Некоторые аспекты средневекового китайского чаепития в контексте антропологических исследований. Some Aspects of Tea Ritual in Medieval China in Context of Anthropological Studies. (original) (raw)

В настоящей статье приводится анализ некоторых аспектов ритуала чаепития на основе материала, изложенного в первом исследовании, специально посвященном чаю - «Чайном каноне» Лу Юя, который был составлен во времена династии Тан в Китае, с переводом отдельных фрагментов текста. Автор предпринял попытку анализа содержания этих аспектов в контексте антропологических исследований, когда элементы ритуала рассматриваются не изолированно, но в контексте этно-культурного процесса. Так же предпринимается попытка привлечь внимание исследователей к проблематике китайской чайной культуры. Ключевые слова: Чайный канон, ритуал чаепития, Лу Юй, средневековый Китай The importance of studying ritual has been proven by past generations of scientists, therefore it requires no further reasoning. We are lucky to rely upon rich and well established methodology of studying and huge collection of field research data. Nevertheless, rituals still erect numerous problems in front of those who intend to interpret the ritual and it's symbolism. One of these problems is verification of the results of interpretation. This problem becomes especially essential when we approach Chinese tea ritual. There are so many orthodox and individual ways of explaining the meaning and purpose of the whole ritual and its different parts in particular that it may seem that there is actually no meaning at all. However, putting the tea ritual into the temporal and ideological context helps us to observe the ritual from outside as a holistic act. In this article we will be talking about tea ritual as it appears in the Tea Classics of Lu Yu, a poet of Tan dynasty, who composed his text in the second part of 8th century. The book consists of ten chapters describing origins of tea and tea drinking customs; tools that are used to produce and prepare tea; methods of picking leaves, it's production, brewing and drinking. Tea Classics had a major influence upon the development of Chinese tea culture and remain of high value amongst tea lovers and researchers. Methods and techniques of tea preparation were changing along with the development of tea and related industries. Another important feature of Chinese tea culture is that during it's history no unified tea ritual was developed. Tea ritual took different shapes and was filled with different meaning depending of social strata and philosophical views of these who performed it. Though Lu Yu mentions different methods of tea preparation popular amongst regular people, he emphasizes his disapproval towards these methods. At the same time he mentions that the method he describes is appropriate among aristocrats. As well as other ancient books on tea Tea Classics does not provide any interpretation of the meaning of different aspects of tea ritual, neither does the author use the word ritual itself. Instead Lu Yu gives some recommendations for those who already know how to make tea and perform a tea ritual. The attempt of analyzing some particular elements of Tan dynasty tea ritual that was made in this article is to show researchers the depth of symbolism of tea ritual to draw the attention to this topic. One can see that the methods of preparation and serving tea to guests are strongly ideologically engaged and culturally and temporally determined.