This study offers an ethnographic examination of the marble Buddhist image trade across the Myanmar-China border since the 1980s, a previously unexamined religious-economic entanglement that transcends conventional academic boundaries between Myanmar and China, Southeast and East Asia, and Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism. Fueled by the Buddhist revival in post-Mao China and the deepening economic integration between China and Southeast Asia over the past three decades, this transborder Buddhist economy has facilitated the circulation of not only raw materials and images but also people, with Chinese workshop owners venturing into Sagyin, Myanmar, for material sourcing and Burmese artisans migrating into Ruili, China, for Buddhist image production. My study argues that this marble Buddhist image trade serves as a compelling contemporary illustration of the enduring and productive interconnectedness between Buddhism and the economy. Employing the concept of “magnificence,” which is closely linked to the material and visual qualities of Buddhist images, my research analyzes the processes of material sourcing, artisan recruitment, image polishing, and transcultural marketing within this trade to explicate how a particular form of Buddhist magnificence, derived from the purity, translucency, and luster of white marble, or white jade (Ch. baiyu) in vernacular Chinese, is religiously and economically cultivated, crafted, and promoted simultaneously. It illuminates how business practices aligned with Buddhist moral principles foster cross-ethnic economic collaboration, how the ethics of Buddhist craftsmanship as a form of soteriologically and economically meaningful labor evolves amidst transborder economic precarity, and how the circulation and marketing of marble Buddhist icon evokes changing imaginaries about Myanmar as a “Buddhist Other” among Chinese Buddhists. This study challenges the Orientalist trope that depicts the economy as a detrimental secularizing force that undermines Buddhism’s ascetic and anti-materialist essence. I argue instead that a dual emphasis that recognizes the intertwined economic and religious dimensions of contemporary Buddhist craftsmanship and material exchanges is required to better capture Buddhism as a lived tradition continuously shaped by the religious values and economic practices of its adherents.

This dissertation examines the development of a singular ritual tradition—the “rites of summoning for interrogation” (kaozhao fa考召法)—from its earliest traces during the Han (2nd century CE) to its full-flowering as a ritual specialty by the end of the Tang (618–907) by drawing upon both esoteric Daoist texts as well as anecdotal materials from the period. Practitioners of this tradition, termed “Ritual Masters of Summoning for Interrogation” (kaozhao fashi), identified as constituents of a larger celestial surveillatory bureaucracy and drew upon its authority to cure disease, exorcize spirits, mend rifts in the community, and even determine marriage compatibility. They did so by utilizing a range of ritualistic practices drawn from the earlier Celestial Master (Zhengyi 正一) and Upper Purity (Shangqing 上清) traditions, such as visualizations, incantations, ritualized pacing, and the talismanic arts. Such practices became widespread in the Song dynasty (960–1279) and were broadly adapted by Daoist movements of the period such as the Orthodox Methods of the Celestial Heart (Tianxin zhengfa 天心正法. In Chapter 1, I trace the origins of kaozhao back to the Han, where they—along with similar exorcistic traditions—drew inspiration from the bureaucratic argot and juridical stylings of officialdom. In Chapter 2, I posit a timeline for the development of kaozhao through the examination of ritual registers and situate the practice in context of the ritual landscape of 8th century China. Chapter 3 details the construction of the kaozhao practitioner’s identity, lineage, and history in the pages of a Tang-era ritual manual, the Jinsuo liuzhu yin 金鎖流珠引. This text provides the earliest categorization of kaozhao—dividing it into a binary of “civil” (wen 文) and “martial” (wu 武) practices—the combination of which were required to attain a new form of communal transcendence called “raising the residence” (bazhai 拔宅). Finally, I demonstrate how the kaozhao rite of “patrolling” (xunyou 巡遊), located therein, recast practitioners as celestial equivalents of the itinerant surveillance commissioners of the Tang, broadening their mandate as ritual polymaths.

