In China, as in India, ritual roles are distributed across the entire social field, rather than being confined to a religious field that is competed over in a quest for the monopolization of its powers (Bourdieu, 1987, 1991; Goossaert, Palmer, 2011; Dean, 2016). This essay explores the ritual roles of a leader of the Chinese diaspora in Singapore in the second half of the 19th century, drawing on stone inscriptions he wrote in several temples he built or restored, and his burial record, composed by the Chinese Consul General to Singapore, Huang Zunxian (1848-1905). These sources reveal how intricately entangled were the secular, commercial, political and religious realms at the end of the golden age of the Chinese temple network in Southeast Asia.
Opium for the Gods
Visitors to the many temples in Singapore today are often surprised to find the mouths and tongues of the underworld deities smeared with opium. Indeed, spirit mediums of the Underworld gods in many parts of Malaysia still...