Buddhist Funeral Cultures of Southeast Asia and China

Paul Williams, Patrice Ladwig

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781107003880
• eBook ISBN: 9781139368612
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Buddhism

The centrality of death rituals has rarely been documented in anthropologically informed studies of Buddhism. Bringing together a range of perspectives including ethnographic, textual, historical and theoretically informed accounts, this edited volume presents the diversity of the Buddhist funeral cultures of mainland Southeast Asia and China. While the contributions show that the ideas and ritual practices related to death are continuously transformed in local contexts through political and social changes, they also highlight the continuities of funeral cultures. The studies are based on long-term fieldwork and covering material from Therav?da Buddhism in Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and various regions of Chinese Buddhism, both on the mainland and in the Southeast Asian diasporas. Topics such as bad death, the feeding of ghosts, pollution through death, and the ritual regeneration of life show how Buddhist cultures deal with death as a universal phenomenon of human culture.

Table of contents

• Cover
• BUDDHIST FUNERAL CULTURES OF SOUTHEAST ASIA AND CHINA
• Title
• Copyright
• Content
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributers
• Preface
• CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Buddhist funeral cultures
• CHAPTER 2 Chanting as ‘bricolage technique’: a comparison of South and Southeast Asian funeral recitation
• CHAPTER 3 Weaving life out of death: the craft of the rag robe in Cambodian ritual technology
• CHAPTER 4 Corpses and cloth: illustrations of the pamsukula ceremony in Thai manuscripts
• CHAPTER 5 good death, bad death and ritual restructurings: the New Year ceremonies of the Phunoy in northern Laos
• CHAPTER 6 Feeding the dead: ghosts, materiality and merit in a Lao Buddhist festival for the deceased
• CHAPTER 7 Funeral rituals, bad death and the protection of social space among the Arakanese (Burma)
• CHAPTER 8 Theatre of death and rebirth: monks’ funerals in Burma
• CHAPTER 9 From bones to ashes: the Teochiu management of bad death in China and overseas
• CHAPTER 10 For Buddhas, families and ghosts: the transformation of the Ghost Festival into a Dharma Assembly in southeast china
• CHAPTER 11 Xianghua foshi 香花佛事 (incense and flower Buddhist rites): a local Buddhist funeral ritual tradition in southeastern China
• CHAPTER 12 Buddhist passports to the other world: a study of modern and early medieval Chinese Buddhist mortuary documents
• Index