Religious Beliefs and Rituals of Lay Believers in Guanzhong Stele Associations during the Fifth and Sixth Centuries

During the fifth and sixth centuries, lay believers from diverse cultural backgrounds came together to form associations centred around the erection of religious stone stelae. Each of these stone stelae contains a fruitful corpus of epigraphic sources, providing direct access to the religious stele culture of lay believers. Dedicatory prayers capture the religious aspirations and motivations of lay believers, while the patronage registers document their names and titles. By conducting an investigation into these stele inscriptions, this research explores the religious beliefs and rituals of lay believers. Its first chapter explores the organisational structure of lay associations. Its second chapter extracts details from the dedicatory prayers to provide an exclusive picture of the production process of stone stelae. Continuing from the dedicatory prayers, the third chapter turns to explore the religious beliefs of lay believers, revealing their imagination and expectation of the afterlife, before examining their interpretations of the relationship between the religious traditions available to them. Finally, the fourth chapter dedicates itself to the possible reconstruction of the ritual scenes of lay believers, proposing a unique codicological reexamination of the patronage registers. Standing as a pioneering interdisciplinary study, this research integrates visual and verbal sources related to stone stelae. Its ultimate goal is to enrich the field by presenting a comprehensive exploration of the stele culture of lay believers.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Wong, Junfu

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Galambos, Imre

• Belief
• Buddhism
• Lay Believers
• Premodern China
• Religion
• Ritual
• Stone Stelae

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/537aa548-79b9-4008-8ea1-8018245eeddf/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.107576

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/366810