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The Emergence and Social Function of Chinese Religious Associations in Singapore*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Marjorie Topley
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Extract

The majority of Singapore Chinese originate from the rural areas of Kwangtung and Fukien provinces. They had already started to immigrate in relatively large numbers by the late nineteenth century, that is before the traditional society of the countryside had been greatly disturbed by new political events and ideas. The social systems Chinese developed in Singapore therefore have been considerably influenced by those existing in “traditional” times in the homeland. Yet they have also been very much modified by the new social environment of Singapore. Overseas Chinese have been free to associate according to a number of principles not open to them in their home villages. New alignments have resulted from the immigration of a body of people of diverse origins and from the heterogenous structure of urban occupations. They become manifest in organisations set up for a number of different kinds of activity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , April 1961 , pp. 298 - 314
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1961

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References

1 In parts of Kwangtung and Fukien the local lineage or a branch of it sometimes coincided with the village unit.

2 Maurice Freedman discusses the evidence for voluntary organisations in village life in Lineage Organization in Southeastern China (=London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology, No. 18) (London, 1958), ch. 12.Google Scholar

3 H. B. Morse distinguishes craft and trade associations in Chinese towns from “provincial clubs”. Only a few of the former appear to have recruited from “aliens” whereas the latter did so exclusively. See The Gilds of China(Shanghai, 1932).Google Scholar

4 What has been called “state religion” included worship of gods associated with territorial units. They were arranged in a hierarchy of importance rather like government officials in the administrative hierarchy. Government officals were expected to participate in their worship. Cf. Doolittle, Justus, Social Life of the Chinese (New York, 1865), I, ch. 14.Google Scholar

5 The Manchu had good reason to proscribe some secret societies and some sects, for they had as their object the overthrow of the dynasty.

6 “Religion and Social Realignment among the Chinese in Singapore”, by M. Freedman and M. Topley (awaiting publication).

7 Elliott, A. J. A., Chinese Spirit Medium Cults in Singapore (= London School of Economics Monographs on Anthropology, No. 14) (London, 1955).Google Scholar

8 Ibid., pp. 44–5

9 I hope to discuss more thoroughly the spiritual and social attractions of salvationist religion for unattached Chinese women in a further publication.

10 The disruptions of war kept Chinese in Singapore when they might have preferred to return to China. Today there is movement in and out of Singapore but few newcomers, and few immigrants returning to China for good. Cf. Freedman, M., Chinese Family and Marriage in Singapore (London, 1957), p. 26.Google Scholar

11 Social Survey of Singapore(1947), p. 51 and table on p. 52.Google Scholar

12 More school children of all “races” attending English schools belong to higher professional or big business families and those in clerical occupations than to working-class families. Ibid., p. 197.

13 This is fully discussed in Freedman, Chinese Family and Marriage.

14 At the time of the 1947 census there were 730, 133 Chinese out of a total population of 940, 824. Two other major groups were Malaysians, 115, 735, and Indians, 68, 978.

15 Elliott estimates that there were probably no more than 25,000 Chinese Christians and two or three hundred Chinese Muslims in 1950 (Op. cit., p. 30).

16 Chinese Christians may move in circles determined by their faith, but they also participate in ordinary social life and join associations where they can opt out of religious activities of which they disapprove.

17 This and the following sections are based so far as possible on my own observations during my period of field work in Singapore: 1951–52 and 1954–55.

18 Cf.n. 6.

19 See Freedman, “Immigrants and Associations”, CSSH, III, p. 25–48.Google Scholar

20 Uniformity in dialect may sometimes have been due to the circumstance that a society recruited from a certain area in Singapore where people of the same dialect group lived together; there are still dialect concentrations in parts of the old Chinatown. Newcomers live there on arrival. Cantonese go to an area known as the Water Cart, and to their Hong Kong relatives this name stands for Singapore. In the early days, dialect or regional bias in membership may have been due to connections between some societies as originally formed in Singapore and parent lodges with jurisdiction over certain regions of the homeland.

21 In part for similar reasons there was also a sex bias in the early ideological associations. See below, p. 308.

22 The main dialect groups in Singapore are: Hokkien, the largest, Hokchiu, Hinghoa, and Hokchhia, from Fukien province; Tiuchiu, Cantonese, and Hainanese, from Kwangtung; Hakka, from both Fukien and Kwangtung. Hokkien and Tiuchiu are inter-intelligible. The other dialects are distinct from each other. Within some, for example in Cantonese, there are sub-dialects based on particular areas. These may form a further basis of alignment in associations.

