A Study on the Funerals of the Han Buddhist Monks of Lingnan during the Late Qing Dynasty via the Haichuang Temple in Guangzhou

Abstract

The funeral protocol of Buddhist monks is an important part of the rituals of Han Buddhism. The monks’ funeral rituals were recorded in detail in the Monastic Rules (清规) of Chan. The funeral of Chinese Buddhism monks after the Song Dynasty was known through the records of Monastic Rules. However, how it is concretely practiced is unknown. In the late Qing Dynasty, Westerners who came to China out of curiosity about the rituals of Han Buddhism recorded the process and details of the funerals of the monks in the temples they visited, among which Haichuang Temple (海幢寺) in Guangzhou ranks first. The funerals of the monks at Haichuang Temple in the late Qing Dynasty inherited the tradition of Chan funeral culture from the Song Dynasty. Meanwhile, the degradation into secular funeral culture appeared. Influenced by the secular funeral culture in Lingnan (岭南), the tombs of the monks in Chan Temples there, among them, Haichuang Temple is listed as a typical example, showed a trend toward the Shanshou Tomb (山手墓) in the early Qing Dynasty. In the late Qing Dynasty, some of the ancestral tomb-pagodas (祖师墓) in Lingnan Chan Temples abandoned the traditional form of pagodas completely and were almost the same as the Shanshou Tombs. The degradation of the funeral culture of Han Buddhism in the late Qing Dynasty reflects the declining trend of Buddhism.