Master of Arts / Department of History / David A. Graff / As the Tang dynasty rose to power and expanded into the present-day provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan, an endemic problem of troublesome frontier officials appeared along the border prefectures. Modern scholars have largely embraced Chinese historical scholarship believing that the lawlessness and remoteness of these southwestern border regions bred immoral, corrupt, and violent officials. Such observations fail to understand the southwest as a dynamic region that exposed assigned border officials to manage areas containing hardship, war, and unreceptive aboriginal tribes. Instead, the ability to act as an “effective” official, that is to bring peace domestically and abroad, reflected less the personal characteristics of an official and rather the relationship these officials had with the local native tribes. Evidence suggests that Tang, Tibetan, and Nanzhao hegemony along the southwestern border regions fluctuated according to which state currently possessed the allegiance of the native tribesmen. As protectors and maintainers of the roads, states possessing the allegiance of the local peoples possessed a tactical advantage, resulting in ongoing attacks and raids into the border prefectures by China’s rivals. Local officials without the allegiance of the locals and encountering attacks succumbed to improper behaviors to maintain control.

The dissertation focuses on the texts of a religious movement known as Tianshidao (the Way of the Celestial Masters) from the 2nd to the 5th century CE. Tianshidao is presented as a multifaceted tradition that should not be reduced by a predefned essence or a teleological vision of history. Instead of reconstructing one coherent cosmology, the author interprets the texts as representing various alternative cosmologies. They are compared according to the theory of cultural bias of Mary Douglas, in terms of grid and group. Special atention is paid to the employment of the bureaucratic imagery and the representations of time which are interpreted in the context of the cultural bias and the various modes of relationship towards the institutions of Tianshidao and the state. The author also analyses the millennialist character of the movement which was noted by previous research and distinguishes between various types of millennialism. Key words Tianshidao, Daoism, Early-Medieval China, cosmology, millennialism.

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