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The Influence of Indian and Buddhist Elements in Medieval China: A Study of Buddha’s Birthday Celebrations In Luoyang during the Northern Wei dynasty
The Buddha’s birthday festival reached an unprecedented level of grandeur during the rule of Northern Wei when its capital was at Luoyang (495 to 534 CE). Buddhism was indigenous to neither the rulers nor the native Han Chinese. Yet, the Buddha’s birthday celebration on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month became a popular ritual in which the entire city participated. This paper studies a particular phenomenon in this public ritual, the use of carriages in image processions, tracing the heritage of these carriages back to the religion’s land of origin, India, and their literary sources. The intention of this paper is to study the reasons for such phenomenal success, in particular as they relate to the functional role of a religious festival and how the tenets of a religion can enable itself to be popular and sustainable. The Buddha’s birthday is a relevant case study because over 1,500 years later, countries such as Cambodia, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam continue to celebrate it as their public holiday.
印度與佛教元素對中國中古時期的影響——北魏洛陽佛誕節慶典研究
北魏首都在洛陽期間（495-534），佛誕節的慶典，即已達到前所未有的隆重程度。對統治者及漢人而言，雖然佛教不是本土文化，但是農曆四月八日的佛誕節慶典已經很流行，舉城參與。本文針對此公開慶典中使用車輦載佛像遊行的特殊現象，將其傳統回溯到佛教的發源地—印度及其文獻，試圖探討這一現象的成功因素。尤其是因為這些因素關係到宗教慶典的功能性角色，以及教義是如何讓宗教受歡迎並持續發展的問題。以佛誕節作為相關的案例研究，是因為1,500多年後，在柬埔寨、香港、澳門、馬來西亞、緬甸、尼泊爾、新加坡、南韓、斯里蘭卡、台灣、泰國、越南等地，佛誕節依然被訂為國定假日來慶祝。
北魏都城與佛教
