Buddhism; stūpa; ritual; material culture; medieval China
摘要
This paper examines how Chinese people perceived and accepted Buddhist stūpas in medieval China. Doctrinal and ritualistic developments can potentially contribute to the emergence of new ritual objects. Ideological connotations of stūpas witnessed a transition associated with the transformation of the stūpa cult in China. Stūpa burial became progressively accessible to ordinary clerics and laypeople who showed sympathy with Buddhism. The similarity between stūpas and tombs in terms of funerary function largely determined people’s interpretations of stūpas in the early medieval period. However, tombs cannot be the precise manifestation of stūpas in medieval China. Stūpas evolved into multidimensional meanings in medieval China. The perceptions of stūpas witnessed an ongoing process of reconstruction, which reveals how cultural transmission and transformation work throughout history.
目次
Abstract 1 Keywords 1 1. Introduction 1 2. The Etymology of Ta 塔 in Chinese Literature 2 3. The Rise of Stūpa Construction in Early Medieval China 4 4. The Interaction of Ritual Practices with Stūpa Construction in Medieval China 7 5. Ideological Connotations of huishen ta (Cremated-Body/Destructed-Body Stūpa) on Mount Bao in Anyang 11 6. Concluding Remarks 13 Funding 14 Institutional Review Board Statement 14 Informed Consent Statement 14 Data Availability Statement 14 Conflicts of Interest 14 Abbreviations 14 Notes 14 References 15
