Shamanism and the Origin of States

Spirit, Power, and Gender in East Asia

Sarah Milledge Nelson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315420271
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Sarah Milledge Nelson's bold thesis is that the development of states in East Asia—China, Japan, Korea—was an outgrowth of the leadership in smaller communities guided by shamans. Using a mixture of historical documents, mythology, archaeological data, and ethnographic studies of contemporary shamans, she builds a case for shamans being the driving force behind the blossoming of complex societies. More interesting, shamans in East Asia are generally women, who used their access to the spirit world to take leadership roles. This work challenges traditional interpretations growth of Asian states, which is overlaid with later Confucian notions of gender roles. Written at a level accessible for undergraduates, this concise work will be fascinating reading for those interested in East Asian archaeology, politics, and society; in gender roles, and in shamanism.

One
Orientation to Shamanism and the Origin of States

Spirit, Power, and Gender in East Asia

Shamanism is a traditional, religious phenomenon tied closely to nature and the surrounding world, in which a practitioner endowed with the special ability to enter a state of trance-possession can communicate with supernatural beings. This transcendental power allows the practitioner, the shaman, to satisfy human cravings for explanation, understanding, and prophecy.

—Tae-gon Kim 1998: 19

THIS CHAPTER is called “orientation” as a play on words, but also I to remind readers that the notion of a place called “the Orient” was a European concept that made exotic others of all people from the Levant and Egypt to Japan (Said 1978). The concepts of “Near East,” Middle East,” and “Far East” are likewise European terms. Thus I use geographic terms in this book—“East Asia” describes the part of the continent of Asia that is on its easternmost side. This chapter is thus an orientation (a way to find ones place) to the topic of shamans in East Asia—China, Korea, Japan, and parts of the Russian Far East. As a region, East Asia is diverse, but coherent because of two powerful influences: the writing system of China (and the Confucian influence it carried) and the shamanism of the regions north of China.

In East Asia, ideology seems to have been particularly important in the formation of state-level polities. Several archaeologists who work in China have postulated that the early ideology/religion of East Asia was shamanism because various features of archaeological discoveries—especially burials and art objects—suggest shamanic rituals. Other archaeologists and historians are not convinced, seeing patrilineal clans and ancestor worship as creating the political and social ties that kept the state functioning. Among Korean archaeologists, the shamanic nature of early states is taken for granted. Likewise, in Japan figurines can be described as depicting shamans without fear of contradiction. Perhaps this difference stems from the fact that shamanism still exists in Korea and Japan (especially Okinawa), but other factors were at play, to be delved into in later chapters.

The topic of shamanism in early states provides an avenue into the larger question of the role of ideology as a factor in state formation. The nature of the patterns in the archaeological sites that are attributed to shamanism brings up other topics as well, which turn out to be inextricably interlinked. Since, in the present, most practicing shamans are women, the question of gender asserts itself. And because the shamanism of Korea and Japan is often linked to that of Siberia (through northeastern China), questions of continuity of practice as well as variations in practice require a close look at East Asia as a whole. When I began to think about organizing this topic, I kept visualizing the traditional decorative knots of Korea, called maedup. To understand its parts each strand has to be followed, but to understand the whole and appreciate the pattern, it must be knotted again.

To explore these interlinked problems, a broad swath through regions and times is the best approach to the question of shamanism and state formation. The questions of whether shamanism was prevalent at the formation of early states in East Asia, and if so, whether shamans became political as well as religious leaders, are only a beginning. In thinking about state origins we must consider how shamans might have become leaders, as well as whether they did.

The processes of state formation were not identical in the regions where the nation-states of China, Korea, and Japan are found. Related states formed in the Russian Far East (Table 1.1). Archaeological evidence forms the basis for this observation, but many relevant texts are also consulted in spite of disagreements among historians about when they were written and what axes their authors may have to grind. Art history, too, contributes to the understanding of states in East Asia, considering the meanings of prevalent symbols. Thus East Asian archaeology, mythology, ethnography, art, and texts provide a rich context to probe the notion of shamanism as contributing to state formation. Each of these approaches to the past has limitations, but adds a valuable dimension for the whole. Although archaeology is the emphasis in this book, more than mere description of sites and artifacts is needed, since relevant facts are subject to theoretical perspectives (Wylie 2002). The question of epistemology—how we know what we know—is never far from the foreground of this exploration.

Ideology as an explanatory factor in state formation has not been popular in wider archaeological circles for several reasons. For one, archaeologists have entertained a number of theories about the development of leadership and the purposes of leadership, and these theoretical positions do not necessarily leave room for shamanism. Another stumbling block may be that studies of current East Asian shamans show that they are preponderantly female. Just as shamanism has been proclaimed as incompatible with leadership in state level societies, so leadership is often said so be a male prerogative. Did shamans change genders, or could ancient leadership have been female?

What Is Shamanism?

