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The Ghost Festival in Medieval China
Abstract
Largely unstudied until now, the religious festivals that attracted Chinese people from all walks of life provide the most instructive examples of the interaction between Chinese forms of social life and the Indian tradition of Buddhism. Stephen Teiser examines one of the most important of such annual celebrations. He provides a comprehensive interpretation of the festivities of the seventh lunar month, in which laypeople presented offerings to Buddhist monks to gain salvation for their ancestors. Teiser uncovers a wide range of sources, many translated or analyzed for the first time in any language, to demonstrate how the symbolism, rituals, and mythology of the ghost festival pervaded the social landscape of medieval China.
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Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“There has been a long debate over whether the Ghost Festival is of Buddhist or Daoist origin.”
From Theravādizing Ghost Festival in Taiwan (2012) · cites this paper as Teiser 1988
In the citing paper
“the Chinese Ghost Festival is already a blend of Buddhist, Daoist, and Chinese religious elements.”
From Theravādizing Ghost Festival in Taiwan (2012) · cites this paper as Teiser 1988
In the citing paper
“Although Xiao makes a strong case, he does not refute Teiser's argument that the monastic routine of Chinese Buddhism is accommodated around the Chinese secular calendar, rather than the Indian calendar (1988, 31-32).”
From Theravādizing Ghost Festival in Taiwan (2012) · cites this paper as Teiser 1988
In the citing paper
“In Chinese Buddhism, the Ghost Festival is called ' yu lan pen ', a term that is exotic and foreign-sounding. Scholars are not sure about the origin or even the meaning of the term: it might be derived from an Indo-European word or from spoken Chinese language (Teiser 1988, 21-23).”
From Theravādizing Ghost Festival in Taiwan (2012) · cites this paper as Teiser 1988
In the citing paper
“Ghost Festival has had a long history in the Chinese culture and is an important ritual in Chinese Buddhism.”
From Theravādizing Ghost Festival in Taiwan (2012) · cites this paper as Teiser 1988
In the citing paper
“Apparently, the idea that merit gained from religious giving can benefit one's parents and others had existed from long before the Ghost Festival became popular in China (which was probably around the sixth or seventh centuries; see Teiser 1988, 21) and this idea could not therefore have been a Chinese Buddhist invention.”
From Theravādizing Ghost Festival in Taiwan (2012) · cites this paper as Teiser 1988
In the citing paper
“Therefore, I am inclined to agree with Teiser that it is probably futile to attempt to pinpoint a Buddhist or Daoist origin for the Ghost Festival. Rather, it is a religious synthesis:”
From Theravādizing Ghost Festival in Taiwan (2012) · cites this paper as Teiser 1988
In the citing paper
“Recent debates in the field of Chinese Buddhism have abandoned the idea of a ' Buddhist conquest of China ' that was posited several decades ago by Erik Zürcher (1959). Instead, they now have come to revolve around models of cultural dialogue and mutual adaptation (Teiser 1988; Gregory 1991).”
From Death and Demonization of a Bodhisattva: Guanyin's Reformulation within Chinese Religion (2016) · cites this paper as Teiser 1988
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Bonanno, G. A., Papa, A., Lalande, K. M., Zhang, N., & Noll, J. G. (2005) · Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-006x.73.1.86 · Cited by 214
The dollarization of Vietnamese ghost money
Kwon, H. (2007) · Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9655.2007.00414.x · Cited by 76
The Rise of Protestantism in Post-Mao China: State and Religion in Historical Perspective
Sun, Y. (2017) · American Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1086/691718 · Cited by 58
Haunting the Buddha: Indian Popular Religion and the Formation of Buddhism
DeCaroli, R. (2004) · doi:10.1093/0195168380.001.0001 · Cited by 53
The Cambridge History of China
(2019) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781139107334 · Cited by 51
Metadata
- Authors
- Teiser, S. F.
- Corresponding author
- Teiser, Stephen F.
- Venue
- Princeton University Press eBooks
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
- Published
- 1988-12-31
- OpenAlex
- W4301299621
- Cited by
- 213
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 21 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 2 · 2012: 30
- FWCI
- 7.08
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Princeton University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Religious studies › Indian and Buddhist Studies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History › Chinese history and philosophy
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Study and Philosophy of Religion
- Keywords
- Ghost Festival, Buddhist festivals, ancestor veneration, Buddhist ritual, Buddhist symbolism, Buddhist mythology, medieval China
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Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Ghost Festival in Medieval China. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1515/9780691222172
- The paper
- Teiser, S. F. (1988). The Ghost Festival in Medieval China. Princeton University Press eBooks. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691222172
