A reassessment of the place of shamanism in the origins of Chinese theater.

• Author: Llamas, Regina
• Position: Essay

The single most common explanation of the origins of theater--Chinese or otherwise--is that it began in ritual. What follows is an examination of scholarship that makes this assertion and the evidence and assumptions on which it is founded. But before exploring the claim that theater began as ritual, it is worth considering the point of the exercise. While I diverge from the consensus of most Chinese theater historians and modern ethnographers on the roots of Chinese theater, this essay is not an attempt to present new evidence for the roots of Chinese theater, nor is it an attempt to create a new theoretical framework for the study of Chinese theater in the very well-documented and vast history of entertainment. This latter topic in particular deserves a separate study. Rather, my focus here is on the soundness of the theses and conclusions of earlier scholars who have searched for the origins of Chinese theater in shamanism. My aim is first to show how the claim that Wang Guowei was a proponent of the theory arguing that the roots of theater were found in shamanism is based on an erroneous reading of his work. Second, I argue that the prevailing modern tendency to establish the roots of theater in a ritual shamanic context rests on a shaky foundation. Finally, I suggest that questioning the shamanic roots of theater is also a call to reconsider and diversify the study of the origins of Chinese theater outside its ritual context.

In a preliminary discussion of the Cambridge Ritualists, Richard Schechner--one of the influential proponents of the value of anthropology for understanding theater--pointed out the pointlessness of looking for the roots of theater in order to understand theater; it is a quixotic quest, he argues, that in the end proves little. (1) This is only partially true for the Chinese tradition, not because the final aim of the search for the roots of theater can deliver satisfactory results, but because the search for roots in China itself initiated a discussion that did accomplish two essential things. First, it established Chinese theater as an academic discipline, thus raising the literary status of drama and placing it on a par with the novel. Second, it created a consensus about the synthetic nature of Chinese theater, establishing the dominant constituent elements that came to form the core and determine the unique nature of Chinese theater.

WANG GUOWEI AND THE LINK TO SHAMANISM

Discussion of the roots of theater began in earnest in the early twentieth century when Wang Guowei (1877-1927) published his History of Song and Yuan Drama (Song Yuan xiqu kao, 1915). Other scholars had previously questioned the roots of Chinese theater, but Wang's work provided the meta-narrative for the history of Chinese drama for generations to come. In his search for origins, Wang established two early lines of dramatic development--one in song and dance and the other in comedy--creating a binary system that has prevailed in the historiography of Chinese drama to this day. In Wang's schema, comedy stemmed from the witty language and actions of early performers (paiyou tit), and in particular the court jesters of the Zhou dynasty (ca. 1050-256 B.C.E.), whereas song and dance derived from Han-dynasty (206 B.C.E.-220 C.E.) descriptions of shamanic performances. Wang's approach has been so influential that ever since he opened his History with the rhetorical question "Could the rise of song and dance have begun with ancient wu shamans?" (2) the ritual origins of Chinese drama have seldom been challenged. Instead, scholars have endeavoured to demonstrate the ritual lineages of each of the main components of Chinese theater. (3)

Over the past one hundred years, scholars have claimed to find the origins of Chinese theater in various types of ritual activity. (4) Here I focus on one: shamanism. This paper will contextualize Wang Guowei's use of shamanism within his ideas of art and literature to show that Wang's view of shamanism differed from mainstream interpretations of shamanism (he wasn't actually interested in possession). It will also assess the views of modern ethnographers and historians of China on the role of shamanism in theater.