This study explores the Free Funeral Service Societies, a social movement in Myanmar merging charitable work with Buddhism. Originating in late 1990s in response to rising funeral costs from urban development, these groups expanded into a network providing various services rooted in the principle of parahita, or the welfare of others. Unlike prior research on Myanmar focusing on apolitical social services to carve out a public space for independent actions amidst oppressive military rule, this study delves into how the Free Funeral Service Movement redefines social services as Buddhist meritorious acts, therefore summoning lay Buddhists to acknowledge their social obligations toward the welfare of others and form themselves into pious subjects through parahita work. Lay Buddhists from all walks of life devote their spare time to parahita social services, particularly free funeral services, treating them as a body of technologies of the self (in Michel Foucault’s terms) for Buddhist self-formation of pious subjects through merit-making, cultivation of virtues, and death preparation.Contrary to the predominant focus on the exchange of material donations for merit in studies of Buddhist giving and merit-making, this study highlights how parahita workers seek not only merit but also the cultivation of piety, defined as virtuous dispositions and habits, through their parahita social services. The virtues nurtured through dedication to the common goods serve also to moralize the distinctive leadership role assumed by parahita workers in public life, their moral and affective connection with the public, and their implicit critique of the state’s failure in social welfare provision. Additionally, this research contributes to the understanding of death and dying in Theravāda Buddhism by illuminating localized Buddhist experiences and practices associated with death preparation. Free funeral services offer ample opportunities for Buddhists to confront their mortality by inducing a heightened emotional state of fear, shock, and agitation, namely saṃvega, through encounters with states of suffering and especially death. Parahita workers’ interpretations of their experience of saṃvega reflect both traditional soteriological concerns with attaining enlightenment to escape suffering and a newfound ethical imperative to alleviate the suffering of others, thereby opening up new ethical pathways in public social life.

This dissertation challenges the conventional understanding that Song dynasty China (960–1279) was a period when Confucianism was placed at the center of governance. Bringing heretofore inadequately studied Buddhist and Daoist texts into discussion, it offers three case studies on interrelationships between Song emperors and the Three Teachings of Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. As shown in all three cases, although a religious campaign directed by the emperor and his institutional apparatus could set out under the influence of a certain teaching/religion, the campaign’s outcome at the state level would often be a fusion of various religious and cultural components. My research suggests that Song emperors employed an eclectic strategy in selecting and utilizing elements from the Three Teachings and attempted to build an imperial religion centered around themselves. As such, Song imperial power emerged as a centripetal force that compelled the Three Teachings to tailor themselves to the imperial religion. Therefore, I term the Song imperial court as a “regulated syncretic field” where segments from different religious traditions became amalgamated into religious/ritualistic entities that served imperial visions of the time. Although proponents of the Three Teachings by and large continued their efforts to gain imperial acceptance of their teachings, they often turned to local society to ensure their authority when their efforts at the court failed. Further, I argue that such phenomena were rooted in the mechanism of patriarchal governance in which the emperor considered themselves and was considered by leaders of the Three Teachings to be the patriarch of his household/empire, who was responsible for balancing the power structure among the Three Teachings.

This dissertation discusses how Confucianism was invented as the basis for culturalidentity of East Asia and how the “Confucian” Classics were circulated and translated in and beyond China proper. Penetrating the compelling forces behind four well-known and widely used texts—the Shijing, the Hanshu, the Shuowen jiezi, and the Erya—in relation to the power dynamics and negotiations among their writers and others in their times, this dissertation follows two tracks. The first investigates how the Classics—which were shared heritages in the pre-Han period (<202 B.C.E.)—became Confucian cultural capital, on the one hand, and how Confucius and his followers were described as authoritative transmitters of ancient culture and martyrs on orders from “anti-traditional” emperors (such as the China’s first Emperor, Qin Shihuangdi), on the other hand. These four early texts, therefore, set forth the framework within which later Confucian intellectuals studied the Classics and the ancient knowledge therein, and also understood their relationship with state power. The second track explores these texts’ Sinocentric and pedantic attitude toward the circulation of the Confucian Classics among people and cultural “Others” who lacked training in the archaic language of the Classics. Nowadays, in light of the fact that the Confucian Classics have become required texts in the curriculum of national learning in the People's Republic of China (PRC), this dissertation provides a lens through which one can see more clearly how Confucianism becomes part of nation building, even in the contemporary world.

This study focuses on the Black Tiger Cult in Anze, Shanxi from the 17th to the 21stcentury and explores changing human-tiger relationships as well as the localization of canonical traditions. Drawing upon local gazetteers, scholar-officials' petitions, canonical texts, stele inscriptions, and temple murals in the area, this study sheds new light on relations among animals, humans, and gods through the deification of the black tiger. While the harsh natural environment intensified conflicts between humans and tigers, the rise of the Black Tiger Cult in local communities helped ease these ecological and social conflicts during the late-imperial era. As the cult gradually established its presence to serve spiritual and practical needs of local people, its practice complemented the mainstream religious communities and state-sponsored sacrificial rituals. The Black Tiger Cult brought together communities and the state power by providing them a space to express and negotiate their spiritual, political, agricultural, and cultural interests. This study also offers a comparative perspective on the Black Tiger Cult in North China and the Tiger Lord Cult in Taiwan during modern times. Different levels of connections between these cults and the historical memory of human-tiger conflicts may contribute to the reinvention of the deified tiger and its relationship with contemporary people. This study argues that the deification of tigers did not elevate the position of animals higher than that of human beings. The establishment of Black Tiger Temples likely changed the local distribution of tigers. Moreover, although traditions of tiger gods vary in different regions and times, they share similar cultural elements that have been interwoven with local human-tiger/animal relationships.

