The Memorial Shrines ritual complex of Jinci in Shanxi province is located at a sacred site where three mountain springs emerge to sustain the surrounding land and people. The Jinci complex is examined in The Divine Nature of Power through multiple methodological perspectives stemming from modern fields of archaeology; anthropology; art and architectural history; and political, social, and religious history. Through a careful reading and interpretation of surviving textual and physical materials, Miller reconstructs part of the complicated cultural history of this ritual complex. She uses a female water spirit of the Jin Springs and the historical/mythical figure of Shu Yu of Tang, founder of the Jin state and son of the founder of the Zhou dynasty (ca. 1099–256 BCE), to create a historical narrative around changing power relationships in patronage, politics, and worship at the site. An attempt is made to correlate these shifting relationships to physical evidence as traced through archaeology and architectural history. The thesis and methodological approaches are clearly presented in the introduction (chapter 1).

Little information exists about the early history or architectural layout of the Jinci complex, and the ambiguity of early references to a Jin Shrine (Jinci or Jinwangci) “leaves open the possibility that this earliest shrine was dedicated to either Shu Yu or the Spirit of the Jin Springs” (31; chapter 2). Modern archaeology shows that Marquis of Jin Shu Yu may not have actually occupied and ruled the territory around Jinci as traditionally believed. Miller instead raises the likelihood that the original worship at the site may have been to a water spirit. Information gleaned from stele, ritual, and building inscriptions along with transmitted accounts in the classical canon, official and local histories, and later scholarship suggest that the connection between Shu Yu and Jinci only became firmly established by the sixth century. A Jinci shrine to Shu Yu was built at some point. Afterwards, it garnered continued patronage through the eleventh century from the local elite and the imperial court as a way to evoke Zhou-dynasty legitimacy (chapters 3 and 4). After the late tenth century, however, the relocation of the regional administrative capital away from nearby Jinyang led to a shift in local patronage and worship from Shu Yu to the local water spirit, who was conferred the title of Sage Mother by 1063 and entered into the official sacrificial statutes (sidian) in 1077 (chapter 5).

The oldest surviving structure at the Jinci complex is the Sage Mother Hall. Although various dates ranging from 979 to 1102 have been proposed as to when the hall was actually constructed (98–102), Miller contends that it was erected between 1038 and 1087 based on dates after a major earthquake, before a dedicatory inscription found in the hall, and by comparison of the architectural style with other regional examples, which in turn are usually dated by style and written accounts (chapter 6). While the analysis is generally compelling, the latter stylistic comparison must be weighed against the fact that the Sage Mother Hall underwent numerous later renovations and even complete dismantlement and repair. It should be realized that almost all buildings surviving from this period have been fully dismantled for renovation, and it is usually assumed, but not always accurate, that their original timbers were largely retained. The present-day shape of the upper roof with its Ming, or later, tile work and even the form of the bracket-set components may no longer reflect the hall’s original condition. Regardless, the importance and grandeur of Sage Mother Hall in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties contrasts with the more modest walled compound housing the Shu Yu shrine, which often fell into disrepair and neglect.

Textual sources indicate that before the Yuan dynasty (1260–1368) the Shu Yu shrine compound occupied a much larger footprint. The shift in patronage to the Sage Mother “resulted in a change in scale, from the grand shrine . . . to a much smaller courtyard complex that required repeated rebuilding by local officials in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties” (61; emphasis in original). Because Shu Yu continued to be listed in the official sacrificial statutes, local literati continued his worship and took over patronage and building repair of his shrine. More concerned with the moral and social value of worshipping the proper deities, literati patronage reflected diverse interests from the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries (chapter 7). With popular donations disproportionately going to the Sage Mother complex, records register the frustration of local officials in repeatedly needing to rebuild the Shu Yu shrine. Some local elites favored the revival of sacrificial rites to Shu Yu as the founding deity. Others sought to usurp the grander Sage Mother Hall for worship to Shu Yu as a way to correct and restore the proper ritual and social hierarchy. Still others sought to reestablish the prominence of the Shu Yu complex in order to gain control over irrigation water supplies. In reaction to Qing-dynasty Manchu conquest, it is also suggested that the Chinese literati elite may have viewed a revival of Shu Yu’s local historical significance as a member of the Zhou royal family as a method to back Confucian rituals and Chinese cultural identification (164). Despite such patronage, however, greater popular support for the Sage Mother continued unabated. Confucian scholars judged this to be inappropriate, and in order to restore the correct social order, one strategy was to revisit textual sources so as to recast the Sage Mother in the role of Yi Jiang, the historical mother of Shu Yu.

