艋舺龍山寺觀音會和唸佛會之歷史與現況 - 兼論女性虔信者在寺廟組織中的角色=The history of Lung-shang Temple's Kuan-in Association and Buddha-chanting Association, Also on the female believers’ role in the temple
Two associations affliated to Lung-shang Temple at Wanhua, Taipei are explored in this paper. Kuan-in Association and Buddha-chanting Association, both belong to Lung-shan Temple are organized by mostly female true believers of the major deity of this temple. These two associations seem not so important, and look like so trivial. But these female members are very active in the everyday work of the temple, and play an important role in all sorts of religious activities in the temple. Some of them come to the temple very early in the morning to clean everything in the temple. Back in the earlier days, they also cooked for the all in the temple. They chant Buddha’s names and Buddhist scripts day and night, especially in the religious festivals many times a year. Through collecting historical and field data, the historical development and the organization of these two associations will be investigated, and the religious activities engaged by the members of these two associations will be described in detail. Finally, a brief contrast with the managing body of the temple majorly occupied by male members will be shown by some empirical data to reveal the conspicuous dimension of gender in which the female true believers of Kuan-in in Lung-shan Temple, organizing themselves into two associations are indeed the important running body of the temple. They deserve our attention in order to understand the female dimension of Kuan-in belief in Taiwan.