23 “Local Chinese Organisations” (signed: A Straits Chinese), The Straits Chinese Magazine, III, no. 10, June 1899 (Singapore), pp. 43 ff.Google Scholar

24 See below, p. 313.

25 As did the provincial associations of urban immigrants in China. Cf. Morse, op. cit., p. 47.

26 Ta, Chen, Emigrant Communities in South China (New York, 1940).Google Scholar

27 Freedman, Family and Marriage, ch. 7.

28 Ibid., pp. 212 ff.

29 In China there were two kinds of tablets, shěn chup'ai, which belonged to the eldest son (younger sons had a kind of collective tablet of all ancestors), and shen weip'ai, which could be tablets with the character wei substituted for chu, or photographs or paper strips. The chup'ai rested usually in the ancestral village, but weip'ai could be made by anyone, including friends or relatives of the deceased living elsewhere. In Hong Kong villages when lineages are segmented the segment to which an ancestor was most important has his chup'ai; the others use a weip'ai to fill in gaps in their tablet records. In Singapore it is often weip'ai that one finds in tablet shrines, sometimes as photographs or even identity cards. One reason for the less orthodox treatment of tablets may be the fact that they are not original soul-tablets (which may be set up in the homeland), but such substitute wei type tablets put in by overseas friends and relatives.

30 The late W. L. Wynne held that there were two distinct sources of the Malayan Chinese secret society—the Triad and the Han League. I have not had the opportunity to examine his unpublished work Triad and Tabut, A Survey of the Origin and Diffusion of Chinese and Mohammedan Secret Societies in the Malay Peninsula A.D. 1800–1935(1941) to see if his theory is based on evidence of marked differences in ritual and organisation.

31 For the rules and secret signs of this society see Comber, L., Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya (New York, 1959), appendix 3. Another name for this society appears to be the Kian Tek.Google Scholar

32 See Ward, J. S. M. and Stirling, W. C., The Hung Society or the Society of Heaven and Earth, I (London, 1925).Google Scholar

33 In some Malay off-shoots of the Triad the initiation ritual was modified to make it compatible with Malay religious beliefs. Ibid., pp. 136–37.

34 Siang, Song Ong, One Hundred Years' History of the Chinese in Singapore(London, 1923), pp. 82 ff.Google Scholar

35 Pickering, W. A., “Chinese Secret Societies and their Origin”, Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Part 1, no. 1 (1878), pp. 63–84.Google Scholar

36 Comber, op. cit., p. 282. This society's rules state that the shen known as Toa Peh Kong has the power of granting favors. Ibid., p. 284.

37 Secret societies in Siam founded temples for this shěn. See Skinner, G. W., Chinese Society in Thailand: an analytical history (New York, 1957), p. 141.Google Scholar

38 Elliott, op. cit., p. 69.

39 For methods of payment see Freedman, Family and Marriage, pp. 191–94.\

40 For post-mortuary ritual see my ”Chinese rites for the repose of the Soul, with special reference to Cantonese custom“, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, XXV, part 1 (1952), pp. 149–160.Google Scholar

41 See Freedman, Lineage Organisation, p. 87.

42 Some of these associations are attached to establishments belonging to religions in which membership takes a kinship form. See below, n. 46.

43 Only those associations with more than ten members have to be registered with the Registrar of Societies, and it is not possible to estimate the number that are smaller than this.

44 On the anti-marriage movement see my “Chinese women's vegetarian houses in Singapore”, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, XXVII, part 1 (1954), pp. 51–67.Google Scholar

45 Maurice Freedman's research for Family and Marriage in 75 associations of the territorial and clan type showed that 14 of these had women members; 10 of the 14 were Cantonese associations. The proportion of women was high in half the Cantonese associations, but in the 4 others was low. Miss Kwok Swee Soo, who investigated 26 clan and district associations, found that the majority of the 800 members of one Cantonese district organisation were single women employed as labourers or domestic servants. In two other Cantonese cases women formed about 50% of the membership. An Account of the Sources of Benevolent Assistance which are Asian in Origin and Organisation (University of Malaya, 1954. Available in microfilm).

46 Buddhist organisation has come to consist of a network of groupings of disciples (lay and cleric) and masters attached to monastic houses and vegetarian halls. These groupings have patterned themselves on Chinese family organisation. Disciples of the same master use terms of address to each other which are borrowed from the kinship system. All disciples, however, both male and female, are treated terminologically as male. Kinship terms extend to disciples of other masters who are fellow-disciples of one's own master. Groupings trace their genealogy from “ancestor” masters. Within religious “lineages” generation names, a feature of the kinship system, are introduced into the new personal names given on entry to the religion. Houses whose inmates are disciples of the same master cooperate with each other for both ritual and economic purposes. The Hsien-t'ien sects have a similar system for the grouping of chai rang, but they group also according to rank. High ranking officials control whole groups of halls, each hall being some segment of the religious “kinship” group. A group of halls cooperates in certain ritual and various segments of the group cooperate also, usually at “family” anniversaries of some kind.

