Narrating a Goddess: Religious Legitimacy and Authority in the Spread of Mazu Cult during the Southern Song

Mazu 媽祖 was a Fujianese shamaness who achieved apotheosis and whose cult subsequently spread posthumously across southern China. This paper engages with the earliest account of the cult's propagation outside Mazu’s hometown, titled Record of the Rebuilding of the Temple of Harmonious Deliverance or Ancestral Temple of Sacred Mound 聖墩祖廟重建順濟廟記, dated to 1150 in the coastal locality of Ninghai 寧海. I postulate that the primary purpose of Mazu's advocacy was to appropriate a non-local deity to legitimize a local merchant lineage. Foremost, I will demonstrate that the Record established the goddess Mazu as more efficacious than the original local deities. Then, I will showcase that the Record’s purposeful insertion of miracles and Confucian references to reinforce Mazu’s religious efficacy and further elevation. Finally, I demonstrate how ascribing Mazu with a regional identity bolsters the legitimacy of a plausible local merchant lineage or community based in Ninghai.