While little is known about the early layout of the Jinci complex, Miller tries to map the architectural and sculptural developments at the site in order to extrapolate parallels with the historical narrative focusing on changing power relationships between patronage of the Sage Mother and Shu Yu. Jinci presently includes several architectural groupings organized around three springs and canals. Miller proposes a key architectural distinction between a formal walled compound for the Shu Yu shrine, and a series of freestanding halls and structures on a central axis from southeast to northwest for the Sage Mother complex. This suggests an architectural opposition between a building complex for a water spirit that is oriented according to natural topography, and a walled compound for Shu Yu that conceptually faces south and conforms to the traditional courtyard layout of most major ritual complexes. In addition, the very grandeur and scale of the Sage Mother Hall led late imperial observers to disbelieve that it could be dedicated to a mere local female water spirit, since how could it overshadow Shu Yu? Efforts such as the attempt to re-identify the Sage Mother as Shu Yu’s mother, therefore, were intended as correctives. Similarly, literati interest in creating a ritually suitable architectural design for the Shu Yu shrine may have resulted in adopting the traditional “courtyard-complex format” modeled after Zhou-dynasty palaces and temples, which is characterized by a south-facing orientation; gates, courtyards, and main halls arranged along a central axis; and the entire compound being enclosed within a rectilinear wall.

In The Divine Nature of Power, the narrative of changing power relationships is convincingly presented after careful study of the currently available textual, physical, and visual sources. This scholarly monograph of a particular ritual architectural site presents architecture not as a static monument frozen in time and space but, instead, as part of a dynamic cultural history. As important as the reconstruction of a probable historical narrative, however, are questions raised about the degree of unknowability inherent in any historical document or monument. As Miller acknowledges, “without a full-scale excavation, we may never know what the pre-Yuan-dynasty ritual compound at the Jin Springs looked like” (97). Without an archaeological survey, how can it be ascertained that the Sage Mother Hall complex formerly was not enclosed by a rectilinear compound wall? The argument is made that the frontal access imposed by the compound walls resulted in a more elaborate front facade and simplified treatment on sides and back walls of the Shu Yu hall. In other words, the compound walls prevent one from seeing the sides and back from inside the compound, so emphasis is placed on the front. If true, the same argument would apply to the Sage Mother Hall where only the front facade has columnar- and intercolumnar-bracket sets arranged in an alternating up-down rhythm beneath the lower eaves. The intercolumnar sets are omitted on the back and sides, which also implies frontality; this may similarly suggest that the hall was once in a walled compound. Alternately, this frontal treatment may be a regional characteristic, or the elaboration of the front facades may have been the result of later renovations. Without archaeological evidence it is also possible to speculate that the Sage Mother complex had once been an equivalent walled compound adjacent to the walled Shu Yu compound. Removing the former’s compound wall may have been intended to allow it to be perceived as architecturally dominating the entire precinct, subsuming the Shu Yu compound as part of its demesne.

What becomes clear is that the textual and physical record only provides fragmentary evidence, and only a small portion of the overall cultural history of the Jinci complex can presently be reconstructed. Throughout the book there are tantalizing clues to other parts of the narrative for which we need more information, including Buddhist and Daoist involvement, fertility worship associated with the Sage Mother, ritual practices, sacred geography, and relationships with other ritual buildings in the complex, including halls to Guandi, Laojun, and Lu Ban. One has to wonder how these factors might have interacted with the narrative focusing on the shifting patronage between Shu Yu and the Sage Mother. Surveying the cultural landscape of the Jinci complex, I am reminded of Charles Darwin’s observation in The Origin of Species on the geological record “as a history of the world imperfectly kept,” where what we know is only the last chapter and some fragmentary pages and sentences from earlier chapters that have by chance been preserved. Like the natural historian, the cultural geologist struggles to make sense of what has survived in order to tell a story that to some degree is unknowable.