In the past twenty years, work on the local culture of central Hunan has been one of the most exciting sources for rethinking the nature and variety of Chinese local society. At the heart of this society is a kind of statuary found nowhere else in China—sculpted images of local people, primarily religious specialists of a wide range, but also parents and ancestors who, according to Confucian orthodoxy, should be represented by tablets, not statues. While the consecration ceremonies of these statues include rites that are common to all China, they are embedded in unique local ritual traditions. The statues themselves are placed not in temples or ancestor halls but on domestic altars. 
　　Alain Arrault’s book, based on two decades of international collaborative research, focuses on some four thousand of these statues, all of which have been meticulously studied on the basis of consecration certificates inserted in the statues, the earliest of which date to the sixteenth century. This comprehensive investigation of central Hunan religious and social practices is the first devoted entirely to the unique statuary and represents a major contribution to our understanding of local Chinese society. 
—John Lagerwey, Research Professor of Chinese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong 
 
　　A History of Cultic Images in China is a significant contribution to the study of religion and local society in China. Alain Arrault has catalogued and studied thousands of small wooden statues that had originally been installed on domestic altars throughout central Hunan province. Particularly noteworthy are the consecration certificates, materia medica, and other objects that are inserted inside of the statues when they are ritually consecrated. Arrault’s excellent book demonstrates the value of studying the materials found inside the statues in the context of the external social world. e research is also based on fieldwork, so that the statues and their contents can be situated within the social and cultural context of the region in Hunan where they originated. 
　　Scholars of Chinese religions are often frustrated by the fact that their sources primarily deal with elites, but by attending to the internal and external aspects of these statues, Arrault reveals a wide variety of little-known deities and religious specialists and provides a rare glimpse into the intimate space of a family’s domestic life and religious practices. is new vantage point helps to ll out our picture of the Chinese religious landscape and challenges many scholarly assumptions about the nature of Chinese religions—and the ways they have been conceptualized and categorized—from the sixteenth century to the present day. 
—James Robson, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University