Imperial Order and Local Variation: The Culture of Ghost in Early Imperial China

Abstract

This paper proposes to provide an outline of the development of the concept of ghost in early Imperial China. I will first give a brief account of the emergence of a discourse on ghost in early China, then I will discuss the religious milieu of early imperial China, concentrating on both the establishment of the imperial order and official religious rituals, and the idea of ghost persisted in people's daily life that developed according to local traditions. I will examine how the official and the private idea of ghost interacted or overlapped with one another. Lastly, I will introduce the appearance of the literary ghost at the end of the Eastern Han, as a prelude to the Six Dynasty ghost literature.