The tiger’s teeth : local gazetteers as sources for images related to the performance of ritual

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Abstract

In 1756, a scholar by the name of Ouyang Zhenghuan 歐陽正煥 (1709-1760) published a new gazetteer for Xiangtan 湘潭county in Hunan province (Xiangtan xian zhi, 1756). To modern historians, Xiangtan may be best known as the county of Mao Zedong’s birth, but during the reign of the Qianlong emperor (1736-1795), the county seems to have wanted to make a name for itself as a place with outstanding ritual implements.The quality of the images is excellent: each of the objects is depicted in elaborate detail, as both figures show.The argument this contribution seeks to make is that local gazetteers like the Xiangtan gazetteer should be considered among the valuable sources for the study of Confucian ritual. When we look closely at the visual material about ritual in local gazetteers, we see, for example that the process of the appearance of images of ritual implements in local gazetteers should not be understood simply as a top down, or central to local, diffusion of state-level ritual instruction. Compilers of local gazetteers such as the 1756 gazetteer for Xiangtan county in Hunan province sourced the visuals to accompany textual information about rituals from other compilations that circulated locally before those visuals appeared in the higher-level compilations about rituals to be discussed below such as Huangchao liqi tushi 皇朝禮器圖式 (Illustrated Regulations for Ceremonial Paraphernalia of the Imperial Qing Dynasty) or Qing huidian tu 大清會典圖 (Imperially endorsed illustrated Collected Statutes of the Great Qing).

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