「仙居古廟鎮蠻邦」：拉律戰爭與何仙姑信仰在英屬馬來亞的開展

“Pacifying the Wildland”: The Larut Wars and the Beginning of the He Xiangu Cult in British Malaya

太平何仙姑廟位於馬來西亞霹靂州昔日首府太平（舊名「拉律」），肇建於1880年代英屬馬來亞時期，是馬來半島首座以「八仙」唯一女仙—「何仙姑」為主祀對象的廟宇。本文結合中國本土與海外的文獻、田野材料，試圖從馬來亞史上最慘烈的華族武裝衝突—拉律戰爭前後拉律∕太平華人置身的社經環境、族群政治脈絡與地方宗教版圖出發，探討何仙姑信仰初入馬來亞的契機與過程。本文指出，何仙姑相傳出身廣東省增城縣，是近代霹靂州錫礦業開闢先驅的增城移民與原鄉之間的重要文化連結。然而，最初於太平創設其廟祀據點，並非僅是增城人在客寓之地兀自移植原鄉信仰所致。促成此廟興立之主因，是十九世紀中葉以來因競逐拉律錫礦開採利益而分化為海山與義興兩大「公司」陣營的各方廣東移民勢力，在後拉律戰爭時期的新政經形勢下，為謀建凝塑大廣東認同的整合機制，所攜手進行的一系列文化操作的結果。本文藉由分析太平何仙姑廟創建的時空脈絡與族群背景，企圖說明，中國鄉土信仰傳統在脫離原鄉社會脈絡後，實際上是透過呼應支持者的多變生存處境才得於域外生根，而信仰本身亦在這樣的歷史過程中被改變、留存或新造，同時反饋成為模塑海外華人社會族群關係、宗教景觀與歷史記憶的關鍵力量。 The He Xiangu Temple in Taiping (called “Larut” before 1874), the birthplace of the modern tin-mining industry in Malaysia, was founded in the 1880s. It was the first temple on the Malay Peninsula to be dedicated to the Chinese goddess He Xiangu 何仙姑 (Immortal Maiden He). This article analyzes the socio-economic, ethnic and religious landscapes in Taiping before and after the Larut Wars (1862-1874), the severest armed conflict involving the Chinese community in the history of Malaya, to show how He Xiangu took root there. The deity's putative hometown was Zengcheng 增 城, a county in Guangdong Province, China. Zengcheng immigrants formed the earliest Chinese tin-mining group in Taiping and together with other Guangdong immigrant groups founded the temple in the wake of the war in an effort to reconcile. The temple was established as part of a cultural strategy to symbolically integrate all Guangdong immigrants into one community. Thus the overseas spread of Chinese local religious traditions cannot simply be attributed to an effort by migrants to relocate their native cultural heritage in the host society, as many scholars studying overseas Chinese societies have argued. This case-study shows that a native cult could only be successfully embedded in the receiving society when it continually enabled its migrant followers to adapt to the ever-changing circumstances of their lives abroad.