Jingyu Liu

This dissertation aims to study the prominence of salvation rites for the dead from the vantage point of its local regional religious history of the Jiangnan area during the Song dynasty (960-1279). By looking at the liturgical interactions between the two great religious traditions, Buddhism and Daoism, this study will investigate how the interactions gave rise to the development and popularization of the grandest universal salvation ceremonies called Water-Land Retreat and Yellow Register Retreat. By sketching a history of a given ritual practice and by understanding the meaning of the ritual practice in the context of sociopolitical development, I hope to construct a socio-liturgical matrix which will shed some new light on the reassessment of the the complexity of Chinese religion.