| 英文摘要 |
This thesis deals with the khiam, an ethnically distinct religious system in Yilan County. Both the religious and the ethnic aspect of the khiam are discussed. A census of fifty-one temples located on the Lanyan Plain serves my survey of the religious aspect of the khiam, which uncovers the present situation and the geographical distribution of the local temple community. On the other hand, I employ historical records, pedigrees of the local clans, materials offered by Professor Teng-fu Shih’s raditional Villages on the Lanyan Plain: Theoretical Structure and Basic Information and information I gathered from my own oral history works as the base upon which to discuss the distribution of a “recessive” ethnic group on the Lanyan Plain, the Hakka immigrants from the Zhao’an County of the Fujian Province, China. Further comparative analyses of the geographical distribution and types of the khiam and the distribution of the Zhao’an Hakka identify the close relation between the khiam and the Zhao’an Hakka. In the last chapter of this thesis, I compare the khiam on the Lanyan Plain and that in Xiluo, a town in Yunlin County in western Taiwan. Differences in language and demographical distribution between these two ethnic groups, the formation, changes, and the scale of their khiam, and their ethnic identity all show the local and ethnic characteristics of the khiam on the Lanyan Plain. |
