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Although Shiratori raised the possibility of Daoist or Buddhist influence in the materials, he remained silent to the fact that the vast bulk of the Yao Documents were Daoist texts used by Yao priests in their religious rites. In his article, Strickmann attempted to explain how and when Yao came to adopt Daoism as their religion, and argued that it was part of a larger sinifying process, one that began by the thirteenth century. While paving the way for future research, and defining a new field of academic endeavor, his discussion was impressionistic, and left many questions unanswered. I will reassess Strickmann’s initial intuitions about the appearance of Daoism among the Yao people, expanding on his argument in some places, and in others, diverting from it.
Prior to Stickmann’s writing about Daoism in Yao society, most research on Yao by Western and Japanese scholars was conducted in Southeast Asia, primarily in Thailand, by anthropologists who were for the most part unfamiliar with Chinese cultural and religious traditions, let alone with the Chinese script.6 Complaining about the lack of communication between different fields of learning, which resulted in the failure to recognize Daoist elements in Yao ritual manuals, Strickmann remarked:
Many Chinese scholars writing about Yao during the same period— presumably capable of reading Chinese and familiar with Daoist themes—were equally ignorant of the Daoist composition of Yao ritual culture. Influenced by Hegelian notions of progress,8 they were wont—as it is still common in much Chinese scholarship—to associate “ethnic minorities” with “primitive religion,” an ideological persuasion which resulted in their overlooking the obvious: the