Encyclopedia of Buddhism

cerns, is believed to grant children to her faithful, thus
earning her the name Songzi Guanyin (Child-Giving
Guanyin).

While Buddhism contributed new deities to folk re-
ligion, it in turn adopted popular deities into its own
pantheon, albeit usually only in a subservient position.
There exist many stories of Buddhist pioneers con-
verting local deities or demons to Buddhism and mak-
ing them guardian spirits of their newly founded
monasteries, thus symbolically subordinating local re-
ligion to Buddhism. The most famous case of such sub-
ordination is the adoption of the powerful folk deity
Guan Gong as a tutelary spirit of Buddhist shrines.

In spite of such attempts at symbolic hegemony,
Buddhism never came to dominate Chinese folk
religion, either symbolically or institutionally. The
san ̇gha’s deliberate separation from local communi-
ties limited its influence on their religious life, but
gave it at the same time opportunities for ritual in-
teraction. The strong association of Chinese Bud-
dhism with concepts of the afterlife combined with
the san ̇gha’s separateness to provide Buddhist monks
and nuns with unique qualifications as providers of
ritual services for the dead. In many areas of China,
mortuary rites and rituals performed for the benefit
of ghosts are predominantly supplied by Buddhist
practitioners. Such practitioners include not only for-
mally ordained monks and nuns, but also the fol-
lowers of Buddhist-inclined lay sects, which in some
areas had a more immediate impact as carriers of
Buddhist ideas than the mainstream san ̇gha. An ex-
ample is the role of the Dragon Flower Sect (Longhua
Pai) in nineteenth-century Taiwan, where, in the ab-
sence of a well-established monastic community, sec-
tarians fulfilled many of the ritual functions that
elsewhere were the domain of the ordained Buddhist
clergy. Such sects arose in large numbers from the
fourteenth century onward. They drew their inspira-
tion ecumenically from all religious traditions of
China, but in many of them the soteriological
promise of the Pure Land combined with the escha-
tological expectation of the buddha Maitreya to in-
fuse them with a distinctly Buddhist flavor. For this
reason they have at times been characterized as “folk
Buddhist.”

In these ways Buddhism helped to shape Chinese
folk religion and was in turn shaped by it. In the
process, it contributed a significant number of the
pieces that make up the rich mosaic of religious life in
Chinese communities.

See also:Apocrypha; Confucianism and Buddhism;

Daoism and Buddhism; Entertainment and Perfor-

mance; Ghosts and Spirits; Local Divinities and Bud-

dhism; Merit and Merit-Making; Syncretic Sects:

Three Teachings

Bibliography

Dean, Kenneth. Taoist Ritual and Popular Cults of Southeast

China.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Overmyer, Daniel L. Folk Buddhist Religion: Dissenting Sects in

Late Traditional China.Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-

sity Press, 1976.

Teiser, Stephen F. The Ghost Festival in Medieval China.Prince-

ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.

Teiser, Stephen F. The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Mak-

ing of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism.Honolulu:

University of Hawaii Press, 1994.

Yü, Chün-fang. Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of

Avalokites ́vara.New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.

PHILIPCLART

FOLK RELIGION, JAPAN

Folk religion (minkan shinko
or minzoku shu
kyo
) is the

unifying element underlying Japanese religious struc-

ture, the “frame of reference,” as Miyake Hitoshi has

termed it (“Folk Religion,”p. 122), through which the

religious traditions of Shinto
and Buddhism have be-

come rooted in Japan. Folk religion is generally con-

sidered to encompass a variety of customs, practices

and ideas, including rituals, festivals and events linked

to the calendrical cycle and to individual and social life

cycles; concepts relating to the spirits of the dead and

to other worlds; the use of AMULETS AND TALISMANS

and divination; belief in the capacity of various figures

of worship to bestow worldly benefits on petitioners;

and concepts of spirit possession and shamanism.

The relationship between Buddhism and folk reli-

gion in Japan has been, and remains, one of interac-

tion and mutual reinforcement. From its initial entry

onward Buddhism has assimilated and adapted to ex-

isting folk ideas and practices, simultaneously shaping

and influencing their development, while Buddhist

ideas and practices have often taken hold through in-

tegrating with folk ideas and practices.

This process of mutual influence can be seen from

the time Buddhism first entered Japan, bringing with

it with Daoist concepts and practices relating to

FOLKRELIGION, JAPAN