17世紀における泰山巡禮と香社・香會 : 靈巖寺大雄寶殿に殘る題記をめぐって

Abstract

Over the past several decades, Mount Tai has been the focus of a number of important studies. However, wall inscriptions left by ordinary pilgrims, despite their considerable historical value, have attracted little scholarly attention to date. This paper seeks to remedy this situation and firmly situate Mount Taiʼs wall inscriptions in the historical discourse on Chinese society in the seventeenth century. In the main hall of the Lingyan Monastery 靈巖寺, located about forty kilometers north of Mount Tai, there still remain over four hundred wall inscriptions left by pilgrims in the seventeenth century, which they engraved together with their names, hometowns, and the dates of their visits. This author visited the Lingyan Monastery and photographed all the extant inscriptions, and a thorough examination of the texts engraved on the stones has produced the following findings : First, an outstanding number of the inscriptions date from 1621, the year prior to the uprising led by Xu Hongru. It is likely that many followers of the Incense-Smelling Sect 聞香敎 also made a pilgrimage to Mount Tai. Second, contrary to common understanding, a large number of pilgrims visited Mount Tai in the tenth lunar month. This is a surprising finding considering that local gazetteers inform us that the main season of pilgrimage to Mount Tai was from the first month to the fourth month, especially on the eighteenth day of the fourth month, commemorating the birth of the Goddess of Mount Tai 碧霞元君. Many of the pilgrims who visited Mount Tai in the tenth month were likely followers of popular religious sects. This could explain why scholar-officials deliberately chose not to record pilgrimsʼ visits to Mount Tai in the tenth month, including those made by lay people. As a result, we currently have only fragmented information on lay peopleʼs pilgrimage visits to Mount Tai. Pilgrims to Mount Tai came from a wide range of areas, including western Shandong, eastern Henan, southern Hebei, and northern Jiangsu provinces. Major transportation routes, the Grand Canal in particular, connected those areas to Mount Tai, and the availability of such means of travel clearly enabled pilgrims to visit Mount Tai. Finally, this paper also considers the issues of the purposes of the pilgrimage to Mount Tai, the roles played by leaders of pilgrimage associations, and women pilgrims. All the data on the Lingyan Monasteryʼs wall inscriptions are found at the end of the paper.