Tudigong

THE MOST WORSHIPPED GOD IN CHINA WAS NOT IN THE REGISTRY. Tudigong is the god of the shrine at the end of the street, and the corpus — holding the Jade Emperor, the Three Pure Ones and the Eight Immortals — had nothing at the bottom of the hierarchy at all. A bureaucracy recorded only from the top is not a bureaucracy.

Domains

• the local soil
• tutelary guardianship
• the lowest rank of the celestial bureaucracy

Relations

• ranks below in the celestial bureaucracy: Chenghuang

Sources

• Reference treatment of Tudigong and the City God: Tudigong, 'Lord of the Soil and the Ground', is a tutelary deity of natural locality who guards the land's natural environment, animals and plants as well as humans; a god of the LOWEST RANK, he receives wishes from worshippers and grants them according to their deeds, and the definitive characteristic of Tudigongs is that they are limited to their specific geographical locations. A City God (Chenghuang) is a tutelary deity believed to protect the people and affairs of a particular village, town or city, and the corresponding location in the afterlife; City God cults appeared over two millennia ago and originally involved worship of a protective deity of a town's walls and moats, the term later being applied to deified leaders from the town who serve in authority over the souls of its deceased and intervene in the affairs of the living, in conjunction with other officials of the hierarchy of divine beings. City Gods rank ABOVE tudigong, which themselves rank above landlord deities.