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RAYMOND L. M. LEE
CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN Chinese SPIRIT MEDIUMSHIP IN URBAN MALAYSIA
The spirit medium occupies an outstanding position in popular Chinese religion. As an judge between the spiritual and the mundane world, he not provided provides services in healing and divination but as well as performs vital roles at temple and spirit festivals. The history of Chinese spirit mediumship can be traced to the Shang Dynasty of the second millennium B.C., where priest-shamans (wu) were accorded luxuriously official standing in the imperial courts, until their decline in the late Chou period in the third hundred B.C.1 However, spirit mediumship did not become obsolete but go along to be practised at the popular level (Yang 1967: 106, 303). a few(prenominal)er reports of spirit mediumship in modern China have appeared in print, except for the detailed observations of De Groot (1964) made in the southern provinces in the late nineteenth century.
Since then, most anthropologists have studied Chinese spirit mediumship in various Chinese communities, particularly in Taiwan (Jordan 1972, Seaman 1978, Kleinman 1980) and Hong Kong (Potter 1974). Spirit mediumship is also practised in various Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, but few ethnographies have been published. One such rare ethnography, by Elliott (1955), focuses on Chinese spirit mediumship in Singapore.2 A comparable information on the Malaysian Peninsula has yet to be accomplished. In this essay, I wish to fill some of this lacuna by describing the practices of Chinese spirit mediums and their organization in contemporary urban Malaysia.3 Chinese Folk Religion in Malaysia It is necessary to describe presently Chinese folk religious practices in Malaysia in pronounce to understand the role of the Chinese spirit medium....If you want to set down a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay
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