The varieties of shamanism found in Siberia tend to be used as a touchstone for shamanism because of the emphasis in Eliades (1964) Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. However, shamans of ancient East Asia, as described in texts and interpreted in archaeological sites, are both like and unlike Siberian shamans of the past and present. Those who study shamanism in the present have documented the varied beliefs, rituals, and artifacts of shamanism according to time and place. Nicholas Thomas and Caroline Humphrey (1994: 2) note that not all shamanisms are equal in terms of scholarship: “the magnetism of shamanism … has made some forms of shamanism peculiarly attractive as objects of scholarship, and has made others appear derivative, impure, or secondary.” Everyone wants to study what they believe are the real, original shamans. But “pure” shamanism never existed. It is an anachronistic mistake to freeze an imagined shamanic past as “real” shamanism, and compare everything else to it. Scholars of current shamans often refer to shamanisms—plural.

Table 1.1

BCE	China	Korea	Japan	Russian Far East
16,000	Late Paleolithic	Late Paleolithic	Incipient Jomon	Late Paleolithic
10,000	Early pottery	Mesolithic	Initial Jomon	Early Pottery
8,000	Xinglongwa, et al.	Early Chulmun	Earliest Jomon
6,000	Yangshao, etal.	Middle Chulmun	Early Jomon
4,000	Longshan, Honghsan et al.	Late Chulmun	Middle Jomon	Boismanskaya
2,000	Erlitou/Xia Dynasty	Mumun	Late Jomon	Zaisanovskaya
1,500	Shang Dynasty	Early Bronze Age
1,000	Zhou Dynasty		Early Yayoi/Final Jomon	Yankovskaya
200	Han Dynasty	Lelang/Samhan	Middle Yayoi	Ilou
CE
100	Later Han	Iron Age Goguryeo	Late Yayoi
300	Three kingdoms, Six dynasties	Silla, Kaya, Baekje (Paekche)	Kofun
600	Tang	United Silla	Heian

But shamanisms must have shared elements to be able to discuss them at all. Current varieties of East Asian shamanism have in common the belief in spirits who are able to affect human lives, the ability of some special humans to reach the spirits, and, importantly, the belief that propitiating the spirits can change the course of events. The relationship between spirits and their human counterparts is the constant that underlies the considerable differences among forms of East Asian shamanism.

Who Were the Wu?

China scholars are mostly in agreement that practitioners called wu in ancient China are considered shamans, in the sense of dancing, trancing, divining, and presumably contacting spirits (Chang 1983, 1994a, 1994b, 2005; Childs-Johnson 1988, 1989, 1995, 1998; but see also Falkenhausen 1995 and Keightley 1998, who prefer to use the term “spirit medium” to translate wu). The character for wu is found on oracle bones of the Shang dynasty, about 1500 BCE, and the character was engraved on the hat of a figurine from Shandong (Liu 2003). Thus, wu is known to be an ancient concept, although shifts in precise meanings of the character wu surely occurred through time and within different regions (Tong 2002).

Wu could be applied to both male and female shamans, but sometimes a different term was used for male shamans, according to ancient Chinese texts. This suggests that the first shamans were women, since the unmarked member of the pair is female. However, the notion that leadership is gendered male is deeply entrenched in both Chinese and Western cultures, and this notion is not easily shaken (Nelson 2002b). I suspect that the gender balance of shamanism is another reason that shamanism has been seen as incompatible with leadership in state-level society. One may infer the dismissal of female leaders in archaeological discourse stems from the fact that the literature on state formation takes little notice of female leaders, although they widely existed (Arwill-Nordbladh 2003; Bell 2003; Davis-Kimball 2003; Gailey 1987; Linduff 2003; Linnekin 1990; McCafferty and McCafferty 2003; Muller 1987; Nelson 2003b; Piggott 1997, 1999; Silverblatt 1988; Trocolli 2002; Troy 2003; Vogel 2003).

Because the Chinese had a word for these practitioners—wu—and because the same word appears as a loanword in Korean (mu in modern Korean), I will sometimes use those specific terms to apply to the shamans of ancient China and Korea. Other designations used for shamans in East Asia are miko in Japanese, and yuta in Okinawan. The word shaman is often applied to these female practitioners but shamanisms in these regions are not identical—and the differences among them are instructive. They will be described later in the book.

State Formation

The hypothesis of this book is that the ritu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• List of Figures
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• CHAPTER 1: ORIENTATION TO SHAMANISM AND THE ORIGIN OF STATES Spirit, Power, and Gender in East Asia
• CHAPTER 2: LANDSCAPES, LEGENDS, AND SKYSCAPES
• CHAPTER 3: WHAT IS A SHAMAN?
• CHAPTER 4: POWER, LEADERSHIP, AND GENDER
• CHAPTER 5: SHAMANS IN THE EAST ASIAN NEOLITHIC
• CHAPTER 6: SHAMANISM IN EARLY CHINESE STATES
• CHAPTER 7: SHAMANISM IN KOREA
• CHAPTER 8: SHAMANISM IN THE JAPANESE ISLANDS
• CHAPTER 9: RETYING THE KNOTS Leadership, Ideology, Cultural Patterns, Gender, and Shamans in East Asia
• References
• Index
• About the Author