Transcript Mortuary Practices and Funeral Rites

Mortuary Practices and Funeral Rites
 Buddhist
services:
monks provided funerary
– Buddhist Services:
– A way to help the dead through these
passages by transferring merit to them.
– The services were held in the home of the
deceased or in a temple
– Monks chanted sutras when performing
services
– The most elaborate service: Great Ceremony
of Land and Water
Mortuary Function of Buddhist
Institution
 Buddhist
temples were places to store
coffins until burial could be arranged
 Buddhist clergy led funeral procession
 Buddhist temples often aided the
practice of cremation, providing
crematories, storing ashes…
Buddhism and Geomancy
 Geomancers
and Buddhist temples
worked together in the provision for
funerary services
– Buddhists handled the ceremonies that
focused on the rebirth of the soul
– Geomancers handled the burial of the
body
 Geomancers
were not always “rustic
masters and vulgar shamans”
– Some of them were prominent Confucian
scholars
State Responses to Cults and Spirits

To cults
–
–
–
–
Outlaw practices
Regulate practices
Define and codify
Use power of example
 Promoted

charitable graveyard
To spirits
–
–
–
–
Outlaw their shrines
Recognition and reward
Appeasement
Exorcism
 Thunder
rites