A Study On The Faith In The Three Buddha Founder In Northern Fujian

During the Tang and Song Dynasties,there were many folk beliefs in gods due to the special geographical environment and humanistic background in Fujian.Then many beliefs in ancestors emerged strikingly,among which was faith inthe three Buddha Founder,arising from northern Fujian mountains in the early Tang Dynasty.Throughout the history,the three Buddha Founderdeveloped from an exotic monk into a small local god and then gradually into a regional god well-known in northern Fujian,and finally rose to the officially recognized god.The rise and fall of the three Buddha Founder,with regional characteristics,is typical of the beliefs in ancestors in Fujian.Targeting faith in three Buddha Founder and combining historical literature and anthropological field study,this paper first clarifies how the faith originated and developed,and then explores how the faith paralleled with the social economy and clan based on literature and oral historical data.On the basis of this,three distinctive Buddhist founding areas are studied and the inheritance patterns of the faith are analyzed from different aspects in order to explore the survival and development of folk beliefs in northern Fujian mountainous areas.