Death Rituals and Politics in Northern Song China by Mihwa Choi (review)

Reviewed by: Death Rituals and Politics in Northern Song China by Mihwa Choi Cheung Hiu Yu Mihwa Choi. Death Rituals and Politics in Northern Song China. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xi + 234. $140 (cloth). ISBN 978-0190459765. Mihwa Choi’s Death Rituals and Politics in Northern Song China is among the few studies in a Western language that devotes serious attention to the conceptions of death rituals in imperial China.1 Based on textual materials and archaeological findings, Choi’s work explores the tension and reconciliation between ideal Confucian ritual discourse and actual ritual practices in eleventh-century China. Some Song emperors and scholar-officials stood out against this background and distinguished themselves as leading actors on the stage of what Choi has called the “ritual embodiment of social imaginary” (9). Choi argues that these ritual agents envisioned various power relations that came to operate in political, social, and intellectual domains, especially in the terrain of monarchical authority and the revival of Confucianism. The content of Choi’s book is evenly distributed between ritual politics and social imaginaries. The first two chapters narrate emperor Zhenzong’s 真宗 (r. 997–1022) endeavor to establish a ritual rubric of the Sacred Ancestor in the Heavenly Text affair of 1008 and corresponding reflections from some scholar-officials after the emperor’s death in 1022. Choi highlights the ideological transformation from the Daoist undertones of Zhenzong’s sacred ancestral worship around the imperial Zhao 趙 clan to the elevation of Confucian ritual discourse regarding funeral and especially sacrificial rites performed in the Ancestral Shrines (zongmiao 宗廟) during Renzong’s 仁 宗 (r. 1022–1063) reign. Against Zhenzong’s legacy of amplifying Daoist rituals, celebrated scholar-officials like Sima Guang 司馬光 (1019–1086) and Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修 (1007–1072) attempted to minimize Daoist influence by championing Confucian ritual Classics, particularly the Book of Rites 禮 記 and the Rites and Ceremonies 儀禮, as the orthopraxy of the Song court. Along with the “Confucianization” of imperial rituals in Renzong’s reign, there was a split between leading scholar-officials in their conceptions of funeral [End Page 197] rites and mourning practices. After Renzong’s death, this division reached its culmination in the ritual controversy over the posthumous designation of the new emperor Yingzong’s 英宗 biological father, Prince Pu 濮. Contesting ritual discourse over death rituals thus bred factional conflicts beyond the ritual realm in later periods. In the next three chapters—Chapters Three, Four, and Five—the focus shifts to the symbolic power of death rituals in shaping Song society through different social imaginary channels. The protagonists in Chapter Three are Sima Guang, Wang Anshi 王安石 (1021–1086), and other scholars who made profound contributions to the theoretical explanations regarding death rituals. A believer in the moral reformation of society through the dissemination of Confucian ritual norms, Sima wrote a comprehensive ritual manual, titled the Letter on Rituals (Shuyi 書儀), which adapted the ideas of ancient ritual norms to meet the needs of his time. According to Choi, Sima’s political opponent Wang Anshi had a different understanding of ritual and social customs (101–2). As Wang put more emphasis on his economic and social reforms, he regarded ritual as less important in transforming society. Choi also mentions Sima’s decision to make the Rites and Ceremonies and the Book of Rites the primary sources of ancient ritual norms for his Letter on Rituals. What she does not mention in this book, which is of crucial importance, is Wang Anshi’s clear inclination toward using the Rituals of Zhou (Zhouli 周禮) in support of his reform agenda. A brief comparison between Sima and Wang in terms of their understandings of canonical authority would help explain their interpretations regarding contemporary ritual needs and practices. Readers other than Song historians may find Chapters Four and Five the most interesting parts of the book, as these two chapters probe into the imagination of the world-beyond in Song elites’ anecdotal records and burial practices. In Chapter Four, through an analysis of Wang Anshi’s image of an underworld prison and Han Qi’s 韓琦 (1008–1075) depiction of glory in heaven, Choi shows how scholar-officials conveyed political messages, composing and spreading stories by hearsay and via notebooks (biji 筆記). The imagination...