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Cited by 50Chinese history and philosophyStudy and Philosophy of ReligionCultural and Mythological Studies

The Offering of Food and the Creation of Order: The Practice of Sacrifice in Early China

Puett, Michael·2005·Of Tripod and Palate
DOI 10.1057/9781403979278_5
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Abstract

Anthropologists of contemporary Chinese religion have often pointed out that the lines between spirits, ghosts, and ancestors are highly permeable. Indeed, the primary difference between them is to be found in food—both in the types of food offered and the ways in which it is given. Ghosts are dead humans who are not fed by living descendants (and thus become hungry and highly dangerous, but also objects of offerings by individuals outside of more established avenues of worship); ancestors are fed by their living descendants (and thus are not dangerous and may even be helpful to the descendants); and spirits are fed by larger numbers of people than just simply their descendants (and thus become far more powerful than ghosts or ancestors). Moreover, each of these can become any of the others if the food offerings are changed: a ghost can become an ancestor, an ancestor can become a ghost, a ghost can become a spirit. In other words, it is living humans, through the act of feeding, who define the differences between spirits, ghosts, and ancestors.1

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  • Echoing the commonplace mode of one table and two chairs in representing the seats for the spirit of the deceased in tombs, such objects would have been devised as a setting for symbolic worship in relic deposits.

    “Echoing the commonplace mode of ' one table and two chairs ' in representing the seats for the spirit of the deceased in tombs, such objects would have been devised as a setting for symbolic worship in relic deposits.”

    From Mechanism of Life for the Netherworld: Transformations of <i>mingqi</I> in Middle-Period China (2015) · cites this paper as [43]

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Authors
Puett, M.
Corresponding author
Puett, Michael
Venue
Of Tripod and Palate
Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Published
2005
Pages
75-95
DOI
10.1057/9781403979278_5
OpenAlex
W2402835161
Cited by
50
References
43
Citations by year
2026: 27 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 2 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 1 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 1 · 2013: 2 · 2012: 1
FWCI
0.00
Type
book chapter
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.springer.com/tdm (unspecified)
Locations
Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Chinese history and philosophy
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Study and Philosophy of Religion
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › General Arts and Humanities › Cultural and Mythological Studies
Keywords
food offerings, sacrifice, ancient China, ancestors, ghosts, alcoholic beverages, ancestor veneration, ritual food, social order, Chinese religion

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