英文摘要 |
To avoid confusion caused by the complex and abstract aspects of feng-shui, this article intends to apply a historical perspective on the effort of analyzing and revealing the various origins and evolutions of feng-shui ideas. It finds that with these various theories and thoughts of feng-shui, there has always been spirit of old-time Chinese 'funerary and commemorative solemnities' in the practice of ancestral worship, inherent in its basic concept. With such concepts of the 'gathering of Chi and echoing of utterances' and the 'resonance's within the same sort,' ancient fathers and then latter-day offspring's were able to be brought together within their lineage context, hence develop into 'a recognition of the same descends bloodline' i.e. a heritable familial ethic. In Taiwan, early immigrants from the areas of Kwangtung and Fujian provinces tended to critically regard the erection of their ancestral halls, the observation of the pilgrimage to the ancestral sites, the keeping of the ancestral bury grounds, and the passing down of the genealogical records, etc. By setting such a cosmic order for their environment, these customaries kept close ties with feng-shui practices. The formation of the physical environment is understandably influenced by the existence and the practices of the feng-shui value system which is alive and well in the context and the tradition of the lineage ethic. Because the concept of feng-shui has come to dwell on the relations between the natural and the clan ethic, for an ancestral hall used in the clan worship, it is only natural that its relation to feng-shui has been regarded so much. While the space where people live in and the space where they worship the ancestors are to become one, the courtyard houses they live are likely covered in the feng-shui discourse, as is the way in how the ambient current of Chi in these house courtyards come to be in terms with the shape and force of the Earth. The 'dragon god' situated underneath the house altar in a residential main hall, however, is the concretization of this conceptual practice. 'Dragon god' is the representation of the point of continuation and immediacy between the man-made and the natural. Therefore, it is not surprising that the ethic order of the deceased forebears and the preferential arrangement of the houserooms of the living are not only in complete correspondence and perfect match, but also in an interlinking relation. |