the seat of the local salt administration. In the thirteenth century, the salt administration was moved to Lucun (the old name for Yuncheng) on the northern shore of the Salt Lake just north of the location of the Salt Temple while the regular prefectural administration remained in Xiezhou City. The reasons for this move are not yet understood, but it meant that the wealth, the labour etc. which came with the salt began to be centred around the new city. Consequently, while Yuncheng flourished, as can be evidenced in a great number of important civic enterprises (walling of the city, establishment of a Confucian College), Xiezhou City went into relative decline. Yuncheng became dominated entirely by the official salt monopoly and trade -- to the extent that the very name of the city derived from the Salt Distribution Commission (yunsi) located there -- Xiezhou City seems to have been able to retain some part of the salt trade with contraband which seems to have operated in the grey-zone of official tolerance. The relationship between these different local forms of salt trade operated by different social groups and the relationship between the cults to the Salt Lake Divinity and Guan Yu promises a rich field of enquiry.

2.2        Questions and Aims
A lively theoretical discourse over the place of popular religion in Chinese culture has developed over the past two or three decades. Primarily conducted among sociologists and anthropologist who have recognised the importance of religious rituals, symbols, and practices for understanding the mental universe of ordinary Chinese, the emphasis has been on modern and contemporary phenomena, phenomena which could be studied in existing communities especially in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and places inhabited by Overseas Chinese. Historians have been much slower in their appreciation of religious practice as a source for the study of social and political history. However, this imbalance is increasingly being redressed by publications such as Hansen's seminal work (Hansen 1990). With the proposed study I hope to make a significant contribution to this emerging field of historical inquiry into religion in China. By focusing on an extremely important and interesting case study, such as the Temple to the Salt God in Hedong, it will be possible to analyse the various uses and distinct layers of religious forms which coexisted and/or competed within a single religious institution in the Chinese countryside during late imperial China. Thus, the study is conceived of as a contribution towards answering the general question of, in what ways and to what extent did religion and its institutions help to create an abiding link between the empire-wide official culture and localities with their increasing complex and varied social structures. In answering this question I will be focusing on three areas: first, official religion; second, popular forms of religion and local community; and third, the types of links between salt technology as well as administration and religion.

2.2.1        Official Religion and Local Religion
It has become customary to divide Chinese religious traditions into four orientations: Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and -- most problematically -- popular religion (Ebrey and Gregory 1993; Lopez 1996; on popular religion, see Bell 1989). Most scholars are careful to add that not only constant influences went across the various divides throughout history, but also that once one leaves the elite layer of the institutional religious traditions and "descends" to the layer of popular religions, the taxonomy of these different traditions collapses and merge into a common base (Zürcher 1980). This study sets out to thematise the interface where popular and institutionalised elite religions meet.
The temple of the Salt God was a complex and historically evolving compound of buildings which provided spaces for different types of activities by a variety of people and groups: official sacrifices, banquets, theatrical performances, imperial visits, guild meetings, and worship by commoners, to name a few. The temple stood out among other not officially recognised religious institutions by its official sanction; the gods which had been of popular origin had been canonised and the whole space marked by a special plaque issued by the emperor. But unlike many new cults studied by Hansen (Hansen 1990) which were officially recognised cults of commoner-deities for commoners in a process that let to the emergence of a popular pantheon during the Northern Song, the Salt God was officially sanctioned on the initiative of certain sections of the officialdom. Thus, it provides an ideal case study for an inquiry into the religious landscape from a different perspective from that chosen by most recent scholars of Chinese religions. Hansen and others tended to focus their attention almost exclusively on local communities as the agents of religious change and development, granting officialdom and the imperial state with little more than developing strategies to contain the uncontrolled proliferation of new cults which were seen to intrude upon the sovereign authority of the imperial system. While not denying the creative potential and power of commoners and merchants in this process of the formation of a popular pantheon, one of the aims in this study is to define the forces and strategies of official and established religion and to show how they aided or impeded and shaped popular religion over the course of the centuries.

2.2.2        Local Community and Religion
It has been shown in recent studies that religion provides practices, symbols and believes which helped to form and express local concerns and social identities. The manipulation of religious symbols were used within local society to negotiate competing interests and to enhance authority. Hansen defined lay religion as religious activities that are local, oral, and secular (i.e., unmediated by institutional religion). Her conception of lay religion encompasses many of the most common features of Chinese religious life, but it primarily concerns the direct encounter between worshippers and their gods. It is through their interaction with the gods and their collectively-held power to recognise and promote gods that ordinary Chinese could grasp some measure of control over their lives. The formation of a popular pantheon was, in Hansen's view, a watershed in Chinese religious culture that sharply distinguished the religious life of late imperial China from that of the pre-Song era. Popular gods addressed the immediate concerns of ordinary people, and their proliferation from the Song onwards betokened an unprecedented role for commoners in the making of Chinese culture.
Building on this concept of lay (popular) religion, the study aims to define lay religion in Xiezhou in the context of the structures of local community, the wider religious landscape, especially in interaction with official religion.