This dissertation explores the relationship between expressions of female virtue—predominantly chastity—and violence within two popular early Chinese literary traditions: Qiu Hu 秋胡 and Han Peng 韓朋. Both tales were in circulation by the Western Han (206 BCE–24 CE) and depict husbands and wives torn apart by conflict—the victims of drama instigated by men—and ultimately end with the righteous suicides of their female leads. Testifying to their enduring popularity, these stories were adapted by poets and prose writers alike, including prominent figures such as Fu Xuan, Yan Yanzhi, Li Shangyin, and Shi Junbao, as well as unknown composers of works discovered at Dunhuang. The results of their labor—poems, prose, and even a Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) stage adaptation—demonstrate the flexibility of these traditions as a means of exploring contemporary concerns regarding female integrity and talent, the dangers of beauty, women’s roles in the family, as well as socio-economic issues. By providing the first study of the portrayal of women within these influential traditions across genre and time, this dissertation not only contributes to the understanding of both tales as elite representations of idealized femininity, but also highlights how such popular traditions were subject to competing pressures of social norms, genre, and audience expectation. By examining and contrasting these disparate works, this study argues that these traditions were less singular tales that owed their existence to any given work than they were a broad collection of topoi that could be shuffled into differing configurations to meet the need of a given author at a given moment.

This thesis is a translation and analysis of the “Epitaph of the Wu Kingdom

Transcendent Duke Ge of the Left Palace of the Grand Bourne” (Epitaph below). The author was Tao Hongjing (456 CE-536 CE). The subject of this Epitaph inscribed on a stele was Ge Xuan (trad. 164 CE-244 CE). Ge Xuan had two titles attributed to him by later Daoists. According to the Lingbao scriptures, Ge was appointed by the Perfected of Grand Bourne, a heavenly title. Later, in the Shangqing scriptures, Ge Xuan was said to be an earthly transcendent without any heavenly appointment. This debate occurred before Tao Hongjing began to write. This stele epitaph is essential, as it records sayings from both Lingbao and Shangqing scriptures. By reading this translated epitaph, scholars can know more about different versions of Ge Xuan's legend, as well as how Ge Xuan's legend was constantly rewritten by later Daoists.

This is a comparative study of two advanced ordination rituals, Daoist chuanshou (conferral of ordination rank) and Buddhist abhiṣeka (guanding) in the mid-late Tang and Five Dynasties (763-979). I analyzed a number of not-well-studied Daoist ritual protocols in the early medieval period, and revealed that rituals recast gender and fostered monastic relations. On the other hand, relying on both canonical materials and a manuscript preserved in Japan that recorded an abhiṣeka performed during the Tang dynasty in 839 C.E., I demonstrated how the canonical prescriptions of Indian origin, with modified actions and reinterpreted meaning, were transformed to respond to the Chinese religious and social environment. Having examined the language of the texts and the step of the rituals, I interpreted how these rituals were made sense in their own religious context, and compared their frame, structure, modality, symbol, and meaning.

Ordination rite concerns the transmission of religious knowledge and authority, and the establishment of religious identity. It is in the relationship between the individual body and the community that Daoists and Buddhists found the form of apprenticeship that led to the embodiment of the community. The mastery of religious knowledge within the community––scriptures, register, mantras, and precepts, etc., was known only through the actual ritual practice. In other words, the ritual body became the locus for coordination of all levels of bodily, social, and cosmological experience via the dialectic of objectification and embodiment in the ordination rites. As the ritualized bodies, those who were ordained coherently comprised the community, which in turn remolded them with dynamically and diversely shaped identities.

My thesis argues that an unrecognized genre existed in classical Chinese painting, one which I call “ethnic" or "minority painting.” The genre of ethnic painting consistently displays certain styles and cultural values and is meant to represent unique ethnic identities. These ideas have not been substantially covered by previous research on Qing dynasty painting. My research raises three main questions: was there a distinct genre in traditional Chinese painting that could be called “ethnic art” (or "minority art")? How did ethnic art distinguish itself within Chinese painting? What were the ethnic identities presented by minority artists from ethnic groups within and outside of China? The materials used for this research include a close visual study of six paintings by Lang Shining (Giuseppe Castiglione) from the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Munich Residenz in Germany and the Musée Guimet in France.