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Mortuary Practices and Funeral Rites . Buddhist monks provided funerary services: Buddhist Services: A way to help the dead through these passages by transferring merit to them. The services were held in the home of the deceased or in a temple Monks chanted sutras when performing services
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Mortuary Practices and Funeral Rites • Buddhist monks provided funerary services: • Buddhist Services: • A way to help the dead through these passages by transferring merit to them. • The services were held in the home of the deceased or in a temple • Monks chanted sutras when performing services • The most elaborate service: Great Ceremony of Land and Water
Mortuary Function of Buddhist Institution • Buddhist temples were places to store coffins until burial could be arranged • Buddhist clergy led funeral procession • Buddhist temples often aided the practice of cremation, providing crematories, storing ashes…
Buddhism and Geomancy • Geomancers and Buddhist temples worked together in the provision for funerary services • Buddhists handled the ceremonies that focused on the rebirth of the soul • Geomancers handled the burial of the body • Geomancers were not always “rustic masters and vulgar shamans” • Some of them were prominent Confucian scholars
State Responses to Cults and Spirits • To cults • Outlaw practices • Regulate practices • Define and codify • Use power of example • Promoted charitable graveyard • To spirits • Outlaw their shrines • Recognition and reward • Appeasement • Exorcism • Thunder rites
