A team of specialists from the University of Bristol has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to conduct the first ever comparative study of ‘Buddhist Death Rituals of Southeast Asia and China’.

The three-year research project is an interdisciplinary collaboration between anthropologists and experts in Religious Studies, led by Professor Paul Williams.

The project is concerned with Sri Lanka, Laos and Thailand in Southeast Asia, and China, and is the first comparative academic study of Buddhist death rituals in these two very distinct cultural areas.

Death rituals are considered to be the most important of all rituals in Buddhist culture. Buddhists believe that unless a person attains Nirvana, death is followed by rebirth. It is also commonly held that, after death, it may be possible to help in some way the person who has died. This has inspired a great number of Buddhist rituals, many of which are still practised today. For example, in some rituals, merit for the deceased can be obtained by the dead person’s family and friends making offerings of food and other items to monks.

Professor Williams explains, "All the different types of death rituals are heavily permeated by the cultural and indigenous elements of belief specific to each Buddhist country. Key to our research is comparing and contrasting practice in different areas and looking, for example, at how the Communist Cultural Revolution in China (1966-1976) has impacted on the death rituals of Chinese Buddhists."

Experts from the team have travelled extensively in both Southeast Asia and China to observe and record the Buddhist funeral rites and death rituals in each. Williams says, "Fieldwork is a particularly strong element of this research project; through filming, recordings, photographs, interviews and collecting of ritual texts, the project covers all aspects of Buddhist death rituals." 

Professor Williams explains, "The outcome of this research will make a considerable contribution to our understanding of Buddhist death rituals. All the original research materials that have been gathered by studying two diverse traditions will be combined to create an archive of material relating to Buddhist death rituals, the aim being to make this available to academic scholars and other interested audiences".

As well as publishing the findings of this research in a book, the team also aims to create documentary-style films which, it is hoped, will be used as teaching aids at the Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Bristol and elsewhere. Furthermore this audio-visual material will form part of an exhibition which is planned for 2009 aimed to reach out to a wider public. The research will also be disseminated at a number of global conferences on Buddhism. The first of these, the 15th Congress of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, took place in June 2008 in Atlanta, Georgia. This Conference, which is held once every three to four years, is considered to be the premier international forum for scholars of Buddhism.

Lastly, the team has been invited by the universities of Leeds and Hamburg (Zentrum für Buddhismuskunde) to share with it the findings of this research through a series of lectures and seminars.

To find out more about the research project see the Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Bristol: www.bristol.ac.uk/thrs/buddhistcentre

Images: Monks officiate during a ritual that concludes a funeral rite. The collected bones are put into a jar which is then sealed and given to the monks who perform a chant upon completion of this act. The jar is then usually kept in the monastery or later on, after the construction of a small monument, enshrined.

Images copyright Patrice Ladwig of the University of Bristol