Oedipal Godoffers the most comprehensive account in any language of
the prodigal deity Nezha. Celebrated for over a millennium, Nezha
is among the most formidable and enigmatic of all Chinese gods. In
this theoretically informed study Meir Shahar recounts Nezha's
riveting tale-which culminates in suicide and attempted
patricide-and uncovers hidden tensions in the Chinese family
system. In deploying the Freudian hypothesis, Shahar does not imply
the Chinese legend's identity with the Greek story of Oedipus. For
one, in Nezha's story the erotic attraction to the mother is not
explicitly acknowledged. More generally, Chinese oedipal tales
differ from Freud's Greek prototype by the high degree of
repression that is applied to them. Shahar argues that, despite a
disastrous father-son relationship, Confucian ethics require that
the oedipal drive masquerade as filial piety in Nezha's story,
dictating that the child-god kill himself before trying to avenge
himself upon his father. Combining impeccable scholarship with an
eminently readable style, the book covers a vast terrain: it
surveys the image of the endearing child-god across varied genres
from oral and written fiction, through theater, cinema, and
television serials, to Japanese manga cartoons. It combines
literary analysis with Shahar's own anthropological field work,
providing a thorough ethnography of Nezha's flourishing cult.
Crossing the boundaries between China's diverse religious
traditions, it tracks the rebellious infant in the many ways he has
been venerated by Buddhist monks, Daoist priests, and possessed
spirit mediums, whose dramatic performances have served to
negotiate individual, familial, and collective tensions. Finally,
the book offers a detailed history of the legend and the cult
reaching back over two thousand years to its origins in India,
where Nezha began as a mythological being named Nalak?bara, whose
sexual misadventures were celebrated in the Sanskrit epics as early
as the first centuries BCE. Here Shahar reveals the long-term
impact that Indian mythology has exerted-through the medium of
esoteric Buddhism-upon the Chinese imagination of divinity. A tour
de force of literary analysis, ethnographic research, psychological
insight, and cross-cultural investigation, Oedipal God is a must
read for anyone interested in Chinese studies and the historical
connection between India and China. Shahar's broad reach and
engaging approach will appeal to specialists and students in a
variety of disciplines including Chinese religion, Chinese
literature, anthropology, Buddhist studies, psychology, Indian
studies, and cross-cultural history.
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