2.2.3        Salt and Religion
Salt was the defining commodity of the Xiezhou area and especially Yuncheng housed a community whose daily routine was intimately linked to this industry: officials of the Salt Distribution Commission, merchants, petty traders, members of brokerage establishments, artisans, and salt workers in the Salt Lake. Thus it is very important to place the history of the temple and the cults in the context of the salt industry and administration in Hedong. We can divide this industry into various branches of activities: production, transportation, distribution, and consumption. It needs to be assessed to what extent the Salt God cult addressed these various aspects of the industry. If, as preliminary research has suggested, the cult was related predominantly to aspects of salt production, the question arises whether the other aspects of the salt industry were in any way represented through religious cults or other religious phenomena, and furthermore, it will be necessary to define the nature of the relationship between these different religious manifestations.
What is the relationship between salt production methods and the history of the Temple? The history of the salt production methods at the Salt Lake has already been studied in detail. These findings suggest that important changes happened first, at the end of the Song dynasty and second, at the end of the Ming. In the period between these two changes, i.e., late 13th to late 16th century, artificial solar evaporation in special parterres, which had been practiced at Lake Xie since the sixth century, was abolished. Salt was produced at this period through spontaneous crystallisation. We know that the latter changes, which brought the return to the artificial methods of production coincided with major efforts of expanding the cult through inclusion of cults to other, minor, gods. The exploration of the relationship of the changes in these different spheres will contribute to our understanding of the relationship between technological innovation and religion, which has been apart from a few important studies (Kuhn 1984, Kuhn 1990, and Li 1990) a relatively neglected area of inquiry in China.

2.3        Methods of Research
The study will be firmly based on largely unedited textual material, i.e., the as yet unstudied epigraphical material found at the temple. To establish a solid foundation for the analysis and interpretation of this material it will be of paramount importance to begin with a textual criticism of these source (textkritische Vorgehensweise).
It will be equally vital to place these sources (epigraphy and local histories, see beneath) in the context of their origins, authors, purposes and uses. Submitting these sources to a careful criticism (quellenkritische Vorgehensweise), on the one hand, promises to reveal significant information about the official -- i.e., textual -- culture of Hedong and the place of religion and cult in the official, administrative framework. On the other hand, source criticism is a necessary condition before the thorny methodological problems involved in the question of popular religion can be confronted.
Popular religion has been defined in several, largely unsatisfactory ways: as a secular, lay religion as opposed to one mediated by institutions, as local in opposition to empire-wide, as oral as opposed to textual, (Glahn 1993, Ebrey and Gregory 1993). Thus, the concept of popular religion appears methodologically extremely problematic and particularly so, as it is defined as the "other," i.e., the predominately oral culture which remains tantalisingly outside the purview of the historian who works mainly with texts. As Hansen has convincingly shown (Hansen 1990), epigraphical and anecdotal material -- and I would also add here Gazetteers -- preserve much of the oral traditions surrounding local cult figures. However, a reconstruction of cults and their histories from these source must be firmly based on a thorough source criticism.
Beyond these textual methods, the study will rely heavily on analytical methods developed in the field of the study of religions (religionswissenschafliche Methoden). Ever since Durkheim's and Max Weber's ground-breaking studies published in the first half of this century, religious studies has allowed for rewarding methodological interaction between historiography, sociology, and anthropology. In more recent years, it has become one of the most exciting and fastest growing fields of research for scholars of Chinese Studies.
A last methodological aspect of the proposed study which is worth mentioning at this preliminary stage is fieldwork. I intend to visit Yuncheng, the site of the Salt Temple, to study the inscriptions and the architecture of the temple to gain a first hand perspective.
Conceived as a study of the complex relationships, influences, and interaction between ideas, technological innovation, religious practice, social, economic and political change, the proposed research promises to be not only to be a detailed reconstruction of cults in Hedong, but can be expected to contribute to the theoretical and methodological problems of the studies of religions.

2.4        Sources
The main sources for this proposed study are a set of nineteen inscriptions which document the history of the Salt Temple from its establishment in 779 to 1918. Ten of these stelae are still in situ, while several more can be found in the local museum at Yuncheng. A list of the stelae inscriptions has been attached to this proposal including indications where these texts can be found in printed sources. It is intended to verify, so as it is possible, these printed sources with the original stelae inscription.
As an official cult, certain details such as the conferral of titles and restoration work are included in the official historical sources -- dynastic histories, monographs, encyclopedias -- which have to be used extensively to verify and supplement the information given in the inscription. This is particularly important in the case of the early history of the cult and salt administration, since up to the Yuan dynasty, no local or salt gazetteers are available. The earliest gazetteer, the Xiezhou zhi, dates from 1525, but most of the surviving gazetteer material was compiled in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Like many of the early gazetteers on the area and on the salt administration, copies are exceedingly rare, however, Cambridge University Library is fortunate enough to hold most of the important ones as Microfilms or reprints (see list). These gazetteers do not only contain important, sometimes contemporary material on the Salt Lake Temple, but provide crucial information on the issue of salt production and administration. Furthermore, they offer us a glimpse of social issues. The reading of these early gazetteers is facilitated by the existence of a Ph.D. dissertation by Helen Dunstan (Cambridge University), who surveyed these materials for a preliminary study of the history of the Ming Salt Administration. Her work provides a useful background to the Ming history and a starting point into the study of the later history. However, the dissertation entirely lacks any reference to the issue of the official Salt God Cult.
Apart from these official sources, either compiled by the central government in the case of the histories and institutional guides or compiled by local officials of the salt and regular administration as in the case of the gazetteers, private writing of the later imperial period will play an important, if unsystematic, role. The Salt Lake was a place of empire-wide relevance, located in an area of historical significance, thus officials, travellers have frequently visited and commented on it. This material is often difficult to locate and of varying kind and genres, including poems, biji notes etc. However, it is particularly valuable to complement the systematic treatment of the official sources because of its variety and different points of views as we have already seen in the early example of Liu Zongyuan's essay.