Before turning to claims for the roots of theater in shamanism, it is important to recognize what it was the first scholars of Chinese theater were looking for in their search for origins. For Wang Guowei, who can largely be credited with beginning the debate on the ritual origins of Chinese theater, the inception of theater, like all art, was possible the moment the necessary aesthetic conditions existed. Influenced by mid-eighteenth-century German ideas of the theater, which regarded theater as the highest and most powerfully aesthetic literary type, Wang believed that, like all forms of literature, drama was the result of man's surplus energy: "People's energy is used in the struggle for survival and what is left over is expended in play" (5) For Wang, theater was an independent activity that could only move forward in its pure form, relying on its own aesthetic values and divorced from politics or pedagogy. Drama, as a literary art, was created with no particular program in mind by exceptionally talented men who possessed acute, cultivated intellects and profound feelings while preserving their true and playful nature. In this framework, theater was, from the outset, an expression of feelings shaped by refined aesthetic sensibilities. (6) It was in search of the birth of these aesthetic sensibilities that Wang came across Qu Yuan's observation of the dances of shamans in a well-known passage from the fifth-century B.C.E. Discourses of the Chu State: (7)

In ancient times, people and spirits did not intermingle. [But] those among the people whose spirit was sincere, not duplicitous, and who also were capable of solemn respect and straight dealing; their wisdom could take measure of what lies above and below; their sagacity could illuminate what is far and propagate what is brilliant; their intelligence could shed light upon it and their cleverness thoroughly comprehend. Into such people the gods would descend. If the [possessor of such powers] was male he was called xi; if female, wu. This made the position and precedence of the spirits orderly, so that they [the spirits] could be served with ritual objects at the appropriate times. (8) When discussing the role of shamans in ancient China. Wang followed the general description of wu shamanic activity found in historical texts and commentaries that argued that they served the spirits through dancing, singing, and drum playing. For instance, the second-century dictionary Shuowen jiezi shows the means by which the wu attracted the spirits, defining the term as follows: "Shamans are officiating invocators. They are women who can serve the formless and through dunce bring the spirits down into them". (9)

The more obviously dramatic aspects of wu activity are the dance, the capacity of female shamans to seduce or lure a spirit, and their function as vessels into which the spirits could descend and from which they could enjoy what was set before them. (10) This process, it can be argued, is a ritual performance enacted for a spirit, and the possession by the gods of the shamans' bodies the means whereby the spirits can reveal themselves. The parallels between shamanism and acting are intriguing. If we reject the existence of the gods, then shamans are, in a sense, play-acting, though the sincerity of mediums for other times and places is well attested. On the other hand, when an actor assumes a role, he or she may on some level be said to be "possessed" by the role. But--and here is the key--Wang Guowei did not mention either of these parallels.

For Wang Guowei at least, the interest in these passages is not that shamans were "acting" but that they were going about their jobs of serving the spirits through song and dance. His attention in these examples is drawn to the means of seduction--the beauty of their song and dance--and the ends of their actions, the attraction, the entertainment, of the spirits; rather than being the first roles, the spirits were instead the first audience. From the outset, rather than focusing on possession, Wang frames shamanic activity within the use of beauty for the production of pleasure. Similarly, Wang was not drawn to ritual or religion per se, but rather, to the performance of song and dance, whatever its context.

Wang was not alone in his emphasis on the place of pleasure in the work of these ancient shamans. Zheng Xuan's (127-200 C.E.) commentary on the Book of Songs had earlier established that "the shamans of ancient times were indeed those who were in charge of singing and dancing in order to please gods and people". (11) But it is in the canonical work of the "southern" tradition, the Nine Songs (Jiu ge of the Elegies of Chu (Chuci), a text probably compiled by Liu Xiang (79-8 B.C.E.) in the Western Han, that Wang. whose primary interest was the literary elite, found further evidence not just for the collective production of pleasure. but of the man of genius who, capable of appreciating beauty produced by rituals, elevated it to an artistic category. This anthology of eleven poems, nine of them dedicated to various gods and goddesses, was later edited by Wang Yi EA (ca. 89-158 C.E.), who in the second century provided a frame, contextualizing the poems and explaining the cause of their composition. (12)

[Among the] people of the Southern district of the Kingdom of Chu, of the land that lies] between the rivers Yuan and Mang, it is their custom to believe in ghosts and they are fond of offerings. In their offerings they would invariably perform songs, play music, beat the drum, and dance in order to please their various gods. When Qu Yuan was sent into exile, he lived in obscurity in the region, full of anxiety and frustration, his mind overflowing with worry and...