Buddhist Long Life associations may be run by the head inmate of a hall or nunnery or monastery, or by the controlling master. Membership may be drawn from several establishments that are connected by “family” relationships, and from disciples in ascending and descending generations. Buddhist associations may also include “ordinary” members who have not joined the religion formally. In sectarian associations this is rare, because members need to understand secret elements of the rituals. Ritual of death, for example, depends on certain esoteric ideas, and only a member of the religion could witness the more secret activities.

47 The Seven Sisters festival is based on a legend related by the philosopher Huai-nan.

48 Two such magazines published in Chinese are entitled: (Chinese) Temples in Singapore (1951), and Buddhism in Singapore(c. 1953).

49 See Temples in Singapore.

50 I cannot account completely for the Tiuchiu bias. Skinner remarks that although such organisations were found all over China they were particularly well developed in Ch'ao Chou (the Tiuchiu area) (op. cit., p. 257).

51 The vegetarian halls of one Hsien-t'iensect in China, were popular with men and provided them with adequate economic benefits. They were the Hankow “sailors' homes”. See Susuki, N., “Lo Religion-one of the Religious Sects of the Chinese Ch'ing Dynasty”, Memoirs of the Institute of Oriental Culture, No. 1 (1943), pp. 1–16 (in Japanese).Google Scholar

52 See Yun-Ts'iao, Hsu, “The Religion of the Void”, Journal of the South Seas Society, X, part 2, no. 20 (in English).Google Scholar

53 Cf. Chan, Wing-tsit, Religious Trends in Modern China (New York, 1953), chs. 3 and 4.Google Scholar

54 The records of one association relate the rise of genuine interest in Buddhism with the visit to Singapore of Tai Hsu, a great reforming priest from China, in 1921.

55 The rules of one association require members to practise “pure basic Buddhist” funeral rites in place of “expensive sophisticated unbuddhist rituals”. Its manifesto says that many Singapore temples “are managed by inexperienced persons, and some … by unscrupulous persons … we need a body to give guidance and check abuses.”

56 It contributed to the founding of Nan Yang University, a comparatively new Chinese University in Singapore.

57 It stressed the value of the Chinese contribution to the building up of Singapore, and urged that this be remembered.

58 It provides both Chinese and Western medicine for the poor, but is particularly interested in promoting the former. In a magazine celebrating its 12th anniversary the Singapore branch said: “Much right and privileges have gone abroad in the past because of using mostly Western medicine”. A writer in the same magazine stressed the relation between education and spiritual advancement: “As the cultural standards of our overseas compatriots becomes higher, the influences of the Tao will be much more strongly felt. Singapore will then become a cultural region”.

59 The fact that Tao-yüan proceedings are conducted in Cantonese may however inhibit non-Cantonese from joining. The Red Swastika on the other hand provides a means for cooperation in philanthropy among all Chinese who believe in at least one of the religions that Tao-yüan incorporates syncretically.

60 One large body has 2 directors, 25 executive committee members, 7 reserve members of that committee, 7 supervisory committee members, 3 reserve members, a standing executive committee and 7 departments for special interests. A Buddhist “lay” association, which includes priests on its committees, has 6 instructors, 4 honorary chairmen, 12 honorary directors, 45 directors, 6 reserve directors, as well as a chairman, vice-chairman, assistant manager, and various departments for special affairs.

61 Miss Kwok, op. cit.

62 Goodrich, B. W. F., Asst. Commissioner C.I.D., Singapore, “Decline and Rise of Secret Societies in Singapore”, South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), 22.1.59.Google Scholar

63 The United Malay Front comprises 46 political, social, religious and welfare associations in Singapore. Reported in South China Morning Post, 3.3.59.

64 Comber, L., “Chinese Secret Societies and Merdeka”, Eastern World, XI, no. 8 (August 1958), suggests that during the 1955 elections certain political parties were not against using the ready-made organisation of Chinese secret societies to “persuade people to vote”, the societies allegedly being paid so much per vote. Comber also cites a Singapore newspaper as stating that one society offered to double the membership of a certain party within a year if it was given a say in running the party.Google Scholar

65 Transcription follows the modified Wade-Giles system as found in “List of Syllabic Headings” in the American edition of Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary, pp. xviii-xxi.Google Scholar