2.5.        Preliminary Structure of Proposed Study
2.5.1        History of the Salt Temple and Cult from the Official Perspective
Part One of the study will focus on the history of the Salt Temple from the point of view of the inscriptions. Since these sources are not readily available, it is planned to provide a complete annotated and commentated translations of all of them. It will be necessary to supplement the information given in this epigraphic material by drawing extensively on the official historiography of the various dynasty. It will be necessary to assess questions such as, who was responsible for the maintenance of the temple and the cult, how frequent were the official offerings made by the local salt administrators; did the Salt God indeed enjoy regular sacrifices as stipulated in the official Registers of Sacrifices, or did the cult lapse for significant stretches of time?
Furthermore, we need to deliberate the status of the cult within the wider context of the imperial ritual programme. It needs to be clarified to what extent the cult to the Salt Divinity is unique within the officially-acknowledged pantheon. Here the ritual codes and institutional encyclopedias of the various dynasties will offer important information.

2.5.2        Salt and Religion
Based on the numerous existing studies of the history of salt production methods and of its administration as well as of salt distribution patterns in Hedong -- which we will need to survey in this study -- the religious phenomena specifically related to these processes will come under serious scrutiny. Two moments in history appear to be particularly important in this context, i.e., the late thirteenth and the late sixteenth centuries. At these times major changes in salt production and salt administration took place (see above). The controversies over the abolition and reintroduction of artificial parterres solar evaporation and the corvee system which sustained this production method was particularly heated at these times. It was especially in the late 11th and early 12th century, in the context of Wang Anshi's New Policies reform movement (from 1068), that this debate was conducted with particular vigour. It needs to be studied whether and how changes in the religious patterns at Xiezhou (new enfeoffments, emergence of the Guandi cult) were related to these debates and the ideas and social realities which stimulated them.

2.5.3        The Salt Temple and Local Community
Even at this preliminary stage of research, it has emerged that the Salt God Temple did not only enjoy the patronage of the official salt administration. At least from the Yuan dynasty we have evidence of merchant sponsorship of the restoration work of the temple. To what uses did merchants who paid repeatedly for the upkeep of the temple put the temple? Was it possible for them to maintain their own cultic activities through privately sponsored offerings or was the Salt God out of bounds? During the Qing dynasty, merchant guilds hosted regular banquets and theatrical entertainments in the temple which did not coincide with the stipulated times of official worship, but it yet remains unclear whether anybody outside officialdom -- i.e., merchants, shopkeepers, tradesmen involved in the petty salt trade or salt workers -- could address the divinity directly through their own offerings. Did the inclusion of the various helping divinities incorporated in the temple complex represent the inclusion and official acknowledgment of cults which might have been supported by other social groups. E.g., did merchants, who might have been barred from offerings to the main divinity, offer sacrifices to Guandi at the Salt Temple and did salt production workers offer to the minor production divinities?
Thus in this section of the study, it will also be necessary to subject local society around the Salt Lake to a more thorough analysis than has been attempted so far. Did tradesmen, shopkeepers have sufficiently self-conscious identity and social organisation to communally support cults. Who was the gentry (degree-holding elite without official post who emerged increasingly from the 16th c.) and where were they represented in the religious landscape?

2.5.4        The Salt Temple and Other Local Cults
Once we have come to a better understanding of the role of the Salt God cult in Hedong in terms of who supported it and what forms this support took, we need to look at the wider religious landscape around the Salt Lake. Thus, answering the question of what was the status of the cult within the wider context of other official sponsored and inofficial local cults, will force us to study this wider context. As suggested above, the inquiry of the Guan Yu/Chiyou complex of beliefs which prevailed in this area, will offer a rich field for inquiry.

2.5.5         Expected Result
This study -- the first to focus on the history of a single cult in northern China in a western language -- will offer significant insights into currently discussed issues concerning concepts of popular and official religion. The cult to the Salt God standing at the interface of official and popular religion will allow us access to the complex interaction between governmental centre and local society. Furthermore, little study of local religion in northern China has so far been attempted. Thus the study will broaden the scope of research into the history of Chinese religions and will address the question of diversity and unity of religious phenomena in geographical as well as historical terms.
Lastly, it is hoped that this study will provide a first assessment of the relationship between technologies and religion in China, and will thus contribute to an important field of historical inquiry which has been largely neglected.

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