A Study On Traditional Funeral Customs In Fengjie From The Perspective Of Religious Study

This study mainly talks about traditional funeral customs nowadays in Chong Qing,Fengjie,and it will solve the problem that the relationship between soul belief and funeral rituals by Religious Studies' theories based on fieldwork.Fengjie has the special traditional funeral customs because of its unique location and different historical culture.The traditional funeral customs based on traditional Confucian funeral rituals assimilated Buddhism's soul belief,the rites of Buddhism and Taoism,Cultural relic in Bachu,Tujia minority culture,and its own folk art.Besides general program,funeral procedure includes Choose the Graveyard and Propitious Time,Lion Dance and Drum Music,A Religious Rite of Releasing the Soul of the Dead,Accompany the Dead All Night by Beating Drums and Singing Funeral Songs,and so on.On the burial's hand,one important thing is the Geomantic Omen of the graveyard.The form is inhumation.The mourning custom with paying attention to sacrifice and despising mourning and the sacrifices during the festival will appear after burning.The essential connotation of traditional funeral customs is religion.The relationship between Soul and the living person will be dealt with by a series of ceremonial symbols according to the reality requires from the living person after death.This study consists of four chapters: Chapter One talks about the origin of funeral and burial,the developing relationship between funeral and soul belief,the religious essence of traditional funeral,and the relationship between traditional funeral customs in Fengjie and other regional culture.Chapter Two based on fieldwork's material will introduce the appearance form of traditional funeral customs in Fengjie from the perspective of organizational form,funeral procedure,burialand funeral sacrifices,and difference performance.Chapter Three will talk about faith meaning with different kinds of ritual symbol and the principle of generation between Life and Death and their interactive mode from the perspective of soul belief which belongs to the traditional funeral customs in Fengjie.Chapter Four will analyse some problems in Fengjie's traditional funeral,and also put forward the countermeasure suggestion according to funeral reform,the protection with the essence of traditional culture and the inheritance of it.This paper holds that: at first,people made burial was aimed at calling back the spirit of the dead and resurrecting the dead rather than sending out the soul;There is one close origin relationship between funeral song and primitive religious sacrifices.Festive funeral originate in one expectation that people want to reach success;Reconstructing the symbolic meaning of ritual is the key for modern funeral reform.