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STEPHENF. TEISERFOLK RELIGION, CHINA
Much has been written about Buddhism’s conversa-
tion with Confucianism and Daoism since its arrival
in China by the first century C.E. While the role of these
two systems of ideas and values in Chinese culture can-
not be denied, it must be kept in mind that the reli-
gious attitudes of the vast majority of the Chinese
people never were directly derived from Confucianism
or Daoism, but rather from folk religion. Folk (or pop-
ular) religion negotiates the relationship of the indi-
vidual, the family, and the local community with the
spirit world by means of beliefs and practices that are
transmitted outside the canonical scriptural traditions
of China. Often this transmission is oral, but there also
exists a long tradition of popular written texts record-
ing myths, rituals, and scriptures. Buddhism’s success
in China can be measured directly by its impact on this
religion of the people.
One major area of Buddhist influence on Chinese
folk religion concerns conceptions of the afterlife. Pre-
Buddhist ideas distinguished between various para-
disiacal realms and a vaguely defined underworld
called the Yellow Springs, but there seems to have been
no clear link between one’s posthumous fate and one’s
conduct while living. The introduction of such a link
by means of the concepts of KARMA(ACTION), REBIRTH,
and hell (or purgatory) led to a fundamental restruc-
turing of Chinese conceptions of the afterlife, furnish-
ing it with a complete set of HELLS, reigned over by ten
kings, in which the soul of the deceased undergoes a
series of punishments in accord with its karmic bur-
den before eventually being reborn. By the seventh
century, this new view of the afterlife had already
gained some acceptance, and in the following centuries
new texts and liturgies for its propagation and ritual
negotiation emerged.
Karma linked the afterlife with individual effort,
which created the terrifying realm of hell, but also
opened up new possibilities for salvation. Here, too,
Buddhism made a major contribution by offering the
saving compassion of its buddhas and bodhisattvas.
From the third century onward, PURELANDBUDDHISM
became the most popular school in China, holding out
as it did the hope of rebirth into AMITABHABuddha’s
Western Paradise. The Bodhisattva Avalokites ́vara, who
until the tenth century was mostly portrayed as male,
gradually came to be visualized as female. Eventually he
became the goddess Guanyin, the quintessential per-
sonification of compassion and one of the most wide-
spread deities of folk religion. Other Buddhist figures
that played an important role in folk religion include
Ksitigarbha (Dizang Wang Pusa), MAITREYA(Mile Fo),
Yama (Yanluo Wang), the Eighteen ARHATs (Lohan),
and MAHAMAUDGALYAYANA(Mulian).
Buddhist saints—revered masters or miracle
workers—sometimes became objects of worship, their
mortuary STUPAs or mummified bodies attracting large
numbers of pilgrims praying for blessings and protec-
tion. A very popular deity in modern Chinese folk re-
ligion, the Living Buddha Jigong (Jigong Huofo),
originated in stories surrounding an unconventional
Buddhist monk who lived in Hangzhou, Zhejiang
province, around the turn of the thirteenth century.
While the cult of Jigong spread far beyond its Hang-
zhou home base, the Patriarch of the Clear Stream
(Qingshui Zushi) is an example of a regional deity that
developed from the cult of an eleventh-century
miracle-working Buddhist monk in Fujian province
and remains largely confined to the Anxi area of Fu-
jian and areas settled by Anxi emigrants in Taiwan and
Southeast Asia. As bodhisattvas, buddhas, and eminent
monks became deities within Chinese folk religion,
they were also removed from the doctrinal control of
the SAN ̇GHAand often took on novel features. The cult
of Qingshui Zushi, for example, adopted more and
more Daoist elements, so that today its Buddhist ori-
gins are barely recognizable. The Bodhisattva Aval-
okites ́vara, in the guise of the female Guanyin, became
a multifunctional deity who, among many other con-FOLKRELIGION, CHINA