The Ghost Festival in Medieval China

290 Pages·1988·7.895 MB·English

by  Stephen F. Teiser

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T h e Q h o s t P e s t i v a l
IN M E D I E V A L C H IN A
BY
Stephen F. Teiser
PRINCETON
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1988 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Guildford, Surrey
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be
found on the last printed page of this book
ISBN 0-691-05525-4
This book has been composed in Linotron Bembo
Clothbound editions of Princeton University Press books are printed on
acid-free paper, and binding materials are chosen for strength and
durability. Paperbacks, although satisfactory for personal collections,
are not usually suitable for library rebinding
Printed in the United States of America by Princcton University Press,
Princeton, New Jersey
Frontispiece: Mu-lien administering the preccpts to his mother in front
of the Buddha and the assembly of monks. Section from a Japanese scroll
dated 1346, thought to be based on a thirteenth-century Chinese
scripture. Photograph by permission of the Kyoto temple, Konkoji, and
courtesy of the Tokyo National Research Institute of Cultural Properties.
To S. A. T.
C. J. R.
G. S. R.

Contents
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xv
Abbreviations xvii
one: Introduction 3
The Spread of the Ghost Festival 3
The Significance of the Ghost Festival 10
The Forms of Religion in Chinese Society 15
The Place of Buddhism in Chinese Society 20
tw o : The Prehistory of the Ghost Festival 26
Antecedents in Indigenous Chinese Religion 27
The Monastic Schedule 31
Taoist Parallels 35
Conclusions 40
three: An Episodic History of the Ghost Festival in
Medieval China 43
The Canonical Sources: The Yii-lan-p’en Sutra and The Sutra on
Offering Bowls to Repay Kindness (ca. 400-500) 48
Tsung Lin’s Record of Seasonal Observances in Ching-ch’u (ca. 561) 56
The Pure Land Yii-lan-p’en Siitra (ca. 600-650) 58
Hui-ching’s Commentary Praising the Yii-lan-p’en Siitra (ca. 636-639) 63
Tao-shih’s Memorandum on Offerings to the Buddha (ca. 668) 66
Yang Chiung’s “Yii-lan-p’cn Rhapsody” (692) 71
Government Offerings According to the T’ang liu-tien (ca. 739) 77
The Celebration under Emperor Tai-tsung in 768 78
Poems and Celebrations under Emperor Te-tsung (r. 779-805) 83
The Transformation Text an Mu-lien Saving His Mother from the Dark
Regions (ca. HOI)) 87
Tsuiig-nii's Commentary on the Yii-lan-p'en Siitra (ca. H30) 91
vii
CONTKNTS
The Suppression of Yii-lan-p'en in H44 95
The Lecture Text on the Ytl-hm-p'en Siitni (ca. H50) 99
Chih-yiian’s "Hymns in Praise of Lan-p’en" (ca. 1020) 103
Postscript: The Cihost Festival after Tang Times 107
four: The Mythological Background 113
An Example 114
Mu-lien’s Biography 116
Hungry Ghosts 124
Mothers and Monks 130
Conclusions 134
Appendix: The Buddha’s Asccnsion to the Heaven of Thirty-three to
Preach to His Mother 136
five: Mu-lien as Shaman 140
The Chinese Background 141
The Buddhist Background 147
Mu-lien as Shaman 157
Conclusions 164
six: The Cosmology of the Ghost Festival 168
The Cosmology of The Trans formation Text on Mu-lien Saving
His Mother 170
Ghost Festival Cosmology in Context 179
Conclusions 190
seven: Buddhism and the Family 196
The Bonds of Kinship 197
The Power of Monks 203
Conclusions 208
eight: Concluding Perspectives 214
A Sociological Perspective 214
A Uitual Perspective 217
An 1 listorical Perspective 221
viii
CONTENTS
Character Glossary of Chinese, Korean, and
Japanese Words 225
Bibliography 231
Index 265
i x

Preface
Even a brief experience of the ghost festival leaves an impression of
spirited diversity. My own encounter with the annual celebration be­
gan in Taiwan on September 5, 1979, when string after string of fire­
crackers punctuated an already fitful night of sleep. All month long
hungry ghosts had been wandering the earth, released from their usual
torments in the dark regions of hell to visit their families, who wel­
comed their own kin but warded off stranger ghosts with noisemakers
and smoke. The festivities reached their peak the next day, the fifteenth
(also the full moon) of the seventh lunar month. A former teacher took
me on a visit to a small Buddhist temple called “The Linked Clouds
Meditation Hall” (Lien-yiin ch’an-yuan) in Taipei. The temple was
staffed by a score of nuns, who had just the day before concluded their
summer meditation retreat. People streamed in and out of the small
chapel all morning. Some joined the nuns in reciting Buddhist scrip­
tures (sutras), some commissioned prayer slips dedicating merit to
their ancestors, while others simply burned incense, offered a short
prayer, and left.
Fixing the shape of the festival subsequently proved to be a curious
task. In tracing the smoke of the ghost festival back to its hazy origins
in early medieval China, I uncovered a surprising abundance of
sources: canonical sutras proclaiming the origins of the ghost festival;
picture tales narrating the adventures of a fearless ascetic named Mu-
lien, who rescued his mother from purgatory; poems and rhapsodies
echoing a Taoist cosmology; other sources attesting to the roles played
by monks and merchants, emperors and common folk in the celebra­
tion of the seventh moon. These documents left no doubt that the sym­
bolism, rituals, and mythology of the ghost festival pervaded the entire
social landscape of medieval China.
Yet I also discovered that the dispersion of the festival throughout
Chinese society remained unexplored in modern scholarship and al­
most unmentioncd in traditional historiography. Understanding the
causes of this vacuum helped directly in overcoming it. The outstand­
ing majority of sources for the history of Chinese religion were pro­
duced by people who shared an “institutional” bias, either as officials
and would-be officials predisposed against the Buddhist church or as
history-writing monks who emphasized the canonical beginnings and
orderly teleology of the services held within temple walls. In either case
xi