Abstract:

The occurrence of folk religions has close relations with the living activities of human beings, which has features of being latent, diversified and diffused. Folk religions among Shanxi, Shaanxi and He’nan Provinces of the Yellow River Basin originate from the concepts of animism in the primitive society and root in the soil of agricultural civilization, and two main survival demands for material production and offspring breeding have contributed to a genealogy of folk religions, with beliefs for natural farming gods, deities for protecting the society, and secular Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism Gods as the backbone of the system. The dangerous geographical environment of the winding Yellow River and harsh climatic conditions of long drought have generated unique beliefs in River God and Rain God. Then through links of efficacy, personification and secularization, these folk beliefs developed their evolutionary mechanism into the bottom of the hearts of people as well as every corner of their social life. During the period of social transition, the development of folk religions should strengthen the interaction of various elements of the belief system, promote folk religions to blend into various links of social structures, and play their roles of moral and ethical education for social groups, social organization integration and soft control of social orders, and ultimately highlight their endogenous forces in rural revitalization.

Key words: Yellow River Basin, River God, Rain God, genealogy of beliefs, soft control